Stretched upon a large old-fashioned sofa, where a burgomaster might have reclined with ‘ample room and verge enough,’ in all the easy abandonment of dressing-gown and slippers; the cool breeze gently wafting the window-blind to and fro, and tempering the lulling sounds from wood and water; the buzzing of the summer insects and the far-off carol of a peasant’s song—I fell into one of those delicious sleeps in which dreams are so faintly marked as to leave us no disappointment on waking: flitting shadowlike before the mind, they live only in a pleasant memory of something vague and undefined, and impart no touch of sorrow for expectations unfulfilled, for hopes that are not to be realised. I would that my dreams might always take this shape. It is a sad thing when they become tangible; when features and looks, eyes, hands, words, and signs, live too strongly in our sleeping minds, and we awake to the cold reality of our daily cares and crosses, tenfold less endurable from very contrast. No! give me rather the faint and waving outline, the shadowy perception of pleasure, than the vivid picture, to end only in the conviction that I am but Christopher Sly after all; or what comes pretty much to the same, nothing but—Arthur O’Leary.
Still, I would not have you deem me discontented with my lot; far from it. I chose my path early in life, and never saw reason to regret the choice. How many of you can say as much? I felt that while the tender ties of home and family, the charities that grow up around the charmed circle of a wife and children, are the great prizes of life, there are also a thousand lesser ones in the wheel, in the kindly sympathies with which the world abounds; that to him who bears no ill-will at his heart—nay, rather loving all things that are lovable, with warm attachments to all who have been kind to him, with strong sources of happiness in his own tranquil thoughts—the wandering life would offer many pleasures.
Most men live, as it were, with one story of their lives, the traits of childhood maturing into manly features; their history consists of the development of early character in circumstances of good or evil fortune. They fall in love, they marry, they grow old, and they die—each incident of their existence bearing on that before and that after, like link upon link of some great chain. He, however, who throws himself like a plank upon the waters, to be washed hither and thither as wind or tide may drive him, has a very different experience. To him life is a succession of episodes, each perfect in itself; the world is but a number of tableaux, changing with climate and country—his sorrows in France having no connection with his joys in Italy; his delights in Spain living apart from his griefs on the Rhine. The past throws no shadow on the future; his philosophy is to make the most of the present; and he never forgets La Bruyère’s maxim—‘Il faut rire avant d’être heureux,de peur de mourir sans avoir ri.’
Now, if you don’t like my philosophy, set it down as a dream, and here I am awake once more.
And certainly I claim no great merit on the score of my vigilance; for the tantararara that awoke me would have aroused the Seven Sleepers themselves. Words are weak to convey the most distant conception of the noise; it seemed as though ten thousand peacocks had congregated beneath my window, and with brazen throats were bent on giving me a hideous concert; the fiend-chorus inRobert le Diablewas a psalm-tune compared to it. I started up and rushed to the casement; and there, in the lawn beneath, beheld some twenty persons costumed in hunting fashion, their horses foaming and splashed, their coats stained with marks of the forest. But the uproar was soon comprehensible, owing to some half-dozen of the party who performed on that most diabolical of all human inventions, thecor de chasse.
Imagine, if you can, and thank your stars that it is only a work of imagination, some twenty feet of brass pipe, worn belt-fashion over one shoulder and under the opposite arm, one end of the aforesaid tube being a mouth-piece, and the other expanding itself into a huge trumpet-mouth; then conceive a Fleming—one of Rubens’s cherubs, immensely magnified, and decorated with a beard and moustaches—blowing into this with all the force of his lungs, perfectly unmindful of the five other performers, who at five several and distinct parts of the melody are blasting away also—treble and bass, contralto and soprano, shake and sostenuto, all blending into one crash of hideous discord, to which the Scotch bagpipe in a pibroch is a soothing, melting melody. A deaf-and-dumb institution ‘would capitulate in half an hour. Truly, the results of a hunting expedition ought to be of the most satisfactory kind, to make the ‘Retour de la Chasse’ (it was this they were blowing) at all sufferable to those who were not engaged in the concert. As for the performers, I can readily believe they never heard a note of the whole.
Even Dutch lungs grow tired at last. Having blown the establishment into ecstasies, and myself into a furious headache, they gave in; and now an awful bell announced the time to dress for dinner. While I made my toilette, I endeavoured, as well as my throbbing temples would permit me, to fancy the host’s personal appearance, and to conjecture the style of the rest of the party. My preparations over, I took a parting look in the glass, as if to guess the probable impression I should make below-stairs, and sallied forth.
Cautiously stealing along over the well-waxed floors, slippery as ice itself, I descended the broad oak stairs into a great hall, wainscoted with dark walnut and decorated with antlers’ and stags’ heads, cross-bows and arquebuses, and, to my shuddering horror, with variouscors de chasse, now happily, however, silent on the walls. I entered the drawing-room, conning over to myself a little speech in French, and preparing myself to bow for the next fifteen minutes; but, to my surprise, no one had yet appeared. All were still occupied in dressing, and probably taking some well-merited repose after their exertions on the wind-instruments. I had now time for a survey of the apartment; and, generally speaking, a drawing-room is no bad indication of the tastes and temperament of the owners of the establishment.
The practised eye speedily detects in the character and arrangement of a chamber something of its occupant. In some houses, the absence of all decoration, the simple puritanism of the furniture, bespeaks the life of quiet souls whose days are as devoid of luxury as their dwellings. You read in the cold grey tints the formal stiffness and unrelieved regularity around the Quaker-like flatness of their existence. In others, there is an air of ill-done display, a straining after effect, which shows itself in costly but ill-assorted details, a mingling of all styles and eras without repose or keeping. The bad pretentious pictures, the faulty bronzes, meagre casts of poor originals, the gaudy china, are safe warranty for the vulgarity of their owners; while the humble parlour of a village inn can be, as I have seen it, made to evidence the cultivated tastes and polished habits of those who have made it the halting-place of a day. We might go back and trace how much of our knowledge of the earliest ages is derived from the study of the interior of their dwellings; what a rich volume of information is conveyed in a mosaic; what a treatise does not lie in a frescoed wall!
The room in which I now found myself was a long, and for its length a narrow, apartment; a range of tall windows, deeply sunk in the thick wall, occupied one side, opposite to which was a plain wall covered with pictures from floor to cornice, save where, at a considerable distance from one another, were two splendidly carved chimney-pieces of black oak, one representing ‘The Adoration of the Shepherds,’ and the other ‘The Miraculous Draught of Fishes’—the latter done with a relief, a vigour, and a movement I have never seen equalled. Above these were some armorial trophies of an early date, in which, among the maces and battle-axes, I could recognise some weapons of Eastern origin, which by the family, I learned, were ascribed to the periods of the Crusades.
