NINE YEARS—AND BEYOND
(1)
The general belief that the Duchesse de Trélan, thrown into prison when
Mirabel was sacked, had shared the terrible fate of the Princesse de
Lamballe, though it was unfounded, had a large amount of probability to
justify it. Valentine de Saint-Chamans had come very near to being cut
down by the weapons of the killers in that shambles of a street outside
La Force on the 3rd of September, 1792—so near it indeed that her
entire disappearance from that hour was assigned to that cause and to no
other.
But she had been saved on the very brink by a man almost unknown to her,
acting under a stimulus not commonly as powerful in this world as it
might be—gratitude.
Years and years before the Duchesse de Trélan had discovered in Paris,
precariously situated, a former steward of Mirabel, had pensioned him
from her own purse, and had continued the pension after his death to his
granddaughter, Suzon. Suzon in due time wedded one Alcibiade Tessier, a
young watchmaker with ideas—the Duchesse, who was fond of her for her
own sake, contributing her dowry. After that Valentine lost sight of her
protégée, and for some years before 1792 she had seen nothing of Mme
Tessier, so that no one had less idea than she in what good stead her
own past generosity was to stand her.
The first intimation of it was the sudden appearance, at one o’clock in
the afternoon of that third of September, in the little courtyard of the
prison of La Petite Force—where only an hour and a half earlier Mme de
Trélan had seen and spoken to the Princesse de Lamballe, now gone to her
doom—of a man whom she seemed to have seen before. This man approached
her, looked her in the face, said with meaning, “Do not be afraid! I
shall be there!” and walked rapidly away again. It was Alcibiade
Tessier, now an important member of his “section,” and, as such,
decorated with a badge of authority commanding respect, though
meaningless to the Duchesse de Trélan.
Sure enough, when a little before three o’clock several men came to take
her before that mock tribunal in the adjoining prison of La Force, he
was at their head. Still Mme de Trélan had not recognised him, and
thought his remark merely ferocious irony. But a measure of
enlightenment as to his aim, at any rate, came when she found him
confidently taking the words out of her mouth, and answering for her to
those questions that she only half understood. It was he who at the end
of that rapid interrogatory caught her arm and, raising it, said, “See,
she cries ‘Vive la nation’”; it was he who, on the pronouncement of
acquittal, went out in front of her through the door of death into the
swimming Rue des Balais, he who, with some more under his orders,
hurried her up the length of that swirling red gutter into the worse
carnage of the Rue St. Antoine, and finally he who, when one of the male
furies there, with dripping sabre, tried to get her to kneel on the
hillock of corpses and shreds of corpses to swear fealty to the nation,
pushed her by, covering her face with his hat, asseverating that she was
not a friend of the Lamballe, and that she had already sworn.
But it was only when she sank down, half dead, in Alcibiade’s little
shop in the Rue de Seine that the Duchesse de Trélan began fully to
realise the harvest which she was reaping. In the Tessiers’ attic,
where, more or less indisposed, she was hidden for a month, she knew it
better still. For Suzon had quite decided that her benefactress was to
instal herself there for the present, until she could safely get away,
and she and Alcibiade so wrought upon Mme de Trélan that in mid-October
she openly appeared as Suzon’s aunt from the provinces, arriving one
evening, for the benefit of the neighbours, with a trunk—Suzon’s.
She was then able to attempt to communicate with her émigré husband, and
wrote a very guarded letter addressed to his last direction in London.
Suzon, who was anxious for her to join him, contrived to get it conveyed
somehow across the Channel. Cautiously as (for the Tessiers’ sake) the
letter was worded, it showed that Mme de Trélan was waiting for a lead
to join the Duc in England. No answer came. The obvious explanation of
the silence was that her letter had never reached him. That was quite to
be expected. After Christmas she wrote again; fresh difficulties of
conveyance, fresh uncertainties as to its arrival. And again no reply.
“The reason is,” Suzon would say, “that M. le Duc is coming himself to
take you away. One of these days he will turn up in the Rue de Seine,
you will see!”
But Valentine knew—indeed, hoped—that that was out of the question. In
that early spring of 1793, after the King’s execution, how could a
proscribed noble possibly get into Paris without incurring the most
terrible risks? She was haunted sometimes by the thought that he had
come, and had paid the penalty. That thought made her hesitate too about
fleeing on her own account to England—always supposing such a course
were possible without compromising the Tessiers—for her husband might
meanwhile be searching for her in Paris, since she had not dared (again
for their sakes) to give her address plainly. She would wait a little
longer.
