light weight; the priest took it involuntarily, so to speak, for the
solemnity of the man's words, the tone in which he said them, and
the respect with which he handled the box, had surprised him beyond
measure. They returned then to the room where the two nuns were
awaiting them.
"You are," said the stranger, "in a house whose owner, Mucius Scævola,
the plasterer who lives on the first floor, is famous throughout
the section for his patriotism; but he is secretly attached to the
Bourbons. He used to be a huntsman in the service of Monseigneur le
Prince de Conti, and he owes his fortune to him. If you do not go out
of his house, you are safer than in any place in France. Stay here.
Devout hearts will attend to your necessities, and you may await
without danger less evil times. A year hence, on the twenty-first of
January (as he mentioned the date he could not restrain an involuntary
gesture), if you continue to occupy this dismal apartment, I will
return to celebrate again a mass of expiation."
He said no more. He bowed to the silent occupants of the attic, cast a
last glance upon the evidences of their poverty, and went away.
To the two innocent nuns, such an adventure had all the interest of a
romance; and so, as soon as the venerable abbé informed them of the
mysterious gift so solemnly bestowed upon him by that man, the box was
placed upon the table and the three anxious faces, dimly lighted by the
candle, betrayed an indescribable curiosity. Mademoiselle de Langeais
opened the box, and found therein a handkerchief of finest linen,
drenched with perspiration; and, on unfolding it, they saw stains.
"It is blood!" said the priest.
"It is marked with the royal crown!" cried the other nun.
The two sisters dropped the precious relic with a gesture of horror.
To those two ingenuous souls the mystery in which the stranger was
enveloped became altogether inexplicable; and as for the priest, from
that day he did not even seek an explanation of it.
The three prisoners soon perceived that a powerful arm was stretched
over them, in spite of the Terror.
In the first place, they received a supply of wood and provisions;
then the two nuns realised that a woman must be associated with their
protector, when some one sent them linen and clothing which enabled
them to go out without being noticed by reason of the aristocratic
cut of the garments which they had been forced to retain; and lastly,
Mucius Scævola gave them two cards of citizenship. It often happened
that information essential to the priest's safety reached him by
devious ways; and he found this advice so opportune that it could have
been given only by somebody initiated in state secrets.
Despite the famine which prevailed in Paris, the outcasts found at the
door of their lodging rations of white bread, which was brought there
regularly by invisible hands; they believed, however, that they could
identify Mucius Scævola as the mysterious agent of this beneficence,
which was always as ingenious as it was timely. The noble occupants
of the attic could not doubt that their protector was the person who
had come to ask the priest to celebrate the mortuary mass on the
evening of the twenty-second of January, 1793; so that he became the
object of a peculiar sort of worship to those three beings, who had
no hope except in him, and lived only through him. They had added
special prayers for him to their daily devotions; night and morning
those pious souls offered up entreaties for his happiness, for his
prosperity, for his salvation, and prayed to God to rescue him from all
snares, to deliver him from his enemies, and to grant him a long and
peaceful life. Their gratitude, being renewed every day, so to speak,
was necessarily accompanied by a feeling of curiosity which became
more intense from day to day. The circumstances which had attended the
appearance of the stranger were the subject of their conversation; they
formed innumerable conjectures about him, and the diversion which
their preoccupation with him afforded them was a benefaction of a new
sort. They were fully determined not to allow the stranger to evade
their friendship when he should return, according to his promise, to
commemorate the sad anniversary of the death of Louis XVI.
That night, so impatiently awaited, came at last. At midnight they
heard the sound of the stranger's heavy steps on the old, wooden
staircase; the room had been arrayed to receive him, the altar was in
place. This time the sisters opened the door beforehand and went forth
eagerly to light the staircase. Mademoiselle de Langeais even went down
a few steps in order to see her benefactor the sooner.
"Come," she said to him in a tremulous and affectionate voice, "come,
we are waiting for you."
