"Quick, quick!" she cried to Jacques, who raised his head. "Come out. It is a prince who calls. Goodness me! when will this procession of high-cockalorums cease? I hope this one will not take it into his head to have breakfast with us, like the Duke of Chartres the other day."
"Which prince is this one?" asked Jacques in an undertone.
Gilbert let a blob of ink fall on the paper much more resembling a blot than a full note.
Jacques went out, smiling behind Therese, who shut the door after them.
"Princes here!" thought Gilbert. "Dukes calling on a copier of music!"
With his heart singularly beating, he went up to the door to listen.
"I want to take you with me," said a strange voice.
"For what purpose, prince?" inquired Jacques.
"To present you to the dauphiness. A new era opens for philosophers in her coming reign."
"I am a thousand times thankful to your highness; but my infirmities keep me indoors."
"Suppose it were that? Is it so curious a thing that I should put myself out for it?"
"Come, and I will spare you the grand reception at the celebration at St. Denis, and take you on to Muette, where her royal highness will pass the night in a couple of days."
"Does she get to St. Denis the day after to-morrow?"
"With her whole retinue. Come! the princess is a pupil of Gluck and an excellent musician."
Gilbert did not listen to any more after hearing that the dauphiness' retinue would be at St. Denis, only a few miles out, in a day or two. He might soon be within view of Andrea. This idea dazzled him like a flash from a looking-glass in his face. When he opened his eyes after this giddiness they fell on a book which happened to be open on the sideboard; it was Rousseau's _Confessions_, "adorned with a portrait of the author."
"The very thing I was looking for. I had never seen what he was like."
He quickly turned over the tissue paper on the steel plate and as he looked, the door opened and the living original of the portrait returned. With extended hands, dropping the volume, and trembling all over, he muttered:
"Oh! I am under the roof of Jean Jacques Rousseau!"
The old gentleman smiled with more happiness at this unstudied ovation than at the thousand triumphs of his glorious life.