Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/81

Rh in shadow, the distant opening of nocturnal flowers, the complicity of little hidden nests, the murmurs of waters and of leaves, soft sighs rising from all things, the freshness, the warmth, and the mysterious awakening of April and May, is the vast diffusion of sex murmuring in whispers their proposals of voluptuousness, till the soul reels beneath the temptation to which it is subjected. Any one seeing Gwynplaine walk, would have said, "Look at that drunken man." He almost staggered under the weight of his own emotions, of the springtime influence, and of the night.

The solitude in the bowling-green was so peaceful that at times Gwynplaine spoke aloud. The consciousness that there is no listener induces speech. He walked with slow steps, his head bent down, his hands behind him, the left hand in the right, the fingers open. Suddenly he felt something slipped between his fingers. He turned round quickly. In his hand was a paper, and in front of him a man. It was this man who, coming up behind him with the stealthy tread of a cat, had placed the paper in his fingers. The paper was a letter. This man, whom he saw quite clearly in the starlight, was small, chubby-cheeked, young, sedate, and dressed in a scarlet livery, exposed from top to toe through the opening of a long grey cloak, then called a capenoche,—a Spanish word contracted; in French it was cape-de-nuit. His head was covered by a crimson cap, like the skull-cap of a cardinal, on which servitude was indicated by a strip of lace. On this cap was a plume of tisserin feathers. He stood motionless before Gwynplaine, like a dark outline in a dream.

Gwynplaine recognized the duchess's page. Before he could utter an exclamation of surprise, he heard the thin voice of the page, at once child-like and feminine in its tone, saying to him:—