The man raised his head, cast a gloomy glance upon the nun, and made
no reply. She felt as if a garment of ice had fallen upon her, and
she said no more; at sight of him, gratitude and curiosity expired
in all their hearts. He may have been less cold, less silent, less
awe-inspiring than he appeared to those poor souls, whom the exaltation
of their feeling inclined to an outpouring of friendliness. The three
unhappy prisoners, understanding that he proposed to remain a stranger
to them, resigned themselves to it. The priest fancied that he detected
upon the stranger's lips a smile that was instantly repressed when he
saw the preparations that had been made to receive him. He heard the
mass and prayed; but he disappeared after responding by a few words of
negative courtesy to Mademoiselle de Langeais's invitation to share the
little supper they had prepared.
After the ninth of Thermidor the nuns were able to go about Paris
without danger. The old priest's first errand was to a perfumer's shop,
at the sign of _La Reine des Fleurs_, kept by Citizen and Citizeness
Ragon, formerly perfumers to the Court, who had remained true to the
royal family, and of whose services the Vendeans availed themselves to
correspond with the princes and the royalist committee in Paris. The
abbé, dressed according to the style of the period, was standing on the
doorstep of that shop, between St.-Roch and Rue des Frondeurs, when a
crowd which filled Rue St.-Honoré prevented him from going out.
"What is it?" he asked Madame Ragon.
"Oh! it's nothing," she replied; "just the tumbril and the executioner,
going to the Place Louis XV. Ah! we saw him very often last year; but
to-day, four days after the anniversary of the twenty-first of January,
we can look at that horrible procession without distress."
"Why so?" said the abbé; "what you say is not Christian."
"Why, it's the execution of Robespierre's accomplices; they defended
themselves as long as they could, but they're going now themselves
where they have sent so many innocent people."
The crowd passed like a flood. Abbé de Marolles, yielding to an impulse
of curiosity, saw over the sea of heads, standing on the tumbril, the
man who, three days before, had listened to his mass.
"Who is that," he said, "that man who----"
"That is the headsman," replied Monsieur Ragon, giving the executioner
his monarchical name.
"My dear, my dear," cried Madame Ragon, "monsieur l'abbé is fainting!"
And the old woman seized a phial of salts, in order to bring the old
priest to himself.
"Doubtless," said the old priest, "he gave me the handkerchief with
which the king wiped his brow when he went to his martyrdom! Poor man!
That steel knife had a heart, when all France had none!"
The perfumers thought that the unfortunate priest was delirious.
1830.
La Grande Bretèche
About one hundred yards from Vendôme, on the banks of the Loire, there
stands an old dark-coloured house, surmounted by a very high roof, and
so completely isolated that there is not in the neighbourhood a single
evil-smelling tannery or wretched inn, such as we see in the outskirts
of almost every small town. In front of the house is a small garden
bordering the river, in which the boxwood borders of the paths, once
neatly trimmed, now grow at their pleasure. A few willows, born in the
Loire, have grown as rapidly as the hedge which encloses the garden,
and half conceal the house. The plants which we call weeds adorn the
slope of the bank with their luxuriant vegetation. The fruit-trees,
neglected for ten years, bear no fruit; their offshoots form a dense
undergrowth. The espaliers resemble hornbeam hedges. The paths,
formerly gravelled, are overrun with purslane; but, to tell the truth,
there are no well-marked paths.
From the top of the mountain upon which hang the ruins of the old
château of the Dukes of Vendôme, the only spot from which the eye
can look into this enclosure, you would say to yourself that, at a
period which it is difficult to determine, that little nook was the
delight of some gentleman devoted to roses and tulips, to horticulture
in short, but especially fond of fine fruit. You espy an arbour, or
rather the ruins of an arbour, beneath which a table still stands, not
yet entirely consumed by time. At sight of that garden, which is no
longer a garden, one may divine the negative delights of the peaceful
life which provincials lead, as one divines the existence of a worthy
tradesman by reading the epitaph on his tombstone. To round out the
melancholy yet soothing thoughts which fill the mind, there is on one
of the walls a sun-dial, embellished with this commonplace Christian
inscription: ULTIMAM COGITA. The roof of the house is terribly
dilapidated, the blinds are always drawn, the balconies are covered
with swallow's-nests, the doors are never opened. Tall weeds mark with
green lines the cracks in the steps; the ironwork is covered with rust.
Moon, sun, winter, summer, snow, have rotted the wood, warped the
boards, and corroded the paint.
