Bressant

"Ah, ha! lose your fortune!" exclaimed the professor, frowning so

portentously as to unseat his spectacles. "How does that happen, sir?"

Bressant looked considerably amused at the old gentleman's evident

emotion; the more as he saw no occasion for it. "I never had the

curiosity to ask how," said he, pulling at his beard. "I shall run no

risks with my fortune. I'm satisfied to know there might be danger;

there's no difficulty in keeping silence about a name."

Professor Valeyon rose from his chair and walked to the window. A mighty

host of gray clouds, piled thickly one upon another, and torn and

tunneled by feverish wind-gusts, were hastening swiftly and silently

across the sky from the west. Beyond, where they were thickest and

angriest, a yellowish, lurid tint was reflected against them. The valley

darkened like a frowning face, and the summits of the western hills

were blotted out of sight. A lightning-flash shivered brightly through

the air, and then came the first growling, leaping, accumulating peal of

thunder. A sudden, rustling breath swept through the garden, and,

following it, in big, quick drops, and soon in an unintermittent

myriad-footed tramp, the rustling, perpendicular down-pelting of the

rain.

In less than a minute, a gray, wet veil had been drawn across the

farther side of the valley, hiding it from the professor's sight. Even

the outer limits of the garden grew indistinct. The leaves of the trees

bobbed ceaselessly up and down, and glistened and dripped; the shrubs

and flowers seemed to lift themselves higher from the earth, and stretch

out their green fingers to the plenteous shower. The tinkle of the

fountain was quite obliterated, and the ordinarily smooth surface of the

basin sprang upward in thousands of tiny pyramids, as if madly welcoming

the impact of the rain-drops. Small cataracts tore in desperate haste

down the slope of the garden-paths, laying bare in their pigmy fury the

lower strata of rough gravel and pebbles. Upon the roof of the balcony

was maintained an evenly sonorous monotone of drubbing, as if

innumerable fairy carpenters were nailing on the shingles. The invalid

water-spout had a hard time of it; it was racked, shaken, and bullied,

and continually choked itself with the volubility of its fluent

utterances, which were instantly swallowed up in the bottomless depths

of the waste-barrel. A strong, cool, earthy odor rose from the garden,

and was wafted past the professor's nostrils, and into the heated house.

The moist brown flower-beds exhaled a fragrant thankfulness, and the

grass-blades looked twice as green and twice as tall as before.

Meanwhile the heavy, regular pulse of the thunder had been beating

intermittently overhead, and bounding ponderously from hill-side to

hill-side; and ever and anon the lightning had showed startlingly in

dazzling zigzags through the omnipresent shadow. But now it seemed that

there was a little less weight in the fall, and gloom in the air. The

pervading freshness of the breeze made itself more unmistakably

perceptible. The west began to lighten, and the rain and darkness

drifted to the east. As for Professor Valeyon, if his thoughts had been

in a tumult, like the elements, might they not become quiet again also?