Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel

‘After all,’ said he mockingly, ‘if it were not that I chanced to resemble some dear prince or other, they had left me to starve. I wonder who my prototype may be: what would he say if I proposed to change coats with him? Should I have more difficulty in performing the part of prince, or he that of vagabond?’

In resentful reflections like this he showed how the seeds of Gabriel’s teaching matured and ripened in his heart, darkening hope, stifling even gratitude. To impute to mere caprice, a passing whim, the benevolence of the rich was a favourite theory of Gabriel; and if, when Gerald listened first to such maxims, they made little or no impression upon him, now, in the long silent hours of his solitude, they came up to agitate and excite him. One startling illustration Gabriel had employed, that would occur again and again to the boy’s mind, in spite of himself.

‘These benefactors,’ said he, ‘are like men who help a drowning swimmer to sustain himself a little longer: they never carry him to the shore. Their mission is not rescue, it is only to prolong a struggle, to protract a fate.’

The snow lay on the Apennines, and even on the lower hills around Florence, ere Gerald was sufficiently recovered to move about his room. The great dreary house, silent and tenantless, was a dominion over which he wandered at will, sitting hours long in contemplation of frescoed walls and ceilings, richly carved architraves, and finely chiselled traceries over door and window. Had they who reared such glorious edifices left no heirs nor successors behind them? Why were such splendours left to rot and decay? Why were patches of damp and mildew suffered to injure these marvellous designs? Why were the floors littered with carved and golden fretwork? What new civilisation had usurped the place of the old one, that men preferred lowly dwellings – tasteless, vulgar, and inconvenient – to those noble abodes, elegant and spacious ‘Could it possibly be that the change in men’s minds, the growing assertion of equality, had tended to suppress whatever too boldly indicated superiority of station? Already distinctions of dress were fading away. The embroidered jabot, the rich falling ruffle, the ample peruke, and the slashed and braided coat, were less and less often seen abroad. A simpler and more uniform taste in costume began to prevail, the insignia of rank were seldom paraded in public, and even the liveries of the rich displayed less of costliness and show than in times past. Over and over had Gabriel directed the youth’s attention to these signs, saying, with his own stern significance —

‘You will see, boy, that men will not any longer wait for equality till the churchyard.’

Was the struggle, then, really approaching? – were the real armies, indeed, marshalling their forces for the fight? And if so, with which should he claim brotherhood? His birth and blood inclined him to the noble, but his want and destitution gave him common cause with the miserable.

It was a dreary day of December, a low, leaden sky, heavily charged with rain or snow, stretched over a landscape inexpressibly sad and wretched-looking. The very character of Italian husbandry is one to add greatly to the rueful aspect of a day in winter: dreary fields of maize left to rot on the tall stalks; scrubby olive-trees, in all the deformity of their leafless existence; straggling vine branches, stretching from tree to tree, or hanging carelessly about – all these damp and dripping, in a scene desolate as a desert, with no inhabitants, and no cattle to be seen.

Such was the landscape that Gerald gazed on from a window, and, weary with reading now, stood long to contemplate.

‘How little great folk care for those seasons of gloom!’ thought he. ‘Their indoor life has its thousand resources of luxury and enjoyment: their palaces stored with every appliance of comfort for them – pictures, books, music – all that can charm in converse, all that can elevate by taste about them. What do they know of the trials of those who plod heavily along through mire and rain, weary, footsore, and famishing?’ And Marietta rose to his mind, and he pictured her toiling drearily along, her dress draggled, her garments dripping. He thought he could mark how her proud look seemed to fire with indignation at an unworthy fate, and that a feverish spot on her cheek glowed passionately at the slavery she suffered. ‘And why am I not there to share with her these hardships?’ cried he aloud. ‘Is not this a coward’s part in me to sit here in indolence, and worse again, in mere dependence? I am able to travel: I can, at least, crawl along a few miles a day; strength will come by the effort to regain it. I will seek her through the wide world till I find her. In her companionship alone has my heart ever met response, and my nature been understood.’

A low, soft laugh interrupted these words. He turned, and it was the Abbé Girardon, a friend of the Marquise de Bauffremont’s, who always accompanied her, and acted as a sort of secretary in her household. There was a certain half-mocking subtlety, a sort of fine raillery in the manner of the polished Abbé which Gerald always hated; and never was he less in the humour to enjoy the society of one whom even friends called ‘malin.’

