The castle of St. Renan, like the dwellings of many of the nobles of
Bretagne and Gascony, was a superb old pile of solid masonry towering
above the huge cliffs which guard the whole of that iron coast with its
gigantic masses of rude masonry. So close did it stand to the verge
of these precipitous crags on its seaward face, that whenever the
wind from the westward blew angrily and in earnest, the spray of the
tremendous billows which rolled in from the wide Atlantic, and burst
in thunder at the foot of those stern ramparts, was dashed so high by
the collision that it would often fall in salt, bitter rain, upon the
esplanade above, and dim the diamond-paned casements with its cold
mists.
For leagues on either side, as the spectator stood upon the terrace
above and gazed out on the expanse of the everlasting ocean, nothing
was to be seen but the salient angles or deep recesses formed by the
dark, gray cliffs, unrelieved by any spot of verdure, or even by that
line of silver sand at their base, which often intervenes between the
rocks of an iron coast and the sea. Here, however, there was no such
intermediate step visible; the black face of the rocks sunk sheer and
abrupt into the water, which, by its dark-green hue, indicated to the
practised eye, that it was deep and scarcely fathomable to the very
shore.
In places, indeed, where huge caverns opening in front to the vast
ocean, which had probably hollowed them out of the earth-fast rock in
the course of succeeding ages, yawned in the mimicry of Gothic arches,
the entering tide would rush, as it were, into the bowels of the land,
roaring and groaning in those strange subterranean dungeons like some
strong prisoner, Typhon, Enceladus, or Ephialtes, in his immortal
agony. One of these singular vaults opened right in the base of the
rock on the summit of which stood the castle of St. Renan, and into
this the billows rushed with rapidity so tumultuous and terrible that
the fishers of that stormy coast avowed that a vortex was created in
the bay by their influx or return seaward, which could be perceived
sensibly at a league’s distance; and that to be caught in it, unless
the wind blew strong and steadily off land, was sure destruction.
However that might be, it is certain that this great subterranean
tunnel extended far beneath the rocks into the interior of the land,
for at the distance of nearly two miles from the castle, directly
eastward, in the bottom of a dark, wooded glen, which runs for many
miles nearly parallel to the coast, there is a deep, rocky well, or
natural cavity, of a form nearly circular, which, when the tide is up,
is filled to overflowing with bitter sea-water, on which the bubbles
and foam-flakes show the obstacles against which it must have striven
in its landward journey. At low water, on the contrary, “the Devil’s
Drinking-Cup,” for so it is named by the superstitious peasantry of
the neighborhood, presents nothing to the eye but a deep, black abyss,
which the countryfolks, of course, assert to be bottomless. But, in
truth, its depth is immense, as can easily be perceived, if you cast
a stone into it, by the length of time during which it may be heard
thundering from side to side, until the reverberated roar of its
descent appears to die away, not because it has ceased, but because the
sound is too distant to be conveyed to human ears.
On this side of the castle everything differs as much as it is possible
to conceive from the view to the seaward, which is grim and desolate
as any ocean scenery the world over. Few sails are ever seen on those
dangerous coasts; all vessels bound to the mouth of the Garonne, or
southward to the shores of Spain, giving as wide a berth as possible to
its frightful reefs and inaccessible crags, which to all their other
terrors add that, from the extraordinary prevalence of the west wind on
that part of the ocean, of being, during at least three parts of the
year, a _lee_ shore.
Inland, however, instead of the bleak and barren surface of the
ever-stormy sea, indented into long rolling ridges and dark tempestuous
hollows, all was varied and smiling, and gratifying to every sense
given by nature for his good to man. Immediately from the brink of the
cliffs the land sloped downward southwardly and to the eastward, so
that it was bathed during all the day, except a few late evening hours,
in the fullest radiance of the sunbeams. Over this immense sloping
descent the eye could range from the castle battlements for miles and
miles, until the rich green champaign was lost in the blue haze of
distance. And it was green and gay over the whole of that vast expanse,
here with the dense and unpruned foliage of immemorial forests, well
stocked with every species of game, from the gaunt wolf and the tusky
boar, to the fleet roebuck and the timid hare; here with the trim and
smiling verdure of rich orchards, in which nestled around their old,
gray shrines the humble hamlets of the happy peasantry; and everywhere
with the long intersecting curves, and sinuous irregular lines of the
old hawthorn hedges, thick set with pollard trees and hedgerow timber,
which make the whole country, when viewed from a height, resemble a
continuous tract of intermingled glades and coppices, and which have
procured for an adjoining district the well-known, and in after-days
far celebrated name of the Bocage.
Immediately around the castle, on the edge as it were of this beautiful
and almost boundless slope, there lay a large and well-kept garden in
the old French style, laid out in a succession of terraces, bordered
by balustrades of marble, adorned at frequent intervals by urns and
statues, and rendered accessible each from the next below by flights
of ornamented steps of regular and easy elevation; pleached bowery
walks, and high clipped hedges of holly, yew, and hornbeam, were the
usual decorations of such a garden, and here they abounded to an extent
that would have gladdened the heart of an admirer of the tastes and
habits of the olden time. In addition to these, however, there were
a profusion of flowers of the choicest kinds known or cultivated in
those days--roses and lilies without number, and honeysuckles, and
the sweet-scented clematis, climbing in bountiful luxuriance over the
numberless seats and bowers which everywhere tempted to repose.
