Under the possibility of immediate departure, Morgan’s horse, after being washed, rubbed down and dried, had been fed a double ration of oats and been resaddled and bridled. The young man had only to ask for it and spring upon its back. He was no sooner in the saddle than the gate opened as if by magic; the horse neighed and darted out swiftly, having forgotten its first trip, and ready for another.
At the gate of the Chartreuse, Morgan paused an instant, undecided whether to turn to the right or left. He finally turned to the right, followed the road which leads from Bourg to Seillon for a few moments, wheeled rapidly a second time to the right, cut across country, plunged into an angle of the forest which was on his way, reappeared before long on the other side, reached the main road to Pont-d’Ain, followed it for about a mile and a half, and halted near a group of houses now called the Maison des Gardes. One of these houses bore for sign a cluster of holly, which indicated one of those wayside halting places where the pedestrians quench their thirst, and rest for an instant to recover strength before continuing the long fatiguing voyage of life. Morgan stopped at the door, drew a pistol from its holster and rapped with the butt end as he had done at the Chartreuse. Only as, in all probability, the good folks at the humble tavern were far from being conspirators, the traveller was kept waiting longer than he had been at the monastery. At last he heard the echo of the stable boy’s clumsy sabots. The gate creaked, but the worthy man who opened it no sooner perceived the horseman with his drawn pistol than he instinctively tried to, close it again.
“It is I, Patout,” said the young man; “don’t be afraid.”
“Ah! sure enough,” said the peasant, “it is really you, Monsieur Charles. I’m not afraid now; but you know, as the curé used to tell us, in the days when there was a good God, ‘Caution is the mother of safety.’”
“Yes, Patout, yes,” said the young man, slipping a piece of silver into the stable boy’s hand, “but be easy; the good God will return, and M. le Curé also.”
“Oh, as for that,” said the good man, “it is easy to see that there is no one left on high by the way things go. Will this last much longer, M. Charles?”
“Patout, I promise, in my honor, to do my best to be rid of all that annoys you. I am no less impatient than you; so I’ll ask you not to go to bed, my good Patout.”
“Ah! You know well, monsieur, that when you come I don’t often go to bed. As for the horse—Goodness! You change them every day? The time before last it was a chestnut, the last time a dapple-gray, now a black one.”
“Yes, I’m somewhat capricious by nature. As to the horse, as you say, my dear Patout, he wants nothing. You need only remove his bridle; leave him saddled. Oh, wait; put this pistol back in the holsters and take care of these other two for me.” And the young man removed the two from his belt and handed them to the hostler.
“Well,” exclaimed the latter, laughing, “any more barkers?”
“You know, Patout, they say the roads are unsafe.”
“Ah! I should think they weren’t safe! We’re up to our necks in regular highway robberies, M. Charles. Why, no later than last week they stopped and robbed the diligence between Geneva and Bourg!”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Morgan; “and whom do they accuse of the robbery?”
“Oh, it’s such a farce! Just fancy; they say it was the Companions of Jesus. I don’t believe a word of it, of course. Who are the Companions of Jesus if not the twelve apostles?”
“Of course,” said Morgan, with his eternally joyous smile, “I don’t know of any others.”
“Well!” continued Patout, “to accuse the twelve apostles of robbing a diligence, that’s the limit. Oh! I tell you, M. Charles, we’re living in times when nobody respects anything.”
And shaking his head like a misanthrope, disgusted, if not with life, at least with men, Patout led the horse to the stable.
As for Morgan, he watched Patout till he saw him disappear down the courtyard and enter the dark stable; then, skirting the hedge which bordered the garden, he went toward a large clump of trees whose lofty tops were silhouetted against the darkness of the night, with the majesty of things immovable, the while their shadows fell upon a charming little country house known in the neighborhood as the Château des Noires-Fontaines. As Morgan reached the château wall, the hour chimed from the belfry of the village of Montagnac. The young man counted the strokes vibrating in the calm silent atmosphere of the autumn night. It was eleven o’clock. Many things, as we have seen, had happened during the last two hours.
Morgan advanced a few steps farther, examined the wall, apparently in search of a familiar spot, then, having found it, inserted the tip of his boot in a cleft between two stones. He sprang up like a man mounting a horse, seized the top of the wall with the left hand, and with a second spring seated himself astride the wall, from which, with the rapidity of lightning, he lowered himself on the other side. All this was done with such rapidity, such dexterity and agility, that any one chancing to pass at that instant would have thought himself the puppet of a vision. Morgan stopped, as on the other side of the wall, to listen, while his eyes tried to pierce the darkness made deeper by the foliage of poplars and aspens, and the heavy shadows of the little wood. All was silent and solitary. Morgan ventured on his path. We say ventured, because the young man, since nearing the Château des Noires-Fontaines, revealed in all his movement a timidity and hesitation so foreign to his character that it was evident that if he feared it was not for himself alone.
He gained the edge of the wood, still moving cautiously. Coming to a lawn, at the end of which was the little château, he paused. Then he examined the front of the house. Only one of the twelve windows which dotted the three floors was lighted. This was on the second floor at the corner of the house. A little balcony, covered with virgin vines which climbed the walls, twining themselves around the iron railing and falling thence in festoons from the window, overhung the garden. On both sides of the windows, close to the balcony, large-leafed trees met and formed above the cornice a bower of verdure. A Venetian blind, which was raised and lowered by cords, separated the balcony from the window, a separation which disappeared at will. It was through the interstices of this blind that Morgan had seen the light.
The young man’s first impulse was to cross the lawn in a straight line; but again, the fears of which we spoke restrained him. A path shaded by lindens skirted the wall and led to the house. He turned aside and entered its dark leafy covert. When he had reached the end of the path, he crossed, like a frightened doe, the open space which led to the house wall, and stood for a moment in the deep shadow of the house. Then, when he had reached the spot he had calculated upon, he clapped his hands three times.
At this call a shadow darted from the end of the apartment and clung, lithe, graceful, almost transparent, to the window.
Morgan repeated the signal. The window was opened immediately, the blind was raised, and a ravishing young girl, in a night dress, her fair hair rippling over her shoulders, appeared in the frame of verdure.
The young man stretched out his arms to her, whose arms were stretched out to him, and two names, or rather two cries from the heart, crossed from one to the other.
