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Title: Stray Pearls

Author: Charlotte M. Yonge

Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5708]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on August 12, 2002]

Edition: 10

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Charlotte M Yonge may be found at http://www.menorot.com/cmyonge.htm.







STRAY PEARLS

MEMOIRS OF MARGARET DE RIBAUMONT

VISCOUNTESS OF BELLAISE





PREFACE



No one can be more aware than the author that the construction of
this tale is defective.  The state of French society, and the strange
scenes of the Fronde, beguiled me into a tale which has become rather
a family record than a novel.

Formerly the Muse of the historical romance was an independent and
arbitrary personage, who could compress time, resuscitate the dead,
give mighty deeds to imaginary heroes, exchange substitutes for
popular martyrs on the scaffold, and make the most stubborn facts
subservient to her purpose.  Indeed, her most favoured son boldly
asserted her right to bend time and place to her purpose, and to make
the interest and effectiveness of her work the paramount object.  But
critics have lashed her out of these erratic ways, and she is now
become the meek hand maid of Clio, creeping obediently in the track
of the greater Muse, and never venturing on more than colouring and
working up the grand outlines that her mistress has left undefined.
Thus, in the present tale, though it would have been far more
convenient not to have spread the story over such a length of time,
and to have made the catastrophe depend upon the heroes and heroines,
instead of keeping them mere ineffective spectators, or only engaged
in imaginary adventures for which a precedent can be found, it has
been necessary to stretch out their narrative, so as to be at least
consistent with the real history, at the entire sacrifice of the
plot.  And it may be feared that thus the story may partake of the
confusion that really reigned over the tangled thread of events.
There is no portion of history better illustrated by memoirs of the
actors therein than is the Fronde; but, perhaps, for that very reason
none so confusing.

Perhaps it may be an assistance to the reader to lay out the bare
historical outline like a map, showing to what incidents the memoirs
of the Sisters of Ribaumont have to conform themselves.

When Henry IV. succeeded in obtaining the throne of France, he found
the feudal nobility depressed by the long civil war, and his
exchequer exhausted.  He and his minister Sully returned to the
policy of Louis XI., by which the nobles were to be kept down and
prevented from threatening the royal power.  This was seldom done by
violence, but by giving them employment in the Army and Court,
attaching them to the person of the King, and giving them offices
with pensions attached to them.

The whole cost of these pensions and all the other expenses of
Government fell on the townspeople and peasantry, since the clergy
and the nobles to all generations were exempt from taxation.  The
trade and all the resources of the country were taking such a spring
of recovery since the country had been at peace, and the persecution
of the Huguenots had ceased, that at first the taxation provoked few
murmurs.  The resources of the Crown were further augmented by
permitting almost all magistrates and persons who held public offices
to secure the succession to their sons on the payment of a tariff
called LA PAULETTE, from the magistrate who invented it.

In the next reign, however, an effort was made to secure greater
equality of burthens.  On the meeting of the States-General--the only
popular assembly possessed by France--Louis XIII., however, after
hearing the complaints, and promising to consider them, shut the
doors against the deputies, made no further answer, and dismissed
them to their houses without the slightest redress.  The Assembly was
never to meet again till the day of reckoning for all, a hundred and
seventy years later.

Under the mighty hand of Cardinal Richelieu the nobles were still
more effectually crushed, and the great course of foreign war begun,
which lasted, with short intervals, for a century.  The great man
died, and so did his feeble master; and his policy, both at home and
abroad, was inherited by his pupil Giulio Mazarini, while the regency
for the child, Louis XIV., devolved on his mother, Anne of Austria--a
pious and well-meaning, but proud and ignorant, Spanish Princess--who
pinned her faith upon Mazarin with helpless and exclusive devotion,
believing him the only pilot who could steer her vessel through
troublous waters.

But what France had ill brooked from the high-handed son of her
ancient nobility was intolerable from a low-born Italian, of graceful
but insinuating manners.  Moreover, the war increased the burthens of
the country, and, in the minority of the King, a stand was made at
last.

The last semblance of popular institutions existed in the Parliaments
of this was the old feudal Council of the Counts of Paris, consisting
of the temporal and spiritual peers of the original county, who had
the right to advise with their chief, and to try the causes
concerning themselves.  The immediate vassals of the King had a right
to sit there, and were called Paris De France, in distinction from
the other nobles who only had seats in the Parliament in whose
province their lands might lie.  To these St. Louis, in his anxiety
to repress lawlessness, had added a certain number of trained lawyers
and magistrates; and these were the working members of these
Parliaments, which were in general merely courts of justice for civil
and criminal causes.  The nobles only attended on occasions of
unusual interest.  Moreover, a law or edict of the King became valid
on being registered by a Parliament.  It was a moot question whether
the Parliament had the power to baffle the King by refusing to
register an edict, and Henry IV. had avoided a refusal from the
Parliament of Paris, by getting his edict of toleration for the
Huguenots registered at Nantes.

The peculiarly oppressive house-tax, with four more imposts proposed
in 1648, gave the Parliament of Paris the opportunity of trying to
make an effectual resistance by refusing the registration.  They were
backed by the municipal government of the city at the Hotel de Ville,
and encouraged by the Coadjutor of the infirm old Archbishop of
Paris, namely, his nephew, Paul de Gondi, titular Bishop of Corinth
in partibus infidelium, a younger son of the Duke of Retz, an Italian
family introduced by Catherince de Medici.  There seemed to be a hope
that the nobility, angered at their own systematic depression, and by
Mazarin's ascendency, might make common cause with the Parliament and
establish some effectual check to the advances of the Crown.  This
was the origin of the party called the Fronde, because the speakers
launched their speeches at one another as boys fling stones from a
sling (fronde) in the streets.

The Queen-Regent was enraged through all her despotic Spanish
haughtiness at such resistance.  She tried to step in by the arrest
of the foremost members of the Opposition, but failed, and only
provoked violent tumults.  The young Prince of Conde, coming home
from Germany flushed with victory, hated Mazarin extremely, but his
pride as a Prince of the Blood, and his private animosities impelled
him to take up the cause of the Queen.  She conveyed her son secretly
from Paris, and the city was in a state of siege for several months.
However, the execution of Charles I. in England alarmed the Queen on
the one hand, and the Parliament on the other as to the consequences
of a rebellion, provisions began to run short, and a vague hollow
peace was made in the March of 1649.

Conde now became intolerably overbearing, insulted every one, and so
much offended the Queen and Mazarin that they caused him, his
brother, and the Duke of Bouillon, to be arrested and imprisoned at
Vincennes.  His wife, though a cruelly-neglected woman whom he had
never loved, did her utmost to deliver him, repaired to Bordeaux, and
gained over the Parliament there, so that she held out four months
against the Queen.  Turenne, brother to Bouillon, and as great a
general as Conde, obtained the aid of Spaniards, and the Coadjutor
prevailed on the King's uncle, Gaston, Duke of Orleans, to represent
that the Queen must give way, release the Princes, part with Mazarin,
and even promise to convoke the States-General.  Anne still, however,
corresponded with the Cardinal, and was directed by him in
everything.  Distrust and dissension soon broke out, Conde and the
Coadjutor quarrelled violently, and the royal promises made to both
Princes and Parliament were eluded by the King, at fourteen, being
declared to have attained his majority, and thus that all engagements
made in his name became void.

Conde went of to Guienne and raised an army; Mazirin returned to the
Queen; Paris shut its gates and declared Mazarin an outlaw.  The
Coadjutor (now become Cardinal de Retz) vainly tried to stir up the
Duke of Orleans to take a manly part and mediate between the parties;
but being much afraid of his own appanage, the city of Orleans, being
occupied by either army, Gaston sent his daughter to take the charge
of it, as she effectually did--but she was far from neutrality, being
deluded by a hope that Conde would divorce his poor faithful wife to
marry her.  Turenne, on his brother's release, had made his peace
with the Court, and commanded the royal army.  War and havoc raged
outside Paris; within the partisans of the Princes stirred the
populace to endeavour to intimidate the Parliament and municipality
into taking their part.  Their chief leader throughout was the Duke
of Beaufort, a younger son of the Duke of Vendome, the child of
Gabrille d'Estrees.  He inherited his grandmother's beauty and his
grandfather's charm of manner; he was the darling of the populace of
Paris, and led them, in an aimless sort of way, whether there was
mischief to be done; and the violence and tumult of this latter
Fronde was far worse than those of the first.

A terrible battle in the Faubourg St. Antoine broke Conde's force,
and the remnant was only saved by Mademoiselle's insisting on their
being allowed to pass through Paris.  After one ungrateful attempt to
terrify the magistrates into espousing his cause and standing a siege
on his behalf, Conde quitted Paris, and soon after fell ill of a
violent fever.

His party melted away.  Mazarin saw that tranquillity might be
restored if he quitted France for a time.  The King proclaimed an
amnesty, but with considerable exceptions and no relaxation of his
power; and these terms the Parliament, weary of anarchy, and finding
the nobles had cared merely for their personal hatreds, not for the
public good, were forced to accept.

Conde, on his recovery, left France, and for a time fought against
his country in the ranks of the Spaniards.  Beaufort died bravely
fighting against the Turks at Cyprus.  Cardinal de Retz was
imprisoned, and Mademoiselle had to retire from Court, while other
less distinguished persons had to undergo the punishment for their
resistance, though, to the credit of the Court party be it spoken,
there were no executions, only imprisonments; and in after years the
Fronde was treated as a brief frenzy, and forgotten.

Perhaps it may be well to explain that Mademoiselle was Anne
Genevieve de Bourbon, daughter of Gaston, Duke of Orleans, by his
first wife, the heiress of the old Bourbon branch of Montpensier.
She was the greatest heiress in France, and an exceedingly vain and
eccentric person, aged twenty-three at the beginning of the Fronde.

It only remains to say that I have no definite authority for
introducing such a character as that of Clement Darpent, but it is
well known that there was a strong under-current of upright, honest,
and highly-cultivated men among the bourgeoisie and magistrates, and
that it seemed to me quite possible that in the first Fronde, when
the Parliament were endeavouring to make a stand for a just right,
and hoping to obtain further hopes and schemes, and, acting on higher
and purer principles than those around him, be universally
misunderstood and suspected.


C. M. YONGE.





CONTENTS



CHAPTER I.      WHITEHALL BEFORE THE COBWEBS

CHAPTER II.     A LITTLE MUTUAL AVERSION

CHAPTER III.    CELADON AND CHLOE

CHAPTER IV.     THE SALON BLEU

CHAPTER V.      IN GARRISON

CHAPTER VI.     VICTORY DEARLY BOUGHT

CHAPTER VII.    WIDOW AND WIFE

CHAPTER VIII.   MARGUERITE TO THE RESCUE

CHAPTER IX.     THE FIREBAND OF THE BOCAGE

CHAPTER X.      OLD THREADS TAKEN UP

CHAPTER XI.     THE TWO QUEENS

CHAPTER XII.    CAVALIERS IN EXILE

CHAPTER XIII.   MADEMOISELLE'S TOILETTE

CHAPTER XIV.    COURT APPOINTMENTS

CHAPTER XV.     A STRANGE THANKGIVING DAY

CHAPTER XVI.    THE BARRICADES

CHAPTER XVII.   A PATIENT GRISEL

CHAPTER XVIII.  TWELFTH NIGHT, OR WHAT YOU WILL

CHAPTER XIX.    INSIDE PARIS (Annora's Narrative)

CHAPTER XX.     CONDOLENCE (By Margaret)

CHAPTER XXI.    ST. MARGARET AND THE DRAGON

CHAPTER XXII.   ST. MARGARET AND THE DRAGON (By Annora)

CHAPTER XXIII.  THE LION AND THE MOUSE

CHAPTER XXIV.   FAMILY HONOUR

CHAPTER XXV.    THE HAGUE

CHAPTER XXVI.   HUNKERSLUST

CHAPTER XXVII.  THE EXPEDIENT (Annora's Narrative)

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOEUF GRAS (Annora's Narrative)

CHAPTER XXIX.   MADAME'S OPPORTUNITY (Annora's Narrative)

CHAPTER XXX.    THE NEW MAID OF ORLEAN (Margaret's Narrative)

CHAPTER XXXI.   PORTE ST. ANTOINE (Margaret's Narrative)

CHAPTER XXXII.  ESCAPE (Annora's Narrative)

CHAPTER XXXIII. BRIDAL PEARLS

CHAPTER XXXIV.  ANNORA'S HOME





STRAY PEARLS

MEMOIRS OF MARGARET DE RIBAUMONT

VISCOUNTESS OF BELLAISE





CHAPTER I.

WHITEHALL BEFORE THE COBWEBS.



I have long promised you, my dear grandchildren, to arrange my
recollections of the eventful years that even your father can hardly
remember.  I shall be glad thus to draw closer the bonds between
ourselves and the English kindred, whom I love so heartily, though I
may never hope to see them in this world, far less the dear old home
where I grew up.

For, as perhaps you have forgotten, I am an English woman by birth,
having first seen the light at Walwyn House, in Dorsetshire.  One
brother had preceded me--my dear Eustace--and another brother,
Berenger, and my little sister, Annora, followed me.

