It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a morning which
gave promise of one of those bright days when Parisians, for the first
time in the year, behold dry pavements underfoot and a cloudless sky
overhead. It was not yet noon when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by two
spirited horses, turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Rue de
Rivoli, and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the newly
opened barrier half-way down the Terrasse de Feuillants. The owner of
the carriage looked anxious and out of health; the thin hair on his
sallow temples, turning gray already, gave a look of premature age to
his face. He flung the reins to a servant who followed on horseback,
and alighted to take in his arms a young girl whose dainty beauty had
already attracted the eyes of loungers on the Terrasse. The little lady,
standing upon the carriage step, graciously submitted to be taken by the
waist, putting an arm round the neck of her guide, who set her down upon
the pavement without so much as ruffling the trimming of her green rep
dress. No lover would have been so careful. The stranger could only be
the father of the young girl, who took his arm familiarly without a word
of thanks, and hurried him into the Garden of the Tuileries.
The old father noted the wondering stare which some of the young men
gave the couple, and the sad expression left his face for a moment.
Although he had long since reached the time of life when a man is fain
to be content with such illusory delights as vanity bestows, he began to
smile.
“They think you are my wife,” he said in the young lady’s ear, and he
held himself erect and walked with slow steps, which filled his daughter
with despair.
He seemed to take up the coquette’s part for her; perhaps of the two, he
was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those little
feet, shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure outlined by
a low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered chemisette, which only
partially concealed the girlish throat. Her dress was lifted by her
movements as she walked, giving glimpses higher than the shoes of
delicately moulded outlines beneath open-work silk stockings. More than
one of the idlers turned and passed the pair again, to admire or to
catch a second glimpse of the young face, about which the brown tresses
played; there was a glow in its white and red, partly reflected from the
rose-colored satin lining of her fashionable bonnet, partly due to the
eagerness and impatience which sparkled in every feature. A mischievous
sweetness lighted up the beautiful, almond-shaped dark eyes, bathed
in liquid brightness, shaded by the long lashes and curving arch of
eyebrow. Life and youth displayed their treasures in the petulant face
and in the gracious outlines of the bust unspoiled even by the fashion
of the day, which brought the girdle under the breast.
The young lady herself appeared to be insensible to admiration. Her
eyes were fixed in a sort of anxiety on the Palace of the Tuileries,
the goal, doubtless, of her petulant promenade. It wanted but fifteen
minutes of noon, yet even at that early hour several women in gala dress
were coming away from the Tuileries, not without backward glances at the
gates and pouting looks of discontent, as if they regretted the lateness
of the arrival which had cheated them of a longed-for spectacle. Chance
carried a few words let fall by one of these disappointed fair ones to
the ears of the charming stranger, and put her in a more than common
uneasiness. The elderly man watched the signs of impatience and
apprehension which flitted across his companion’s pretty face with
interest, rather than amusement, in his eyes, observing her with a close
and careful attention, which perhaps could only be prompted by some
after-thought in the depths of a father’s mind.
It was the thirteenth Sunday of the year 1813. In two days’ time
Napoleon was to set out upon the disastrous campaign in which he was
to lose first Bessières, and then Duroc; he was to win the memorable
battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, to see himself treacherously deserted by
Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, and Bernadotte, and to dispute the dreadful
field of Leipsic. The magnificent review commanded for that day by the
Emperor was to be the last of so many which had long drawn forth the
admiration of Paris and of foreign visitors. For the last time the Old
Guard would execute their scientific military manoeuvres with the pomp
and precision which sometimes amazed the Giant himself. Napoleon was
nearly ready for his duel with Europe. It was a sad sentiment which
brought a brilliant and curious throng to the Tuileries. Each mind
seemed to foresee the future, perhaps too in every mind another thought
was dimly present, how that in the future, when the heroic age of France
should have taken the half-fabulous color with which it is tinged for
us to-day, men’s imaginations would more than once seek to retrace the
picture of the pageant which they were assembled to behold.
“Do let us go more quickly, father; I can hear the drums,” the young
girl said, and in a half-teasing, half-coaxing manner she urged her
companion forward.
“The troops are marching into the Tuileries,” said he.
“Or marching out of it--everybody is coming away,” she answered in
childish vexation, which drew a smile from her father.
“The review only begins at half-past twelve,” he said; he had fallen
half behind his impetuous daughter.
It might have been supposed that she meant to hasten their progress by
a movement of her right arm, for it swung like an oar blade through the
water. In her impatience she had crushed her handkerchief into a ball in
her tiny, well-gloved fingers. Now and then the old man smiled, but the
smiles were succeeded by an anxious look which crossed his withered face
and saddened it. In his love for the fair young girl by his side, he
was as fain to exalt the present moment as to dread the future. “She is
happy to-day; will her happiness last?” he seemed to ask himself, for
the old are somewhat prone to foresee their own sorrows in the future of
the young.
Father and daughter reached the peristyle under the tower where the
tricolor flag was still waving; but as they passed under the arch by
which people came and went between the Gardens of the Tuileries and the
Place du Carrousel, the sentries on guard called out sternly:
“No admittance this way.”
By standing on tiptoe the young girl contrived to catch a glimpse of
a crowd of well-dressed women, thronging either side of the old marble
arcade along which the Emperor was to pass.
“We were too late in starting, father; you can see that quite well.” A
little piteous pout revealed the immense importance which she attached
to the sight of this particular review.
“Very well, Julie--let us go away. You dislike a crush.”
“Do let us stay, father. Even here I may catch a glimpse of the Emperor;
he might die during this campaign, and then I should never have seen
him.”
Her father shuddered at the selfish speech. There were tears in the
girl’s voice; he looked at her, and thought that he saw tears beneath
her lowered eyelids; tears caused not so much by the disappointment as
by one of the troubles of early youth, a secret easily guessed by an old
father. Suddenly Julie’s face flushed, and she uttered an exclamation.
Neither her father nor the sentinels understood the meaning of the cry;
but an officer within the barrier, who sprang across the court towards
the staircase, heard it, and turned abruptly at the sound. He went to
the arcade by the Gardens of the Tuileries, and recognized the young
lady who had been hidden for a moment by the tall bearskin caps of the
grenadiers. He set aside in favor of the pair the order which he himself
had given. Then, taking no heed of the murmurings of the fashionable
crowd seated under the arcade, he gently drew the enraptured child
towards him.
“I am no longer surprised at her vexation and enthusiasm, if _you_ are
in waiting,” the old man said with a half-mocking, half-serious glance
at the officer.
“If you want a good position, M. le Duc,” the young man answered, “we
must not spend any time in talking. The Emperor does not like to be kept
waiting, and the Grand Marshal has sent me to announce our readiness.”
As he spoke, he had taken Julie’s arm with a certain air of old
acquaintance, and drew her rapidly in the direction of the Place du
Carrousel. Julie was astonished at the sight. An immense crowd was
penned up in a narrow space, shut in between the gray walls of the
palace and the limits marked out by chains round the great sanded
squares in the midst of the courtyard of the Tuileries. The cordon of
sentries posted to keep a clear passage for the Emperor and his staff
had great difficulty in keeping back the eager humming swarm of human
beings.
“Is it going to be a very fine sight?” Julie asked (she was radiant
now).
“Pray take care!” cried her guide, and seizing Julie by the waist, he
lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and set her down beside a
pillar.
But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would have come into
collision with the hindquarters of a white horse which Napoleon’s
Mameluke held by the bridle; the animal in its trappings of green velvet
and gold stood almost under the arcade, some ten paces behind the rest
of the horses in readiness for the Emperor’s staff.
