Louis had, moreover, heard years before, nay, looked upon the nascent loveliness of Melanie d’Argenson, and, with that cold-blooded voluptuary, to look on beauty was to lust after it, to lust after it was to devote all the powers his despotism could command to win it.
Hence as the abbé de Chastellar soon made his unfortunate nephew and pupil comprehend, a settled determination had arisen on the part of the odious despot to break off the marriage of the lovely girl with the young soldier whom it was well known that she fondly loved, and to have her the wife of one who would be less tender of his honor, and less reluctant to surrender, or less difficult to be deprived of a bride, too transcendently beautiful to bless the arms of a subject, even if he were the noblest of the noble.
All this was easily arranged, the base father of Melanie was willing enough to sell his exquisite and virtuous child to the splendid infamy of becoming a king’s paramour, and the yet baser chevalier de la Rochederrien was eager to make the shameful negotiation easy, and to sanction it to the eyes of the willingly hoodwinked world, by giving his name and rank to a woman, who was to be his wife but in name, and whose charms and virtue he had precontracted to make over to another.
The infamous contract had been agreed upon by the principal actors; nay, the wages of the iniquity had been paid in advance. The sieur d’Argenson had grown into the comte of the same, with the governorship of the town of Morlaix added, by the revenues of which to support his new dignities; while the chevalier de la Rochederrien had become no less a personage than the marquis de Ploermel, with a captaincy in the musquetaires, and Heaven knows what beside of honorary title and highly-gilded sinecure, whereby to reconcile him to such depth of sordid infamy as the meanest galley-slave could have scarce undertaken as the price of exchange between his fettersand his oars, and the great noble’s splendor.
Such were the tidings which greeted Raoul on his return from honorable service to his king—service for which he was thus repaid; and, before he had even time to reflect on the consequences, or to comprehend the anguish thus entailed upon him, his eyes were opened instantly to comprehension of two or three occurrences which previously he had been unable to explain to himself, or even to guess at their meaning by any exercise of ingenuity. The first of these was the singular ignorance in which he had been kept of the death of his parents by the government officials in the East, and the very evident suppression of the letters which, as his uncle informed him, had been despatched to summon him with all speed homeward.
The second was the pertinacity with which he had been thrust forward, time after time, on the most desperate and deadly duty—a pertinacity so striking, that, eager as the young soldier was, and greedy of any chance of winning honor, it had not failed to strike him thathewas frequentlyorderedon duty of a nature which, under ordinary circumstances, is performed by volunteers.
Occurrences of this kind are soon remarked in armies, and it had early become a current remark in the camp that to serve in Raoul’s company was a sure passport either to promotion or to the other world. But to such an extent was this carried, that when time after time that company had been decimated, even the bravest of the brave experienced an involuntary sinking of the heart when informed that they were transferred or even promoted into those fatal ranks.
Nor was this all, for twice it had occurred, once when he was a captain in command of a company, and again when he had a whole regiment under his orders as its colonel, that his superiors, after detaching him on duty so desperate that it might almost be regarded as a forlorn hope, had entirely neglectedeither to support or recall him, but had left him exposed to almost inevitable destruction.
In the first instance, not a man whether officer or private of his company had escaped, with the exception of himself. And he was found, when all was supposed to be over, in the last ditch of the redoubt which he had been ordered to defend to the uttermost, after it had been retaken, with his colors wrapped around his breast, still breathing a little, although so cruelly wounded that his life was long despaired of, and was only saved at last by the vigor and purity of an unblemished and unbroken constitution. On the second occasion, he had been suffered to contend alone for three entire days with but a single battalion against a whole oriental army; but then, that which had been intended to destroy him had won him deathless fame, for by a degree of skill in handling his little force, which had by no means been looked for in so young an officer, although his courage and his conduct were both well known, he had succeeded in giving a bloody repulse to the overwhelming masses of the enemy, and when at length he was supported—doubtless when support was deemed too late to avail him aught—by a few hundred native horse and a few guns, he had converted that check into a total and disastrous route.
So palpable was the case that although Raoul suspected nothing of the reasons which had led to that disgraceful affair, he had demanded an inquiry into the conduct of his superior; and that unfortunate personage being clearly convicted of unmilitary conduct, and having failed in the end which would have justified the means in the eyes of the voluptuous tyrant, was ruthlessly abandoned to his fate, and actually died on the scaffold with a gag in his mouth, as did the gallant Lally a few years afterward to prevent his revelation of the orders which he had received and for obeying which he perished.
All this, though strange and even extraordinary, had failed up to this moment to awaken any suspicion of undue or treasonable agency in the mind of Raoul.
But now as his uncle spoke the scales fell from his eyes, and he saw all the baseness, all the villany of the monarch and his satellites, in its true light.
“Is it so? Is it, indeed, so?” he said mournfully. And it really appeared that grief at detecting such a dereliction on the part of his king, had a greater share in the feelings of the noble youth than indignation or resentment. “Is it indeed so?” he said; “and could neither my father’s long and glorious services, nor my poor conduct, avail aught to turn him from such infamy? But tell me,” he continued, the blood now mounting fiery red to his pale face, “tell me this, uncle, is she true to me? is she pure and good? Forgive, me, Heaven, that I doubt her; but in such a mass of infamy where may a man look for faith or virtue? Is Melanie true to me, or is she, too, consenting to this scheme of infamous and loathsome guilt?”
“She was true, my son, when I last saw her,” replied the good clergyman; “and you may well believe that I spared no argument to urge her to hold fast to her loyalty and faith, and she vowed then, by all that was most dear and holy, that nothing should induce her ever to become the wife of Rochederrien. But they carried her off into the province, and have immured her, I have heard men say, almost in a dungeon, in her father’s castle, for now above a twelvemonth. What has fallen out no one as yet knows certainly; but it is whispered now that she has yielded, and the court scandal goes that she has either wedded him already, or is to do so now within a few days. It is said that they are looked for ere the month is out in Paris.”
“Then I will to horse, uncle,” replied Raoul, “before this night is two hours older for St. Renan.”
“Great Heaven! to what end, Raoul? For the sake of all that is good—by your father’s memory—I implore you,do nothing rashly!”
“To know of my own knowledge if she be true or false, uncle.”
“And what matters it, Raoul? My boy, my unhappy boy! False or true, she is lost to you alike, for ever! You have that against which to contend, which no human energy can conquer.”
“I know not the thing which human energy can not conquer, uncle! It is years now ago that my good father taught me this—that there is no such word ascannot! I have proved it before now, uncle-abbé: I may, should I find it worth the while, prove it again, and that shortly. If so, let the guilty and the traitors look to themselves—they were best, for they shall need it!”
Such was the state of St. Renan’s affections and his hopes when he left the gay capital of France, within a few hours after his arrival, and hurried down at the utmost speed of man and horse into Bretagne, whither he made his way so rapidly, that the first intimation his people received of his return from the East was his presence at the gates of the castle.
