 | ANNETTE DELARBRE. Bracebridge Hall, or, The humorists |  |
ANNETTE DELARBRE.
Nor heed the loud whistling gale;
Nor strain thy sad eye to where sea meets with sky,
In search of thy true lover's sail.
Anon.
In the course of a tour that I once made in
Lower Normandy, I remained for a day or two
at the old town of Honfleur, which stands near
the mouth of the Seine. It was the time of a fête,
and all the world was thronging in the evening
to dance at the fair held before the chapel of our
Lady of Grace. As I like all kinds of innocent
merry making I joined the throng.
The chapel is situated on the top of a high
hill, or promontory; from whence its bell may
be heard at a distance by the mariner at night.
It is said to have given the name to the port of
on the other side of the Seine. The road up to
the chapel went in a zig-zag course along the
brow of the steep coast; it was shaded by trees,
from between which I had beautiful peeps at
the ancient towers of Honfleur below; the varied
scenery of the opposite shore; the white
buildings of Havre in the distance; and the
wide sea beyond. The road was enlivened by
groups of peasant girls, in their bright crimson
dresses, and tall caps; and I found all the flower
of the neighbourhood assembled on the green
that crowns the summit of the hill.
The chapel of Notre Dame de Grace is a
favourite resort of the inhabitants of Honfleur
and its vicinity, both for pleasure and devotion.
At this little chapel prayers are put up by the
mariners of the port previous to their voyages,
and by their friends during their absence; and
votive offerings are hung about its walls, in fulfilment
of vows made during times of shipwreck
and disaster. The chapel is surrounded by
trees. Over the portal is an image of the virgin
as being quite poetical:
Etoile de la mer, priez pour nous!
(Star of the sea pray for us.)
On a level spot near the chapel, under a grove
of noble trees, the populace dance on fine summer
evenings; and here are held frequent fairs
and fêtes, which assemble all the rustic beauty
of the loveliest parts of Lower Normandy. The
present was an occasion of the kind. Booths
and tents were erected among the trees; there
were the usual displays of finery to tempt the
rural coquette; of wonderful shows to entice
the curious; mountebanks were exerting their
eloquence; jugglers and fortune-tellers astonishing
the credulous; while whole rows of grotesque
saints, in wood and wax-work, were offered
for the purchase of the pious.
The fête had assembled in one view all the
picturesque costumes of the Pays D'Ange, and
the Coté de Caux. I beheld tall stately caps and
been handed down from mother to daughter for
centuries; the exact counterparts of those worn
in the time of the Conqueror, and which surprised
me by their faithful resemblance to those
which I had seen in the old pictures of Froissart's
Chronicles, and in the paintings of illuminated
manuscripts. Any one, also, that has been
in Lower Normandy, must have remarked the
beauty of the peasantry; and that air of native
elegance which prevails among them. It is to
this country, undoubtedly, that the English owe
their good looks. It was from hence that the
bright carnation, the fine blue eye, the light auburn
hair, passed over to England in the train
of the Conqueror, and filled the land with beauty.
The scene before me was perfectly enchanting.
The assemblage of so many fresh and
blooming faces; the gay groups in fanciful
dresses; some dancing on the green; others
strolling about, or seated on the grass; the fine
clumps of trees in the foreground, bordering the
sea, sleeping in summer tranquillity in the distance.
Whilst I was regarding this animated picture,
I was struck with the appearance of a beautiful
girl, who passed through the crowd, without
seeming to take any interest in their amusements.
She was slender and delicate in her form; she
had not the bloom upon her cheek that is usual
among the peasantry of Normandy; and her
blue eyes had a singular and melancholy expression.
She was accompanied by a venerable
looking man, whom I presumed to be er father.
There was a whisper among the bystanders, and
a wistful look after her as she passed; the young
men touched their hats, and some of the children
followed her at a little distance, watching her
movements. She approached the edge of the
hill, where there is a little platform, from whence
the people of Honfleur look out for the approach
of vessels. Here she stood for some time, gazing
on the sea, and waving her handkerchief, though
there was nothing to be seen but two or three
bosom of the distant ocean.
