Harper's New Monthly Magazine. No. XVI.—September, 1851—Vol. III

The drawing-room into which we were shown was a perfect picture of cottage elegance; all the furniture was of polished walnut wood, and kept in the very best condition. It opened by three spacious windows upon the terrace above the river, and afforded a view of mountain and valley for miles on every side. An easel was placed on this gallery, and a small sketch in oils of Kuffstein was already nigh completed on it. There were books, too, in different languages, and, to my inexpressible delight, a piano!

The reader will smile, perhaps, at the degree of pleasure objects so familiar and every-day called forth; but let him remember how removed were all the passages of my life from such civilizing influences – how little of the world had I seen beyond camps and barrack-rooms, and how ignorant I was of the charm which a female presence can diffuse over even the very humblest abode.

Before I had well ceased to wonder, and admire these objects, the marquise entered.

A tall and stately old lady, with an air at once haughty and gracious, received me with a profound courtesy, while she extended her hand to the salute of the general. She was dressed in deep mourning, and wore her white hair in two braids along her face. The sound of my native language, with its native accent, made me forget the almost profound reserve of her manner, and I was fast recovering from the constraint her coldness imposed, when her niece entered the room. Mademoiselle, who was, at that time, about seventeen, but looked older by a year or two, was the very ideal of "brunette" beauty; she was dark-eyed and black-haired, with a mouth the most beautifully formed; her figure was light, and her foot a model of shape and symmetry. All this I saw in an instant, as she came, half-sliding, half-bounding, to meet the general: and then turning to me, welcomed me with a cordial warmth, very different from the reception of Madame la Marquise.

Whether it was the influence of her presence, whether it was a partial concession of the old lady's own, or whether my own awkwardness was wearing off by time, I can not say – but gradually the stiffness of the interview began to diminish. From the scenery around us we grew to talk of the Tyrol generally, then of Switzerland, and lastly of France. The marquise came from Auvergne, and was justly proud of the lovely scenery of her birth-place.

Calmly and tranquilly as the conversation had been carried on up to this period, the mention of France seemed to break down the barrier of reserve within the old lady's mind, and she burst out in a wild flood of reminiscences of the last time she had seen her native village. "The Blues," as the revolutionary soldiers were called, had come down upon the quiet valley, carrying fire and carnage into a once peaceful district. The chateau of her family was razed to the ground; her husband was shot upon his own terrace; the whole village was put to the sword; her own escape was owing to the compassion of the gardener's wife, who dressed her like a peasant boy, and employed her in a menial station, a condition she was forced to continue so long as the troops remained in the neighborhood. "Yes," said she, drawing off her silk mittens, "these hands still witness the hardships I speak of. These are the marks of my servitude."

It was in vain the general tried at first to sympathize, and then withdraw her from the theme; in vain her niece endeavored to suggest another topic, or convey a hint that the subject might be unpleasing to me. It was the old lady's one absorbing idea, and she could not relinquish it. Whole volumes of the atrocities perpetrated by the revolutionary soldiery came to her recollection; each moment, as she talked, memory would recall this fact or the other, and so she continued rattling on with the fervor of a heated imagination, and the wild impetuosity of a half-crazed intellect. As for myself, I suffered far more from witnessing the pain others felt for me, than from any offense the topic occasioned me directly. These events were all "before my time." I was neither a Blue by birth nor adoption; a child during the period of revolution, I had only taken a man's part when the country, emerging from its term of anarchy and blood, stood at bay against the whole of Europe. These consolations were, however, not known to the others, and it was at last, in a moment of unendurable agony, that mademoiselle rose and left the room.

The general's eyes followed her as she went, and then sought mine with an expression full of deep meaning. If I read his look aright, it spoke patience and submission; and the lesson was an easier one than he thought.

