Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848

The first thing Hull and I saw were the heels of the justice flourishing in the air, and the last was Joe going off to jail in the grasp of the constable one way, and the deacon sneaking off another. We never heard afterward of the suit, but "Let the gentleman proceed," was for a long time a by-word amongst us in the village.

After crossing the strawberry field we came to a "cross-road" leading to the turnpike. In a few minutes we arrived at "Cold Spring," where a little streak of water ran through a hollowed log, green with moss, from the fountain a short distance in the forest, and fell into a pebbly basin at the road-side. We here refreshed ourselves with repeated draughts of the sweet, limpid element, and then, resuming our walk, soon found ourselves upon the broad, gray turnpike, with the village upon the summit of the hill, about half a mile in front.

The sun had long since plunged into the slate-colored haze of the West; the thickening landscape looked dull and faded; the mist was glimmering before the darkened forests; the cows were wending homeward, lowing; the woodsmen passed us with axes on their shoulders; and, mounting the hill, we saw here and there, a light sparkling in the village, following the example of the scattered stars that were timidly glancing from the dome of the purpled heavens.

THE LOST PET

BY MRS. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY[SEE ENGRAVING.]When Mary's brother went to sea,He lingered near the door,Beside the old, familiar tree,He ne'er had left before,And though gay boyhood loves to seekNew regions where to tread,A pearl-drop glittered on his cheekAs tenderly he said —"The gentle dove I reared with care,Sister, I leave to thee,And let it thy protection shareWhen I am far at sea."Whene'er for Willy's loss she grieved,His darling she caressed,That from her hand its food received,Or nestled in her breast;And sometimes, at the twilight dim,When blossoms bow to sleep,She thought it murmuring asked for himWhose home was on the deep.And if her mother's smile of joyWas lost in anxious thought,As memories of her sailor-boySome gathering tempest wrought,She showed his pet, the cooing dove,Perched on her sheltering arm,And felt how innocence and loveCan rising wo disarm.When summer decked the leafy bowers,And pranked the russet plain,She bore his cage where breathing flowersInspired a tuneful strain;And now and then, through open door,Indulged a wish to roam,Though soon, the brief excursion o'er,The wanderer sought its home.She laughed to see it brush the dewFrom bough and budding spray.And deemed its snow-white plumage grewMore beauteous, day by day.The rose of June was in its flush,And 'neath the fragrant shadeOf her own fullest, fairest bushThe favorite's house was staid,While roving, bird-like, here and there,Amid her flow'rets dear,She culled a nosegay, rich and rare,A mother's heart to cheer.A shriek! A flutter! Swift as thoughtHer startled footstep flew,But full of horror was the sightThat met her eager view —Her treasure in a murderer's jaws!One of that feline raceWhose wily looks and velvet pawsConceal their purpose base.And scarce the victim's gushing breastHeaved with one feeble breath,Though raised to hers, its glance exprestAffection even in death.Oh, stricken child! though future yearsMay frown with heavier shade,When woman's lot of love and tearsIs on thy spirit laid —Yet never can a wilder cryThy heart-wrung anguish proveThan when before thy swimming eyeExpired that wounded dove.

FIEL A LA MUERTE, OR TRUE LOVE'S DEVOTION

A TALE OF THE TIMES OF LOUIS QUINZEBY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, AUTHOR OF "THE ROMAN TRAITOR," "MARMADUKE WYVIL," "CROMWELL," ETC(Concluded from page 91.)PART IIIFor there were seen in that dark wall,Two niches, narrow, dark and tall.Who enters by such grisly door,Shall ne'er, I ween, find exit more. – Walter Scott.

It would be wonderful, were it not of daily occurrence, and to be observed by all who give attention to the characteristics of the human mind, how quickly confidence, even when shaken to its very foundations, and almost obliterated, springs up again, and recovers all its strength in the bosoms of the young of either sex.

Let but a few more years pass over the heart, and when once broken, if it be only by a slight suspicion, or a half unreal cause, it will scarce revive again in a life-time; nor then, unless proofs the strongest and most unquestionable can be adduced to overpower the doubts which have well-nigh annihilated it.