Great, as may be imagined, was the real joy of the old, true-hearted servitors of the house, at finding their lord thus unexpectedly restored to them, at a time when they had in fact almost abandoned every hope of seeing him again. The same infernal policy which had thrust him so often, as it were, into the very jaws of death—which had intercepted all the letters sent to him from home, and taken, in one word, every step that ingenuity could suggest to isolate him altogether in that distant world—had taken measures as deep and iniquitous at home to cause him to be regarded as one dead, and to obliterate all memory of his existence.
Three different times reports so circumstantial, and accompanied by such minute details of time and place, as to render italmost impossible for men to doubt their authenticity, had been circulated with regard to the death of the young soldier; and as no tidings had been received of him from any more direct source, the last news of his fall had been generally received as true, no motive appearing why it should be discredited.
His appearance, therefore, at the castle of St. Renan, was hailed as that of one who had been lost and was now found—of one who had been dead, and lo! he was alive. The banc-loche of the old feudal pile rang forth its blithest and most jovial notes of greeting; the banner, with the old armorial bearings of St. Renan, was displayed upon the keep; and a few light pieces of antique artillery—falcons, and culverins, and demi-cannon, which had kept their places on the battlements since the days of the leagues—sent forth their thunders far and wide over the astonished country.
So generally, however, had the belief of Raoul’s death been circulated, and so absolute had been the credence given to the rumor, that when those unwonted sounds of rejoicing were heard to proceed from the long-silent walls of St. Renan, men never suspected that the lost heir had returned to enjoy his own again, but fancied that some new master had established his claim to the succession, and was thus celebrating his investiture with the rights of the counts of St. Renan.
Nor was this wonderful, for ocular proof was scarcely enough to satisfy the oldest retainers of the family of the young lord’s identity; and indeed ocular proof was rendered in some sort dubious by the great alteration which had taken place in the appearance of the personage in question.
Between the handsome stripling of sixteen and the grown man of twenty summers there is a greater difference than the same lapse of time will produce at any other period of human life. And this change had been rendered even greater than usual by the burning climate to which Raoul had been exposed,by the stout endurance of fatigues which had prematurely enlarged and hardened his youthful frame, and above all by the dark experience which had spread something of the thoughtful cast of age over the smooth and gracious lineaments of boyhood.
When he left home, the viscount de Douarnenez was a slight, slender, graceful stripling, with a fair, delicate complexion, a profusion of light hair waving in soft curls over his shoulders, a light, elastic step, and a frame which, though it showed the promise already of strength to be attained with maturity, was conspicuous as yet for ease, and agility, and pliability, rather than for power or robustness.
On his return, he had lost, it is true, no jot of his gracefulness or ease of demeanor, but he had shot up and expanded into a tall, broad-shouldered, round-chested, thin-flanked man, with a complexion burned to the darkest hue of which a European skin is susceptible, and which perhaps required the aid of the full, soft blue eye to prove it to be European—with a glance as quick, as penetrating, and at the same time as calm and steady, as that of the eagle when he gazes undazzled at the noontide splendor.
His hair had been cut short to wear beneath the casque, which was still carried by cavaliers, and had grown so much darker, that this alteration alone would have gone far to defy the recognition of his friends. He wore a thick, dark mustache on his upper lip, and a large “royal,” which we should now-a-days call an “imperial,” on his chin.
The whole aspect and expression of face, moreover, was altered, even in a greater degree than his complexion or his person. All the quick, sparkling play and mobility of feature, the sharp flash of rapidly-succeeding sentiments and strong emotions, expressed on the ingenuous face as soon as they were conceived within the brain—all these had disappeared completely—disappeared,never to return.
The grave composure of the thoughtful, self-possessed, experienced soldier, sufficient in himself to meet every emergency, every alternation of fortune, had succeeded the imaginative, impulsive ardor of the impetuous, gallant boy.
There was a shadow, too, a heavy shadow of something more than thought; for it was, in truth, deep, real, heartfelt melancholy, which lent an added gloom to the cold fixity of eye and lip—which had obliterated all the gay and gleeful flashes which used, from moment to moment, to light up the countenance so speaking and so frank in its disclosures.
Yet it would have been difficult to say whether Raoul de St. Renan—grave, dark, and sorrowful, as he now showed—was not both a handsomer and more attractive person than he had been in his earlier days, as the gay and thoughtless viscount de Douarnenez.
There was a depth of feeling as well as of thought now perceptible in the pensive brow and calm eye; and if the ordinary expression of those fine and placid lineaments was fixed and cold, that coldness and rigidity vanished when his face was lighted up by a smile, as quickly as the thin ice of an April morning melts away before the first glitter of the joyous sunbeams. Nor were these smiles rare or forced, though not now as habitual as in those days of youth unalloyed by calamity, and unsunned by passion, which, once departed, never can return in this world!
The morning of the young lord’s arrival passed gloomily enough. It was the very height of summer, it is true, and the sun was shining his brightest over field, and tree, and tower, and everything appeared to partake of the delicious influence of the charming weather, and to put on its blithest and most radiant apparel.
Never perhaps had the fine grounds with their soft, mossy, sloping lawns, tranquil, brimful waters, and shadowy groves of oak and elm—great, immemorial trees—looked lovelier than they did that day to greet their long-absent master.
But, inasmuch as nothing in this world is more delightful, nothing more unmixed in its means of conveying pleasure, than the return, after long wanderings in foreign climes, among vicissitudes, and cares, and sorrows, to an unchanged and happy home, where the same faces are assembled to smile on your late return which wept at your departure—so nothing can be imagined sadder or more depressing to the spirit than, so returning, to find all things inanimate unchanged, or if changed, more beautiful and brighter for the alteration, but all the living, breathing, sentient creatures—the creatures whose memory has cheered our darkest days of sorrow, whose love we desire most to find unaltered—gone, never to return, swallowed by the cold grave, deaf, silent, unresponsive to our fond affection!
Such was St. Renan’s return to the house of his fathers. Until a few short days before, he had pictured to himself his father’s moderate and manly pleasure, his mother’s holy kiss and chastened rapture at beholding once again, at clasping to her happy bosom, the son, whom she sent forth a boy, returned a man worthy the pride of the most ambitious parent.
All this Raoul de St. Renan had anticipated, and bitter, bitter was the pang when he perceived all this gay and glad anticipation thrown to the winds irreparably.
There was not a room in the old house, not a view from a single window, not a tree in the noble park, not a winding curve of a trout-stream glimmering through the coppices, but was in some way connected with his tenderest and most sacred recollections—but had a memory of pleasant hours attached to it—but recalled the sound of the kindliest and dearest words, couched in the sweetest tones—the sight of persons but to think of whom made his heart thrill and quiver to its inmostcore.
And for hours he had wandered through the long, echoing corridors, the stately and superb saloons, feeling their solitude as if it had been actual presence weighing upon his soul, and peopling every apartment with the phantoms of the loved and lost.
Thus had the day lagged onward; and, as the sun stooped toward the west, darker and sadder had become the young man’s fancies, and he felt as if his last hope were about to fade out with the fading light of the declining day-god. So gloomy, indeed, were his thoughts—so sadly had he become inured to wo within the last few days—so certainly had the reply to every question he had asked been the very bitterest and most painful he could have met—that he had, in truth, lacked the courage to assure himself of that on which he could not deny to himself that his last hope of happiness depended. He had not ventured yet to ask even of his own most faithful servants whether Melanie d’Argenson—who was, he well knew, living scarcely three bow-shots distant from the spot where he stood—was true to him—was a maiden or a wedded wife!