"They talk of heroism," cried she, frantically – "it was massacre! And when they speak of chivalry, they mean the slaughter of women and children!" She looked round, seeing that her niece had left the room, suddenly dropped her voice to a whisper, and said, "Think of her mother's fate; dragged from her home, her widowed, desolate home, and thrown into the Temple, outraged and insulted, condemned on a mock trial, and then carried away to the guillotine! Ay, and even then, on that spot, which coming death might have sanctified, in that moment, when even fiendish vengeance can turn away, and leave its victim at liberty to utter a last prayer in peace, even then, these wretches devised an anguish greater than all death could compass. You will scarcely believe me," said she, drawing in her breath, and talking with an almost convulsive effort, "you will scarcely believe me in what I am now about to tell you, but it is the truth – the simple but horrible truth. When my sister mounted the scaffold there was no priest to administer the last rites. It was a time, indeed, when few were left; their hallowed heads had fallen in thousands before that. She waited for a few minutes, hoping that one would appear; and when the mob learned the meaning of her delay, they set up a cry of fiendish laughter, and with a blasphemy that makes one shudder to think of, they pushed forward a boy, one of those blood-stained 'gamins' of the streets, and made him gabble a mock litany! Yes, it is true: a horrible mockery of our service, in the ears and before the eyes of that dying saint."

"When? in what year? in what place was that?" cried I, in an agony of eagerness.

"I can give you both time and place, sir," said the marquise, drawing herself proudly up, for she construed my question into a doubt of her veracity. "It was in the year 1793, in the month of August; and as for the place, it was one well seasoned to blood – the Place de Grève, at Paris."

A fainting sickness came over me as I heard these words; the dreadful truth flashed across me that the victim was the Marquise D'Estelles, and the boy, on whose infamy she dwelt so strongly, no other than myself. For the moment, it was nothing to me that she had not identified me with this atrocity; I felt no consolation in the thought that I was unknown and unsuspected. The heavy weight of the indignant accusation almost crushed me. Its falsehood I knew, and yet, could I dare to disprove it? Could I hazard the consequences of an avowal, which all my subsequent pleadings could never obliterate. Even were my innocence established in one point, what a position did it reduce me to in every other.

These struggles must have manifested themselves strongly in my looks, for the marquise, with all her self-occupation, remarked how ill I seemed. "I see, sir," cried she, "that all the ravages of war have not steeled your heart against true piety; my tale has moved you strongly." I muttered something in concurrence, and she went on. "Happily for you, you were but a child when such scenes were happening! Not, indeed, that childhood was always unstained in those days of blood; but you were, as I understand, the son of a Garde du Corps, one of those loyal men who sealed their devotion with their life. Were you in Paris then?"

"Yes, madam," said I, briefly.

"With your mother, perhaps?"

"I was quite alone, madam; an orphan on both sides."

"What was your mother's family-name?"

Here was a puzzle; but at a hazard I resolved to claim her who should sound best to the ears of La Marquise. "La Lasterie, madam," said I.

"La Lasterie de La Vignoble – a most distinguished house, sir. Provençal, and of the purest blood. Auguste de La Lasterie married the daughter of the Duke de Miriancourt, a cousin of my husband's, and there was another of them who went as embassador to Madrid."

I knew none of them, and I supposed I looked as much.

"Your mother was, probably, of the elder branch, sir;" asked she.

I had to stammer out a most lamentable confession of my ignorance.

"Not know your own kinsfolks, sir; not your nearest of blood!" cried she, in amazement. "General, have you heard this strange avowal? or is it possible that my ears have deceived me?"

"Please to remember, madam," said I, submissively, "the circumstances in which I passed my infancy. My father fell by the guillotine."

"And his son wears the uniform of those who slew him!"

"Of a French soldier, madam, proud of the service he belongs to; glorying to be one of the first army in Europe."

"An army without a cause is a banditti, sir. Your soldiers, without loyalty, are without a banner."

"We have a country, madam."

"I must protest against this discussion going further," said the general, blandly, while in a lower tone he whispered something in her ear.

"Very true, very true," said she; "I had forgotten all that. Monsieur de Tiernay, you will forgive me this warmth. An old woman, who has lost nearly every thing in the world, may have the privilege of bad temper accorded her. We are friends now, I hope," added she, extending her hand, and, with a smile of most gracious meaning, beckoning to me to sit beside her on the sofa.

