The name of the farm that Henri Mauperin had added to his surname to
make it sound more aristocratic happened, by a strange chance, such as
sometimes occurs, to be the name of an estate in Lorraine and of a
family, illustrious in former days, but at present so completely
forgotten that every one believed it had died out.
The man who had just dealt Henri this blow was the last of those
Villacourts who took their name from the domain and château of
Villacourt, situated some three leagues from Saint-Mihiel, and owned by
them from time immemorial.
In 1303 Ulrich de Villacourt was one of the three lords who set their
seal to the will of Ferry, Duke of Lorraine, by order of that prince.
Under Charles the Bold, Gantonnet de Villacourt, who had been taken
prisoner by the Messinians, only regained his liberty by giving his word
never to mount a battle-horse, nor to carry military weapons again. From
that time forth he rode a mule, arrayed himself in buffalo-skin, carried
a heavy iron bar, and returned to the fight bolder and more terrible
than ever. Maheu de Villacourt married Gigonne de Malain and afterward
Christine de Gliseneuve. His marble statue, between his two wives, was
to be seen before the Revolution in the Church of the Grey Friars at
Saint-Mihiel. Duke René allowed him to take eight hundred florins from
the town of Ligny for the ransom that he had had to pay after the
disastrous battle of Bulgnéville.
Remacle de Villacourt, Maheu's son, was killed in 1476, in the battle
waged by Duke René before Nancy against Charles the Daring. Hubert de
Villacourt, Remacle's sons, Seneschal of Barrois and Bailiff of
Bassigny, followed Duke Antoine as standard-bearer in the Alsatian war,
while his brother Bonaventure, a monk of the strict order of
Saint-François, was made three times over the triennial Superior of his
order, and confessor of Antoine and François, Dukes of Lorraine; and one
of his sisters, Salmone, was appointed Abbess of Sainte Glossinde of
Metz.
Jean-Marie de Villacourt served in the French army, and after the
Landrecies day, the king made him a knight and embraced him. He was
afterward captain of three hundred foot soldiers and Equerry of the
King's stables, and was then appointed to the captaincy of Vaucouleurs
and made Governor of Langres. He had married a sister of Jean de
Chaligny, the celebrated gun-founder of Lorraine, who cast the famous
culverin, twenty-two feet high. His brother Philibert was a cavalry
captain under Charles IX. His brother Gaston made himself famous by his
duels. It was he who killed Captain Chambrulard, with two sword-strokes,
before four thousand persons assembled at the back of the Chartreux in
Paris. Jean-Marie had another brother, Angus, who was Canon of Toul and
Archdeacon of Tonnerrois, and a sister, Archange, who was Abbess of
Saint-Maur, Verdun.
Then came Guillaume de Villacourt, who fought against Louis XIII. He was
obliged to surrender with Charles de Lenoncourt, who was defending the
town of Saint-Mihiel, and he shared his four years' captivity in the
Bastille. His son, Mathias de Villacourt, married in 1656 Marie
Dieudonnée, a daughter of Claude de Jeandelincourt, who opened the salt
mine of Château-Salins. Mathias had fourteen children, ten of whom were
killed in the service of Louis XIV: Charles, captain of the regiment of
the Pont, killed in the siege of Philisbourg; Jean, killed in the battle
of Nerwinde; Antoine, captain of the regiment of Normandie, killed in
the siege of Fontarabie; Jacques, killed in the siege of Bellegarde,
where he had gone by permission of the king; Philippe, captain of the
grenadiers in the Dauphin's regiment, killed in the battle of Marsaille;
Thibaut, captain in the same regiment, killed in the battle of
Hochstett; Pierre-François, commander in the Lyonnais regiment, killed
in the battle of Fleurus; Claude-Marie, commander in the Périgord
regiment, killed in the passage of the Hogue; Edme, lieutenant in his
brother's company, killed at his side in the same affair, and Gerard,
Knight of the Order of Saint-Jean of Jerusalem, killed in 1700, in a
conflict between four galleys of Christians and a Turkish man-of-war. Of
the three daughters of Charles-Mathias, Lydie married the Seigneur de
Majastre, Governor of Epinal, and the other two, Berthe and Phoebé, died
unmarried.