The young officer placed the father and daughter in front of the crowd
in the first space to the right, and recommended them by a sign to the
two veteran grenadiers on either side. Then he went on his way into
the palace; a look of great joy and happiness had succeeded to his
horror-struck expression when the horse backed. Julie had given his hand
a mysterious pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little service
he had done her, or did she tell him, “After all, I shall really see
you?” She bent her head quite graciously in response to the respectful
bow by which the officer took leave of them before he vanished.
The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked grave. He
seemed to have left the two young people together for some purpose of
his own, and now he furtively watched the girl, trying to lull her
into false security by appearing to give his whole attention to the
magnificent sight in the Place du Carrousel. When Julie’s eyes turned
to her father with the expression of a schoolboy before his master, he
answered her glance by a gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had
followed the officer under the arcade, and nothing of all that passed
was lost upon him.
“What a grand sight!” said Julie in a low voice, as she pressed her
father’s hand; and indeed the pomp and picturesquesness of the spectacle
in the Place du Carrousel drew the same exclamation from thousands
upon thousands of spectators, all agape with wonder. Another array of
sightseers, as tightly packed as the ranks behind the old noble and
his daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the railings which
crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a line parallel with
the Palace of the Tuileries. The dense living mass, variegated by the
colors of the women’s dresses, traced out a bold line across the
centre of the Place du Carrousel, filling in the fourth side of a vast
parallelogram, surrounded on three sides by the Palace of the Tuileries
itself. Within the precincts thus railed off stood the regiments of the
Old Guard about to be passed in review, drawn up opposite the Palace
in imposing blue columns, ten ranks in depth. Without and beyond in the
Place du Carrousel stood several regiments likewise drawn up in parallel
lines, ready to march in through the arch in the centre; the Triumphal
Arch, where the bronze horses of St. Mark from Venice used to stand in
those days. At either end, by the Galeries du Louvre, the regimental
bands were stationed, masked by the Polish Lancers then on duty.
The greater part of the vast graveled space was empty as an arena, ready
for the evolutions of those silent masses disposed with the symmetry
of military art. The sunlight blazed back from ten thousand bayonets in
thin points of flame; the breeze ruffled the men’s helmet plumes till
they swayed like the crests of forest-trees before a gale. The mute
glittering ranks of veterans were full of bright contrasting colors,
thanks to their different uniforms, weapons, accoutrements, and
aiguillettes; and the whole great picture, that miniature battlefield
before the combat, was framed by the majestic towering walls of the
Tuileries, which officers and men seemed to rival in their immobility.
Involuntarily the spectator made the comparison between the walls of
men and the walls of stone. The spring sunlight, flooding white masonry
reared but yesterday and buildings centuries old, shone full likewise
upon thousands of bronzed faces, each one with its own tale of perils
passed, each one gravely expectant of perils to come.
The colonels of the regiments came and went alone before the ranks of
heroes; and behind the masses of troops, checkered with blue and silver
and gold and purple, the curious could discern the tricolor pennons on
the lances of some half-a-dozen indefatigable Polish cavalry, rushing
about like shepherds’ dogs in charge of a flock, caracoling up and down
between the troops and the crowd, to keep the gazers within their proper
bounds. But for this slight flutter of movement, the whole scene might
have been taking place in the courtyard of the palace of the Sleeping
Beauty. The very spring breeze, ruffling up the long fur on the
grenadiers’ bearskins, bore witness to the men’s immobility, as the
smothered murmur of the crowd emphasized their silence. Now and again
the jingling of Chinese bells, or a chance blow to a big drum, woke
the reverberating echoes of the Imperial Palace with a sound like the
far-off rumblings of thunder.
An indescribable, unmistakable enthusiasm was manifest in the expectancy
of the multitude. France was about to take farewell of Napoleon on the
eve of a campaign of which the meanest citizen foresaw the perils. The
existence of the French Empire was at stake--to be, or not to be. The
whole citizen population seemed to be as much inspired with this thought
as that other armed population standing in serried and silent ranks in
the enclosed space, with the Eagles and the genius of Napoleon hovering
above them.
Those very soldiers were the hope of France, her last drop of blood; and
this accounted for not a little of the anxious interest of the scene.
Most of the gazers in the crowd had bidden farewell--perhaps farewell
for ever--to the men who made up the rank and file of the battalions;
and even those most hostile to the Emperor, in their hearts, put up
fervent prayers to heaven for the glory of France; and those most weary
of the struggle with the rest of Europe had left their hatreds behind as
they passed in under the Triumphal Arch. They too felt that in the hour
of danger Napoleon meant France herself.
The clock of the Tuileries struck the half-hour. In a moment the hum of
the crowd ceased. The silence was so deep that you might have heard a
child speak. The old noble and his daughter, wholly intent, seeming to
live only by their eyes, caught a distinct sound of spurs and clank of
swords echoing up under the sonorous peristyle.
And suddenly there appeared a short, somewhat stout figure in a green
uniform, white trousers, and riding boots; a man wearing on his head a
cocked hat well-nigh as magically potent as its wearer; the broad red
ribbon of the Legion of Honor rose and fell on his breast, and a short
sword hung at his side. At one and the same moment the man was seen by
all eyes in all parts of the square.
Immediately the drums beat a salute, both bands struck up a martial
refrain, caught and repeated like a fugue by every instrument from the
thinnest flutes to the largest drum. The clangor of that call to arms
thrilled through every soul. The colors dropped, and the men presented
arms, one unanimous rhythmical movement shaking every bayonet from
the foremost front near the Palace to the last rank in the Place du
Carrousel. The words of command sped from line to line like echoes. The
whole enthusiastic multitude sent up a shout of “Long live the Emperor!”
Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon had mounted
his horse. It was his movement that had put life into those silent
masses of men; the dumb instruments had found a voice at his coming,
the Eagles and the colors had obeyed the same impulse which had brought
emotion into all faces.
The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed to cry
aloud, “Long live the Emperor!”
There was something preternatural about it--it was magic at work, a
counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or rather it was a fugitive
image of a reign itself so fugitive.
And _he_ the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and devotion, and so
many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven the clouds from the sky,
was sitting there on his horse, three paces in front of his Golden
Squadron, with the grand Marshal on his left, and the Marshal-in-waiting
on his right. Amid all the outburst of enthusiasm at his presence not a
feature of his face appeared to alter.
“Oh! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the field of
Borodino, among the dead, always as cool as a cucumber _he_ is!” said
the grenadier, in answer to the questions with which the young girl
plied him. For a moment Julie was absorbed in the contemplation of that
face, so quiet in the security of conscious power. The Emperor noticed
Mlle. de Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to Duroc,
which drew a smile from the Grand Marshal. Then the review began.
If hitherto the young lady’s attention had been divided between
Napoleon’s impassive face and the blue, red, and green ranks of troops,
from this time forth she was wholly intent upon a young officer moving
among the lines as they performed their swift symmetrical evolutions.
She watched him gallop with tireless activity to and from the group
where the plainly dressed Napoleon shone conspicuous. The officer rode a
splendid black horse. His handsome sky-blue uniform marked him out amid
the variegated multitude as one of the Emperor’s orderly staff-officers.
His gold lace glittered in the sunshine which lighted up the aigrette on
his tall, narrow shako, so that the gazer might have compared him to a
will-o’-the-wisp, or to a visible spirit emanating from the Emperor to
infuse movement into those battalions whose swaying bayonets flashed
into flames; for, at a mere glance from his eyes, they broke and
gathered again, surging to and fro like the waves in a bay, or again
swept before him like the long ridges of high-crested wave which the
vexed Ocean directs against the shore.