Between the windows were placed a succession of carved oak cabinets of the seventeenth century—beautiful specimens of art, and for all their quaintness far handsomer objects of furniture than our modern luxury has introduced among us. Japan vases of dark blue-and-green were filled with rare flowers; here and there small tables of costly buhl invited you to the window recesses, where the downy ottomans, pillowed with Flemish luxury, suggested rest if not sleep. The pictures, over which I could but throw a passing glance, were all by Flemish painters, and of that character which so essentially displays their chief merits of richness of colour and tone—Gerard Dow and Ostade, Cuyp, Van der Meer, and Terburg—those admirable groupings of domestic life, where the nation is, as it were, miniatured before you; that perfection of domestic quiet, which bespeaks an heirloom of tranquillity derived whole centuries back. You see at once, in those dark-brown eyes and placid features, the traits that have taken ages to bring to such perfection; and you recognise the origin of those sturdy burgomasters and bold burghers, who were at the same time the thriftiest merchants and the haughtiest princes of Europe.
Suddenly, and when I was almost on my knees to examine a picture by Memling, the door opened, and a small, sharp-looking man, dressed in the last extravagance of Paris mode, resplendent in waistcoat and glistening in jewellery, tripped lightly forward. ‘Ah, mi Lor O’Leary!’ said he, advancing towards me with a bow and a slide.
It was no time to discuss pedigree; so gulping the promotion, I made my acknowledgments as best I could; and by the time that we met, which on a moderate calculation might have been two minutes after he entered, we shook hands very cordially, and looked delighted to see each other. This ceremony, I repeat, was only accomplished after his having bowed round two tables, an ottoman, and an oakarmoire, I having performed the like ceremony behind a Chinese screen, and very nearly over a vase of the original ‘green dragon,’ which actually seemed disposed to spring at me for my awkwardness.
Before my astonishment—shall I add, disappointment?—had subsided, at finding that the diminutive, overdressed figure before me was the representative of those bold barons I had been musing over (for such he was), the room began to fill. Portly ladies of undefined dates sailed in and took their places, stiff, stately, and silent as their grandmothers on the walls; heavy-looking gentlemen, with unpronounceable names, bowed and wheeled and bowed again; while a buzz ofvotre serviteur, madame, or monsieur, swelled and sank amid the murmur of the room, with the scraping of feet on the glazedparquet, and the rustle of silk, whose plenitude bespoke a day when silkworms were honest.
The host paraded me around the austere circle, where the very names sounded like an incantation; and the old ladies shook their bugles and agitated their fans in recognition of my acquaintance. The circumstances of my adventure were the conversation of every group; and although, I confess, I could not help feeling that even a small spice of malice might have found food for laughter in the absurdity of my durance, yet not one there could see anything in the whole affair save a grave case of smuggled tobacco, and a most unwarrantable exercise of authority on the part of the curé who liberated me. Indeed, this latter seemed to gain ground so rapidly, that once or twice I began to fear they might remand me and sentence me to another night in the air, ‘till justice should be satisfied.’ I did the worthy Maire de Givet foul wrong, said I to myself; these people here are not a whit better.
The company continued to arrive at every moment; and now I remarked that it was the veteran battalion who led the march, the younger members of the household only dropping in as the hour grew later. Among these was a pleasant sprinkling of Frenchmen, as easily recognisable among Flemings as is an officer of the Blues from one of the new police; a German baron, a very portrait of his class, fat, heavy-browed, sulky-looking, but in reality a good-hearted, fine-tempered fellow; two Americans; an English colonel, with his daughters twain; and a Danishchargé d’ affaires—the minor characters being what, in dramatic phrase, are calledpremiersandpremieres, meaning thereby young people of either sex, dressed in the latest mode, and performing the part of lovers; the ladies, with a moderate share of good looks, being perfect in the freshness of their toilette and in a certain air of ease and gracefulness almost universal abroad; the men, a strange mixture of silliness and savagery (a bad cross), half hairdresser, half hero.
Before the dinner was announced, I had time to perceive that the company was divided into two different and very opposite currents—one party consisting of the old Dutch or Flemish race, quiet, plodding, peaceable souls, pretending to nothing new, enjoying everything old, their souvenirs referring to some event in the time of their grandfathers; the other section being the younger portion, who, strongly imbued with French notions on dress and English on sporting matters, attempted to bring Newmarket and the Boulevards des Italiens into the heart of the Ardennes.
Between the two, and connecting them with each other, was a species ofpont du diable, in the person of a little, dapper, olive-complexioned man of about forty. His eyes were black as jet, but with an expression soft and subdued, save at moments of excitement, when they flashed like glow-worms; his plain suit of black with deep cambric ruffles, his silk shorts and buckled shoes, had in them something of the ecclesiastic; and so it was. He was the Abbé van Praet, the cadet of an ancient Belgian family, a man of considerable ability, highly informed on most subjects; a linguist, a musician, a painter of no small pretensions, who spent his life in thefar nienteof château existence—now devising a party of pleasure, now inventing a madrigal, now giving directions to the chef how to make anomelette à la curé, now stealing noiselessly along some sheltered walk to hear some fair lady’s secret confidence; for he was privy counsellor in all affairs of the heart, and, if the world did not wrong him, occasionally pleaded his own cause when no other petitioner offered. I was soon struck by this man, and by the tact with which, while he preserved his ascendency over the minds of all, he never admitted any undue familiarity, yet affected all the ease andinsoucianceof the veriest idler. I was flattered, also, by his notice of me, and by the politeness of his invitation to sit next him at table.
The distinctions I have hinted at already, made the dinner conversation a strange medley of Flemish history and sporting anecdotes; of reminiscences of the times of Maria Theresa, and dissertations on weights and ages; of the genealogies of Flemish families, and the pedigrees of English racehorses. The young English ladies, both pretty and delicate-looking girls, with an air of good-breeding and tone in their manner, shocked me not a little by the intimate knowledge they displayed on all matters of the turf and the stable—their acquaintance with the details of hunting, racing, and steeplechasing, seeming to form the most wonderful attraction to the moustached counts and whiskered barons who listened to them. The colonel was a fine, mellow-looking old gentleman, with a white head and a red nose, and with that species of placid expression one sees in the people who perform those parts in Vaudeville theatres calledpères nobles. He seemed, indeed, as if he had been daily in the habit of bestowing a lovely daughter on some happy, enraptured lover, and invoking a blessing on their heads; there was a rich unction in his voice, an almost imperceptible quaver, that made it seem kind and affectionate; he finished his shake of the hand with a little parting squeeze, a kind of ‘one cheer more,’ as they say nowadays, when some misguided admirer calls upon a meeting for enthusiasm they don’t feel. The Americans were (and one description will serve for both, so like were they) sallow, high-boned, silent men, with a species of quiet caution in their manner, as if they were learning, but had not yet completed, a European education as to habits and customs, and were studiously careful not to commit any solecisms which might betray their country.
