Chapter I

On a pleasant, sunshiny afternoon of early summer, Mlle. Lisa sat knitting in the door-way of a white, shining house, fronting on a silent, remote street of a garrisoned town of France, not far distant from Paris. The street was narrow and badly paved with sharp, irregular stones, sloping gradually down to a point in the centre, which formed the gutter, and at night was feebly lighted by an oil-lamp suspended to a rope and stretched across the street at the corners. The general aspect of the place was not amusing, for the habitations were few and the passers-by fewer. Long rows of high, white-washed walls, the boundaries of gentlemen's gardens, garnished with broken glass and pots of cactus, gave a certain monotony to the Rue Arc en Ciel. The very blossoms of the fruit-trees and flowering-shrubs behind the white-washed walls, looked sleepily over their barriers, as they diffused the contagious languor of their odors along the silent white street. These drowsy influences, however, seemed in no ways to diminish the carolling propensities of Mlle. Lisa, or to abate in any particular the ardor of her knitting.

Lisa Ledru was the daughter of the _proprietaire_ of No. 29,--a worthy woman who had toiled to sustain herself and an agreeable, sprightly husband, addicted to no vice save that of contented idleness, through many long, weary years, and had brought up her only child, Lisa, to a point of prettiness and usefulness, which compensated for past sacrifices, and promised well for the future.

Madame Ledru's house had been for years the abode of _militaires_. She would occasionally condescend to the admission of a bourgeois, but this infringement of habit and inclination was but a condescension after all, and left her with a certain sense of degradation, when she exposed her stair-case, which had creaked so long under the thundering tread of martial heel and spur, to the mild, apologetic footstep of a man of peace. Mme. Ledru's principles were well-known and properly appreciated by the regiments in garrison, and her house never lacked inmates. Her reputation for discretion and adroitness, in bringing order out of the chaotic love affairs which perpetually entangled the impetuous sons of Mars, was established on the firmest basis. No lodger was ever "at home" to an importunate creditor, so long as madame's ample person could bar the passage to their entrance, and no _tête-à-tête_ of a tender nature was ever interrupted by the untimely appearance of a cherished mother or aunt, or, still worse, the jealous intrusion of a rival queen.

The court-yard of Mme. Ledru's house presented a far more lively appearance than the street in which it stood. In the centre of the court stood a large, umbrageous tree, drooping over a stone watering-trough, which gave drink to the numerous horses in the stable-yard as well as to the chickens and barn-yard fowls, who cackled and prowled about in its vicinity, as they picked up their precarious living. At times their foraging-ground would be enriched by a shower of crumbs from a friendly window above, and rumor asserted that the gallant Colonel Victor de Villeport, hero of many campaigns, with the prestige of a wound or two, and a compensating glitter of decorations, had so far abandoned himself to the pastime of chicken-feeding as to invent new methods of beguiling the monotony of the entertainment,--such as tying morsels of bread to a string and dancing it distractedly before the eyes of stupid clucking hens, until experience had taught them in a measure how to cope with this unexpected phase of their trying existence. The stable-yard, extending to the left of the court, was gay with the bright military caps of orderlies, who sang snatches of vaudeville airs, as they rubbed down their masters' steeds, and polished up their sabres and buckles.

But to return to Mlle. Lisa, who sat knitting and singing in the Porte Cochère of No. 29, on a warm summer afternoon. Her joyous refrain ceased, for a moment, as she heard the little gate opposite to the house, belonging to the Countess d'Hivry's garden, creak on its hinges, and the next instant saw protruding the round, red head of François, the gardener. This apparition, though not itself enchanting, gave Mlle. Lisa, on this occasion, the liveliest satisfaction.

"Good-morning, Monsieur François," she said, with a beaming smile, as she glanced furtively at the bouquet of flowers which was in his hand. However dull might be the instincts of François in many things, they were keen enough where Lisa was concerned; and, recognizing at once the advantages of the situation, he advanced with a profusion of bows, and a grin of ecstasy, to deposit his tribute of flowers at the feet of his _adorata_.

"What beautiful taste you have in flowers, Monsieur François," said Lisa, with a perceptible elevation of voice, and with a sidelong glance at the stone trough in the court-yard, whereat Ulysse, the orderly of Colonel de Villefort, was watering his master's horse. "Mme. la Contesse d'Hivry says that she could never give a dinner-party without you to arrange flowers for the Jardinières, and to furnish all that lovely fruit for dessert, which you grow in the glass-houses."