And the old servitors, well aware of the earnest love which had existed between the young people, and of the contract which had been entered into with the consent of all parties, knew not how their young master now stood affected toward the lady, and consequently feared to speak on the subject.
At length, when he had dined some hours, while he was sitting with the old bailiff, who had been endeavoring to seduce him into an examination of I know not what of rents and leases, dues and droits, seignorial and manorial—while the bottles of ruby-colored Bordeaux wine stood almost untouched before them—the young man made an effort, and raising his head suddenly after a long and thoughtful silence, asked his companion whether the comte d’Argenson was at that time resident atthe château.
“Oh, yes, monseigneur,” the old man returned immediately, “he has been here all the summer, and the château has been full of gay company from Paris. Never such times have been known in my days: hawking-parties one day, and hunting-matches the next, and music and balls every night, and cavalcades of bright ladies, and cavaliers all ostrich-plumes and cloth of gold and tissue, that you would think our old woods here were converted into fairy-land. The young lady Melanie was wedded only three days since to the marquis de Ploermel; but you will not know him by that name, I trow: he was the chevalier only—the chevalier de la Rochederrien—when you were here before.”
“Ah, theyarewedded, then,” replied the youth, mastering his passions by a terrible exertion, and speaking of what rent his very heartstrings asunder, as if it had been a matter which concerned him not so much even as a thought; “I heard it was about to be so shortly, but knew not that it had yet taken place.”
“Yes, monseigneur, three days since; and it is very strangely thought of in the country, and very strange things are said on all sides concerning it.”
“As what, Matthieu?”
“Why, the marquis is old enough to be her father, or some say her grandfather, for that matter; and little Rosalie, her fille-de-chambre, has been telling all the neighborhood that Mademoiselle Melanie hated him with all her heart and soul, and would far rather die than go to the altar as his bride.”
“Pshaw! is that all, good Matthieu?” answered the youth, very bitterly—“is that all? Why, there is nothing strange in that; that is an every-day event. A pretty lady changes her mind, breaks her faith, and weds a man she hates and despises! Well! that is perfectly in rule; that is preciselywhat is done every day at court! If you could tell just the converse of this tale—that a beautiful woman had kept her inclinations unchanged, her faith unbroken, her honor pure and bright—that she had rejected a rich man or a powerful man because he was base or bad, and wedded a poor and honorable one because she loved him—then, indeed, my good Matthieu, you would be telling something that would make men open their eyes wide enough, and marvel what should follow. Is this all that you call strange?”
“You are jesting at me, monseigneur, for that I am country bred,” replied the steward, staring at his youthful master with big eyes of astonishment; “you can not mean that which you say!”
“I do mean precisely what I say, my good friend; and I never felt less like jesting in the whole course of my life. I know that you good folk down here in the quiet country judge of these things as you have spoken; but that is entirely on account of your ignorance of court life, and what is now termed nobility. What I tell you is strictly true: that falsehood, and intrigue, and lying—that daily sales of honor—that adultery and infamy of all kinds—are every-day occurrences in Paris; and that the wonders of the time are truth and sincerity, and keeping faith and honor! This, I doubt not, seems strange to you, but it in true for all that.”
“At least, it is not our custom down here in Bretagne,” returned the old man, “and that, I suppose, is the reason why it appears to be so extraordinary to us here. But you will not say, I think, monsieur le comte, that what else I shall tell you is nothing strange or new.”
“What else will you tell me, Matthieu? Let us hear it, and then I shall be better able to decide.”
“Why, they say, monseigneur, that she is no more the marquis de Ploermel’s wife than she is yours or mine, except inname alone; and that he does not dare to kiss her hand, much less her lips; and that they have separate apartments, and are, as it were, strangers altogether; and that the reason of all this is, that Ma’mselle Melanie is never to be his wife at all, but that she is to go to Paris in a few days, and to become the king’s mistress! Will you tell me that this is not strange—and more than strange, infamous—and dishonoring to the very name of man and woman?”
“Even in this, were it true, there would be nothing, I am grieved to say, very wondrous now-a-days—for there have been several base and terrible examples of such things, I am told, of late; for the rest, I must sympathize with you in your disgust and horror of such doings, even if I prove myself thereby a mere country hobereau, and no man of the world, or of fashion. But you must not believe all these things to be true which you hear from the country gossips,” he added, desirous still of shielding Melanie, so long as her guilt should be in the slightest possible degree doubtful, from the reproach which seemed already to attach to her. “I hardly can believe such things possible of so fair and modest a demoiselle as the young lady of D’Argenson: nor is it easy to me to believe that the count would consent to any arrangement so disgraceful, or that the chevalier de la Rocheder—I beg his pardon, the marquis de Ploermel, would marry a lady for such an infamous object. I think, therefore, good Matthieu, that, although there would not even in this be anything very wonderful, it is yet neither probable nor true.”
“Oh, yes, it is true! I am well assured that it is true, monseigneur,” replied the old man, shaking his head obstinately; “I do not believe that there is much truth or honor in this lady either, or she would not so easily have broken one contract, or forgotten one lover!”
“Hush, hush, Matthieu!” cried Raoul, “you forget that we were mere children at that time; such early troth plightings are foolish ceremonials at the best; besides, do you not see that you are condemning me also as well as the lady?”
“Oh, that is different—that is quite different!” replied the old steward, “gentlemen may be permitted to take some little liberties which with ladies are not allowable. But that a young demoiselle should break her contract in such wise is disgraceful.”
“Well, well, we will not argue it to-night, Matthieu,” said the young soldier, rising and looking out of the great oriel window over the sunshiny park; “I believe I will go and walk out for an hour or two and refresh my recollections of old times. It is a lovely afternoon as I ever beheld in France or elsewhere.”
And with the word he took up his rapier which lay on a slab near the table at which he had been sitting, and hung it to his belt, and then throwing on his plumed hat carelessly, without putting on his cloak, strolled leisurely out into the glorious summer evening.
For a little while he loitered on the esplanade, gazing out toward the sea, the ridgy waves of which were sparkling like emeralds tipped with diamonds in the grand glow of the setting sun. But ere long he turned thence with a sigh, called up perhaps by some fancied similitude between that bright and boundless ocean, desolate and unadorned even by a single passing sail, and his own course of life so desert, friendless, and uncompanioned.
Thence he strolled listlessly through the fine garden, inhaling the rare odors of the roses, hundreds of which bloomed on every side of him, there in low bushes, there in trim standards, and not a few climbing over tall trellices and bowery alcoves in one mass of living bloom. He saw the happy swallows darting and wheeling to and fro through the pellucid azure, inpursuit of their insect prey. He heard the rich mellow notes of the blackbirds and thrushes, thousands and thousands of which were warbling incessantly in the cool shadow of the yew and holly hedges. But his diseased and unhappy spirit took no delight in the animated sounds, or summer-teeming sights of rejoicing nature. No, the very joy and merriment, which seemed to pervade all nature, animate or inanimate around him, while he himself had no present joys to elevate, no future promises to cheer him, rendered him, if that were possible, darker and gloomier, and more mournful.