When the manoeuvres were over the officer galloped back at full speed,
pulled up his horse, and awaited orders. He was not ten paces from Julie
as he stood before the Emperor, much as General Rapp stands in Gerard’s
_Battle of Austerlitz_. The young girl could behold her lover in all his
soldierly splendor.
Colonel Victor d’Aiglemont, barely thirty years of age, was tall,
slender, and well made. His well-proportioned figure never showed to
better advantage than now as he exerted his strength to hold in the
restive animal, whose back seemed to curve gracefully to the rider’s
weight. His brown masculine face possessed the indefinable charm of
perfectly regular features combined with youth. The fiery eyes under the
broad forehead, shaded by thick eyebrows and long lashes, looked like
white ovals bordered by an outline of black. His nose had the delicate
curve of an eagle’s beak; the sinuous lines of the inevitable black
moustache enhanced the crimson of the lips. The brown and tawny shades
which overspread the wide high-colored cheeks told a tale of unusual
vigor, and his whole face bore the impress of dashing courage. He was
the very model which French artists seek to-day for the typical hero
of Imperial France. The horse which he rode was covered with sweat, the
animal’s quivering head denoted the last degree of restiveness; his hind
hoofs were set down wide apart and exactly in a line, he shook his long
thick tail to the wind; in his fidelity to his master he seemed to be a
visible presentment of that master’s devotion to the Emperor.
Julie saw her lover watching intently for the Emperor’s glances, and
felt a momentary pang of jealousy, for as yet he had not given her a
look. Suddenly at a word from his sovereign Victor gripped his horse’s
flanks and set out at a gallop, but the animal took fright at a shadow
cast by a post, shied, backed, and reared up so suddenly that his rider
was all but thrown off. Julie cried out, her face grew white, people
looked at her curiously, but she saw no one, her eyes were fixed upon
the too mettlesome beast. The officer gave the horse a sharp admonitory
cut with the whip, and galloped off with Napoleon’s order.
Julie was so absorbed, so dizzy with sights and sounds, that
unconsciously she clung to her father’s arm so tightly that he could
read her thoughts by the varying pressure of her fingers. When Victor
was all but flung out of the saddle, she clutched her father with a
convulsive grip as if she herself were in danger of falling, and the
old man looked at his daughter’s tell-tale face with dark and painful
anxiety. Pity, jealousy, something even of regret stole across every
drawn and wrinkled line of mouth and brow. When he saw the unwonted
light in Julie’s eyes, when that cry broke from her, when the convulsive
grasp of her fingers drew away the veil and put him in possession of
her secret, then with that revelation of her love there came surely some
swift revelation of the future. Mournful forebodings could be read in
his own face.
Julie’s soul seemed at that moment to have passed into the officer’s
being. A torturing thought more cruel than any previous dread contracted
the old man’s painworn features, as he saw the glance of understanding
that passed between the soldier and Julie. The girl’s eyes were wet, her
cheeks glowed with unwonted color. Her father turned abruptly and led
her away into the Garden of the Tuileries.
“Why, father,” she cried, “there are still the regiments in the Place du
Carrousel to be passed in review.”
“No, child, all the troops are marching out.”
“I think you are mistaken, father; M. d’Aiglemont surely told them to
advance----”
“But I feel ill, my child, and I do not care to stay.”
Julie could readily believe the words when she glanced at his face; he
looked quite worn out by his fatherly anxieties.
“Are you feeling very ill?” she asked indifferently, her mind was so
full of other thoughts.
“Every day is a reprieve for me, is it not?” returned her father.
“Now do you mean to make me miserable again by talking about your death?
I was in such spirits! Do pray get rid of those horrid gloomy ideas of
yours.”
The father heaved a sigh. “Ah! spoiled child,” he cried, “the best
hearts are sometimes very cruel. We devote our whole lives to you, you
are our one thought, we plan for your welfare, sacrifice our tastes to
your whims, idolize you, give the very blood in our veins for you, and
all this is nothing, is it? Alas! yes, you take it all as a matter of
course. If we would always have your smiles and your disdainful love, we
should need the power of God in heaven. Then comes another, a lover, a
husband, and steals away your heart.”
Julie looked in amazement at her father; he walked slowly along, and
there was no light in the eyes which he turned upon her.
“You hide yourself even from us,” he continued, “but, perhaps, also you
hide yourself from yourself--”
“What do you mean by that, father?”
“I think that you have secrets from me, Julie.--You love,” he went on
quickly, as he saw the color rise to her face. “Oh! I hoped that you
would stay with your old father until he died. I hoped to keep you with
me, still radiant and happy, to admire you as you were but so lately. So
long as I knew nothing of your future I could believe in a happy lot for
you; but now I cannot possibly take away with me a hope of happiness for
your life, for you love the colonel even more than the cousin. I can no
longer doubt it.”
“And why should I be forbidden to love him?” asked Julie, with lively
curiosity in her face.
“Ah, my Julie, you would not understand me,” sighed the father.
“Tell me, all the same,” said Julie, with an involuntary petulant
gesture.
“Very well, child, listen to me. Girls are apt to imagine noble and
enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have
fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then
they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections of
their day-dreams, and put their trust in him. They fall in love with
this imaginary creature in the man of their choice; and then, when it
is too late to escape from their fate, behold their first idol, the
illusion made fair with their fancies, turns to an odious skeleton.
Julie, I would rather have you fall in love with an old man than with
the Colonel. Ah! if you could but see things from the standpoint of ten
years hence, you would admit that my old experience was right. I know
what Victor is, that gaiety of his is simply animal spirits--the gaiety
of the barracks. He has no ability, and he is a spendthrift. He is one
of those men whom Heaven created to eat and digest four meals a day, to
sleep, to fall in love with the first woman that comes to hand, and to
fight. He does not understand life. His kind heart, for he has a kind
heart, will perhaps lead him to give his purse to a sufferer or to a
comrade; _but_ he is careless, he has not the delicacy of heart which
makes us slaves to a woman’s happiness, he is ignorant, he is selfish.
There are plenty of _buts_--”
“But, father, he must surely be clever, he must have ability, or he
would not be a colonel--”
“My dear, Victor will be a colonel all his life.--I have seen no one who
appears to me to be worthy of you,” the old father added, with a kind of
enthusiasm.
He paused an instant, looked at his daughter, and added, “Why, my poor
Julie, you are still too young, too fragile, too delicate for the cares
and rubs of married life. D’Aiglemont’s relations have spoiled him, just
as your mother and I have spoiled you. What hope is there that you two
could agree, with two imperious wills diametrically opposed to
each other? You will be either the tyrant or the victim, and either
alternative means, for a wife, an equal sum of misfortune. But you are
modest and sweet-natured, you would yield from the first. In short,” he
added, in a quivering voice, “there is a grace of feeling in you
which would never be valued, and then----” he broke off, for the tears
overcame him.
“Victor will give you pain through all the girlish qualities of your
young nature,” he went on, after a pause. “I know what soldiers are, my
Julie; I have been in the army. In a man of that kind, love very seldom
gets the better of old habits, due partly to the miseries amid which
soldiers live, partly to the risks they run in a life of adventure.”
“Then you mean to cross my inclinations, do you, father?” asked Julie,
half in earnest, half in jest. “Am I to marry to please you and not to
please myself?”
“To please me!” cried her father, with a start of surprise. “To please
_me_, child? when you will not hear the voice that upbraids you so
tenderly very much longer! But I have always heard children impute
personal motives for the sacrifices that their parents make for
them. Marry Victor, my Julie! Some day you will bitterly deplore his
ineptitude, his thriftless ways, his selfishness, his lack of delicacy,
his inability to understand love, and countless troubles arising through
him. Then, remember, that here under these trees your old father’s
prophetic voice sounded in your ears in vain.”