‘I believed I was alone, sir,’ said Gerald, half haughtily, as the other continued to show his whole teeth in ridicule of the youth’s speech.

‘It was chance gave me the honour of overhearing you,’ replied the Abbé, smiling. ‘I opened this door by mere accident, and without expecting to find you here.’

Gerald’s cheek grew crimson. The exceeding courtesy of the other’s manner seemed to him a studied impertinence, and he stared steadfastly at him, without knowing how to reply.

‘And yet,’ resumed the Abbé, ‘it was in search of you I came out from Florence this dreary day. I had no other object, I assure you.’

‘Too much honour, Monsieur,’ said Gerald, with a haughty bend of the head; for the raillery, as he deemed it, was becoming insupportable.

‘Not but the tidings I bear would reward me for even a rougher journey,’ said the Abbé courteously. ‘You are aware of the deep interest the Marquise de Bauffremont has ever taken in your fortunes. To her care and kindness you owe, indeed, all the attentions your long illness stood in need of. Well, her only difficulty in obtaining a career for you was her inability to learn to what rank in life to ascribe you. You believed yourself noble, and she was most willing to accept the belief. Now, a mere accident has tended to confirm this assumption.’

‘Let me hear what you call this accident, Monsieur l’Abbé,’ broke in Gerald anxiously.

‘It was an observation made yesterday at dinner by Sir Horace Mann. In speaking of the Geraldines, and addressing Count Gherardini for confirmation, he said: “The earldom of Desmond, which is held by a branch of the family, is yet the youngest title of the house.” And the Count answered quickly: “Your Excellency is right; we date from a long time back. There ‘s an insolent proverb in our house that says, ‘Meglio un Gherardini bastardo che un Corsini ben nato.’” Madame de Bauffremont caught at the phrase, and made him repeat it. In a word, Monsieur, she was but too happy to avail herself of what aided a foregone conclusion. She wished you to be noble, and you were so.’

‘But I am noble!’ cried Gerald boldly. ‘I want no hazards like these to establish my station. Let them inquire how I am enrolled in the college.’

‘Of what college do you speak?’ asked the Abbé quickly.

‘It matters not,’ stammered out Gerald, in confusion at thus having betrayed himself into a reference to his past. ‘None have the right to question me on these things.’

‘A student enrolled with his due title,’ suggested the wily Abbé, ‘would at once stand independent of all generous interpretation.’

‘You will learn no more from me, Monsieur l’Abbé,’ said the youth disdainfully. ‘I shall not seek to prove a rank from which I ask to derive no advantage. They called me t’other day, at the tribunal, a “vagabond”: that is the only title the law of Tuscany gives me.’

The Abbé, with a tact skilled to overcome far greater difficulties, strove to allay the youth’s irritation, and smooth down the asperity which recent illness, as well as temperament, excited, and at last succeeded so far that Gerald seated himself at his side, and listened calmly to the plan which the Marquise had formed for his future life. At some length, and with a degree of address that deprived the subject of anything that could alarm the jealous susceptibility of the boy’s nature, the Abbé related that a custom prevailed in certain great houses (whose alliances with royalty favoured the privilege) of attaching to their household young cadets of noble families, who served in a capacity similar to that of courtier to the person of the king. They were ‘gentlemen of the presence,’ pages or equerries, as their age or pretensions decided; and, in fact, from the followers of such houses as the De Rohan, the Noailles, the Tavannes, and the Bauffre-mont, did royalty itself recruit its personal attendants. Monsieur de Girardon was too shrewd a reader of character not to perceive that any description of the splendours and fascinations of a life of voluptuous ease would be less captivating to such a youth than a picture of a career full of incident and adventure, and so he dwelt almost exclusively on all that such a career could offer of high ambition, the army being chiefly officered by the private influence of the great families of France.

