Look kindly on them; I cannot bear
Severity;
My heart’s so tender, should you charge me rough,
I should but weep and answer you with sobbing;
But use me gently, like a loving brother,
And search through all the secrets of my soul.--Otway.
Marguerite d’Auray, whose history the reader has become aquainted with,
from the conversation between Captain Paul and Emanuel, was one of those
delicate, pale beauties, who bear impressed upon their features the
characteristic stamp of high birth. At the first glance, from the soft
flexibility of her form, the whiteness of her skin, the shape of her
hands and tapering fingers, with their thin, rosy and transparent nails,
could be discerned that she was descended from an ancient race. It was
evident that her feet, so small that both of them could have been placed
in the foot-mark of most women, had never walked excepting on carpeted
saloons or on the flowery turf of a park. There was in her movements,
graceful as they were, a certain degree of haughtiness and pride, the
attribute of all her family; in fine, she conveyed the impression that
her soul, capable of making any sacrifice she had resolved upon,
was very likely to rebel against tyranny; that devotedness was an
instinctive virtue of her heart, while obedience, in her view, was only
an educational duty, so that the tempest wind which blew upon her, might
make her bend down before it as a lily, but not as a reed.
And yet, when she appeared at the door, her features depicted such
complete discouragement, her eyes had retained the traces of such
burning tears, her whole frame seemed weighed down by such an
overwhelming despair, that Emanuel saw at once, that she must have
summoned all her strength to assume an appearance of calmness. On seeing
him, she made a violent effort, and it was with a certain degree of
nervous firmness that she approached the arm chair on which he was
sitting. And then, seeing that the features of her brother retained the
expression of impatience, which they had assumed on being interrupted,
she paused, and these two children of the same mother, looked at each
other as strangers, the one with the eyes of ambition, the other with
those of fear. By degrees, Marguerite resumed her courage.
“You have come at last, Emanuel! I was awaiting your return as the blind
await the light, and yet from the manner in which you look upon your
sister, it is easy to perceive that she was wrong in placing her hopes
in you.”
“If my sifter has become, as she always ought to have been,” replied
Emanuel, “that is to say, a submissive and respectful daughter, she will
have understood what her rank and her position demand of her; she will
have forgotten past events as things which never should have happened,
and which consequently she ought not to remember, and she will have
prepared herself for the new destiny which awaits her. If it is in this
disposition that she now comes before me, my arms are open to receive
her, and my sister is still my sister.”
“Listen attentively to what I am about to say,” said Marguerite, “and
above all, consider it as a justification of myself, and not intended as
a reproach to others. If my mother--and God forbid that I should accuse
her, for a holy duty keeps her apart from us--if my mother had been,
I was about to say, toward me as other mothers are towards their
daughters, I should constantly have opened my heart to her as a book;
at the first word traced upon it by any stranger hand, she would have
warned me of my danger and I should have avoided it. Had I been educated
in the world instead of being brought up like a poor wild flower beneath
the shade of this old castle, I should have learned from infancy the
value of the rank and position which you speak of to-day, and I should,
perhaps, not have infringed the decorum they prescribe, or the duties
they impose. In short, had I been tutored amidst women of the world,
with their sparkling wit and frivolous hearts, whom I have so often
heard you praise, but whom I never knew, had I been guilty of some
faults from levity, which love has caused me to commit--yes, I can well
understand, I might then have forgotten the past, have sown upon the
surface new recollections as flowers are planted upon tombs; and then,
forgetting the place where they had grown, have formed of them a bouquet
for a ball, or a bridal wreath. But unfortunately it is not so, Emanuel.
I was told to beware, when it was too late to avoid the danger. They
spoke to me of my rank and position in society, when I had already
forfeited them, and I am now called upon to look forward to joy in the
future, when my heart is drowned in the tears and misery of the past.”
“And the conclusion of all this,” bitterly rejoined Emanuel.
“The conclusion depends on you alone, Emanuel; it is in your power to
render it, if not happy, at all events becoming. I cannot have recourse
to my father. Alas! I know not even if he could recognise his daughter.
I have no hope in my mother; her glance freezes me, her words are
death to me. You alone, Emanuel, were left to me, to whom I could say,
brother: you are now the head of the family; it is to you alone that we
are answerable for our honor. I have fallen from ignorance, and I have
been punished for my fault as if it had been a wilful crime.”
“Well! well!”, murmured Emanuel impatiently, “what is it that you ask?”
“Brother, I demand, since a union with the only being I could have
loved, is said to be impossible, I demand that my punishment be
regulated according to my strength to bear it. My mother--may heaven
pardon her!--tore my child from me as if she had never herself been a
mother, and my child will be brought up far from me, neglected, and in
obscurity. You, Emanuel, removed the father, as my mother did the child,
and you were more cruel to him than the case required; I will not say as
man to man, but even as a judge towards a guilty person. As to myself,
you have both united to impose upon me a martyrdom more painful still.
Well, then, Emanuel, I demand in the name of our childhood spent in the
same cradle, of our youth passed under the same roof, in the name of the
tender appellations of brother and sister, which nature bestowed upon
us--I demand that a convent be opened to me, and that its gates should
close upon me for ever. And in that convent, I swear to you, Emanuel,
that every day upon my knees, before God, my forehead bent down to the
stone-pavement, weighed down by my fault, I will entreat the Lord as
a recompense for all my sufferings, to restore my father to reason, my
mother to happiness, and to pour on you, Emanuel, honor, and glory and
fortune. I swear to you, I will do this.”
