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LED ASTRAY
_By_ OCTAVE FEUILLET, _author of "Romance of a
Poor Young Man," etc._
[Illustration]
NEW YORK AND LONDON
STREET & SMITH, PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1891
By STREET & SMITH
LED ASTRAY.
CHAPTER I.
A GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION.
GEORGE L---- to PAUL B., PARIS.
ROZEL, _15th September_.
It's nine o'clock in the evening, my dear friend, and you have just
arrived from Germany. They hand you my letter, the post-mark of which
informs you at once that I am absent from Paris. You indulge in a gesture
of annoyance, and call me a vagabond. Nevertheless, you settle down in
your best arm-chair, you open my letter, and you hear that I have been for
the past five days domesticated in a flour-mill in Lower Normandy. In a
flour-mill! What the duse can he be doing in a mill? A wrinkle appears on
your forehead, your eyebrows are drawn together; you lay down my letter
for a moment; you attempt to penetrate this mystery by the unaided power
of your imagination. Suddenly a playful expression beams upon your
countenance; your mouth expresses the irony of a wise man tempered by the
indulgence of a friend; you have caught a glimpse, through an
opera-comique cloud, of a miller's pretty wife with powdered hair, a waist
all trimmed with gay ribbons, a light and short skirt, and stockings with
gilded clocks; in short, one of those fair young millers' wives whose
heart goes pit-a-pat with hautboy accompaniment. But the graces who are
ever sporting in your mind sometimes lead it astray; my fair miller is as
much like the creature of your imagination as I am like a youthful Colin;
her head is adorned with a towering cotton night-cap to which the thickest
possible coating of flour fails to restore its primitive color; she wears
a coarse woolen petticoat which would abrade the hide of an elephant; in
short, it frequently happens to me to confound the miller's wife with the
miller himself, after which it is sufficient to add that I am not the
least curious to know whether or not her heart goes pit-a-pat. The truth
is, that, not knowing how to kill time in your absence, and having no
reason to expect you to return before another month; (it's your own
fault!), I solicited a mission. The council-general of the department of
---- had lately, and quite opportunely, expressed officially the wish that
a certain ruined abbey, called Rozel Abbey, should be classed among
historical monuments. I have been commissioned to investigate closely the
candidate's titles. I hastened with all possible speed to the chief town
of this artistic department, where I effected my entrance with the
important gravity of a man who holds within his hands the life or the
death of a monument dear to the country. I made some inquiries at the
hotel; great was my mortification when I discovered that no one seemed to
suspect that such a thing as Rozel Abbey existed within a circuit of a
hundred leagues. I called at the prefecture while still laboring under the
effect of this disappointment; the prefect, Valton, whom you know very
well, received me with his usual affability; but to the questions I
addressed him on the subject of the condition of the ruins which the
council seemed so desirous of preserving for the admiration of its
constituents, he replied with an absent smile, that his wife, who had
visited these ruins on the occasion of an excursion into the country,
while she was sojourning on the sea shore, could tell me a great deal more
about the ruins than he possibly could himself.
He invited me to dinner, and in the evening, Madame Valton, after the
usual struggles of expiring modesty, showed me, in her album, some
views of the famous ruins sketched with considerable taste. She became
mildly excited while speaking to me of these venerable remains, situated,
if she is to be believed, in the midst of an enchanting site, and, above
all, particularly well suited for picnics and country excursions. A
beseeching and corrupting look terminated her harangue. It seems
evident to me that this worthy lady is the only person in the department
who takes any real interest in that poor old abbey, and that the
conscript fathers of the general council have passed their resolution
authorizing an investigation out of pure gallantry. It is impossible for
me, however, not to concur in their opinion; the abbey has beautiful
eyes; she deserves to be classed--she shall be classed.
My decision was therefore settled, from that moment, but it was still
necessary to write it down and back it with some documentary evidence.
Unfortunately, the local archives and libraries do not abound in
traditions relative to my subject; after two days of conscientious
rummaging, I had collected but a few rare and insignificant documents,
which may be summed up in these two lines; "Rozel Abbey, in Rozel
township, was inhabited from time immemorial by monks, who left it when it
fell in ruins."
That is why I resolved to go, without further delay, and ask their secret
of these mysterious ruins, and to multiply, if need be, the artifices of
my pencil, to make up for the compulsory conciseness of my pen. I left
on Wednesday morning for the town of Vitry, which is only two or three
leagues distant from the abbey. A Norman coach, complemented with
a Norman coachman, jogged me about all day, like an indolent monarch,
along the Norman hedges. When night came, I had traveled twelve miles
and my coachman had taken twelve meals.
The country is fine, though of a character somewhat uniformly rustic.
