the old priest with solemn energy; while the dark features of the
cuirassier became purple and then deadly pale, and his eyes wandered
from the faces of Ronald and Maria to the calm features of the curate,
whose arm he grasped, as, with emphatic sternness and in a tone
something very like consternation, he answered,--
"My daughter? Impossible! What have you dared to tell me, old man?'
"Truth, truth! as I shall answer to Heaven, when all men shall stand at
the tribunal to be judged on the great day which is to come. I tell you
truth,--she is your daughter."
"Her mother?" asked the dragoon, bending forward his dark eyes, as if he
would look searchingly into the very soul of the curate. "Her mother--"
"Was Justine Rosat,--the lily of Besancon."
"Poor Justine!" exclaimed the other, covering his face for a moment with
his hand. "And, Monsieur le Cure, you are--"
"Francois Rosat, her father, and grandsire of this poor orphan."
"What! the gardener at my jovial old chateau of Quinsay, on the banks of
the Doubs? Impossible! he was destroyed when I blew up the hall, with
all the base republican mechanics who filled it."
"Monsieur, I am he," replied the curate.
Maria, with her hands crossed on her bosom, knelt at the feet of De
Mesmai weeping bitterly, and imploring him, if he was really her father,
to speak to her, to look upon her. But the devil-may-care-spirit of the
true Parisian roue and libertine was not at all subdued: he turned from
her to Ronald, who had been listening in silence and wonder.
"Ah! Monsieur Stuart," said he with a laugh, "I have been a sad fellow
when a subaltern. _Tete-dieu!_ what would old D'Erlon and his countess
think of this?'
"Noble senor," said the kneeling girl, in a soft plaintive voice, "ah,
if you are indeed my father, speak to me;" and she pressed his hand
between her own. "Father, hear me!"
"Father! _ma belle_. Very good, but something new when addressed to me,
and sounds odd. How D'Erlon and his plumed and aiguletted staff would
laugh at this! Maurice de Mesmai of the 10th cuirassiers,--the most
dashing aide-de-camp in the Imperial service, to be father of a little
Spanish _paisana_. By the bomb! you do me infinite honour. What a very
odd adventure! And so, monsieur, my old rebellious gardener escaped the
explosion at Quinsay? Excellently planned affair that was! Hand me
wine: thank you. Really, 'pon honour, this respectable title of father
has in it something very overpowering."
He quaffed a long horn of the wine, which had already begun to cloud his
faculties, and he endeavoured by talking in his usually careless manner
to hide the confusion that he evidently felt. Maria, who had shrunk from
his side, wept bitterly, and covered her face with her hands.
"_Diable!_" said the cuirassier, turning round. "'Tis horrible wine
this. Ah! for a single glass of Hermitage, Chateau Margot, Vin
Ordinaire, Volnay, or glorious Champagne, such as old Marcel retails at
the Eagle on the Quai d'Orsai, opposite to the Pont Royal, in our good
and glorious Paris. But what is the girl weeping about? You should
rather laugh, having just found your father, and found him as handsome a
fellow as ever stood in jack-boots. All the girls are in love with
me,--'pon honour they are. Some of the fairest creatures at the court
of the Empress are dying for me; and I mean to act the part of a
hard-hearted dragoon, and let them die if they will. I swear to you,
Maria, by a thousand caissons of devils, that as you appear just now,
with your lashes cast down and your face covered with tears and blushes,
like the western sky in a shower, you are pretty enough to turn the
brain of monsieur the Pope, to whom I drink that he may have a long and
joyful life. But I must retire. My head is buzzing anew with that
sword-stroke. _Diable!_ my gay helmet, what a dinge you have got. But,
messieurs, we will talk over these matters in the morning, when I
suppose we shall leap to saddle without blast of trumpet. Adieu!
mademoiselle, my daughter; pleasant dreams to you. _Vive la
joie--tete-dieu!_" He took up his heavy military cloak and staggered
out of the room, withdrawing to the humble attic set apart for himself
and Ronald. A long pause ensued.
