 | The knights of England, France, and Scotland |  |
2. PART II.
The castle of St. Renan, like the dwellings of many of the
nobles of Bretagne and Gascony, was a superb old pile of solid
masonry towering above the huge cliffs which guard the whole
of that iron coast with its gigantic masses of rude masonry. So
close did it stand to the verge of these precipitous crags on its
seaward face, that whenever the wind from the westward blew
angrily and in earnest, the spray of the tremendous billows
which rolled in from the wide Atlantic, and burst in thunder at
the foot of those stern ramparts, was dashed so high by the
collision that it would often fall in salt, bitter rain, upon the esplanade
above, and dim the diamond-paned casements with its
cold mists.
For leagues on either side, as the spectator stood upon the
terrace above and gazed out on the expanse of the everlasting
ocean, nothing was to be seen but the salient angles or deep
recesses formed by the dark, gray cliffs, unrelieved by any
spot of verdure, or even by that line of silver sand at their
base, which often intervenes between the rocks of an iron
coast and the sea. Here, however, there was no such intermediate
step visible; the black face of the rocks sunk sheer
and abrupt into the water, which, by its dark-green hue, indicated
to the practised eye, that it was deep and scarcely fathomable
to the very shore.
In places, indeed, where huge caverns opening in front to
the vast ocean, which had probably hollowed them out of the
earth-fast rock in the course of succeeding ages, yawned in
the mimicry of Gothic arches, the entering tide would rush, as
it were, into the bowels of the land, roaring and groaning in
Typhon, Enceladus, or Ephialtes, in his immortal agony. One
of these singular vaults opened right in the base of the rock on
the summit of which stood the castle of St. Renan, and into
this the billows rushed with rapidity so tumultuous and terrible
that the fishers of that stormy coast avowed that a vortex was
created in the bay by their influx or return seaward, which
could be perceived sensibly at a league's distance; and that to
be caught in it, unless the wind blew strong and steadily off
land, was sure destruction. However that might be, it is certain
that this great subterranean tunnel extended far beneath
the rocks into the interior of the land, for at the distance of
nearly two miles from the castle, directly eastward, in the bottom
of a dark, wooded glen, which runs for many miles nearly
parallel to the coast, there is a deep, rocky well, or natural
cavity, of a form nearly circular, which, when the tide is up,
is filled to overflowing with bitter sea-water, on which the bubbles
and foam-flakes show the obstacles against which it must
have striven in its landward journey. At low water, on the
contrary, “the Devil's Drinking-Cup,” for so it is named by
the superstitious peasantry of the neighborhood, presents nothing
to the eye but a deep, black abyss, which the countryfolks,
of course, assert to be bottomless. But, in truth, its depth is
immense, as can easily be perceived, if you cast a stone into it,
by the length of time during which it may be heard thundering
from side to side, until the reverberated roar of its descent appears
to die away, not because it has ceased, but because the
sound is too distant to be conveyed to human ears.
On this side of the castle everything differs as much as it is
possible to conceive from the view to the seaward, which is
grim and desolate as any ocean scenery the world over. Few
sails are ever seen on those dangerous coasts; all vessels
bound to the mouth of the Garonne, or southward to the shores
and inaccessible crags, which to all their other terrors add that,
from the extraordinary prevalence of the west wind on that
part of the ocean, of being, during at least three parts of the
year, a lee shore.
Inland, however, instead of the bleak and barren surface of
the ever-stormy sea, indented into long rolling ridges and dark
tempestuous hollows, all was varied and smiling, and gratifying
to every sense given by nature for his good to man. Immediately
from the brink of the cliffs the land sloped downward
southwardly and to the eastward, so that it was bathed during
all the day, except a few late evening hours, in the fullest radiance
of the sunbeams. Over this immense sloping descent
the eye could range from the castle battlements for miles and
miles, until the rich green champaign was lost in the blue haze
of distance. And it was green and gay over the whole of that
vast expanse, here with the dense and unpruned foliage of immemorial
forests, well stocked with every species of game,
from the gaunt wolf and the tusky boar, to the fleet roebuck and
the timid hare; here with the trim and smiling verdure of rich
orchards, in which nestled around their old, gray shrines the
humble hamlets of the happy peasantry; and everywhere with
the long intersecting curves, and sinuous irregular lines of the
old hawthorn hedges, thick set with pollard trees and hedgerow
timber, which make the whole country, when viewed from
a height, resemble a continuous tract of intermingled glades
and coppices, and which have procured for an adjoining district
the well-known, and in after-days far celebrated name of the
Bocage.