In early youth, however, before long contact with the world has blunted the susceptibilities, and hardened the sympathies of the soul, before the constant experience of the treachery, the coldness, the ingratitude of men has given birth to universal doubt and general distrust, the shadow vanishes as soon as the cloud which cast it is withdrawn, and the sufferer again believes, alas! too often, only to be again deceived.

Thus it was with St. Renan, who a few minutes before had given up even the last hope, who had ceased, as he thought, to believe even in the possibility of faith or honor among men, of constancy, or purity, or truth in women, no sooner saw his Melanie, whom he knew to be the wife of another, solitary and in tears, no sooner felt her inanimate form reclining on his bosom, than he was prepared to believe any thing, rather than believe her false.

Indeed, her consternation at his appearance, her evident dismay, not unnatural in an age wherein skepticism and infidelity were marvelously mingled with credulity and superstition, her clear conviction that it was not himself in mortal blood and being, did go far to establish the fact, that she had been deceived either casually or – which was far more probable – by foul artifice, into the belief that her beloved and plighted husband was no longer with the living.

The very exclamation which she uttered last, ere she sunk senseless into his arms, uttered, as she imagined, in the presence of the immortal spirit of the injured dead, "I am true, Raoul – true to the last, my beloved!" rang in his ears with a power and a meaning which convinced him of her veracity.

"She could not lie!" he muttered to himself, "in the presence of the living dead! God be praised! she is true, and we shall yet be happy!"

How beautiful she looked, as she lay there, unconscious and insensible even of her own existence. If time and maturity had improved Raoul's person, and added the strength and majesty of manhood to the grace and pliability of youth, infinitely more had it bestowed on the beauty of his betrothed. He had left her a beautiful girl just blooming out of girlhood, he found her a mature, full-blown woman, with all the flush and flower of complete feminine perfection, before one charm has become too luxuriant, or one drop of the youthful dew exhaled from the new expanded blossom.

She had shot up, indeed, to a height above the ordinary stature of women – straight, erect, and graceful as a young poplar, slender, yet full withal, exquisitely and voluptuously rounded, and with every sinuous line and swelling curve of her soft form full of the poetry and beauty both of repose and motion.

Her complexion was pale as alabaster; even her cheeks, except when some sudden tide of passion, or some strong emotion sent the impetuous blood coursing thither more wildly than its wont, were colorless, but there was nothing sallow or sickly, nothing of that which is ordinarily understood by the word pallid, in their clear, warm, transparent purity; nothing, in a word, of that lividness which the French, with more accuracy than we, distinguish from the healthful paleness which is so beautiful in southern women.

Her hair, profuse almost to redundance, was perfectly black, but of that warm and lustrous blackness which is probably the hue expressed by the ancient Greeks by the term hyacinthine, and which in certain lights has a purplish metallic gloss playing over it, like the varying reflections on the back of the raven. Her strongly defined, and nearly straight eyebrows, were dark as night, as were the long, silky lashes which were displayed in clear relief against the fair, smooth cheek, as the lids lay closed languidly over the bright blue eyes.

It was a minute or two before Melanie moved or gave any symptoms of recovering from her fainting fit, and during those minutes the lips of Raoul had been pressed so often and so warmly to those of the fair insensible, that had any spark of perception remained to her, the fond and lingering pressure could not have failed to call the "purple light of love," to her ingenuous face.

At length a long, slow shiver ran through the form of the senseless girl, and thrilled, like the touch of the electric wire, every nerve in St. Renan's body.

Then the soft rosy lips were unclosed, and forth rushed the ambrosial breath in a long, gentle sigh, and the beautiful bust heaved and undulated, like the bosom of the calm sea, when the first breathings of the coming storm steal over it, and wake, as if by sympathy, its deep pulsations.

He clasped her closer to his heart, half fearful that when life and perfect consciousness should be restored to that exquisite frame, it would start from his embrace, if not in anger or alarm, at least as if from a forbidden and illicit pleasure.

Gradually a faint rosy hue, slight as the earliest blushes of the morning sky, crept over her white cheeks, and deepened into a rich passionate flush; and at the same moment the azure-tinctured lids were unclosed slowly, and the large, radiant, bright-blue eyes beamed up into his own, half languid still, but gleaming through their dewy languor, with an expression which he must have been, indeed, blind to mistake for aught but the strongest of unchanged, unchangeable affection.