“Charles!”
“Amélie!”
Then the young man sprang against the wall, caught at the vine shoots, the jagged edges of the rock, the jutting cornice, and in an instant was on the balcony.
What these two beautiful young beings said to each other was only a murmur of love lost in an endless kiss. Then, by gentle effort, the young man drew the girl with one hand to her chamber, while with the other he loosened the cords of the blind, which fell noisily behind them. The window closed behind the blind. Then the lamp was extinguished, and the front of the Château des Noires-Fontaines was again in darkness.
This darkness had lasted for about a quarter of an hour, when the rolling of a carriage was heard along the road leading from the highway of Pont-d’Ain to the entrance of the château. There the sound ceased; it was evident that the carriage had stopped before the gates.
The carriage which had stopped before the gate was that which brought Roland back to his family, accompanied by Sir John.
The family was so far from expecting him that, as we have said, all the lights in the house were extinguished, all the windows in darkness, even Amélie’s. The postilion had cracked his whip smartly for the last five hundred yards, but the noise was insufficient to rouse these country people from their first sleep. When the carriage had stopped, Roland opened the door, sprang out without touching the steps, and tugged at the bell-handle. Five minutes elapsed, and, after each peal, Roland turned to the carriage, saying: “Don’t be impatient, Sir John.”
At last a window opened and a childish but firm voice cried out: “Who is ringing that way?”
“Ah, is that you, little Edouard?” said Roland. “Make haste and let us in.”
The child leaped back with a shout of delight and disappeared. But at the same time his voice was heard in the corridors, crying: “Mother! wake up; it is Roland! Sister! wake up; it is the big brother!”
Then, clad only in his night robe and his little slippers, he ran down the steps, crying: “Don’t be impatient, Roland; here I am.”
An instant later the key grated in the lock, and the bolts slipped back in their sockets. A white figure appeared in the portico, and flew rather than ran to the gate, which an instant later turned on its hinges and swung open. The child sprang upon Roland’s neck and hung there.
“Ah, brother! Brother!” he exclaimed, embracing the young man, laughing and crying at the same time. “Ah, big brother Roland! How happy mother will be; and Amélie, too! Every body is well. I am the sickest—ah! except Michel, the gardener, you know, who has sprained his leg. But why aren’t you in uniform? Oh! how ugly you are in citizen’s clothes! Have you just come from Egypt? Did you bring me the silver-mounted pistols and the beautiful curved sword? No? Then you are not nice, and I won’t kiss you any more. Oh, no, no! Don’t be afraid! I love you just the same!”
And the boy smothered the big brother with kisses while he showered questions upon him. The Englishman, still seated in the carriage, looked smilingly through the window at the scene.
In the midst of these fraternal embraces came the voice of a woman; the voice of the mother.
“Where is he, my Roland, my darling son?” asked Madame de Montrevel, in a voice fraught with such violent, joyous emotion that it was almost painful. “Where is he? Can it be true that he has returned; really true that he is not a prisoner, not dead? Is he really living?”
The child, at her voice, slipped from his brother’s arms like an eel, dropped upon his feet on the grass, and, as if moved by a spring, bounded toward his mother.
“This way, mother; this way!” said he, dragging his mother, half dressed as she was, toward Roland. When he saw his mother Roland could no longer contain himself. He felt the sort of icicle that had petrified his breast melt, and his heart beat like that of his fellowmen.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, “I was indeed ungrateful to God when life still holds such joys for me.”
And he fell sobbing upon Madame de Montrevel’s neck without thinking of Sir John, who felt his English phlegm disperse as he silently wiped away the tears that flowed down his cheeks and moistened his lips. The child, the mother, and Roland formed an adorable group of tenderness and emotion.
Suddenly little Edouard, like a leaf tossed about by the wind, flew from the group, exclaiming: “Sister Amélie! Why, where is she?” and he rushed toward the house, repeating: “Sister Amélie, wake up! Get up! Hurry up!”
And then the child could be heard kicking and rapping against a door. Silence followed. Then little Edouard shouted: “Help, mother! Help, brother Roland! Sister Amélie is ill!”
Madame de Montrevel and her son flew toward the house. Sir John, consummate tourist that he was, always carried a lancet and a smelling bottle in his pocket. He jumped from the carriage and, obeying his first impulse, hurried up the portico. There he paused, reflecting that he had not been introduced, an all-important formality for an Englishman.
However, the fainting girl whom he sought came toward him at that moment. The noise her brother had made at the door brought Amélie to the landing; but, without doubt, the excitement which Roland’s return had occasioned was too much for her, for after descending a few steps in an almost automatic manner, controlling herself by a violent effort, she gave a sigh, and, like a flower that bends, a branch that droops, like a scarf that floats, she fell, or rather lay, upon the stairs. It was at that moment that the child cried out.
But at his exclamation Amélie recovered, if not her strength, at least her will. She rose, and, stammering, “Be quiet, Edouard! Be quite, in Heaven’s name! I’m all right,” she clung to the balustrade with one hand, and leaning with the other on the child, she had continued to descend. On the last step she met her mother and her brother. Then with a violent, almost despairing movement, she threw both arms around Roland’s neck, exclaiming: “My brother! My brother!”
Roland, feeling the young girl’s weight press heavily upon his shoulder, exclaimed: “Air! Air! She is fainting!” and carried her out upon the portico. It was this new group, so different from the first, which met Sir John’s eyes.
As soon as she felt the fresh air, Amélie revived and raised her head. Just then the moon, in all her splendor, shook off a cloud which had veiled her, and lighted Amélie’s face, as pale as her own. Sir John gave a cry of admiration. Never had he seen a marble statue so perfect as this living marble before his eyes.
We must say that Amélie, seen thus, was marvelously beautiful. Clad in a long cambric robe, which defined the outlines of her body, molded on that of the Polyhymnia of antiquity, her pale face gently inclined upon her brother’s shoulder, her long golden hair floating around her snowy shoulders, her arm thrown around her mother’s neck, its rose-tinted alabaster hand drooping upon the red shawl in which Madame de Montrevel had wrapped herself; such was Roland’s sister as she appeared to Sir John.