"There, he has gone with the same swagger as of old,--the polished
gentleman,--the accomplished and gallant soldier, combined with the
blustering tavern brawler and the libertinism of the perfect _roue_. He
is all unchanged, although twenty years have passed into eternity since
I beheld him last," said the curate in a mournful accent; "and yet, when
I remember what he was, I cannot,--no, I cannot implore a curse upon
him. I carried him in my arms when he was an infant, and he is the
father of this poor weeping girl. Alas! from the day that as a
stripling soldier he first buckled on a sword-belt, time has wrought no
change upon him. He is the same daring and gallant, but reckless and
hollow-hearted man as ever."
"Senor Cura, to me this has been a most incomprehensible scene," said
Stuart; "so much so, that I trust you will not consider me impertinent
or inquisitive in wishing for an explanation."
"Quite the reverse,--an explanation is, indeed, necessary. But retire,
Maria, my poor cast-away; I will speak to you of this afterwards. Be
seated, monsieur, and draw the wine-jug towards you."
He led Maria from the room, and on returning, seated himself at the
table and commenced in the following words:--
"Monsieur Officier, I am, as you already know, a Frenchman, a native of
the fertile district of Besancon. I succeeded my father in the humble
occupation of gardener to the family of this Monsieur Maurice de Mesmai,
at the castle of Quinsay, a noble chateau, built on the banks of the
Doubs, which flows through Besancon. The chateau is of venerable
antiquity, and it is said to have been granted to an ancestor of De
Mesmai's by Charles Martel. Ah, monsieur! when I had only my
flower-beds and vineries to attend to, no man was happier than
I,--Francois Rosat. With my flowers, my wife and daughter were my sole
delights; and when I returned in the evening, after working during the
hot dusty days in the garden of the chateau, what pleasure was mine to
be met by my smiling Suzette, with the little laughing Justine in arms,
stretching out her hands and crowing with delight at the _bouquet_ of
violets and roses I always brought her from my choicest beds. And
merrily we used to spend our evenings, for Suzette sung while I played
second on the flute, and we taught little Justine to dance as soon as
she could walk. My life was all humble happiness then, monsieur; but it
was not destined to continue long so. Justine was just sixteen when my
wife died, and our old lord dying soon after, this sad _roue_, Monsieur
Maurice came to take possession of the chateau, and terrify the poor
peasantry by the wickedness he had learned in Paris and the garrison
towns where he had been stationed: he belonged to the dragoons of
Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul. This dissipated Maurice, arrayed in all
the extreme of Parisian dandyism, the first Sunday we saw him in church
formed a strong contrast to our venerable old lord his father, who used
to occupy the same pew so devoutly, dressed in his old-fashioned way of
Louis the Fifteenth's days,--his deep waistcoat, silk coat, with its
collar covered with powder, and his ruffles and frills starched as stiff
as pasteboard; and we soon discovered that if there was a difference in
their appearance, there was an equal difference in their hearts and
sentiments.
"My little Justine had now become a woman, and a very beautiful
one,--more especially so for the daughter of a peasant. She was the
belle of the rural district, and the people named her the lily of
Besancon. Ah, monsieur! although the child of a low-born man, a vassal,
she was surprisingly beautiful; too much so to be happy, as my friend
Pierre Raoul told me more than once. Her figure was not the less
handsome or graceful because, instead of satin or brocade, she wore our
homely brown stuffs; and her long black curls, flowing in freedom,
seemed a thousand times more beautiful than the locks of high-born
ladies, powdered and pasted into puffs and bows by the hands of a
fashionable barber.
"Monsieur, I perceive that you almost comprehend my story, ere it is
told. My daughter was charming, and our lord was a libertine. In that
sentence are the causes of all my woe. I was kept in a constant state
of anxiety lest the debauchee, our young lord, or some accomplished
rascal of his acquaintance, might rob me of my treasure, for such she
was to me; and what I had dreaded came to pass at last. I had observed
that the manners of Justine were changed. She shunned the villagers,
and often went out alone; she seldom laughed, and never sang as she used
to do; but was ever moody and melancholy, and often I found her weeping
in solitary places.