These circumstances excited my curiosity, and
I made some inquiries about her, which were
answered with readiness and intelligence by a
priest of the neighbouring chapel. Our conversation
drew together several of the bystanders,
each of whom had something to communicate,
and from them all I gathered the following particulars:
Annette Delarbre was the only daughter of
one of the higher order of farmers, or small proprietors,
as they are called, who lived at Pont
L'Eveque, a pleasant village, not far from Honfleur,
in that rich pastoral part of Lower Normandy
called the Pays D'Ange. Annette was
the pride and delight of her parents, and was
brought up with the fondest indulgence. She
was gay, tender, petulant, and susceptible. All
her feelings were quick and ardent; and having
never experienced contradiction or restraint, she
was little practised in self-control. Nothing but
running continually into error.
Even while a child, her susceptibility was
evinced in an attachment which she formed to a
playmate, Eugene La Forgue, the only son of a
widow who lived in the neighbourhood. Their
childish love was an epitome of maturer passion;
it had its caprices, and jealousies, and quarrels,
and reconciliations. It was assuming something
of a graver character as Annette entered her fifteenth,
and Eugene his nineteenth year, when
he was suddenly carried off to the army by the
conscription. It was a heavy blow to his widowed
mother, for he was her only pride and comfort;
but it was one of those sudden bereavements
which mothers were perpetually doomed
to feel in France, during the time that continual
and bloody wars were incessantly draining her
youth. It was a temporary affliction also to Annette,
to lose her lover. With tender embraces,
half childish, half womanish, she parted from
him. The tears streamed from her blue eyes as
she bound a long braid of her fair hair round his
she was yet too young to feel how serious a thing
is separation, and how many chances there are,
when parting in this wide world, against our ever
meeting again.
Weeks, months, years flew by. Annette increased
in beauty as she increased in years; and
was the reigning belle of the neighbourhood. Her
time passed innocently and happily. Her father
was a man of some consequence in the rural
community, and his house was the resort of the
gayest of the village. Annette held a kind of rural
court; she was always surrounded by companions
of her own age, among whom she shone
unrivalled. Much of their time was past in
making lace, the prevalent manufacture of the
neighbourhood. As they sat at this delicate and
feminine labour, the merry tale and sprightly
song went round; none laughed with a lighter
heart than Annette; and if she sang, her voice
was perfect melody. Their evenings were enlivened
by the dance, or by those pleasant social
games so prevalent among the French; and
evenings, she was the theme of universal admiration.
As she was a rural heiress she did not want
for suitors. Many advantageous offers were
made her, but she refused them all. She laughed
at the pretended pangs of her admirers, and
triumphed over them with the caprice of buoyant
youth and conscious beauty. With all her
apparent levity, however, could any one have
read the story of her heart, they might have traced
in it some fond remembrance of her early
playmate; not so deeply graven as to be painful;
but too deep to be easily obliterated; and they
might have noticed, amidst all her gayety, the
tenderness that marked her manner towards the
mother of Eugene. She would often steal away
from her youthful companions and their amusements,
to pass whole days with the good widow;
listening to her fond talk about her boy; and
blushing with secret pleasure when his letters
were read, at finding herself a constant theme
of recollection and inquiry.
At length the sudden return of peace, which
sent many a warrior to his native cottage, brought
back Eugene, a young sunburnt soldier to the
village. I need not say how rapturously his return
was greeted by his mother; who saw in
him the pride and staff of her old age. He had
risen in the service by his merit, but brought
away little from the wars excepting a soldier-like
air, a gallant name, and a scar across the
forehead. He brought back, however, a nature
unspoiled by the camp. He was frank, open,
generous, and ardent. His heart was quick and
kind in its impulses, and was perhaps a little
softer from having suffered; it was full of tenderness
for Annette. He had received frequent
accounts of her from his mother, and the mention
of her kindness to his lonely parent, had
rendered her doubly dear to him. He had been
wounded; he had been a prisoner; he had been
in various troubles; but he had always preserved
the braid of her hair which she had bound round
his arm. It had been a kind of talisman to
him; when wounded and in prison, he had many
ground; and the thought that he might one day
see Annette again, and the fair fields about his
native village, had cheered his heart, and enabled
him to bear up against every hardship.