As dinner proceeded, the sporting characters carried the day. Theouverture de la chasse, which was to take place the following morning, was an all-engrossing topic, and I found myself established as judge on a hundred points of English jockey etiquette, of which as my ignorance was complete I suffered grievously in the estimation of the company, and, when referred to, could neither apportion the weight to age, nor even tell the number of yards in a ‘distance.’ It was, however, decreed that I should ride the next day—the host had the ‘very horse to suit me’; and, as the abbé whispered me to consent, I acceded at once to the arrangement.
When we adjourned to the drawing-room, Colonel Muddleton came towards me with an easy smile and an outstretched snuff-box, both in such perfect keeping: the action was a finished thing.
‘Any relation, may I ask, of a very old friend and brother officer of mine, General Mark O’Leary, who was killed in Canada?’ said he.
‘A very distant one only,’ replied I.
‘A capital fellow, brave as a lion, and pleasant. By Jove, I never met the like of him! What became of his Irish property?—he was never married, I think?’
‘No, he died a bachelor, and left his estates to my uncle; they had met once by accident, and took a liking to each other.’
‘And so your uncle has them now?’
‘No; my uncle died since. They came into my possession some two or three years ago.’
‘Eh—ah—upon my life!’ said he, with something of surprise in his manner; and then, as if ashamed of his exclamation, and with a much more cordial vein than at first, he resumed: ‘What a piece of unlooked-for good fortune to be sure! Only think of my finding my old friend Mark’s nephew!’
‘Not his nephew. I was only——’
‘Never mind, never mind; he was kind of an uncle, you know—any man might be proud of him. What a glorious fellow!—full of fun, full of spirit and animation. Ah, just like all your countrymen! I’ve a little Irish blood in my veins myself; my mother was an O’Flaherty or an O’Neil, or something of that sort; and there’s Laura—you don’t know my daughter?’ ‘I have not the honour.’
‘Come along, and I’ll introduce you to her; a little reserved or so,’ said he, in a whisper, as if to give me thecarte du pays—’ rather cold, you know, to strangers; but when she hears you are the nephew of my old friend Mark—Mark and I were like brothers.—Laura, my love,’ said he, tapping the young lady on her white shoulder as she stood with her back towards us; ‘Laura, dear—-the son of my oldest friend in the world, General O’Leary.’
The young lady turned quickly round, and, as she drew herself up somewhat haughtily, dropped me a low curtsy, and then resumed her conversation with a very much whiskered gentleman near. The colonel seemed, despite all his endeavours to overcome it, rather put out by his daughter’s hauteur to thesonof his old friend; and what he would have said or done I know not, but the abbé came suddenly up, and with a card invited me to join a party at whist. The moment was so awkward for all, that I would have accepted an invitation even to écarté to escape from the difficulty, and I followed him into a small boudoir where two ladies were awaiting us. I had just time to see that they were both pleasing-looking, and of that time of life when women, without forfeiting any of the attractions of youth, are much more disposed to please by the attractions of manner andespritthan by mere beauty, when we sat down to our game. La Baronne de Meer, my partner, was the younger and the prettier of the two; she was one of those Flemings into whose families the race of Spain poured the warm current of southern blood, and gave them the dark eye and the olive skin, the graceful figure and the elastic step, so characteristic of their nation.
‘A la bonne heure,’ said she, smiling; ‘have we rescued one from the enchantress?’
‘Yes,’ replied the abbé, with an affected gravity; ‘in another moment he was lost.’
‘If you mean me,’ said I, laughing, ‘I assure you I ran no danger at all; for whatever the young lady’s glances may portend, she seemed very much indisposed to bestow a second on me.’
The game proceeded with its running fire of chitchat, from which I could gather that Mademoiselle Laura was a most established man-killer, no one ever escaping her fascinations save when by some strange fatality they preferred her sister Julia, whose style was, to use the abbé’s phrase, her sister’s ‘diluted.’ There was a tone of pique in the way the ladies criticised the colonel’s daughters, which I have often remarked in those who, accustomed to the attentions of men themselves, without any unusual effort to please on their part, are doubly annoyed when they perceive a rival making more than ordinary endeavours to attract admirers. They feel as a capitalist would, when another millionaire offers money at a lower rate of interest. It is, as it were, a breach of conventional etiquette, and never escapes being severely criticised.
As for me, I had no personal feeling at stake, and looked on at the game of all parties with much amusement.
‘Where is the Comte d’Espagne to-night?’ said the baronne to the abbé. ‘Has he been false?’
‘Not at all; he was singing with mademoiselle when I was in the salon.’
‘You’ll have a dreadful rival there, Monsieur O’Leary,’ said she laughingly; ‘he is the most celebrated swordsman and the best shot in Flanders.’
‘It is likely he may rust his weapons if he have no opportunity for their exercise till I give it,’ said I.
‘Don’t you admire her, then?’ said she.
‘The lady is very pretty, indeed,’ said I.
‘The heart led,’ interrupted the abbé suddenly, as he touched my foot beneath the table—‘play a heart.’
Close beside my chair, and leaning over my cards, stood Mademoiselle Laura herself at the moment.
‘You have no heart,’ said she, in English, and with a singular expression on the words, while her downcast eye shot a glance—one glance—through me.
‘Yes, but I have though,’ said I, discovering a card that lay concealed behind another; ‘it only requires a little looking for.’
‘Not worth the trouble, perhaps,’ said she, with a toss of her head, as I threw the deuce upon the table; and before I could reply she was gone.
‘I think her much prettier when she looks saucy,’ said the baronne, as if to imply that the air of pique assumed was a mere piece of acting got up for effect.
I see it all, said I to myself. Foreign women can never forgive English for being so much their superior in beauty and loveliness. Meanwhile our game came to a close, and we gathered around the buffet.
There we found the old colonel, with a large silver tankard of mulled wine, holding forth over some campaigning exploit, to which no one listened for more than a second or two—and thus the whole room became joint-stock hearers of his story. Laura stood eating her ice with the Comte d’Espagne, the black-whiskered cavalier already mentioned, beside her. The Americans were prosing away about Jefferson and Adams; the Belgians talked agriculture and genealogy; and the French collecting into a group of their own, in which nearly all the pretty women joined, discoursed the ballet, the Chambre, the court, the coulisses, the last mode, and the last murder, and all in the same mirthful and lively tone. And truly, let people condemn as they will this superficial style of conversation, there is none equal to it; it avoids the prosaic flatness of German, and the monotonous pertinacity of English, which seems more to partake of the nature of discussion than dialogue. French chit-chat takes a wider range—anecdotic, illustrative, and discursive by turns; it deems nothing too light, nothing too weighty for its subject; it is a gay butterfly, now floating with gilded wings above you, now tremulously perched upon a leaf below, now sparkling in the sunbeam, now loitering in the shade; embodying not only thought, but expression, it charms by its style as well as by its matter. The language, too, suggests shades and nuances of colouring that exist not in other tongues; you can give to your canvas the precise tint you wish, for when mystery would prove a merit, the equivoque is there ready to your hand—meaning so much, yet asserting so little. For my part I should make my will in English; but I’d rather make love in French.
