THE CONVENT OF ST. URSULE.
Two other episodes will close my adventures in the Isle of Martinique.
I need not detail to the reader the investment of Fort Bourbon, where
General Rochambeau, commander of the French West-India Islands, made
a desperate resistance, at the head of twelve hundred men of a
revolted regiment of the French line--the old 37th, or Marshal
Turenne's corps; and how, at the point of the bayonet, we hurled
Bellegarde and Pelocque, the leaders of the blacks and mulattoes,
with all their dingy warriors, from the heights of La Sourrière, with
the loss of all their cannon and plunder; or how we toiled day and
night--officers and soldiers working side by Bide--to make a new road
over the mountains, and to drag up heavy guns and mortars, till,
finding the futility of further resistance, Rochambeau capitulated,
delivering over the fortress, with five stand of colours, and all the
cannon and arms. When Rochambeau came forth, he was clad in the new
uniform of a general of the Republic--to wit, a blue coat, richly
embroidered with gold; a white satin waistcoat and blue pantaloons,
also laced with gold; a cocked hat and nodding tricoloured plume.
The hilt and scabbard of his sabre were studded with precious stones.
From plainness, the sovereign people were hurrying into the extreme
of military frippery.
With the shattered remnant of his forces, consisting of the 37th and
the gunners of the marine corps, he embarked on board the fleet of
Admiral Jervis for conveyance to England, as prisoner of war.
The two barriers of Fort Bourbon were delivered over with all due
formality, and I had the honour first to do duty as an officer by
commanding a Fusilier guard at the eastern gate on this eventful day.
Then came the preparation of those lists, which, as poor Jack Rolster
our adjutant said, "were to carry grief to many a heart, and perhaps
poverty to many a home;" yet, our losses in killed, wounded, and
missing (barely three hundred) were trifling, when we considered the
value of the territory we had added to the British crown. The
casualties in our ranks were rapidly replaced by volunteers from the
Scottish Lowland Fencible corps which were in process of reduction at
this time.
In the store-houses of Fort Bourbon, we found great quantities of
rice, maize, potatoes, figs, melons, and bananas. These, with pigs,
turkeys, and wood-pigeons, kept us in fresh provisions for a long
time.
The casualties of a soldier's life in these wild and perilous times,
brought me through many a strange adventure and mischance; but few of
these have impressed me more vividly than those connected with our
campaign in Martinique.
At Fort Bourbon, Captain Glendonwyn discovered in the quarters of the
late Colonel de Rouvigny, a vast quantity of plunder, among which
were the gold and silver altar vessels, the jewels, vestments, books,
reliques, and pictures belonging to the Ursuline convent at St.
Pierre. These the general ordered to be packed up, and to be
delivered to the superior; and on this peaceful duty, with all the
paraphernalia of St. Ursule piled in a cart, driven by two half-naked
negroes, and guarded by twenty Fusiliers, I marched by the main road
to St. Pierre, passing on the way all the ruined and dismantled
batteries we had so lately taken from the French, and over which the
young grass and weeds were already sprouting.
After a twenty-one miles' march, we re-entered St. Pierre about
nightfall. All was quiet then, as our troops occupied both the town
and citadel. Even the revolted blacks--our most dreadful
enemies--dared not to molest a red-coat now, unless they caught him
straggling and alone.
It is impossible to depict the state of danger to which the decree of
the French National Assembly by abolishing all distinctions of colour
in their Colonies, reduced their wretched planters in the Antilles.
The murders and devastations consequent on this decree are
incalculable. In San Domingo alone one hundred and thirty-five
thousand furious blacks were in arms, destroying all whose colour was
fairer than their own; ten thousand of these marauders were killed,
and twenty-four thousand were dispersed, but not before they had
destroyed five hundred and forty-seven coffee and sugar plantations,
and tortured to death in cold blood two hundred and fourteen white
men and women. A _white infant_, impaled on a spear, was their
banner and symbol!
Martinique, St. Bartholomew, Marigalante, and Los Santos, were all
similarly convulsed.
I remember the terrible devastation of a village which the blacks of
Bellegarde and Pelocque had ravaged. The little church of St. Martin
had been shamefully desecrated; the images had been torn from their
niches, the ornaments defaced, and bibles and missals were rent to
shreds. In the houses, the skeletons, still with sufficient
fragments of clothing about them to indicate their sexes, lay in
veritable heaps, some with their sightless sockets turned still to
heaven imploring the mercy or succour which never came. In the
streets and alleys lay scattered bones, as if wild animals had gnawed
and strewed them about. In the fleshless hand of a woman lay a
blood-stained bible, which was open at the words, "It is better to be
in the house of mourning than of feasting." A leaf was turned down
at the passage which was thus impressed upon my memory. But to
resume.
I proceeded direct to the Ursuline convent, which stands on the bank
of a little stream.