He had left Annette almost a child; he found
her a blooming woman. If he had loved her
before, he now adored her. Annette was equally
struck with the improvement which time had
made in her lover. She noticed, with secret admiration,
his superiority to the other young men
of the village; the frank, lofty, military air that
distinguished him from all the rest at their rural
gatherings. The more she saw of him, the more
her light playful fondness of former years deepened
into ardent and powerful affection. But
Annette was a rural belle. She had tasted the
sweets of dominion; and had been rendered
wilful and capricious by constant indulgence at
home and admiration abroad. She was conscious
of her power over Eugene, and delighted
in exercising it. She sometimes treated him
with petulant caprice, enjoying the pain which
soon she would chace it away again by her
smiles. She took a pleasure in alarming his
fears, by affecting a temporary preference to some
one or other of his rivals; and then would delight
in allaying them by an ample measure of
returning kindness. Perhaps there was some
degree of vanity gratified by all this; it might be
a matter of triumph to show her absolute power
over the young soldier, who was the universal
object of female admiration. Eugene, however,
was of too serious and ardent a nature to be
trifled with. He loved too fervently not to be
filled with doubt. He saw Annette surrounded
by admirers, and full of animation; the gayest
among the gay at all their rural festivities;
and apparently most gay when he was most
dejected, Every one saw through this caprice,
but himself; every one saw that in reality she
doated on him; but Eugene alone suspected the
sincerity of her affection. For some time he
bore this coquetry with secret impatience and
distrust; but his feelings grew sore and irritable,
took place; a quarrel ensued.
Annette, unaccustomed to be thwarted and contradicted,
and full of the insolence of youthful
beauty, assumed an air of disdain. She refused
all explanations to her lover, and they parted in
anger. That very evening Eugene saw her full
of gayety, dancing with one of his rivals; and
as her eye caught his, his fixed on her with unfeigned
distress, it sparkled with more than usual
vivacity. It was a finishing blow to his hopes,
already so much impaired by secret distrust.
Pride and resentment both struggled in his breast;
and seemed to rouse his spirit to all its wonted
energy. He retired from her presence with
the hasty determination never to see her again.
A woman is more considerate in affairs of
love than man; because love is more the study
and business of her life. Annette soon repented
of her indiscretion. She felt that she had used
her lover unkindly; she felt that she had trifled
with his sincere and generous nature—and then
he looked so handsome when he parted after
She had intended making up with him
at the evening dance, but his sudden departure
prevented her. She now promised herself that
when next they met, she would amply repay
him by the sweets of a perfect reconciliation,
and that thenceforward she would never—never
tease him more!
That promise was not to be fulfilled. Day
after day passed; but Eugene did not make his
appearance. Sunday evening came, the usual
time when all the gayety of the village assembled,
but Eugene was not there. She inquired
after him: he had left the village. She now
became alarmed; and forgetting all coyness and
affected indifference, called on Eugene's mother
for an explanation. She found her full of affliction,
and learnt with surprise and consternation
that Eugene had gone to sea.
While his feelings were yet smarting with
her affected disdain, and his heart a prey to alternate
indignation and despair, he had suddenly
embraced an invitation which had repeatedly
out a ship from the port of Honfleur, and who
wished him to be the companion of his voyage.
Absence appeared to him the only cure for his
unlucky passion; and in the temporary transports
of his feelings there was something gratifying
in the idea of having half the world intervene
between them. The hurry necessary for
his departure left no time for cool reflection; it
rendered him deaf to the remonstrances of his
afflicted mother. He hastened to Honfleur just
in time to make the needful preparations for the
voyage; and the first news that Annette received
of this sudden determination, was a letter delivered
by his mother, returning her pledges of
affection, particularly the long treasured braid
of her hair; and bidding her a last farewell, in
terms more full of sorrow and tenderness than
upbraiding.
This was the first stroke of real anguish that
Annette had ever received, and it overcame her.
The vivacity of her spirits were apt to hurry her
to extremes; she for a time gave way to ungovernable
discovered by her violent exclamations the real
ardour of her affection. The thought occurred
to her that the ship might not yet have sailed;
she seized on the hope with eagerness, and hastened
with her father to Honfleur. The ship
had sailed that very morning. From the heights
above the town she saw it lessening to a speck
on the broad bosom of the ocean, and before
evening the white sail had faded from her sight.
She turned, full of anguish, to the neighbouring
chapel of our Lady of Grace, and throwing
herself on the pavement, poured out prayers and
tears for the safe return of her lover.