The spirits of the departed seemed to hover about him, forbidding him ever again to admit hope or joy as an inmate to his desolate heart; and, wrapt in these dark phantasies, with his brow bent, and his eyes downcast, he wandered from terrace to terrace through the garden, until he reached its farthest boundary, and then passed out into the park, through which he strolled, almost unconscious whither, until he came to the great deer-fence of the utmost glen, through a wicket of which, just as the sun was setting, he entered into the shadowy woodland.
Then a whole flood of wild and whirling thoughts rushed over his brain at once. He had strolled without a thought into the very scene of his happy rambles with the beloved, the faithless, the lost Melanie. Carried away by a rush of inexplicable feelings, he walked swiftly onward through the dim wildwood path toward the Devil’s Drinking-Cup. He came in sight of it—a woman sat by its brink, who started to her feet at the sound of his approaching footsteps.
It was Melanie—alone—and if his eyes deceived him not, weeping bitterly.
She gazed at him, at the first, with an earnest, half-alarmed, half-inquiring glance, as if she did not recognise his face, and, perhaps, apprehended rudeness, if not danger, from the approachof a stranger.
Gradually, however, she seemed in part to recognise him. The look of inquiry and alarm gave place to a fixed, glaring, icy stare of unmixed dread and horror; and when he had now come to within six or eight paces of her, still without speaking, she cried, in a wild, lowvoice—
“Great God! great God! has he come up from the grave to reproach me! I am true, Raoul; true to the last, my beloved!”
And with a long, shivering, low shriek, she staggered, and would have fallen to the earth had he not caught her in his arms.
But she had fainted in the excess of superstitious awe, and perceived not that it was no phantom’s hand, but a most stalwart arm of human mould that clasped her to the heart of the living Raoul de St. Renan.
“For there were seen in that dark wall,Two niches, narrow, dark, and tall.Who enters by such grisly door,Shall ne’er, I ween, find exit more.”—Walter Scott.
“For there were seen in that dark wall,Two niches, narrow, dark, and tall.Who enters by such grisly door,Shall ne’er, I ween, find exit more.”—Walter Scott.
“For there were seen in that dark wall,Two niches, narrow, dark, and tall.Who enters by such grisly door,Shall ne’er, I ween, find exit more.”—Walter Scott.
Itwould be wonderful, were it not of daily occurrence, and to be observed by all who give attention to the characteristics of the human mind, how quickly confidence, even when shaken to its very foundations, and almost obliterated, springs up again, and recovers all its strength in the bosoms of the young of either sex.
Let but a few more years pass over the heart, and when once broken, if it be only by a slight suspicion, or a half unreal cause, it will scarce revive again in a lifetime; nor then, unless proofs the strongest and most unquestionable can be adduced to overpower the doubts which have well-nigh annihilated it.
In early life, however, before long contact with the world has blunted the susceptibilities, and hardened the sympathies of the soul, before the constant experience of the treachery, the coldness, the ingratitude of men has given birth to universal doubt and general distrust, the shadow vanishes as soon as the cloud which cast it is withdrawn, and the sufferer again believes, alas! too often, only to be again deceived.
Thus it was with St. Renan, who a few moments before had given up even the last hope, who had ceased, as he thought, to believe even in the possibility of faith or honor among men, of constancy, or purity, or truth, in women, no sooner saw his Melanie, whom he knew to be the wife of another, solitary and in tears, no sooner felt her inanimate form reclining on his bosom, than he was prepared to believe anything, rather than believeher false.
Indeed, her consternation at his appearance, her evident dismay, not unnatural in an age wherein skepticism and infidelity were marvellously mingled with credulity and superstition, her clear conviction that it was not himself in mortal blood and being, did go far to establish the fact, that she had been deceived either casually or—which was far more probable—by foul artifice, into the belief that her beloved and plighted husband was no longer with the living.
The very exclamation which she uttered last, ere she sunk senseless into his arms, uttered, as she imagined, in the presence of the immortal spirit of the injured dead, “I am true, Raoul—true to the last, my beloved!” rang in his ears with a power and a meaning which convinced him of her veracity.
“She could not lie!” he muttered to himself, “in the presence of the living dead! God be praised! she is true, and we shall yet be happy!”
How beautiful she looked, as she lay there, unconscious and insensible even of her own existence. If time and maturity had improved Raoul’s person, and added the strength and majesty of manhood to the grace and pliability of youth, infinitely more had it bestowed on the beauty of his betrothed. He had left her a beautiful girl just blooming out of girlhood, he found her a mature, full-blown woman, with all the flush and flower of complete feminine perfection, before one charm has become too luxuriant, or one drop of the youthful dew exhaled from the new expanded blossom.
She had shot up, indeed, to a height above the ordinary stature of women—straight, erect, and graceful as a young poplar, slender, yet full withal, exquisitely and voluptuously rounded, and with every sinuous line and swelling curve of her soft form full of the poetry and beauty of both repose and motion.
Her complexion was pale as alabaster; even her cheeks, except when some sudden tide of passion, or some strong emotion sent the impetuous blood coursing thither more wildly than its wont, were colorless, but there was nothing sallow or sickly, nothing of that which is ordinarily understood by the word pallid, in their clear, warm, transparent purity; nothing, in a word, of that lividness which the French, with more accuracy than we, distinguish from the healthful paleness which is so beautiful in southern women.
Her hair, profuse almost to redundance, was perfectly black, but of that warm and lustrous blackness which is probably the hue expressed by the ancient Greeks by the term hyacinthine, and which in certain lights has a purplish metallic gloss playing over it, like the varying reflections on the back of the raven. Her strongly defined, and nearly straight eyebrows, were dark as night, as were the long, silky lashes which were displayed in clear relief against the fair, smooth cheek, as the lids lay closed languidly over the bright blue eyes.
It was a minute or two before Melanie moved or gave any symptoms of recovering from her fainting fit, and during those minutes the lips of Raoul had been pressed so often and so warmly to those of the fair insensible, that had any spark of perception remained to her, the fond and lingering pressure could not have failed to call the “purple light of love,” to her ingenuous face.
At length a long, slow shiver ran through the form of the senseless girl, and thrilled, like the touch of the electric wire, every nerve in St. Renan’s body.
Then the soft rosy lips were unclosed, and forth rushed the ambrosial breath in a long, gentle sigh, and the beautiful bust heaved and undulated, like the bosom of the calm sea, when the first breathings of the coming storm steal over it, and wake, as if by sympathy, its deep pulsations.
He clasped her closer to his heart, half-fearful that when life and perfect consciousness should be restored to that exquisite frame, it would start from his embrace, if not in anger or alarm, at least as if from a forbidden and illicit pleasure.
Gradually a faint rosy hue, slight as the earliest blushes of the morning sky, crept over her white cheeks, and deepened into a rich passionate flush; and at the same moment the azure-tinctured lids were unclosed slowly, and the large, radiant, bright blue eyes beamed up into his own, half languid still, but gleaming through their dewy languor, with an expression which he must have been, indeed, blind to mistake for aught but the strongest of unchanged, unchangeable affection.