It was evident that she knew him now; that the momentary terror, arising rather, perhaps, from fear than from superstition, which had converted the young ardent soldier into a visitant from beyond those gloomy portals through which no visitant returns, had passed from her mind, and that she had already recognized, although she spoke not, her living lover.

And though she recognized him, she sought not to withdraw herself from the enclosure of his sheltering arms, but lay there on his bosom, with her head reclined on his shoulder, and her eyes drinking long draughts of love from his fascinated gaze, as if she were his own, and that her appropriate place of refuge and protection.

"Oh! Raoul," she exclaimed, at length, in a low, soft whisper, "is it, indeed, you – you, whom I have so long wept as dead – you, whom I was even now weeping as one lost to me forever, when you are thus restored to me!"

"It is I, Melanie," he answered mournfully, "it is I, alive, and in health; but better far had I been in truth dead, as they have told you, rather than thus a survivor of all happiness, of all hopes; spared only from the grave to know you false, and myself forgotten."

"Oh, no, Raoul, not false!" she cried wildly, as she started from his arms, "oh, not forgotten! think you," she added, blushing crimson, "that had I loved any but you, that had I not loved you with my whole heart and being, I had lain thus on your bosom, thus endured your caresses? Oh, no, no, never false! nor for one moment forgotten?"

"But what avails it, if you do love no other – what profits it, if you do love me? Are you not – are you not, false girl, – alas! that these lips should speak it, – the wife of another – the promised mistress of the king?"

"I – I – Raoul!" she exclaimed, with such a blending of wonder and loathing in her face, such an expression of indignation on her tongue, that her lover perceived at once, that, whatever might be the infamy of her father, of her husband, of this climax of falsehood and self-degradation, she, at least, was guiltless.

"The mistress of the king! what king? what mean you? are you distraught?"

"Ha! you are ignorant, you are innocent of that, then. You are not yet indoctrinated into the noble uses for which your honorable lord intends you. It is the town's talk, Melanie. How is it you, whom it most concerns, alone have not heard it?"

"Raoul," she said, earnestly, imploringly, "I know not if there be any meaning in your words, except to punish me, to torture me, for what you deem my faithlessness, but if there be, I implore you, I conjure you, by your father's noble name; by your mother's honor, show me the worst; but listen to me first, for by the God that made us both, and now hears my words, I am not faithless."

"Not faithless? Are you not the wife of another?"

"No!" she replied enthusiastically. "I am not. For I am yours, and while you live I cannot wed another. Whom God hath joined man cannot put asunder."

"I fear me that plea will avail us little," Raoul answered. "But say on, dearest Melanie, and believe that there is nothing you can ask which I will not give you gladly – even if it were my own life-blood. Say on, so shall we best arrive at the truth of this intricate and black affair."

"Mark me, then, Raoul, for every word I shall speak is as true as the sun in heaven. It is near two years now since we heard that you had fallen in battle, and that your body had been carried off by the barbarians. Long! long I hoped and prayed, but prayers and hopes were alike in vain. I wrote to you often, as I promised, but no line from you has reached me, since the day when you sailed for India, and that made me fear that the dread news was true. But at the last, to make assurance doubly sure, all my own letters were returned to me six months since, with their seals unbroken, and an endorsement from the authorities in India that the person addressed was not to be found. Then hope itself was over; and my father, who never from the first had doubted that you were no more – "

"Out on him! out on him! the heartless villain!" the young man interrupted her indignantly. "He knows, as well as I myself, that I am living; although it is no fault of his or his coadjutors that I am so. He knows not as yet, however, that I am here; but he shall know it ere long to his cost, my Melanie."

"At least," she answered in a faltering voice, "at least he swore to me that you were dead; and never having ceased to persecute me, since the day that fatal tidings reached, to become the wife of La Rochederrien, now Marquis de Ploermel, he now became doubly urgent – "

"And you, Melanie! you yielded! I had thought you would have died sooner."

"I had no choice but to yield, Raoul. Or at least but the choice of that old man's hand, or an eternal dungeon. The lettres de cachet were signed, and you dead, and on the conditions I extorted from the marquis, I became in name, Raoul, only in name, by all my hopes of Heaven! the wife of the man whom you pronounce, wherefore, I cannot dream, the basest of mankind. Now tell me."