At the Englishman’s cry of admiration, Roland remembered that he was there, and Madame de Montrevel perceived his presence. As for the child, surprised to see this stranger in his mother’s home, he ran hastily down the steps of the portico, stopping on the third one, not that he feared to go further, but in order to be on a level with the person he proceeded to question.
“Who are you, sir!” he asked Sir John; “and what are you doing here?”
“My little Edouard,” said Sir John, “I am your brother’s friend, and I have brought you the silver-mounted pistols and the Damascus blade which he promised you.”
“Where are they?” asked the child.
“Ah!” said Sir John, “they are in England, and it will take some time to send for them. But your big brother will answer for me that I am a man of my word.”
“Yes, Edouard, yes,” said Roland. “If Sir John promises them to you, you will get them.” Then turning to Madame de Montrevel and his sister, “Excuse me, my mother; excuse me, Amélie; or rather, excuse yourselves as best you can to Sir John, for you have made me abominably ungrateful.” Then grasping Sir John’s hand, he continued: “Mother, Sir John took occasion the first time he saw me to render me an inestimable service. I know that you never forget such things. I trust, therefore, that you will always remember that Sir John is one of our best friends; and he will give you the proof of it by saying with me that he has consented to be bored for a couple of weeks with us.”
“Madame,” said Sir John, “permit me, on the contrary, not to repeat my friend Roland’s words. I could wish to spend, not a fortnight, nor three weeks, but a whole lifetime with you.”
Madame de Montrevel came down the steps of the portico and offered her hand to Sir John, who kissed it with a gallantry altogether French.
“My lord,” said she, “this house is yours. The day you entered it has been one of joy, the day you leave will be one of regret and sadness.”
Sir John turned toward Amélie, who, confused by the disorder of her dress before this stranger, was gathering the folds of her wrapper about her neck.
“I speak to you in my name and in my daughter’s, who is still too much overcome by her brother’s unexpected return to greet you herself as she will do in a moment,” continued Madame de Montrevel, coming to Amélie’s relief.
“My sister,” said Roland, “will permit my friend Sir John to kiss her hand, and he will, I am sure, accept that form of welcome.”
Amélie stammered a few words, slowly lifted her arm, and held out her hand to Sir John with a smile that was almost painful.
The Englishman took it, but, feeling how icy and trembling it was, instead of carrying it to his lips he said: “Roland, your sister is seriously indisposed. Let us think only of her health this evening. I am something of a doctor, and if she will deign to permit me the favor of feeling her pulse I shall be grateful.”
But Amélie, as if she feared that the cause of her weakness might be surmised, withdrew her hand hastily, exclaiming: “Oh, no! Sir John is mistaken. Joy never causes illness. It is only joy at seeing my brother again which caused this slight indisposition, and it has already passed over.” Then turning to Madame de Montrevel, she added with almost feverish haste: “Mother, we are forgetting that these gentlemen have made a long voyage, and have probably eaten nothing since Lyons. If Roland has his usual good appetite he will not object to my leaving you to do the honors of the house, while I attend to the unpoetical but much appreciated details of the housekeeping.”
Leaving her mother, as she said, to do the honors of the house, Amélie went to waken the maids and the manservant, leaving on the mind of Sir John that sort of fairy-like impression which the tourist on the Rhine brings with him of the Lorelei on her rock, a lyre in her hand, the liquid gold of her hair floating in the evening breezes.
In the meantime, Morgan had remounted his horse, returning at full gallop to the Chartreuse. He drew rein before the portal, pulled out a note-book, and pencilling a few lines on one of the leaves, rolled it up and slipped it through the keyhole without taking time to dismount.
Then pressing in both his spurs, and bending low over the mane of the noble animal, he disappeared in the forest, rapid and mysterious as Faust on his way to the mountain of the witches’ sabbath. The three lines he had written were as follows:
“Louis de Montrevel, General Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp, arrivedthis evening at the Château des Noires-Fontaines. Be careful,Companions of Jehu!”
But, while warning his comrades to be cautious about Louis de Montrevel, Morgan had drawn a cross above his name, which signified that no matter what happened the body of the young officer must be considered as sacred by them.
The Companions of Jehu had the right to protect a friend in that way without being obliged to explain the motives which actuated them. Morgan used that privilege to protect the brother of his love.
The Château of Noires-Fontaines, whither we have just conducted two of the principal characters of our story, stood in one of the most charming spots of the valley, where the city of Bourg is built. The park, of five or six acres, covered with venerable oaks, was inclosed on three sides by freestone walls, one of which opened in front through a handsome gate of wrought-iron, fashioned in the style of Louis XV.; the fourth side was bounded by the little river called the Reissouse, a pretty stream that takes its rise at Journaud, among the foothills of the Jura, and flowing gently from south to north, joins the Saône at the bridge of Fleurville, opposite Pont-de-Vaux, the birthplace of Joubert, who, a month before the period of which we are writing, was killed at the fatal battle of Novi.
Beyond the Reissouse, and along its banks, lay, to the right and left of the Château des Noires-Fontaines, the village of Montagnac and Saint-Just, dominated further on by that of Ceyzeriat. Behind this latter hamlet stretched the graceful outlines of the hills of the Jura, above the summits of which could be distinguished the blue crests of the mountains of Bugey, which seemed to be standing on tiptoe in order to peer curiously over their younger sisters’ shoulder at what was passing in the valley of the Ain.
It was in full view of this ravishing landscape that Sir John awoke. For the first time in his life, perhaps, the morose and taciturn Englishman smiled at nature. He fancied himself in one of those beautiful valleys of Thessaly celebrated by Virgil, beside the sweet slopes of Lignon sung by Urfé, whose birthplace, in spite of what the biographers say, was falling into ruins not three miles from the Château des Noires-Fontaines. He was roused by three light raps at his door. It was Roland who came to see how he had passed the night. He found him radiant as the sun playing among the already yellow leaves of the chestnuts and the lindens.
“Oh! oh! Sir John,” cried Roland, “permit me to congratulate you. I expected to find you as gloomy as the poor monks of the Chartreuse, with their long white robes, who used to frighten me so much in my childhood; though, to tell the truth, I was never easily frightened. Instead of that I find you in the midst of this dreary October, as smiling as a morn of May.”