While thus digressing, I have forgotten to mention that people are running back and forward with bedroom candles; there is a confused hum ofbonsoiron every side; and, with many a hope of a fine day for the morrow, we separate for the night.
I lay awake some hours thinking of Laura, and then of the baronne—they were both arch ones; the abbé too crossed my thoughts, and once or twice the old colonel’s roguish leer; but I slept soundly for all that, and did not wake till eight o’clock the next morning. The silence of the house struck me forcibly as I rubbed my eyes and looked about. Hang it, thought I, have they gone off to thechassewithout me? I surely could never have slept through the uproar of their trumpets. I drew aside the window-curtains, and the mystery was solved: such rain never fell before; the clouds, actually touching the tops of the beech-trees, seemed to ooze and squash like squeezed sponges. The torrent came down in that splashing stroke as if some force behind momentarily propelled it stronger; and the long-parched ground seethed and smoked like a heated caldron.
Pleasant this, was reflection number one, as I endeavoured to peer through the mist, and beheld a haze of weeping foliage—pleasant to be immured here during Heaven knows how many days, without the power to escape. Lucky fellow, Arthur, was my second thought; capital quarters you have fallen into. Better far the snug comforts of a Flemish chateau than the chances of a wayside inn. Besides, here is a goodly company met together; there will needs be pleasant people among them. I wish it may rain these three weeks; château life is the very thing I ‘m curious about. How do they get through the day? There’s noTimesin Flanders; no one cares a farthing about who’s in and who’s out. There’s no Derby, no trials for murder. What can they do? was the question I put to myself a dozen times over. No matter; I have abundant occupation; my journal has never been posted up since—since—alas, I can scarcely tell!
It might be from reflections like these, or perhaps because I was less of a sportsman than my companions, but certainly, whatever the cause, I bore up against the disappointment of the weather with far more philosophy than they, and dispersed a sack of proverbs about patience, hope, equanimity, and contentment which Sancho Panza himself might have envied, until at length no one ventured a malediction on the day in my presence, for fear of eliciting a hailstorm of moral reflections. The company dropped down to breakfast by detachments, the elated looks and flashing eyes of the night before saddened and overcast at the unexpected change. Even the elders of the party seemed discontented; and except myself and an old gentleman with the gout, who took an airing about the hall and the drawing-room in a wheel-chair, all seemed miserable.
Each window had its occupant posted against the glass, vainly endeavouring to catch one bit of blue amid the dreary waste of cloud. A little group, sulky and silent, were gathered around the weather-glass; a literary inquirer sat down to con over the predictions of the almanac. You might as well have looked for sociability among the inhabitants of a private madhouse as here. The weather was cursed in every language from Cherokee to Sanskrit; all agreed that no country had such an abominable climate. The Yankee praised the summers of America, the Dane upheld his own, and I took a patriotic turn, and vowed I had never seen such rain in Ireland. The master of the house could scarcely show himself amid this torrent of abusive criticism; and when he did by chance appear, he looked as much ashamed as though he himself had pulled out the spigot, and deluged the whole land with water.
Meanwhile, none of those I looked for appeared. Neither the colonel’s daughter nor the baronne came down; the abbé too, did not descend to the breakfast room, and I was considerably puzzled and put out by the disappointment.
After then enduring a good hour’s boredom from the old colonel on the subject of my late lamented parent, Mark O’Leary; after submitting to a severe cross-examination from the Yankee gentleman as to the reason of my coming abroad, what property and expectations I had, my age and birthplace, what my mother died of, and whether I did not feel very miserable from the abject slavery of submitting to an English Government—I escaped into the library, a fine, comfortable old room, which I rightly conjectured I should find unoccupied.
Selecting a quaint-looking quarto with some curious illuminated pages for my companion, I drew a great deep leather chair into a recess of one window, and hugged myself in my solitude. While I listlessly turned over the leaves of my book, or sat lost in reflection, time crept along, and I heard the great clock of the château strike three; at the same moment a hand fell lightly on my shoulder; I turned about—it was the abbé.
‘I half suspected I should find you here,’ said he. ‘Do I disturb you, or may I keep you company?’
‘But too happy,’ I replied, ‘if you ‘ll do me the favour.’
‘I thought,’ said he, as he drew a chair opposite to me,—‘I thought you’d scarcely play dominoes all day, or discuss waistcoats.’
‘In truth I was scarcely better employed; this old volume here which I took down for its plates——’
‘Ma foi, a most interesting one; it is Guchardi’sHistory of Mary of Burgundy. Those quaint old processions, those venerable councils, are admirably depicted. What rich stores for a romance writer lie in the details of these old books! Their accuracy as to costume, the little traits of everyday life, are so naïvely told; every little domestic incident is so full of its characteristic era. I wonder, when the springs are so accessible, men do not draw more frequently from them, and more purely also.’
‘You forget Scott.’
‘No; far from it. He is the great exception; and from his intimate acquaintance with this class of reading is he so immeasurably superior to all other writers of his style. Not merely tinctured, but deeply imbued with the habits of the feudal period, the traits by which others attempt to paint the time with him were mere accessories in the picture; costume and architecture he used to heighten, not to convey his impressions; and while no one knew better every minute particular of dress or arms that betokened a period or a class, none more sparingly used such aid. He felt the same delicacy certain ancient artists did as to the introduction of pure white into their pictures, deeming such an unfair exercise of skill. But why venture to speak of your countryman to you, save that genius is above nationality, and Scott’s novels at least are European.’
After chatting for some time longer, and feeling struck with, the extent and variety of the abbé’s attainments, I half dropped a hint expressive of my surprise that one so cultivated as he was could apparently so readily comply with the monotonous routine of a château life, and the little prospect it afforded of his meeting congenial associates. Far from feeling offended at the liberty of my remark, he replied at once with a smile—
‘You are wrong there, and the error is a common one; but when you have seen more of life, you will learn that a man’s own resources are the only real gratifications he can count upon. Society, like a field-day, may offer the occasion to display your troops and put them through their manoeuvres; but, believe me, it is a rare and a lucky day when you go back richer by one recruit, and the chance is that even he is a cripple, and must be sent about his business. People, too, will tell you much of the advantage to be derived from associating with men of distinguished and gifted minds. I have seen something of such in my time, and give little credit to the theory. You might as well hope to obtain credit for a thousand pounds because you took off your hat to a banker.’