The eldest of the sons of Charles-Mathias, Louis-Aimé de Villacourt, who
served eighteen years and retired from service after the battle of
Malplaquet, died in 1702. His son left Villacourt, settled down in
Paris, threw himself into the life of the capital, and so got rid of the
remainder of a fortune which had already been encroached upon by the
loss of a lawsuit between his father and the d'Haraucourts. He
endeavoured to recover his losses at the gaming-table, got into debt,
and returned to Villacourt with a wife from Carrouge who had kept a
gambling house in Paris. He died in 1752, owning very little besides the
walls of the château, and leaving a name less famous and less honourable
than his father's had been. He had two children by his marriage, a
daughter and a son. The daughter became maid of honour to the
Empress-Queen, the son remained at Villacourt, leading a low, coarse
life as a country gentleman. On the abolition of privileges in 1790 he
gave up his rank and lived on a friendly and equal footing with the
peasants until he died in 1792. His son Jean, lieutenant in the regiment
of the Royal-Liégeois in 1787, was in the Nancy affair. He emigrated,
went through the campaigns of 1792 to 1801 in Mirabeau's legion, which
was then commanded by Roger de Damas, and in the Bourbon grenadiers in
Condé's army. On the thirteenth of August, 1796, he was wounded on the
head in the Oberkamlach battle. In 1802 he returned to France, bringing
with him a wife he had married in Germany, who died after bearing him
four children, four sons. He had become weak in intellect, almost
childish in fact, from the result of his wound, and after his wife's
death there was no one to regulate the household expenses. Disorder
gradually crept in, he kept open table and took to drinking, until at
last he was obliged to sell what little land he had round the château.
Finally the château itself began to crumble away. He could not have it
repaired, as he had no money to pay the workmen. The wind could be felt
through the cracks, and the rain came in. The family were obliged to
give up one room after another, taking refuge where the roof was still
sound. He himself was indifferent to all this; after drinking two or
three glasses of brandy he would take his seat in what used to be the
kitchen garden, on a stone bench near a meridian, the figures of which
had worn away, and there he would get quite cheerful in the sunshine,
calling to people over the hedge to come in and drink with him. Decay
and poverty, however, made rapid strides in the château. There was
nothing left of all the old silver but a salad-bowl, which was used for
the food of a horse called Brouska, that the exile had brought with him
from Germany, and which was now allowed to roam in liberty through the
rooms on the ground-floor.
The four sons grew up as the château went to decay, accustomed to wind,
rain, and roughing it. They were entirely neglected and abandoned by
their father, and their only education consisted of a few lessons from
the parish priest. From living like the peasants, and mixing with them
in their work and games, they gradually became regular peasants
themselves, and the roughest and strongest in the country round. When
their father died the four brothers, by common consent, made over to a
land agent the remaining stones of their château in return for a few
pounds, with which to pay their most pressing debts, and an annuity of
twenty pounds, which was to be paid until the death of the last of the
four. They then took up their abode in the forest, which joined their
estate, and lived there with the wood-cutters and in the same way as
they did, making a regular den of their hut, and living there with
their sweethearts or wives, peopling the forest with a half-bred race,
in which the Villacourts were crossed with nature, noblemen mated with
children of the forest, whose language, even, was no longer French. Some
of Jean de Villacourt's old comrades in arms had tried, on his death, to
do something for his children. They were interested in this name, which
had been so great and had now fallen so low. In 1826 the youngest of the
boys, who was scarcely more than sixteen, was brought to Paris. The
little savage was clothed and presented to the Duchesse d'Angoulême: he
appeared three or four times in the _salons_ of the Minister of War, who
was related to his family, and who was very anxious to do something for
him; but at the end of a week, feeling stifled in these drawing-rooms,
and ill at ease in his clothes, he had escaped like a little wolf, gone
straight back to his hiding-place, and had not come out of it again for
years.
Of these four Villacourts, he was the only one left at the end of twenty
years. His three brothers died one after the other, and all by violent
deaths; one from drunkenness, the second from illness, and the other
from blows he had received in a skirmish. All three had been struck down
suddenly, snatched as it were from the midst of life. Living among the
bastards they had left, this last of the Villacourts was looked up to in
the forest as the chieftain of a clan until 1854, when the game laws
came into force. All the regulations and the supervision, the trials,
fines, confiscations, and liabilities connected with the chase, which
had now become his very life, and the fear of giving way to his anger
some day and of putting a bullet into one of the keepers, disgusted him
with this part of the world, with France, and with this land which was
no longer his own.
It occurred to him to go to America in order to be quite free, and to be
able to hunt in untrodden fields where no gun license was necessary. He
went to Paris to set sail from Havre, but he had not enough money for
the voyage. He then fell back on Africa, but there he found a second
France with laws, gendarmes, and forest-keepers. He tried working a
grant of land, and then a clearing, but that kind of labour did not suit
him. The country and the climate tried him, and the burning heat of the
sun and soil began to take effect on his robust health. At the end of
two years he returned to France.