"Never shall I forget the evening when the dreadful truth broke upon me,
with all its maddening anguish; when I was told that my daughter was
lost,--that the bloom of the lily was blighted! I was no longer
Francois Rosat,--no longer the same man apparently; a cloud of horror
seemed to have enveloped me, for although but a poor peasant of
Besancon, I held my honour as dear to me as Louis XVI. could have held
his. One evening I returned to my cottage, bearing with me a basket of
choice flowers for the decoration of Justine, who had been elected queen
of a fete which was to be given by the villagers and tenantry of Quinsay
on the morrow. I returned to my home, monsieur,--a house which was to
be no longer a home for me. Justine was not awaiting me, as usual,
under the porch, where I had trained up the honey-suckle and
woodbine,--nor was she in our sitting-room; but she could not be far
off, I imagined, as her guitar and work-basket lay on the table. I know
not how it was, but I noted these little matters anxiously, and I felt
my heart beat quicker, as if in dread of coming evil.
"'Justine!' said I, laying down my basket, 'come hither. You never saw
such flowers as these for freshness and beauty, and I have been employed
the whole day in culling them for you. Here are anemonies, crimson and
lilac, and blue and white pinks, carnations, gillyflower, auriculas with
eyes of scarlet edged with green, violets as large as lilies, and tulips
and roses such as were never before seen in Besancon. Justine! come
here, girl. Why, where are you?' But no Justine answered my call. Her
little room, the room in which her mother died, was deserted, and my
heart swelled in my breast with an inward presentiment of evil, as I
went forth to seek her by the river side. Here I met the steward of
Quinsay, Pierre Raoul, a surly fellow, whose addresses she had rejected.
He informed me, with what I thought a grin of triumph and malice, that
my daughter, with Monsieur Maurice, had just swept through Besancon in a
travelling-carriage, and were off for Paris as fast as four horses could
take them. As he spoke the earth swam around me, and I saw his lips
moving, although I heard not his conclusion; there was a hissing
sensation in my ears,--the cords of my heart felt as if riven asunder,
and I sunk on the turf at the feet of Pierre.
"When I returned to consciousness, he was bathing my brow and hands in
the cool water of the river; but he soon left me, and oh! monsieur, what
a sense of loneliness and desolation came upon me. That my daughter
should desert me thus heartlessly,--that the little creature I had
cherished in my bosom should turn upon me and sting me thus! I raved
like a madman, and tore the hair from my head and the grass from the
earth in handfuls. When this fit passed away, all was silence and
stillness around me: the moon was shining brightly in the sky, and
silvered the boughs of the trees my own hands had trained, and the
petals and buds of the flowers that it had been my delight to attend;
but they were unheeded now, and I turned to where appeared, in the
strong light and shadow, the old chateau de Quinsay, with its
battlemented towers and elevated turrets. I prayed deeply for my erring
Justine, and implored Heaven and the spirit of her mother to sustain me
under so heavy a dispensation. I would rather have seen the child of
Suzette laid dead by her side, than the dishonoured mistress of Maurice
de Mesmai. But my prayers were impious, as I mingled them with the
bitterest maledictions upon her accomplished seducer. At the chateau
the servants, some with pity, some with the malice felt by little minds,
corroborated the blasting information given me by Pierre Raoul, and that
very night I set out for Paris in pursuit of my lost sheep. I set out
on foot on my sorrowful pilgrimage, almost heart-broken, and without a
sous to defray my expenses by the way. How I reached the capital--a
distance of two hundred and thirty-five miles from Besancon--I know not.
But He who fed the children of Israel in the desert surely assisted me
by the way. How great was my misery, when begging as a miserable
mendicant, exposed to the insults of the _gens d'armes_, I wandered
about that wide wilderness of Paris, with the vague and eager hope of
recovering Justine! Once--yes, once--I got a sight of her; only a
single glance, but one I shall never forget. In a dashing carriage, the
panels of which flashed in the sun with gilding and armorial bearings,
she was seated by the side of De Mesmai, tricked out in all the gaudy
and wanton finery that wealth and pride could bestow upon her. But she
looked paler, less happy than she was wont to be, and the roses had
faded from her cheek, and the lustre from her once sunny eye. They
swept past me on the Boulevards, where I was seeking alms as was my
wont, and Justine, _mon Dieu!_ my own fallen but kind-hearted daughter,
threw a demi-franc into my tattered hat, without looking upon my face.