“Yes; and the world will say that I had a sister whom I sacrificed to my
fortune, whose property I inherited while she still lived! Why this is
sheer madness!”
“Listen to me, Emanuel,” rejoined Marguerite, supporting herself on the
back of a chair, near which she was standing.
“Well?” replied Emanuel.
“When you have pledged your word, you keep it, do you not?”
“I am a gentleman.”
“Well, then! look at this bracelet.”
“I see it--perfectly--what then?”
“It is fastened by a key--the key which opens it is attached to a ring,
and with that ring, I pledged my word that I would not be released from
a promise I had made, until the ring should be brought back and returned
to me.”
“And he who has the key of it?”
“Thanks to you, and to my mother, Emanuel, he is too far from us to
ask it of him. He is at Cayenne.”
“Before you are married two months,” replied Emanuel, with an ironical
smile, “that bracelet will be so irksome to you, that you will be the
first to get rid of it.”
“I thought that I had told you it is locked upon my arm.”
“You know what people do when they have lost the key and cannot get into
their house--they send for a locksmith.”
“Well! in my case, Emanuel,” replied Marguerite, rasing her voice,
and extending her arm with a solemn gesture, “they must send for the
executioner then, for this hand shall be cut off before I give it to
another.”
“Silence! silence!” cried Emanuel, rising hastily, and looking anxiously
towards the door of the inner room.
“And now I have said all I had to say,” rejoined Marguerite: “my
only hope was in you, Emanuel; for although you cannot comprehend any
deep-seated feeling, you are not cruel. I came to you in tears, look
at me and you will see that it is true--I came to you to say, ‘Brother,
this marriage is the misfortune, is the misery of my life--I would
prefer a convent--I would prefer death to it--and you have not listened
to me, or if you have listened, you have not understood me. Well, then,
I will address myself to this man--I will appeal to his honor, to his
delicacy; if that should not be sufficient, I will tell him all; my love
for another, my weakness, my fault, my crime! I will tell him that I
have a child; that although he was torn from me, although I have never
since seen him, although I am ignorant of his abode, still my child
exists. A child cannot die, without his death striking some chord within
its mother’s heart. In short I will tell him, should it be necessary,
that I still love another, that I cannot love him, and that I never
will.”
“Well! tell him all this,” cried Emanuel, irritated by her persistence,
“and that evening we will sign the contract, and the next day you will
be Baroness de Lectoure.”
“And then,” replied Marguerite, “then, I shall be truly the most
miserable woman in existence, for I should then have a brother whom I
should no longer love, and a husband for whom I should have no esteem.
Farewell, Emanuel; believe me this contract is not yet signed.”
And after saying these words, Marguerite withdrew with that deep and
settled despair upon her features, which could not for a moment be
mistaken. And Emanuel, convinced that he had not, as he had anticipated,
obtained a victory, but that the struggle was still to be continued,
gazed after her with an anxiety which was not devoid of tenderness.
After a few moments of silence, in which he sat pensive and motionless,
he turned round and saw Captain Paul, whom he had completely forgotten,
standing at the door of the study, and then considering the vital
importance it was to him to get possession of the papers, which the
captain had offered him, he hurriedly sat down at the table, took a pen
and paper, and turning towards him, said--
“And now, sir, we are again alone, and there is nothing to prevent our
at once concluding this affair. In what terms do you wish the promise
to be drawn up? Dictate them, I am ready to write them down.”
“It is now useless,” coldly replied the captain.
“And why so?”
“I have changed my mind.”
“How is that?” said Emanuel, rising, alarmed at the consequences which
he perceived might arise from words which he was far from expecting.
“I will give,” replied Paul, with the calmness of a fixed determination,
“the hundred thousand livres to the child, and I will find a husband
for your sister.”
“Who are you, then,” said Emanuel, advancing a step towards him, “who
are you, sir, who thus disposes of a young girl who is my sister, who
has never seen you, and who does not even know that you exist?”
“Who am I!” replied Paul, smiling; “upon my honor, I know no more upon
that subject than you do, for my birth is a secret which is only to be
revealed to me when I have attained my twenty-fifth year.”
“And you will attain that age?”----
“This evening, sir. I place myself at your disposal from to-morrow
morning, to give you all the information you may require of me,” and
saying these words, Paul bowed.
“I allow you to depart, sir, but you will understand it is upon the
condition that we meet again.”
“I was about to propose that condition, count, and I thank you for
having anticipated me.”
He then bowed to Emanuel a second time, and left the room. At the castle
gate, Paul found his horse and servant, and resumed the route to Port
Louis. When he had got out of sight of the castle, he alighted from his
horse, and directed his steps towards a fisherman’s hut, built upon
the beach. At the door of this house, seated upon a bench, and in a
sailor’s’ dress, was a young man so deeply absorbed in thought, that he
did not observe Paul’s approach. The captain placed his hand upon the
young man’s shoulder, the other started, looked at him, and became
frightfully pale, although the open and joyful countenance of Paul,
indicated that he was far from being the bearer of bad news.
“Well!” said Paul to him, “I have seen her.”
“Who?” demanded the young man.
“Marguerite, by heaven!”
“And----”
“She is charming.”
“I did not ask you that.”
“She loves you still.”
“Gracious heaven!” exclaimed the young man, throwing himself into Paul’s
arms, and bursting into tears.