"And did it never strike you as being wonderful and most unnatural that this Ploermel, who is neither absolutely a dotard nor an old woman, should accept your hand upon this condition?"

"I was too happy to succeed in extorting it to think much of that," she answered.

"Extorted!" replied Raoul bitterly, "And how, I pray you, is this condition which you extorted ratified or made valid?"

"It is signed by himself, and witnessed by my own father, that, being I regard myself the wife of the dead, he shall ask no more of familiarity from me than if I were the bride of heaven!"

"The double villains!"

"But wherefore villains, Raoul?" exclaimed Melanie.

"I tell you, girl, it is a compact – a base, hellish compact – with the foul despot, the disgrace of kings, the opprobrium of France, who sits upon the throne, dishonoring it daily! A compact such as yet was never entered into by a father and a husband, even of the lowest of mankind! A compact to deliver you a spotless virgin-victim to the vile-hearted and luxurious tyrant. Curses! a thousand curses on his soul! and on my own soul! who have fought and bled for him, and all to meet with this, as my reward of service!"

"Great God! can these things be," she exclaimed, almost fainting with horror and disgust. "Can these things indeed be? But speak, Raoul, speak; how can you know all this?"

"I tell you, Melanie, it is the talk, the very daily, hourly gossip of the streets, the alleys, nay, even the very kennels of Paris. Every one knows it – every one believes it, from the monarch in the Louvre to the lowest butcher of the Faubourg St. Antoine!

"And they believe it – of me, of me, they believe this infamy!"

"With this addition, if any addition were needed, that you are not a deceived victim, but a willing and proud participator in the shame."

"I will – that is – " she corrected herself, speaking very rapidly and energetically – "I would die sooner. But there is no need now to die. You have come back to me, and all will yet go well with us!"

"It never can go well with us again," St. Renan answered gloomily. "The king never yields his purpose, he is as tenacious in his hold as reckless in his promptitude to seize. And they are paid beforehand."

"Paid!" exclaimed the girl, shuddering at the word. "What atrocity! How paid?"

"How, think you, did your good father earn his title and the rich governorship of Morlaix? What great deeds were rewarded to La Rochederrien by his marquisate, and this captaincy of mousquetaires. You know not yet, young lady, what virtue there is nowadays in being the accommodating father, or the convenient husband of a beauty!"

"You speak harshly, St. Renan, and bitterly."

"And if I do, have I not cause enough for bitterness and harshness?" he replied almost angrily.

"Not against me, Raoul."

"I am not bitter against you, Melanie. And yet – and yet – "

"And yet what, Raoul?"

"And yet had you resisted three days longer, we might have been saved – you might have been mine – "

"I am yours, Raoul de St. Renan. Yours, ever and forever! No one's but only yours."

"You speak but madness – your vow – the sacrament!"

"To the winds with my vow – to the abyss with the fraudful sacrament!" she cried, almost fiercely. By sin it was obtained and sanctioned – in sin let it perish. I say – I swear, Raoul, if you will take me, I am yours."

"Mine? Mine?" cried the young man, half bewildered. "How mine, and when?"

"Thus," she replied, casting herself upon his breast, and winding her arms around his neck, and kissing his lips passionately and often. "Thus, Raoul, thus, and now!"

He returned her embrace fondly once, but the next instant he removed her almost forcibly from his breast, and held her at arm's length.

"No, no!" he exclaimed, "not thus, not thus! If at all, honestly, openly, holily, in the face of day! May my soul perish, ere cause come through me why you should ever blush to show your front aloft among the purest and the proudest. No, no, not thus, my own Melanie!"

The girl burst into a paroxysm of tears and sobbing, through which she hardly could contrive to make her interrupted and faultering words audible.

"If not now," she said at length, "it will never be. For, hear me, Raoul, and pity me, to-morrow they are about to drag me to Paris."

The lover mused for several moments very deeply, and then replied, "Listen to me, Melanie. If you are in earnest, if you are true, and can be firm, there may yet be happiness in store for us, and that very shortly."

"Do you doubt me, Raoul?"