The deathly silence which reigns there is disturbed only by the birds,
the cats, the martens, the rats and the mice, which are at liberty
to run about, to fight, and to eat one another at their will. An
invisible hand has written everywhere the word MYSTERY. If, impelled
by curiosity, you should go to inspect the house on the street side,
you would see a high gate arched at the top, in which the children of
the neighbourhood have made numberless holes. I learned later that
that gate had been condemned ten years before. Through these irregular
breaches you would be able to observe the perfect harmony between the
garden front and the courtyard front. The same disorder reigns supreme
in both. Tufts of weeds surround the pavements. Enormous cracks furrow
the walls, whose blackened tops are enlaced by the countless tendrils
of climbing plants. The steps are wrenched apart, the bell-rope is
rotten, the gutters are broken. "What fire from heaven has passed this
way? What tribunal has ordered salt to be strewn upon this dwelling?
Has God been insulted here? Has France been betrayed?" Such are the
questions which one asks one's self. The reptiles crawl hither and
thither without answering. That empty and deserted house is an immense
riddle, the solution of which is known to no one.
It was formerly a small feudal estate and bore the name of La Grande
Bretèche. During my stay at Vendôme, where Desplein had left me to
attend a rich patient, the aspect of that strange building became
one of my keenest pleasures. Was it not more than a mere ruin? Some
souvenirs of undeniable authenticity are always connected with a
ruin; but that abode, still standing, although in process of gradual
demolition by an avenging hand, concealed a secret, an unknown
thought; at the very least, it betrayed a caprice. More than once, in
the evening, I wandered in the direction of the hedge, now wild and
uncared for, which surrounded that enclosure. I defied scratches, and
made my way into that ownerless garden, that estate which was neither
public nor private; and I remained whole hours there contemplating its
disarray. Not even to learn the story which would doubtless account
for that extraordinary spectacle would I have asked a single question
of any Vendômese gossip. Straying about there, I composed delightful
romances, I abandoned myself to little orgies of melancholy which
enchanted me.
If I had learned the cause of that perhaps most commonplace neglect, I
should have lost the unspoken poesy with which I intoxicated myself.
To me that spot represented the most diverse images of human life
darkened by its misfortunes; now it was the air of the cloister, minus
the monks; again, the perfect peace of the cemetery, minus the dead
speaking their epitaphic language; to-day, the house of the leper;
to-morrow, that of the Fates; but it was, above all, the image of
the province, with its meditation, with its hour-glass life. I have
often wept there, but never laughed. More than once I have felt an
involuntary terror, as I heard above my head the low rustling made by
the wings of some hurrying dove. The ground is damp; you must beware of
lizards, snakes, and toads, which wander about there with the fearless
liberty of nature; above all, you must not fear the cold, for, after a
few seconds, you feel an icy cloak resting upon your shoulders, like
the hand of the Commendator on the neck of Don Juan. One evening I had
shuddered there; the wind had twisted an old rusty weathervane, whose
shrieks resembled a groan uttered by the house at the moment that I
was finishing a rather dismal melodrama, by which I sought to explain
to myself that species of monumental grief. I returned to my inn, beset
by sombre thoughts. When I had supped, my hostess entered my room with
a mysterious air, and said to me:
"Here is Monsieur Regnault, monsieur."
"Who is Monsieur Regnault?"
"What! Monsieur doesn't know Monsieur Regnault? That's funny!" she
said, as she left the room.
Suddenly I saw a tall, slender man, dressed in black, with his hat in
his hand, who entered the room like a ram ready to rush at his rival,
disclosing a retreating forehead, a small, pointed head, and a pale
face, not unlike a glass of dirty water. You would have said that he
was the doorkeeper of some minister. He wore an old coat, threadbare at
the seams; but he had a diamond in his shirt-frill and gold rings in
his ears.
"To whom have I the honour of speaking, monsieur?" I asked him.
He took a chair, seated himself in front of my fire, placed his hat on
my table, and replied, rubbing his hands:
"Ah! it's very cold! I am Monsieur Regnault, monsieur."
I bowed, saying to myself:
"_Il Bondocani!_ Look for him!"
"I am the notary at Vendôme," he continued.
"I am delighted to hear it, monsieur," I exclaimed, "but I am not ready
to make my will, for reasons best known to myself."