Below this beautiful garden a wide expanse of smooth, green turf,
dotted here and there with majestic trees, and at rarer intervals
diversified with tall groves and verdant coppices, covered the whole
descent of the first hill to the dim wooded dell which has been
mentioned as containing the singular cavity known throughout the
country as the “Devil’s Drinking-Cup.” This dell, which was the limit
of count de St. Renan’s demesnes in that direction, was divided from
the park by a ragged paling many feet in height, and of considerable
strength, framed of rough timber from the woods, the space within being
appropriated to a singular and choice breed of deer, imported from
the East by one of the former counts, who, being of an adventurous
and roving disposition, had sojourned for some time in the French
settlements of Hindostan. Beyond this dell again, which was defended on
the outer side by a strong and lofty wall of brick, all overrun with
luxuriant ivy, the ground rose in a small rounded knoll, or hillock of
small extent, richly wooded, and crowned by the gray turrets and steep
flagged roof of the old château d’Argenson.
This building, however, was as much inferior in size and stateliness
to the grand feudal fortalice of St. Renan, as the little round-topped
hill on which it stood, so slightly elevated above the face of the
surrounding country as to detract nothing, at least in appearance,
from its general slope to the southeastward, was lower than the great
rock-bound ridge from which it overlooked the territories, all of which
had in distant times obeyed the rules of its almost princely dwellers.
The sun of a lovely evening in the latter part of July had already sunk
so far down in the west that only one half of its great golden disk
was visible above the well-defined, dark outline of the seaward-crags,
which, relieved by the glowing radiance of the whole western sky, stood
out massive and solid like a huge purple wall, and seemed so close at
hand that the spectator could almost persuade himself that he had but
to stretch out his arm, in order to touch the great barrier, which was
in truth several miles distant.
Over the crest, and through the gaps of this continuous line of
highland, the long level rays streamed down in the slope in one vast
flood of golden glory, which was checkered only by the interminable
length of shadows which were projected from every single tree, or
scattered clump, from every petty elevation of the soil, down the soft
glimmering declivity.
Three years had elapsed since the frightful fate of the unhappy lord
of Kerguelen, and the various incidents, which in some sort took their
origin from the nature of his crime and its consequence, affecting
in the highest degree the happiness of the families of St. Renan and
D’Argenson.
Three years had elapsed--three years! That is a little space in the
annals of the world, in the life of nations, nay, in the narrow records
of humanity. Three years of careless happiness, three years of indolent
and tranquil ease, unmarked by any great event, pass over our heads
unnoted, and, save in the gray hairs which they scatter, leave no
memorial of their transit, more than the sunshine of a happy summer
day. They are, they are gone, they are forgotten.
Even three years of gloom and sorrow, of that deep anguish which at
the time the sufferer believes to be indelible and everlasting, lag on
their weary, desolate course, and when they too are over-passed, and he
looks back upon their transit, which seemed so painfully protracted,
and, lo! all is changed, and _their_ flight also is now but as an ended
minute.
And yet, what strange and sudden changes altering the affairs of
men, changing the hearts of mortals, yea, revolutionizing their
whole intellects, and overturning their very natures--more than the
devastating earthquake or the destroying lava transforms the face of
the everlasting earth--have not been wrought, and again well nigh
forgotten within that little period.
Three years had passed, I say, over the head of Raoul de
Douarnenez--the three most marked and memorable years in the life of
every young man--and from the ingenuous and promising stripling, he
had now become in every respect a man, and a bold and enterprising
man, moreover, who had seen much and struggled much, and suffered
somewhat--without which there is no gain of his wisdom here below--in
his transit, even thus far, over the billows and among the reefs and
quicksands of the world.
His father had kept his promise to that loved son in all things, nor
had the sieur d’Argenson failed of his plighted faith. The autumn of
that year, the spring of which saw Kerguelen die in unutterable agony,
saw Raoul de Douarnenez the contracted and affianced husband of the
lovely and beloved Melanie.
All that was wanted now to render them actually man and wife, to
create between them that bond which, alone of mortal ties, man can not
sunder, was the ministration of the church’s holiest rite, and that,
in wise consideration of their tender years, was postponed until the
termination of the third summer.
During the interval it was decided that Raoul, as was the custom of
the world in those days, especially among the nobility, and most
especially among the nobility of France, should bear arms in active
service, and see something of the world abroad, before settling down
into the easier duties of domestic life. The family of St. Renan, since
the days of that ancestor who has been already mentioned as having
sojourned in Pondicherry, had never ceased to maintain some relations
with the East Indian possessions of France, and a relation of the house
in no very remote degree was at this time military governor of the
French East Indies, which were then, previous to the unexampled growth
of the British empire in the East, important, flourishing, and full of
future promise.