Immediately around the castle, on the edge as it were of this
beautiful and almost boundless slope, there lay a large and
well-kept garden in the old French style, laid out in a succession
of terraces, bordered by balustrades of marble, adorned at
each from the next below by flights of ornamented steps of regular
and easy elevation; pleached bowery walks, and high
clipped hedges of holly, yew, and hornbeam, were the usual
decorations of such a garden, and here they abounded to an
extent that would have gladdened the heart of an admirer of
the tastes and habits of the olden time. In addition to these,
however, there were a profusion of flowers of the choicest
kinds known or cultivated in those days — roses and lilies
without number, and honeysuckles, and the sweet-scented clematis,
climbing in bountiful luxuriance over the numberless
seats and bowers which everywhere tempted to repose.
Below this beautiful garden a wide expanse of smooth, green
turf, dotted here and there with majestic trees, and at rarer intervals
diversified with tall groves and verdant coppices, covered
the whole descent of the first hill to the dim wooded dell
which has been mentioned as containing the singular cavity
known throughout the country as the “Devil's Drinking-Cup.”
This dell, which was the limit of count de St. Renan's demesnes
in that direction, was divided from the park by a ragged
paling many feet in height, and of considerable strength,
framed of rough timber from the woods, the space within being
appropriated to a singular and choice breed of deer, imported
from the East by one of the former counts, who, being of an
adventurous and roving disposition, had sojoured for some
time in the French settlements of Hindostan. Beyond this
dell again, which was defended on the outer side by a strong
and lofty wall of brick, all overrun with luxuriant ivy, the
ground rose in a small rounded knoll, or hillock of small extent,
richly wooded, and crowned by the gray turrets and steep
flagged roof of the old château d'Argenson.
This building, however, was as much inferior in size and
stateliness to the grand feudal fortalice of St. Renan, as the little
above the face of the surrounding country as to detract nothing,
at least in appearance, from its general slope to the southeastward,
was lower than the great rock-bound ridge from which
it overlooked the territories, all of which had in distant times
obeyed the rules of its almost princely dwellers.
The sun of a lovely evening in the latter part of July had
already sunk so far down in the west that only one half of its
great golden disk was visible above the well-defined, dark outline
of the seaward-crags, which, relieved by the glowing radiance
of the whole western sky, stood out massive and solid
like a huge purple wall, and seemed so close at hand that the
spectator could almost persuade himself that he had but to
stretch out his arm, in order to touch the great barrier, which
was in truth several miles distant.
Over the crest, and through the gaps of this continuous line
of highland, the long level rays streamed down in the slope in
one vast flood of golden glory, which was checkered only by
the interminable length of shadows which were projected from
every single tree, or scattered clump, from every petty elevation
of the soil, down the soft glimmering declivity.
Three years had elapsed since the frightful fate of the unhappy
lord of Kerguelen, and the various incidents, which in
some sort took their origin from the nature of his crime and
its consequence, affecting in the highest degree the happiness
of the families of St. Renan and D'Argenson.
Three years had elapsed — three years! That is a little
space in the annals of the world, in the life of nations, nay, in
the narrow records of humanity. Three years of careless happiness,
three years of indolent and tranquil ease, unmarked by
any great event, pass over our heads unnoted, and, save in the
gray hairs which they scatter, leave no memorial of their transit,
more than the sunshine of a happy summer day. They
are, they are gone, they are forgotten.
