Joseph Balsamo (81 page)

But that terrible, that despairing shriek, was heard and answered. Gilbert, carried to a distance from Andre, had by dint of struggling once more approached her. Bending beneath the same wave which had ingulfed Andre, he raised himself again, made a frantic leap at the sword which had unwittingly threatened her, grasped the throat of the soldier who was going to strike, and hurled him to the ground. Beside the soldier lay a female form dressed in white ; he raised her up and bore her off as though he had been a giant.

When he felt that lovely form, that corpse, perhaps, pressed to his heart, a gleam of pride lighted up his countenance his force and courage rose with the circumstances he felt himself a hero !

He flung himself and his burden into a stream of people whose torrent would certainly have leveled a wall in its flight. Supported by this group, which lifted him up and bore him along with his lovely burden, he walked or rather rolled onward for some minutes. All at once the torrent stopped, as if broken by some opposing obstacle. Gilbert’s feet touched the ground, and not till then was he

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sensible of the weight of Andre. He looked up to ascertain what the obstacle might be, and perceived that he was within a few steps of the Garde Meuble. That mass of stone had broken the mass of flesh.

During that momentary and anxious halt, he had time to look at Andre. Overcome by a sleep heavy as that of death, her heart had ceased to beat, her eyes were closed, and her face was of a violet tinge, like a white rose that is fading. Gilbert thought that she was dead. He shrieked in his turn, pressed his lips at first to her dress, to her hand, then, emboldened by her insensibility, he covered with kisses that cold face, those eyes swollen beneath their sealed lids. He blushed, wept, raved, strove to transfuse his soul into the bosom of Andre, feeling astonished that his kisses, which might have warmed a marble statue, had no effect upon that inanimate form. All at once Gilbert felt her heart beat under his hand.

” She is saved ! ” exclaimed he, on perceiving the swart and blood-stained mob dispersing, and hearing the imprecations, the shrieks, the sighs, the agony of the victims die away in the distance. ” She is saved, and it is I who saved her ! “

The poor fellow, who stood leaning with his back against the wall, and his eyes turned toward the bridge, had not looked to his right. Before the carriages, which long detained by the crowd but now hemmed in less closely, began oiice more to move, and soon came on galloping as if coachmen and horses had been seized with a general frenzy, fled twenty thousand unfortunate creatures, mutilated, wounded, bruised one against the other. In-stinctively they fled close to the walls, against which the nearest of them were crushed. This mass swept away or suffocated all those who, having taken up their position near the Garde Menble, imagined that they had escaped the wreck. A fresh shower of blows, of living and dead bodies, rained on Gilbert. He found one of the recesses, formed by the iron gates, and stationed himself there. The weight of the fugitives made the wall crack.

Gilbert, nearly stifled, felt ready to loose his hold, but

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with a last desperate effort, mustering all his strength, he encompassed Andre’s body with his arms, resting his head on the bosom of the young girl. One would have supposed he meant to suffocate her whom he was protecting.

” Farewell,” murmured he, biting rather than kissing her dress ; “farewell.” And he raised his eyes to heaven as if directing a last supplicating glance to it for assistance. Then a strange sight met his vision.

Mounted on a post, holding with his right hand by a ring let into the wall, while with his left hand he seemed to be rallying an army of fugitives, was a man, who, looking at the furious sea raging at his feet, sometimes dropped a word, sometimes made a gesture. At that word, at that gesture, some individual among the crowd might be seen to pause, struggle, and by a violent effort strive to reach the man. Others who had already reached him seemed to recognize the newcomers as -brothers, and assisted to drag them out of the crowd, raising, supporting, and drawing them toward them.

In this manner, by acting together, this knot had, like the pier of a bridge which divides and resists the water, succeeded in dividing the crowd and holding in check the flying masses.

Every moment fresh stragglers, seeming to rise out of the ground at those strange words and singular gestures, swelled the retinue of this man. Gilbert raised himself by a last effort ; he felt that there was safety, for there was calmness and power. A last dying gleam from the burning scaffold, leaping up only to expire, fell upon his face. Gilbert uttered a cry of amazement : ” Oh ! let me die ! ” he murmured, ” let me die, but save her ! “

Then with a sublime forgetfulness of self, raising the young girl in both his arms, he exclaimed, ” Baron de Balsamo, save Mademoiselle Andre ede Taveiney !”

Balsamo heard that voice which cried to him, like that in the Bible, from the depths ; he beheld a white figure, raised above the devouring waves, he leaped from his post to the ground, crying, “This way!” His party over-

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turned all that obstructed their course, and, seizing Andre, still supported in Gilbert’s sinking arms, he lifted her up, impelled by a movement of that crowd which he had ceased to repress, and bore her off, without once turning to look behind.

Gilbert endeavored to utter a last word. Perhaps, after imploring the protection of this strange man for Andre, he might have solicited it for himself ; but he had ouly strength to press his lips to the drooping arm of the young girl, and to snatch, with a wild and despairing grasp, a portion of her dress.

After that last kiss, after that final farewell, the young man had nothing left to live for ; he made no further struggle, but, closing his eyes, sunk dying upon a heap of dead.