Our family had property both in England and in Picardy, and it was
while attending to some business connected with the French estate
that my father had fallen in love with a beautiful young widow,
Madame la Baronne de Solivet (nee Cheverny), and had brought her
home, in spite of the opposition of her relations.  I cannot tell
whether she were warmly welcomed at Walwyn Court by any one but the
dear beautiful grandmother, a Frenchwoman herself, who was delighted
again to hear her mother tongue, although she had suffered much among
the Huguenots in her youth, when her husband was left for dead on the
S. Barthelemi.

He, my grandfather, had long been dead, but I perfectly remember her.
She used to give me a sugar-cake when I said 'Bon soir, bonne maman,'
with the right accent, and no one made sugar-cake like hers. She
always wore at her girdle a string of little yellow shells, which she
desired to have buried with her.  We children were never weary of
hearing how they had been the only traces of her or of her daughter
that her husband could find, when he came to the ruined city.

I could fill this book with her stories, but I must not linger over
them; and indeed I heard no more after I was eight years old.  Until
that time my brother and I were left under her charge in the country,
while my father and mother were at court.  My mother was one of the
Ladies of the Bedchamber of Queen Henrietta Maria, who had been
enchanted to find in her a countrywoman, and of the same faith.  I
was likewise bred up in their Church, my mother having obtained the
consent of my father, during a dangerous illness that followed my
birth, but the other children were all brought up as Protestants.
Indeed, no difference was made between Eustace and me when we were at
Walwyn.  Our grandmother taught us both alike to make the sign of the
cross, and likewise to say our prayers and the catechism; and oh! we
loved her very much.

Eustace once gave two black eyes to our rude cousin, Harry
Merricourt, for laughing when he said no one was as beautiful as the
Grandmother, and though I am an old woman myself, I think he was
right.  She was like a little fairy, upright and trim, with dark
flashing eyes, that never forgot how to laugh, and snowy curls on her
brow.

I believe that the dear old lady made herself ill by nursing us two
children day and night when we had the smallpox.  She had a stroke,
and died before my father could be fetched from London; but I knew
nothing of all that; I only grieved, and wondered that she did not
come to me, till at last the maid who was nursing me told me flatly
that the old lady was dead.  I think that afterwards we were sent
down to a farmer's house by the sea, to be bathed and made rid of
infection; and that the pleasure of being set free from our sick
chambers and of playing on the shore drove from our minds for the
time our grief for the good grandma, though indeed I dream of her
often still, and of the old rooms and gardens at Walwyn, though I
have never seen them since.

When we were quite well and tolerably free from pock-marks, my father
took us to London with him, and there Eustace was sent to school at
Westminster; while I, with little Berry, had a tutor to teach us
Latin and French, and my mother's waiting-maid instructed me in
sewing and embroidery.  As I grew older I had masters in dancing and
the spinnet, and my mother herself was most careful of my deportment.
Likewise she taught me such practices of our religion as I had not
learnt from my grandmother, and then it was I found that I was to be
brought up differently from Eustace and the others.  I cried at
first, and declared I would do like Eustace and my father.  I did not
think much about it; I was too childish and thoughtless to be really
devout; and when my mother took me in secret to the queen's little
chapel, full of charming objects of devotion, while the others had to
sit still during sermons two hours long, I began to think that I was
the best off.

Since that time I have thought much more, and talked the subject over
both with my dear eldest brother and with good priests, both English
and French, and I have come to the conclusion, as you know, my
children, that the English doctrine is no heresy, and that the Church
is a true Church and Catholic, though, as my home and my duties lie
here, I remain where I was brought up by my mother, in the communion
of my husband and children.  I know that this would seem almost
heresy to our good Pere Chavand, but I wish to leave my sentiments on
record for you, my children.

But how I have anticipated my history!  I must return, to tell you
that when I was just sixteen I was told that I was to go to my first
ball at Whitehall.  My hair was curled over my forehead, and I was
dressed in white satin, with the famous pearls of Ribaumont round my
neck, though of course they were not to be mine eventually.

I knew the palace well, having often had the honour of playing with
the Lady Mary, who was some years younger than I, so that I was much
less alarmed than many young gentlewomen there making their first
appearance.  But, as my dear brother Eustace led me into the outer
hall, close behind my father and mother, I heard a strange whistle,
and, looking up, I saw over the balustrade of the gallery a droll
monkey face looking out of a mass of black curls, and making
significant grimaces at me.

I knew well enough that it was no other than the Prince of Wales. He
was terribly ugly and fond of teasing, but in a good-natured way,
always leaving off when he saw he was giving real pain, and I liked
him much better than his brother, the Duke of York, who was proud and
sullen.  Yet one could always trust the Duke, and that could not be
said for the Prince.

By the time we had slowly advanced up the grand staircase into the
banqueting-hall, and had made our reverences to the king and queen--
ah, how stately and beautiful they looked together!--the Prince had
stepped in some other way, and stood beside me.

'Well, Meg,' he said, in an undertone--'I beg pardon, Mrs. Margaret--
decked out in all her splendour, a virgin for the sacrifice!'

'What sacrifice, sir?'  I asked, startled.

'Eh!' he said.  'You do not know that le futur is arrived!'

'She knows nothing, your Highness,' said Eustace.

'What, oh, what is there to know?'  I implored the Prince and my
brother in turn to inform me, for I saw that there was some earnest
in the Prince's jests, and I knew that the queen and my mother were
looking out for a good match for me in France.

'Let me show him to you,' presently whispered the Prince, who had
been called off by his father to receive the civilities of an
ambassador.  Then he pointed out a little wizened dried-up old man,
who was hobbling up to kiss Her Majesty's hand, and whose courtly
smile seemed to me to sit most unnaturally on his wrinkled
countenance.  I nearly screamed.  I was forced to bite my lips to
keep back my tears, and I wished myself child enough to be able to
scream and run away, when my mother presently beckoned me forward.  I
hardly had strength to curtsey when I was actually presented to the
old man.  Nothing but terror prevented my sinking on the floor, and I
heard as through falling waters something about M. le Marquis de
Nidemerle and Mrs. Margaret Ribmont, for so we were called in
England.

By and by I found that I was dancing, I scarcely knew how or with
whom, and I durst not look up the whole time, nor did my partner
address a single word to me, though I knew he was near me; I was only
too thankful that he did not try to address me.

To my joy, when we had made our final reverences, he never came near
me again all the evening.  I found myself among some young maidens
who were friends of mine, and in our eager talk together I began to
forget what had passed, or to hope it was only some teasing pastime
of the Prince and Eustace.

When we were seated in the coach on the way to our house my father
began to laugh and marvel which had been the most shy, the gallant or
the lady, telling my mother she need never reproach the English with
bashfulness again after this French specimen.

'How will he and little Meg ever survive to-morrow's meeting!' he
said.

Then I saw it was too true, and cried out in despair to beg them to
let me stay at home, and not send me from them; but my mother bade me
not be a silly wench.  I had always known that I was to be married in
France and the queen and my half-brother, M. de Solivet, had found an
excellent parti for me.  I was not to embarrass matters by any folly,
but I must do her credit, and not make her regret that she had not
sent me to a convent to be educated.

Then I clung to my father.  I could hold him tight in the dark, and
the flambeaux only cast in a fitful flickering light.  'Oh, sir,'
said I, 'you cannot wish to part with your little Meg!'

'You are your mother's child, Meg,' he said sadly.  'I gave you up to
her to dispose of at her will.'

'And you will thank me one of these days for your secure home,' said
my mother.  'If these rogues continue disaffected, who knows what
they may leave us in England!'

'At least we should be together,' I cried, and I remember how I
fondled my father's hand in the dark, and how he returned it.  We
should never have thought of such a thing in the light; he would have
been ashamed to allow such an impertinence, and I to attempt it.

Perhaps it emboldened me to say timidly: 'If he were not so old---'

But my mother declared that she could not believe her ears that a
child of hers should venture on making such objections--so
unmaidenly, so undutiful to a parti selected by the queen and
approved by her parents.

As the coach stopped at our own door I perceived that certain strange
noises that I had heard proceeded from Eustace laughing and chuckling
to himself all the way.  I must say I thought it very unkind and
cruel when we had always loved each other so well.  I would hardly
bid him good-night, but ran up to the room I shared with nurse and
Annora, and wept bitterly through half the night, little comforted by
nurse's assurance that old men were wont to let their wives have
their way far more easily than young ones did.




CHAPTER II.

A LITTLE MUTUAL AVERSION.



I had cried half the night, and when in the morning little Nan wanted
to hear about my ball, I only answered that I hated the thought of
it.  I was going to be married to a hideous old man, and be carried
to France, and should never see any of them again.  I made Nan cry
too, and we both came down to breakfast with such mournful faces that
my mother chid me sharply for making myself such a fright.

Then she took me away to the still-room, and set me for an hour to
make orange cakes, while she gave orders for the great dinner that we
were to give that day, I knew only too well for whose sake; and if I
had only known which orange cake was for my betrothed, would not it
have been a bitter one!  By and by my mother carried me off to be
dressed.  She never trusted the tiring-woman to put the finishing
touches with those clumsy English fingers; and, besides, she bathed
my swollen eyelids with essences, and made me rub my pale cheeks with
a scarlet ribbon, speaking to me so sharply that I should not have
dared to shed another tear.

When I was ready, all in white, and she, most stately in blue velvet
and gold, I followed her down the stairs to the grand parlour, where
stood my father, with my brothers and one or two persons in black,
who I found were a notary and his clerk, and there was a table before
them with papers, parchment, a standish, and pens.  I believe if it
had been a block, and I had had to lay my head on it, like poor Lady
Jane Grey, I could not have been much more frightened.

There was a sound of wheels, and presently the gentleman usher came
forward, announcing the Most Noble the Marquis de Nidemerle, and the
Lord Viscount of Bellaise.  My father and brothers went half-way down
the stairs to meet them, my mother advanced across the room, holding
me in one hand and Annora in the other.  We all curtsied low, and as
the gentlemen advanced, bowing low, and almost sweeping the ground
with the plumes in their hats, we each had to offer them a cheek to
salute after the English fashion.  The old marquis was talking French
so fast that I could not understand him in the least, but somehow a
mist suddenly seemed to clear away from before me, and I found that I
was standing before that alarming table, not with him, but with
something much younger--not much older, indeed, than Eustace.

I began to hear what the notary was reading out, and behold it was--
'Contract of marriage on the part of Philippe Marie Francois de
Bellaise, Marquis de Nidermerle, and Eustace de Ribaumont, Baron
Walwyn of Walwyn, in Dorset, and Baron de Ribaumont in Picardy, on
behoof of Gaspard Henri Philippe, Viscount de Bellaise, nephew of the
Marquis de Nidemerle, and Margaret Henrietta Maria de Ribaumont,
daughter of the Baron de Ribaumont.'

Then I knew that I had been taken in by the Prince's wicked trick,
and that my husband was to be the young viscount, not the old uncle!
I do not think that this was much comfort to me at the moment, for,
all the same, I was going into a strange country, away from every one
I had ever known.

But I did take courage to look up under my eye-lashes at the form I
was to see with very different eyes.  M. de Ballaise was only
nineteen, but although not so tall as my father or brother, he had
already that grand military bearing which is only acquired in the
French service, and no wonder, or he had been three years in the
Regiment de Conde, and had already seen two battles and three sieges
in Savoy, and now had only leave of absence for the winter before
rejoining his regiment in the Low Countries.

Yet he looked as bashful as a maiden.  It was true that, as my father
said, his bashfulness was as great as an Englishman's.  Indeed, he
had been bred up at his great uncle's chateau in Anjou, under a
strict abbe who had gone with him to the war, and from whom he was
only now to be set free upon his marriage.  He had scarcely ever
spoken to any lady but his old aunt--his parents had long been dead--
and he had only two or three times seen his little sister through the
grating of her convent.  So, as he afterwards confessed, nothing but
his military drill and training bore him through the affair.  He
stood upright as a dart, bowed at the right place, and in due time
signed his name to the contract, and I had to do the same.  Then
there ensued a great state dinner, where he and I sat together, but
neither of us spoke to the other; and when, as I was trying to see
the viscount under my eyelashes, I caught his eyes trying to do the
same by me, I remember my cheeks flaming all over, and I think his
must have done the same, for my father burst suddenly out into a
laugh without apparent cause, though he tried to check himself when
he saw my mother's vexation.

When all was over, she highly lauded the young gentleman, declaring
that he was an example of the decorum with which such matters were
conducted in France; and when my father observed that he should
prefer a little more fire and animation, she said: 'Truly, my lord,
one would think you were of mere English extraction, that you should
prefer the rude habits of a farmer or milkmaid to the reserve of a
true noble and lady of quality.'

'Well, dame, I promised that you should have it your own way with the
poor lass,' said my father; 'and I see no harm in the lad, but I own
I should like to know more of him, and Meg would not object either.
It was not the way I took thee, Margaret.'

'I shall never make you understand that a widow is altogether a
different thing,' said my mother.

I suppose they never recollected that I could hear every word they
said, but I was full in view of them, and of course I was listening
most anxiously for all I could gather about my new life.  If I
remember right, it was an envoy-extraordinary with whom the marquis
and his nephew had come, and their stay was therefore very short, so
that we were married after a very few days in the Queen's Chapel, by
her own almoner.