"As to that," replied François, drawing himself up, and assuming an attitude of professional dignity, which had momentarily yielded to the all-absorbing power of Lisa's presence, "as to that, mademoiselle, I can say, without boasting, that the yellow roses and tulips of the Jardin du Roi would never be known for tulips and roses alongside of mine; though for red and white roses I will not say so much, and the pears--

"O mademoiselle! how lovely you are with those flowers in your hair!" cried out the enamored gardener, once more forgetful of his life-long enthusiasm, the pears and roses, and only mindful of the unexpected form of female seduction offered to his distracted gaze. "I never knew that roses could be so beautiful," he added, with a genuineness which would have touched any being less merciless than a girl of eighteen, bent on piquing a more indifferent admirer into something like jealousy.

"It is your roses," said Lisa, laughing, "that make me, what you call lovely. I don't make the roses. But what have you peeping out of your pocket?" she inquired, fearing that the conversation was about to assume a more tender character than she desired; "a note I should think"--

"Ah, yes! I had forgotten," said poor François, with a sigh over his own hopeless perturbation. "It is from Mme. la Contesse to the Colonel de Villefort, and it was to be given without delay."

"Ulysse, Ulysse," cried Lisa, gladly availing herself of this welcome diversion, "here is a note for you."

"Do you not see, mademoiselle," said Ulysse, pettishly, not entirely pleased with François and his flowers, "do you not see that I am watering the colonel's horse? I should think, too, that the bearer of a note might deliver it himself."

François, with a soothing sense of present preferment, was about to make a good-natured reply, when the colloquy was terminated by a sonorous voice from an upper window shouting, "Ulysse!"

"_Mon colonel._"

"Saddle one of my horses immediately."

"Impossible to use either to-day, _mon colonel_; one limps, and I have taken Mars to the blacksmith's, for he cast a shoe this morning."

"_Sapeisti!_ What am I to ride then? There is the horse of Monsieur le Baron always at our service. He is a nasty, stumbling thing, but if it is very pressing"--

Victor de Villefort looked irresolutely out of the window, and twirled his blonde mustache. He was a man between thirty and forty perhaps, _distingué_ in manner and bearing, and gifted with a charming sympathetic voice.

"Here is a note for you, _mon colonel_," said Lisa, glancing reproachfully at Ulysse, as she tripped lightly across the court-yard, and passing the corridor of red brick, mounted two flights of narrow wooden stairs to the colonel's room.

"Thank you, mademoiselle," said Victor, courteously, as he took the note. "Ulysse shall stay with me always if you say so. Do the roses worn so gracefully on the left side of the head, indicate consent?"

"I wear the roses for the sake of François, the gardener of Madame la Contesse d'Hivry, who brings them to me."

"Ah! I am always allowing myself to be taken by surprise, Lisa," said Victor, opening his note and glancing over its contents. "I never keep pace with fickleness."

"But is it fickleness, _mon colonel_, to like what belongs to the Contesse d'Hivry?" inquired Lisa, lowering her eyes with assumed _naïveté_.

"For you, yes. I should say that it was. But I dare say, with your little malicious airs, mademoiselle, you mean more than that. But I advise you to wear roses on the right side for Ulysse, and then tell him that he must never leave me; and he shall not, I give you my word," said Victor, gayly, taking up his hat and gloves and moving to the door. "What a lucky thing," he continued to himself as he descended the stair-case, "that the charming countess only asks for a pedestrian cavalier! If she had asked for a mounted escort, I should have been forced to have recourse to this tiresome baron here," and Victor brushed lightly against the door of a fellow-lodger, "to have used his stumbling horse, and then to have been bored for the rest of my life, or of his life, about helping him to the cross of the Legion of Honor."

The baron in question was a retired _militaire_, who, inspired with an insatiable thirst for fame, was writing a military history of France. His chief claims to notice appeared to be the possession of a stumbling horse, and an overwhelming greed of decorations.

As Victor mused over the consequences of an incautious acceptance of the baron's steed, and over the base intrigues in which a pursuit of the coveted cross might involve him, his brow darkened, and his step grew heavier.