He said no more; he had detected a rebellious shake of the head on his
daughter’s part. Both made several paces towards the carriage which was
waiting for them at the grating. During that interval of silence, the
young girl stole a glance at her father’s face, and little by little her
sullen brow cleared. The intense pain visible on his bowed forehead made
a lively impression upon her.
“Father,” she began in gentle tremulous tones, “I promise to say no more
about Victor until you have overcome your prejudices against him.”
The old man looked at her in amazement. Two tears which filled his eyes
overflowed down his withered cheeks. He could not take Julie in his arms
in that crowded place; but he pressed her hand tenderly. A few minutes
later when they had taken their places in the cabriolet, all the anxious
thought which had gathered about his brow had completely disappeared.
Julie’s pensive attitude gave him far less concern than the innocent joy
which had betrayed her secret during the review.
Nearly a year had passed since the Emperor’s last review. In early March
1814 a calèche was rolling along the highroad from Amboise to Tours.
As the carriage came out from beneath the green-roofed aisle of walnut
trees by the post-house of la Frillière, the horses dashed forward with
such speed that in a moment they gained the bridge built across the Cise
at the point of its confluence with the Loire. There, however, they come
to a sudden stand. One of the traces had given way in consequence of the
furious pace at which the post-boy, obedient to his orders, had urged on
four horses, the most vigorous of their breed. Chance, therefore, gave
the two recently awakened occupants of the carriage an opportunity of
seeing one of the most lovely landscapes along the enchanting banks of
the Loire, and that at their full leisure.
At a glance the travelers could see to the right the whole winding
course of the Cise meandering like a silver snake among the meadows,
where the grass had taken the deep, bright green of early spring. To the
left lay the Loire in all its glory. A chill morning breeze, ruffling
the surface of the stately river, had fretted the broad sheets of water
far and wide into a network of ripples, which caught the gleams of the
sun, so that the green islets here and there in its course shone like
gems set in a gold necklace. On the opposite bank the fair rich meadows
of Touraine stretched away as far as the eye could see; the low hills
of the Cher, the only limits to the view, lay on the far horizon, a
luminous line against the clear blue sky. Tours itself, framed by the
trees on the islands in a setting of spring leaves, seemed to rise like
Venice out of the waters, and her old cathedral towers soaring in air
were blended with the pale fantastic cloud shapes in the sky.
Over the side of the bridge, where the carriage had come to a stand, the
traveler looks along a line of cliffs stretching as far as Tours.
Nature in some freakish mood must have raised these barriers of rock,
undermined incessantly by the rippling Loire at their feet, for a
perpetual wonder for spectators. The village of Vouvray nestles, as
it were, among the clefts and crannies of the crags, which begin
to describe a bend at the junction of the Loire and Cise. A whole
population of vine-dressers lives, in fact, in appalling insecurity in
holes in their jagged sides for the whole way between Vouvray and Tours.
In some places there are three tiers of dwellings hollowed out, one
above the other, in the rock, each row communicating with the next by
dizzy staircases cut likewise in the face of the cliff. A little girl
in a short red petticoat runs out into her garden on the roof of another
dwelling; you can watch a wreath of hearth-smoke curling up among
the shoots and trails of the vines. Men are at work in their almost
perpendicular patches of ground, an old woman sits tranquilly spinning
under a blossoming almond tree on a crumbling mass of rock, and smiles
down on the dismay of the travelers far below her feet. The cracks in
the ground trouble her as little as the precarious state of the old
wall, a pendant mass of loose stones, only kept in position by the
crooked stems of its ivy mantle. The sound of coopers’ mallets rings
through the skyey caves; for here, where Nature stints human industry of
soil, the soil is everywhere tilled, and everywhere fertile.
No view along the whole course of the Loire can compare with the rich
landscape of Touraine, here outspread beneath the traveler’s eyes. The
triple picture, thus barely sketched in outline, is one of those scenes
which the imagination engraves for ever upon the memory; let a poet
fall under its charm, and he shall be haunted by visions which shall
reproduce its romantic loveliness out of the vague substance of dreams.
As the carriage stopped on the bridge over the Cise, white sails came
out here and there from among the islands in the Loire to add new grace
to the perfect view. The subtle scent of the willows by the water’s
edge was mingled with the damp odor of the breeze from the river. The
monotonous chant of a goat-herd added a plaintive note to the sound
of birds’ songs in a chorus which never ends; the cries of the boatmen
brought tidings of distant busy life. Here was Touraine in all its
glory, and the very height of the splendor of spring. Here was the
one peaceful district in France in those troublous days; for it was
so unlikely that a foreign army should trouble its quiet that Touraine
might be said to defy invasion.
As soon as the calèche stopped, a head covered with a foraging cap was
put out of the window, and soon afterwards an impatient military man
flung open the carriage door and sprang down into the road to pick a
quarrel with the postilion, but the skill with which the Tourangeau was
repairing the trace restored Colonel d’Aiglemont’s equanimity. He went
back to the carriage, stretched himself to relieve his benumbed muscles,
yawned, looked about him, and finally laid a hand on the arm of a young
woman warmly wrapped up in a furred pelisse.
“Come, Julie,” he said hoarsely, “just wake up and take a look at this
country. It is magnificent.”
Julie put her head out of the window. She wore a traveling cap of sable
fur. Nothing could be seen of her but her face, for the whole of her
person was completely concealed by the folds of her fur pelisse.
The young girl who tripped to the review at the Tuileries with light
footsteps and joy and gladness in her heart was scarcely recognizable in
Julie d’Aiglemont. Her face, delicate as ever, had lost the rose-color
which once gave it so rich a glow. A few straggling locks of black hair,
straightened out by the damp night air, enhanced its dead whiteness,
and all its life and sparkle seemed to be torpid. Yet her eyes glittered
with preternatural brightness in spite of the violet shadows under the
lashes upon her wan cheeks.
She looked out with indifferent eyes over the fields towards the
Cher, at the islands in the river, at the line of the crags of Vouvray
stretching along the Loire towards Tours; then she sank back as soon as
possible into her seat in the calèche. She did not care to give a glance
to the enchanting valley of the Cise.
“Yes, it is wonderful,” she said, and out in the open air her voice
sounded weak and faint to the last degree. Evidently she had had her way
with her father, to her misfortune.
“Would you not like to live here, Julie?”
“Yes; here or anywhere,” she answered listlessly.
“Do you feel ill?” asked Colonel d’Aiglemont.
“No, not at all,” she answered with momentary energy; and, smiling at
her husband, she added, “I should like to go to sleep.”
Suddenly there came a sound of a horse galloping towards them. Victor
d’Aiglemont dropped his wife’s hand and turned to watch the bend in the
road. No sooner had he taken his eyes from Julie’s pale face than
all the assumed gaiety died out of it; it was as if a light had been
extinguished. She felt no wish to look at the landscape, no curiosity to
see the horseman who was galloping towards them at such a furious pace,
and, ensconcing herself in her corner, stared out before her at the
hindquarters of the post-horses, looking as blank as any Breton peasant
listening to his _recteur’s_ sermon.
Suddenly a young man riding a valuable horse came out from behind the
clump of poplars and flowering briar-rose.
“It is an Englishman,” remarked the Colonel.
“Lord bless you, yes, General,” said the post-boy; “he belongs to the
race of fellows who have a mind to gobble up France, they say.”