Even three years of gloom and sorrow, of that deep anguish
which at the time the sufferer believes to be indelible and everlasting,
lag on their weary, desolate course, and when they too
are over-passed, and he looks back upon their transit, which
seemed so painfully protracted, and, lo! all is changed, and
their flight also is now but as an ended minute.
And yet, what strange and sudden changes altering the affairs
of men, changing the hearts of mortals, yea, revolutionizing
their whole intellects, and overturning their very natures —
more than the devastating earthquake or the destroying lava
transforms the face of the everlasting earth — have not been
wrought, and again well nigh forgotten within that little period.
Three years had passed, I say, over the head of Raoul de
Douarnenez — the three most marked and memorable years in
the life of every young man — and from the ingenuous and
promising stripling, he had now become in every respect a
man, and a bold and enterprising man, moreover, who had seen
much and struggled much, and suffered somewhat — without
which there is no gain of his wisdom here below — in his transit,
even thus far, over the billows and among the reefs and
quicksands of the world.
His father had kept his promise to that loved son in all
things, nor had the sieur d'Argenson failed of his plighted
faith. The autumn of that year, the spring of which saw Kerguelen
die in unutterable agony, saw Raoul de Douarnenez the
contracted and affianced husband of the lovely and beloved
Melanie.
All that was wanted now to render them actually man and
wife, to create between them that bond which, alone of mortal
ties, man can not sunder, was the ministration of the church's
holiest rite, and that, in wise consideration of their tender
years, was postponed until the termination of the third summer.
During the interval it was decided that Raoul, as was the
and most especially among the nobility of France, should
bear arms in active service, and see something of the world
abroad, before settling down into the easier duties of domestic
life. The family of St. Renan, since the days of that ancestor
who has been already mentioned as having sojourned in Pondicherry,
had never ceased to maintain some relations with
the East Indian possessions of France, and a relation of the
house in no very remote degree was at this time military governor
of the French East Indies, which were then, previous to
the unexampled growth of the British empire in the East, important,
flourishing, and full of future promise.
Thither, then, it was determined that Raoul should go in
search of adventures, if not of fortune, in the spring following
the signature of his marriage contract with the young demoiselle
d'Argenson. And, consequently, after a winter passed in
quiet domestic happiness on the noble estates, whereon the
gentry of Brittany were wont to reside in almost patriarchal
state — a winter, every day of which the young lovers spent in
company, and at every eve of which they separated more in
love than they were at meeting in the morning — Raoul set
sail in a fine frigate, carrying several companies of the line,
invested with the rank of ensign, and proud to bear the colors
of his king, for the shores of the still half-fabulous oriental
world.
Three years had passed, and the boy had returned a man,
the ensign had returned a colonel, so rapid was the promotion
of the nobility of the sword in the French army, under the ancient
regime; and — greatest change of all, ay, and saddest —
the viscount of Douarnenez had returned count de St. Renan.
An infectious fever, ere he had been one year absent from the
land of his birth, and had cut off his noble father in the very
pride and maturity of his intellectual manhood; nor had his
fondly. A low, slow fever, caught from that beloved patient
whom she had so affectionately nurtured, was as fatal to her,
though not so suddenly, as it had proved to her good lord; and
when their son returned to France full of honors achieved, and
gay anticipations for the future, he found himself an orphan,
the lord in lonely and unwilling state of the superb demesnes
which had so long called his family their owners.
There never in the world was a kinder heart than that which
beat in the breast of the young soldier, and never was a family
more strictly bound together by all the kindly influences which
breed love and confidence, and domestic happiness among all
the members of it, than that of St Renan. There had been
nothing austere or rigid in the bringing up of the gallant boy;
the father, who had at one hour been the tutor and the monitor,
was at the next the comrade and the playmate, and at all
times the true and trusted friend, while the mother had been
ever the idolized and adored protectress, and the confidante of
all the innocent schemes and artless joys of boyhood.