Thither, then, it was determined that Raoul should go in search of
adventures, if not of fortune, in the spring following the signature
of his marriage contract with the young demoiselle d’Argenson. And,
consequently, after a winter passed in quiet domestic happiness on the
noble estates, whereon the gentry of Brittany were wont to reside in
almost patriarchal state--a winter, every day of which the young lovers
spent in company, and at every eve of which they separated more in love
than they were at meeting in the morning--Raoul set sail in a fine
frigate, carrying several companies of the line, invested with the rank
of ensign, and proud to bear the colors of his king, for the shores of
the still half-fabulous oriental world.
Three years had passed, and the boy had returned a man, the ensign
had returned a colonel, so rapid was the promotion of the nobility of
the sword in the French army, under the ancient regime; and--greatest
change of all, ay, and saddest--the viscount of Douarnenez had returned
count de St. Renan. An infectious fever, ere he had been one year
absent from the land of his birth, and had cut off his noble father in
the very pride and maturity of his intellectual manhood; nor had his
mother lingered long behind him whom she had ever loved so fondly.
A low, slow fever, caught from that beloved patient whom she had so
affectionately nurtured, was as fatal to her, though not so suddenly,
as it had proved to her good lord; and when their son returned to
France full of honors achieved, and gay anticipations for the future,
he found himself an orphan, the lord in lonely and unwilling state of
the superb demesnes which had so long called his family their owners.
There never in the world was a kinder heart than that which beat in the
breast of the young soldier, and never was a family more strictly bound
together by all the kindly influences which breed love and confidence,
and domestic happiness among all the members of it, than that of St.
Renan. There had been nothing austere or rigid in the bringing up of
the gallant boy; the father, who had at one hour been the tutor and
the monitor, was at the next the comrade and the playmate, and at all
times the true and trusted friend, while the mother had been ever the
idolized and adored protectress, and the confidante of all the innocent
schemes and artless joys of boyhood.
Bitter, then, was the blow stricken to the very heart of the young
soldier, when the first tidings which he received, on landing in his
loved France, was the intelligence that those--all those, with but one
exception--whom he most tenderly and truly loved, all those to whom he
looked up with affectionate trust for advice and guidance, all those on
whom he relied for support in his first trials of young manhood, were
cold and silent in the all-absorbing tomb.
To him there was no hot, feverish ambition prompting him to grasp
joyously the absolute command of his great heritage. In his heart there
was none of that fierce yet sordid avarice which finds compensation for
the loss of the scarce-lamented dead in the severance of the dearest
natural bonds, in the possession of wealth, or the promise of power.
Nor was this all, for, in truth, so well had Raoul de Douarnenez been
brought up, and so completely had wisdom grown up with his growth,
that when, at the age of nineteen years, he found himself endowed
with the rank and revenues of one of the highest and wealthiest
peers of France, and in all but mere name his own master--for the
abbé de Chastellar, his mother’s brother, who had been appointed his
guardian by his father’s will, scarcely attempted to exercise even a
nominal jurisdiction over him--he felt himself more than ever at a
loss, deprived as he was, when he most needed it, of his best natural
counsellor; and instead of rejoicing, was more than half inclined
to lament over the almost absolute self-control with which he found
himself invested.
Young hearts are naturally true themselves, and prone to put trust in
others; and it is rarely, except in a few dark and morose and gloomy
natures, which are exceptions to the rule and standard of human nature,
that man learns to be distrustful and suspicious of his kind, even
after experience of fickleness and falsehood may have in some sort
justified suspicions, until his head has grown gray.
And this in an eminent degree was the case with Raoul de St. Renan, for
henceforth he must be called by the title which his altered state had
conferred upon him.
His natural disposition was as trustful and unsuspicious as it was
artless and ingenuous; and from his early youth all the lessons
which had been taught him by his parents tended to preserve in him
unblemished and unbroken that bright gem, which once shattered never
can be restored, confidence in the truth, the probity, the goodness of
mankind.
Some ruder schooling he had met in the course of his service in the
eastern world--he had already learned that men, and--harder knowledge
yet to gain--women also, can feign friendship, ay, and love, where
neither have the least root in the heart, for purposes the vilest,
ends the most sordid. He had learned that bosom friends can be secret
foes; that false loves can betray; and yet he was not disenchanted with
humanity, he had not even dreamed of doubting, because he had fallen
among worldly-minded flatterers and fickle-hearted coquettes, that
absolute friendship and unchangeable love may exist, even in this evil
world, stainless and incorruptible among all the changes and chances of
this mortal life.
If he had been deceived, he had attributed the failure of his hopes
hitherto to the right cause--the fallacy of his own judgment, and the
error of his own choice; and the more he had been disappointed the more
firmly had he relied on what he felt certain could not change, the
affection of his parents, the love of his betrothed bride.
On the very instant of his landing he found himself shipwrecked in his
first hope; and on his earliest interview with his uncle, in Paris, he
had the agony--the utter and appalling agony to undergo--of hearing
that in the only promise which he had flattered himself was yet left to
him, he was destined in all probability to undergo a deeper, deadlier
disappointment.