The stranger was one of the foreigners traveling in France at the time
when Napoleon detained all British subjects within the limits of the
Empire, by way of reprisals for the violation of the Treaty of Amiens,
an outrage of international law perpetrated by the Court of St. James.
These prisoners, compelled to submit to the Emperor’s pleasure, were not
all suffered to remain in the houses where they were arrested, nor yet
in the places of residence which at first they were permitted to choose.
Most of the English colony in Touraine had been transplanted thither
from different places where their presence was supposed to be inimical
to the interests of the Continental Policy.
The young man, who was taking the tedium of the early morning hours on
horseback, was one of these victims of bureaucratic tyranny. Two years
previously, a sudden order from the Foreign Office had dragged him from
Montpellier, whither he had gone on account of consumptive tendencies.
He glanced at the Comte d’Aiglemont, saw that he was a military man, and
deliberately looked away, turning his head somewhat abruptly towards the
meadows by the Cise.
“The English are all as insolent as if the globe belonged to them,”
muttered the Colonel. “Luckily, Soult will give them a thrashing
directly.”
The prisoner gave a glance to the calèche as he rode by. Brief though
that glance was, he had yet time to notice the sad expression which lent
an indefinable charm to the Countess’ pensive face. Many men are deeply
moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look
of pain for a sign of constancy or of love. Julie herself was so much
absorbed in the contemplation of the opposite cushion that she saw
neither the horse nor the rider. The damaged trace meanwhile had been
quickly and strongly repaired; the Count stepped into his place again;
and the post-boy, doing his best to make up for lost time, drove
the carriage rapidly along the embankment. On they drove under the
overhanging cliffs, with their picturesque vine-dressers’ huts and
stores of wine maturing in their dark sides, till in the distance uprose
the spire of the famous Abbey of Marmoutiers, the retreat of St. Martin.
“What can that diaphanous milord want with us?” exclaimed the Colonel,
turning to assure himself that the horseman who had followed them from
the bridge was the young Englishman.
After all, the stranger committed no breach of good manners by riding
along on the footway, and Colonel d’Aiglemont was fain to lie back in
his corner after sending a scowl in the Englishman’s direction. But in
spite of his hostile instincts, he could not help noticing the beauty of
the animal and the graceful horsemanship of the rider. The young man’s
face was of that pale, fair-complexioned, insular type, which is almost
girlish in the softness and delicacy of its color and texture. He was
tall, thin, and fair-haired, dressed with the extreme and elaborate
neatness characteristic of a man of fashion in prudish England. Any one
might have thought that bashfulness rather than pleasure at the sight
of the Countess had called up that flush into his face. Once only Julie
raised her eyes and looked at the stranger, and then only because she
was in a manner compelled to do so, for her husband called upon her to
admire the action of the thoroughbred. It so happened that their glances
clashed; and the shy Englishman, instead of riding abreast of the
carriage, fell behind on this, and followed them at a distance of a few
paces.
Yet the Countess had scarcely given him a glance; she saw none of the
various perfections, human and equine, commended to her notice, and
fell back again in the carriage, with a slight movement of the eyelids
intended to express her acquiescence in her husband’s views. The Colonel
fell asleep again, and both husband and wife reached Tours without
another word. Not one of those enchanting views of everchanging
landscape through which they sped had drawn so much as a glance from
Julie’s eyes.
Mme. d’Aiglemont looked now and again at her sleeping husband. While she
looked, a sudden jolt shook something down upon her knees. It was her
father’s portrait, a miniature which she wore suspended about her neck
by a black cord. At the sight of it, the tears, till then kept back,
overflowed her eyes, but no one, save perhaps the Englishman, saw them
glitter there for a brief moment before they dried upon her pale cheeks.
Colonel d’Aiglemont was on his way to the South. Marshal Soult was
repelling an English invasion of Bearn; and d’Aiglemont, the bearer of
the Emperor’s orders to the Marshal, seized the opportunity of taking
his wife as far as Tours to leave her with an elderly relative of his
own, far away from the dangers threatening Paris.
Very shortly the carriage rolled over the paved road of Tours, over the
bridge, along the Grande-Rue, and stopped at last before the old mansion
of the _ci-devant_ Marquise de Listomère-Landon.
The Marquise de Listomère-Landon, with her white hair, pale face, and
shrewd smile, was one of those fine old ladies who still seem to wear
the paniers of the eighteenth century, and affects caps of an extinct
mode. They are nearly always caressing in their manners, as if the
heyday of love still lingered on for these septuagenarian portraits
of the age of Louis Quinze, with the faint perfume of _poudre a la
maréchale_ always clinging about them. Bigoted rather than pious, and
less of bigots than they seem, women who can tell a story well and talk
still better, their laughter comes more readily for an old memory than
for a new jest--the present intrudes upon them.
When an old waiting-woman announced to the Marquise de Listomère-Landon
(to give her the title which she was soon to resume) the arrival of a
nephew whom she had not seen since the outbreak of the war with Spain,
the old lady took off her spectacles with alacrity, shut the _Galerie
de l’ancienne Cour_ (her favorite work), and recovered something like
youthful activity, hastening out upon the flight of steps to greet the
young couple there.
Aunt and niece exchanged a rapid glance of survey.
“Good-morning, dear aunt,” cried the Colonel, giving the old lady a
hasty embrace. “I am bringing a young lady to put under your wing.
I have come to put my treasure in your keeping. My Julie is neither
jealous nor a coquette, she is as good as an angel. I hope that she will
not be spoiled here,” he added, suddenly interrupting himself.
“Scapegrace!” returned the Marquise, with a satirical glance at her
nephew.
She did not wait for her niece to approach her, but with a certain
kindly graciousness went forward herself to kiss Julie, who stood there
thoughtfully, to all appearance more embarrassed than curious concerning
her new relation.
“So we are to make each other’s acquaintance, are we, my love?” the
Marquise continued. “Do not be too much alarmed of me. I always try not
to be an old woman with young people.”
On the way to the drawing-room, the Marquise ordered breakfast for her
guests in provincial fashion; but the Count checked his aunt’s flow of
words by saying soberly that he could only remain in the house while the
horses were changing. On this the three hurried into the drawing-room.
The Colonel had barely time to tell the story of the political and
military events which had compelled him to ask his aunt for a shelter
for his young wife. While he talked on without interruption, the older
lady looked from her nephew to her niece, and took the sadness in
Julie’s white face for grief at the enforced separation. “Eh! eh!” her
looks seemed to say, “these young things are in love with each other.”
The crack of the postilion’s whip sounded outside in the silent old
grass-grown courtyard. Victor embraced his aunt once more, and rushed
out.
“Good-bye, dear,” he said, kissing his wife, who had followed him down
to the carriage.
“Oh! Victor, let me come still further with you,” she pleaded coaxingly.
“I do not want to leave you----”
“Can you seriously mean it?”
“Very well,” said Julie, “since you wish it.” The carriage disappeared.
“So you are very fond of my poor Victor?” said the Marquise,
interrogating her niece with one of those sagacious glances which
dowagers give younger women.
“Alas, madame!” said Julie, “must one not love a man well indeed to
marry him?”
The words were spoken with an artless accent which revealed either a
pure heart or inscrutable depths. How could a woman, who had been the
friend of Duclos and the Marechal de Richelieu, refrain from trying to
read the riddle of this marriage? Aunt and niece were standing on the
steps, gazing after the fast vanishing calèche. The look in the young
Countess’ eyes did not mean love as the Marquise understood it. The good
lady was a Provencale, and her passions had been lively.
“So you were captivated by my good-for-nothing of a nephew?” she asked.