Bitter, then, was the blow stricken to the very heart of the
young soldier, when the first tidings which he received, on
landing in his loved France, was the intelligence that those —
all those, with but one exception — whom he most tenderly
and truly loved, all those to whom he looked up with affectionate
trust for advice and guidance, all those on whom he relied
for support in his first trials of young manhood, were cold and
silent in the all-absorbing tomb.
To him there was no hot, feverish ambition prompting him
to grasp joyously the absolute command of his great heritage.
In his heart there was none of that fierce yet sordid avarice
which finds compensation for the loss of the scarce-lamented
dead in the severance of the dearest natural bonds, in the possession
of wealth, or the promise of power. Nor was this all,
up, and so completely had wisdom grown up with his growth,
that when, at the age of nineteen years, he found himself endowed
with the rank and revenues of one of the highest and
wealthiest peers of France, and in all but mere name his own
master — for the abbé de Chastellar, his mother's brother, who
had been appointed his guardian by his father's will, scarcely
attempted to exercise even a nominal jurisdiction over him —
he felt himself more than ever at a loss, deprived as he was,
when he most needed it, of his best natural counsellor; and
instead of rejoicing, was more than half inclined to lament over
the almost absolute self-control with which he found himself
invested.
Young hearts are naturally true themselves, and prone to
put trust in others; and it is rarely, except in a few dark and
morose and gloomy natures, which are exceptions to the rule
and standard of human nature, that man learns to be distrustful
and suspicious of his kind, even after experience of fickleness
and falsehood may have in some sort justified suspicions, until
his head has grown gray.
And this in an eminent degree was the case with Raoul de
St. Renan, for henceforth he must be called by the title which
his altered state had conferred upon him.
His natural disposition was as trustful and unsuspicious as
it was artless and ingenuous; and from his early youth all the
lessons which had been taught him by his parents tended to
preserve in him unblemished and unbroken that bright gem,
which once shattered never can be restored, confidence in the
truth, the probity, the goodness of mankind.
Some ruder schooling he had met in the course of his service
in the eastern world — he had already learned that men,
and — harder knowledge yet to gain — women also, can feign
friendship, ay, and love, where neither have the least root in
had learned that bosom friends can be secret foes; that false
loves can betray; and yet he was not disenchanted with humanity,
he had not even dreamed of doubting, because he had
fallen among worldly-minded flatterers and fickle-hearted coquettes,
that absolute friendship and unchangeable love may
exist, even in this evil world, stainless and incorruptible among
all the changes and chances of this mortal life.
If he had been deceived, he had attributed the failure of his
hopes hitherto to the right cause — the fallacy of his own judgment,
and the error of his own choice; and the more he had
been disappointed the more firmly had he relied on what he
felt certain could not change, the affection of his parents, the
love of his betrothed bride.
On the very instant of his landing he found himself shipwrecked
in his first hope; and on his earliest interview with
his uncle, in Paris, he had the agony — the utter and appalling
agony to undergo — of hearing that in the only promise which
he had flattered himself was yet left to him, he was destined
in all probability to undergo a deeper, deadlier disappointment.
If Melanie d'Argenson had been a lovely girl, the good abbé
said, when she was budding out of childhood into youth, so utterly
had she outstripped all the promise of her girlhood, that
no words could describe, nor imagination suggest to itself the
charms of the mature yet youthful woman. There was no
other beauty named, when loveliness was the theme, throughout
all France, than that of the young betrothed of Raoul de Douarnenez.
And that which was so loudly and so widely bruited
abroad, could not fail to reach the ever open, ever greedy ears
of the vile and sensual tyrant who sat on the throne of France,
at that time heaping upon his people that load of suffering and
anguish which was in after-times to be avenged so bitterly and
bloodily upon the innocent heads of his unhappy descendants.
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
and 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 that he was frequently ordered on 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
either 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
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 as cannot! 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
almost 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 bancloche
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
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
— 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, and 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
core.
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
the 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, they are wedded, 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!
what 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 is 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
name 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
pursuit 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,
of 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, low voice —
“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.
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