If Melanie d’Argenson had been a lovely girl, the good abbé said,
when she was budding out of childhood into youth, so utterly had she
outstripped all the promise of her girlhood, that no words could
describe, nor imagination suggest to itself the charms of the mature
yet youthful woman. There was no other beauty named, when loveliness
was the theme, throughout all France, than that of the young betrothed
of Raoul de Douarnenez. And that which was so loudly and so widely
bruited abroad, could not fail to reach the ever open, ever greedy ears
of the vile and sensual tyrant who sat on the throne of France, at that
time heaping upon his people that load of suffering and anguish which
was in after-times to be avenged so bitterly and bloodily upon the
innocent heads of his unhappy descendants.
Louis had, moreover, heard years before, nay, looked upon the nascent
loveliness of Melanie d’Argenson, and, with that cold-blooded
voluptuary, to look on beauty was to lust after it, to lust after it
was to devote all the powers his despotism could command to win it.
Hence as the abbé de Chastellar soon made his unfortunate nephew and
pupil comprehend, a settled determination had arisen on the part of the
odious despot to break off the marriage of the lovely girl with the
young soldier whom it was well known that she fondly loved, and to have
her the wife of one who would be less tender of his honor, and less
reluctant to surrender, or less difficult to be deprived of a bride,
too transcendently beautiful to bless the arms of a subject, even if he
were the noblest of the noble.
All this was easily arranged, the base father of Melanie was willing
enough to sell his exquisite and virtuous child to the splendid infamy
of becoming a king’s paramour, and the yet baser chevalier de la
Rochederrien was eager to make the shameful negotiation easy, and to
sanction it to the eyes of the willingly hoodwinked world, by giving
his name and rank to a woman, who was to be his wife but in name, and
whose charms and virtue he had precontracted to make over to another.
The infamous contract had been agreed upon by the principal actors;
nay, the wages of the iniquity had been paid in advance. The sieur
d’Argenson had grown into the comte of the same, with the governorship
of the town of Morlaix added, by the revenues of which to support his
new dignities; while the chevalier de la Rochederrien had become no
less a personage than the marquis de Ploermel, with a captaincy in
the musquetaires, and Heaven knows what beside of honorary title and
highly-gilded sinecure, whereby to reconcile him to such depth of
sordid infamy as the meanest galley-slave could have scarce undertaken
as the price of exchange between his fetters and his oars, and the
great noble’s splendor.
Such were the tidings which greeted Raoul on his return from honorable
service to his king--service for which he was thus repaid; and, before
he had even time to reflect on the consequences, or to comprehend the
anguish thus entailed upon him, his eyes were opened instantly to
comprehension of two or three occurrences which previously he had been
unable to explain to himself, or even to guess at their meaning by any
exercise of ingenuity. The first of these was the singular ignorance in
which he had been kept of the death of his parents by the government
officials in the East, and the very evident suppression of the letters
which, as his uncle informed him, had been despatched to summon him
with all speed homeward.
The second was the pertinacity with which he had been thrust forward,
time after time, on the most desperate and deadly duty--a pertinacity
so striking, that, eager as the young soldier was, and greedy of any
chance of winning honor, it had not failed to strike him that _he_
was frequently _ordered_ on duty of a nature which, under ordinary
circumstances, is performed by volunteers.
Occurrences of this kind are soon remarked in armies, and it had early
become a current remark in the camp that to serve in Raoul’s company
was a sure passport either to promotion or to the other world. But
to such an extent was this carried, that when time after time that
company had been decimated, even the bravest of the brave experienced
an involuntary sinking of the heart when informed that they were
transferred or even promoted into those fatal ranks.
Nor was this all, for twice it had occurred, once when he was a captain
in command of a company, and again when he had a whole regiment under
his orders as its colonel, that his superiors, after detaching him on
duty so desperate that it might almost be regarded as a forlorn hope,
had entirely neglected either to support or recall him, but had left
him exposed to almost inevitable destruction.
In the first instance, not a man whether officer or private of his
company had escaped, with the exception of himself. And he was found,
when all was supposed to be over, in the last ditch of the redoubt
which he had been ordered to defend to the uttermost, after it had
been retaken, with his colors wrapped around his breast, still
breathing a little, although so cruelly wounded that his life was long
despaired of, and was only saved at last by the vigor and purity of
an unblemished and unbroken constitution. On the second occasion, he
had been suffered to contend alone for three entire days with but a
single battalion against a whole oriental army; but then, that which
had been intended to destroy him had won him deathless fame, for by a
degree of skill in handling his little force, which had by no means
been looked for in so young an officer, although his courage and his
conduct were both well known, he had succeeded in giving a bloody
repulse to the overwhelming masses of the enemy, and when at length he
was supported--doubtless when support was deemed too late to avail him
aught--by a few hundred native horse and a few guns, he had converted
that check into a total and disastrous route.