And then, in that April, the bloody thundercloud of the Terror broke
over France. Ere the first spattering red drops had swelled to the
stream which was to run so full Valentine found herself once more in
prison—this time in a much obscurer place of detention than La Force. A
piece of her underclothing, incautiously sent to be washed out of the
house, was found to bear a compromising mark; the washerwoman denounced
this widow from the provinces who had a coronet on her shift. The marvel
was that the Tessiers themselves were not included in this catastrophe,
but they put up such a good defence, Alcibiade’s character for
patriotism stood so high, and Suzon affirmed so stoutly that the garment
in question belonged to a ci-devant in the country whom her aunt had
once served as maid, that in the end Valentine was imprisoned as a
suspect merely. And as a suspect she remained in her mean captivity for
more than a year, unrecognised—for there were none of her acquaintance
there—and forgotten.
The Gironde fell, Marat was murdered, the Queen executed, Vendée
defeated. The year 1793 closed; the next began; Hébert’s, then Danton’s
head went the way of the rest, and at last the long suspense was ended,
when on a May morning of 1794 the widow Vidal stood before Dumas and his
assessors in their plumed hats, in that hall of so many anguishes in the
Palais de Justice, to find acquittal on an unforeseen ground. There was
no evidence against her; the zealous washerwoman was dead, and even
Fouquier-Tinville himself, demanding his quota of heads a day, was
intent on nobler quarry than this country widow. Her trial only lasted
ten minutes. One was quickly lost or saved just then.
The fishwives on the other side of the barrier acclaimed the acquittal,
little guessing whom they were applauding. Some of them insisted on
accompanying the Duchesse home—to all the home she had. Henceforward
she was more or less sacred. But never, now, while that orgy of blood
and denunciation lasted, could her real identity be suffered to reveal
itself, or the Tessiers would be lost indeed. Moreover, Mme de Trélan
was herself beginning to be uncertain of it. And, though her position
was improved by her official acquittal, the months of prison and
privation had left their mark on her character in a kind of inertia and
indifference very foreign to her nature. In common with many others in
those days of superhuman strain, the love of life was running low in
her. Existence was almost a burden. She was ill, indeed, for months.
Then at last, in that stiflingly hot and cloudless Thermidor, the spell
of terror was snapped, and the guillotine came back from its ceaseless
work in the east of Paris to the centre for Maximilien Robespierre
himself.
In the reaction Valentine roused herself to write again to her husband,
more because she felt she owed it to him than because of any great wish
to do so, or of any hope that he would receive the letter. She did
seriously contemplate leaving France, or at least leaving Paris, but the
days went on, and she took no steps. . . . It was better to think that
Gaston was dead. She did think it at last. If he were not, she was too
proud to make an appearance in the world of emigration as a deserted
wife. And the few family ties she, an only child and early orphaned, had
possessed were all broken now, by nature or violence. She was happy,
too, in a sense, with the Tessiers, who had risked so much for her, and
to whom, since Thermidor, her presence was no longer a menace—though
she was still very careful not to betray herself. She began to earn
money by embroidery, which she had always done exquisitely; she began,
too, to enjoy the new sensation of earning. And when in ’97 Alcibiade
died very suddenly, and his widow, keeping a journeyman to attend to the
clocks and watches, turned half the shop into a lingerie, Mme de
Trélan’s skill helped to support the new venture.
So—unbelievably when she looked back at their added months—five years,
almost, had passed since her release, and she was still in the Rue de
Seine, having reached an indifference to outward circumstances which
might, on the surface, have earned the commendation accorded by
spiritual direction to “detachment.” Yet this state of mind was not in
the main the fruit of the astonishing change in her fortunes, of
captivity and indignities or suspense—not even the fruit of her
husband’s strange silence. It sprang from a tree of older growth than
these, though no doubt these conditions, and especially the last, had
ripened it; it was the lees of a cup more deadening, even, than that
which the Revolution had set to her lips—the cup which she had begun to
drink years before, when her heart had been slowly starved amid the
luxury and state of Mirabel.
