The house of Cosmo’s residence was not a great enough house to boast a
regular _portière_ or _concierge_. A little cobbler, who lived in an odd
little ever-open room, on the ground floor, was the real renter and
landlord of the much-divided dwelling place. He and his old wife lived
and labored without change or extension in this one apartment, which
answered for all purposes, and in which Baptiste’s scraps of leather
contended for preëminence of odor over Margot’s _pot au feu_; and it was
here that the lodgers hung up the keys of their respective chambers, and
where the letters and messages of the little community were left.
Cameron and Cosmo were both very friendly with Baptiste. They understood
him but imperfectly, and he, for his part, kept up a continual chuckle
behind his sleeve over the blunders of _les Anglais_. But as they
laughed at each other mutually, both were contented, and kept their
complacence. Cosmo had found out by guess or inference, he could not
quite tell how, that madame in the second floor opposite, with the
invalid daughter, was the owner of Baptiste’s house--a fact which made
the cobbler’s little room very attractive to the lad, as it was easy to
invent questions, direct or indirect, about the beautiful old lady. One
morning, Baptiste looked up, with a smirk, from his board, as he bid
good-day to his young lodger. He had news to tell.
“You shall now have your wish,” said Baptiste; “Madame has been asking
Margot about the young Englishman. Madame takes interest in _les
Anglais_. You shall go to present yourself, and make your homage when
her poor daughter is better. She loves your country. Madame is _Anglais_
herself.”
“Is she?” cried Cosmo, eagerly; “but I am not English, unfortunately,”
added the lad, with a jealous nationality. “I am a Scotsman, Baptiste;
madame will no longer wish to see me.”
“Eh, bien!” said Baptiste, “I know not much of your differences, you
islanders--but madame is _Ecossais_. Yes, I know it. It was so said when
Monsieur Jean brought home his bride. Ah, was she not beautiful? too
pretty for the peace of the young man and the ladies; they made poor
Monsieur Jean jealous, and he took her away.”
“Is that long ago?” asked Cosmo.
“It was the year that Margot’s cousin, Camille, was drawn in the
conscription,” said Baptiste, smiling to himself at his own private
recollections. “It is twenty years since. But madame was lovely! So poor
Monsieur Jean became jealous and carried her away. They went, I know not
where, to the end of the world. In the meantime the old gentleman died.
He was of the old _régime_--he was of good blood--but he was poor--he
had but this house here and that other to leave to his son--fragments,
monsieur, fragments, crumbs out of the hands of the Revolution; and
Monsieur Jean was gay and of a great spirit. He was not a _bourgeois_ to
go to become rich. The money dropped through his fine fingers. He came
back, let me see, but three years ago. He was a gentleman, he was a
noble, with but a thousand francs of rent. He did not do any thing.
Madame sat at the window and worked, with her pretty white hands. Eh,
bien! what shall you say then? she loved him--nothing was hard to her.
He was made to be loved, this poor Monsieur Jean.”
“It is easy to say so--but he could not have deserved such a wife,”
cried Cosmo, with a boy’s indignation; “he ought to have toiled for her
rather, night and day.”
“Ah, monsieur is young,” said Baptiste, with a half satirical smile and
shrug of his stooping French shoulders. “We know better when we have
been married twenty years. Monsieur Jean was not made to toil, neither
night nor day; but he loved madame still, and was jealous of her--he was
a _beau garçon_ himself to his last days.”
“Jealous!” Cosmo was horrified; “you speak very lightly, Baptiste,” said
the boy, angrily, “but that is worst of all--a lady so beautiful, so
good--it is enough to see her to know how good she is--the man deserved
to be shot!”
“Nay, nay,” cried Baptiste, laughing, “monsieur does not understand the
ways of women--it pleased madame--they love to know their power, and to
hear other people know it; all the women are so. Madame loved him all
the better for being a little--just a little afraid of her beauty. But
he did not live long--poor Monsieur Jean!”
“I hope she was very glad to be rid of such a fellow,” cried Cosmo, who
was highly indignant at the deficient husband of his beautiful old lady.
Baptiste rubbed the corner of his own eye rather hard with his knuckle.
The cobbler had a little sentiment lingering in his ancient bosom for
the admired of his youth.
“But he had an air noble--a great spirit,” cried Baptiste. “But madame
loved him! She wept--all St. Ouen wept, monsieur--and he was the last of
an old race. Now there are only the women, and madame herself is a
foreigner and a stranger, and knows not our traditions. Ah, it is a
great change for the house of Roche de St. Martin! If you will believe
it, monsieur, madame herself is called by the common people nothing but
Madame Roche!”
“And that is very sad, Baptiste,” said Cosmo, with a smile. Baptiste
smiled too; the cobbler was not particularly sincere in his
aristocratical regrets, but, with the mingled wit and sentiment of his
country, was sufficiently ready to perceive either the ludicrous or the
pathetic aspect of the decayed family.
Cosmo, however, changed his tone with the most capricious haste. Whether
she was a plain Madame Roche, or a noble lady, it did not matter much to
the stranger. She was at the present moment, in her lovely age and
motherhood, the lady of Cosmo’s dreams, and ridicule could not come near
her. She was sacred to every idea that was most reverential and full of
honor.
“And she is a widow, now, and has a sick daughter to take care of,” said
Cosmo, meditatively; “strange how some people in the world have always
some burden upon them. Had she no one to take care of _her_?”
