We left Graham Vane slowly recovering from the attack of fever which had
arrested his journey to Berlin in quest of the Count von Rudesheimn. He
was, however, saved the prosecution of that journey, and his direction
turned back to France by a German newspaper which informed him that
the King of Prussia was at Rheims, and that the Count von Rudesheim was
among the eminent personages gathered there around their sovereign. In
conversing the same day with the kindly doctor who attended him, Graham
ascertained that this German noble held a high command in the German
armies, and bore a no less distinguished reputation as a wise political
counsellor than he had earned as a military chief. As soon as he
was able to travel, and indeed before the good doctor sanctioned his
departure, Graham took his way to Rheims, uncertain, however, whether
the Count would still be found there. I spare the details of his
journey, interesting as they were. On reaching the famous and, in the
eyes of Legitimists, the sacred city, the Englishman had no difficulty
in ascertaining the house, not far from the cathedral, in which the
Count von Rudesheim had taken his temporary abode. Walking towards it
from the small hotel in which he had been lucky enough to find a room
disengaged--slowly, for he was still feeble--he was struck by the quiet
conduct of the German soldiery, and, save in their appearance, the
peaceful aspect of the streets. Indeed, there was an air of festive
gaiety about the place, as in an English town in which some popular
regiment is quartered. The German soldiers thronged the shops, buying
largely; lounged into the cafes; here and there attempted flirtations
with the grisettes, who laughed at their French and blushed at their
compliments; and in their good-humoured, somewhat bashful cheeriness,
there was no trace of the insolence of conquest.
But as Graham neared the precincts of the cathedral his ear caught a
grave and solemn music, which he at first supposed to come from within
the building. But as he paused and looked round, he saw a group of the
German military, on whose stalwart forms and fair manly earnest faces
the setting sun cast its calm lingering rays. They were chanting, in
voices not loud but deep, Luther’s majestic hymn:
“Nun danket alle Gott.” The chant awed even the ragged beggar boys who
had followed the Englishman, as they followed any stranger, would have
followed King William himself, whining for alms. “What a type of the
difference between the two nations!” thought Graham; “the Marseillaise,
and Luther’s Hymn!” While thus meditating and listening, a man in a
general’s uniform came slowly out of the cathedral, with his hands
clasped behind his back, and his head bent slightly downwards. He, too,
paused on hearing the hymn; then unclasped his hand and beckoned to one
of the officers, to whom approaching he whispered a word or two, and
passed on towards the Episcopal palace. The hymn hushed, and the singers
quietly dispersed. Graham divined rightly that the general had thought
a hymn thanking the God of battles might wound the feelings of the
inhabitants of the vanquished city--not, however, that any of them were
likely to understand the language in which the thanks were uttered.
Graham followed the measured steps of the general, whose hands were
again clasped behind his back--the musing habit of Von Moltke, as it
had been of Napoleon the First. Continuing his way, the Englishman soon
reached the house in which the Count von Rudesheim was lodged, and,
sending in his card, was admitted at once through an anteroom in which
sate two young men, subaltern officers apparently employed in draughting
maps, into the presence of the Count.
“Pardon me,” said Graham, after the first conventional salutation, “if
I interrupt you for a moment or so in the midst of events so grave, on a
matter that must seem to you very trivial.”
“Nay,” answered the Count, “there is nothing so trivial in this world
but what there will be some one to whom it is important. Say how I can
serve you.”
“I think, M. le Comte, that you once received in your household, as
teacher or governess, a French lady, Madame Marigny.”
“Yes, I remember her well--a very handsome woman. My wife and daughter
took great interest in her. She was married out of my house.”
“Exactly--and to whom?”
“An Italian of good birth, who was then employed by the Austrian
Government in some minor post, and subsequently promoted to a better one
in the Italian dominion, which then belonged to the house of Hapsburg,
after which we lost sight of him and his wife.”
“An Italian--what was his name?”
“Ludovico Cicogna.”
“Cicogna!” exclaimed Graham, turning very pale. “Are you sure that was
the name?”
“Certainly. He was a cadet of a very noble house, and disowned by
relations too patriotic to forgive him for accepting employment under
the Austrian Government.”
“Can you not give me the address of the place in Italy to which he was
transferred on leaving Austria?”