I attempted to cry out; but what I would have said expired on my lips.
My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and when I recovered they were
gone! I never beheld them again.
"I was starving at that moment, monsieur; food had not passed my lips
for three days, and I looked wistfully, till my eyes became blinded with
tears, upon the little coin I had received from Justine. A sudden
thought struck me. I spat upon it, and tossed it from me as a coin of
hell, as the wages of her infamy. Twelve months,--long and weary months
of wretchedness and sorrow, I wandered about the streets of Paris, a
woe-begone mendicant, until all hope of seeing her again was
extinguished, and I returned to Besancon more heart-broken, if possible,
than when I had left it. My cottage had fallen into ruin; but honest
Pierre Raoul restored me again to the occupation of gardener, and
repaired my old residence for me. Our lord had been absent, no one knew
where, ever since he had carried off Justine, and I began to have some
faint hope that he might have married her.
"These thoughts stole at length like sunshine into my desolate heart;
and I thought so much of the chances and probabilities, that at last it
appeared to me to be beyond a doubt that Justine was the wife of De
Mesmai. I plucked up fresh courage, and attended from dawn till sunset
my loaded orchards and blooming flower-beds as of old. The garden was
again my delight and glory, and not even does the great Napoleon survey
his troops with more delight, than I did my beds of tulips and
anemonies: I had brought to perfection the art of cultivation, and where
can it be practised with more success than under the climate of my own
beautiful France? In the garden of the chateau the aloe of Africa, the
pine of Scotland, the oak of England, the cypress of Candia, the laurels
of Greece and Portugal, the rose-tree of Persia, the palms of India, the
figs of Egypt--all blooming together, and at once.
"In my application to my old business, the manifold miseries I had
endured in Paris were forgotten, or at least subdued in my remembrance.
I pictured bright images of monsieur's returning, with my beautiful
Justine to be mistress of his chateau. But these were doomed soon to
end. One evening I sat on the turf-seat at my door, employed as usual
building castles in the air, while I made up and dried packages of seed
which were never to be sown by me. It was a beautiful summer evening,
and all the fertile landscape seemed bright and joyous in the light of
the setting sun. Clear as a mirror the river murmured at my feet,
sweeping past the old chateau on its opposite bank, where, above trees a
hundred years old, the slated roofs of its turrets and gilded vanes were
shining in the sun. Afar off, between openings in the trees of the
lawn, could be seen the fortifications of the citadel and city of
Besancon, with its round towers and the tall spires of its colleges and
churches reared against the cloudless sky. I desisted from my
employment and took off my hat, for the sound of the evening service
came floating on the wind towards me from the rich abbey of the order of
Citeaux. The very air was filled with perfume, for the breeze swept
over the wide orchards and gardens of the abbey and chateau.
"We French are enthusiastic creatures, monsieur; and I was filled with
delight and ecstacy at the beauty of the evening and the scenery of my
native place, where the deep blue river wound among fertile hills,
vineyards, and green woods between happy little hamlets clustering round
ivy clad churches and the stately chateaux of the old nobility of
France,--a nobility, monsieur, in those days not less proud and haughty
than those of your own northern country.
"'Yes,' said I aloud, giving utterance to my thoughts, 'the hand of fate
has been in all this. Justine will certainly be the lady of Quinsay, and
poor old Francois Rosat will get a corner in some part of that huge old
chateau to rest in. Let me see, now: the octagon turret which overlooks
the orchard will suit me exactly. It has a window to the south, which
overlooks the garden. Excellent! I can watch the buds and blossoms in
spring,--I will look at them the moment I leap from bed; but, alas! I
must no do more. I shall then be a gentleman, and Monsieur Francois
Rosat, father-in-law of the lord of Quinsay, must not be up with the
lark, like Maitre Francois the gardener,--that would never do. This red
night-cap I will exchange for a hat of the best beaver, tied up with a
silver loop, a la Louis XVI. My coat--'
"The train of my vain but happy thoughts was cruelly cut short by the
apparition of a woman standing before me. Her appearance declared her
to be sunk to the lowest ebb of misery and degraded destitution. She
was tanned by exposure to the weather; bare-headed, bare-footed,--almost
without covering, and bore in her arms a poor child, almost as wan and
meagre as herself. _Ah, mon Dieu!_ how keenly at this distant time can
my memory recall the agony of that terrible recognition. Oh, what a
moment was that! Disguised as she was, I recognised her; but a mist
overspread my vision, and I felt her fall into my open arms, although I
could not for some minutes discern her.