When she returned home the cheerfulness of
her spirits was at an end. She looked back with
remorse and self upbraiding at her past caprices;
she turned with distaste from the adulation of
her admirers, and had no longer any relish for
the amusements of the village. With humiliation
and diffidence she sought the widowed mother
of Eugene; but was received by her with
an overflowing heart; for she only beheld in her
for her son. It seemed some alleviation of
her remorse, to sit by the mother all day; to
study her wants; to beguile her heavy hours;
to hang about her with the caressing endearments
of a daughter; and to seek by every means, if possible,
to supply the place of the son, whom she
reproached herself with having driven away.
In the mean time the ship made a prosperous
voyage to her destined port. Eugene's mother
received a letter from him, in which he lamented
the precipitancy of his departure. The voyage
had given him time for sober reflection. If Annette
had been unkind to him, he ought not to
have forgotten what was due to his mother, who
was now advanced in years. He accused himself
of selfishness in only listening to the suggestions
of his own inconsiderate passions. He
promised to return with the ship; to make his
mind up to his disappointment; and to think of
nothing but making his mother happy. “And
when he does return,” said Annette, clasping her
if he ever leaves us again!”
The time approached for the ship's return.
She was daily expected, when the weather became
dreadfully tempestuous. Day after day
brought news of vessels foundered or driven on
shore, and the sea coast was strewed with
wrecks. Intelligence was received of the looked
for ship having been seen dismasted in a violent
storm, and the greatest fears were entertained for
her safety.
Annette never left the side of Eugene's mother.
She watched every change of her countenance
with painful solicitude, and endeavoured
to cheer her with hopes, while her own mind
was racked by anxiety. She tasked her efforts
to be gay; but it was a forced and unnatural
gayety; a sigh from the mother would completely
check it; and when she could no longer
restrain the rising tears, she would hurry away
and pour out her agony in secret.
Every anxious look; every anxious inquiry of
the mother, whenever a door opened, or a strange
considered every disappointment as a pang of her
own infliction; and her heart sickened under the
care-worn expression of the maternal eye. At
length this suspense became insupportable. She
left the village and hastened to Honfleur, hoping
every hour, every moment, to receive some tidings
of her lover. She paced the pier, and wearied
the seamen of the port with her inquiries. She
made a daily pilgrimage to the chapel of our
Lady of Grace; hung votive garlands on the
wall; and passed hours either kneeling before
the altar, or looking out from the brow of the
hill upon the angry sea.
At length word was brought that the long
wished for vessel was in sight. She was seen
standing into the mouth of the Seine, shattered
and crippled, bearing marks of having been sadly
tempest tost. There was a general joy diffused
by her return, and there was not a brighter eye
nor a lighter heart than Annette's in the little
port of Honfleur. The ship came to anchor in
the river, and shortly after a boat put off for the
pier head to welcome it. Annette stood blushing,
and smiling, and trembling, and weeping;
for a thousand painfully pleasing emotions agitated
her breast, at the thoughts of the meeting
and the reconciliation that was about to take
place. Her heart throbbed to pour itself out
and atone to her gallant lover for all its errors.
Her agitation increased as the boat drew near;
until it became distressing. At one moment
she placed herself in a conspicuous place, where
she might at once catch his view, and surprize
him by her welcome; the next moment she
shrunk among the throng, trembling, and faint,
and gasping with her emotions.
It was almost a relief to her when she perceived
that her lover was not in the boat; she
presumed that he had remained on board to prepare
for his return home, and she felt as if the
delay would enable her to gather more self-possession
for the meeting. As the boat was nearing
the shore there were a thousand inquiries
made and laconic answers returned. At length
Her heart palpitated: there was a moment's
pause: the reply was brief but awful. He had
been washed from the deck with two of the
crew in the midst of a stormy night, when it
was impossible to render any assistance. A
piercing shriek broke from among the crowd,
and Annette had nearly fallen into the waves.
The sudden revulsion of feelings after such
wearing anxiety was too much for her frame.
She was carried home senseless. Her life was
for some time despaired of, and it was months
before she recovered her health; but she never
had perfectly recovered her mind: it still remained
unsettled with respect to her lover's
fate.
“The subject,” continued my informer, “is
never mentioned in her hearing; but she sometimes
speaks of it, and it seems as though there
were some vague train of impressions in her
mind, in which hope and fear are strangely
mingled, some imperfect idea of his shipwreck,
and yet some expectation of his return.
