"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?