“My dear Roland,” replied Sir John, “I am an orphan; I lost my mother at my birth and my father when I was twelve years old. At an age when children are usually sent to school, I was master of a fortune producing a million a year; but I was alone in the world, with no one whom I loved or who loved me. The tender joys of family life are completely unknown to me. From twelve to eighteen I went to Cambridge, but my taciturn and perhaps haughty character isolated me from my fellows. At eighteen I began to travel. You who scour the world under the shadow of your flag; that is to say, the shadow of your country, and are stirred by the thrill of battle, and the pride of glory, cannot imagine what a lamentable thing it is to roam through cities, provinces, nations, and kingdoms simply to visit a church here, a castle there; to rise at four in the morning at the summons of a pitiless guide, to see the sun rise from Rigi or Etna; to pass like a phantom, already dead, through the world of living shades called men; to know not where to rest; to know no land in which to take root, no arm on which to lean, no heart in which to pour your own! Well, last night, my dear Roland, suddenly, in an instant, in a second, this void in my life was filled. I lived in you; the joys I seek were yours. The family which I never had, I saw smiling around you. As I looked at your mother I said to myself: ‘My mother was like that, I am sure.’ Looking at your sister, I said: ‘Had I a sister I could not have wished her otherwise.’ When I embraced your brother, I thought that I, too, might have had a child of that age, and thus leave something behind me in the world, whereas with the nature I know I possess, I shall die as I have lived, sad, surly with others, a burden to myself. Ah! you are happy, Roland! you have a family, you have fame, you have youth, you have that which spoils nothing in a man—you have beauty. You want no joys. You are not deprived of a single delight. I repeat it, Roland, you are a happy man, most happy!”
“Good!” said Roland. “You forget my aneurism, my lord.”
Sir John looked at Roland incredulously. Roland seemed to enjoy the most perfect health.
“Your aneurism against my million, Roland,” said Lord Tanlay, with a feeling of profound sadness, “providing that with this aneurism you give me this mother who weeps for joy on seeing you again; this sister who faints with delight at your return; this child who clings upon your neck like some fresh young fruit to a sturdy young tree; this château with its dewy shade, its river with its verdant flowering banks, these blue vistas dotted with pretty villages and white-capped belfries graceful as swans. I would welcome your aneurism, Roland, and with death in two years, in one, in six months; but six months of stirring, tender, eventful and glorious life!”
Roland laughed in his usual nervous manner.
“Ah!” said he, “so this is the tourist, the superficial traveller, the Wandering Jew of civilization, who pauses nowhere, gauges nothing, judges everything by the sensation it produces in him. The tourist who, without opening the doors of these abodes where dwell the fools we call men, says: ‘Behind these walls is happiness!’ Well, my dear friend, you see this charming river, don’t you? These flowering meadows, these pretty villages? It is the picture of peace, innocence and fraternity; the cycle of Saturn, the golden age returned; it is Eden, Paradise! Well, all that is peopled by beings who have flown at each other’s throats. The jungles of Calcutta, the sedges of Bengal are inhabited by tigers and panthers not one whit more ferocious or cruel than the denizens of these pretty villages, these dewy lawns, and these charming shores. After lauding in funeral celebrations the good, the great, the immortal Marat, whose body, thank God! they cast into the common sewer like carrion that he was, and always had been; after performing these funeral rites, to which each man brought an urn into which he shed his tears, behold! our good Bressans, our gentle Bressans, these poultry-fatteners, suddenly decided that the Republicans were all murderers. So they murdered them by the tumbrelful to correct them of that vile defect common to savage and civilized man—the killing his kind. You doubt it? My dear fellow, on the road to Lons-le-Saulnier they will show you, if you are curious, the spot where not six months ago they organized a slaughter fit to turn the stomach of our most ferocious troopers on the battlefield. Picture to yourself a tumbrel of prisoners on their way to Lons-le-Saulnier. It was a staff-sided cart, one of those immense wagons in which they take cattle to market. There were some thirty men in this tumbrel, whose sole crime was foolish exaltation of thought and threatening language. They were bound and gagged; heads hanging, jolted by the bumping of the cart; their throats parched with thirst, despair and terror; unfortunate beings who did not even have, as in the times of Nero and Commodus, the fight in the arena, the hand-to-hand struggle with death. Powerless, motionless, the lust of massacre surprised them in their fetters, and battered them not only in life but in death; their bodies, when their hearts had ceased to beat, still resounded beneath the bludgeons which mangled their flesh and crushed their bones; while women looked on in calm delight, lifting high the children, who clapped their hands for joy. Old men who ought to have been preparing for a Christian death helped, by their goading cries, to render the death of these wretched beings more wretched still. And in the midst of these old men, a little septuagenarian, dainty, powdered, flicking his lace shirt frill if a speck of dust settled there, pinching his Spanish tobacco from a golden snuff-box, with a diamond monogram, eating his “amber sugarplums” from a Sevres bonbonnière, given him by Madame du Barry, and adorned with the donor’s portrait—this septuagenarian—conceive the picture, my dear Sir John—dancing with his pumps upon that mattress of human flesh, wearying his arm, enfeebled by age, in striking repeatedly with his gold-headed cane those of the bodies who seemed not dead enough to him, not properly mangled in that cursed mortar! Faugh! My friend, I have seen Montebello, I have seen Arcole, I have seen Rivoli, I have seen the Pyramids, and I believe I could see nothing more terrible. Well, my mother’s mere recital, last night, after you had retired, of what has happened here, made my hair stand on end. Faith! that explains my poor sister’s spasms just as my aneurism explains mine.”
Sir John watched Roland, and listened with that strange wonderment which his young friend’s misanthropical outbursts always aroused. Roland seemed to lurk in the niches of a conversation in order to fall upon mankind whenever he found an opportunity. Perceiving the impression he had made on Sir John’s mind, he changed his tone, substituting bitter raillery for his philanthropic wrath.