Under everlasting groves is displayed an opulent and monotonous verdure,
in the thickness of which contented-looking oxen ruminate. I can
understand my coachman's twelve meals; the idea of eating must occur
frequently and almost exclusively to the imagination of any man who spends
his life in the midst of this rich nature, the very grass of which gives
an appetite.
Toward evening, however, the aspect of the landscape changed; we entered a
rolling prairie, quite low, marshy, bare as a Russian steppe, and
extending on both sides of the road; the sound of the wheels on the
causeway assumed a hollow and vibrating sonority; dark-colored reeds and
tall, unhealthy-looking grass covered, as far as the eye could reach, the
blackish surface of the marsh. I noticed in the distance, through the
deepening twilight, and behind a cloud of rain, two or three horsemen
running at full speed, and as if demented, through these boundless spaces;
they disappeared at intervals in the depressions of the meadows, and
suddenly came to sight again, still galloping with the same frenzy. I
could not imagine toward what imaginary goal these equestrian phantoms
were thus madly rushing. I took good care not to inquire; mystery is a
sweet and sacred thing.
The next morning, I started for the abbey, taking with me in my cabriolet
a tall young peasant who had yellow hair, like Ceres. He was a farm-boy
who had lived since his birth within a rod of my monument; he had heard me
in the morning asking for information in the court-yard of the inn, and
had obligingly volunteered to show me the way to the ruins, which were the
first thing he had seen on coming into the world. I had no need whatever
of a guide; I accepted, nevertheless, the fellow's offer, his officious
chattering seeming to promise a well-sustained conversation, in the course
of which I hoped to detect some interesting legend; but as soon as he had
taken his seat by my side, the rascal became dumb; my questions seemed
even, I know not why, to inspire him with a deep mistrust, almost akin to
anger. I had to deal with the genius of the ruins, the faithful guardian
of their treasures. On the other hand, I had the gratification of taking
him home in my carriage; it was apparently all he wished, and he had every
reason to be satisfied with my accommodating spirit.
After landing this agreeable companion at his own door, it became
necessary for me to alight also; a rocky path, or rather a rude flight of
stone steps, winding down the side of a steep declivity, led me to the
bottom of a narrow valley which spreads and stretches between a double
chain of high wooded hills. A small river flows lazily through it under
the shade of alder-bushes, dividing two strips of meadows as fine and
velvety as the lawns of a park; it is crossed over by an old bridge with a
single arch, which reflects in the placid water the outlines of its
graceful ogive. On the right, the hills stand close together in the form
of a circus, and seemed to join their verdure-clad curves; on the left,
they spread out until they become merged in the deep and somber masses of
a vast forest. The valley is thus closed on all sides, and offers a
picture of which the calm, the freshness, and the isolation penetrate the
soul.
The ruins of the abbey stand with their back against the forest. What
remains of the abbey proper is not a great deal. At the entrance of the
court-yard, a monumental gateway; a wing of the building, dating from the
twelfth century, in which dwell the family of the miller of whom I am the
guest; the chapter-hall, remarkable for some elegant arches and a few
remnants of mural painting; finally, two or three cells, one of which
seems to have been used for the purposes of correction, if I may judge
from the solidity of the door and the strength of the bolts. The rest has
been torn down, and may be found in fragments among the cottages of the
neighborhood. The church, which has almost the proportions of a cathedral,
is finely preserved, and produces a marvelous effect. The portal and the
apse have alone disappeared; the whole interior architecture, the copings,
the tall columns, are intact and as if built yesterday. There, it seems,
that an artist must have presided over the work of destruction; a masterly
stroke of the pick-ax has opened at the two extremities of the church,
where stood the portal and where stood the altar, two gigantic bays, so
that, from the threshold of the edifice, the eye plunges into the forest
beyond as through a deep triumphal arch. In this solitary spot the effect
is unexpected and solemn. I was delighted with it. "Monsieur," I said to
the miller, who, since my arrival, had been watching my every step from a
distance with that fierce mistrust which is a peculiarity of this part of
the country, "I have been requested to examine and to sketch these ruins.
That work will require several days; could you not spare me a daily trip
from the town to the abbey and back, by furnishing me with such
accommodations as you can, for a week or two?"
The miller, a thorough Norman, examined me from head to foot without
answering, like a man who knows that silence is of gold; he measured me,
he gauged me, he weighed me, and finally, opening his flour-coated lips,
he called his wife. The latter appeared at once upon the threshold of the
chapter-hall, converted into a cow-pen, and I had to repeat my request to
her. She examined me in her turn, but not at such great length as her
husband, and, with the superior scent of her sex, her conclusion was, as I
had the right to expect, that of the _præses_ in the _Malade Imaginaire_:
"_Dignus es intrare_." The miller, who saw what turn things were taking,
lifted his cap and treated me to a smile. I must add that these excellent
people, once the ice was broken, tried in every way to compensate me, by a
thousand eager attentions, for the excessive caution of their reception.