The abbé paused after this, and seemed to be occupied with his own thoughts; then raising his head suddenly, he said—
‘As to happiness, believe me, it lives only in the extremes of perfect vacuity or true genius. Your clever fellow, with a vivid fancy and glowing imagination, strong feeling and strong power of expression, has no chance of it. The excitement he lives in is alone a bar to the tranquil character of thought necessary to happiness; and however cold a man may feel, he should never warm himself through a burning-glass.’
There seemed through all he said something like a retrospective tone, as though he were rather giving the fruit of past personal experiences than merely speculating on the future; and I could not help throwing out a hint to this purport.
‘Perhaps you are right,’ said he; then, after a long silence, he added: ‘It is a fortunate thing after all when the faults of a man’s temperament are the source of some disappointment in early life, because then they rarely endanger his subsequent career. Let him only escape the just punishment, whatever it be, and the chances are that they embitter every hour of his after-life. His whole care and study being not correction, but concealment, he lives a life of daily duplicity; the fear of detection is over him at every step he takes; and he plays a part so constantly that he loses all real character at last in the frequency of dissimulation. Shall I tell you a little incident with which I became acquainted in early life. If you have nothing better to do, it may while away the hours before dinner.’
‘Without tiring you with any irrelevant details of the family and relatives of my hero, if I dare call him such, I may mention that he was the second son of an old Belgian family of some rank and wealth, and that in accordance with the habits of his house he was educated for the career of diplomacy. For this purpose, a life of travel was deemed the best preparation—foreign languages being the chief requisite, with such insight into history, national law, and national usages as any young man with moderate capacity and assiduity can master in three or four years.
‘The chief of the Dutch mission at Frankfort was an old diplomat of some distinction, but who, had it not been from causes purely personal towards the king, would not have quitted The Hague for any embassy whatever. He was a widower, with an only daughter—one of those true types of Dutch beauty which Terburg was so fond of painting. There are people who can see nothing but vulgarity in the class of features I speak of, and yet nothing in reality is farther from it. Hers was a mild, placid face, a wide, candid-looking forehead, down either side of which two braids of sunny brown hair fell; her skin, fair as alabaster, had the least tinge of colour, but her lips were full, and of a carmine hue, that gave a character of brilliancy to the whole countenance; her figure inclined to embonpoint, was exquisitely moulded, and in her walk there appeared the composed and resolute carriage of one whose temperament, however mild and unruffled, was still based on principles too strong to be shaken. She was indeed a perfect specimen of her nation, embodying in her character the thrift, the propriety, the high sense of honour, the rigid habits of order, so eminently Dutch; but withal there ran through her nature the golden thread of romance, and beneath that mild eyebrow there were the thoughts and hopes of a highly imaginative mind.
‘The mission consisted of an old secretary of embassy, Van Dohein, a veteran diplomat of some sixty years, and Edward Norvins, the youth I speak of. Such was the family party, for you are aware that they all lived in the same house, and dined together every day—theattachésof the mission being specially intrusted to the care and attention of the head of the mission, as if they were his own children. Norvins soon fell in love with the pretty Marguerite. How could it be otherwise? They were constantly together; he was her companion at home, her attendant at every ball; they rode out together, walked, read, drew, and sang together, and in fact very soon became inseparable. In all this there was nothing which gave rise to remark. The intimate habits of a mission permitted such; and as her father, deeply immersed in affairs of diplomacy, had no time to busy himself about them, no one else did. The secretary had followed the same course at every mission for the first ten years of his career, and only deemed it the ordinary routine of anattachéslife.
‘Such, then, was the pleasant current of their lives, when an event occurred which was to disturb its even flow—ay, and alter the channel for ever. A despatch arrived one morning at the mission, informing them that a certain Monsieur von Halsdt, a son of one of the ministers, who had lately committed some breach of discipline in a cavalry regiment, was about to be attached to the mission. Never was such a shock as Marguerite and her lover sustained. To her the idea of associating with a wild, and unruly character like this was insupportable. To him it was misery; he saw at once all his daily intimacy with her interrupted; he perceived how their former habits could no longer be followed—that with this arrival must cease the companionship that made him the happiest of men. Even the baron himself was indignant at the arrangement to saddle him with avauriento be reclaimed; but then he was the minister’s son. The king himself had signed the appointment, and there was no help for it.
‘It was indeed with anything but feelings of welcome that they awaited the coming of the new guest. Even in the short interval between his appointment and his coming, a hundred rumours reached them of his numerous scrapes and adventures, his duels, his debts, his gambling, and his love exploits. All of course were duly magnified. Poor Marguerite felt as though an imp of Satan was about to pay them a visit, and Norvins dreaded him with a fear that partook of a presentiment.
‘The day came, and the dinner-hour, in respect for the son of the great man, was delayed twenty minutes in expectation of his coming; and they went to table at last without him, silent and sad—the baron, annoyed at the loss of dignity he should sustain by a piece of politeness exercised without result; the secretary, fretting over theentréesthat were burned; Marguerite and Edward, mourning over happiness never to return. Suddenly acalèchedrove into the court at full gallop, the steps rattled, and a figure wrapped in a cloak sprang out. Before the first surprise permitted them to speak, the door of thesalleopened, and he appeared.
‘It would, I confess, have been a difficult matter to fix on that precise character of looks and appearances which might have pleased all the party. Whatever were the sentiments of others I know not, but Norvins’ wishes would have inclined to see him short and ill-looking, rude in speech and gesture—in a word, as repulsive as possible. It is indeed a strange thing—you must have remarked it, I’m certain—that the disappointment we feel at finding people we desire to like inferior to our own conceptions of them, is not one-half so great as is our chagrin at discovering those we are determined to dislike very different from our preconceived notions, with few or none of the features we were prepared to find fault with, and, in fact, altogether unlike the bugbear we had created for ourselves. One would suppose that such a revulsion in feeling would be pleasurable rather than otherwise. Not so, however; a sense of our own injustice adds poignancy to our previous prejudice, and we dislike the object only the more for lowering us in our own esteem.
‘Van Halsdt was well calculated to illustrate my theory. He was tall and well made; his face, dark as a Spaniard’s (his mother was descended from a Catalonian family), was manly-looking and frank, at once indicating openness of temperament, and a dash of heroic daring that would like danger for itself alone; his carriage had the easy freedom of a soldier, without anything bordering on coarseness or effrontery. Advancing with a quiet bow, he tendered his apologies for being late, rather as a matter he owed to himself, to excuse his want of punctuality, than from any sense of inconvenience to others, and ascribed the delay to the difficulty of finding post-horses. “While waiting, therefore,” said he, “I resolved to economise time, and so dressed for dinner at the last stage.”
‘This apology at least showed a desire on his part to be in time, and at once disposed the secretary in his favour. The baron himself spoke little; and as for Marguerite, she never opened her lips to him the whole time of dinner; and Norvins could barely get out the few commonplaces of table, and sat eyeing him from time to time with an increasing dislike.