Once away from the terrible theme of the Revolution, she conversed with much agreeability; and her niece having reappeared, the conversation became animated and pleasing. Need I say with what interest I now regarded mademoiselle; the object of all my boyish devotion; the same whose pale features I had matched for many an hour in the dim half light of the little chapel; her whose image was never absent from my thoughts waking or sleeping; and now again appearing before me in all the grace of coming womanhood!

Perhaps to obliterate any impression of her aunt's severity – perhaps it was mere manner – but I thought there was a degree of anxiety to please in her bearing toward me. She spoke, too, as though our acquaintance was to be continued by frequent meetings, and dropped hints of plans that implied constant intercourse. Even excursions into the neighborhood she spoke of; when, suddenly stopping, she said, "But these are for the season of spring, and before that time Monsieur de Tiernay will be far away."

"Who can tell that?" said I. "I would seem to be forgotten by my comrades."

"Then you must take care to do that which may refresh their memory," said she, pointedly; and, before I could question her more closely as to her meaning, the general had risen to take his leave.

"Madame La Marquise was somewhat more tart than usual," said he to me, as we ascended the cliff; "but you have passed the ordeal now, and the chances are, she will never offend you in the same way again. Great allowances must be made for those who have suffered as she has. Family – fortune – station – even country – all lost to her; and even hope now dashed by many a disappointment."

Though puzzled by the last few words, I made no remark on them, and he resumed,

"She has invited you to come and see her as often as you are at liberty; and, for my part, you shall not be restricted in that way. Go and come as you please, only do not infringe the hours of the fortress; and if you can concede a little now and then to the prejudices of the old lady, your intercourse will be all the more agreeable to both parties."

"I believe, general, that I have little of the Jacobin to recant," said I, laughing.

"I shall go farther, my dear friend, and say none," added he. "Your uniform is the only tint of 'blue' about you." And thus chatting, we reached the fortress, and said good-night.

I have been particular, perhaps tiresomely so, in retailing these broken phrases and snatches of conversation; but they were the first matches applied to a train that was long and artfully laid.

CHAPTER XXXIX

"A SORROWFUL PARTING."

The general was as good as his word, and I now enjoyed the most unrestricted liberty; in fact the officers of the garrison said truly, that they were far more like prisoners than I was. As regularly as evening came, I descended the path to the village, and, as the bell tolled out the vespers, I was crossing the little grass plot to the cottage. So regularly was I looked for, that the pursuits of each evening were resumed as though only accidentally interrupted. The unfinished game of chess, the half read volume, the newly begun drawing, were taken up where we had left them, and life seemed to have centred itself in those delightful hours between sunset and midnight.

I suppose there are few young men who have not, at some time or other of their lives, enjoyed similar privileges, and known the fascination of intimacy in some household, where the affections became engaged as the intellect expanded; and, while winning another's heart, have elevated their own. But to know the full charm of such intercourse, one must have been as I was – a prisoner – an orphan – almost friendless in the world – a very "waif" upon the shore of destiny. I can not express the intense pleasure these evenings afforded me. The cottage was my home, and more than my home. It was a shrine at which my heart worshiped – for I was in love! Easy as the confession is to make now, tortures would not have wrung it from me then!

In good truth, it was long before I knew it; nor can I guess how much longer the ignorance might have lasted, when General Urleben suddenly dispelled the clouds, by informing me that he had just received from the minister of war at Vienna a demand for the name, rank, and regiment of his prisoner, previous to the negotiation for his exchange.

"You will fill up these blanks, Tiernay," said he, "and within a month, or less, you will be once more free, and say adieu to Kuffstein."