They wished to give up to me their own room, adorned with the Adventures
of Telemachus, but I preferred--as Mentor would have done--a cell of
austere nudity, of which the window, with small, lozenge-shaped panes,
opens on the ruined portal of the church and the horizon of the forest.
Had I been a few years younger, I would have enjoyed keenly this poetic
installation; but I am turning gray, friend Paul, or at least I fear so,
though I try still to attribute to a mere effect of light the doubtful
shades that dot my beard under the rays of the noon-day sun. Nevertheless,
if my reverie has changed its object, it still lasts, and still has its
charms for me. My poetic feeling has become modified and, I think, more
elevated. The image of a woman is no longer the indispensable element of
my dreams; my heart, peaceful now, and striving to become still more so,
is gradually withdrawing from the field of my mind's labors. I cannot, I
confess, find enough pleasure in the pure and dry meditations of the
intellect; my imagination must speak first and set my brain in motion, for
I was born romantic, and romantic I shall die; and all that can be asked
of me, all I can obtain of myself, at an age when propriety already
commands gravity, is to build romances without love.
Up to this time, ennui has spared me in my solitude. Shall I confess to
you that I even experience in it a singular feeling of contentment? It
seems as though I were a thousand leagues away from the things of the
world, and that there is a sort of truce and respite in the miserable
routine of my existence, at once so agitated and so commonplace. I relish
my complete independence with the naïve joy of a twelve-year-old Robinson
Crusoe. I sketch when I feel like it; the rest of the time, I walk here
and there at random, being careful only never to go beyond the bounds of
the sacred valley. I sit down upon the parapet of the bridge, and I watch
the running water; I go on voyages of discovery among the ruins; I dive
into the underground vaults; I scale the shattered steps of the belfry,
and being unable to come down again the same way, I remain astride a
gargoyle, cutting a rather sorry figure, until the miller brings me a
ladder. I wander at night through the forest, and I see deer running by in
the moonlight. All these things have a soothing effect on my mind, and
produce the effect of child's dream in middle age.
Your letter dated from Cologne, and which was forwarded to me here
according to my instructions, has alone disturbed my beatitude. I console
myself with some difficulty for having left Paris almost on the eve of
your return. May Heaven confound your whims and your want of decision! All
I can do now, is to hurry my work; but where shall I find the historical
documents I still need? I am seriously anxious to save these ruins. There
is here a rare landscape, a valuable picture, which it would be sheer
vandalism to allow to perish.
And then, I admire the old monks! I wish to offer up to their departed
shades this homage of my sympathy. Yes, had I lived some thousand years
ago, I would certainly have sought among them the repose of the cloister
while waiting for the peace of heaven. What existence could have suited me
better? Free from the cares of this world, and assured of the other, free
from any agitations of the heart or the mind, I would have placidly
written simple legends which I would have been credulous enough to
believe; I would have unraveled with intense curiosity some unknown
manuscripts, and discovered with tears of joy the Iliad or the Æneid; I
would have sketched imaginary cathedrals; I would have heated
alembics--and perhaps have invented gunpowder; which is by no means the
best thing I might have done.
Come! 'tis midnight; brother, we must sleep!
_Postscriptum._--There are ghosts! I was closing this letter, my dear
friend, in the midst of a solemn silence, when suddenly my ears were
filled with mysterious and confused sounds that seemed to come from
the outside, and among which I thought I could distinguish the buzzing
murmur of a large crowd. I approached, quite surprised, the window of my
cell, and I could not exactly tell you the nature of the emotion I felt on
discovering the ruins of the church illuminated with a resplendent blaze;
the vast portal and the yawning ogives cast floods of light far as the
distant woods. It was not, it could not be, an accidental conflagration.
Besides, I could see, through the stone trefoils, shadows of superhuman
size flitting through the nave, apparently performing, with a sort of
rhythm, some mysterious ceremony. I threw my window abruptly open;
at the same instant, a loud blast broke forth in the ruins, and rang again
through all the echoes of the valley; after which, I saw issuing from the
church a double file of horsemen bearing torches and blowing horns, some
dressed in red, others draped in black, with plumes waving over their
heads. This strange procession followed, still in the same order, amid the
same dazzling light and the same clangor of trumpets, the shaded path that
skirts the edge of the meadows. Having reached the little bridge, it
stopped; I saw the torches rise, wave, and cast showers of sparks; the
horns sounded a weird and prolonged blast; then suddenly every light
disappeared, every noise ceased, and the valley was again wrapped in the
darkness and the deep silence of the night. That is what I saw and heard.
You who have just arrived from Germany, did you meet the Black Huntsman?
No? Hang yourself, then!