‘Van Halsdt could not help feeling that his reception was of the coldest; yet either perfectly indifferent to the fact, or resolved to overcome their impressions against him, he talked away unceasingly of everything he could think of—the dinners at court, the theatres, the diplomatic soirées, the news from foreign countries, all of which he spoke of with knowledge and intimacy. Yet nothing could he extract in return. The old baron retired, as was his wont, immediately after dinner; the secretary dropped off soon after; Marguerite went to take her evening drive on the boulevards; and Norvins was left alone with his new comrade. At first he was going to pretend an engagement. Then the awkwardness of the moment came forcibly before him, and he sat still, silent and confused.
‘“Any wine in that decanter?” said Van Halsdt, with a short abrupt tone, as he pointed to the bottle beside him. “Pray pass it over here. I have only drunk three glasses. I shall be better aware to-morrow how soon your party breaks up here.”
‘“Yes,” said Edward timidly, and not well knowing what to say. “The baron retires to his study every evening at seven.”
‘“With all my heart,” said he gaily; “at six, if he prefer it, and he may even take the old secretary with him. But the mademoiselle, shall we see any more of her during the evening? Is there no salon? Eh, what do you do after dinner?”
‘“Why, sometimes we drive, or we walk out on the boulevards; the other ministers receive once or twice a week, and then there’s the opera.”
‘“Devilishly slow you must find all this,” said Van Halsdt, filling a bumper, and taking it off at a draught. “Are you long here?”
‘“Only three months.”
‘“And well sick of it, I ‘ll be sworn.”
‘“No, I feel very happy; I like the quiet.”
‘“Oh dear! oh dear!” said he, with a long groan, “what is to become of me?”
‘Norvins heartily wished he could have replied to the question in the way he would have liked; but he said nothing.
‘“It’s past eight.” said Van Halsdt, as he perceived him stealing a look at his watch. “Never mind me, if you’ve any appointment; I ‘ll soon learn to make myself at home here. Perhaps you’d better ring for some more claret, however, before you go; they don’t know me yet.”
‘Edward almost started from his chair at this speech. Such a liberty had never before been heard of as to call for more wine; indeed, it was not their ordinary habit to consume half what was placed on the table; but so taken by surprise was he, that he actually rose and rang the bell, as he was desired.
‘“Some claret, Johann,” said he with a gulp, as the old butler entered.
‘The man started back, and fixed his eyes on the empty decanter.
‘“And I say, ancient,” said Van Halsdt, “don’t decant it; you shook the last bottle confoundedly. It’s old wine, and won’t bear that kind of usage.”
‘The old man moved away with a deep sigh, and returned in about ten minutes with a bottle from the cellar.
‘“Didn’t Providence bless you with two hands, friend?” said Van Halsdt. “Go down for another.”
‘“Go, Johann,” said Norvins, as he saw him hesitate, and not knowing what his refusal might call forth; and then, without waiting for further parley, he arose and withdrew.
‘“Well,” thought he, when he was once more alone, “if he is a good-looking fellow, and there’s no denyingthat, one comfort is, he is a confirmed drunkard. Marguerite will never be able to endure him”; for such, in his secret heart, was the reason of his premature dislike and dread of his new companion; and as he strolled along he meditated on the many ways he should be able to contrast his own acquirements with the other’s deficiencies, for such he set them down at once, and gradually reasoned himself into the conviction that the fear of all rivalry from him was mere folly; and that whatever success his handsome face and figure might have elsewhere, Marguerite was not the girl to be caught by such attractions, when coupled with an unruly temper and an uneducated mind.
‘And he was right. Great as his own repugnance was towards Van Halsdt, hers was far greater. She not only avoided him on every occasion, but took pleasure, as it seemed, in marking the cold distance of her manner to him, and contrasting it with her behaviour to others. It is true he appeared to care little for this; and only replied to it by a half-impertinent style of familiarity—a kind of jocular intimacy most insulting to a woman, and horribly tantalising for those to witness who are attached to her.
‘I don’t wish to make my story a long one; nor could I without entering into the details of everyday life, which now became so completely altered. Marguerite and Norvins met only at rare intervals, and then less to cultivate each other’s esteem than expatiate on the many demerits of him who had estranged them so utterly. All the reports to his discredit that circulated in Frankfort were duly conned over; and though they could lay little to his charge of their own actual knowledge, they only imagined the more, and condemned him accordingly.
‘To Norvins he became hourly more insupportable. There was in all his bearing towards him the quiet, measured tone of a superior to an inferior, the patronising protection of an elder to one younger and less able to defend himself—and which, with the other’s consciousness of his many intellectual advantages over him, added double bitterness to the insult. As he never appeared in the bureau of the mission, nor in any way concerned himself with official duties, they rarely met save at table; there, his appearance was the signal for constraint and reserve —an awkwardness that made itself felt the more, as the author of it seemed to exult in the dismay he created.
‘Such, then, was the state of events when Norvins received his nomination as secretary of legation at Stuttgart. The appointment was a surprise to him; he had not even heard of the vacancy. The position, however, and the emoluments were such as to admit of his marrying; and he resolved to ask the baron for his daughter’s hand, to which the rank and influence of his own family permitted him to aspire without presumption.
‘The baron gave his willing consent; Marguerite accepted; and the only delay was now caused by the respect for an old Dutch custom—the bride should be at least eighteen, and Marguerite yet wanted three months of that age. This interval Norvins obtained leave to pass at Frankfort; and now they went about to all public places together as betrothed; paid visits in company, and were recognised by all their acquaintances as engaged to each other.
‘Just at this time a French cuirassier regiment marched into garrison in the town; they were on their way to the south of Germany, and only detained in Frankfort to make up their full complement of horses. In this regiment was a young Dutch officer, who once belonged to the same regiment as Van Halsdt, and who was broke by the court-martial for the same quarrel. They had fought twice with swords, and only parted with the dire resolve to finish the affair at the next opportunity. This officer was a man of an inferior class, his family being an obscure one of North Holland; and thus, when dismissed the service, he had no other resource than to enter the French army, at that time at war with Austria. He was said to be a man of overbearing temper and passion, and it was not likely that the circumstance of his expatriation and disgrace had improved him. However, some pledge Van Halsdt had made to his father decided him in keeping out of the way. The report ran that he had given a solemn promise never to challenge nor accept any challenge from the other on any pretext whatsoever. Whatever the promise, certain it was he left Frankfort the same day the regiment marched into town, and retired to Wiesbaden.
‘The circumstance soon became the subject of town gossip, and plenty there were most willing to attribute Van Halsdt’s departure to prudential motives, rather than to give so wild a character any credit for filial ones. Several who felt offended at his haughty, supercilious manner now exulted in this, as it seemed, fall to his pride; and Norvins, unfortunately, fell into the same track, and by many a sly innuendo and half allusion to his absence gave greater currency to the report that his absence was dictated by other considerations than those of parental respect.