(2)
The marriage of Geneviève-Armande-Marie-Valentine de Fondragon with
Gaston-Henri-Hippolyte-Gabriel-Eléonor de Saint-Chamans, Duc de Trélan,
had been arranged, as often happened, when the bride was a child in the
convent. But Mlle de Fondragon had seen her betrothed before the
ceremony rather oftener than fell to the lot of most highborn young
girls in her day, and no match, in the end, had been more one of love
than hers with the singularly attractive young man who came sometimes,
as was permitted, to the parlour of the great aristocratic nunnery of
the Panthémont where she was being educated. She was seventeen,
beautiful and accomplished, when she was wedded with all imaginable pomp
in the chapel of Mirabel to a bridegroom of twenty-three, and began with
him an existence out of which custom and the demands of fashion, rather
than anything more menacing, were so quickly to suck not only the early
enchantment, but the more lasting affection that might have replaced it.
For the splendid and handsome young patrician whom she had married went
his own way in life—and it was not hers.
It was indeed expected of a man of rank in those days that he should
either keep a mistress or be assigned as lover to some married lady of
his own world, and that he should see only as much of the society of his
own wife as a certain standard of good usage demanded. After a few years
of marriage the young Duc de Trélan was conforming most faithfully to
both these requirements. And Valentine, formed in that corrupt and
polished society which grew up so early, was even at twenty-one too much
of her rank and epoch ever to utter reproaches, or even to feel very
keenly that her husband’s far from unusual conduct was reprehensible in
itself. Practically the whole of the highest society was an amazing
_chassé-croisé_ of such arrangements. But she did feel it in another
way, and that sharply enough; for there was a factor not always present
in like situations—she loved her husband passionately. And so, just as
an ordinary woman, she suffered.
Not that Gaston de Trélan was by any means a profligate. He was
difficult in his preferences, and she knew well how violently—and for
the most part unsuccessfully—he was run after in society.
“Saint-Charmant” was the current play on his name in the salons of the
Faubourg St. Germain and of the Marais. Nor did he ever fail in
attentions to her; nay, as the years went on, she knew that she had his
respect always; intermittently, perhaps, almost his love. Of the
freedom, not to say licence, which a lady in her high position could
claim, she herself had not taken the shadow of an advantage. And yet,
though she was herself so unsullied, and though she was also a very
proud woman, she would have passed over in her husband what her world,
so far from censuring, almost demanded. As youth fell away from both of
them she certainly felt it less, and the Duc’s love affairs, never
scandalously frequent, became almost negligible. It was not that trait
in him which had cut the deepest; it was the gradual conviction that the
high promise of his character and gifts would never be fulfilled. Her
love for him, which had survived unfaithfulness, was ambitious, and not
without reason. More than most of his line Gaston de Trélan had
capacity, but unluckily there ran in his blood far more than his share
of the indolent pride of the Saint-Chamans. If he could not do a thing
supremely well, he would not do it at all. Indeed, he appeared to see no
reason why he should trouble to do anything, in a world where all was at
his feet, but be uniformly charming, gay, keenwitted—and supremely
wilful. Like most young nobles he had had a military training, and had
been given a colonelcy at the age of twenty; but not one second more
than the obligatory four months of the twelve would he ever spend with
his regiment. Indeed he resigned the burden of this command a few years
after marriage. In later life the coveted position of First Gentleman of
the Bedchamber had been almost forced upon him; fortunately that only
entailed a year of service. Valentine, a Dame du Palais herself at the
time, had no love for the long and tiring ceremonial of Court
attendance, and if only he had accepted the post of ambassador to Sweden
which was offered him about the same period, or that of governor of
Provence for which he was proposed, she would have forgiven him had he
refused the honour at Versailles. But there existed no influence strong
enough to make him shoulder responsibility against his will.
Yet the slow disillusionment had not killed her love. After all, when
the crash came in 1790 they were neither of them old. And she herself,
as she felt bitterly at times, had failed to do the one thing which was
really demanded of her. She had not given her husband an heir—and
Gaston de Trélan was the last of his line.
It was a shattering blow to a house which dated from the eleventh
century. The name would be extinguished altogether, and the property
broken up. Mirabel would go to a cousin, the Duc de Savary-Lancosme, who
would also inherit the great estates in Berry. Saint-Chamans, that
cradle of the race in the South—which for some reason Valentine had
never liked and rarely visited—would fall to another branch. So the Duc
de Trélan was pitied, as she knew, for what, to a man of his rank,
possessions and ancient lineage, was indeed a profound misfortune.