As the French religieux were all royalists and in the interest of
Britain, I soon obtained an audience of the Superior in the
reception-room or parlour of the convent--an apartment having a tiled
floor, and broad sunshades over its windows, the open Venetian blinds
of which overlooked a beautiful garden, where the classic myrtle, the
Provence rose, the geranium, and the violet, with all the flowers of
Europe and the Indian isles were blooming. In the twilight of the
evening, and in the sombre apartment (its walls were painted with a
russet-green tint which rendered the hue of everything deeper still),
I remember being struck by the grace and bearing of the lady, to whom
I readily introduced myself, not without a strange undefinable
emotion of interest, as this was the first occasion on which I had
ever stood within the walls of a convent, or made the acquaintance of
a recluse, save through the medium of a circulating library. The
grace of this woman's form, neither her black serge robe, nor her
square white hood, which fell in sepulchral folds over her brow and
under her chin, could conceal. She revealed only the lower part of
her face, and, on seeing me, paused and seemed rather agitated.
"Madame," said I, "you must excuse me, if at this hour I intrude upon
one, who with her companions, must have suffered so many terrors of
late; but I come hither by the orders of Sir Charles Grey, the
commander-in-chief of the British troops, to restore some valuable
property--the plunder of your convent--which we discovered in Fort
Bourbon, after its capitulation by General Rochambeau."
She now raised her head, and lifting her white hood, gazed on me
sorrowfully, sweetly, and with features so pale, that in her sombre
dress she seemed like one returned from the grave. Suddenly, a pang
shot through my heart, and an exclamation escaped me.
"Eulalie!"
"Monsieur Oliver--I thought you would know me at last," said she,
with a sad smile.
"Eulalie--here, alive, and in this strange dress!"
I held out my arms, but she shrank back.
"You see how wayward is my fate," said she.
"You are now----"
"A nun." She shook her head, and let her arms droop by her side.
"Oh, Eulalie----"
"Repining is futile--I have taken the irrevocable vows for life."
"For life! you know not the suspense--I may well call it torture--I
endured, my dear friend--after discovering your abduction from
Barbadoes; visions of cruelty and death were ever before me."
"I suffered much cruelty, but not death. Rouvigny relented--even
_he_ could relent. He brought me here, and I embraced a new life, as
an escape from that to which he had condemned me."
"But was not this irregular--without a divorce? and consent----"
"Of the Pope you would say?"
"Yes."
"It is irregular; but in the total confusion of all our
ecclesiastical affairs, here and in Italy, the Bishop of Martinique,
though deposed by the Republicans, permitted it, as the best mode of
separating us for ever, and perhaps of protecting me."
"Are you happy?" I asked, almost reproachfully.
"Happy!" she reiterated, in a tone of voice that was exquisitely
touching; "what said Louise de la Valliere, in. answer to the same
question, when she became a nun: 'I am not happy; but I am
_content_.'"
"Know you not that Rouvigny is dead."
"Dead!" she repeated, with clasped hands.
"He died after the skirmish at Le Morne Rouge."
"May God give peace to his spirit--I have prayed for Mm many, many
times."
"You are now free."
"Free! Oh, Marie mère de Dieu!" she exclaimed, while the tears fell
over her pale face; "I have this day been elected Superior of the
Ursulines. Go--go, Monsieur Oliver; for Heaven's sake leave me. We
must meet no more; and better had it been for us that we had never
met. You have won your epaulettes; fortune favours you, and I
rejoice at it. Go on thus, my friend--my dear friend, and prosper."
"Thanks, dear Eulalie."
"In the path you must pursue in life Eulalie will soon be forgotten;
but never, while pulsation and human charity remain in her heart,
will she forget to pray for you. Adieu, God bless you!"
She pressed her hands upon her breast. I could hear her sob; I
stepped towards her; but she hastily withdrew, closed the parlour
door, and I was left alone.
I never saw Eulalie again.
To know that she lived and loved me still, but was for ever separated
from me--that I dared not see, or visit, or talk with her, and love
her in return--filled me with perplexity, irritation, and sorrow; but
there was no help for it now.
In all this deep interest no thought of marriage ever occurred to me;
in short, I was still too much of a boy to think of this. The
romance of loving her sufficed for me; but as some one says, "Did
Petrarch ever reflect if Laura would make a good wife? Did Oswald
ever think it of Corinne? Would it not weaken faith in their
romantic passages if you believed it? What have such practical
issues to do with that passion which sublimates the faculties, and
makes the loving dreamer to live in an ideal sphere, wherein nothing
but goodness and brightness can come?"
Then, as I conjured up the fair image of Eulalie, and thought of the
deep mine of tenderness and love which lay buried in that living tomb
at St. Pierre, I hailed with joy the order that sent us to the
conquest of St. Lucia.