‘Through all the chit-chat of the time, Marguerite showed herself highly indignant at Van Halsdt’s conduct. The quiet timid girl, who detested violence and hated crime in any shape, felt disgusted at the thought of his poltroonery, and could not hear his name mentioned without an expression of contempt. All this delighted Edward; it seemed to be the just retribution on the former insolence of the other, and he longed for his return to Frankfort to witness the thousand slights that awaited him.
‘Such a strange and unaccountable thing is our triumph over others for the want of those qualities in which we see ourselves deficient. No one is so loud in decrying dishonesty and fraud as the man who feels the knave in his own heart. Who can censure female frailty like her who has felt its sting in her own conscience? You remember the great traveller, Mungo Park, used to calculate the depths of rivers in Africa by rolling heavy stones over their banks and watching the air-bubbles that mounted to the surface; so, oftentimes, may you measure the innate sense of a vice by the execration some censor of morals bestows upon it. Believe me, these heavy chastisements of crime are many times but the cries of awakened conscience. I speak strongly, but I feel deeply on this subject.
‘But to my story. It was the custom for Marguerite and her lover each evening to visit the theatre, where the minister had a box; and as they were stepping into the carriage one night as usual, Van Halsdt drove up to the door and asked if he might accompany them. Of course, a refusal was out of the question; he was a member of the mission; he had done nothing to forfeit his position there, however much he had lost in the estimation of society generally; and they acceded to his request, still with a species of cold courtesy that would, by any other man, have been construed into a refusal.
‘As they drove along in silence, the constraint increased at every moment, and had it not been for the long-suppressed feeling of hated rivalry, Norvins could have pitied Van Halsdt as he sat, no longer with his easy smile of self-satisfied indifference, but with a clouded, heavy brow, mute and pale. As for Marguerite, her features expressed a species of quiet, cold disdain whenever she looked towards him, far more terrible to bear than anything like an open reproach. Twice or thrice he made an effort to start some topic of conversation, but in vain; his observations were either unreplied to, or met a cold, distant assent more chilling still. At length, as if resolved to break through their icy reserve towards him, he asked in a tone of affected indifference—
‘“Any changes in Frankfort, mademoiselle, since I had the pleasure of seeing you last?”
‘“None, sir, that I know of, save that the French cuirassier regiment marched this morning for Baden,of which, however, it is more than probable you are aware already.”
‘On each of these latter words she laid an undue stress, fixing her eyes steadfastly on him, and speaking in a slow, measured tone. He grew deeply red, almost black for a moment or two; his moustache seemed almost to bristle with the tremulous convulsion that shook his upper lip; then as suddenly he became lividly pale, while the great drops of perspiration stood on his brow, and fell upon his cheek. Not another word was spoken. They soon reached the theatre, when Norvins offered Marguerite his arm, Van Halsdt slowly following them upstairs.
‘The play was one of Lessing’s and well acted; but somehow Norvins could pay no attention to the performance, his whole soul being occupied by other thoughts. Marguerite appeared to him in a different light from what he had ever seen her—not less to be loved, but altogether different. The staid, placid girl, whose quiet thoughts seemed never to rest on topics of violent passion or excitement, who fled from the very approach of anything bordering on overwrought feeling, now appeared carried away by her abhorrence of a man to the very extreme of hatred for conduct which Norvins scarcely thought she should have considered even faulty. If, then, his triumph over Van Halsdt brought any pleasure to his heart, a secret sense of his own deficiency in the very quality for which she condemned him made him shudder.
‘While he reflected thus, his ear was struck with a conversation in the box next his, in which were seated a large party of young men, with two or three ladies, whose air, dress, and manners were at least somewhat equivocal. ‘“And so, Alphonse, you succeeded after all?” said a youth to a large, powerful, dark-moustached man, whose plain blue frock could not conceal the soldier.
‘“Yes,” replied he, in a deep sonorous voice; “our doctor managed the matter for me. He pronounced me unable to march before to-morrow; he said that my old wound in the arm gave symptoms of uneasiness, and required a little more rest. But, by Saint Denis, I see little benefit in the plan, after all. This ‘white feather’ has not ventured back, and I must leave in the morning without meeting him.”
‘These words, which were spoken somewhat loudly, could be easily heard in any part of the adjoining box; and scarcely were they uttered when Van Halsdt, who sat the entire evening far back, and entirely concealed from view, covered his face with both hands, and remained in that posture for several minutes. When he withdrew them, the alteration in his countenance was actually fearful. Though his cheeks were pale as death, his eyes were bloodshot, and the lids swelled and congested; his lips, too, were protruded, and trembled like one in an ague, and his clasped hands shook against the chair.
‘Norvins would have asked him if he were ill, but was afraid even to speak to him, while again his attention was drawn off by the voices near him.
‘“Not got a bouquet?” said the large man to a lady beside him; “pardi, that’s too bad. Let me assist you. I perceive that this pretty damsel, who turns her shoulder so disdainfully towards us, makes little use of hers, and soavec permission, mademoiselle!” With that he stood up, and leaning across the division into their box, stretched over his hand and took the bouquet that lay before Marguerite, and handed it to the lady at his side.
‘Marguerite started back, as her eyes flashed with offended pride, and then turned them on her lover. He stood up, not to resent the insult, but to offer her his arm to leave the box. She gave him a look: never in a glance was there read such an expression of withering contempt; and drawing her shawl around her, she said in a low voice, “The carriage.” Before Edward could open the box door to permit her to pass out, Van Halsdt sprang to the front of the box, and stretched over. Then came a crash, a cry, a confused shout of many voices together, and the wordpolissonabove all; but hurrying Marguerite along, Norvins hastened down the stairs and assisted her into the carriage. As she took her place, he made a gesture as if to follow, but she drew the door towards her, and with a shuddering expression, “No!” leaned back, and closed the door. Thecalèchemoved on, and Norvins was alone in the street.
‘I shall not attempt to describe the terrific rush of sensations that came crowding on his brain. Coward as he was, he would have braved a hundred deaths rather than endure such agony. He turned towards the theatre, but his craven spirit seemed to paralyse his very limbs; he felt as if were his antagonist before him, he would not have had energy to speak to him. Marguerite’s look was ever before him; it sank into his inmost soul; it was burning there like a fire, that no memory nor after sorrow should ever quench.
‘As he stood thus, an arm was passed hastily through his, and he was led along. It was Van Halsdt, his hat drawn over his brows, and a slight mark of blood upon his cheek. He seemed so overwhelmed with his own sensations as not to be cognisant of his companion’s.
‘“I struck him,” said he, in a thick guttural voice, the very breathings of vengeance—“I struck him to my feet. It is nowà la mortbetween us, and better it should besoat once.” As he spoke thus he turned towards the boulevard, instead of the usual way towards the embassy. ‘“We are going wrong,” said Norvins—“this leads to the Breiten gasse.”