Things might indeed have been very different if Mirabel had not been a
childless house—not in the accepted sense that the birth of a son would
have drawn husband and wife together, for this was doubtful—but because
the Duchesse de Trélan would not have felt always, as the hope of one
died, the sense of an irremediable shortcoming, and because a certain
fatal retort could never have been made.
For her husband’s entire abstention from reproach on that score
Valentine had always borne him gratitude. And indeed no one in the world
ever counted up more greedily than she his good qualities—his
generosity, his courage, his strict regard for honour, his contempt of
anything petty or mean. It was nothing but that undying wish of hers to
see him openly what he really was which led, after the years of partial
estrangement, to their final rupture, when, in July, 1790, the Duc
announced his intention of emigrating.
He assumed as a matter of course that his wife would accompany him from
a France grown, as he said, insupportable. Most people of their rank had
already gone, for with them it had become practically a principle; M. de
Trélan was inclined to blame himself for having remained so long. But
Valentine did not approve of the principle, and said so; for a man of
any weight and authority to leave France at this juncture seemed to her
like deserting one’s country in her hour of need—though the opinion was
not fashionable. Her husband listened to her, as he always did, with
courtesy, but replied that by remaining he regarded himself as tacitly
countenancing the growth of theories and practices, both in politics and
religion, which he most cordially detested. And the Duchesse on that had
frankly told him that, having for so many years refused to take any part
in politics, or diplomacy, or military affairs or indeed anything, he
had hardly the right now to complain of present developments. Never
before had she been within even measurable distance of such plain
speech.
And M. de Trélan, who could never brook criticism, was plainly more than
annoyed, but he had controlled himself, and recurred more insistently
still to the question of his wife’s accompanying him into exile. Once
more the Duchesse had refused, saying finally, when pressed for a
reason, that she “did not like running away.”
It was true that she had hastily added “from responsibility”—since she
knew, none better, that the last weakness on earth of which her husband
could be accused was physical cowardice—but it was too late. The Duc
was on his feet, quite white. “Madame,” he said, “God made you a woman;
you may thank Him for it. Do you stay here then, with your
responsibilities. They are doubtless great; and if I do not return”—he
took no notice of her as she tried to break in—“if I do not return, you
can superintend the bestowal of my property on its legal heirs.
Savary-Lancosme and the rest will have cause, _as ever,_ to be grateful
to you. I have the honour to wish you good-day.” And he walked out of
her boudoir.
She never saw him again. Within an hour he had quitted Mirabel for ever,
leaving her to reflect, wounded to the soul as she was, on those two
little words “as ever” and what, after all, they revealed.
But in a few days there came a letter from him begging her, not without
a certain stiffness, to forgive him for what, in the heat of the moment,
had passed his lips, and offering her, if she had reconsidered her
decision, his escort to Coblentz, or, if she preferred it, to England.
Otherwise, for the short absence which he proposed to make, she would
find that his affairs were sufficiently in order not to incommode her,
and he prayed her to remain at Mirabel or wherever seemed good to her.
Except for an absence of feeling the letter was perfect, but Mme de
Trélan knew that it was the letter of a man who wishes to set himself
right in his own eyes for what he considers a lapse from good taste. She
thought emigration foolish and unpatriotic—the day had not yet come
when it was the only chance of safety for the wellborn—and she could
not bring herself to accept an amende prompted less by affection for her
than by a desire for rehabilitation. And if it was to be a short
absence, why leave France at all? Down at her country house in Touraine
she was, besides, interesting herself in a certain philanthropic scheme
of her own. So she answered the Duc’s letter in much the same spirit,
asked his pardon also for her hasty words—and refused.
The Duc de Trélan never came back. From Coblentz he went to England, and
though he and his wife at first kept up a desultory correspondence on
matters of business, for five or six months before the sack of Mirabel
she had not had a line from him. Intercourse with England was by that
time becoming uncertain, but she had news of him through less direct
channels. By all accounts Gaston de Trélan was much too popular in
English society to find time for writing to the wife who so deeply
disapproved of his having taken refuge there.