I do not remember much about the wedding, as indeed it was done very
quietly, being intended to be kept altogether a secret; but in some
way, probably through the servants, it became known to the mob in
London, and as we drove home from Whitehall in the great coach with
my father and mother, a huge crowd had assembled, hissing and yelling
and crying out upon Lord Walwyn for giving his daughter to a French
Papist.

The wretches! they even proceeded to throw stones.  My young
bridegroom saw one of these which would have struck me had he not
thrown himself forward, holding up his hat as a shield.  The stone
struck him in the eye, and he dropped forward upon my mother's knee
senseless.

The crowd were shocked then, and fell back, but what good did that do
to him?  He was carried to his chamber, and a surgeon was sent for,
who said that there was no great injury done, for the eye itself had
not been touched, but that he must be kept perfectly quiet until the
last minute, if he was to be able to travel without danger, when the
suite were to set off in two day's time.  They would not let me go
near him.  Perhaps I was relieved, for I should not have known what
to do; yet I feared that he would think me unkind and ungrateful, and
I would have begged my mother and Eustace to thank him and make my
excuses, but I was too shy, and I felt it very hard to be blamed for
indifference and rudeness.

Indeed, we four young ones kept as much together as we could do in
the house and gardens, and played all our dear old games of
shuttlecock, and pig go to market, and proverbs, and all that you, my
children, call very English sports, because we knew only too well
that we should never play at them altogether again.  The more I was
blamed for being childish, the more I was set upon them, till at last
my mother said that she was afraid to let me go, I was so childish
and unfeeling; and my father replied that she should have thought of
that before.  He and I were both more English at heart than French,
and I am sure now that he perceived better than I did myself that my
clinging to my brothers and sister, and even my noisy merriment, were
not the effect of want of feeling.

As to my bridegroom, I have since known that he was dreadfully afraid
of us, more especially of me, and was thankful that the injury kept
him a prisoner.  Nay, he might have come downstairs, if he had been
willing, on the last evening, but he shrank from another presentation
to me before the eyes of all the world, and chose instead to act the
invalid, with no companion save Eustace, with whom he had made
friends.

I will not tell you about the partings, and the promises and
assurances that we should meet again.  My father had always promised
that my mother should see France once more, and he now declared that
they would all visit me.  Alas! we little thought what would be the
accomplishment of that promise.

My father and Eustace rode with us from London to Dover, and all the
time I kept close to them.  M. de Bellaise was well enough to ride
too.  His uncle, the marquis, went in a great old coach with the
ladies, wives of some of his suite, and I should have been there too,
but that I begged so hard to ride with my father that he yielded,
after asking M. le Vicomte whether he had any objection.  M. le
Vicomte opened great eyes, smiled, blushed and bowed, stammering
something.  I do not think that he had a quite realised previously
that I was his wife, and belonged to him.  My father made him ride
with us, and talked to him; and out in the open air, riding with the
wind in our cheeks, and his plume streaming in the breeze, he grew
much less shy, and began to talk about the wolf-hunts and boar-hunts
in the Bocage, and of all the places that my father and I both knew
as well as if we had seen them, from the grandam's stories.

I listened, but we neither of us sought the other; indeed, I believe
it seemed hard to me that when there was so little time with my
father and Eustace, they should waste it on these hunting stories.
Only too soon we were at Dover, and the last, last farewell and
blessing were given.  I looked my last, though I knew it not at that
dear face of my father!




CHAPTER III.

CELADON AND CHLOE



My tears were soon checked by dreadful sea-sickness.  We were no
sooner out of Dover than the cruel wind turned round upon us, and we
had to go beating about with all our sails reefed for a whole day and
night before it was safe to put into Calais.

All that time I was in untold misery, and poor nurse Tryphena was
worse than I was, and only now and then was heard groaning out that
she was a dead woman, and begging me to tell some one to throw her
over board.

But it was that voyage which gave me my husband.  He was not exactly
at his ease, but he kept his feet better than any of the other
gentlemen, and he set himself to supply the place of valet to his
uncle, and of maid to me, going to and fro between our cabins as best
he could, for he fell and rolled whenever he tried to more; sharp
shriek or howl, or a message through the steward, summoned him back
to M. le Marquis, who had utterly forgotten all his politeness and
formality towards the ladies.

However, our sufferings were over at last.  My husband, who was by
this time bruised from head to foot by his falls, though he made no
complaints, came to say we should in a few moments be in port.  He
helped me to dress, for Tryphena thought she was dead, and would not
move; and he dragged me on deck, where the air revived me, and where
one by one the whole party appeared, spectacles of misery.

M. le Marquis did not recover himself till he was on shore, and
caused himself to be assisted to the quay between his nephew and the
valet, leaving me to myself; but the dear viscount returned for me,
and after he had set me ashore, as he saw I was anxious about
Tryphena, he went back and fetched her, as carefully as if she had
been a lady, in spite of the grumblings of his uncle and of her own
refractoriness, for she was horribly frightened, and could not
understand a word he said to her.

Nevertheless, as soon as we had all of us come to ourselves, it
turned out that he had gained her heart.  Indeed, otherwise I should
have had to send her home, for she pined sadly for some time, and
nothing but her love for me and her enthusiastic loyalty to him kept
her up during the first months.

As to my husband and me, that voyage had made us as fond of one
another's company on one side of the Channel as we had been afraid of
it before on the other, but there was no more riding together for us.
I had to travel in the great coach with M. le Marquis, the three
ladies, and all our women, where I was so dull and weary that I
should have felt ready to die, but for watching for my husband's
plume, or now and then getting a glance and a nod from him as he rode
among the other gentlemen, braving all their laughter at his
devotion; for, bashful as he was, he knew how to hold his own.

I knew that the ladies looked on me as an ugly little rustic
foreigner, full of English mauvaise honte.  If they tried to be kind
to me, it was as a mere child; and they went on with their chatter,
which I could hardly follow, for it was about things and people of
which I knew nothing, so that I could not understand their laughter.
Or when they rejoiced in their return from what they called their
exile, and found fault with all they had left in England, my cheeks
burned with indignation.

My happy hours were when we halted for refreshments.  My husband
handed me to my place at table and sat beside me; or he would walk
with me about the villages where we rested.  The ladies were shocked,
and my husband was censured for letting me 'faire l'Anglaise,' but we
were young and full of spirits, and the being thus thrown on each
other had put an end to his timidity towards me. He did indeed blush
up to his curls, and hold himself as upright as a ramrod, when satire
was directed to us as Celadon and Chloe; but he never took any other
notice of it, nor altered his behaviour in consequence.  Indeed, we
felt like children escaping from school when we crept down the stairs
in early morning, and hand-in-hand repaired to the church in time for
the very earliest mass among the peasants, who left their scythes at
the door, and the women with their hottes, or their swaddled babies
at their backs.  We would get a cup of milk and piece of barley-bread
at some cottage, and wander among the orchards, fields, or vineyards
before Mesdames had begun their toiles; and when we appeared at the
dejeuner, the gentlemen would compliment me on my rouge au naturel,
and the ladies would ironically envy my English appetite.

Sometimes we rested in large hostels in cities, and then our walk
began with some old cathedral, which could not but be admired, Gothic
though it were, and continued in the market-place, where the piles of
fruit, vegetables, and flowers were a continual wonder and delight to
me.  My husband would buy bouquets of pinks and roses for me; but in
the coach the ladies always said they incommoded them by their scent,
and obliged me to throw them away.  The first day I could not help
shedding a few tears, for I feared he would think I did not value
them; and then I perceived that they thought the little Englishwoman
a child crying for her flowers.  I longed to ask them whether they
had ever loved their husbands; but I knew how my mother would have
looked at me, and forbore.

Once or twice we were received in state at some chateau, where our
mails had to be opened that we might sup in full toilet; but this was
seldom, for most of the equals of M. le Marquis lived at Paris.
Sometimes our halt was at an abbey, where we ladies were quartered in
a guest-chamber without; and twice we slept at large old convents,
where nobody had lived since the Huguenot times, except a lay brother
put in by M. l'Abbe to look after the estate and make the house a
kind of inn for travelers.  There were fine walled gardens run into
wild confusion, and little neglected and dismantled shrines, and
crosses here and there, with long wreaths of rose and honeysuckle
trailing over them, and birds' nests in curious places. My Viscount
laughed with a new pleasure when I showed him the wren's bright eye
peeping out from her nest, and he could not think how I knew the egg
of a hedge-sparrow from that of a red-breast.  Even he had never been
allowed to be out of sight of his tutor, and he knew none of these
pleasures so freely enjoyed by my brothers; while as to his sister
Cecile, she had been carried from her nurse to a convent, and had
thence been taken at fourteen to be wedded to the grandson and heir
of the Count d'Aubepine, who kept the young couple under their own
eye at their castle in the Bocage.

My husband had absolutely only seen her twice, and then through the
grating, and the marriage had taken place while he was in Savoy last
autumn.  He knew his brother-in-law a little better, having been his
neighbour at Nid de Merle; but he shrugged his shoulders as he spoke
of 'le chevalier,' and said he was very young, adored by his
grandparents, and rather headstrong.

As to growing up together in the unity that had always existed
between an absolute surprise to him to find that my dear brother was
grieved at parting with me.  He said he had lain and heard our shouts
in the passages with wonder as we played those old games of ours.

'As though you were in a den of roaring wild beasts,' I said; for I
ventured on anything with him by that time, voices, I teased him
about his feelings at having to carry off one of these same savage
beasts with him; and then he told me how surprised he had been when,
on the last evening he spent in his chamber in our house, Eustace had
come and implored him to be good to me, telling him--ah, I can see my
dear brother's boyish way!--all my best qualities, ranging from my
always speaking truth to my being able to teach the little dog to
play tricks, and warning him of what vexed or pained me, even
exacting a promise that he would take care of me when I was away from
them all.  I believe that promise was foremost in my husband's mind
when he waited on me at sea.  Nay, he said when remembered the tears
in my brother's eyes, and saw how mine arose at the thought, his
heart smote him when he remembered that his sister's marriage had
scarcely cost him a thought or care, and that she was an utter
stranger to him; and then we agreed that if ever we had children, we
would bring them up to know and love one another, and have precious
recollections in common.  Ah! l'homme propose, mais Dieu dispose.

It was only on that day that it broke upon me that we were to be
separated immediately after our arrival in Paris.  M. de Bellaise was
to go to his regiment, which was at garrison at Nancy, and I was to
be left under the charge of old Madame la Marquise de Nidemerle at
Paris.  I heard of it first from the Marquise himself in the coach,
as he thanked one of the ladies who invited me--with him--to her
salon in Paris, where there was to be a great entertainment in the
summer.  When I replied that M. de Bellaise would have rejoined his
regiment, they began explaining that I should go into society under
Madame de Nidemerle, who would exert herself for my sake.

I said no more.  I knew it was of no use there; but when next I could
speak with my husband--it was under an arbour of vines in the garden
of the inn where we dine--I asked him whether it was true.  He opened
large eyes, and said he knew I could not wish to withdraw him from
his duty to his king and country, even if he could do so with honour.

'Ah! no,' I said; 'I never thought of that.'  But surely the place of
a wife was with her husband, and I had expected to go with him to his
garrison at Nancy, and there wait when he took the field.  He threw
himself at my feet, and pressed my hands with transport at what he
called this unheard-of proof of affection; and then I vexed him by
laughing, for I could not help thinking what my brothers would have
said, could they have seen us thus.

Still he declared that, in spite of his wishes, it was hardly
possible.  His great-uncle and aunt would never consent.  I said they
had no right to interfere between husband and wife, and he replied
that they had brought him up, and taken the place of parents to him;
to which I rejoined that I was far nearer to him.  He said I was a
mutinous Englishwoman; and I rejoined that he should never find me
mutinous to him.

Nay, I made up my mind that if he would not insist on taking me, I
would find means to escape and join him.  What!  Was I to be carried
about in the coach of Madame de Nidemerle to all the hateful salons
of Paris, while my husband, the only person in France whom I could
endure, might be meeting wounds and death in the Low Countries while
I might be dancing!

So again I declined when the ladies in the coach invited me to their
houses in Paris.  Should I go to a convent? they asked; and one began
to recommend the Carmelites, another the Visitation, another Port
Royal, till I was almost distracted; and M. le Marquis began to say
it was a pious and commendable wish, but that devotion had its proper
times and seasons, and that judgment must be exercised as to the
duration of a retreat, etc.

'No, Monsieur,' said I, 'I am not going into a convent.  A wife's
duty is with her husband; I am going into garrison at Nancy.'

Oh, how they cried out!  There was such a noise that the gentlemen
turned their horses' heads to see whether any one was taken ill.
When they heard what was the matter, persecution began for us both.

We used to compare our experiences; the ladies trying to persuade me
now that it was improper, now that I should be terrified to death now
that I should become too ugly to be presentable; while the gentlemen
made game of M. de Bellaise as a foolish young lover, who was so
absurd as to encumber himself with a wife of whom he would soon
weary, and whose presence would interfere with his enjoyment of the
freedom and diversions of military life.  He who was only just free
from his governor, would he saddle himself with a wife?  Bah!

He who had been so shy defended himself with spirit; and on my side I
declared that nothing but his commands, and those of my father,
should induce me to leave him.  At Amiens we met a courier on his way
to England, and by him we dispatched letters to my father.

