第69章

He was preparing at nine o'clock to return on foot to the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse; but Madame de la Chanterie, fearing the solitude of that neighborhood at a late hour, made him take a cab.When he reached the house Godefroid heard the sound of an instrument, though the shutters were so carefully closed that not a ray of light issued through them.As soon as he reached the landing, Auguste, who was probably on the watch for him, opened the door of Monsieur Bernard's apartment and said:--"Mamma would like to see you, and my grandfather offers you a cup of tea."When Godefroid entered, the patient seemed to him transfigured by the pleasure she felt in making music; her face was radiant, her eyes were sparkling like diamonds.

"I ought to have waited to let you hear the first sounds," she said to Godefroid, "but I flung myself upon the little organ as a starving man flings himself on food.You have a soul that comprehends me, and Iknow you will forgive."

Vanda made a sign to her son, who placed himself in such a way as to press with his foot the pedal which filled the bellows; and then the invalid, whose fingers had for the time recovered all their strength and agility, raising her eyes to heaven like Saint Cecilia, played the "Prayer of Moses in Egypt," which her son had bought for her and which she had learned by heart in a few hours.Godefroid recognized in her playing the same quality as in Chopin's.The soul was satisfied by divine sounds of which the dominant note was that of tender melancholy.Monsieur Bernard had received Godefroid with a look that was long a stranger to his eyes.If tears were not forever dried at their source, withered by such scorching sorrows, that look would have been tearful.

The old man sat playing with his snuff-box and looking at his daughter in silent ecstasy.

"To-morrow, madame," said Godefroid, when the music ceased; "to-morrow your fate will be decided.I bring you good news.The celebrated Halpersohn is coming to see you at three o'clock in the afternoon.He has promised," added Godefroid in a low voice to Monsieur Bernard, "to tell me the exact truth."The old man rose, and grasping Godefroid's hand, drew him to a corner of the room beside the fireplace.

"Ah! what a night I shall pass! a definitive decision! My daughter cured or doomed!""Courage!" said Godefroid; "after tea come out with me.""My child, my child, don't play any more," said the old man; "you will bring on an attack; such a strain upon your strength must end in reaction."He made Auguste take away the instrument and offered a cup of tea to his daughter with the coaxing manner of a nurse quieting the petulance of a child.

"What is the doctor like?" she asked, her mind already distracted by the prospect of seeing a new person.

Vanda, like all prisoners, was full of eager curiosity.When the physical phenomena of her malady ceased, they seemed to betake themselves to the moral nature; she conceived the strangest fancies, the most violent caprices; she insisted on seeing Rossini, and wept when her father, whom she believed to be all powerful, refused to fetch him.

Godefroid now gave her a minute account of the Jewish doctor and his study; of which she knew nothing, for Monsieur Bernard had cautioned Auguste not to tell his mother of his visits to Halpersohn, so much had he feared to rouse hopes in her mind which might not be realized.

Vanda hung upon Godefroid's words like one fascinated; and she fell into a sort of ecstasy in her passionate desire to see this strange Polish doctor.