Involuntarily Julie shuddered, something in the experienced coquette’s
look and tone seemed to say that Mme. de Listomère-Landon’s knowledge
of her husband’s character went perhaps deeper than his wife’s. Mme.
d’Aiglemont, in dismay, took refuge in this transparent dissimulation,
ready to her hand, the first resource of an artless unhappiness. Mme.
de Listomère appeared to be satisfied with Julie’s answers; but in her
secret heart she rejoiced to think that here was a love affair on hand
to enliven her solitude, for that her niece had some amusing flirtation
on foot she was fully convinced.
In the great drawing-room, hung with tapestry framed in strips of
gilding, young Mme. d’Aiglemont sat before a blazing fire, behind a
Chinese screen placed to shut out the cold draughts from the window,
and her heavy mood scarcely lightened. Among the old eighteenth-century
furniture, under the old paneled ceiling, it was not very easy to be
gay. Yet the young Parisienne took a sort of pleasure in this entrance
upon a life of complete solitude and in the solemn silence of the old
provincial house. She exchanged a few words with the aunt, a stranger,
to whom she had written a bride’s letter on her marriage, and then sat
as silent as if she had been listening to an opera. Not until two hours
had been spent in an atmosphere of quiet befitting la Trappe, did she
suddenly awaken to a sense of uncourteous behavior, and bethink herself
of the short answers which she had given her aunt. Mme. de Listomère,
with the gracious tact characteristic of a bygone age, had respected
her niece’s mood. When Mme. d’Aiglemont became conscious of her
shortcomings, the dowager sat knitting, though as a matter of fact she
had several times left the room to superintend preparations in the
Green Chamber, whither the Countess’ luggage had been transported; now,
however, she had returned to her great armchair, and stole a glance from
time to time at this young relative. Julie felt ashamed of giving way
to irresistible broodings, and tried to earn her pardon by laughing at
herself.
“My dear child, _we_ know the sorrows of widowhood,” returned her aunt.
But only the eyes of forty years could have distinguished the irony
hovering about the old lady’s mouth.
Next morning the Countess improved. She talked. Mme. de Listomère no
longer despaired of fathoming the new-made wife, whom yesterday she had
set down as a dull, unsociable creature, and discoursed on the delights
of the country, of dances, of houses where they could visit. All that
day the Marquise’s questions were so many snares; it was the old habit
of the old Court, she could not help setting traps to discover her
niece’s character. For several days Julie, plied with temptations,
steadfastly declined to seek amusement abroad; and much as the old
lady’s pride longed to exhibit her pretty niece, she was fain to
renounce all hope of taking her into society, for the young Countess was
still in morning for her father, and found in her loss and her mourning
dress a pretext for her sadness and desire for seclusion.
By the end of the week the dowager admired Julie’s angelic sweetness
of disposition, her diffident charm, her indulgent temper, and
thenceforward began to take a prodigious interest in the mysterious
sadness gnawing at this young heart. The Countess was one of those women
who seem born to be loved and to bring happiness with them. Mme. de
Listomère found her niece’s society grown so sweet and precious, that
she doted upon Julie, and could no longer think of parting with her.
A month sufficed to establish an eternal friendship between the two
ladies. The dowager noticed, not without surprise, the changes that took
place in Mme. d’Aiglemont; gradually her bright color died away, and
her face became dead white. Yet, Julie’s spirits rose as the bloom faded
from her cheeks. Sometimes the dowager’s sallies provoked outbursts of
merriment or peals of laughter, promptly repressed, however, by some
clamorous thought.
Mme. de Listomère had guessed by this time that it was neither Victor’s
absence nor a father’s death which threw a shadow over her niece’s life;
but her mind was so full of dark suspicions, that she found it difficult
to lay a finger upon the real cause of the mischief. Possibly truth is
only discoverable by chance. A day came, however, at length when
Julie flashed out before her aunt’s astonished eyes into a complete
forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the wild spirits of
careless girlhood. Mme. de Listomère then and there made up her mind
to fathom the depths of this soul, for its exceeding simplicity was as
inscrutable as dissimulation.
Night was falling. The two ladies were sitting by the window which
looked out upon the street, and Julie was looking thoughtful again, when
some one went by on horseback.
“There goes one of your victims,” said the Marquise.
Mme. d’Aiglemont looked up; dismay and surprise blended in her face.
“He is a young Englishman, the Honorable Arthur Ormand, Lord Grenville’s
eldest son. His history is interesting. His physician sent him to
Montpellier in 1802; it was hoped that in that climate he might recover
from the lung complaint which was gaining ground. He was detained, like
all his fellow-countrymen, by Bonaparte when war broke out. That monster
cannot live without fighting. The young Englishman, by way of amusing
himself, took to studying his own complaint, which was believed to be
incurable. By degrees he acquired a liking for anatomy and physic, and
took quite a craze for that kind of thing, a most extraordinary taste
in a man of quality, though the Regent certainly amused himself with
chemistry! In short, Monsieur Arthur made astonishing progress in his
studies; his health did the same under the faculty of Montpellier; he
consoled his captivity, and at the same time his cure was thoroughly
completed. They say that he spent two whole years in a cowshed, living
on cresses and the milk of a cow brought from Switzerland, breathing as
seldom as he could, and never speaking a word. Since he come to Tours
he has lived quite alone; he is as proud as a peacock; but you have
certainly made a conquest of him, for probably it is not on my account
that he has ridden under the window twice every day since you have been
here.--He has certainly fallen in love with you.”
That last phrase roused the Countess like magic. Her involuntary start
and smile took the Marquise by surprise. So far from showing a sign of
the instinctive satisfaction felt by the most strait-laced of women when
she learns that she has destroyed the peace of mind of some male
victim, there was a hard, haggard expression in Julie’s face--a look of
repulsion amounting almost to loathing.
A woman who loves will put the whole world under the ban of Love’s
empire for the sake of the one whom she loves; but such a woman can
laugh and jest; and Julie at that moment looked as if the memory of some
recently escaped peril was too sharp and fresh not to bring with it a
quick sensation of pain. Her aunt, by this time convinced that Julie
did not love her nephew, was stupefied by the discovery that she loved
nobody else. She shuddered lest a further discovery should show her
Julie’s heart disenchanted, lest the experience of a day, or perhaps
of a night, should have revealed to a young wife the full extent of
Victor’s emptiness.
“If she has found him out, there is an end of it,” thought the dowager.
“My nephew will soon be made to feel the inconveniences of wedded life.”
The Marquise now proposed to convert Julie to the monarchical doctrines
of the times of Louis Quinze; but a few hours later she discovered, or,
more properly speaking, guessed, the not uncommon state of affairs, and
the real cause of her niece’s low spirits.
Julie turned thoughtful on a sudden, and went to her room earlier than
usual. When her maid left her for the night, she still sat by the fire
in the yellow velvet depths of a great chair, an old-world piece of
furniture as well suited for sorrow as for happy people. Tears flowed,
followed by sighs and meditation. After a while she drew a little table
to her, sought writing materials, and began to write. The hours went by
swiftly. Julie’s confidences made to the sheet of paper seemed to cost
her dear; every sentence set her dreaming, and at last she suddenly
burst into tears. The clocks were striking two. Her head, grown heavy as
a dying woman’s, was bowed over her breast. When she raised it, her
aunt appeared before her as suddenly as if she had stepped out of the
background of tapestry upon the walls.
“What can be the matter with you, child?” asked the Marquise. “Why are
you sitting up so late? And why, in the first place, are you crying
alone, at your age?”
