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Taking the Bastile

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<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2> THE YOUNG VISIONARY. Meeting with a public conveyance, the doctor got into it with Billet and Pitou, and they went to Louis-the-Great College, where Sebastian was still in the sick ward. The principal received the doctor with deep regard as he knew him to be the foremost pupil of the physicians and chemists, Cabanis and Condorcet. He imparted his fears, as well to the doctor as to the parent of his pupil, that the boy was too much given to moody fits. "You are right," said Gilbert, "gravity in a boy is a token of lunacy or weakness." While Pitou was being refreshed in the principal's residence and Billet shared a bottle with the gentleman himself, the physician conferred with his son. [Pg 123] "I ask you about your health," said the father to the pallid, nervous youth, "and you answer that you are well. Now I ask you if your reserve towards your schoolfellows arises from pride and I hope you will answer, no." "Be encouraged, father," said Sebastian, "It is neither pride nor ill health, but sorrow. I have a dream which frightens me and yet it is not a terror. When a little boy, I had such visions." "Ah?" "Two or three times I was lost in the woods, following this phantom." Gilbert looked at the speaker in alarm. "It was thus, father dear: I would be playing with the other children of the village when I saw nothing; but when I left them, I heard the rustle of a silk dress as if some one wearing it were going away from me; I would thrust out my hands to seize it but grasp nothing but air. But as the sound diminished, the vision appeared, more and more distinct. This cloudy vapor would gradually assume a human shape. It was a woman's, who glided rather than walked, and grew the more clear as it was buried in the woody depths. "A strange, weird, irresistible spell drew me on in the woman's steps. I pursued her with extended arms, mute like she was. Often I tried to call her but my lips would not emit a sound; I pursued without ever overtaking, until the prodigy announcing her coming was reproduced for her departure. She became misty and faded away. Spent with weariness, I would drop on the sward, where she had disappeared. Pitou would find me there, sometimes not till the following day." Gilbert looked at the youth with increasing disquiet. His fingers were fixed on his pulse. Sebastian seemed to understand his father's feelings. "Do not be uneasy about it," said he; "I know that it is a phantasm." "What did this woman look like?" "Majestic as a queen." "Have you seen her lately?" "I have seen her here—that is, in the garden reserved for the teachers. I saw her glide from our grounds into that garden. And one day when Master Berardier, pleased with my [Pg 124] composition, asked me to state a favor, I got leave to stroll in this garden. She appeared to me." "Strange hallucination," thought Gilbert; "yet not so remarkable in the child of a mesmeric medium. Who do you think this woman is?" "My mother." Gilbert turned pale and clasped his hand to his heart as though to staunch a re-opening wound. "But this is all a dream and I am almost as crazed as you." "It may be all a dream," said the youth with pensive eye, "but the reality of the dream exists. I have seen the lady alive, in a magnificent equipage drawn by four horses, in Satory Woods near Versailles, on the last holiday when we were taken out there. I nearly swooned on seeing her, I do not know why. For she could not be my mother, who is dead, and she is the same as the vision." He remarked the giddiness of his father who ran his hand over his brow, and he was frightened by his white face. "I see I am wrong to tell you such nonsense," he said. "Oh, no, speak all you can on the subject and we shall try to cure you," responded the doctor. "Why? I am born to musing: it takes up half my time. I love this ghost though it avoids me and seems sometimes to repulse me. Do not expel it: I should else be all alone when you are on your travels or return to America." "I hope we shall not part," he said to his boy whom he embraced: "for I want to take you on my journeys." "Was my mother fair?" inquired the youth. "Very," was answered in the doctor's stifled voice. "And did she love you as much as I do?" continued the child. "Sebastian, never speak her name to me!" cried the physician, kissing him a last time and bounding out of the garden. Instead of following him, the boy dropped on a bench, disconsolate. In the yard Gilbert found Billet and Pitou, refreshed by the feast of the principal, to whom the doctor recommended special care of his son, and the three men got into the hack again. <hr class="chap" /> [Pg 125] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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