M. de Nidemerle treated all like absurd childish nonsense,
complimenting me ironically all the while; but I thought he wavered a
little before the journey was over, wishing perhaps that he had never
given his nephew a strange, headstrong, English wife, but thinking
that, as the deed was done, the farther off from himself she was the
better.

At least, he no longer blamed his nephew and threatened him with his
aunt; but declared that Madame de Rambouillet would soon put all such
folly out of our minds.

I asked my husband what Madame de Rambouillet could have to do with
our affairs; and he shrugged his shoulders and answered that the
divine Arthenice was the supreme judge of decorum, whose decisions
no one could gainsay.




CHAPTER IV.

THE SALON BLEU



We arrived at Paris late in the day, entering the city through a
great fortified gateway, and then rolling slowly through the rough
and narrow streets.  You know them too well, my children, to be able
to conceive how strange and new they seemed to me, accustomed as I
was to our smooth broad Thames and the large gardens of the houses in
the Strand lying on its banks.

Our carriage turned in under the porte cochere of this Hotel de
Nidemerle of ours, and entered the courtyard.  My husband, his uncle,
and I know not how many more, were already on the steps.  M. de
Nidemerle solemnly embraced me and bade me welcome, presenting me at
the same time to a gentlemen, in crimson velvet and silver, as my
brother.  My foolish heart bounded for a moment as if it could have
been Eustace; but it was altogether the face of a stranger, except
for a certain fine smile like my mother's.  It was, of course, my
half-brother, M. le Baron de Solivet, who saluted me, and politely
declared himself glad to make the acquaintance of his sister.

The Marquis then led me up the broad stairs, lined with lackeys, to
our own suite of apartments, where I was to arrange my dress before
being presented to Madame de Nidemerle, who begged me to excuse her
not being present to greet me, as she had caught cold, and had a
frightful megrim.

I made my toilet, and they brought me a cup of eau sucree and a few
small cakes, not half enough for my hungry English appetite.

My husband looked me over more anxiously than ever he had done
before; and I wished, for his sake, that I had been prettier and
fitter to make a figure among all these grand French ladies.

My height was a great trouble to me in those unformed days.  I had so
much more length to dispose of than my neighbours, and I knew they
remarked me the more for it; and then my hair never would remain in
curl for half an hour together.  My mother could put it up safely,
but since I had left her it was always coming down, like flax from a
distaff; and though I had in general a tolerably fresh and rosy
complexion, heat outside and agitation within made my whole face,
nose and all, instantly become the colour of a clove gillyflower.  It
had so become every afternoon on the journey, and I knew I was
growing redder and redder every moment, and that I should put him, my
own dear Viscount, to shame before his aunt.

'Oh! my friend,' I sighed, 'pardon me, I cannot help it.'

'Why should I pardon thee?' he answered tenderly. 'Because thou hast
so great and loving a heart?'

'Ah! but what will thine aunt think of me?'

'Let her think,' he said.  'Thou art mine, not Madame's.'

I know not whether those words made me less red, but they gave me
such joyous courage that I could have confronted all the dragoons,
had I been of the colour of a boiled lobster, and when he himself
sprinkled me for the last time with essences, I felt ready to defy
the censure of all the marchionesses in France.

My husband took me by the hand and led me to the great chamber, where
in an alcove stood the state bed, with green damask hangings fringed
with gold, and in the midst of pillows trimmed with point-lace sat up
Madam la Marquis, her little sallow face, like a bit of old
parchment, in the midst of the snowy linen, and not--to my eyes--
wearing a very friendly aspect.

She had perhaps been hearing of my wilfulness and insubordination,
for she was very grand and formal with me, solemnly calling me Madame
la Vicomtesse, and never her niece, and I thought all the time that I
detected a sneer.  If I had wished for my husband's sake to accompany
him, I wished it ten thousand times more when I fully beheld the
alternative.

Ah! I am writing treason.  Had I been a well-trained French young
girl I should have accepted my lot naturally, and no doubt all the
family infinitely regretted that their choice has fallen on one so
impracticable.

I was happier as the supper-table, to which we were soon summoned,
for I had become accustomed to M. de Nidemerle, who was always kind
to me.  Poor old man, I think he had hoped to have something young
and lively in his house; but I never thought of that, and of course
my husband was my only idea.

M. de Solivet set by me, and asked many questions about my mother and
the rest of the family, treating me more as a woman than anyone else
had done.  Nor was it long before I caught slight resemblances both
to my mother and to my brother Berenger, which made me feel as home
with him.  He was a widower, and his two daughters were being
educated in a convent, where he promised to take me to visit them,
that I might describe them to their grandmother.

Poor little things! I thought them very stiff and formal, and pitied
them when I saw them; but I believed they were really full of fun and
folic among their companions.

M. de Solivet was consulted on this wild scheme of mine, and the
Marchioness desired him to show me its absurdity.  He began by
arguing that it was never when to act in the face of custom, and that
he had only known of two ladies who had followed their husbands to
the wars, and both them only belonged to the petite noblesse, and
were no precedent for me!  One of them had actually joined her
husband when wounded and made prisoner, and it was said that her care
had saved his life!

Such a confession on his part rendered me the more determined, and we
reminded M. de Nidemerle of his promise to consult Madame de
Rambouillet, though I would not engage even  then to abide by any
decision except my father's, which I daily expected.  I overheard
people saying how much M. de Bellaise was improved by his marriage,
and how much more manly and less embarrassed he had become, and I
felt that my resolution made him happy, so that I became the more
determined.

Children, you who have laughed at Les Precieuses can have little idea
what the Hotel de Rambouillet was when, three nights after arrival, I
went thither with my husband and his uncle and aunt.

The large salon, hung and draped with blue velvet, divided by lines
of gold, was full of people ranged in a circle, listening eagerly to
the recital of poem by the author, an Abbe, who stood in the midst,
declaiming each couplet with emphasis, and keeping time with his
foot, while he made gestures with his uplifted hand.  Indeed, I
thought at first he was in a furious passion and was going to knock
someone down, till I saw calmly everyone sat; and then again I
fancied we had come to a theatre by mistake; but happily I did not
speak, and, without interrupting the declamation, chairs were given
us, and exchanging a mute salutation with a lady of a noble cast of
beauty, who guided us to seats, we quietly took our places.  She was
Julie d'Argennes, the daughter of Madame de Rambouillet.  A gentlemen
followed her closely, the Duke of Montausier, who adored her, but
whom she could not yet decide on accepting.

I found it difficult to fit from laughing as the gestures of the
Abbe, especially when I thought of my brother and how they would mock
them; but I knew that this would be unpardonable bad taste, and as I
had come in too late to have the clue to the discourse, I amused
myself with looking about me.

Perhaps the most striking figure was that of the hostess, with her
stately figure, and face, not only full of intellect, but of
something that went far beyond it, and came out of some other higher
world, to which she was trying to raise this one.

Next I observed a lady, no longer in her first youth, but still
wonderfully fair and graceful.  She was enthroned in a large arm-
chair, and on a stool beside her sat her daughter, a girl of my own
age, the most lovely creature I had ever seen, with a profusion of
light flaxen hair, and deep blue eyes, and one moment full of grave
thought, at another of merry mischief.  A young sat by, whose cast of
features reminded me of the Prince of Wales, but his nose was more
aquiline, his dark blue eyes far more intensely bright and flashing,
and whereas Prince Charles would have made fun of all the flourishes
of our poet, they seemed to inspire in this youth an ardour he could
barely restrain, and when there was something vehement about Mon epee
et ma patrie he laid his hand on his sword, and his eyes lit up, so
that he reminded me of a young eagle.

This was the Princess of Conde, who in the pride of her youthful
beauty had been the last flame of Henri IV., who had almost begun a
war on her account; this was her lovely daughter, Mademoiselle de
Bourbon, and her sons, the brave Duke of Enghien, with his deformed
brother, the Prince of Conti.

When the recital was over, there was a general outburst of applause,
in which M. de Nidemerle joined heartily.  Madame de Rambouillet gave
her meed of approbation, but her daughter, Mademoiselle d' Argennes,
took exception at the use of the word chevaucher, for to ride, both
as being obsolete, and being formed from the name of a single animal,
instead of regularly derived from a Latin verb.

The Abbe defended his word, and for fully twenty minutes there was an
eager argument, people citing passages and derivations, and defining
shades of meaning with immense animation and brilliant wit, as I now
understand, though then it seemed to me a wearisome imbroglio about a
trifle.  I did not know what real benefit was done by these
discussions in purifying the language from much that was coarse and
unrefined.  Yes, and far more than the language, for Madame de
Rambouillet, using her great gifts as a holy trust for the good of
her neighbour, conferred no small benefit on her generation, nor is
that good even yet entirely vanished.  Ah! If there were more women
like her, France and society would be very different.

When the discussion was subsiding, Mademoiselle d' Argennes came to
take me by the hand, and to present us to the queen of the salon.

'Here, my mother, are our Odoardo and Gildippe,' she said.

You remember, my children, that Odoardo and Gildippe are the names
bestowed by Tasso on the English married pair who went together on
the first crusade, and Gildippe continued to be my name in that
circle, my nom de Parnasse, as it was called--nay, Madame de
Montausieur still gives it to me.

The allusion was a fortunate one; it established a precedent, and,
besides, English people have always been supposed to be eccentric.  I
am, however, doing the noble lady injustice.  Arthenice, as she was
called by an anagram of her baptismal name of Catherine, was no blind
slave to the conventional.  She had originality enough to have been
able to purify the whole sphere in which she moved, and to raise the
commonplace into the ideal.  'Excuse me,' she said to her friends,
and she led my husband apart into a deep window, and there, as he
told me, seemed to look him through and through.  And verily he was
one who needed not to fear such an inspection, any more than the
clearest crystal.

Then, in like manner, she called for me, and made me understand that
I was condemning myself to a life of much isolation, and that I must
be most circumspect in my conduct, whole, after all, I might see very
little of my husband; I must take good care that my presence was a
help and refreshment, not a burden and perplexity to him, or he would
neglect me and repent my coming.  'It may seem strange,' she said,
'but I think my young friend will understand me, that I have always
found that, next of course to those supplied by our holy religion,
the best mode of rendering our life and its inconveniences endurable
is to give them a colouring of romance.'  I did not understand her
then, but I have often since thought of her words, when the
recollection of the poetical aspect of the situation has aided my
courage and my good temper.  Madame de Rambouillet looked into my
eyes as she spoke, then said: 'Pardon an old woman, my dear;' and
kissed my brow, saying: 'You will not do what I have only dreamt of.'

Finally she led us forward to our great-uncle, saying: 'Madame le
Marquis, I have conversed with these children.  They love one
another, and so long as that love lasts they will be better guardians
to one another than ten governors or twenty dames de compagnie.'

In England we should certainly not have done all this in public, and
my husband and I were terribly put to the blush; indeed, I felt my
whole head and neck burning, and caught a glimpse of myself in a
dreadful mirror, my white bridal dress and flaxen hair making my
fiery face look, my brothers would have said, 'as if I had been
skinned.'

And then, to make it all worse, a comical little crooked lady, with a
keen lively face, came hopping up with hands outspread, crying: 'Ah,
let me see her! Where is the fair Gildippe, the true heroine, who is
about to confront the arrows of the Lydians for the sake of the lord
of her heart?'

'My niece,' said the Marquis, evidently gratified by the sensation I
had created, 'Mademoiselle de Scudery does you the honour of
requesting to be presented to you.'

I made a low reverence, terribly abashed, and I fear it would have
reduced my mother to despair, but it was an honour that I
appreciated; for now that I was a married woman, I was permitted to
read romances, and I had just begun on the first volume of the Grand
Curus.  My husband read it to me as I worked at my embroidery, and
you may guess how we enjoyed it.

But I had no power of make compliments--nay, my English heart
recoiled in anger at their making such an outcry, whether of blame or
praise, at what seemed to me the simplest thing in the world.  The
courtesy and consideration were perfect; as soon as these people saw
that I was really abashed and distressed, they turned their attention
from me.  My husband was in the meantime called to be presented to
the Duke of Enghien, and I remained for a little while unmolested, so
that I could recover myself a little.  Presently a soft voice close
to me said 'Madame,' and I looked up into the beautiful countenance
of Anne Genevieve de Bourbon, her blue eyes shining on me with the
sweetest expression.  'Madame,' she said, 'permit me to tell you how
glad I am for you.'

I thanked her most heartily.  I felt this was the real tender
sympathy of a being of my own age and like myself, and there were
something so pathetic in her expression that I felt sorry for her.

'You are good!  You will keep good,' she said.

'I hope so, Mademoiselle,' I said.

'Ah! yes, you will.  They will not make you lose your soul against
your will!' and she clenched her delicate white hand.

'Nobody can do that, Mademoiselle.'

'What!  Not when they drag you to balls and fete away from the
cloister, where alone you can be safe?'

'I hope not there alone,' I said.

'For me it is the only place,' she repeated.  'What is the use of
wearing haircloth when the fire of the Bourbons is in one's blood,
and one has a face that all the world runs after?'

'Mais, Mademoiselle,' I said; 'temptation is only to prove our
strength.'

'You are strong.  You have conquered,' she said, and clasped my hand.
'But then you loved him.'

I suppose I smiled a little with my conscious bliss, for this strange
young princess hastily asked: 'Did you love him?  I mean, before you
were married.'