‘You will thus,’ said he, at the close of a clever description; ‘you will thus, at the very threshold of life, enjoy what the luckiest rarely attain till later on – the choice of what road you will take. If the splendour of a court life attract you, you can be a courtier; if the ambitions of statesmanship engross your mind, you are sure of office; if you aspire to military glory, here is your shortest road to it; or if,’ said he, with a graceful melancholy, ‘you can submit yourself to be a mere guest at the banquet of life, and never a host – one whose place at the table is assigned him, not taken by right – such, in a word, as I am – why, then, the Abbé’s frock is an easy dress, and a safe passport besides.’

With a sort of unintentional carelessness, that seemed frankness itself, the Abbé glided into a little narrative of his own early life, and how, with a wide choice of a career before him, he had, half in indolence, half in self-indulgence, adopted the gown.

‘Stern thinkers call men like me mere idlers in the vineyard, drones in the great human hive: but we are not; we have our uses just as every other luxury. We are to society what the bouquet is to the desert; our influence on mankind is not the less real, that its exercise attracts little notice.’

‘And what am I to be, what to do?’ asked Gerald proudly.

‘Imagine the Marquise de Bauffremont to be Royalty, and you are a courtier; you are of her household, in attendance on her great receptions; you accompany her on visits of ceremony – your rank securing you all the deference that is accorded to birth, and admission to the first circles in Paris.’

‘Is not this service menial?’ asked he quickly.

‘It is not thus the world regards it. The Melcours, the Frontignards, the Montrouilles are to be found at this moment in these ranks.’

‘But they are recognised by these very names,’ cried Gerald; ‘but who knows me, or what title do I bear?’

‘You will be the Chevalier de Fitzgerald; the Marquise has influence enough at court to have the title confirmed. Believe me,’ added he, smiling blandly, ‘everything has been provided for – all forethought taken already.’

‘But shall I be free to abandon this – servitude’ (the word would out, though he hesitated to utter it) – ‘if I find it onerous or unpleasant? Am I under no obligation or pledge?’

‘None; you are the arbiter of your own fortune at any moment you wish.’

‘You smile, sir, and naturally enough, that one poor and friendless as I am should make such conditions; but remember, my liberty is all my wealth – so long as I have that, so long am I master of myself: free to come and go, I am not lost to self-esteem. I accept,’ and so saying, he gave his hand to the Abbé, who pressed it cordially, in ratification of the compact.

‘You will return with me to Florence, Monsieur le Chevalier,’ said the Abbé, rising, and assuming a degree of courteous respect which Gerald at once saw was to be his right for the future.

BOOK THE SECOND

CHAPTER I. THE ‘SALLE DES GARDES’

In a large salon of the palace at Versailles, opening upon a terrace, and with a view of the vast forest beneath it, were assembled a number of officers, whose splendid uniforms and costly equipments proclaimed them to be of the bodyguard of the king. They had just risen from table, and were either enjoying their coffee in easy indolence, gathered in little knots for conversation, or arranging themselves into parties for play.

The most casual glance at them would have shown what it is but fair to confess they never sought to conceal – that they were the pampered favourites of their master. It was not alone the richness of their embroidered dress, the boundless extravagance that all around them displayed, but, more than even these, a certain air of haughty pretension, the carriage and bearing of a privileged class, proclaimed that they took their rank from the high charge that assigned them the guard of the person of the sovereign.

When the power and sway of the monarchy suffered no check – so long as the nation was content to be grateful for the virtues of royalty, and indulgent to its faults – while yet the prestige of past reigns of splendour prevailed, the ‘Garde du Corps’ were great favourites with the public: their handsome appearance, the grace of their horsemanship, their personal elegance, even their very waste and extravagance had its meed of praise from those who felt a reflected pride from the glittering display of the court. Already, however, signs of an approaching change evidenced themselves: a graver tone of reprehension was used in discussing the abandoned habits of the nobility; painfully drawn pictures of the poor were contrasted with the boundless waste of princely households; the flatteries that once followed every new caprice of royal extravagance, and which imparted to the festivities of the Trianon the gorgeous colours of a romance, were now exchanged for bare recitals, wherein splendour had a cold and chilling lustre. If the cloud were no bigger than a man’s hand, it was charged with deadliest lightning.