On going back to his log-hut at Motte-Noire he found a newspaper there,
the only thing which had come for him during his absence. It was a
number of the _Moniteur_ and was more than a year old. He tore it up to
light his pipe, and, just as he was twisting it, caught sight of a
red-pencil mark. He opened it out again and read the marked paragraph:
"_M. Mauperin_ (_Alfred-Henri_), better known by the name of
_Villacourt_, is about to apply to the Keeper of the Seals for
permission to add to his name that of Villacourt, and will henceforth be
known as _Mauperin de Villacourt_."
He got up, walked about, fumed, then sat down again, and slowly lighted
his pipe.
Three days later he was in Paris.
Just at first on reading the paper he had felt as though some one had
struck him across the face with a horsewhip. Then he had said to himself
that he was robbed of his name, but that was all, that his name was no
longer worth anything, as it was now the name of a beggar. This
philosophizing mood did not last long, the thought of the theft of his
name gradually came back to him, and it irritated and hurt him, and made
him feel bitter. After all he had nothing left but this name, and he
could not endure the idea of having it stolen from him, and so started
for Paris.
On arriving he was as furious as a mad bull, and his one idea was to go
and knock this M. Mauperin down at once. When once he was in the
capital, though, with its streets and its crowds, face to face with its
people, its shops, its life, all the passers-by, and the noise, he felt
dazed, like some wild beast let loose in a huge circus, whose rage is
suddenly turned into fright and who stops short after its first leap. He
went straight to the law courts, and in the long hall accosted one of
those men in black, who are generally leaning against a pillar, and
told him what had happened. The man in black informed him that as the
year's delay had expired there was nothing to be done but appeal to the
high court against the decree authorizing the addition of the name, and
he gave him the address of a counsel of the higher court. M. de
Villacourt hurried to this counsel. He found a very cold, polite man,
wearing a white necktie, who, while leaning back in a green morocco
chair, listened with a fixed expression in his eyes all the time to his
case, his claims, his rights, his indignation, and to the sound of the
parchments he was turning over with a nervous hand.
The expression of the counsel's face never changed, so that when M. de
Villacourt had finished he fancied that the other man had not
understood, and he began all over again. The lawyer stopped him with a
gesture, saying: "I think you will gain your case, monsieur."
"You _think_ so? Do you mean to say you are not sure of it?"
"A lawsuit is always a lawsuit, monsieur," answered the lawyer with a
faint smile, which was so sceptical that it chilled M. de Villacourt,
who was just prepared to burst out in a rage. "The chances are on your
side, though, and I am quite willing to undertake your case."
"Here you are then," said M. de Villacourt, putting his roll of
title-deeds down on the desk. "Thank you, sir," he added, rising to take
his leave.
"Excuse me," said the lawyer on seeing him walk towards the door, "but I
must call your attention to the fact that in business of this kind, in
an appeal to the higher court, we do not only act as the barrister but
as the lawyer of our client. There are certain expenses, for getting
information and examining deeds--If I take up your case I shall be
obliged to ask you to cover these expenses. Oh, it is only a matter of
from twenty to twenty-five pounds. Let us say twenty pounds."
"Twenty to twenty-five pounds! Why, what do you mean!" exclaimed M. de
Villacourt, turning red with indignation. "Some one steals my name, and
because I have not seen the newspaper in which the man warns me that he
intends robbing me, I must pay twenty-five pounds to make this rascal
give up my name again. Twenty to twenty-five pounds! But I haven't the
money, sir," he said, lowering his head and letting his arms fall down
at his sides.
"I am extremely sorry, monsieur, but this little formality is
indispensable. Oh, you must be able to find it. I feel sure that among
the relatives of the families into which your family has married--in
such questions as these, families are always ready to pull together."
"I do not know any one--and the Count de Villacourt will never ask for
money. I had just twelve pounds when I arrived. I bought this coat for
about two pounds at the Palais Royal on the way here. This hat cost me
five and tenpence. I suppose my hotel bill will cost me about a
sovereign, and I shall want about a sovereign to get back home. Could
you do with what is left?"
"I am very sorry, monsieur----"
M. de Villacourt put his hat on and left the room. At the hall-door he
suddenly turned round, passed through the dining-room and opening the
office-door again, he said, in a smothered voice which he was doing his
utmost to control:
"Can I have the address of M. Henri Mauperin--known as de
Villacourt--without paying for it?"
"Certainly; he is a barrister. I shall find his address in this book.
Here it is; Rue Taitbout--14."
It was after all this that M. de Villacourt had hurried away to Henri
Mauperin's.