"Just a minute," he rejoined, raising his hand as if to impose silence
upon me. "I beg pardon, monsieur, I beg pardon! I have heard that you
go to walk sometimes in the garden of La Grande Bretèche."
"Yes, monsieur!"
"Just a minute," he said, repeating his gesture; "that practice
constitutes a downright trespass. I have come, monsieur, in the name
and as executor of the late Madame Countess de Merret, to beg you to
discontinue your visits. Just a minute! I'm not a Turk, and I don't
propose to charge you with a crime. Besides, it may well be that you
are not aware of the circumstances which compel me to allow the finest
mansion in Vendôme to fall to ruin. However, monsieur, you seem to be
a man of education, and you must know that the law forbids entrance
upon an enclosed estate under severe penalties. A hedge is as good as
a wall. But the present condition of the house may serve as an excuse
for your curiosity. I would ask nothing better than to allow you to go
and come as you please in that house; but, as it is my duty to carry
out the will of the testatrix, I have the honour, monsieur, to request
you not to go into that garden again. Even I myself, monsieur, since
the opening of the will, have never set foot inside that house, which,
as I have had the honour to tell you, is a part of the estate of Madame
de Merret. We simply reported the number of doors and windows, in order
to fix the amount of the impost which I pay annually from the fund set
aside for that purpose by the late countess. Ah! her will made a great
deal of talk in Vendôme, monsieur."
At that, he stopped to blow his nose, the excellent man. I respected
his loquacity, understanding perfectly that the administration of
Madame de Merret's property was the important event of his life--his
reputation, his glory, his Restoration. I must needs bid adieu to my
pleasant reveries, to my romances; so that I was not inclined to scorn
the pleasure of learning the truth from an official source.
"Would it be indiscreet, monsieur," I asked him, "to ask you the reason
of this extraordinary state of affairs?"
At that question an expression which betrayed all the pleasure that a
man feels who is accustomed to ride a hobby passed over the notary's
face. He pulled up his shirt collar with a self-satisfied air, produced
his snuff-box, opened it, offered it to me, and at my refusal, took a
famous pinch himself. He was happy; the man who has no hobby has no
idea of the satisfaction that can be derived from life. A hobby is the
precise mean between passion and monomania. At that moment I understood
the witty expression of Sterne in all its extent, and I had a perfect
conception of the joy with which Uncle Toby, with Trim's assistance,
bestrode his battle-horse.
"Monsieur," said Monsieur Regnault, "I was chief clerk to Master Roguin
of Paris. An excellent office, of which you may have heard? No? Why, it
was made famous by a disastrous failure. Not having sufficient money
to practise in Paris, at the price to which offices had risen in 1816,
I came here and bought the office of my predecessor. I had relatives
in Vendôme, among others a very rich aunt, who gave me her daughter in
marriage. Monsieur," he continued after a brief pause, "three months
after being licensed by the Keeper of the Seals I was sent for one
evening, just as I was going to bed (I was not then married), by Madame
Countess de Merret, to come to her Château de Merret. Her maid, an
excellent girl who works in this inn to-day, was at my door with madame
countess's carriage. But, just a minute! I must tell you, monsieur,
that Monsieur Count de Merret had gone to Paris to die, two months
before I came here. He died miserably there, abandoning himself to
excesses of all sorts. You understand?--On the day of his departure
madame countess had left La Grande Bretèche and had dismantled it.
Indeed, some people declare that she burned the furniture and hangings,
and all chattels whatsoever now contained in the estate leased by
the said--What on earth am I saying? I beg pardon, I thought I was
dictating a lease.--That she burned them," he continued, "in the fields
at Merret. Have you been to Merret, monsieur? No?" he said, answering
his own question. "Ah! that is a lovely spot! for about three months,"
he continued, after a slight shake of the head, "monsieur count and
madame countess led a strange life.
"They received no guests; madame lived on the ground floor, and
monsieur on the first floor. When madame countess was left alone,
she never appeared except at church. Later, in her own house, at her
château, she refused to see the friends who came to see her. She was
already much changed when she left La Grande Bretèche to go to Merret.