So palpable was the case that although Raoul suspected nothing of the
reasons which had led to that disgraceful affair, he had demanded
an inquiry into the conduct of his superior; and that unfortunate
personage being clearly convicted of unmilitary conduct, and having
failed in the end which would have justified the means in the eyes
of the voluptuous tyrant, was ruthlessly abandoned to his fate, and
actually died on the scaffold with a gag in his mouth, as did the
gallant Lally a few years afterward to prevent his revelation of the
orders which he had received and for obeying which he perished.
All this, though strange and even extraordinary, had failed up to this
moment to awaken any suspicion of undue or treasonable agency in the
mind of Raoul.
But now as his uncle spoke the scales fell from his eyes, and he saw
all the baseness, all the villany of the monarch and his satellites, in
its true light.
“Is it so? Is it, indeed, so?” he said mournfully. And it really
appeared that grief at detecting such a dereliction on the part of
his king, had a greater share in the feelings of the noble youth than
indignation or resentment. “Is it indeed so?” he said; “and could
neither my father’s long and glorious services, nor my poor conduct,
avail aught to turn him from such infamy? But tell me,” he continued,
the blood now mounting fiery red to his pale face, “tell me this,
uncle, is she true to me? is she pure and good? Forgive, me, Heaven,
that I doubt her; but in such a mass of infamy where may a man look for
faith or virtue? Is Melanie true to me, or is she, too, consenting to
this scheme of infamous and loathsome guilt?”
“She was true, my son, when I last saw her,” replied the good
clergyman; “and you may well believe that I spared no argument to urge
her to hold fast to her loyalty and faith, and she vowed then, by all
that was most dear and holy, that nothing should induce her ever to
become the wife of Rochederrien. But they carried her off into the
province, and have immured her, I have heard men say, almost in a
dungeon, in her father’s castle, for now above a twelvemonth. What has
fallen out no one as yet knows certainly; but it is whispered now that
she has yielded, and the court scandal goes that she has either wedded
him already, or is to do so now within a few days. It is said that they
are looked for ere the month is out in Paris.”
“Then I will to horse, uncle,” replied Raoul, “before this night is two
hours older for St. Renan.”
“Great Heaven! to what end, Raoul? For the sake of all that is good--by
your father’s memory--I implore you, do nothing rashly!”
“To know of my own knowledge if she be true or false, uncle.”
“And what matters it, Raoul? My boy, my unhappy boy! False or true, she
is lost to you alike, for ever! You have that against which to contend,
which no human energy can conquer.”
“I know not the thing which human energy can not conquer, uncle! It
is years now ago that my good father taught me this--that there is no
such word as _cannot_! I have proved it before now, uncle-abbé: I may,
should I find it worth the while, prove it again, and that shortly. If
so, let the guilty and the traitors look to themselves--they were best,
for they shall need it!”
Such was the state of St. Renan’s affections and his hopes when he
left the gay capital of France, within a few hours after his arrival,
and hurried down at the utmost speed of man and horse into Bretagne,
whither he made his way so rapidly, that the first intimation his
people received of his return from the East was his presence at the
gates of the castle.
Great, as may be imagined, was the real joy of the old, true-hearted
servitors of the house, at finding their lord thus unexpectedly
restored to them, at a time when they had in fact almost abandoned
every hope of seeing him again. The same infernal policy which had
thrust him so often, as it were, into the very jaws of death--which had
intercepted all the letters sent to him from home, and taken, in one
word, every step that ingenuity could suggest to isolate him altogether
in that distant world--had taken measures as deep and iniquitous at
home to cause him to be regarded as one dead, and to obliterate all
memory of his existence.
Three different times reports so circumstantial, and accompanied
by such minute details of time and place, as to render it almost
impossible for men to doubt their authenticity, had been circulated
with regard to the death of the young soldier; and as no tidings had
been received of him from any more direct source, the last news of his
fall had been generally received as true, no motive appearing why it
should be discredited.
His appearance, therefore, at the castle of St. Renan, was hailed as
that of one who had been lost and was now found--of one who had been
dead, and lo! he was alive. The banc-loche of the old feudal pile rang
forth its blithest and most jovial notes of greeting; the banner, with
the old armorial bearings of St. Renan, was displayed upon the keep;
and a few light pieces of antique artillery--falcons, and culverins,
and demi-cannon, which had kept their places on the battlements since
the days of the leagues--sent forth their thunders far and wide over
the astonished country.
So generally, however, had the belief of Raoul’s death been circulated,
and so absolute had been the credence given to the rumor, that when
those unwonted sounds of rejoicing were heard to proceed from the
long-silent walls of St. Renan, men never suspected that the lost heir
had returned to enjoy his own again, but fancied that some new master
had established his claim to the succession, and was thus celebrating
his investiture with the rights of the counts of St. Renan.
Nor was this wonderful, for ocular proof was scarcely enough to satisfy
the oldest retainers of the family of the young lord’s identity; and
indeed ocular proof was rendered in some sort dubious by the great
alteration which had taken place in the appearance of the personage in
question.