“It is true,” said he, “that, apart from this excellent aristocrat who finished what the butchers had begun, and dyed in blood the red heels of his pumps, the people who performed these massacres belonged to the lower classes, bourgeois and clowns, as our ancestors called those who supported them. The nobles manage things much more daintily. For the rest, you saw yourself what happened at Avignon. If you had been told that, you would never have believed it, would you? Those gentlemen pillagers of stage coaches pique themselves on their great delicacy. They have two faces, not counting their mask. Sometimes they are Cartouche and Mandrin, sometimes Amadis and Galahad. They tell fabulous tales of these heroes of the highways. My mother told me yesterday of one called Laurent. You understand, my dear fellow, that Laurent is a fictitious name meant to hide the real name, just as a mask hides the face. This Laurent combined all the qualities of a hero of romance, all the accomplishments, as you English say, who, under pretext that you were once Normans, allow yourselves occasionally to enrich your language with a picturesque expression, or some word which has long, poor beggar! asked and been refused admittance of our own scholars. This Laurent was ideally handsome. He was one of seventy-two Companions of Jehu who have lately been tried at Yssen-geaux. Seventy were acquitted; he and one other were the only ones condemned to death. The innocent men were released at once, but Laurent and his companion were put in prison to await the guillotine. But, pooh! Master Laurent had too pretty a head to fall under the executioner’s ignoble knife. The judges who condemned him, the curious who expected to witness him executed, had forgotten what Montaigne calls the corporeal recommendation of beauty. There was a woman belonging to the jailer of Yssen-geaux, his daughter, sister or niece; history—for it is history and not romance that I am telling you—history does not say which. At all events the woman, whoever she was, fell in love with the handsome prisoner, so much in love that two hours before the execution, just as Master Laurent, expecting the executioner, was sleeping, or pretending to sleep, as usually happens in such cases, his guardian angel came to him. I don’t know how they managed; for the two lovers, for the best of reasons, never told the details; but the truth is—now remember; Sir John, that this is truth and not fiction—that Laurent was free, but, to his great regret, unable to save his comrade in the adjoining dungeon. Gensonné, under like circumstances, refused to escape, preferring to die with the other Girondins; but Gensonné did not have the head of Antinous on the body of Apollo. The handsomer the head, you understand, the more one holds on to it. So Laurent accepted the freedom offered him and escaped; a horse was waiting for him at the next village. The young girl, who might have retarded or hindered his flight, was to rejoin him the next day. Dawn came, but not the guardian angel. It seems that our hero cared more for his mistress than he did for his companion; he left his comrade, but he would not go without her. It was six o’clock, the very hour for his execution. His impatience mastered him. Three times had he turned his horse’s head toward the town, and each time drew nearer and nearer. At the third time a thought flashed through his brain. Could his mistress have been taken, and would she pay the penalty for saving him? He was then in the suburbs. Spurring his horse, he entered the town with face uncovered, dashed through people who called him by name, astonished to see him free and on horseback, when they expected to see him bound and in a tumbrel on his way to be executed. Catching sight of his guardian angel pushing through the crowd, not to see him executed, but to meet him, he urged his horse past the executioner, who had just learned of the disappearance of one of his patients, knocking over two or three bumpkins with the breast of his Bayard. He bounded toward her, swung her over the pommel of his saddle, and, with a cry of joy and a wave of his hat, he disappeared like M. de Condé at the battle of Lens. The people all applauded, and the women thought the action heroic, and all promptly fell in love with the hero on the spot.”
Roland, observing that Sir John was silent, paused and questioned him by a look. “Go on,” replied the Englishman; “I am listening. And as I am sure you are telling me all this in order to come to something you wish to say, I await your point.”
“Well,” resumed Roland, laughing, “you are right, my dear friend, and, on my word, you know me as if we had been college chums. Well, what idea do you suppose has been cavorting through my brain all night? It is that of getting a glimpse of these gentlemen of Jehu near at hand.”
“Ah, yes, I understand. As you failed to get yourself killed by M. de Barjols, you want to try your chance of being killed by M. Morgan.”
“Or any other, my dear Sir John,” replied the young officer calmly; “for I assure you that I have nothing in particular against M. Morgan; quite the contrary, though my first impulse when he came into the room and made his little speech—don’t you call it a speech—?”
Sir John nodded affirmatively.
“Though my first thought,” resumed Roland, “was to spring at his throat and strangle him with one hand, and to tear off his mask with the other.”
“Now that I know you, my dear Roland, I do indeed wonder how you refrained from putting such a fine project into execution.”
“It was not my fault, I swear! I was just on the point of it when my companion stopped me.”
“So there are people who can restrain you?”
“Not many, but he can.”
“And now you regret it?”
“Honestly, no! This brave stage-robber did the business with such swaggering bravado that I admired him. I love brave men instinctively. Had I not killed M. de Barjols I should have liked to be his friend. It is true I could not tell how brave he was until I had killed him. But let us talk of something else; that duel is one of my painful thoughts. But why did I come up? It was certainly not to talk of the Companions of Jehu, nor of M. Laurent’s exploits—Ah! I came to ask how you would like to spend your time. I’ll cut myself in quarters to amuse you, my dear guest, but there are two disadvantages against me: this region, which is not very amusing, and your nationality, which is not easily amused.”
“I have already told you, Roland,” replied Lord Tanlay, offering his hand to the young man, “that I consider the Château des Noires-Fontaines a paradise.”
“Agreed; but still in the fear that you may find your paradise monotonous, I shall do my best to entertain you. Are you fond of archeology—Westminster and Canterbury? We have a marvel here, the church of Brou; a wonder of sculptured lace by Colonban. There is a legend about it which I will tell you some evening when you cannot sleep. You will see there the tombs of Marguerite de Bourbon, Philippe le Bel, and Marguerite of Austria. I will puzzle you with the problem of her motto: ‘Fortune, infortune, fort’une,’ which I claim to have solved by a Latinized version: ‘Fortuna, in fortuna, forti una.’ Are you fond of fishing, my dear friend? There’s the Reissouse at your feet, and close at hand a collection of hooks and lines belonging to Edouard, and nets belonging to Michel; as for the fish, they, you know, are the last thing one thinks about. Are you fond of hunting? The forest of Seillon is not a hundred yards off. Hunting to hounds you will have perforce to renounce, but we have good shooting. In the days of my old bogies, the Chartreuse monks, the woods swarmed with wild boars, hares and foxes. No one hunts there now, because it belongs to the government; and the government at present is nobody. In my capacity as General Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp I’ll fill the vacancy, and we’ll see who dares meddle with me, if, after chasing the Austrians on the Adige and the Mamelukes on the Nile, I hunt the boars and deer and the hares and foxes on the Reissouse. One day of archeology, one day of fishing, and one of hunting, that’s three already. You see, my dear fellow, we have only fifteen or sixteen left to worry about.”