“No; but if the information be necessary to you, it can be obtained
easily at Milan, where the head of the family resides, or indeed in
Vienna, through any ministerial bureau.”
“Pardon me one or two questions more. Had Madame Marigny any children by
a former husband?”
“Not that I know of: I never heard so. Signor Cicogna was a widower,
and had, if I remember right, children by his first wife, who was also
a Frenchwoman. Before he obtained office in Austria, he resided, I
believe, in France. I do not remember how many children he had by his
first wife. I never saw them. Our acquaintance began at the baths of
Toplitz, where he saw and fell violently in love with Madame Marigny.
After their marriage, they went to his post, which was somewhere, I
think, in the Tyrol. We saw no more of them; but my wife and daughter
kept up a correspondence with the Signora Cicogna for a short time. It
ceased altogether when she removed into Italy.”
“You do not even know if the Signora is still living?”
“No.”
“Her husband, I am told, is dead.”
“Indeed! I am concerned to hear it. A good-looking, lively, clever man.
I fear he must have lost all income when the Austrian dominions passed
to the house of Savoy.”
“Many thanks for your information. I can detain you no longer,” said
Graham, rising.
“Nay, I am not very busy at this moment; but I fear we Germans have
plenty of work on our hands.”
“I had hoped that, now the French Emperor, against whom your king made
war, was set aside, his Prussian majesty would make peace with the
French people.”
“Most willingly would he do so if the French people would let him. But
it must be through a French Government legally chosen by the people.
And they have chosen none! A mob at Paris sets up a provisional
administration, that commences by declaring that it will not give up ‘an
inch of its territory nor a stone of its fortresses.’ No terms of peace
can be made with such men holding such talk.” After a few words more
over the state of public affairs,--in which Graham expressed the English
side of affairs, which was all for generosity to the vanquished; and the
Count argued much more ably on the German, which was all for security
against the aggressions of a people that would not admit itself to be
vanquished,--the short interview closed.
As Graham at night pursued his journey to Vienna, there came into his
mind Isaura’s song of the Neapolitan fisherman. Had he, too, been blind
to the image on the rock? Was it possible that all the while he had been
resisting the impulse of his heart, until the discharge of the mission
entrusted to him freed his choice and decided his fortunes, the very
person of whom he was in search had been before him, then to be for
ever won, lost to him now for ever? Could Isaura Cicogna be the child
of Louise Duval by Richard King? She could not have been her child by
Cicogna: the dates forbade that hypothesis. Isaura must have been five
years old when Louise married the Italian. Arrived at Milan, Graham
quickly ascertained that the post to which Ludovico Cicogna had been
removed was in Verona, and that he had there died eight years ago.
Nothing was to be learned as to his family or his circumstances at the
time of his death. The people of whose history we know the least are
the relations we refuse to acknowledge. Graham continued his journey
to Verona. There he found on inquiry that the Cicognas had occupied an
apartment in a house which stood at the outskirts of the town and had
been since pulled down to make way for some public improvements. But
his closest inquiries could gain him no satisfactory answers to the
all-important questions as to Ludovico Cicogna’s family. His political
alienation from the Italian cause, which was nowhere more ardently
espoused than at Verona, had rendered him very unpopular. He visited at
no Italian houses. Such society as he had was confined to the Austrian
military within the Quadrilateral or at Venice, to which city he made
frequent excursions: was said to lead there a free and gay life, very
displeasing to the Signora, whom he left in Verona. She was but little
seen, and faintly remembered as very handsome and proud-looking. Yes,
there were children--a girl, and a boy several years younger than the
girl; but whether she was the child of the Signora by a former marriage,
or whether the Signora was only the child’s stepmother, no one could
say. The usual clue, in such doubtful matters obtainable through
servants, was here missing. The Cicognas had only kept two servants, and
both were Austrian subjects, who had long left the country,--their very
names forgotten.