'Oh no,' I said, glad to disavow what was so shocking in my new
country.

'But he is lovable?  Ah! that is it.  While you are praying to
Heaven, and devoting yourself to a husband whom you love, remember
that if I ruin my soul, it is because they would have it so!'

At that moment there was a pause.  A gentleman, the Marquis de
Feuquieres, had come in, bringing with him a very young lad, in the
plian black gown and white collar of a theological student; and it
was made known that the Marquis had been boasting of the wonderful
facility of a youth was studying at the College of Navarre, and had
declared that he could extemporise with eloquence upon any subject.
Some one had begged that the youth might be fetched and set to preach
on a text proposed to him at the moment, and here he was.

Madame de Rambouillet hesitated a little at the irreverence, but the
Duke of Enghien requested that the sermon might take place, and she
consented, only looking at her watch and saying it was near midnight,
so that the time was short.  M. Voiture, the poet, carried round a
velvet bag, and each was to write a text on a slip of paper to be
drawn out at haphazard.

We two showed each other what we wrote.  My husband's was--'Love is
strong as death;' mine--'Let the wife cleave unto her husband.'  But
neither of them was drawn out.  I saw by the start that Mademoiselle
de Bourbon gave that it was hers, when the first paper was taken out--
'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!'  a few minutes were offered to
the young Abbe to collect his thoughts, but he declined them, and he
was led to a sort of a dais at the end of the salon, while the chairs
were placed in a half-circle.  Some of the ladies tittered a little,
though Madame de Rambouillet looked grave; but they composed
themselves.  We all stood and repeated the Ave, and then seated
ourselves; while the youth, in a voice already full and sweet, began
solemnly: 'What is life? what is man?'

I can never convey to you how this world and all its fleeting follies
seemed to melt away before us, and how each of us felt our soul alone
in the presence of our Maker, as though nothing mattered, or ever
would matter, but how we stood with Him.  One hardly dared to draw
one's breath.  Mademoiselle de Bourbon was almost stifled with the
sobs she tried to restrain lest her mother should make her retire.
My husband held my hand, and pressed it unseen.  He was a deeper,
more thoughtful man ever after he heard that voice, which seemed to
come, as it were, from the Angel at Bochim who warned the Israelites;
and that night we dedicated ourselves to the God who had not let us
be put asunder.

I wished we could have gone away at once and heard no more, and so
must, I think, the young preacher have felt; but he was surrounded
with compliments. M. Voiture said he had never heard 'so early nor so
late a sermon;' while others thronged up with their compliments.

Madame de Rambouillet herself murmured: 'He might be Daniel hearing
the compliments of Belshazzar on his deciphering the handwriting,' so
impassively did he listen to the suffrages of the assembly, only
replying by a bow.

The Duke of Enghien, boldest of course, pressed up to him and, taking
his hand, begged to know his name.

'Bossuet, Monseigneur,' he answered.

There were one or two who had the bad taste to smile, for Bossuet (I
must tell my English kindred) means a draught-ox; but once more the
lovely sister of the young Duke grasped my hand and said: 'Oh, that I
could hide myself at once!  Why will they not let me give myself to
my God?  Vanity of vanities! why am I doomed?'

I was somewhat frightened, and was glad that a summons of 'my
daughter' from the Princess of Conde interrupted these strange
communications.  I understood them better when we were called upon to
ell the old Marchioness the names of every one whom we had met at the
Hotel de Rambouillet, and on hearing of the presence of Mademoiselle
de Bourbon she said: 'Ah! yes, a marriage is arranged for the young
lady with the Duke of Longueville.'

'But!' exclaimed my husband, 'the Duke is an old man, whose daughter
is older than I.'

'What has that to do with it?' said his aunt.  'There is not much
blood in France with which a Montmorency Bourbon can match.
Moreover, they say the child is devote, and entetee on Madam de Port
Royal, who is more than suspected of being outree in her devotion; so
the sooner she is married the better!'

Poor beautiful girl, how I pitied her then!  Her lovely, wistful,
blue eyes haunted me all night, in the midst of my own gladness; for
a courier had come that evening bringing my father's reply.  He said
my mother deplored my unusual course, but that for his part he liked
his little girl the better for her courage, and that he preferred
that I should make my husband's home happy to my making it at court.
All he asked of me was to remember that I had to guard the honour of
my husband's name and of my country, and he desired that I should
take Tryphena with me wherever I went.




CHAPTER V.

IN GARRISON.



I am almost afraid to dwell on those happiest days of my life that I
spent in garrison.  My eyes, old as they are, fill with tears when I
am about to write of them, and yet they passed without my knowing how
happy they were; for much of my time was spent in solitude, much in
waiting, much in anxiety; but ah! there then always was a possibility
that never, never can return!

Nancy seems to me a paradise when I look back to it, with its broad
clean streets and open squares, and the low houses with balconies,
and yet there I often thought myself miserable, for I began to learn
what it was to be a soldier's wife. Madame de Rambouillet had kindly
written to some of her friends in the duchy of Lorraine respecting
me, and they assisted us in obtaining a lodging and servants.  This
might otherwise have been difficult, for the Duke was I the Spanish
army, while we held his territories, and naturally we were not in
very good odour with the people.

My husband had to leave me, immediately after he had placed me in my
little house at Nancy, to join the army in Germany under Marshal
Guebrian.  I lived through that time by the help of the morning mass,
of needlework, and of the Grand Cyrus, which I read through and then
began again.  My dear husband never failed to send me a courier once
a week with letters that were life to me, and sometimes I heard from
England; but my mother's letters were becoming full of anxiety,
affairs were looking so ill for the king.

After a gallant victory over the Swedes my Viscount returned to me
without a wound, and with distinguished praise from the Marshal.
That was an important winter, for it saw the deaths of the great
Cardinal and of King Louis XIII., moreover of the old Marchioness.
My husband's loving heart sorrowed for her and for his uncle; but
that same week brought thee to my arms, my dear son, my beloved
Gaspard!  Oh! what a fight Tryphena and I had to prevent his being
stifled in swaddling clothes!  And how all the women predicted that
his little limbs would be broken and never be straight.

That winter was only clouded by the knowledge that spring would take
my husband away again.  How good he was to me!  How much pleasure and
amusement he gave up for my sake!  He had outgrown his bashfulness
and embarrassment in this campaign, and could take his place in
company, but re remained at home with me.   Had neither the grace nor
the vivacity that would have enabled me to collect a society around
me, and I seldom saw his brother officers except my brother M. de
Solivet, and his great friend M. de Chamillard, who was quite
fatherly to me.

The Duke of Enghien took the command of the army of Picardy, and
asked for our regiment.  I entreated not to be sent back to Paris,
and prevailed to be allowed to take up my abode at Mezieres, where I
was not so far from the camp but that my dear M. de Bellaise could
sometimes ride over and see me.  He told me of the murmur of the
elder men of the army that the fiery young inexperienced prince was
disregarding all the checks that the old Marshal de l'Hopital put in
his way; but he himself was delighted, and made sure of success.  The
last time he came he told me he heard that Rocroy was invested by the
enemy.  I was made to promise that in case of any advance on the
enemy's part I would instantly set off for Paris.  He said it was the
only way to make him fight with a free heart, if a battle there were,
and not repent of having permitted me to follow him, and that I must
think of my child as well as myself; but he did not expect any such
good fortune as a battle, the old marshal was so set against it!

But I knew that he did expect a battle, by the way he came back and
back again to embrace me and his child.

I have waited and watched many times since that day, but never as I
then waited.  With what agony I watched and prayed! how I lived
either before the altar, or at the window! how I seemed to be all
eyes and ears!  How reports came that there was fighting, then that
we had the day, then that all was lost!  Then came a calm, and it was
said that Marshal de l'Hospital had refused to fight, and was in full
retreat, with the Duke of Enghien cursing and swearing and tearing
his hair.  My landlord had a visit from the mayor to say that he must
prepare to have some men billeted on him, and I sent out to inquire
for horses, but decided that, as it was only our own troops
retreating, there would be plenty of time.  Then one of the maids of
the house rushed in declaring that firing was plainly to be heard.
Half the people were out in the streets, many more had gone outside
the city to listen.  Tryphena sat crying with fright, and rocking the
baby in her lap, and wishing she had never come to this dreadful
country.  Alas! poor Tryphena she would have been no better off in
her own at that moment!  I ran from window to door, unable to rest a
moment, listening to the cries in the streets, asking the landlady
what she heard, and then running back to my own room to kneel in
prayer, but starting up at the next sound in the streets.

At last, just before sunset, on that long, long 19th of May, all the
bells began to ring, clashing as if mad with joy, and a great roaring
shout burst out all over the city: 'Victory!  Victory!  Vive le Roi!
Vive le Duc d'Enghien!'

I was at the window just in time to see a party of splendid horsemen,
carrying the striped and castellated colours of Spain, galloping
through the town, followed by universal shouts and acclamations.  My
man-servant, Nicole, frantic with joy, came in to tell me that they
had only halted at the inn long enough to obtain fresh horses, on
their way to the Queen-Regent with the news of the great victory of
Rocroy.  More standards taken, more cannon gained, more of the enemy
killed and captive than could be counted, and all owing to the
surpassing valour of the Duke of Enghien!

'And my husband!' I cried, and asked everybody, as if, poor little
fool that I was, any one was likely to know how it fared with one
single captain of the dragoons of Conde on such a day as that.

The good landlady and Tryphena both tried to reassure me that if
there were ill news it would have been sent to me at once; but though
they persuaded me at last to go to bed, I could not sleep, tossing
about and listening till morning light, when I dropped into a sound
sleep, which lasted for hours.  I had longed for the first morning
mass to go and pray there, but after all I only heard the bells
through my slumber, feeling as if I could not rouse myself, and then
--as it seemed to me, in another moment--I heard something that made
me turn round on my pillow and open my eyes, and there he stood--my
husband himself.  His regiment had surpassed itself; he had received
the thanks of his colonel; he had but snatched a few hours' sleep,
and had ridden off to assure his Gildippe of his safety by her own
eyes, and to rejoice over our splendid victory.

And yet he could not but shudder as he spoke.  When they had asked a
Spanish prisoner how many there had been in the army, 'Count the
dead,' he proudly answered.  Nor could my husband abstain from tears
as he told me how the old Spanish guards were all lying as they
stood, slain all together, with their colonel, the Count of Fontanes,
at their head, sitting in the armchair in which he had been carried
to the field, for he was more than eighty years old, and could not
stand or ride on account of the gout.

The Duke of Enghien had said that if he had not been victorious, the
next best thing would be to have died like that.

But his charges, his fire, his coolness, his skill, the vehemence
which had triumphed over the caution of the old marshal, and the
resolution which had retrieved the day when his colleague was
wounded; of all this M. de Bellaise spoke with passionate ardour and
enthusiasm, and I--oh! I think that was the happiest and most
glorious day of all my life!

When we went together to mass, how everybody looked at him! and when
we returned there was quite a little crowd--M. le Gouverneur and his
officials eager to make their compliments to M. de Bellaise, and to
ask questions about the Duke and about the battle, and whether he
thought the Duke would march this way, in which case a triumphal
entry should be prepared.  They wanted to have regaled M. de Bellaise
with a banquet, and were sadly disappointed when he said he had only
stolen a few hours to set his wife's heart at rest, and must return
immediately to the camp.

There was little after that to make me anxious, for our army merely
went through a course of triumphs, taking one city after another in
rapid succession.  I remained at Mezieres, and M. de Bellaise
sometimes was able to spend a few days with me, much, I fear, to the
derision of his fellow-soldiers, who could not understand a man's
choosing such a form of recreation.  We had been walking under the
fine trees in the PLACE on a beautiful summer evening, and were
mounting the stairs on our return home, when we heard a voice
demanding of the hostess whether this were the lodging of Captain de
Bellaise.

I feared that it was a summons from the camp, but as the stranger
came forward I saw that he was a very young man in the dress of a
groom, booted, spurred, and covered with dust and dried splashes of
mud, though his voice and pronunciation were those of a gentleman.

'Do you bring tidings from M. le Marquis?' inquired my husband, who
had recognized our livery.

'Ah! I have deceived you likewise, and no wonder, for I should not
have known you, Philippe,' cried the new comer.

'Armand d'Aubepine!  Impossible!  I thought your child was a girl,'
exclaimed my husband.

'And am I to waste my life and grow old ingloriously on that
account?' demanded the youth, who had by this time come up to our
rooms.

'Welcome, then, my brother,' said my husband a little gravely, as I
thought.  'My love,' he added, turning to me, 'let me present to you
my brother-in-law, the Chevalier d'Aubepine.'

With infinite grace the Chevalier put a knee to the ground, and
kissed my hand.

'Madame will be good enough to excuse my present appearance,' he
said, 'in consideration of its being the only means by which I could
put myself on the path of honour.'

'It is then an evasion?' said my husband gravely.

'My dear Viscount, do not give yourself the airs of a patriarch.
They do not suit with your one-and-twenty years, even though you are
the model of husbands.  Tell me, where is your hero?'

'The Duke?  He is before Thionville.'

'I shall be at his feet in another day.  Tell me how goes the war.
What cities are falling before our arms?'