"I do not doubt you, Melanie. But ever as in my own wildest rapture, even to gain my own extremest bliss, I would not do aught that could possibly cast one shadow on your pure renown, so, mark me, would I not take you to my heart were there one spot, though it were but as a speck in the all-glorious sun, upon the brightness of your purity."

"I believe you, Raoul. I feel, I know that my honor, that my purity is all in all to you.

"I would die a thousand deaths," he made answer, "ere even a false report should fall on it, to mar its virgin whiteness. Marvel not then that I ask as much of you."

"Ask anything, St. Renan. It is granted."

"In France we can hope for nothing. But there are other lands than France. We must fly; and thanks to these documents which you have wrung from them, and the proofs which I can easily obtain, this cursed marriage can be set aside, and then, in honor and in truth you can be mine, mine own Melanie."

"God grant it so, Raoul."

"It shall be so, beloved. Be you but firm, and it may be done right speedily. I will sell the estates of St. Renan – by a good chance, supposing me dead, the Lord of Yrvilliac was in treaty for it with my uncle. That can be arranged forthwith. Conduct yourself according to your wont, cool and as distant as may be with this villain of Ploermel; avoid above all things to let your father see that you are buoyed by any hope, or moved by any passion. Treat the king with deliberate scorn, if he approach you over boldly. Beware how you eat or drink in his company, for he is capable of all things, even of drugging you into insensibility, and here," he added, taking a small poniard, of exquisite workmanship, with a gold hilt and scabbard, from his girdle, and giving it to her, "wear this at all times, and if he dare attempt violence, were he thrice a king, use it!"

"I will – I will – trust me, Raoul! I will use it, and that to his sorrow! My heart is strong, and my hand brave now– now that I know you to be living. Now that I have hope to nerve me, I will fear nothing, but dare all things."

"Do so, do so, my beloved, and you shall have no cause to fear, for I will be ever near you. I will tarry here but one day; and ere you reach Paris, I will be there, be certain. Within ten days, I doubt not I can convert my acres into gold, and ship that gold across the narrow straits; and that done, the speed of horses, and a swift sailing ship will soon have us safe in England; and if that land be not so fair, or so dear as our own France, at least there are no tyrants there, like this Louis; and there are laws, they say, which guard the meanest man as safely and as surely as the proudest noble."

"A happy land, Raoul. I would that we were there even now."

"We will be there ere long, fear nothing. But tell me, whom have you near your person on whom we may rely. There must be some one through whom we may communicate in Paris. It may be that I shall require to see you."

"Oh! you remember Rose, Raoul – little Rose Faverney, who has lived with me ever since she was a child – a pretty little black-eyed damsel."

"Surely I do remember her. Is she with you yet? That will do admirably, then, if she be faithful, as I think she is; and unless I forget, what will serve us better yet, she loves my page Jules de Marliena. He has not forgotten her, I promise you."

"Ah! Jules – we grow selfish, I believe, as we grow old, Raoul. I have not thought to ask after one of your people. So Jules remembers little Rose, and loves her yet; that will, indeed, secure her, even had she been doubtful, which she is not. She is as true as steel – truer, I fear, than even I; for she reproached me bitterly four evenings since, and swore she would be buried alive, much more willingly imprisoned, than be married to the Marquis de Ploermel, though she was only plighted to the Vicomte Raoul's page! Oh! we may trust in her with all certainty."

"Send her, then, on the very same night that you reach Paris, so soon as it is dark, to my uncle's house in the Place de St. Louis. I think she knows it, and let her ask – not for me – but for Jules. Ere then I will know something definite of our future; and fear nothing, love, all shall go well with us. Love such as ours, with faith, and right, and honesty and honor to support it, cannot fail to win, blow what wind may. And now, sweet Melanie, the night is wearing onward, and I fear that they may miss you. Kiss me, then, once more, sweet girl, and farewell."

"Not for the last, Raoul," she cried, with a gay smile, casting herself once again into her lover's arms, and meeting his lips with a long, rapturous kiss.

"Not by a thousand, and a thousand! But now, angel, farewell for a little space. I hate to bid you leave me, but I dare not ask you to stay; even now I tremble lest you should be missed and they should send to seek you. For were they but to suspect that I am here and have seen you, it would, at the best, double all our difficulties. Fare you well, sweetest Melanie."