‘“I know it,” was the brief reply; “we must make for the country; the thing was too public not to excite measures of precaution. We are to rendezvous at Katznach.” ‘“With swords?”
‘“No; pistols,this time.” said he, with a fiendish emphasis on the last words.
‘They walked on for above an hour, passing through the gate of the town, and reaching the open country, each silent and lost in his own thoughts.
‘At a small cabaret they procured horses and a guide to Katznach, which was about eleven miles up the mountain. The way was so steep that they were obliged to walk their horses, and frequently to get down and lead them; yet not a word was spoken on either side. Once, only, Norvins asked how he was to get his pistols from Frankfort; to which the other answered merely, “They provide the weapons!” and they were again silent.
‘Norvins was somewhat surprised, and offended also, that his companion should have given him so little of his confidence at such a moment; gladly, indeed, would he have exchanged his own thoughts for those of any one else, but he left him to ruminate in silence on his unhappy position, and to brood over miseries that every minute seemed to aggravate.
‘“They’re coming up the road yonder; I see them now,” said Van Halsdt suddenly, as he aroused the other from a deep train of melancholy thoughts. “Ha! how lame he walks!” cried he, with savage exultation.
‘In a few minutes the party, consisting of four persons, dismounted from their horses, and entered the little burial-ground beside the chapel. One of them advancing hastily towards Van Halsdt, shook him warmly by the hand, and whispered something in his ear. The other replied; when the first speaker turned towards Norvins with a look of ineffable scorn and then passed over to the opposite group. Edward soon perceived that this man was to act as Halsdt’s friend; and though really glad that such an office fell not to his share, he was deeply offended on being thus, as it were, passed over. In this state of dogged anger he sat down on a tombstone, and, as if having no interest whatever in the whole proceedings, never once looked towards them.
‘Norvins did not notice that the party now took the path towards the wood, nor was he conscious of the flight of time, when suddenly the loud report of two pistols, so close together as to be almost blended, rang through his ears. Then he sprang up, a dreadful pang piercing his bosom, some terrible sense of guilt he could neither fathom nor explain flashing across him. At the same instant the brushwood crashed behind him, and Van Halsdt and his companion came out; the former with his eyes glistening and his cheek flushed, the other pale and dreadfully agitated. He nodded towards Edward significantly, and Van Halsdt said, “Yes.”
‘Before Norvins could conjecture what this meant, the stranger approached him, and said—
‘“I am sorry, sir, the sad work of this morning cannot end here; but of course you are prepared to afford my friend the only reparation in your power.”
‘“Me! reparation! what do you mean? Afford whom?”
‘“Monsieur van Halsdt,” said he coolly, and with a slight emphasis of contempt as he spoke.
‘“Monsieur van Halsdt! he never offendedme; I never insulted, never injuredhim,” said Edward, trembling at every word.
‘“Never injured me!” cried Van Halsdt. “Is it nothing that you have ruined me for ever; that your cowardice to resent an affront offered to one who should have been dearer than your life, a hundred times told, should have involved me in a duel with a man I swore never to meet, never to cross swords nor exchange a shot with? Is it nothing that I am to be disgraced by my king, disinherited by my father—a beggar and an exile at once? Is it nothing, sir, that the oldest name of Friesland is to be blotted from the nobles of his nation? Is it nothing that for you I should bewhat I now am?”
‘The last words were uttered in a voice that made Norvins, very blood run cold; but he could not speak, he could not mutter a word in answer.
‘“What!” said Van Halsdt, in an accent of cutting sarcasm, “I thought that perhaps in the suddenness of the moment your courage, unprepared for an unexpected call, might not have stood your part; but can it be true that you are a coward? Is this the case?”
‘Norvins hung down his head; the sickness of death was on him. The dreadful pause was broken at last; it was Van Halsdt who spoke—
‘“Adieu, sir; I grieve for you. I hope we may never meet again; yet let me give you a counsel ere we part. There is but one coat men can wear with impunity when they carry a malevolent and a craven spirit; you can be a———“’
‘Monsieur l’Abbé, the dinner is on the table,’ said a servant, entering at this moment of the story.
‘Ma foi, and so it is,’ said he, looking gaily at his watch, as he rose from his chair.
‘But mademoiselle,’ said I, ‘what became of her?’
‘Ah, Marguerite: she was married to Van Halsdt in less than three months. The cuirassier fortunately recovered from his wounds; the duel was shown to be a thing forced by the stress of consequences. As for Van Halsdt, the king forgave him, and he is now ambassador at Naples.’
‘And the other, Norvins?—though I scarcely feel any interest in him.’
‘I’m sorry for it,’ said he, laughing; ‘but won’t you move forward?’
With that he made me a polite bow to precede him towards the dinner-room, and followed me with the jaunty step and the light gesture of an easy and contented nature.
I need scarcely say that I did not sit next the abbé that day at dinner; on the contrary, I selected the most stupid-looking old man I could find for my neighbour, hugging myself in the thought, that, where there is little agreeability, Nature may kindly have given in recompense some traits of honesty and some vestiges of honour. Indeed, such a disgust did I feel for the amusing features of the pleasantest part of the company, and so inextricably did I connect repartee with rascality, that I trembled at every good thing I heard, and stole away early to bed, resolving never to take sudden fancies to agreeable people as long as I lived—an oath which a long residence in a certain country that shall be nameless happily permits me to keep, with little temptation to transgress.
The next morning was indeed a brilliant one—the earth refreshed by rain, the verdure more brilliant, the mountain streams grown fuller; all the landscape seemed to shine forth in its gladdest features. I was up and stirring soon after sunrise; and with all my prejudices against such a means of ‘lengthening one’s days,’ I sat at my window, actually entranced with the beauty of the scene. Beyond the river there rose a heath-clad mountain, along which misty masses of vapour swept hurriedly, disclosing as they passed some tiny patch of cultivation struggling for life amid granite rocks and abrupt precipices. As the sun grew stronger, the grey tints became brown and the brown grew purple, while certain dark lines that tracked their way from summit to base began to shine like silver, and showed the course of many a mountain torrent tumbling and splashing towards that little lake that lay calm as a mirror below. Immediately beneath my window was the garden of the château— a succession of terraces descending to the very river. The quaint yew hedges carved into many a strange device, the balustrades half hidden by flowering shrubs and creepers, the marble statues peeping out here and there, trim and orderly as they looked, were a pleasant feature of the picture, and heightened the effect of the desolate grandeur of the distant view. The very swans that sailed about on the oval pond told of habitation and life, just as the broad expanded wing that soared above the mountain peak spoke of the wild region where the eagle was king.
My musings were suddenly brought to a close by a voice on the terrace beneath. It was that of a man who was evidently, from his pace, enjoying his morning’s promenade under the piazza of the château, while he hummed a tune to pass away the time:—