It was evident that she knew him now; that the momentary terror, arising rather, perhaps, from fear than from superstition, which had converted the young ardent soldier into a visitant from beyond those gloomy portals through which no visitant returns, had passed from her mind, and that she had already recognised, although she spoke not, her living lover.
And though she recognised him, she sought not to withdraw herself from the enclosure of his sheltering arms, but lay there on his bosom, with her head reclined on his shoulder, and her eyes drinking long draughts of love from his fascinated gaze, as if she were his own, and that her appropriate place of refuge.
“Oh! Raoul,” she exclaimed, at length, in a low, soft whisper, “is it, indeed, you—you, whom I have so long wept as dead—you, whom I was even now weeping as one lost to me for ever, when you are thus restored to me?”
“It is I, Melanie,” he answered mournfully, “it is I, alive, and in health; but better far had I been in truth dead, as they have told you, rather than thus a survivor of all happiness, of all hopes; spared only from the grave to knowyoufalse, and myself forgotten.”
“Oh, no, Raoul, not false!” she cried wildly, as she started from his arms, “oh, not forgotten! think you,” she added, blushingcrimson, “that had I loved any but you, that had I not loved you with my whole heart and being, I had lain thus on your bosom, thus endured your caresses? Oh, no, no, never false! nor for one moment forgotten!
“But what avails it, if you do love no other—what profits it, if you do love me? Are you not—are you not, false girl—alas! that these lips should speak it—the wife of another—the promised mistress of the king?”
“I—I—Raoul!” she exclaimed, with such a blending of wonder and loathing in her face, such an expression of indignation on her tongue, that her lover perceived at once, that, whatever might be the infamy of her father, of her husband, of this climax of falsehood and self-degradation, she, at least, was guiltless.
“The mistress of the king! what king? what mean you? are you distraught?”
“Ha! you are ignorant, you are innocent of that, then. You are not yet indoctrinated into the noble uses for which your honorable lord intends you. It is the town’s talk, Melanie. How is it you, whom it most concerns, alone have not heard it?”
“Raoul,” she said, earnestly, imploringly, “I know not if there be any meaning in your words, except to punish me, to torture me, for what you deem my faithlessness, but if there be, I implore you, I conjure you, by your father’s noble name, by your mother’s honor, show me the worst; but listen to me first, for by the God that made us both, and now hears my words, I am not faithless.”
“Not faithless? Are you not the wife of another?”
“No!” she replied enthusiastically. “I am not. For I am yours, and while you live I can not wed another. Whom God hath joined man can not put asunder.”
“I fear me that plea will avail us little,” Raoul answered. “But say on, dearest Melanie, and believe that there is nothing you can ask which I will not give you gladly—even if it were my own life-blood. Say on, so shall we best arrive at the truth of this intricate and black affair.”
“Mark me, then, Raoul, for every word I shall speak is as true as the sun in heaven. It is near two years now since we heard that you had fallen in battle, and that your body had been carried off by the barbarians. Long, long I hoped and prayed, but prayers and hopes were alike in vain. I wrote to you often, as I promised, but no line from you has reached me since the day when you sailed for India, and that made me fear that the dread news was true. But at the last, to make assurance doubly sure, all my own letters were returned to me six months since, with their seals unbroken, and an endorsement from the authorities in India that the person addressed was not to be found. Then hope itself was over; and my father, who never from the first had doubted that you were no more—”
“Out on him! out on him! the heartless villain!” the young man interrupted her indignantly. “He knows, as well as I myself, that I am living; although it is no fault of his or his coadjutors that I am so. He knows not as yet, however, that I amhere; but he shall know it ere long to his cost, my Melanie.”
“At least,” she answered in a faltering voice, “at least hesworeto me that you were dead; and never having ceased to persecute me, since the day that fatal tidings reached us, to become the wife of La Rochederrien, now marquis de Ploermel, he now became doubly urgent—”
“And you Melanie! you yielded! I had thought you would have died sooner.”
“I had no choice but to yield, Raoul. Or at least but the choice of that old man’s hand, or an eternal dungeon. Thelettres de cachetwere signed, and you dead, and on the conditionsI extorted from the marquis, I became in name, Raoul, only in name, by all my hopes of heaven, the wife of the man whom you pronounce, wherefore, I can not dream, the basest of mankind. Now tell me.”
“And did it never strike you as being wonderful and most unnatural that this Ploermel, who is neither absolutely a dotard nor an old woman, should accept your hand upon this condition?”
“I was too happy to succeed in extorting it to think much of that,” she answered.
“Extorted!” replied Raoul bitterly; “and how, I pray you, is this condition which you extorted ratified or made valid?”
“It is signed by himself, and witnessed by my own father, that, being I regard myself the wife of the dead, he shall ask no more of familiarity from me than if I were the bride of heaven!”
“The double villains!”
“But wherefore villains, Raoul?” exclaimed Melanie.
“I tell you, girl, it is a compact—a base, hellish compact—with the foul despot, the disgrace of kings, the opprobrium of France, who sits upon the throne, dishonoring it daily! A compact such as yet was never entered into by a father and a husband, even of the lowest of mankind! A compact to deliver you a spotless virgin-victim to the vile-hearted and luxurious tyrant. Curses! a thousand curses on his soul! and on my own soul! who have fought and bled for him, and all to meet with this, as my reward of service!”
“Great God! can these things be,” she exclaimed, almost fainting with horror and disgust. “Can these things indeed be? But speak, Raoul, speak; how can you know all this?”
“I tell you, Melanie, it is the talk, the very daily, hourly gossip of the streets, the alleys, nay, even the very kennels of Paris. Every one knows it—every one believes it, from themonarch in the Louvre to the lowest butcher of the Faubourg St. Antoine!
“And they believe it—of me, ofme, they believe this infamy!”
“With this addition, if any addition were needed, that you are not a deceived victim, but a willing and proud participator in the shame.”
“I will—that is—” she corrected herself, speaking very rapidly and energetically—“Iwoulddie sooner. But there is no need now to die. You have come back to me, and all will yet go well with us!”
“It never can go well with us again,” St. Renan answered gloomily. “The king never yields his purpose, he is as tenacious in his hold as reckless in his promptitude to seize. And they are paid beforehand.”
“Paid!” exclaimed the girl, shuddering at the word. “What atrocity. How paid?”
“How, think you, did your good father earn his title and the rich governorship of Morlaix? What great deeds were rewarded to La Rochederrien by his marquisate, and this captaincy of musquetaires. You know not yet, young lady, what virtue there is now-a-days in being the accommodating father, or the convenient husband of a beauty!”
“You speak harshly, St. Renan, and bitterly.”
“And if I do, have I not cause enough for bitterness and harshness?” he replied almost angrily.
“Not against me, Raoul.”
“I am not bitter against you, Melanie. And yet—and yet—”
“And yetwhat, Raoul?”
“And yet had you resisted three days longer, we might have been saved—you might have been mine—”
“I am yours, Raoul de St. Renan. Yours, ever and for ever! No one’s but only yours.”