The lack of that deference which they had so long regarded as their due, made these haughty satraps but haughtier and more insolent in their manner toward the citizens. Every day saw the breach widen between them; and what formerly had been oppression on one side and yielding on the other, were now occasions of actual collision, wherein the proud soldier was not always the victor. If the newspapers were strong on one side, the language of society was less measured on the other. The whole tone of conversation caught its temper from the times; and ‘the bourgeois’ was ridiculed and laughed at unceasingly. The witty talker sought no other theme; the courtly epigrammatist selected no other subject; and even royalty itself was made to laugh at the stage exhibitions of those whose loyalty had once, at least, been the bulwark of the monarchy.

In the spacious apartment already mentioned, and at a small table before an open window, sat a party of three, over their wine. One was a tall, spare, dark-complexioned man, with something Spanish in his look, the Duc de Bourguignon, a captain in the Garde; the second was a handsome but over-conceited-looking youth, of about twenty-two or three, the Marquis de Maurepas. The third was Gerald, or as he was then and there called, Le Chevalier de Fitzgerald. Though the two latter were simple soldiers, all their equipment was as costly as that of the officer at their side. As little was there any difference in their manner of addressing him. Maurepas, indeed, seemed rather disposed to take the lead in conversation, and assumed a sort of authority in all he said, to which the Duke gave the kind of assent usually accorded to the ‘talkers by privilege.’ The young Marquis had all the easy flippancy of a practised narrator, and talked like one who rarely fell upon an unwilling audience.

‘It needs but this, Duke,’ said he, after a very energetic burst of eloquence; ‘it needs but this, and our corps will be like a regiment of the line.’

‘Parbleu!’ said the Duke, as he stroked his chin with the puzzled air of a man who saw a difficulty, but could not imagine any means of escape.

‘I should like to know what your father or mine would have said to such pretension,’ resumed the Marquis. ‘You remember what the great monarch said to Colonna, when he asked a place for his son? – “You must ask Honoré if he has a vacancy in the kitchen!” And right, too. Are we to be all mixed up together! Are the employments of the State to be filled by men whose fathers were lackeys! Is France going to reject the traditions that have guided her for centuries?’

‘To what is all this apropos, Gaston!’ asked Fitzgerald calmly.

‘Haven’t you heard that M. Lescour has made interest with the king to have his son appointed to the Garde?’

‘And who is M. Lescour?’

‘I ‘ll tell you what he is, which is more to the purpose: he himself would be puzzled to say who. M. Lescour is a fermier-general – very rich, doubtless, but of an origin the lowest.’

‘And his son?’

‘His son! What do I know about his son? I conclude he resembles his father: at all events, he cannot be one of us.’

‘Pardon me if I am not able to see why,’ said Gerald calmly. ‘There is nothing in the station of a fermier-general that should not have opened to his son the approach to the very highest order of education, all that liberal means could bestow – ’

‘But, mon cher, what do we care for all that? We want good blood and good names among our comrades; we want to know that our friendships and our intimacies are with those whose fathers were the associates of our fathers. Ask the Duke here, how he would fancy companionship with the descendants of the rabble. Ask yourself, is it from such a class you would select your bosom friends?’

‘Grant all you say to be correct: is not the king himself a good judge of those to whom he would intrust the guardianship of his person?’ interposed Gerald. ‘The annals of the world have shown that loyalty and courage are not peculiar to a class.’

‘A’nt they —parbleu!’ cried Maurepas. ‘Why, those sentiments are worthy of the Rue Montmartre. Messieurs,’ added he, rising, and addressing the others, scattered in groups through the room, ‘congratulate yourselves that the enlightened opinions of the age have penetrated the darkness of our benighted corps. Here is the Chevalier de Fitzgerald enunciating opinions that the most advanced democracy would be proud of.’

The company thus addressed rose from their several places and came crowding around the table where the three were seated. Gerald knew not very accurately the words he had just uttered, and turned from one face to the other of those around to catch something like sympathy or encouragement in this moment of trial, but none such was there. Astonishment and surprise were, perhaps, the most favourable among the expressions of those who now regarded him.