Without further ceremony she sat down beside her niece, her eyes the
while devouring the unfinished letter.
“Were you writing to your husband?”
“Do I know where he is?” returned the Countess.
Her aunt thereupon took up the sheet and proceeded to read it. She had
brought her spectacles; the deed was premeditated. The innocent writer
of the letter allowed her to take it without the slightest remark. It
was neither lack of dignity nor consciousness of secret guilt which left
her thus without energy. Her aunt had come in upon her at a crisis. She
was helpless; right or wrong, reticence and confidence, like all things
else, were matters of indifference. Like some young maid who had heaped
scorn upon her lover, and feels so lonely and sad when evening comes,
that she longs for him to come back or for a heart to which she can pour
out her sorrow, Julie allowed her aunt to violate the seal which honor
places upon an open letter, and sat musing while the Marquise read on:--
“MY DEAR LOUISA,--Why do you ask so often for the fulfilment of as
rash a promise as two young and inexperienced girls could make?
You say that you often ask yourself why I have given no answer to
your questions for these six months. If my silence told you
nothing, perhaps you will understand the reasons for it to-day, as
you read the secrets which I am about to betray. I should have
buried them for ever in the depths of my heart if you had not
announced your own approaching marriage. You are about to be
married, Louisa. The thought makes me shiver. Poor little one!
marry, yes, in a few months’ time one of the keenest pangs of
regret will be the recollection of a self which used to be, of the
two young girls who sat one evening under one of the tallest
oak-trees on the hillside at Ecouen, and looked along the fair
valley at our feet in the light of the sunset, which caught us in
its glow. We sat on a slab of rock in ecstasy, which sobered down
into melancholy of the gentlest. You were the first to discover that
the far-off sun spoke to us of the future. How inquisitive and how
silly we were! Do you remember all the absurd things we said and
did? We embraced each other; ‘like lovers,’ said we. We solemnly
promised that the first bride should faithfully reveal to the
other the mysteries of marriage, the joys which our childish minds
imagined to be so delicious. That evening will complete your
despair, Louisa. In those days you were young and beautiful and
careless, if not radiantly happy; a few days of marriage, and you
will be, what I am already--ugly, wretched, and old. Need I tell
you how proud I was and how vain and glad to be married to Colonel
Victor d’Aiglemont? And besides, how could I tell you now? for I
cannot remember that old self. A few moments turned my girlhood to
a dream. All through the memorable day which consecrated a chain,
the extent of which was hidden from me, my behavior was not free
from reproach. Once and again my father tried to repress my
spirits; the joy which I showed so plainly was thought unbefitting
the occasion, my talk scarcely innocent, simply because I was so
innocent. I played endless child’s tricks with my bridal veil, my
wreath, my gown. Left alone that night in the room whither I had
been conducted in state, I planned a piece of mischief to tease
Victor. While I awaited his coming, my heart beat wildly, as it
used to do when I was a child stealing into the drawing-room on
the last day of the old year to catch a glimpse of the New Year’s
gifts piled up there in heaps. When my husband came in and looked
for me, my smothered laughter ringing out from beneath the lace in
which I had shrouded myself, was the last outburst of the
delicious merriment which brightened our games in childhood...”
When the dowager had finished reading the letter, and after such a
beginning the rest must have been sad indeed, she slowly laid her
spectacles on the table, put the letter down beside them, and looked
fixedly at her niece. Age had not dimmed the fire in those green eyes as
yet.
“My little girl,” she said, “a married woman cannot write such a letter
as this to a young unmarried woman; it is scarcely proper--”
“So I was thinking,” Julie broke in upon her aunt. “I felt ashamed of
myself while you were reading it.”
“If a dish at table is not to our taste, there is no occasion to disgust
others with it, child,” the old lady continued benignly, “especially
when marriage has seemed to us all, from Eve downwards, so excellent an
institution... You have no mother?”
The Countess trembled, then she raised her face meekly, and said:
“I have missed my mother many times already during the past year; but I
have myself to blame, I would not listen to my father. He was opposed to
my marriage; he disapproved of Victor as a son-in-law.”
She looked at her aunt. The old face was lighted up with a kindly look,
and a thrill of joy dried Julie’s tears. She held out her young,
soft hand to the old Marquise, who seemed to ask for it, and the
understanding between the two women was completed by the close grasp of
their fingers.
“Poor orphan child!”
The words came like a final flash of enlightenment to Julie. It seemed
to her that she heard her father’s prophetic voice again.
“Your hands are burning! Are they always like this?” asked the Marquise.
“The fever only left me seven or eight days ago.”
“You had a fever upon you, and said nothing about it to me!”
“I have had it for a year,” said Julie, with a kind of timid anxiety.
“My good little angel, then your married life hitherto has been one long
time of suffering?”
Julie did not venture to reply, but an affirmative sign revealed the
whole truth.
“Then you are unhappy?”
“On! no, no, aunt. Victor loves me, he almost idolizes me, and I adore
him, he is so kind.”
“Yes, you love him; but you avoid him, do you not?”
“Yes... sometimes... He seeks me too often.”
“And often when you are alone you are troubled with the fear that he may
suddenly break in on your solitude?”
“Alas! yes, aunt. But, indeed, I love him, I do assure you.”
“Do you not, in your own thoughts, blame yourself because you find it
impossible to share his pleasures? Do you never think at times that
marriage is a heavier yoke than an illicit passion could be?”
“Oh, that is just it,” she wept. “It is all a riddle to me, and can you
guess it all? My faculties are benumbed, I have no ideas, I can scarcely
see at all. I am weighed down by vague dread, which freezes me till
I cannot feel, and keeps me in continual torpor. I have no voice with
which to pity myself, no words to express my trouble. I suffer, and I am
ashamed to suffer when Victor is happy at my cost.”
“Babyish nonsense, and rubbish, all of it!” exclaimed the aunt, and a
gay smile, an after-glow of the joys of her own youth, suddenly lighted
up her withered face.
“And do you too laugh!” the younger woman cried despairingly.
“It was just my own case,” the Marquise returned promptly. “And
now Victor has left you, you have become a girl again, recovering a
tranquillity without pleasure and without pain, have you not?”
Julie opened wide eyes of bewilderment.
“In fact, my angel, you adore Victor, do you not? But still you would
rather be a sister to him than a wife, and, in short, your marriage is
emphatically not a success?”
“Well--no, aunt. But why do you smile?”
“Oh! you are right, poor child! There is nothing very amusing in all
this. Your future would be big with more than one mishap if I had not
taken you under my protection, if my old experience of life had not
guessed the very innocent cause of your troubles. My nephew did
not deserve his good fortune, the blockhead! In the reign of our
well-beloved Louis Quinze, a young wife in your position would very
soon have punished her husband for behaving like a ruffian. The selfish
creature! The men who serve under this Imperial tyrant are all of them
ignorant boors. They take brutality for gallantry; they know no more of
women than they know of love; and imagine that because they go out
to face death on the morrow, they may dispense to-day with all
consideration and attentions for us. The time was when a man could love
and die too at the proper time. My niece, I will form you. I will put an
end to this unhappy divergence between you, a natural thing enough, but
it would end in mutual hatred and desire for a divorce, always supposing
that you did not die on the way to despair.”
Julie’s amazement equaled her surprise as she listened to her aunt. She
was surprised by her language, dimly divining rather than appreciating
the wisdom of the words she heard, and very much dismayed to find what
this relative, out of great experience, passed judgment upon Victor as
her father had done, though in somewhat milder terms. Perhaps some quick
prevision of the future crossed her mind; doubtless, at any rate, she
felt the heavy weight of the burden which must inevitably overwhelm
her, for she burst into tears, and sprang to the old lady’s arms. “Be my
mother,” she sobbed.