He asked of victories; M. de Bellaise asked of his sister.  'Oh!
well, well, what do I know?' he answered lightly, as if the matter
were beneath his consideration; and when I inquired about his child,
he actually made a grimace, and indeed he had barely seen her, for
she had been sent out to be nursed at a farmhouse, and he did not
even recollect her name.  I shall never forget how he stared, when at
the sound of a little cry my husband opened the door and appeared
with our little Gaspard, now five months old, laughing and springing
in his arms, and feeling for the gold on his uniform.  The count had
much the same expression with which I have seen a lady regard me when
I took a caterpillar in my hand.

'Ah! ah!' cried our Chevalier; 'with all his legs and arms too!  That
is what comes of marrying an Englishwoman.'  [he did not know I was
within hearing, for I had gone in to give Tryphena orders about the
room he would occupy.]  'Beside, it is a son.'

'I hope one day to have a daughter whom I shall love the more, the
more she resembles her mother,' said my husband, to tease him.

'Bah!  You will not have to detest her keeping you back from glory!
Tell me, Philippe, could a lettre de cachet reach me here?'

'We are on French soil.  What have you been doing, Armand?'

'Only flying from inglorious dullness, my friend.  Do not be
scandalized, but let me know how soon I can reach the hero of France,
and enroll myself as a volunteer.'

'The Duke is at Binche.  I must return thither tomorrow.  You had
better eat and sleep here tonight, and then we can decide what is to
be done.'

'I may do that,' the youth said, considering.  'My grandfather could
hardly obtain an order instantaneously, and I have a fair start.'

So M. de Bellaise lent him some clothes, and he appeared at supper as
a handsome lively-looking youth, hardly come to his full height, for
he was only seventeen, with a haughty bearing, and large, almost
fierce dark eyes, under eyebrows that nearly met.

At supper he told us his story.  He was, as you know the only scion
of the old house of Aubepine, his father having been killed in a
duel, and his mother dying at his birth.  His grandparents bred him
up with the most assiduous care, but (as my husband told me) it was
the care of pride rather than of love.  When still a mere boy, they
married him to poor little Cecile de Bellaise, younger still, and
fresh from her convent, promising, on his vehement entreaty, that so
soon as the succession should be secured by the birth of a son, he
should join the army.

Imagine then his indignation and despair when a little daughter--a
miserable little girl, as he said--made her appearance, to prolong
his captivity.  For some centuries, he said--weeks he meant--he
endured, but then came the tidings of Rocroy to drive him wild with
impatience, and the report that there were negotiations for peace
completed the work.  He made his wife give him her jewels and assist
his escape from the window of her chamber; bribed a courier--who was
being sent from M. de Nidemerle to my husband--to give him his livery
and passport and dispatches, and to keep out of sight; and thus
passed successfully through Paris, and had, through a course of
adventures which he narrated with great spirit, safely reached us.
Even if the rogue of a courier, as he justly called his accomplice,
had betrayed him, there was no fear but that he would have time to
put himself on the roll of the army, whence a promising young noble
volunteer was not likely to be rejected.

My husband insisted that he should write to ask the pardon of his
grandfather, and on that condition engaged to introduce him to the
Duke and to the lieutenant-colonel of his regiment.  M. de Bellaise
then inquired anxiously after the health of our uncle, who, on the
death of his wife, had retired to his own estate at Nid de Merle,
close to the Chateau d'Aubepine.  Of this the young gentleman could
tell little or nothing.

'Bah!' he said, adding what he thought was a brilliant new military
affirmation, unaware that it was as old as the days of the League.
'What know I?  He is, as all old men are, full of complaints.'

Handsome, graceful, courteous, spirited as was this young Chevalier,
I could not like him, and I afterwards told my husband that I
wondered at his assisting him.

'My love,' he said, 'the Chateau d'Aubepine is dull enough to die of.
The poor fellow was eating out his own heart.  He has followed his
instinct, and it is the only thing that can save him from worse
corruption.'

'His instinct of selfishness,' I said.  'His talk was all of glory,
but it was of his own glory, not his duty nor the good of his
country.  He seems to me to have absolutely no heart!'

'Do not be hard on him; remember how he has been brought up.'

'You were brought up in like manner by two old people.'

'Ah! but they loved me.  Besides, my tutor and his were as different
as light and darkness.'

'And your poor little sister,' I said.

'She must have won his gratitude by her assistance.  He will have
learnt to love her when he returns.  Come, ma mie, you must forgive
him.  If you knew what his captivity was, you could not help it.  He
was the play-fellow of my boyhood, and if I can help him to the more
noble path, my aid must not be wanting, either for his sake or that
of my sister.'

How wise and how noble these two years had made my dear husband; how
unlike the raw lad I had met at Whitehall!  It was the training in
self-discipline that he had given himself for my sake--yes, and for
that of his country and his God.




CHAPTER VI.

VICTORY DEARLY BOUGHT



No difficulty was made about enrolling the Chevalier d'Aubepine as a
volunteer in the regiment of Conde, and as the lettre de cachet, as
my brother De Solivet said, the Cardinal understood his game too well
to send one to bring back a youth who had rushed to place himself
beneath the banners of his country in the hands of a prince of the
blood.

Indeed, we soon learned that there was no one to pursue him.  His
grandfather had a stroke of apoplexy in his rage on hearing of the
arrest, and did not survive it a week, so that he had become Count of
Aubepine.  The same courier brought to my husband a letter from his
sister, which I thought very stiff and formal, all except the
conclusion: 'Oh, my brother, I implore you on my knees to watch over
him and bring him back to me!'

Yet, as far as we knew and believed, the young man had never written
at all to his poor little wife.  My husband had insisted on his
producing a letter to his grandfather; but as to his wife, he
shrugged his shoulders, said that she could see that he was safe, and
that was enough for her.

He was, in fact, like one intoxicated with the delights of liberty
and companionship.  He enjoyed a certain eclat from the manner of his
coming, and was soon a universal favourite among the officers.
Unfortunately, the influence and example there were not such as to
lead him to think more of his wife.  The Duke of Enghien had been
married against his will to a poor little childish creature, niece to
Cardinal de Richelieu, and he made it the fashion to parade, not only
neglect, but contempt, of one's wife.  He was the especial hero of
our young Count's adoration, and therefore it was the less wonder
that, when in the course of the winter, the chaplain wrote that the
young Madame le Comtesse was in the most imminent danger, after
having given birth to the long desired son and heir, he treated the
news with supreme carelessness.  We should never have known whether
she lived or died, had not the courier, by whom M. de Bellaise wrote
to her as well as to his uncle, brought back one of her formal little
letters, ill-spelt and unmeaning, thanking Monsieur son frere and
Madame sa femme for their goodness, and saying she was nearly
recovered.

'It cuts me to the heart to receive such letters,' said my husband,
'and to feel how little I can be to her.  Some day I hope I may know
her better, and make her feel what a brother means.'

All this happened while we were in garrison for the winter at Nancy.
Again we offered M. d'Aubepine a room in our house; but though he
was, in his way, fond of my husband, and was polite to me, he thought
a residence with us would interfere with his liberty, and, alas! his
liberty consisted in plunging deeper and deeper into dissipation,
gambling, and all those other sports which those about him made him
think the privileges of manhood.  We could do nothing; he laughed at
M. de Bellaise, and so indeed did these chosen friends of his.  I
believe plenty of wit was expended on us and our happy domestic life;
but what was that to us?  The courage of M. de Bellaise was well
known, and he had so much good-temper and kindness that no one durst
insult him.

He was doubly tender to me that winter and spring because the
accounts from England were so sad.  My dear brother Berenger had been
killed at the battle of Alresford, and affairs looked very ill for
the royal cause.  I wept for my brother; but, ah! those tears were as
nothing compared with what I was soon to shed.

The Duke of Enghien arrived.  He was not to take the command of the
army of the Low Countries, but of that of Germany.  He came on the
very day we had heard of the loss of Freiburg in Brisgau, and all was
at once activity.  I saw the inspection of the army just outside the
city, and a glorious sight it was; bodies of infantry moving like one
great machine, squadrons of cavalry looking invincible, all
glittering with gold, and their plumes waving, the blue and gold
banners above their heads; and the dear regiment of Conde, whence
salutes from eye and hand came to me and my little Gaspard as they
rode past.

I did not tremble as in the last campaign.  Ah! perhaps I did not
pray so much.  I heard of the crossing of the Rhine at Brisach, and
then came rumours of a tremendous battle at Freiburg.  The bells had
only just begun to ring, when Pierre, our groom, galloped into the
town, and sent up at once his packet.  His master, he said, was
wounded, but not badly, and had covered himself with glory.  I tore
open the packet.  There were a few lines by his own dear hand;--

'My heart--I shall be with thee soon to rest in thy care--D.G.  Kiss
your son.  Thy B.'

The rest of the packet was from my half-brother De Solivet, and told
how, in the frightful attack on the vineyard at Freiburg, seven times
renewed, my dear, dear Philippe had received a shot in the knee, just
as he was grasping a Bavarian standard, which he carried off with
him.  He would have returned to the charge, but faintness overpowered
him, and he was supported on horseback from the field to the tent.
The wound had been dressed, and the surgeon saw no occasion for
alarm. M. de Solivet, who had a slight wound himself, and M.
d'Aubepine, who was quite uninjured, though he had done prodigies of
valour, would tend him with all their hearts.  I had better send the
carriage and horses at once to bring him back, as the number of
wounded was frightful, and means of transport were wanting.  Then
followed a message of express command from my husband that I was not
to think of coming with the carriage.  He would not have me at
Freiburg on any account.

I submitted; indeed I saw no cause for fear, and even rejoiced that
for a long time I should have my husband to myself.  I made all ready
for him, and taught my little Gaspard now he would say: 'Soyez le
bienvenu, mon papa.'

So passed a week.  Then one day there was a clanking of spurs on the
stairs; I flew to the door and there stood M. d'Aubepine.

'Is he near?' I cried, and then I saw he was white and trembling.

'Ah! no,' he cried; 'he is at Brisach!  We could bring him no
farther.  Can you come with me, Madame?  He asked incessantly for
you, and it might--it might be that your coming may revive him.'

And then this wild headstrong youth actually sank into a chair, hid
his face on the table, and sobbed as if his heart would break.

I had no time for weeping then.  I sent for the first physician in
Nancy, and offered him any sum in the world to accompany me; I had to
make almost wild efforts to procure a horse, and at last had to force
one from the governor by my importunities.  I collected wine and
cordials, and whatever could be of service, and after his first
outburst my young brother-in-law helped me in a way I can never
forget.  No doubt the pestiferous air caused by the horrible carnage
of Freiburg had poisoned the wound.  As soon as possible my husband
was removed; but the mischief had been already done; the wound was in
a bad state, fever had set in, and though he struggled on stage after
stage, declaring that he should be well when he saw me, the agony had
been such on the last day that they barely got him to Brisach, and he
there became delirious, so that M. de Solivet decided on remaining
with him, while the Count came on to fetch me.  He had ridden ever
since four o'clock in the morning, and yet was ready to set out again
as soon as my preparations were complete.  Oh, I can never overlook
what he was to me on that journey!

Hope kept us up through that dismal country--the path of war, where
instead of harvest on the August day we saw down-trodden, half-burned
wheat fields, where a few wretched creatures were trying to glean a
few ears of wheat.  Each village we passed showed only blackened
walls, save where at intervals a farmhouse had been repaired to serve
as an estafette for couriers from the French army.  The desolation of
the scene seemed to impress itself on my soul, and destroy the hopes
with which I had set forth; but on and on we went, till the walls of
Brisach rose before us.

He was in the governor's quarters, and only at the door, I perceived
the M. d'Aubepine had much doubted whether we should find him alive.
However, that one consolation was mine.  He knew me; he smiled again
on me; he called me by all his fondest names; he said that now he
could rest.  For twenty-four hours we really thought that joy was
working a cure.  Alas! then he grew worse again, and when the pain
left him, mortification had set in, and we could only send for a
priest to administer the last Sacraments.

I am an old woman now, and what was then the cruelest anguish touches
me with pleasure when I think how he called me his guardian angel,
and thanked me for having been his shield from temptation, placing
his son in my sole charge, and commending his sister and his old
uncle to me--his poor little sister whose lot seemed to grieve him so
much.  He talked to the Count, who wept, tore his hair, and made
promises, which he really then intended to execute, and which at
least comforted my Philippe.

The good priest who attended him said, he had never seen anything
more edifying or beautiful, and that he had never heard the
confession of a military man showing a purer heart, more full of holy
love, trust, and penitence.  There was a great peace upon us all, as
his life ebbed away, and even the Count stood silent and awestruck.
They took me away at last.  I remember nothing but the priest telling
me that my husband was in Paradise.

I felt as if it were all a dream, and when presently my brother came
and took my hand, I cried out: 'Oh, wake me! Wake me!'  And when he
burst into tears I asked what he meant.

Looking back now I can see how very kind he was to me, though I made
little return, being altogether bewildered by the sudden strangeness
of my first grief.  Poor M. de Solivet! he must have had a heavy
charge for Armand d'Aubepine was altogether frantic with grief, and
did nothing to help him, while I could not weep, and sat like a
statue, hardly knowing what they said to me.  Nay, when the tidings
came that my father had been killed in the battle of Marston Moor
three weeks before, I was too dull and dead to grieve.  Eustace had
written to my husband in order that he might prepare me; I opened the
letter, and all that I can remember feeling was that I had no one to
shield me.