“If monsieur means _that_,” said Baptiste, with a comical smile, “I do
not doubt madame might have married again.”
“Married--she! how dare you say so, Baptiste,” cried the lad, coloring
high in indignation; “it is profane!--it is sacrilege!--but she has only
this invalid daughter to watch and labor for--nothing more?”
“Yes--it is but a sad life,” said Baptiste; “many a laboring woman, as I
tell Margot, has less to do with her hard fingers than has madame with
those pretty white hands--one and another all her life to lean upon her,
and now, alas! poor Mademoiselle Marie!”
The cobbler looked as if something more than mere compassion for her
illness moved this last exclamation, but Cosmo was not very much
interested about Mademoiselle Marie, who lay always on the sofa, and,
hidden in the dimness of the chamber, looked older than her mother, as
the lad fancied. He went away from Baptiste, however, with his mind very
full of Madame Roche. For a homeborn youth like himself, so long
accustomed to the family roof and his mother’s rule and company, he had
been a long time now totally out of domestic usages and female
society--longer than he had ever been in his life before--he was
flattered to think that his beautiful old lady had noticed him, and an
affectionate chivalrous sentiment touched Cosmo’s mind with unusual
pleasure. He loved to imagine to himself the delicate womanly fireside,
lighted up by a smile which might remind him of his mother’s, yet would
be more refined and captivating than the familiar looks of the Mistress.
He thought of himself as something between a son and a champion,
tenderly reverent and full of affectionate admiration. No idea of
Mademoiselle Marie, nor of any other younger person with whom it might
be possible to fall in love, brought Cosmo’s imagination down to the
vulgar level. He felt as a lad feels who has been brought up under the
shadow of a mother heartily loved and honored. It was still a mother he
was dreaming about; but the delicate old beauty of his old lady added an
indefinable charm to the impulse of affectionate respect which animated
Cosmo. It made him a great deal more pleased and proud to think she had
noticed him, and to anticipate perhaps an invitation to her very
presence. It made him think as much about her to-day as though she had
been a girl, and he her lover. The sentiment warmed the lad’s heart.
He was wandering around the noble old cathedral later in the day, when
the February sun slanted upon all the fretted work of its pinnacles and
niches, and playing in, with an ineffectual effort, was lost in the
glorious gloom of the sculptured porch. Cosmo pleased himself straying
about this place, not that he knew any thing about it, or was at all
enlightened as to its peculiar beauties--but simply because it moved him
with a sense of perfectness and glory, such as, perhaps, few other human
works ever impress so deeply. As he went along, he came suddenly upon
the object of his thoughts. Madame Roche--as Baptiste lamented to think
the common people called her--was in an animated little discussion with
a market-woman, then returning home, about a certain little bundle of
sweet herbs which remained in her almost empty basket. Cosmo hurried
past, shyly afraid to be supposed listening; but he could hear that
there was something said about an omelette for Mademoiselle Marie, which
decided the inclinations of his old lady. He could not help standing at
the corner of the lane to watch her when she had passed. She put the
herbs into her own little light basket, and was moving away towards her
house, when something called her attention behind, and she looked back.
She could not but perceive Cosmo, lingering shy and conscious at the
corner, nor could she but guess that it was herself whom the lad had
been looking at. She smiled to him, and made him a little courtesy, and
waved her hand with a kindly, half-amused gesture of recognition, which
completed the confusion of Cosmo, who had scarcely self-possession
enough left to take off his hat. Then the old lady went on, and he
remained watching her. What a step she had!--so simple, so
straightforward, so unconscious, full of a natural grace which no
training could have given. It occurred to Cosmo for a moment, that he
had seen but one person walk like Madame Roche. Was it a gift universal
to French women?--but then she was not a Frenchwoman--she was
English--nay--hurrah! better still--she was his own countrywoman. Cosmo
had not taken time to think of this last particular before--his eye
brightened with a still more affectionate sentiment, his imagination
quickened with new ground to go upon. He could not help plunging into
the unknown story with quite a zest and fascination. Perhaps the little
romance which the lad wove incontinently, was not far from the truth.
The young heir of the house of Roche de St. Martin, whom the Revolution
left barely “lord of his presence and no land beside"--the stately old
French father, perhaps an _emigré_--the young man wandering about the
free British soil, captivated by the lovely Scottish face, bringing his
bride here, only to carry her away again, a gay, volatile, mercurial,
unreliable Frenchman. Then those wanderings over half the world, those
distresses, and labors, and cares which had not been able to take the
sweet bloom from her cheek, nor that elastic grace from her step--and
now here she was, a poor widow with a sick daughter, bargaining under
the shadow of St. Ouen for the sweet herbs for Marie’s omelette. Cosmo’s
young heart rose against the incongruities of fortune. She who should
have been a fairy princess, with all the world at her feet, how had she
carried that beautiful face unwithered and unfaded, that smile undimmed,
that step unburthened, through all the years and the sorrows of her
heavy life?
It seemed very hard to tell--a wonderful special provision of Providence
to keep fresh the bloom which it had made; and Cosmo went home, thinking
with enthusiasm that perhaps it was wrong to grudge all the poverty and
trials which doubtless she had made beautiful and lighted up by her
presence among them. Cosmo was very near writing some verses on the
subject. It was a very captivating subject to a poet of his years--but
blushed and restrained himself with a truer feeling, and only went to
rest that night wondering how poor Mademoiselle Marie liked her
omelette, and whether Madame Roche, the next time they met, would
recognize him again.