The aunt shed no tears. The Revolution had left old ladies of the
Monarchy but few tears to shed. Love, in bygone days, and the Terror at
a later time, had familiarized them with extremes of joy and anguish in
such a sort that, amid the perils of life, they preserved their dignity
and coolness, a capacity for sincere but undemonstrative affection
which never disturbed their well-bred self-possession, and a dignity of
demeanor which a younger generation has done very ill to discard.
The dowager took Julie in her arms, and kissed her on the forehead with
a tenderness and pity more often found in women’s ways and manner than
in their hearts. Then she coaxed her niece with kind, soothing words,
assured her of a happy future, lulled her with promises of love, and
put her to bed as if she had been not a niece, but a daughter, a
much-beloved daughter whose hopes and cares she had made her own.
Perhaps the old Marquise had found her own youth and inexperience and
beauty again in this nephew’s wife. And the Countess fell asleep, happy
to have found a friend, nay a mother, to whom she could tell everything
freely.
Next morning, when the two women kissed each other with heartfelt
kindness, and that look of intelligence which marks a real advance in
friendship, a closer intimacy between two souls, they heard the sound
of horsehoofs, and, turning both together, saw the young Englishman ride
slowly past the window, after his wont. Apparently he had made a certain
study of the life led by the two lonely women, for he never failed
to ride by as they sat at breakfast, and again at dinner. His horse
slackened pace of its own accord, and for the space of time required
to pass the two windows in the room, its rider turned a melancholy look
upon the Countess, who seldom deigned to take the slightest notion of
him. Not so the Marquise. Minds not necessarily little find it difficult
to resist the little curiosity which fastens upon the most trifling
event that enlivens provincial life; and the Englishman’s mute way of
expressing his timid, earnest love tickled Mme. de Listomère. For her
the periodically recurrent glance became a part of the day’s routine,
hailed daily with new jests. As the two women sat down to table, both of
them looked out at the same moment. This time Julie’s eyes met Arthur’s
with such a precision of sympathy that the color rose to her face. The
stranger immediately urged his horse into a gallop and went.
“What is to be done, madame?” asked Julie. “People see this Englishman
go past the house, and they will take it for granted that I--”
“Yes,” interrupted her aunt.
“Well, then, could I not tell him to discontinue his promenades?”
“Would not that be a way of telling him that he was dangerous? You might
put that notion into his head. And besides, can you prevent a man from
coming and going as he pleases? Our meals shall be served in another
room to-morrow; and when this young gentleman sees us no longer, there
will be an end of making love to you through the window. There, dear
child, that is how a woman of the world does.”
But the measure of Julie’s misfortune was to be filled up. The two women
had scarcely risen from table when Victor’s man arrived in hot haste
from Bourges with a letter for the Countess from her husband. The
servant had ridden by unfrequented ways.
Victor sent his wife news of the downfall of the Empire and the
capitulation of Paris. He himself had gone over to the Bourbons, and all
France was welcoming them back with transports of enthusiasm. He could
not go so far as Tours, but he begged her to come at once to join him at
Orleans, where he hoped to be in readiness with passports for her.
His servant, an old soldier, would be her escort so far as Orleans; he
(Victor) believed that the road was still open.
“You have not a moment to lose, madame,” said the man. “The Prussians,
Austrians, and English are about to effect a junction either at Blois or
at Orleans.”
A few hours later, Julie’s preparations were made, and she started out
upon her journey in an old traveling carriage lent by her aunt.
“Why should you not come with us to Paris?” she asked, as she put her
arms about the Marquise. “Now that the Bourbons have come back you would
be--”
“Even if there had not been this unhoped-for return, I should still have
gone to Paris, my poor child, for my advice is only too necessary to
both you and Victor. So I shall make all my preparations for rejoining
you there.”
Julie set out. She took her maid with her, and the old soldier galloped
beside the carriage as escort. At nightfall, as they changed horses for
the last stage before Blois, Julie grew uneasy. All the way from Amboise
she had heard the sound of wheels behind them, a carriage following hers
had kept at the same distance. She stood on the step and looked out
to see who her traveling companions might be, and in the moonlight saw
Arthur standing three paces away, gazing fixedly at the chaise which
contained her. Again their eyes met. The Countess hastily flung herself
back in her seat, but a feeling of dread set her pulses throbbing. It
seemed to her, as to most innocent and inexperienced young wives, that
she was herself to blame for this love which she had all unwittingly
inspired. With this thought came an instinctive terror, perhaps a sense
of her own helplessness before aggressive audacity. One of a man’s
strongest weapons is the terrible power of compelling a woman to think
of him when her naturally lively imagination takes alarm or offence at
the thought that she is followed.
The Countess bethought herself of her aunt’s advice, and made up her
mind that she would not stir from her place during the rest of the
journey; but every time the horses were changed she heard the Englishman
pacing round the two carriages, and again upon the road heard the
importunate sound of the wheels of his calèche. Julie soon began to
think that, when once reunited to her husband, Victor would know how to
defend her against this singular persecution.
“Yet suppose that in spite of everything, this young man does not love
me?” This was the thought that came last of all.
No sooner did she reach Orleans than the Prussians stopped the chaise.
It was wheeled into an inn-yard and put under a guard of soldiers.
Resistance was out of the question. The foreign soldiers made the three
travelers understand by signs that they were obeying orders, and that
no one could be allowed to leave the carriage. For about two hours the
Countess sat in tears, a prisoner surrounded by the guard, who smoked,
laughed, and occasionally stared at her with insolent curiosity. At
last, however, she saw her captors fall away from the carriage with a
sort of respect, and heard at the same time the sound of horses entering
the yard. Another moment, and a little group of foreign officers,
with an Austrian general at their head, gathered about the door of the
traveling carriage.
“Madame,” said the General, “pray accept our apologies. A mistake has
been made. You may continue your journey without fear; and here is a
passport which will spare you all further annoyance of any kind.”
Trembling the Countess took the paper, and faltered out some vague words
of thanks. She saw Arthur, now wearing an English uniform, standing
beside the General, and could not doubt that this prompt deliverance
was due to him. The young Englishman himself looked half glad, half
melancholy; his face was turned away, and he only dared to steal an
occasional glance at Julie’s face.
Thanks to the passport, Mme. d’Aiglemont reached Paris without further
misadventure, and there she found her husband. Victor d’Aiglemont,
released from his oath of allegiance to the Emperor, had met with a
most flattering reception from the Comte d’Artois, recently appointed
Lieutenant-General of the kingdom by his brother Louis XVIII.
D’Aiglemont received a commission in the Life Guards, equivalent to
the rank of general. But amid the rejoicings over the return of the
Bourbons, fate dealt poor Julie a terrible blow. The death of the
Marquise de Listomère-Landon was an irreparable loss. The old lady died
of joy and of an accession of gout to the heart when the Duc d’Angoulême
came back to Tours, and the one living being entitled by her age to
enlighten Victor, the woman who, by discreet counsels, might have
brought about perfect unanimity of husband and wife, was dead; and Julie
felt the full extent of her loss. Henceforward she must stand alone
between herself and her husband. But she was young and timid; there
could be no doubt of the result, or that from the first she would
elect to bear her lot in silence. The very perfection of her character
forbade her to venture to swerve from her duties, or to attempt to
inquire into the cause of her sufferings, for to put an end to them
would have been to venture on delicate ground, and Julie’s girlish
modesty shrank from the thought.
A word as to M. d’Aiglemont’s destinies under the Restoration.