The dear woman--I say 'dear,' because this diamond came from her; but
I actually only saw her once,--the excellent lady, then, was very ill;
she had doubtless despaired of her health, for she died without calling
a doctor; so that many of our ladies thought that she was not in full
possession of her wits. My curiosity was therefore strangely aroused,
monsieur, when I learned that Madame de Merret needed my services. I
was not the only one who took an interest in that story. That same
evening, although it was late, the whole town knew that I had gone to
Merret. The maid answered rather vaguely the questions that I asked her
on the road; she told me, however, that her mistress had received the
sacrament from the curé of Merret during the day, and that she did not
seem likely to live through the night.
"I reached the château about eleven o'clock; I mounted the main
staircase. After passing through divers large rooms, high and dark, and
as cold and damp as the devil, I reached the state bedchamber where the
countess was. According to the reports that were current concerning
that lady--I should never end, monsieur, if I should repeat all the
stories that are told about her--I had thought of her as a coquette.
But, if you please, I had much difficulty in finding her in the huge
bed in which she lay. To be sure, to light that enormous wainscoted
chamber of the old _régime_, where everything was so covered with dust
that it made one sneeze simply to look at it, she had only one of those
old-fashioned Argand lamps. Ah! but you have never been to Merret.
Well, monsieur, the bed is one of those beds of the olden time, with
a high canopy of flowered material. A small night-table stood beside
the bed, and I saw upon it a copy of the _Imitation of Jesus Christ_,
which, by the by, I bought for my wife, as well as the lamp. There was
also a large couch for the attendant, and two chairs. Not a spark of
fire. That was all the furniture. It wouldn't have filled ten lines in
an inventory.
"Oh! my dear monsieur, if you had seen, as I then saw it, that huge
room hung with dark tapestry, you would have imagined yourself
transported into a genuine scene from a novel. It was icy cold; and,
more than that, absolutely funereal," he added, raising his arm with
a theatrical gesture, and pausing for a moment. "By looking hard and
walking close to the bed, I succeeded in discovering Madame de Merret,
thanks to the lamp, the light of which shone upon the pillow. Her face
was as yellow as wax, and resembled two clasped hands. She wore a lace
cap, which revealed her lovely hair, as white as snow. She was sitting
up, and seemed to retain that position with much difficulty. Her great
black eyes, dulled by fever no doubt, and already almost lifeless,
hardly moved beneath the bones which the eyebrows cover--these," he
said, pointing to the arch over his eyes.--"Her brow was moist. Her
fleshless hands resembled bones covered with tightly-drawn skin; her
veins and muscles could be seen perfectly. She must have been very
beautiful; but at that moment I was seized with an indefinable feeling
at her aspect. Never before, according to those who laid her out, had
a living creature attained such thinness without dying. In short, she
was horrible to look at; disease had so wasted that woman that she
was nothing more than a phantom. Her pale violet lips seemed not to
move when she spoke to me. Although my profession had familiarised me
with such spectacles, by taking me sometimes to the pillows of dying
persons to take down their last wishes, I confess that the families in
tears and despair whom I had seen were as nothing beside that solitary,
silent woman in that enormous château.
"I did not hear the slightest sound, I could not detect the movement
which the breathing of the sick woman should have imparted to the
sheets that covered her; and I stood quite still, gazing at her in a
sort of stupor. It seems to me that I am there now. At last her great
eyes moved, she tried to raise her right hand, which fell back upon
the bed, and these words came from her mouth like a breath, for her
voice had already ceased to be a voice: 'I have been awaiting you with
much impatience.'--Her cheeks suddenly flushed. It was a great effort
for her to speak, monsieur.--'Madame,' I said. She motioned to me to
be silent. At that moment the old nurse rose and whispered in my ear:
'Don't speak; madame countess cannot bear to hear the slightest sound,
and what you said might excite her.'--I sat down. A few moments later,
Madame de Merret collected all her remaining strength, to move her
right arm and thrust it, not without infinite difficulty, beneath her
bolster; she paused for just a moment; then she made a last effort to
withdraw her hand, and when she finally produced a sealed paper, drops
of sweat fell from her brow.--'I place my will in your hands,' she
said. 'O _mon Dieu_, oh!' That was all. She grasped a crucifix that lay
on her bed, hastily put it to her lips, and died. The expression of her
staring eyes makes me shudder even now, when I think of it. She must
have suffered terribly! There was a gleam of joy in her last glance, a
sentiment which remained in her dead eyes.