I had but one wish and sense of duty at that moment, namely, to carry
home those dear remains to the resting-place of his father in Anjou,
where I hope myself to rest.  It was of no use to tell me that all
places would be alike to my Philippe when we should awake on the
Resurrection day.  I was past reason, and was possessed with a
feeling that I would be sacrilege to leave him among the countless
unnamed graves of the wounded who, like him, had struggled as far as
Brisach to die.  I fancied I should not be able to find him, and,
besides, it was an enemy's country!  I believe opposition made me
talk wildly and terrify my brother; at any rate, he swore to me that
the thing should be done, if only I would return to Nancy and to my
child.  I fancied, most unjustly, that this was meant to deceive me,
and get me out of the way while they buried him whom I loved so much,
and I refused to stir without the coffin.

How my brother contrived it, I do not know, but the thing was done,
and though I was but a cart that carried the coffin to Nancy, I was
pacified.

At Nancy he arranged matters more suitably.  Here M. d'Aubepine, in
floods of tears, took leave of me to return to the army, and M. de
Solivet, whose wound disabled him from active service, undertook to
escort me and my precious to Anjou.

It was a long tedious journey, and my heart beats with gratitude to
him when I think what he undertook for me, and how dreary it must
have been for him, while I was too dead and dull to thank him, though
I hope my love and confidence evinced my gratitude in after life.

My dearest went first in a hearse drawn by mules, as was also my
large carriage,--that which we had so joyously bought together,
saying it would be like a kind of tent on our travels.  I traveled in
it with my child and my women, and M. de Solivet rode with our men-
servants.  Our pace was too slow for the fatigue to be too much for
him, and he always preceded me to every place where we halted to eat,
or where we lodged for the night, and had everything ready without a
thought or a word being needful from me.  He always stood ready to
give me his arm to take me to hear mass before we set out each day.
The perfect calm, and the quiet moving on, began to do me good.  I
felt as if the journey had always been going on, and only wished it
were endless, for when it was over I should feel my desolation, and
have no more to do for my Philippe.  But I began to respond to my
poor boy's caresses and playfulness a little more; I was not so short
and maussade with my women or with my good brother, and I tried to
pray at mass.  My brother has since told me that he never felt more
relieved in his life than once when he made little Gaspard bring me
some blue corn-flowers and wheat, which reminded me of my English
home, so that I began to weep so profusely, that he carried away the
poor frightened child, and left me to Tryphena.

One afternoon at a little village there was a look of festival; the
bells were ringing, everybody was hurrying to the church, and when we
stopped at the door of the inn my brother came to the carriage-window
and said he was afraid that we should not find it easy to proceed at
once, for a mission priest was holding a station, and no one seemed
able to attend to anything else.

'He is a true saint! he is just about to preach,' said the landlady,
who had come out with her gayest apron, her whitest cap, and all her
gold chains.  'Ah! the poor lady, it would do her heart good to hear
him preach; and by that time the roast would be ready--an admirable
piece of venison, sent for the occasion.  There he is, the blessed
man!'

And as I had just alighted from the carriage, for our mules had made
a double stage and could not go farther, I saw coming from the
prebytere three or four priests, with the sexton and the serving
boys.  One of them, a spare thin man, with a little bronze crucifix
in his hand, paused as he saw the hearse drawn up, clasped his hands
in prayer, and then lifted them in benediction of him who lay within.
I saw his face, and there was in it an indescribable heavenly
sweetness and pity which made me say to my brother: 'I must go and
hear him.'

My brother was so glad to hear me express any wish, that I believe,
if I had asked to go and dance on the village green, he would almost
have permitted it; and leaving my little one to play in the garden
under Tryphena's care, he gave me his arm, and we went into the
church, crowded--crowded so that we could hardly find room; but my
deep mourning made the good people respectfully make place for us and
give us chairs.

Ah! that sermon!  I cannot tell you it in detail; I only know that it
gave the strongest sense of healing balm to my sore heart, and seemed
in a wonderful way to lift me up into the atmosphere where my
Philippe was gone, making me feel that what kept me so far--far from
him was not death, nor his coffin, but my own thick husk of sin and
worldliness.  Much more there was, which seems now to have grown into
my very soul; and by the time it was over I was weeping tears no
longer bitter, and feeling nothing so much as the need to speak to
that priest.

M. de Solivet promised that I should, but we had long to wait, for
the saintly Abbe de Paul would not postpone the poor to the rich; nor
could my grief claim the precedence, for I was not the only broken-
hearted young widow in France, nor even in that little village.

I cannot be grateful enough to my brother that he put up with all the
inconveniences of sleeping at this little village, that I might carry
out what he though a mere woman's enthusiastic fancy: but in truth it
was everything to me.  After vespers the holy man was able to give me
an hour in the church, and verily it was the opening of new life to
me.  Since my light had been taken from me, all had been utter
desolate darkness before me.  He put a fresh light before me, which
now, after fifty years, I know to have been the dawn of better
sunshine than even that which had brightened my youth--and I thank my
good God, who has never let me entirely lose sight of it.

Very faint, almost disappointing, it seemed to me then.  I came away
from my interview feeling as if it had been vain to think there could
be any balm for a crushed heart, and yet when I awoke the next
morning, and dressed myself to hear mass before resuming my journey,
it was with the sense that there I should meet a friend and
comforter.  And when I looked at my little son, it was not only with
dreary passionate pity for the unconscious orphan, but with a growing
purpose to bring him up as his father's special charge,--nay, as that
from even a greater and nearer than my Philippe.

While, as we journeyed on, I gradually dwelt less on how piteous my
arrival would be for myself, and thought more and more of its sadness
for the poor old Marquis who had loved his nephew so much, till,
instead of merely fearing to reach Nid de Merle, I began to look
forward to it, and consider how to comfort the poor old man; for had
not my husband begged me to be the staff of his old age, and to fill
a daughter's place to him?




CHAPTER VII.

WIDOW AND WIFE



We had avoided Paris, coming through Troyes and Orleans, and thus our
sad strange journey lasted a full month.  Poor old M. de Nidemerle
had, of course, been prepared for our coming, and he came out in his
coach to meet us at the cross-roads.  My brother saw the mourning
liveries approaching, and gave me notice.  I descended from my
carriage, intending to go to him in his, but he anticipated me; and
there, in the middle of the road, the poor old man embraced me,
weeping floods of passionate tears of grief.  He was a small man,
shrunk with age, and I found him clinging to me so like a child that
I felt an almost motherly sense of protection and tenderness towards
his forlorn old age; but my English shyness was at the moment
distressed at the sense of all the servants staring at such a
meeting, and I cried out: 'Oh, sir! you should not have come thus.'
'What can I do, but show all honour to the heroic wife of my dear
child?' sobbed he; and, indeed, I found afterwards that my
persistence in bringing home my dearest to the tombs of his
forefathers had won for me boundless gratitude and honour.  They took
the hearse to the church of the convent at Bellaise, where its
precious burthen was to rest.  The obsequies, requiem, and funeral
mass were to take place the next day, and in the meantime I
accompanied the Marquis to the chateau, and we spent the evening and
great part of the night in talking of him whom we had both loved so
dearly, and in weeping together.

Then came the solemn and mournful day of the funeral.  I was taken
early to the convent, where, among the nuns behind the grille, I
might assist at these last rites.

Thickly veiled, I looked at no one except that I curtsied my thanks
to the Abbess before kneeling down by the grating looking into the
choir.  My grief had always been too deep for tears, and on that day
I was blessed in a certain exaltation of thoughts which bore me
onward amid the sweet chants to follow my Philippe, my brave, pure-
hearted, loving warrior, onto his rest in Paradise, and to think of
the worship that he was sharing there.

So I knelt quite still, but by and by I was sensible of a terrible
paroxysm of weeping from some one close to me.  I could scarcely see
more than a black form when I glanced round, but it seemed to me that
it was sinking; I put out my arm in support, and I found a head on my
shoulder.  I knew who it must be--my husband's poor little sister,
Madame d'Aubepine, and I held my arm round her with an impulse of
affection, as something that was his; but before all was over, I was
sure that she was becoming faint, and at last I only moved just in
time to receive her in my lap and arms, as she sank down nearly, if
not quite, unconscious.

I tore back the heavy veil that was suffocating her, and saw a tiny
thin white face, not half so large as my little Gaspard's round rosy
one.  Numbers of black forms hovered about with water and essences;
and one tall figure bent to lift the poor child from me, apologizing
with a tone of reproof, and declaring that Madame la Comtesse was
ashamed to inconvenience Madame.

'No,' I said; 'one sister could not inconvenience another,' and I
felt the feeble hand stealing round my waist, and saw a sort of smile
on the thin little lips, which brought back one look of my
Philippe's.  I threw off my own veil, and raised her in my arms so as
to kiss her, and in that embrace I did indeed gain a sister.

I did not heed the scolding and the murmuring; I lifted her; she was
very small, and light as a feather; and I was not merely tall, but
very strong, so I carried her easily to a chamber, which one of the
nuns opened for us, and laid her on the bed.  She clung to me, and
when some one brought wine, I made her drink it, and prayed that they
would leave us to ourselves a little while.

I know now that nothing but the privileges of my position on that day
would have prevailed to get that grim and terrible dame de compagnie
out of the room.  However, we were left alone, and the first thing
the poor young thing did when she could speak or move, was to throw
herself into my arms and cry:

'Tell me of him!'

'He sent his love.  He commended you to me,' I began.

'Did he?  Oh, my dear hero!  And how is he looking?'

So it was of her husband, not her brother, that she was thinking.  I
gave me a pang, and yet I could not wonder; and alas, d'Aubepine had
not given me any message at all for her.  However, I told her what I
thought would please her--of his handsome looks, and his favour with
the Duke of Enghien, and her great dark eyes began to shine under
their tear-swollen lids; but before long, that terrible woman knocked
at the door again to say that Madame la Comtesse's carriage was
ready, and that M. le Marquis awaited Madame la Vicomtesse.

We arranged our disordered dress, and went down hand-in-hand.  The
Marquis and the Abbess both embraced the poor little Countess, and I
assured her that we would meet again, and be much together.

'Madame la Comtesse will do herself the honour of paying her respects
to Madame la Vicomtesse,' said the dame de compagnie with the elder
M. d'Aubepine, and had regulated her household of late years.

'I congratulate myself on not belonging to that respectable
household,' said my brother.

M. de Nidemerle laughed, and said the good lady had brought with her
a fair share of Calvinist severity.  In fact, it was reported that
her conversion had been stimulated by the hope that she should be
endowed with her family property, and bestowed in marriage on the
young d'Aubepine, the father of the present youth, and that
disappointment in both these expectations had embittered her life.  I
was filled with pity for my poor little sister-in-law, who evidently
was under her yoke; and all the more when, a day or two later, the
tow ladies came in great state to pay me a visit of ceremony, and I
saw how pale and thin was the little Countess, and how cowed she
seemed by the tall and severe duenna.

Little Gaspard was trotting about.  The Marquis was delighted with
the child, and already loved him passionately; and the little fellow
was very good, and could amuse himself without troubling any one.

He took refuge with me from Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau; but as I
held him to kiss his aunt, her eyes filled with tears; and when I
asked whether her little girl could walk as well as he did, she
faltered so that I was startled, fearing that the child might have
died and I not have heard of it.

'She is out at nurse,' at last she murmured.

'Children are best at farms,' said Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau;
'Madame la Comtesse Douariere is not to be incommoded.'  The old man
held out his arms to my little boy, and said something of his being a
pleasure instead of an inconvenience; but though the lady answered
politely, she looked so severe that my poor child hid his face on my
bosom and began to cry, by way of justifying her.

However, when she was gone, both the gentlemen agreed that the little
fellow was quite right, and showed his sense, and that if they had
been only two years old, they would have cried too.

That was all in my favour when I entreated M. de Nidemerle to let me
have a visit from my sister-in-law,--not a mere call of ceremony, but
a stay at the chateau long enough for me to get acquainted with her.
Not only was she the only sister of my dear Philippe, but the
Marquis, her uncle, was her guardian and only near relative, so that
he had a right to insist, more especially as the old Countess was
imbecile and bedridden.

I think he felt towards me much as he would have done if he had been
shut up in a room with Gaspard, ready to give me anything I begged
for, provided I would not cry.  He was very good to me, and I could
not but be sorry for the poor, bereaved, broken old man, and try to
be a daughter to him; and thus our relations were very different from
what they had been on our journey to Paris together in the coach.  At
any rate, he promised me that I should be gratified, and the day
after my brother left us, he actually went over to Chateau
d'Aubepine, and brought off his niece in the carriage with him,
presenting her to me in the hall like the spoils of war.  She was
frightened, formal, and ceremonious all super time, but I thought she
was beginning to thaw, and was more afraid of the Marquis than of me.
We played at cards all the evening, the Cure being sent for to make
up the set, and now and then I caught her great eyes looking at me
wistfully; indeed, I was obliged to avoid them lest they should make
me weep; for it was almost the look that my Philippe used to cast on
me in those early days when we had not begun to know one another.