‘I was telling the Duc de Bourguignon of the danger that impended our corps,’ began Maurepas, addressing the company generally. ‘I was alluding to what rumour has been threatening us with some time back, the introduction into the Garde of men of ignoble birth. I mentioned specifically one case, which, if carried through, dissolves for ever the prestige of that bond that has always united us, when our comrade here interposes and tells me that the person of his Majesty will be as safe in the guardianship of the vile “Koturier” as in that of our best and purest blood. I will not for an instant dispute with him as to knowledge of the class whose merits he upholds.’ A faint murmur, half astonishment, half reproof, arose throughout the room at these words; but Gerald never moved a muscle, but sat calm and still awaiting the conclusion of the speech.

‘I say this without offence, resumed Maurepas, who quickly saw that he had not the sympathy of his hearers in his last sally; ‘without the slightest offence, for, in good truth, I have no acquaintanceship outside the world of my equals. Our comrade’s views are doubtless, therefore, wider and broader; but I will also say that these used not to be the traditions of our corps, and that not only our duty, but our very existence, was involved in the idea that we were a noble guard.’

‘Well said!’ ‘True!’ ‘Maurepas is right!’ resounded through the room.

‘We are, then, agreed in this,’ resumed Maurepas, following up his success with vigour; ‘and there is only one among us who deems that the blood of the plebeian is wanting to lend us chivalry and devotion.’

‘Shame! shame!’ cried several together, and looks of disapprobation were now turned on Fitzgerald.

‘If I have unintentionally misrepresented the Chevalier,’ resumed Maurepas, ‘he is here to correct me.’

Gerald arose, his face crimson, the flush spreading over his forehead and his temples. There was a wild energy in his glance that showed the passion that worked within him; but though his chest heaved with high indignation and his heart swelled, his tongue could not utter a word, and he stood there mute and confounded.

‘There, there – enough of it!’ exclaimed an old officer, whose venerable appearance imparted authority to his words. ‘The Chevalier retracts, and there is an end to it.’

‘I do not. I withdraw nothing – not a syllable of what I said,’ cried Gerald wildly.

‘It is far better thus, then,’ cried Maurepas; ‘let the corps decide between us.’

‘Decide what,’ exclaimed Gerald passionately. ‘Monsieur de Maurepas would limit the courage and bravery of France to the number of those who wear our uniform. I am disposed to believe that there are some hundreds of thousands just as valiant and just as loyal who carry less lace on their coats, and some even – ’ here he stopped confused and abashed, when a deep voice called out —

‘And some even who have no coats at all. Is it not so you would say, Chevalier?’

‘I accept the words as my own, though I did not use them,’ cried Gerald boldly.

‘There is but one explanation of such opinions as these,’ broke in Maurepas; ‘the Chevalier de Fitzgerald has been keeping other company than ours of late.’

Gerald rose angrily to reply, but ere he could utter a word an arm was slipped within his own, and a deep voice said —

‘Come away from this – come to my quarters, Gerald, and let us talk over the matter.’ It was Count Dillon, the oldest captain of the corps, who spoke, and Gerald obeyed him without a word of remonstrance.

‘Don’t you perceive, boy,’ said the Count, as soon as they reached the open air, ‘that we Irish are in a position of no common difficulty here? They expect us to stand by an order of nobility that we do not belong to. To the king and the royal family you and I will be as loyal and true as the best among them; but what do we care – what can we care – for the feuds between noble and bourgeois? If this breach grows wider every day, it was none of our making; as little does it concern us how to repair it.’

‘I never sought for admission into this corps,’ said Gerald angrily. ‘Madame de Bauffremont promised me my grade in the dragoons, and then I should have seen service. Two squadrons of the very regiment I should have joined are already off to America, and instead of that, I am here to lounge away my life, less a soldier than a lackey!’

‘Say nothing to disparage the Garde, young fellow, or I shall forget we are countrymen,’ said Dillon sternly; and then, as if sorry for the severity of the rebuke, added, ‘Have only a little patience, and you can effect an exchange. It is what I have long desired myself.’

‘You too, Count?’ cried Gerald eagerly.

‘Ay, boy. This costly life just suits my pocket as ill as its indolence agrees with my taste. As soldiers, we can be as good men as they, but neither you nor I have three hundred thousand livres a year, like Maurepas or Noailles. We cannot lose ten rouleaux of Louis every evening at ombre, and sleep soundly after; our valets do not drink Pomard at dinner, nor leave our service rich with two years of robbery.’