CHAPTER LXXVI.
CRIMINATION AND INDIFFERENCE.
Louison Brisot, with all her secretiveness and self-control, felt her heart burn, and her cheeks grow hot, when Mirabeau insulted her solicitude with a rude answer. She arose and walked to a window; a pretty goldfinch, which had been taught to fly out of his cage at will, fluttered downward and settled upon her shoulder. She seized the tiny thing, wrung its neck, and flung it down to her feet.
Mirabeau had settled back upon his couch, and his eyes were again wandering among the frescoed flowers. So the woman appeased her wrath by taking this little life before the poor thing could utter a breath of pain; and he only knew that his favorite was dead after she was gone.
While the pretty thing was quivering on the floor, his murderer had sunk down by Mirabeau’s couch, and took his hand in hers, where it lay indolently, not once offering to return the grasp with which she clung to it.
“Mirabeau!”
“Well, Louison!”
“You have ceased to love me?”
“Ceased to love you! Well, what then? To be good patriots we need not be lovers.”
The woman turned deadly white, and her hands wrenched themselves away from his.
“You confess it.”
There was a cry of pain in her words. All this time she had been actuated by a forlorn hope that he would contradict her.
“No! I confess nothing! How should I, not being quite certain myself?”
“Great heavens! you dare say this to me!”
Mirabeau started up fiercely and shook back his hair like a roused lion.
“Dare! Woman, is that word intended for Mirabeau?”
The man was fully aroused now, his light gray eyes flamed, his sensuous mouth took a haughty curve; he had risen to his elbow, and his massive neck was laid bare almost to the bosom, where the delicately-crimped ruffles of his shirt fell open, revealing the blue veins that swelled over it, inflaming his face to the eyes, which suddenly became bloodshot.
“The man who offends Louison Brisot dares everything,” answered the woman, in a low voice.
Mirabeau laughed, for all the evil daring of his nature was getting uppermost.
“So you threaten me?”
“Cowards threaten!”
“And brave souls act. Well, Louison, you certainly are no coward; and yet your speech had a threat in it. Tell me why?”
“Ah, Mirabeau! It is only a little thing. During some years—that is, ever since I was an innocent girl, who never committed a greater sin than plucking a few clusters where the grapes first ripened into purple—I have loved you. It was not much, only a human soul flung at the feet of a man who has not yet trampled it under his heel. But this soul was all I had—and you took it. For your sake I worked hard, studied, learned all those arts by which women gain influence in the world; gloried in my beauty, and in that keen wit which is a weapon of power in these days, all because they might make me more dear and more useful to you. In the scale of your glory I flung my life. Is it strange that I ask something back; that out of the whole of an existence I lavished on you I ask a ray of light; only that which the moon takes from the sun, and feel defrauded when it is withheld?”
The smile broadened and grew brighter on Mirabeau’s face as the young woman made this passionate address. He loved to be adored; and the intellect of this woman gave piquancy to her homage; without that she would have been nothing to him, with it she had a hold upon his interests and his vanity stronger, by far, than any woman had ever possessed over his affections. No man living had greater talent for turning the genius of other people to his own account than Mirabeau. Men and women were alike made available to his popularity. He had no desire to quarrel with the handsome young female, whose words, taking the form of passionate pleading, were sufficient to convince him of the power he still possessed.
Louison saw the self-satisfied smile, and it stung her. She broke forth with passionate vehemence.
“But love like mine must have full love in return; faith like mine must meet answering faith. If I have been strong as a woman, I have also been trusting as a child. Deceive me once, and you open my eyes forever; cease to be my entire friend, and you make me your bitterest enemy. Keep no secrets from me; if you attempt it, I will find them out, and then they are my property. I warn you now, in right or in wrong, make me your confidant.”
It would have been well for Mirabeau had he then and there taken the woman at her word; but, like all social traitors, he had no faith in the sex, and so only turned on his side and gazed on her flushed face in wonder that any one would believe him weak enough to trust one woman with the secrets of another.
“Upon my word, Louison, you are a remarkably beautiful person, and have a power of eloquence I never dreamed of before. They tell me Theroigne de Mericourt is to appear at the Cordeliers; we must have you at the Jacobins. She is beautiful—so are you; she is eloquent, but in that I have just discovered we can more than match her. I have a thing on my mind which must be brought before the club with great caution—a woman can do it; for we accept and excuse anything from beautiful lips—and yours are blooming as roses, Louison.”
A faint sneer curled the lips he praised. Did he think to use her as a blind instrument in behalf of the lady whose hand she had seen raised to his lips with such reverence? There was bitter satisfaction in the thought that she had this man’s secret in her keeping, and by it could read the very changes of his mind. She had come there to upbraid him, but the secretiveness of her nature rose uppermost, even in her jealous wrath; it prompted her to watch him, and if he proved treacherous, to fight her battle with his own weapons.
“The time has come,” said Mirabeau, “when the women of France must make their influence felt in the nation. Theroigne will be received like a goddess by the Cordeliers.”
If the demagogue thought to inspire Louison’s ambition, he only succeeded in uniting with that passion one more dangerous still.
“It is said that this Maid of Liege has something besides the wrongs of France to avenge,” she said, dreamily. “Among the minions who swarm around that Austrian woman, is the man she loved—a noble, who plucked the soul from her life, and flung it away in haughty disdain. Yes, yes! it _is_ time that the women of France should test their power. Let Theroigne lead with the Cordeliers; as for me, in life or death, I stand by Mirabeau!”
“That is a brave girl; and now let me tell you a secret.”
Louison’s heart leaped in her bosom. Would he tell her all that she had learned? If so, that interview with Marie Antoinette might have only a political meaning. She listened breathlessly for his next words. They came to surprise and disappoint her.
“Before the year is out, my friend, Mirabeau will be president of the Jacobin club; then Louison Brisot shall test her powers against those of the amazon of Liege.”
“Yes,” said Louison; “she will test her powers then.”
“The women of the markets are ardent and ignorant; they need leaders of their own sex. These women in their hearts love the queen.”
“Ha!”
“Did you speak, Louison?”
“No, I did not speak, but listened. You think I might control these women?”
“You have the power; they would look up to you as they never have to the queen. She is so far above them that they cannot understand her. But you——”
“Oh, yes! I can make them understand me. I, too, am of the people,” said Louison, interrupting him.
“But still, education and great natural talent has lifted you nearer to her.”
“You think so? Well, perhaps it is true.”
“You are brave.”
“Yes, I am no coward.”
“With a warm, earnest heart.”
Here Louison sunk down to the foot of the couch, and bowing her face to her knees, began to sob. Mirabeau took her hand.
“Why do you weep, my friend?”
“Because I once had a warm, earnest heart, that is all,” cried the girl, lifting her head, and sweeping the hair back from her face. “Women who aspire for love or power should have no hearts.”
“You are wrong, my friend; a warm heart is necessary to true eloquence. Without that, the magnetism which thrills crowds would be wanting. It is because you can speak clearly and feel intensely, that I predict for you a glorious career among the women of France. That which Mirabeau is to the men, Louison shall be to the women of this nation.”
“And this is all you have to tell me?”
“All. If I have nothing more to confide, it is because my heart is always open to my friends, most of all to you.”
“Traitor!”
The word was not spoken, but it hissed like a serpent in the woman’s brain. She dashed the tears from her eyes and stood up.
“I will go now.”
Mirabeau fell indolently back among the cushions of his couch.
“Must you go?” he questioned, dreamily. “Well, well, think of what I have said.”
“I will.”