Between the handsome stripling of sixteen and the grown man of twenty
summers there is a greater difference than the same lapse of time
will produce at any other period of human life. And this change had
been rendered even greater than usual by the burning climate to which
Raoul had been exposed, by the stout endurance of fatigues which had
prematurely enlarged and hardened his youthful frame, and above all by
the dark experience which had spread something of the thoughtful cast
of age over the smooth and gracious lineaments of boyhood.
When he left home, the viscount de Douarnenez was a slight, slender,
graceful stripling, with a fair, delicate complexion, a profusion of
light hair waving in soft curls over his shoulders, a light, elastic
step, and a frame which, though it showed the promise already of
strength to be attained with maturity, was conspicuous as yet for ease,
and agility, and pliability, rather than for power or robustness.
On his return, he had lost, it is true, no jot of his gracefulness
or ease of demeanor, but he had shot up and expanded into a tall,
broad-shouldered, round-chested, thin-flanked man, with a complexion
burned to the darkest hue of which a European skin is susceptible, and
which perhaps required the aid of the full, soft blue eye to prove it
to be European--with a glance as quick, as penetrating, and at the same
time as calm and steady, as that of the eagle when he gazes undazzled
at the noontide splendor.
His hair had been cut short to wear beneath the casque, which was
still carried by cavaliers, and had grown so much darker, that this
alteration alone would have gone far to defy the recognition of his
friends. He wore a thick, dark mustache on his upper lip, and a large
“royal,” which we should now-a-days call an “imperial,” on his chin.
The whole aspect and expression of face, moreover, was altered,
even in a greater degree than his complexion or his person. All the
quick, sparkling play and mobility of feature, the sharp flash of
rapidly-succeeding sentiments and strong emotions, expressed on the
ingenuous face as soon as they were conceived within the brain--all
these had disappeared completely--disappeared, never to return.
The grave composure of the thoughtful, self-possessed, experienced
soldier, sufficient in himself to meet every emergency, every
alternation of fortune, had succeeded the imaginative, impulsive ardor
of the impetuous, gallant boy.
There was a shadow, too, a heavy shadow of something more than thought;
for it was, in truth, deep, real, heartfelt melancholy, which lent an
added gloom to the cold fixity of eye and lip--which had obliterated
all the gay and gleeful flashes which used, from moment to moment, to
light up the countenance so speaking and so frank in its disclosures.
Yet it would have been difficult to say whether Raoul de St.
Renan--grave, dark, and sorrowful, as he now showed--was not both a
handsomer and more attractive person than he had been in his earlier
days, as the gay and thoughtless viscount de Douarnenez.
There was a depth of feeling as well as of thought now perceptible
in the pensive brow and calm eye; and if the ordinary expression of
those fine and placid lineaments was fixed and cold, that coldness and
rigidity vanished when his face was lighted up by a smile, as quickly
as the thin ice of an April morning melts away before the first glitter
of the joyous sunbeams. Nor were these smiles rare or forced, though
not now as habitual as in those days of youth unalloyed by calamity,
and unsunned by passion, which, once departed, never can return in this
world!
The morning of the young lord’s arrival passed gloomily enough. It was
the very height of summer, it is true, and the sun was shining his
brightest over field, and tree, and tower, and everything appeared to
partake of the delicious influence of the charming weather, and to put
on its blithest and most radiant apparel.
Never perhaps had the fine grounds with their soft, mossy, sloping
lawns, tranquil, brimful waters, and shadowy groves of oak and
elm--great, immemorial trees--looked lovelier than they did that day to
greet their long-absent master.
But, inasmuch as nothing in this world is more delightful, nothing
more unmixed in its means of conveying pleasure, than the return,
after long wanderings in foreign climes, among vicissitudes, and
cares, and sorrows, to an unchanged and happy home, where the same
faces are assembled to smile on your late return which wept at your
departure--so nothing can be imagined sadder or more depressing to the
spirit than, so returning, to find all things inanimate unchanged, or
if changed, more beautiful and brighter for the alteration, but all the
living, breathing, sentient creatures--the creatures whose memory has
cheered our darkest days of sorrow, whose love we desire most to find
unaltered--gone, never to return, swallowed by the cold grave, deaf,
silent, unresponsive to our fond affection!
Such was St. Renan’s return to the house of his fathers. Until a few
short days before, he had pictured to himself his father’s moderate
and manly pleasure, his mother’s holy kiss and chastened rapture at
beholding once again, at clasping to her happy bosom, the son, whom she
sent forth a boy, returned a man worthy the pride of the most ambitious
parent.
All this Raoul de St. Renan had anticipated, and bitter, bitter was the
pang when he perceived all this gay and glad anticipation thrown to the
winds irreparably.
There was not a room in the old house, not a view from a single window,
not a tree in the noble park, not a winding curve of a trout-stream
glimmering through the coppices, but was in some way connected with his
tenderest and most sacred recollections--but had a memory of pleasant
hours attached to it--but recalled the sound of the kindliest and
dearest words, couched in the sweetest tones--the sight of persons but
to think of whom made his heart thrill and quiver to its inmost core.
