The household came to bed, the night-light was lit, the dormitory hushed. Sleep soon reigned. Over those pillows sleep won an easy supremacy—contented sovereign over heads and hearts which did not ache. He passed by the unquiet.
The drug wrought. I know not whether madame had over-charged or under-charged the dose; its result was not that she intended. Instead of stupor came excitement. I became alive to new thought—to reverie peculiar in colouring. A gathering call ran among the faculties, their bugles sang, their trumpets rang an untimely summons. Imagination was roused from her rest, and she came forth impetuous and venturous. With scorn she looked on matter, her mate.
“Rise!” she said. “Sluggard! this night I will have my will, nor shalt thou prevail.”
“Look forth and view the night!” was her cry; and when I lifted the heavy blind from the casement close at hand, with her own royal gesture she showed me a moon supreme, in an element deep and splendid.
To my gasping senses she made the glimmering gloom, the narrow limits, the oppressive heat of the dormitory intolerable. She lured me to leave this den and follow her forth into dew, coolness, and glory.
She brought upon me a strange vision of Villette at midnight. Especially she showed the park, the summer- park, with its long alleys all silent, lone, and safe. Among these lay a huge stone basin—that basin I knew, and beside which I had often stood—deep-set in the tree-shadows, brimming with cool water, clear, with a green, leafy, rushy bed. What of all this? The park-gates were shut up, locked, sentinelled; the place could not be entered.
Could it not?—a point worth considering; and while revolving it, I mechanically dressed. Utterly incapable of sleeping or lying still, excited from head to foot, what could I do better than dress?
The gates were locked, soldiers set before them. Was there, then, no admission to the park?
The other day, in walking past, I had seen, without then attending to the circumstance, a gap in the paling, one stake broken down. I now saw this gap again in recollection—saw it very plainly—the narrow, irregular aperture visible between the stems of the lindens, planted orderly as a colonnade. A man could not have made his way through that aperture, nor could a stout woman, perhaps not Madame Beck; but I thought I might. I fancied I should like to try; and once within, at this hour the whole park would be mine—the moonlit, midnight park!
How soundly the dormitory slept! What deep slumbers! What quiet breathing! How very still the whole large house! What was the time? I felt restless to know. There stood a clock in the classe below. What hindered me from venturing down to consult it? By such a moon its large white face and jet black figures must be vividly distinct.
As for hindrance to this step, there offered not so much as a creaking hinge or a clicking latch. On these hot July nights, close air could not be tolerated, and the chamber door stood wide open. Will the dormitory planks sustain my tread untraitorous? Yes. I know wherever a board is loose, and will avoid it. The oak staircase creaks somewhat as I descend, but not much; I am in the carré.
The great classe doors are close shut; they are bolted. On the other hand, the entrance to the corridor stands open. The classes seem to my thought great dreary jails, buried far back beyond thoroughfares, and for me filled with spectral and intolerable memories, laid miserable amongst their straw and their manacles. The corridor offers a cheerful vista, leading to the high vestibule which opens direct upon the street.
Hush! The clock strikes. Ghostly deep as is the stillness of this convent, it is only eleven. While my ear follows to silence the hum of the last stroke, I catch faintly from the built-out capital a sound like bells or like a band—a sound where sweetness, where victory, where mourning blend. Oh, to approach this