"'My father! oh, my father!' said she. But, alas! her voice was not so
sweet as of old.
"'Justine, I forgive you,' was my answer. 'Come again to my bosom: the
past shall be forgotten.'
"She sunk down between my knees upon the earth, and lay motionless and
still. Monsieur, I will not protract this intrusive story of my griefs.
She was dead! she had expired at that moment--the kindness of my
forgiveness had killed her! Unrequited love, unkindness, sorrow, shame,
and misery had wrought their worst upon her,--she was destroyed! De
Mesmai had taken her to Italy, and there, ruthlessly abandoning her for
some new victim, she was left to find her way as she best could to
Besancon, to place in my charge the infant to which she had given birth
on the way. The child of De Mesmai is the Maria to whom he behaved so
insolently to-night. Two days afterwards the poor polluted lily of
Besancon was laid in her mother's grave; and as I strewed the fresh
flowers on the green turf which covered her, I knelt down upon it and
solemnly swore a vow,--a vow at once terrible and impious,--to seek
revenge upon her destroyer!
"I joined one of those secret bands or societies then so numerous in
France, composed of men who were desperate by their characters and
fortunes, and the sworn enemies of kings and of nobility. I longed for
desperate vengeance, and the hour for glutting it seemed at hand. A
bloody standard was soon to wave over France, and destiny had pointed
out that, like your own Stuarts, the Bourbons were a doomed race. The
spirit of revolution and destruction was soon to sweep over my country,
blighting and blasting it like the simoom of the African desert; and,
eager as I was for vengeance on De Mesmai, I hailed the approaching
tumult with joy, and entered into the wildest schemes of the most savage
republicans and heaven-daring atheists. So eagerly did I attend the
taverns of Besancon to hear the news from Paris, that the little
innocent confided by Justine to my charge was quite neglected. My
garden became a wilderness; I became sullen and morose, and forgot even
to hang fresh flowers, as had been my custom daily, on the grave of
Justine.
"About six months after her return, the once-dreary chateau was filled
with sudden life and bustle. Monsieur Maurice had returned, bringing
with him a number of wild and reckless fellows like himself. These were
all officers of his own regiment, except one very sad dog, worse even
than the rest, Monsieur Louis Chateaufleur, captain of the _Gens d'armes
Ecossois_, or first troop of the French gendarmerie. Nothing was heard
of now but feasting, drinking, and desperate gambling within the
chateau; hunting, hawking, shooting, frolics, and outrages of every sort
committed out of it. The guests of De Mesmai were some of the wildest
_roues_ about Paris--and the mess of the Duc de Choiseul's regiment had
produced many of them,--and a great commotion their appearance made in
Besancon and the rural district of Quinsay. All the lamps in the former
were sometimes broken in a single night, and the whole city involved in
darkness; while these madcaps and their servants possessed themselves of
the steeples, where they rang the alarum bells backwards, and rushed
through the streets, crying 'Fire! murder! robbery and invasion!' until
the peaceable citizens were scared out of their seven senses.
"Nor were their brawls and outrages confined to the night alone. The
wig of Monsieur le Maire was dragged off and flung in his face, when he
was passing through the Rue de l'Universite. Swords were drawn in the
lobbies of the theatre every night, and the gens d'armes were always
beaten and insulted. Monsieur Chateaufleur, of the _gens d'armes
Ecossois_, as a crowning outrage, carried off by force to the chateau a
young milliner or grisette of the Rue de Paradis; and the citizens of
Besancon were enraged beyond what I can describe at the insolencies of
these young aristocrats, who were at once struck with terror and dismay
when news arrived of the revolution which had broken out in Paris, and
of the bloody tumults which had ensued there. De Mesmai armed his
servants, and the inhabitants of the chateau kept close within its
walls.