And for hours he had wandered through the long, echoing corridors, the
stately and superb saloons, feeling their solitude as if it had been
actual presence weighing upon his soul, and peopling every apartment
with the phantoms of the loved and lost.
Thus had the day lagged onward; and, as the sun stooped toward the
west, darker and sadder had become the young man’s fancies, and he felt
as if his last hope were about to fade out with the fading light of the
declining day-god. So gloomy, indeed, were his thoughts--so sadly had
he become inured to wo within the last few days--so certainly had the
reply to every question he had asked been the very bitterest and most
painful he could have met--that he had, in truth, lacked the courage to
assure himself of that on which he could not deny to himself that his
last hope of happiness depended. He had not ventured yet to ask even of
his own most faithful servants whether Melanie d’Argenson--who was, he
well knew, living scarcely three bow-shots distant from the spot where
he stood--was true to him--was a maiden or a wedded wife!
And the old servitors, well aware of the earnest love which had existed
between the young people, and of the contract which had been entered
into with the consent of all parties, knew not how their young master
now stood affected toward the lady, and consequently feared to speak on
the subject.
At length, when he had dined some hours, while he was sitting with the
old bailiff, who had been endeavoring to seduce him into an examination
of I know not what of rents and leases, dues and droits, seignorial and
manorial--while the bottles of ruby-colored Bordeaux wine stood almost
untouched before them--the young man made an effort, and raising his
head suddenly after a long and thoughtful silence, asked his companion
whether the comte d’Argenson was at that time resident at the château.
“Oh, yes, monseigneur,” the old man returned immediately, “he has been
here all the summer, and the château has been full of gay company from
Paris. Never such times have been known in my days: hawking-parties one
day, and hunting-matches the next, and music and balls every night,
and cavalcades of bright ladies, and cavaliers all ostrich-plumes and
cloth of gold and tissue, that you would think our old woods here were
converted into fairy-land. The young lady Melanie was wedded only
three days since to the marquis de Ploermel; but you will not know him
by that name, I trow: he was the chevalier only--the chevalier de la
Rochederrien--when you were here before.”
“Ah, they _are_ wedded, then,” replied the youth, mastering his
passions by a terrible exertion, and speaking of what rent his very
heartstrings asunder, as if it had been a matter which concerned him
not so much even as a thought; “I heard it was about to be so shortly,
but knew not that it had yet taken place.”
“Yes, monseigneur, three days since; and it is very strangely thought
of in the country, and very strange things are said on all sides
concerning it.”
“As what, Matthieu?”
“Why, the marquis is old enough to be her father, or some say her
grandfather, for that matter; and little Rosalie, her fille-de-chambre,
has been telling all the neighborhood that Mademoiselle Melanie hated
him with all her heart and soul, and would far rather die than go to
the altar as his bride.”
“Pshaw! is that all, good Matthieu?” answered the youth, very
bitterly--“is that all? Why, there is nothing strange in that; that is
an every-day event. A pretty lady changes her mind, breaks her faith,
and weds a man she hates and despises! Well! that is perfectly in
rule; that is precisely what is done every day at court! If you could
tell just the converse of this tale--that a beautiful woman had kept
her inclinations unchanged, her faith unbroken, her honor pure and
bright--that she had rejected a rich man or a powerful man because he
was base or bad, and wedded a poor and honorable one because she loved
him--then, indeed, my good Matthieu, you would be telling something
that would make men open their eyes wide enough, and marvel what should
follow. Is this all that you call strange?”
“You are jesting at me, monseigneur, for that I am country bred,”
replied the steward, staring at his youthful master with big eyes of
astonishment; “you can not mean that which you say!”
“I do mean precisely what I say, my good friend; and I never felt less
like jesting in the whole course of my life. I know that you good
folk down here in the quiet country judge of these things as you have
spoken; but that is entirely on account of your ignorance of court
life, and what is now termed nobility. What I tell you is strictly
true: that falsehood, and intrigue, and lying--that daily sales of
honor--that adultery and infamy of all kinds--are every-day occurrences
in Paris; and that the wonders of the time are truth and sincerity, and
keeping faith and honor! This, I doubt not, seems strange to you, but
it in true for all that.”
“At least, it is not our custom down here in Bretagne,” returned the
old man, “and that, I suppose, is the reason why it appears to be so
extraordinary to us here. But you will not say, I think, monsieur le
comte, that what else I shall tell you is nothing strange or new.”
“What else will you tell me, Matthieu? Let us hear it, and then I shall
be better able to decide.”
“Why, they say, monseigneur, that she is no more the marquis de
Ploermel’s wife than she is yours or mine, except in name alone;
and that he does not dare to kiss her hand, much less her lips; and
that they have separate apartments, and are, as it were, strangers
altogether; and that the reason of all this is, that Ma’mselle Melanie
is never to be his wife at all, but that she is to go to Paris in a few
days, and to become the king’s mistress! Will you tell me that this is
not strange--and more than strange, infamous--and dishonoring to the
very name of man and woman?”