Graham now called to mind the Englishman Selby, for whom Isaura had such
grateful affection, as supplying to her the place of her father. This
must have been the Englishman whom Louise Duval had married after
Cicogna’s death. It would be no difficult task, surely, to ascertain
where he had resided. Easy enough to ascertain all that Graham wanted to
know from Isaura herself, if a letter could reach her. But, as he knew
by the journals, Paris was now invested--cut off from all communication
with the world beyond. Too irritable, anxious, and impatient to wait for
the close of the siege, though he never suspected it could last so long
as it did, he hastened to Venice, and there learned through the
British consul that the late Mr. Selby was a learned antiquarian, an
accomplished general scholar, a fanatico in music, a man of gentle
temper though reserved manners; had at one time lived much at Venice:
after his marriage with the Signora Cicogna he had taken up his abode
near Florence. To Florence Graham now went. He found the villa on the
skirts of Fiesole at which Mr. Selby had resided. The peasant who had
officiated as gardener and shareholder in the profits of vines and
figs, was still, with his wife, living on the place. Both man and wife
remembered the Inglese well; spoke of him with great affection, of his
wife with great dislike. They said her manners were very haughty, her
temper very violent; that she led the Inglese a very unhappy life; that
there were a girl and a boy, both hers by a former marriage; but
when closely questioned whether they were sure that the girl was the
Signora’s child by the former husband, or whether she was not the child
of that husband by a former wife, they could not tell; they could only
say that both were called by the same name--Cicogna; that the boy was
the Signora’s favourite--that indeed she seemed wrapt up in him; that
he died of a rapid decline a few months after Mr. Selby had hired the
place, and that shortly after his death the Signora left the place and
never returned to it; that it was little more than a year that she had
lived with her husband before this final separation took place. The girl
remained with Mr. Selby, who cherished and loved her as his own child.
Her Christian name was Isaura, the boy’s Luigi. A few years later, Mr.
Selby left the villa and went to Naples, where they heard he had died.
They could give no information as to what had become of his wife: Since
the death of her boy that lady had become very much changed--her spirits
quite broken, no longer violent. She would sit alone and weep bitterly.
The only person out of her family she would receive was the priest; till
the boy’s death she had never seen the priest, nor been known to attend
divine service.
“Was the priest living?”
“Oh, no; he had been dead two years. A most excellent man--a saint,”
said the peasant’s wife.
“Good priests are like good women,” said the peasant, drily; “there are
plenty of them, but they are all underground.”
On which remark the wife tried to box his ears. The contadino had
become a freethinker since the accession of the house of Savoy. His wife
remained a good Catholic. Said the peasant as, escaping from his wife,
he walked into the high-road with Graham, “My belief, Eccellenza, is,
that the priest did all the mischief.”
“What mischief?”
“Persuaded the Signora to leave her husband. The Inglese was not a
Catholic. I heard the priest call him a heretic. And the padre, who,
though not so bad as some of his cloth, was a meddling bigot, thought it
perhaps best for her soul that it should part company with a heretic’s
person. I can’t say for sure, but I think that was it. The padre seemed
to triumph when the Signora was gone.” Graham mused. The peasant’s
supposition was not improbable. A woman such as Louise Duval appeared to
be--of vehement passions and ill-regulated mind--was just one of those
who, in a moment of great sorrow, and estranged from the ordinary
household affections, feel, though but imperfectly, the necessity of a
religion, and, ever in extremes, pass at once from indifferentism into
superstition.
Arrived at Naples, Graham heard little of Selby except as a literary
recluse, whose only distraction from books was the operatic stage. But
he heard much of Isaura; of the kindness which Madame de Grantmesnil
had shown to her, when left by Selby’s death alone in the world; of the
interest which the friendship and the warm eulogies of one so eminent as
the great French writer had created for Isaura in the artistic circles;
of the intense sensation her appearance, her voice, her universal
genius, had made in that society, and the brilliant hopes of her
subsequent career on the stage the cognoscenti had formed. No one knew
anything of her mother; no one entertained a doubt that Isaura was
by birth a Cicogna. Graham could not learn the present whereabouts of
Madame de Grantmesnil. She had long left Naples, and had been last heard
of at Genoa; was supposed to have returned to France a little before the
war. In France she had no fixed residence.
The simplest mode of obtaining authentic information whether Isaura
was the daughter of Ludovico Cicogna by his first wife--namely, by
registration of her birth--failed him; because, as von Rudesheim had
said, his first wife was a Frenchwoman. The children had been born
somewhere in France, no one could even guess where. No one had ever seen
the first wife, who had never appeared in Italy, nor had even heard what
was her maiden name.