Had the paper contained my dismissal from the service, I shame to own it would have been more welcome! The last few months had changed all the character of my life, suggested new hopes and new ambitions. The career I used to glory in had grown distasteful; the comrades I once longed to rejoin were now become almost repulsive to my imagination. The marquise had spoken much of emigrating to some part of the new world beyond seas, and thither my fancy alike pointed. Perhaps my dreams of a future were not the less rose-colored, that they received no shadow from any thing like a "fact." The old lady's geographical knowledge was neither accurate nor extensive, and she contrived to invest this land of promise with odd associations of what she once heard of Pondicherry – with certain features belonging to the United States. A glorious country it would, indeed, have been, which, within a month's voyage, realized all the delights of the tropics, with the healthful vigor of the temperate zone, and where, without an effort beyond the mere will, men amassed enormous fortunes in a year or two. In a calmer mood, I might, indeed must, have been struck with the wild inconsistency of the old lady's imaginings, and looked with somewhat of skepticism on the map for that spot of earth so richly endowed; but now I believed every thing, provided it only ministered to my new hopes. Laura, evidently, too, believed in the "Canaan" of which, at last, we used to discourse as freely as though we had been there. Little discussions, would, however, now and then vary the uniformity of this creed, and I remember once feeling almost hurt at Laura's not agreeing with me about zebras, which I assured her were just as trainable as horses, but which the marquise flatly refused ever to use in any of her carriages. These were mere passing clouds; the regular atmosphere of our wishes was bright and transparent. In the midst of these delicious day dreams, there came one day a number of letters to the marquise by the hands of a courier on his way to Naples. What were their contents I never knew, but the tidings seemed most joyful, for the old lady invited the general and myself to dinner, when the table was decked out with white lilies on all sides; she herself, and Laura also, wearing them in bouquets on their dresses.

The occasion had, I could see, something of a celebration about it. Mysterious hints of circumstances I knew nothing of were constantly interchanged, the whole ending with a solemn toast to the memory of the "Saint and Martyr;" but who he was, or when he lived, I knew not one single fact about.

That evening – I can not readily forget it – was the first I had ever an opportunity of being alone with Laura! Hitherto the marquise had always been beside us; now she had all this correspondence to read over with the general, and they both retired into a little boudoir for the purpose, while Laura and myself wandered out upon the terrace, as awkward and constrained as though our situation had been the most provoking thing possible. It was on that same morning I had received the general's message regarding my situation, and I was burning with anxiety to tell it, and yet knew not exactly how. Laura, too, seemed full of her own thoughts, and leaned pensively over the balustrade and gazed on the stream.

"What are you thinking of so seriously?" asked I, after a long pause.

"Of long, long ago," said she sighing, "when I was a little child. I remember a little chapel like that yonder, only that it was not on a rock over a river, but stood in a small garden; and though in a great city, it was as lonely and solitary as might be – the Chapelle de St. Blois."

"St. Blois, Laura," cried I; "oh, tell me about that!"

"Why you surely never heard of it before," said she, smiling. "It was in a remote quarter of Paris, nigh the outer Boulevard, and known to but a very few! It had once belonged to our family; for in olden times there were chateaux and country houses within that space, which then was part of Paris, and one of our ancestors was buried there! How well I remember it all! The dim little aisle, supported on wooden pillars; the simple altar, with the oaken crucifix, and the calm, gentle features of the poor curé."

"Can you remember all this so well, Laura?" asked I, eagerly, for the theme was stirring my very heart of hearts.

"All – everything – the straggling weed-grown garden, through which we passed to our daily devotions – the congregation standing respectfully to let us walk by, for my mother was still the great Marquise D'Estelles, although my father had been executed, and our estates confiscated. They who had known us in our prosperity, were as respectful and devoted as ever; and poor old Richard, the lame sacristan, that used to take my mother's bouquet from her, and lay it on the altar; how every thing stands out clear and distinct before my memory! Nay, Maurice, but I can tell you more, for strangely enough, certain things, merely trifles in themselves, make impressions that even great events fail to do. There was a little boy, a child somewhat older than myself, that used to serve the mass with the Père, and he always came to place a footstool or a cushion for my mother. Poor little fellow, bashful and diffident he was, changing color at every minute, and trembling in every limb; and when he had done his duty, and made his little reverence, with his hands crossed on his bosom, he used to fall back into some gloomy corner of the church, and stand watching us with an expression of intense wonder and pleasure! Yes, I think I see his dark eyes glistening through the gloom, ever fixed on me! I am sure, Maurice, that little fellow fancied he was in love with me!"