“Even in this, were it true, there would be nothing, I am grieved to
say, very wondrous now-a-days--for there have been several base and
terrible examples of such things, I am told, of late; for the rest, I
must sympathize with you in your disgust and horror of such doings,
even if I prove myself thereby a mere country hobereau, and no man of
the world, or of fashion. But you must not believe all these things to
be true which you hear from the country gossips,” he added, desirous
still of shielding Melanie, so long as her guilt should be in the
slightest possible degree doubtful, from the reproach which seemed
already to attach to her. “I hardly can believe such things possible
of so fair and modest a demoiselle as the young lady of D’Argenson:
nor is it easy to me to believe that the count would consent to any
arrangement so disgraceful, or that the chevalier de la Rocheder--I
beg his pardon, the marquis de Ploermel, would marry a lady for such
an infamous object. I think, therefore, good Matthieu, that, although
there would not even in this be anything very wonderful, it is yet
neither probable nor true.”
“Oh, yes, it is true! I am well assured that it is true, monseigneur,”
replied the old man, shaking his head obstinately; “I do not believe
that there is much truth or honor in this lady either, or she would not
so easily have broken one contract, or forgotten one lover!”
“Hush, hush, Matthieu!” cried Raoul, “you forget that we were mere
children at that time; such early troth plightings are foolish
ceremonials at the best; besides, do you not see that you are
condemning me also as well as the lady?”
“Oh, that is different--that is quite different!” replied the old
steward, “gentlemen may be permitted to take some little liberties
which with ladies are not allowable. But that a young demoiselle should
break her contract in such wise is disgraceful.”
“Well, well, we will not argue it to-night, Matthieu,” said the young
soldier, rising and looking out of the great oriel window over the
sunshiny park; “I believe I will go and walk out for an hour or two and
refresh my recollections of old times. It is a lovely afternoon as I
ever beheld in France or elsewhere.”
And with the word he took up his rapier which lay on a slab near the
table at which he had been sitting, and hung it to his belt, and then
throwing on his plumed hat carelessly, without putting on his cloak,
strolled leisurely out into the glorious summer evening.
For a little while he loitered on the esplanade, gazing out toward
the sea, the ridgy waves of which were sparkling like emeralds tipped
with diamonds in the grand glow of the setting sun. But ere long he
turned thence with a sigh, called up perhaps by some fancied similitude
between that bright and boundless ocean, desolate and unadorned even
by a single passing sail, and his own course of life so desert,
friendless, and uncompanioned.
Thence he strolled listlessly through the fine garden, inhaling the
rare odors of the roses, hundreds of which bloomed on every side of
him, there in low bushes, there in trim standards, and not a few
climbing over tall trellices and bowery alcoves in one mass of living
bloom. He saw the happy swallows darting and wheeling to and fro
through the pellucid azure, in pursuit of their insect prey. He heard
the rich mellow notes of the blackbirds and thrushes, thousands and
thousands of which were warbling incessantly in the cool shadow of
the yew and holly hedges. But his diseased and unhappy spirit took no
delight in the animated sounds, or summer-teeming sights of rejoicing
nature. No, the very joy and merriment, which seemed to pervade all
nature, animate or inanimate around him, while he himself had no
present joys to elevate, no future promises to cheer him, rendered him,
if that were possible, darker and gloomier, and more mournful.
The spirits of the departed seemed to hover about him, forbidding him
ever again to admit hope or joy as an inmate to his desolate heart;
and, wrapt in these dark phantasies, with his brow bent, and his eyes
downcast, he wandered from terrace to terrace through the garden, until
he reached its farthest boundary, and then passed out into the park,
through which he strolled, almost unconscious whither, until he came
to the great deer-fence of the utmost glen, through a wicket of which,
just as the sun was setting, he entered into the shadowy woodland.
Then a whole flood of wild and whirling thoughts rushed over his brain
at once. He had strolled without a thought into the very scene of
his happy rambles with the beloved, the faithless, the lost Melanie.
Carried away by a rush of inexplicable feelings, he walked swiftly
onward through the dim wildwood path toward the Devil’s Drinking-Cup.
He came in sight of it--a woman sat by its brink, who started to her
feet at the sound of his approaching footsteps.
It was Melanie--alone--and if his eyes deceived him not, weeping
bitterly.
She gazed at him, at the first, with an earnest, half-alarmed,
half-inquiring glance, as if she did not recognise his face, and,
perhaps, apprehended rudeness, if not danger, from the approach of a
stranger.
Gradually, however, she seemed in part to recognise him. The look of
inquiry and alarm gave place to a fixed, glaring, icy stare of unmixed
dread and horror; and when he had now come to within six or eight paces
of her, still without speaking, she cried, in a wild, low voice--
“Great God! great God! has he come up from the grave to reproach me! I
am true, Raoul; true to the last, my beloved!”
And with a long, shivering, low shriek, she staggered, and would have
fallen to the earth had he not caught her in his arms.
But she had fainted in the excess of superstitious awe, and perceived
not that it was no phantom’s hand, but a most stalwart arm of human
mould that clasped her to the heart of the living Raoul de St. Renan.