“You speak but madness—your vow—the sacrament!”
“To the winds with my vow—to the abyss with the fraudful sacrament!” she cried, almost fiercely. “By sin it was obtained and sanctioned—in sin let it perish. I say—I swear, Raoul, if you will take me, I am yours.”
“Mine? Mine?” cried the young man, half bewildered. “How mine, and when?”
“Thus,” she replied, casting herself upon his breast, and winding her arms around his neck, and kissing his lips passionately and often. “Thus, Raoul, thus, and now!”
He returned her embrace fondly once, but the next instant he removed her almost forcibly from his breast, and held her at arm’s length.
“No, no!” he exclaimed, “not thus, not thus! If at all, honestly, openly, holily, in the face of day! May my soul perish, ere cause come through me why you should ever blush to show your front aloft among the purest and the proudest. No, no, not thus, my own Melanie!”
The girl burst into a paroxysm of tears and sobbing, through which she hardly could contrive to make her interrupted and faltering words audible.
“If not now,” she said at length, “it will never be. For, hear me, Raoul, and pity me, to-morrow they are about to drag me to Paris.”
The lover mused for several moments very deeply, and then replied, “Listen to me, Melanie. If you are in earnest, if you are true, and can be firm, there may yet be happiness in store for us, and that very shortly.”
“Do you doubt me, Raoul?”
“I do not doubt you, Melanie. But ever as in my own wildest rapture, even to gain my own extremest bliss, I would not do aught that could possibly cast one shadow on your purerenown, so, mark me, would I not take you to my heart were there one spot, though it were but as a speck in the all-glorious sun, upon the brightness of your purity.”
“I believe you, Raoul. I feel, I know that my honor, that my purity is all in all to you.”
“I would die a thousand deaths,” he made answer, “ere even a false report should fall on it, to mar its virgin whiteness. Marvel not then that I ask as much of you.”
“Ask anything, St. Renan. Itisgranted.”
“In France we can hope for nothing. But there are other lands than France. We must fly; and thanks to these documents which you have wrung from them, and the proofs which I can easily obtain, this cursed marriage can be set aside, and then, in honor and in truth you can be mine, mine own Melanie.”
“God grant it so, Raoul.”
“It shall be so, beloved. Be you but firm, and it may be done right speedily. I will sell the estates of St. Renan—by a good chance, supposing me dead, the lord of Yrvilliac was in treaty for it with my uncle. That can be arranged forthwith. Conduct yourself according to your wont, cool and as distant as may be with this villain of Ploermel; avoid above all things to let your father see that you are buoyed by any hope, or moved by any passion. Treat the king with deliberate scorn, if he approach you over-boldly. Beware how you eat or drink in his company, for he is capable of all things, even of drugging you into insensibility, and here,” he added, taking a small poniard, of exquisite workmanship, with a gold hilt and scabbard, from his girdle, and giving it to her, “wearthisat all times, and if he dare attempt violence, were he thrice a king,use it!”
“I will—I will—trust me, Raoul! Iwilluse it, and that to his sorrow! My heart is strong, and my hand bravenow—nowthat I know you to be living. Now that I have hope to nerve me, I will fear nothing, but dare all things.”
“Do so, do so, my beloved, and you shall have no cause to fear, for I will be ever near you. I will tarry here but one day; and ere you reach Paris, I will be there, be certain. Within ten days, I doubt not I can convert my acres into gold, and ship that gold across the narrow straits; and that done, the speed of horses, and a swift ship will soon have us safe in England; and if that land be not so fair, or so dear as our own France, at least there are no tyrants there, like this Louis; and there are laws, they say, which guard the meanest man as safely and as surely as the proudest noble.”
“A happy land, Raoul. I would we were there even now.”
“We will be there ere long, fear nothing. But tell me, whom have you near your person on whom we may rely. There must be some one through whom we may communicate in Paris. It may be that I shall require to see you.”
“Oh! you remember Rose, Raoul—little Rose Faverney, who has lived with me ever since she was a child—a pretty little black-eyed damsel.”
“Surely I do remember her. Is she with you yet? That will do admirably, then, if she be faithful, as I think she is; and unless I forget, what will serve us better yet, she loves my page Jules de Marlien. He has not forgotten her, I promise you.”
“Ah! Jules—we grow selfish, I believe, as we grow old, Raoul. I have not thought to ask after one of your people. So Jules remembers little Rose, and loves her yet; that will indeed, secure her, even had she been doubtful, which she is not. She is as true as steel—truer, I fear, than even I; for she reproached me bitterly four evenings since, and swore she would be buried alive, much more willingly imprisoned, than be married to the marquis de Ploermel, though she was onlyplighted to the vicomte Raoul’s page! Oh! we may trust in her with all certainty.”
“Send her, then, on the very same night that you reach Paris, so soon as it is dark, to my uncle’s house in the place de St. Louis. I think she knows it, and let her ask—not for me—but for Jules. Ere then I will know something definite of our future; and fear nothing, love, all shall go well with us. Love such as ours, with faith, and right, and honesty, and honor to support it, can not fail to win, blow what wind may. And now, sweet Melanie, the night is wearing onward, and I fear that they may miss you. Kiss me, then, once more, sweet girl, and farewell.”
“Not for the last, Raoul,” she cried, with a gay smile, casting herself once again into her lover’s arms, and meeting his lips with a long, rapturous kiss.
“Not by a thousand, and a thousand! But now, angel, farewell for a little space. I hate to bid you leave me, but I dare not ask you to stay; even now I tremble lest you should be missed and they should send to seek you. For were they but to suspect that I am here and have seen you, it would, at the best, double all our difficulties; fare you well, sweetest Melanie.”
“Fare you well,” she replied; “fare you well, my own best beloved Raoul,” and she put up the glittering dagger, as she spoke, into the bosom of her dress; but as she did so, she paused and said, “I wishthishad not been your first gift to me, Raoul, for they say that such gifts are fatal, to love at least, if not to life.”
“Fear not! fear not!” answered the young man, laughing gayly, “our love is immortal. It may defy the best steel blade that was ever forged on Milan stithy to cut it asunder. Fare you—but, hush! who comes here; it is too late, yet fly—fly, Melanie!”
But she did not fly, for as he spoke, a tall, gayly-dressed cavalier burst through the coppice on the side next the château d’Argenson, exclaiming: “So, my fair cousin!—this is your faith to my good brother of Ploermel is it?”
But, before he spoke, she had whispered to Raoul, “It is the chevalier de Pontrein, de Ploermel’s half-brother. Alas! all is lost.”
“Not so! not so!” answered her lover, also in a whisper, “leave him to me, I will detain him. Fly, by the upper pathway and through the orchard to the château, and remember—you have not seen this dog. So much deceit is pardonable. Fly, I say, Melanie. Look not behind for your life, whatever you may hear, nor tarry. All rests now on your steadiness and courage.”
“Then all is safe,” she answered firmly and aloud, and without casting a glance toward the cavalier, who was now within ten paces of her side, or taking the smallest notice of his words, she kissed her hand to St. Renan, and bounded up the steep path, in the opposite direction, with so fleet a step as soon carried her beyond the sound of all that followed, though that was neither silent nor of small interest.