“My dear Roland,” said Sir John sadly, and without replying to the young officer’s wordy sally, “won’t you ever tell me about this fever which sears you, this sorrow which undermines you?”
“Ah!” said Roland, with his harsh, doleful laugh. “I have never been gayer than I am this morning; it’s your liver, my lord, that is out of order and makes you see everything black.”
“Some day I hope to be really your friend,” replied Sir John seriously; “then you will confide in me, and I shall help you to bear your burden.”
“And half my aneurism!—Are you hungry, my lord?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I hear Edouard on the stairs, coming up to tell us that breakfast is ready.”
As Roland spoke, the door opened and the boy burst out: “Big brother Roland, mother and sister Amélie are waiting breakfast for Sir John and you.”
Then catching the Englishman’s right hand, he carefully examined the first joint of the thumb and forefinger.
“What are you looking at, my little friend?” asked Sir John.
“I was looking to see if you had any ink on your fingers.”
“And if I had ink on my fingers, what would it mean?”
“That you had written to England, and sent for my pistols and sword.”
“No, I have not yet written,” said Sir John; “but I will to-day.”
“You hear, big brother Roland? I’m to have my sword and my pistols in a fortnight!”
And the boy, full of delight, offered his firm rosy cheek to Sir John, who kissed it as tenderly as a father would have done. Then they went to the dining-room where Madame de Montrevel and Amélie were awaiting them.
That same day Roland put into execution part of his plans for his guest’s amusement. He took Sir John to see the church of Brou.
Those who have seen the charming little chapel of Brou know that it is known as one of the hundred marvels of the Renaissance; those who have not seen it must have often heard it said. Roland, who had counted on doing the honors of this historic gem to Sir John, and who had not seen it for the last seven or eight years, was much disappointed when, on arriving in front of the building, he found the niches of the saints empty and the carved figures of the portal decapitated.
He asked for the sexton; people laughed in his face. There was no longer a sexton. He inquired to whom he should go for the keys. They replied that the captain of the gendarmerie had them. The captain was not far off, for the cloister adjoining the church had been converted into a barrack.
Roland went up to the captain’s room and made himself known as Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp. The captain, with the placid obedience of a subaltern to his superior officer, gave him the keys and followed behind him. Sir John was waiting before the porch, admiring, in spite of the mutilation to which they had been subjected, the admirable details of the frontal.
Roland opened the door and started back in astonishment. The church was literally stuffed with hay like a cannon charged to the muzzle.
“What does this mean?” he asked the captain of the gendarmerie.
“A precaution taken by the municipality.”
“A precaution taken by the municipality?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“To save the church. They were going to demolish it; but the mayor issued a decree declaring that, in expiation of the false worship for which it had served, it should be used to store fodder.”
Roland burst out laughing, and, turning to Sir John, he said: “My dear Sir John, the church was well worth seeing, but I think what this gentleman has just told us is no less curious. You can always find—at Strasburg, Cologne, or Milan—churches or cathedrals to equal the chapel of Brou; but where will you find an administration idiotic enough to destroy such a masterpiece, and a mayor clever enough to turn it into a barn? A thousand thanks, captain. Here are your keys.”
“As I was saying at Avignon, the first time I had the pleasure of seeing you, my dear Roland,” replied Sir John, “the French are a most amusing people.”
“This time, my lord, you are too polite,” replied Roland. “Idiotic is the word. Listen. I can understand the political cataclysms which have convulsed society for the last thousand years; I can understand the communes, the pastorals, the Jacquerie, the maillotins, the Saint Bartholomew, the League, the Fronde, the dragonnades, the Revolution; I can understand the 14th of July, the 5th and 6th of October, the 20th of June, the 10th of August, the 2d and 3d of September, the 21st of January, the 31st of May, the 30th of October, and the 9th Thermidor; I can understand the egregious torch of civil wars, which inflames instead of soothing the blood; I can understand the tidal wave of revolution, sweeping on with its flux, that nothing can arrest, and its reflux, which carries with it the ruins of the institution which it has itself shattered. I can understand all that, but lance against lance, sword against sword, men against men, a people against a people! I can understand the deadly rage of the victors, the sanguinary reaction of the vanquished, the political volcanoes which rumble in the bowels of the globe, shake the earth, topple over thrones, upset monarchies, and roll heads and crowns on the scaffold. But what I cannot understand is this mutilation of the granite, this placing of monuments beyond the pale of the law, the destruction of inanimate things, which belong neither to those who destroy them nor to the epoch in which they are destroyed; this pillage of the gigantic library where the antiquarian can read the archeological history of a country. Oh! the vandals, the barbarians! Worse than that, the idiots! who revenge the Borgia crimes and the debauches of Louis XV. on stone. How well those Pharaohs, Menæs, and Cheops knew man as the most perversive, destructive and evil of animals! They who built their pyramids, not with carved traceries, nor lacy spires, but with solid blocks of granite fifty feet square! How they must have laughed in the depths of those sepulchres as they watched Time dull its scythe and pashas wear out their nails in vain against them. Let us build pyramids, my dear Sir John. They are not difficult as architecture, nor beautiful as art, but they are solid; and that enables a general to say four thousand years later: ‘Soldiers, from the apex of these monuments forty centuries are watching you!’ On my honor, my lord, I long to meet a windmill this moment that I might tilt against it.”
And Roland, bursting into his accustomed laugh, dragged Sir John in the direction of the château. But Sir John stopped him and asked: “Is there nothing else to see in the city except the church?”
“Formerly, my lord,” replied Roland, “before they made a hay-loft of it, I should have asked you to come down with me into the vaults of the Dukes of Savoy. We could have hunted for that subterranean passage, nearly three miles long, which is said to exist there, and which, according to these rumors, communicates with the grotto of Ceyzeriat. Please observe, I should never offer such a pleasure trip except to an Englishman; it would have been like a scene from your celebrated Anne Radcliffe in the ‘Mysteries of Udolpho.’ But, as you see, that is impossible, so we will have to be satisfied with our regrets. Come.”
“Where are we going?”