"And why not, Laura; was the thing so very impossible? was it even so unlikely?"

"Not that," said she archly, "but think of a mere child; we were both mere children; and fancy him, the poor little boy, of some humble house, perhaps; of course he must have been that, raising his eyes to the daughter of the great 'marquise;' what energy of character there must have been to have suggested the feeling; how daring he was, with all his bashfulness!"

"You never saw him afterward?"

"Never!"

"Never thought of him, perhaps?"

"I'll not say that," said she, smiling. "I have often wondered to myself, if that hardihood I speak of had borne good or evil fruit. Had he been daring or enterprising in the right, or had he, as the sad times favored, been only bold and impetuous for the wrong!"

"And how have you pictured him to your imagination?" said I, as if merely following out a fanciful vein of thought.

"My fancy would like to have conceived him a chivalrous adherent to our ancient royalty, striving nobly in exile to aid the fortunes of some honored house, or daring, as many brave men have dared, the heroic part of La Vendée. My reason, however, tells me, that he was far more likely to have taken the other part."

"To which you will concede no favor, Laura; not even the love of glory."

"Glory, like honor, should have its fountain in a monarchy," cried she proudly. "The rude voices of a multitude can confer no meed of praise. Their judgments are the impulses of the moment. But why do we speak of these things, Maurice? nor have I, who can but breathe my hopes for a cause, the just pretension to contend with you, who shed your blood for its opposite."

As she spoke, she hurried from the balcony, and quitted the room. It was the first time, as I have said, that we had ever been alone together, and it was also the first time she had ever expressed herself strongly on the subject of party. What a moment to have declared her opinions, and when her reminiscences, too, had recalled our infancy! How often was I tempted to interrupt that confession, by declaring myself, and how strongly was I repelled by the thought that the avowal might sever us forever. While I was thus deliberating, the marquise, with the general entered the room, and Laura followed in a few moments.

The supper that night was a pleasant one to all save me. The rest were gay and high-spirited. Allusions, understood by them, but not by me, were caught up readily, and as quickly responded to. Toasts were uttered, and wishes breathed in concert, but all was like a dream to me. Indeed my heart grew heavier at every moment. My coming departure, of which I had not yet spoken, lay drearily on my mind, while the bold decision with which Laura declared her faith showed that our destinies were separated by an impassable barrier.

It may be supposed that my depression was not relieved by discovering that the general had already announced my approaching departure, and the news, far from being received with any thing like regret, was made the theme of pleasant allusion, and even congratulation. The marquise repeatedly assured me of the delight the tidings gave her, and Laura smiled happily toward me, as if echoing the sentiment.

Was this the feeling I had counted on? were these the evidences of an affection, for which I had given my whole heart? Oh, how bitterly I reviled the frivolous ingratitude of woman! how heavily I condemned their heartless, unfeeling nature. In a few days, a few hours, perhaps, I shall be as totally forgotten here, as though I had never been, and yet these are the people who parade their devotion to fallen monarchy, and their affection for an exiled house! I tried to arm myself with every prejudice against royalism. I thought of Santron and his selfish, sarcastic spirit. I thought of all the stories I used to hear of cowardly ingratitude, and noble infamy, and tried to persuade myself that the blandishments of the well-born were but the gloss that covered cruel and unfeeling natures.

For very pride sake, I tried to assume a manner cool and unconcerned as their own. I affected to talk of my departure as a pleasant event, and even hinted at the career that Fortune might hereafter open to me. In this they seemed to take a deeper interest than I anticipated, and I could perceive that more than once the general exchanged looks with the ladies most significantly. I fear I grew very impatient at last. I grieve to think that I fancied a hundred annoyances that were never intended for me, and when we arose to take leave, I made my adieux with a cold and stately reserve, intended to be strongly impressive, and cut them to the quick.