At last we went up to bed.  The rooms were all en suite, and I had
given her one opening into mine, telling her we would never shut the
door save when she wished it.  I saw her gazing earnestly at her
brother's portrait and all the precious little objects consecrated to
his memory, which I had arranged by my benitier and crucifix, but I
did not expect her firs exclamation, when our woman had left us: 'Ah!
Madame, how happy you are!'

'I was once!' I sighed.

'Ah! but you ARE happy.  You have your child, and your husband loved
you.'

'But your husband lives, and your children are well.'

'That may be.  I never see them.  I have only seen my daughter twice,
and my son once, since they were born.  They will not let them come
to the chateau, and they say there is no road to the farms.'

'We will see to that,' I said, and I made her tell me where they
were; but she knew no more of distances than I did, never going
anywhere save in the great family coach.  Poor child! When I called
her Cecile, she burst into tears, and said no one had called her by
that name since she had left her friend Amelie in the convent, and as
to calling me Marguerite, Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau would be sure
to say it was bourgeois and ill-bred to use familiar names, but then
we need never let her hear us.

I took the poor little forlorn creature to sleep with me, and then,
and in the course of the next day or two, the whole sad state of
things came before me.

The little Cecile de Bellaise had been carried to a convent at Angers
from the farm that she could just remember.  Here she had spent all
the happy days of her life.  The nuns ere not strict, and they must
have been very ignorant, for they had taught her nothing but her
prayers, a little reading, some writing, very bad orthography,
embroidery, and heraldry; but they were very good-natured, and had a
number of pensionnaires who seemed to have all run wild together in
the corridors and gardens, and played all sorts of tricks on the
nuns.  Sometimes Cecile told me some of these, and very unedifying
they were,--acting ghosts in the passages, fastening up the cell
doors, ringing the bells at unearthly hours, putting brushes or shoes
in the beds, and the like practical jokes.

Suddenly, from the midst of these wild sports, while still a mere
child under fourteen, Cecile was summoned to be married to Armand
d'Aubepine, who was two years older, and was taken at once to Chateau
d'Aubepine.

There was no more play for her; she had to sit upright embroidering
under the eyes of Madame la Comtesse and of Mademoiselle de
Gringrimeau; nor did she ever go out of doors except for a turn on
the terrace with the ladies, or a drive in the great coach.  Of
course they were disappointed in having such a little unformed being
on their hands, but they must have forgotten that they had ever been
young themselves, when they forced her to conform rigidly to the life
that suited them, and which they thought the only decorous thing for
a lady of any age.

There was nothing else that was young near her except her husband,
and he thought her an ugly little thing, and avoided her as much as
possible.  He had expected to be freed from his tutor on his
marriage, and when he was disappointed, he was extremely displeased,
and manifested his wrath by neglect of her.  His governor must have
been a very different one from my dear husband's beloved abbe, fro I
know that if I had been five times as ugly and stupid as I was, my
Philippe would have tried to love me, because it was his duty--and
have been kind to me, because he could not be unkind to any one.  But
the Chevalier d'Aubepine had never learnt to care for any one's
pleasure but his own; he was angry at, and ashamed of, the wife who
had been imposed on him; he chafed and raged at not being permitted
to join the army and see the world; and in the meantime he, with the
connivance of his governor, from time to time escaped at night to
Saumur, and joined in the orgies of the young officers in garrison
there.

Nevertheless, through all his neglect, Cecile loved him with a
passionate, faithful adoration, surpassing all words, just as I have
seen a poor dog follow faithfully a savage master who gives him
nothing but blows.  She never said a word of complaint to me of him.
All I gathered of this was from her simple self-betrayals, or from
others, or indeed what I knew of himself; but the whole sustenance of
that young heart had been his few civil words at times when he could
make her useful to him.  I am persuaded, too, that Mademoiselle de
Gringrimeau exercised her spite in keeping the two young creatures
from any childish or innocent enjoyments that might have drawn them
together.  If etiquette were the idol of that lady, I am sure that
spite flavoured the incense she burned to it.

I think, if I had been in Cecile's position, I should either have
gone mad, or have died under the restraint and dreariness; but she
lived on in the dull dream of half-comprehended wretchedness, and
gave birth to her daughter, but without being in the least cheered,
for a peasant woman was in waiting, who carried the child off while
she was still too much exhausted to have even kissed it.  All she
obtained was universal murmuring at the sex of the poor little thing.
It seemed the climax of all her crimes, which might be involuntary,
but for which she was made to suffer as much as if they had been her
fault.

Her husband was more displeased than any one else; above all when he
heard the news of Rocroy; and then it was that he devised the scheme
of running away, and in discussing it with her became more friendly
than ever before.  Of course it was dreadful to her that he should go
to the war, but the gratification of helping him, keeping his secret,
plotting with him, getting a few careless thanks and promises,
carried the day, and bore her through the parting.  'He really did
embrace me of his own accord,' said the poor young creature; and it
was on that embrace that she had ever since lived, in hope that when
they should meet again he might find it possible to give her a few
shreds of affection.

Of course, when she was found to have been cognizant of his
departure, she was in the utmost disgrace.  Rage at his evasion
brought on the fit of apoplexy which cost the old count his life; and
the blame was so laid upon her, not only by Mademoiselle de
Gringrimeau, but by Madame and by her confessor, that she almost
believed herself a sort of parricide; and she had not yet completed
the course of penitential exercises that have been imposed on her.

By the time--more than half a year later--her son was born, the old
countess had become too childish to be gratified for more than a
moment.  Indeed, poor Cecile herself was so ill that she survived
only by a wonder, since no one cared whether she lived or died,
except her own maid, who watched over her tenderly, and gave her,
when she could read it, a letter from her husband upon the joyful
news.  She wore that letter, such as it was, next her heart, and
never told her how my husband had absolutely stood over him while he
wrote it.

So she recovered, if it can be called recovery--for her health had
been shattered by all this want of the most care and consideration;
she was very weak and nervous, and suffered constantly from headache,
and her looks were enough to break one's heart.  I suppose nothing
could have made her beautiful, but she had a strange, worn, blighted,
haggard, stunted look, quite dreadful for one not yet eighteen; she
was very short, and fearfully thin and pale, but out of the sad
little face there looked my Philippe's eyes, and now and then his
smile.

After talking till late I fell asleep, and when I woke to dress for
morning mass, I found that she had not slept at all, and had a
frightful headache.  I bade her lie still till I came back, and she
seemed hardly able to believe in such luxury.  Mademoiselle said
nothing but resolution was wanting to shake off a headache.

'Have you found it so?' I asked.

'At any rate, it is better than the doses Mademoiselle gives me,' she
said.

'You shall try my remedy this time,' I said; and I set out for the
little village church, which stood at the garden-gate, with a fixed
determination that this state of things--slow torture and murder, as
it seemed to me--should not go on.  If one work bequeathed to me by
my dear Philippe was to take care of his uncle, another surely was to
save and protect his sister.




CHAPTER VIII.

MARGUERITE TO THE RESCUE.



It was in my favour that M. de Nidemerle had conceived a very high
opinion of me, far above my deserts.  My dear husband's letters had
been full of enthusiasm for me.  I found them all among the Marquis's
papers; and his tenderness and gratitude, together with the
circumstances of my return, had invested me with a kind of halo,
which made me a sort of heroine in his eyes.

Besides, I did my best to make the old man's life more cheerful.  I
read him the Gazette that came once a week, I played at cards with
him all the evening, and I sometimes even wrote or copied his letters
on business; and, when I sat at my embroidery, he liked to come and
sit near me, sometimes talking, playing with Gaspard, or dozing.  He
was passionately fond of Gaspard, and let the child domineer over him
in a way that sometimes shocked me.

Thus he was ready to believe what I told him of his niece, and
assured me I might keep her with me as long as I wished, if the
Countess, her mother-in-law, would consent.  The first thing we did
together was that I took her to see her children.  The boy was at a
farm not very far off; he was seven months old, and a fine healthy
infant, though not as clean as I could have wished; but then Tryphena
and I had been looked on as barbarians, who would certainly be the
death of Gaspard, because we washed him all over every evening, and
let him use his legs and arms.  Cecile was enchanted; she saw an
extraordinary resemblance between her son and his father; and hugged
the little form like one who had been famished.

Our search for the little Armantine was less prosperous.  Cecile
could not ride, nor could even walk a quarter of a mile without
nearly dying of fatigue; nay, the jolting of the coach as we drove
along the road would have been insupportable to her but for her
longing to see her little one.  We drove till it was impossible to
get the coach any farther, and still the farm was only just in sight.

I jumped out and said I would bring the child to her, and I went up
between the hedges with two lackeys behind me, till I came to a
farmyard, where three or four children, muddy up to the very eyes,
were quarrelling and playing with the water of a stagnant pool.  I
made my way through animals, dogs, and children, to the farm kitchen,
where an old grandmother and a beggar sat on two chairs opposite to
one another, on each side of the fire, and a young woman was busy
over some raw joints of an animal.  They stared at me with open
mouths, and when I said that Madame la Comtesse d'Aubepine was come
to see her child, and was waiting in the carriage, they looked as if
such a thing had never been heard of before.  The young woman began
to cry--the old woman to grumble.  I think if they had dared, they
would have flown into a passion, and I was really alarmed lest the
child might be sick or even dead.  I told them impressively who I
was, and demanded that they would instantly show me the little one.

The young woman, muttering something, stepped out and brought in her
arms the very dirtiest child of the whole group I had left in the
gutter, with the whole tribe behind her.  My first impulse was to
snatch it up and carry it away to its mother, taking it home at once
to Nid de Merle; but it squalled and kicked so violently when I held
out my arms to it, that it gave me time to think that to carry it
thus away without authority might only bring Cecile into trouble with
those who had the mastery over her, and that to see it in such a
condition could only give her pain.  I should not have objected to
the mere surface dirt of grubbing in the farmyard (shocking as it may
sound to you, Mademoiselle mes Petites Filles).  Eustace and I had
done such things at Walwyn and been never the worse for it; but this
poor little creature had a wretched, unwholesome, neglected air about
her that made me miserable, and the making her fit to be seen would
evidently be a long business, such as could hardly be undertaken in
the midst of the salting of a pig, which was going on.

I therefore promised the woman a crown if she would make the child
tidy and bring her to Nid de Merle on the Sunday.  Something was
muttered about Mademoiselle having said the child was not to be
constantly brought to the house to incommonde Madame la Comtesse; but
I made her understand that I meant Nid de Merle, and trusted that the
hope of the money would be a bait.

Cecile was sorely disappointed when I returned without the child, and
conjured me at once to tell her the worst, if it were indeed dead;
but she let herself be pacified by the hope of seeing it on Sunday,
and indeed she was half dead with fatigue from the roughness of the
road.

The child was duly brought by the foster-mother who was in the full
costume of a prosperous peasant, with great gold cross and gay apron;
but I was not better satisfied about the little on, though she had a
cleaner face, cap, and frock.  Unused to the sight of black, she
would let neither of us touch her, and we could only look at her,
when she sat on her nurse's knee with a cake in her hand.  I was sure
she was unhealthy and uncared for, her complexion and everything
about her showed it, and my Gaspard was twice her size.  It was well
for the peace of the young mother that she knew so little what a
child ought to be like, and that her worst grief was that the little
Armantine would not go to her.

'And oh! they will send her straight into a convent as soon as she is
weaned, and I shall never have her with me!' sighed Cecile.

'ON' ON had done many harsh things towards my poor little sister-in-
law, and I began now to consider of whom ON now consisted.  It seemed
to me to be only Mademoiselle de Gringrimeau acting in the name of
the doting Countess and the absent husband, and that one resolute
effort might emancipate the poor young thing.

I was still considering the matter, and rallying my forces, when a
message came from the Chateau l'Aube that Madame la Douariere was
dying, and Madame la Comtesse must return instantly.  I went with
her; I could not let her return alone to Mademoiselle's tender
mercies, and the Marquis approved and went with us.  In fact, the two
chateaux were not two miles apart, through the lanes and woods,
though the way by the road was much longer.

The old Countess lingered another day and then expired.  Before the
funeral ceremonies were over, I had seen how Mademoiselle de
Gringrimeau tyrannise over this young sister-in-law, who was still a
mere gentle child, and was absolutely cowed by the woman.  When I
tried to take her home with me, Mademoiselle had the effrontery to
say that the Count himself, as well as the late dowager, had given
her authority over Madame as dame de compagnie, and that she did not
consider it etiquette to visit after so recent a bereavement, thus
decidedly hitting at me.

However, I had made up my mind.  I entreated my poor weeping Cecile
to hold out yet a little longer in hope; and then I returned home to
lay the whole situation before the Marquis, and to beg him to assert
his authority as uncle, and formally request that she might reside
under his protection while her husband was with the army--a demand
which could hardly fail to be granted.

I wrote also to M. d'Aubepine, over whom I thought I had some
influence, and added likewise a letter to my half-brother De Solivet,
explaining the situation, and entreating him to get the young
gentleman into his lodgings, and not let him out till he had written
his letters, signed and sealed them!

The plan answered.  In due time our courier returned, and with all we
wanted in the way of letters, with one great exception, alas! any
true sign of tenderness for the young wife.  There was a formal
letter for her, telling her to put herself and her children under the
charge of her uncle and her brother's widow, leaving the charge of
the chateau and the servants to the intendant and to Mademoiselle de
Gringrimeau.  The poor child had to imbibe what her yearning heart
could