“Faith, I don’t know. Ten years ago I should have taken you to the farms where they fatten pullets. The pullets of Bresse, you must know, have a European reputation. Bourg was an annex to the great coop of Strasburg. But during the Terror, as you can readily imagine, these fatteners of poultry shut up shop. You earned the reputation of being an aristocrat if you ate a pullet, and you know the fraternal refrain: ‘Ah, ça ira, ça ira—the aristocrats to the lantern!’ After Robespierre’s downfall they opened up again; but since the 18th of Fructidor, France has been commanded to fast, from fowls and all. Never mind; come on, anyway. In default of pullets, I can show you one thing, the square where they executed those who ate them. But since I was last in the town the streets have changed their names. I know the way, but I don’t know the names.”
“Look here!” demanded Sir John; “aren’t you a Republican?”
“I not a Republican? Come, come! Quite to the contrary. I consider myself an excellent Republican. I am quite capable of burning off my hand, like Mucius Scævola, or jumping into the gulf like Curtius to save the Republic; but I have, unluckily, a keen sense of the ridiculous. In spite of myself, the absurdity of things catches me in the side and tickles me till I nearly die of laughing. I am willing to accept the Constitution of 1791; but when poor Hérault de Séchelles wrote to the superintendent of the National Library to send him a copy of the laws of Minos, so that he could model his constitution on that of the Isle of Crete, I thought it was going rather far, and that we might very well have been content with those of Lycurgus. I find January, February, and March, mythological as they were, quite as good as Nivose, Pluviose, and Ventose. I can’t understand why, when one was called Antoine or Chrystomome in 1789, he should be called Brutus or Cassius in 1793. Here, for example, my lord, is an honest street, which was called the Rue des Halles (Market Street). There was nothing indecent or aristocratic about that, was there? Well, now it is called—Just wait (Roland read the inscription). Well, now it is called the Rue de la Révolution. Here’s another, which used to be called Notre Dame; it is now the Rue du Temple. Why Rue du Temple? Probably to perpetuate the memory of that place where the infamous Simon tried to teach cobbling to the heir of sixty-three kings. Don’t quarrel with me if I am mistaken by one or two! Now here’s a third; it was named Crèvecoeur, a name famous throughout Bresse, Burgundy and Flanders. It is now the Rue de la Federation. Federation is a fine thing, but Crèvecoeur was a fine name. And then you see to-day it leads straight to the Place de la Guillotine, which is, in my opinion, all wrong. I don’t want any streets that lead to such places. This one has its advantages; it is only about a hundred feet from the prison, which economized and still economizes the tumbrel and the horse of M. de Bourg. By the way, have you noticed that the executioner remains noble and keeps his title? For the rest, the square is excellently arranged for spectators, and my ancestor, Montrevel, whose name it bears, doubtless, foreseeing its ultimate destiny, solved the great problem, still unsolved by the theatres, of being able to see well from every nook and corner. If ever they cut off my head, which, considering the times in which we are living, would in no wise be surprising, I shall have but one regret: that of being less well-placed and seeing less than the others. Now let us go up these steps. Here we are in the Place des Lices. Our Revolutionists left it its name, because in all probability they don’t know what it means. I don’t know much better than they, but I think I remember that a certain Sieur d’Estavayer challenged some Flemish count—I don’t know who—and that the combat took place in this square. Now, my dear fellow, here is the prison, which ought to give you some idea of human vicissitudes. Gil Blas didn’t change his condition more often than this monument its purposes. Before Cæsar it was a Gaelic temple; Cæsar converted it into a Roman fortress; an unknown architect transformed it into a military work during the Middle Ages; the Knights of Baye, following Cæsar’s example, re-made it into a fortress; the princes of Savoy used it for a residence; the aunt of Charles V. lived here when she came to visit her church at Brou, which she never had the satisfaction of seeing finished. Finally, after the treaty of Lyons, when Bresse was returned to France, it was utilized both as a prison and a court-house. Wait for me a moment, my lord, if you dislike the squeaking of hinges and the grating of bolts. I have a visit to pay to a certain cell.”
“The grating of bolts and the squeaking of hinges is not a very enlivening sound, but no matter. Since you were kind enough to undertake my education, show me your dungeon.”
“Very well, then. Come in quickly. I see a crowd of persons who look as if they want to speak to me.”
In fact, little by little, a sort of rumor seemed to spread throughout the town. People emerged from the houses, forming groups in the streets, and they all watched Roland with curiosity. He rang the bell of the gate, situated then where it is now, but opening into the prison yard. A jailer opened it for them.
“Ah, ah! so you are still here, Father Courtois?” asked the young man. Then, turning to Sir John, he added: “A fine name for a jailer, isn’t it, my lord?”
The jailer looked at the young man in amazement.
“How is it,” he asked through the grating, “that you know my name, when I don’t know yours?”
“Good! I not only know your name, but also your opinions. You are an old royalist, Père Courtois.”
“Monsieur,” said the jailer, terrified, “don’t make bad jokes if you please, and say what you want.”
“Well, my good Father Courtois, I would like to visit the cell where they put my mother and sister, Madame and Mademoiselle Montrevel.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the gatekeeper, “so it’s you, M. Louis? You may well say that I know you. What a fine, handsome young man you’ve grown to be!”
“Do you think so, Father Courtois? Well, I can return the compliment. Your daughter Charlotte is, on my word, a beautiful girl. Charlotte is my sister’s maid, Sir John.”
“And she is very happy over it. She is better off there than here, M. Roland. Is it true that you are General Bonaparte’s aide-de-camp?”
“Alas! I have that honor, Courtois. You would prefer me to be Comte d’Artois’s aide-de-camp, or that of M. le Duc of Angoulême?”
“Oh, do be quiet, M. Louis!” Then putting his lips to the young man’s ear, “Tell me, is it true?”
“What, Father Courtois?”
“That General Bonaparte passed through Lyons yesterday?”
“There must be some truth in the rumor, for this is the second time that I have heard it. Ah! I understand now. These good people who were watching me so curiously apparently wanted to question me. They were like you, Father Courtois: they want to know what to make of General Bonaparte’s arrival.”
“Do you know what they say, M. Louis?”
“Still another rumor, Father Courtois?”
“I should think so, but they only whisper it.”
“What is it?”
“They say that he has come to demand the throne of his Majesty Louis XVIII. from the Directory and the king’s return to it; and that if Citizen Gohier as president doesn’t give it up of his own accord he will take it by force.”