Graham, meanwhile, was not aware that Isaura was still in the besieged
city, whether or not already married to Gustave Rameau; so large a
number of the women had quitted Paris before the siege began, that he
had reason to hope she was among them. He heard through an American that
the Morleys had gone to England before the Prussian investment; perhaps
Isaura had gone with them. He wrote to Mrs. Morley, inclosing his letter
to the Minister of the United States at the Court of St. James’s, and
while still at Naples received her answer. It was short, and malignantly
bitter. “Both myself and Madame Savarin, backed by Signora Venosta,
earnestly entreated Mademoiselle Cicogna to quit Paris, to accompany us
to England. Her devotion to her affianced husband would not permit
her to listen to us. It is only an Englishman who could suppose Isaura
Cicogna to be one of those women who do not insist on sharing the perils
of those they love. You ask whether she was the daughter of Ludovico
Cicogna by his former marriage, or of his second wife by him. I cannot
answer. I don’t even know whether Signor Cicogna ever had a former wife.
Isaura Cicogna never spoke to me of her parents. Permit me to ask--what
business is it of yours now? Is it the English pride that makes you
wish to learn whether on both sides she is of noble family? How can that
discovery alter your relations towards the affianced bride of another?”
On receipt of this letter, Graham quitted Naples, and shortly afterwards
found himself at Versailles. He obtained permission to establish himself
there, though the English were by no means popular. Thus near to Isaura,
thus sternly separated from her, Graham awaited the close of the siege.
Few among those at Versailles believed that the Parisians would endure
it much longer. Surely they would capitulate before the bombardment,
which the Germans themselves disliked to contemplate as a last resource,
could commence.
In his own mind Graham was convinced that Isaura was the child of
Richard King. It seemed to him probable that Louise Duval, unable
to assign any real name to the daughter of the marriage she
disowned,--neither the name borne by the repudiated husband, nor her
own maiden name,--would, on taking her daughter to her new home, have
induced Cicogna to give the child his name, or that after Cicogna’s
death she herself had so designated the girl. A dispassionate confidant,
could Graham have admitted any confidant whatever, might have suggested
the more than equal probability that Isaura was Cicogna’s daughter by
his former espousal. But then what could have become of Richard King’s
child? To part with the fortune in his hands, to relinquish all the
ambitious dreams which belonged to it, cost Graham Vane no pang: but he
writhed with indignant grief when he thought that the wealth of Richard
King’s heiress was to pass to the hands of Gustave Rameau,--that this
was to be the end of his researches--this the result of the sacrifice
his sense of honour imposed on him. And now that there was the
probability that he must convey to Isaura this large inheritance, the
practical difficulty of inventing some reason for such a donation, which
he had, while at a distance made light of, became seriously apparent.
How could he say to Isaura that he had L200,000. in trust for her,
without naming any one so devising it? Still more, how constitute
himself her guardian, so as to secure it to herself, independently
of her husband? Perhaps Isaura was too infatuated with Rameau, or too
romantically unselfish, to permit the fortune so mysteriously conveyed
being exclusively appropriated to herself. And if she were already
married to Rameau, and if he were armed with the right to inquire into
the source of this fortune, how exposed to the risks of disclosure would
become the secret Graham sought to conceal. Such a secret affecting
the memory of the sacred dead, affixing a shame on the scutcheon of
the living, in the irreverent hands of a Gustave Rameau,--it was too
dreadful to contemplate such a hazard. And yet, if Isaura were
the missing heiress, could Graham Vane admit any excuse for basely
withholding from her, for coolly retaining to himself the wealth for
which he was responsible? Yet, torturing as were these communings with
himself, they were mild in their torture compared to the ever-growing
anguish of the thought that in any case the only woman he had ever
loved--ever could love,--who might but for his own scruples and
prejudices have been the partner of his life, was perhaps now actually
the wife of another, and, as such, in what terrible danger! Famine
within the walls of the doomed city: without, the engines of death
waiting for a signal. So near to her, and yet so far! So willing to die
for her, if for her he could not live: and with all his devotion, all
his intellect, all his wealth, so powerless!