“Do you not hear me, madam. By Heaven! but you carry it off easily!” cried the young cavalier, setting off at speed, as if to follow her. “But you must run swifter than a roe if you look to ’scape me;” and with the words he attempted to rush past Raoul, of whom he affected, although he knew him well, to take no notice.
But in that intent he was quickly frustrated, for the young count grasped him by the collar as he endeavored to pass, with a grasp of iron, and said to him in an ironical tone of excessive courtesy.
“Sweet sir, I fear you have forgotten me, that you should give me the go-by thus, when it is so long a time since we have met, and we such dear friends, too.”
But the young man was in earnest, and very angry, and struggled to release himself from St. Renan’s grasp, until, having no strong reasons for forbearance, but many for the reverse, Raoul, too, lost his temper.
“By Heaven!” he exclaimed, “I believe that you donotknow me, or you would not dare to suppose that I would suffer you to follow a lady who seeks not your presence or society.”
“Let me go, St. Renan!” returned the other fiercely, laying his hand on his dagger’s hilt. “Let me go, villain, or you shall rue it!”
“Villain!” Raoul repeated calmly, “villain! It is so you call me, hey?” and he did instantly release him, drawing his sword as he did so. “Draw, De Pontrien—that word has cost you your life!”
“Yes, villain!” repeated the other, “villain to your teeth! But you lie! it is your life that is forfeit—forfeit to my brother’s honor!”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Raoul, savagely. “Ha-ha-ha-ha! your brother’s honor! who the devil ever heard before of a pandar’s honor—even if he were Sir Pandarus to a king? Sa! sa! have at you!”
Their blades crossed instantly, and they fought fiercely, and with something like equality for some ten minutes. The chevalier de Pontrien was far more than an ordinary swordsman, and he was in earnest, not angry, but savage and determined, and full of bitter hatred, and a fixed resolution to punish the familiarity of Raoul with his brother’s wife. But that was a thing easier proposed than executed; for St. Renan, who had left France as a boy already a perfect master of fence, had learned the practice of the blade against the swordsmen of the East, the finest swordsmen of the world, and had added to skill, science, and experience, the iron nerves, the deep breath, and the unwearied strength of a veteran.
If he fought slowly, it was that he fought carefully—that he meant the first wound to be the last. He was resolved that De Pontrien never should return home again to divulge what he had seen, and he had the coolness, the skill, and the power to carry out his resolution.
At the end of ten minutes he attacked. Six times within as many seconds he might have inflicted a severe, perhaps a deadly wound on his antagonist; and he, too, perceived it, but it would not have been surely mortal.
“Come, come!” cried De Pontrien, at last, growing impatient and angry at the idea of being played with. “Come, sir, you are my master, it seems; make an end of this.”
“Do not be in a hurry,” replied St. Renan, with a deadly smile, “it will come soon enough. There! will that suit you?”
And with the word he made a treble feint and lounged home. So true was the thrust that the point pierced the very cavity of his heart. So strongly was it sent home that the hilt smote heavily on his breast-bone. He did not speak or groan, but drew one short, broken sigh, and fell dead on the instant.
“The fool!” muttered St. Renan. “Wherefore did he meddle where he had no business? But what the devil shall I do with him? He must not be found, or all will out—and that were ruin.”
As he spoke, a distant clap of thunder was heard to the eastward, and a few heavy drops of rain began to fall, while a heavy mass of black thunder-clouds began to rise rapidly against the wind.
“There will be a fierce storm in ten minutes, which will soon wash out all this evidence,” he said, looking down at the trampled and blood-stained greensward. “One hour hence, and there will not be a sign of this, if I can but dispose of him. Ha!” he added, as a quick thought struck him, “the Devil’s Drinking-Cup! Enough! it is done!”
Within a minute’s space he had swathed the corpse tightly in the cloak, which had fallen from the wretched man’s shoulders as the fray began, bound it about the waist by the scarf, to which he attached firmly an immense block of stone, which lay at the brink of the fearful well, which was now—for the tide was up—brimful of white boiling surf, and holding his breath atween resolution and abhorrence, hurled it into the abyss.
It sunk instantly, so well was the stone secured to it; and the fate of the chevalier de Pontrien never was suspected, for that fatal pool never gave up its dead, nor will until the judgment-day.
Meantime the flood-gates of heaven were opened, and a mimic torrent, rushing down the dark glen, soon obliterated every trace of that stern, short affray.
Calmly Raoul strode homeward, and untouched by any conscience, for those were hard and ruthless times, and he had undergone so much wrong at the hands of his victim’s nearest relatives, and dearest friends, that it was no great marvel if his blood were heated, and his heart pitiless.
“I will have masses said for his soul in Paris,” he muttered to himself; and therewith, thinking that he had more than discharged all a Christian’s duty, he dismissed all further thoughts of the matter, and actually hummed a gay opera-tune as he strode homeward through the pelting storm, thinking how soon he should be blessed by the possession of his own Melanie.
No observation was made on his absence, by either the steward or any of the servants, on his return, though he was well-nigh drenched with rain, for they remembered his old half-boyish, half-romantic habits, and it seemed natural to them that on his first return, after so many years of wandering, to scenes endeared to him by innumerable fond recollections, he should wander forth alone to muse with his own soul in secret.
There was great joy, however, in the hearts of the old servitors and tenants in consequence of his return, and on the followingmorning, and still on the third day, that feeling of joy and security continued to increase, for it soon got abroad that the young lord’s grief and gloominess of mood were wearing hourly away, and that his lip, and his whole countenance, were often lighted up with an expression which showed, as they fondly augured, that days and years of happiness were yet in store for him.
It was not long before the tidings reached him that the house of D’Argenson was in great distress concerning the sudden and unaccountable disappearance of the chevalier de Pontrien, who had walked out, it was said, on the preceding afternoon, promising to be back at supper-time, and who had not been heard of since.
Raoul smiled grimly at the intimation, but said nothing, and the narrator judging that St. Renan was not likely to take offence at the imputations against the family of Ploermel, proceeded to inform him, that in the opinion of the neighborhood there was nothing very mysterious, after all, in the disappearance of the chevalier, since he was known to be very heavily in debt, and was threatened with deadly feud by the old Sieur de Plouzurde, whose fair daughter he had deceived to her undoing. Robinet the smuggler’s boat, had been seen off the Penmarcks when the moon was setting, and no one doubted that the gay gallant was by this time off the coast of Spain.
To all this, though he affected to pay little heed to it, Raoul inclined an eager and attentive ear, and as a reward for his patient listening, was soon informed, furthermore, that the bridegroom marquis and the beautiful bride, being satisfied, it was supposed, of the chevalier’s safety, had departed for Paris, their journey having been postponed only in consequence of the research for the missing gentleman, from the morning when it should have taken place, to the afternoon of the same day.