“Pooh!” exclaimed the young officer with an incredulous air bordering on irony. But Father Courtois insisted on his news with an affirmative nod.
“Possibly,” said the young man; “but as for that, it’s news for me. And now that you know me, will you open the gate?”
“Of course I will. I should think so. What the devil am I about?” and the jailer opened the gate with an eagerness equalling his former reluctance. The young man entered, and Sir John followed him. The jailer locked the gate carefully, then he turned, followed by Roland and the Englishman in turn. The latter was beginning to get accustomed to his young friend’s erratic character. The spleen he saw in Roland was misanthropy, without the sulkiness of Timon or the wit of Alceste.
The jailer crossed the yard, which was separated from the law courts by a wall fifteen feet high, with an opening let into the middle of the receding wall, closed by a massive oaken door, to admit prisoners without taking them round by the street. The jailer, we say, crossed the yard to a winding stairway in the left angle of the courtyard which led to the interior of the prison.
If we insist upon these details, it is because we shall be obliged to return to this spot later, and we do not wish it to be wholly unfamiliar to our readers when that time comes.
These steps led first to the ante-chamber of the prison, that is to say to the porter’s hall of the lower court-room. From that hall ten steps led down into an inner court, separated from a third, which was that of the prisoners, by a wall similar to the one we have described, only this one had three doors. At the further end of the courtyard a passage led to the jailer’s own room, which gave into a second passage, on which were the cells which were picturesquely styled cages. The jailer paused before the first of these cages and said, striking the door:
“This is where I put madame, your mother, and your sister, so that if the dear ladies wanted either Charlotte or myself, they need but knock.”
“Is there any one in the cell?”
“No one”
“Then please open the door. My friend, Lord Tanlay, is a philanthropic Englishman who is travelling about to see if the French prisons are more comfortable than the English ones. Enter, Sir John.”
Père Courtois having opened the door, Roland pushed Sir John into a perfectly square cell measuring ten or twelve feet each way.
“Oh, oh!” exclaimed Sir John, “this is lugubrious.”
“Do you think so? Well, my dear friend, this is where my mother, the noblest woman in the world, and my sister, whom you know, spent six weeks with a prospect of leaving it only to make the trip to the Place de Bastion. Just think, that was five years ago, so my sister was scarcely twelve.”
“But what crime had they committed?”
“Oh! a monstrous crime. At the anniversary festival with which the town of Bourg considered proper to commemorate the death of the ‘Friend of the People,’ my mother refused to permit my sister to represent one of the virgins who bore the tears of France in vases. What will you! Poor woman, she thought she had done enough for her country in giving it the blood of her son and her husband, which was flowing in Italy and Germany. She was mistaken. Her country, as it seems, claimed further the tears of her daughter. She thought that too much, especially as those tears were to flow for the citizen Marat. The result was that on the very evening of the celebration, during the enthusiastic exaltation, my mother was declared accused. Fortunately Bourg had not attained the celerity of Paris. A friend of ours, an official in the record-office, kept the affair dragging, until one fine day the fall and death of Robespierre were made known. That interrupted a good many things, among others the guillotinades. Our friend convinced the authorities that the wind blowing from Paris had veered toward clemency; they waited fifteen days, and on the sixteenth they told my mother and sister that they were free. So you understand, my friend—and this involves the most profound philosophical reflection—so that if Mademoiselle Teresa Cabarrus had not come from Spain, if she had not married M. Fontenay, parliamentary counsellor; had she not been arrested and brought before the pro-consul Tallien, son of the Marquis de Bercy’s butler, ex-notary’s clerk, ex-foreman of a printing-shop, ex-porter, ex-secretary to the Commune of Paris temporarily at Bordeaux; and had the ex-pro-consul not become enamored of her, and had she not been imprisoned, and if on the ninth of Thermidor she had not found means to send a dagger with these words: ‘Unless the tyrant dies to-day, I die to-morrow’; had not Saint-Just been arrested in the midst of his discourse; had not Robespierre, on that day, had a frog in his throat; had not Garnier de l’Aube exclaimed: ‘It is the blood of Danton choking you!’ had not Louchet shouted for his arrest; had he not been arrested, released by the Commune, recaptured in spite of this, had his jaw broken by a pistol shot, and been executed next day—my mother would, in all probability, have had her head cut off for refusing to allow her daughter to weep for citizen Marat in one of the twelve lachrymal urns which Bourg was desirous of filling with its tears. Good-by, Courtois. You are a worthy man. You gave my mother and sister a little water to put with their wine, a little meat to eat with their bread, a little hope to fill their hearts; you lent them your daughter that they might not have to sweep their cell themselves. That deserves a fortune. Unfortunately I am not rich; but here are fifty louis I happen to have with me. Come, my lord.”
And the young man carried off Sir John before the jailer, recovered from his surprise and found time either to thank Roland or refuse the fifty louis; which, it must be said, would have been a remarkable proof of disinterestedness in a jailer, especially when that jailer’s opinions were opposed to those of the government he served.
Leaving the prison, Roland and Sir John found the Place des Lices crowded with people who had heard of General Bonaparte’s return to France, and were shouting “Vive Bonaparte!” at the top of their lungs—some because they really admired the victor of Arcola, Rivoli, and the Pyramids, others because they had been told, like Père Courtois, that this same victor had vanquished only that Louis XVIII. might profit by his victories.
Roland and Sir John, having now visited all that the town of Bourg offered of interest, returned to the Château des Noires-Fontaines, which they reached before long. Madame de Montrevel and Amélie had gone out. Roland installed Sir John in an easy chair, asking him to wait a few minutes for him. At the end of five minutes he returned with a sort of pamphlet of gray paper, very badly printed, in his hand.
“My dear fellow,” said he, “you seemed to have some doubts about the authenticity of that festival which I just mentioned, and which nearly cost my mother and sister their lives, so I bring you the programme. Read it, and while you are doing so I will go and see what they have been doing with my dogs; for I presume that you would rather hold me quit of our fishing expedition in favor of a hunt.”
He went out, leaving in Sir John’s hands a copy of the decree of the municipality of the town of Bourg, instituting the funeral rites in honor of Marat, on the anniversary of his death.