“Her parents have tried every means to cheer
her up, and to banish these gloomy images from
her thoughts. They assemble round her the
young companions in whose society she used to
delight; and they will work, and chat, and sing,
and laugh as formerly; but she will sit silently
among them, and will sometimes weep in the
midst of their gayety; and if spoken to will
make no reply, but look up with streaming eyes
and sing a dismal little song which she has learnt
somewhere, about a shipwreck. It makes every
one's heart ache to see her in this way; for she
used to be the happiest creature in the village.
“She passes the greater part of the time with
Eugene's mother, whose only consolation is her
society, and who doats on her with a mother's
tenderness. She is the only one that has perfect
influence over Annette in every mood. The
poor girl seems, as formerly, to make an effort to
be cheerful in her company; but will sometimes
gaze upon her with the most piteous look, and
then put back her cap, and kiss her gray hairs,
and fall on her neck and weep.
“She is not always melancholy, however;
she has occasional intervals when she will be
bright and animated for days together; but there
is a degree of wildness attending these fits of
gayety, that prevents their yielding any encouragement
to her friends. At such times she will
arrange her room, which is all covered with pictures
of ships, and legends of saints; and will
wreath a white chaplet, as if for a wedding, and
prepare wedding ornaments. She will listen
anxiously at the door, and look frequently at the
window, as if expecting some one's arrival. It
is supposed that at such times she is looking for
her lover's return; but as no one touches upon
the theme, or mentions his name in her presence,
the current of her thoughts are for the most part
merely conjecture.
“Now and then she will make a pilgrimage
to the chapel of Notre Dame de Grace; where
she will pray for hours at the altar, and decorate
the images with wreaths that she has woven; or
will wave her handkerchief from the terrace,
seen in the distance.”
Nearly two years, he informed me, had
now elapsed, without effacing from her mind
this singular taint of insanity; still her friends
hoped it might gradually wear away. They
had at one time removed her to a distant part of
the country, in hopes that absence from the scenes
connected with her story might have a salutary
effect; but, when her periodical melancholy returned
she became more restless and wretched
than usual, and, privately escaping from her
friends, set out on foot, without knowing the
road, on one of her pilgrimages to the chapel.
This little story entirely drew my attention
from the gay scene of the fête, and fixed it upon
the beautiful Annette. While she was yet standing
on the terrace the vesper bell was rung from
the neighbouring chapel. She listened for a moment,
and then, drawing a small rosary from her
bosom, walked in that direction. Several of the
peasantry followed her in silence; and I felt too
much interested not to do the same.
The chapel, as I said before, is in the midst of
a grove on the high promontory. The inside is
hung round with miniature ships, and rude paintings
of wrecks and perils at sea, and providential
deliverances; the votive offerings of captains and
crews that have been saved. On entering, Annette
paused for a moment before a picture of the
virgin; which I observed had recently been decorated
with a wreath of artificial flowers. When
she reached the middle of the chapel she knelt
down, and those who followed her involuntarily
did the same at a little distance. The evening
sun shone softly through the chequered grove into
one window of the chapel. A perfect stillness
reigned within; and this stillness was the more
impressive contrasted with the distant sound of
music and merriment of the fair.
I could not take my eyes off from the poor
suppliant. Her lips moved as she told her beads;
but her prayers were breathed in silence. It
might have been mere fancy excited by the scene,
that, as she raised her eyes to heaven, I thought
they had an expression truly seraphic; but I am
something in this mixture of love, devotion, and
partial insanity, that was inexpressibly touching.
As the poor girl left the chapel there was a
sweet serenity in her looks, and I was told that
she would now return home, and in all probability
be calm and cheerful for days and even
weeks; in which time it was supposed that hope
predominated in her mental malady; and that
when the dark side of her mind, as her friends
called it, was about to turn up, it would be known
by her neglecting her distaff or her lace; singing
plaintive songs, and weeping in silence.
She passed on from the chapel without noticing
the fête, but smiling and speaking to many
as she passed. I followed her with my eye as
she descended the winding road towards Honfleur,
leaning on her father's arm. “Heaven,”
thought I, “has ever its store of balms for the
hurt mind and wounded spirit, and may in time
raise up this broken flower to be once more the
pride and joy of the valley. The very delusion
those mists kindly diffused by Providence over
the regions of thought, when they become too
fruitful of misery. The veil may gradually be
raised which obscures the horizon of her mind,
as she is enabled steadily and calmly to contemplate
the sorrows at present hidden in mercy
from her view.”
| ANNETTE DELARBRE. Bracebridge Hall, or, The humorists | |