For two days longer did Raoul tarry at St. Renan, apparently as free from concern or care about the fair Melanie de Ploermel, as if he had never heard her name. And on this point alone, for all men knew that he once loved her, did his conduct excite any observation, or call forth comment. His silence, however, and external nonchalance were attributed at all hands to a proper sense of pride and self-respect; and as the territorial vassals of those days held themselves in some degree ennobled or disgraced by the high bearing or recreancy of their lords, it was very soon determined by the men of St. Renan that it would have been very disgraceful and humiliating had their lord, the lord of Duarnenez and St. Renan, condescended to trouble his head about the little demoiselle d’Argenson.
Meanwhile our lover, whose head was in truth occupied about no other thing than that very same little demoiselle, for whom he was believed to feel a contempt so supreme, had thoroughly investigated all his affairs, thereby acquiring from his old steward the character of an admirable man of business, had made himself perfectly master of the real value of his estates, droits, dues, and all connected with the same, and had packed up all his papers, and such of his valuables as were movable, so as to be transported easily by means of pack-horses.
This done, leaving orders for a retinue of some twenty of his best and most trusty servants to follow him as soon as the train and relays of horses could be prepared, he set off with two followers only to return riding post, as he had come from Paris.
He was three days behind the lady of his love at starting; but the journey from the western extremity of Bretagne to the metropolis is at all times a long and tedious undertaking; and as the roads and means of conveyance were in those days, he found it no difficult task to catch up with the carriages of the marquis, and to pass them on the road long enough before they reached Paris.
Indeed, though he had set out three days behind them, he succeeded in anticipating their arrival by as many, and had succeeded in transacting more than half the business on which his heart was bent, before he received the promised visit from the pretty Rose Faverney, who, prompted by her desire to renew her intimacy with the handsome page, came punctual to her appointment. He had not, of course, admitted the good old churchman, his uncle, into all his secrets; he had not even told him that he had seen the lady, much less what were his hopes and views concerning her.
But he did tell him that he was so deeply mortified and wounded by her desertion, that he had determined to sell his estates, to leave France for ever, and to betake himself to the new American colonies on the St. Lawrence.
There was not in the state of France in those days much to admire, or much to induce wise men to exert their influence over the young and noble, to induce them to linger in the neighborhood of a court which was in itself a very sink of corruption. It was with no great difficulty, therefore, that Raoul obtained the concurrence of his uncle, who was naturally a friend to gallant and adventurous daring. The estates of St. Renan, the old castle and the home park, with a few hundred acres in its immediate vicinity only excepted, were converted into gold with almost unexampled rapidity.
A part of the gold was in its turn converted into a gallant brigantine of some two hundred tons, which was despatched at once along the coast of Douarnenez bay, there to take in a crew of the hardy fishermen and smugglers of that stormy shore, all men well known to Raoul de St. Renan, and well content to follow their young lord to the world’s end, should such be his will.
Here, indeed, I have anticipated something the progress of events, for hurry it as much as he could in those days, St. Renan could not, of course, work miracles; and though thebrigantine was purchased, where she lay ready to sail, at Calais, the instant the sale of St. Renan was determined, without awaiting the completion of the transfer, or the payment of the purchase-money, many days had elapsed before the news could be sent from the capital to the coast, and the vessel despatched to Brittany.
Everything was, however, determined; nay, everything was in process of accomplishment before the arrival of the fair lady and her nominal husband, so that at the first interview with Rose, Raoul was enabled to lay all his plans before her, and to promise that within a month at the farthest, everything would be ready for their certain and safe evasion.
He did not fail, however, on that account to impress upon the pretty maiden—who, as Jules was to accompany his lord, though not a hint of whither had been breathed to any one, was doubly devoted to the success of the scheme—that a method must be arranged by which he could have daily interviews with the lovely Melanie; and this she promised that she would use all her powers to induce her mistress to permit, saying, with a gay laugh, that her permission gained, all the rest was easy.
The next day, the better to avoid suspicion, Raoul was presented to the king, in full court, by his uncle, on the double event of his return from India, and of his approaching departure for the colony of Acadie, for which it was his present purpose to sue for his majesty’s consent and approbation.
The king was in great good humor, and nothing could have been more flattering or more gracious than Raoul de St. Renan’s reception. Louis had heard that very morning of the fair Melanie’s arrival in the city, and nothing could have fallen out moreaproposthan the intention of her quondam lover to depart at this very juncture, and that, too, for an indefinite period, fromthe land of his birth.
Rejoicing inwardly at his good fortune, and of course, ascribing the conduct of the young man to pique and disappointment, the king, while he loaded him with honors and attentions, did not neglect to encourage him in his intention of departing on a very early day, and even offered to facilitate his departure by making some remissions in his behalf from the strict regulations of the Douane.
All this was perfectly comprehensible to Raoul; but he was far too wise to suffer any one, even his uncle, to perceive that he understood it; and while he profited to the utmost by the readiness which he found in high places to smooth away all the difficulties from his path, he laughed in his sleeve as he thought what would be the fury of the licentious and despotic sovereign when he should discover that the very steps which he had taken to remove a dangerous rival, had actually cast the lady into that rival’s arms.
Nor had this measure of Raoul’s been less effectual in sparing Melanie much grief and vexation, than it had proved in facilitating his own schemes of escape; for on that very day, within an hour after his reception of St. Renan, the king caused information to be conveyed to the marquis de Ploermel that the presentation of madame should be deferred until such time as the vicomte de St. Renan should have set sail for Acadie, which it was expected would take place within a month at the furthest.
That evening when Rose Faverney was admitted to the young lord’s presence, through the agency of the enamored Jules, she brought him permission to visit her lady at midnight in her own chamber; and she brought with her a plan, sketched by Melanie’s own hand, of the garden, through which, by the aid of a master-key and a rope-ladder, he was to gain access to her presence.
“My lady says, Monsieur Raoul,” added the merry girl, with a light laugh, “that she admits you only on the faith that you will keep the word which you plighted to her, when last you met, and on the condition that I shall be present at all your interviews with her.”
“Her honor were safe in my hands,” replied the young man, “without that precaution. But I appreciate the motive, and accept the condition.”
“You will remember, then, my lord—at midnight. There will be one light burning in the window, when that is extinguished, all will be safe, and you may enter fearless? Will you remember?”
“Nothing but death will prevent me. Nor that, if the spirits of the dead may visit what they love best on earth. So tell her, Rose. Farewell!”
Four hours afterward St. Renan stood in the shadow of a dense trellice in the garden, watching the moment when that love-beacon should expire. The clock of St. Germain l’Auxerre struck twelve, and on the instant all was darkness. Another minute and the lofty wall was scaled, and Melanie was in the arms of Raoul.
It was a strange, grim, gloomy, gothic chamber, full of queer niches and recesses of old stone-work. The walls were hung with gilded tapestries of Spanish leather, but were interrupted in many places by the antique stone groinings of alcoves and cupboards, one of which, close beside the mantlepiece, was closed by a curiously carved door of heavy oak-work, itself sunk above a foot within the embrasure of the wall.
Lighted as it was only by the flickering of the wood-fire on the hearth, for the thickness of the walls, and the damp of the old vaulted room, rendered a fire acceptable, even at midsummer, that antique chamber appeared doubly grim and ghostly; but little cared the young lovers for its dismal seeming; and if they noticed it at all, it was but to jest at the contrast of itsappearance with the happy hours which they passed within it.