Of all the many personages which have figured in this tale, there are
but few of whom it behoves us to give any farther account. The lives
of some stand written on the bright and glorious page of history,
never to be effaced till the waters of time have rolled long over this
portion of the globe, have levelled our dwellings and our monuments
with the sands, have washed away our learning and our records, and
blotted out not alone the sweet domestic memories--on which each
succeeding generation sets its foot, trampling with all the insolence
of youth the withered flower just dead--but have also razed, from the
hard tablet of glory, the few names that are really worthy of eternal
consecration. When such a change has taken place,--and who shall say
that it will not?--when Europe shall be called the land of forests and
of barbarism, and some prying strangers alone shall come from their
happier lands, and try to trace upon the desert shores the mouldering
remnants of arts and sciences and nations long gone by, perhaps the
name of Henry IV. of France, and those who resemble him, may be
forgotten, but till then they have a glorious existence separate from
the rest of men. The Duke of Mayenne, too, ambitious and intriguing,
but generous and often wise, has a share of the page of history; and
all those who continued to play a conspicuous part in the days of
Henry Quatre, either for good or for evil, have their record in the
annals of the time. This tale can alone take farther note of those
whose fate it has depicted in the preceding pages, and who at this
point separate themselves from the general course of history, either
to fall into the calm repose of sweet domestic life, or to seek a
refuge from unhappy fortunes in the tomb.
The body of Beatrice of Ferrara being removed from the cottage where
Eugenie de Menancourt had dwelt so long, was borne to the chateau in
which she herself had spent the last hours of her own existence; and
with curses and imprecations upon his head, the tale of what his
machinations had wrought was told to the dwarf Bartholo by the more
faithful yet less attached servants of his late mistress.
He listened to the whole in sullen composure, and even a smile played
upon his lip as he heard of the death of the Count d'Aubin; but when
the last sad event was mentioned by the narrator, and he learned that
Beatrice herself was dead, he struggled with the bonds that tied him,
and then cast himself grovelling on the ground, which he dewed with
his bitter agonising tears. He strove to tear his flesh with his
teeth; and when they took him up, more to gaze upon his torture, than
with any feeling of compassion--for no one loved, and no one
compassionated him--he raved upon them with frantic and incoherent
words, and again cast himself down in raving despair. For several days
he refused all food; but at length pity touched some one, and a leech
was sent for, who bled him largely, which produced a change. He no
longer raved, he no longer refused food, he took what was offered him,
did what was bid him; but it was with the slow and sullen stupidity of
an idiot. The fire, too, had left his eye; his activity was gone; his
witty sauciness at an end; and he would sit for days gazing vacantly
upon the floor, without hearing what was said to him, and without
addressing a word to any one. At length, the body of Beatrice of
Ferrara was conveyed to Italy for the purpose of being interred
amongst her princely ancestors; and then, though none knew how he
escaped, it was perceived that the dwarf was gone also. It was not,
indeed, extraordinary that he had disappeared without notice; for
after his frenzy had terminated in idiocy, no one had paid him much
attention.
How he travelled so great a distance, and how he supported himself by
the way, are equally unknown; but some three months after, the
wretched being was seen wandering about in the long vacant streets of
Ferrara, enduring the scoff of the schoolboy and the peasant. He
remained in that part of the country for several years; and those who
had known him when first he had entered the household of the princes
of Legnano, often gave food and money out of charity to the poor
dwarf, whom they now despised and had formerly hated. At length, one
morning, when the sacristan took his early round through the chapel in
which the dead of that noble house slept in the cold marble which was
their place of last repose, he was startled by seeing something curled
up at the end of the new monument erected to the Princess Beatrice. He
touched it, but it stirred not; and, familiar with the dead, he
carelessly raised up the head, and beheld the lifeless features of the
dwarf Bartholo.
The Count d'Aubin lay with his ancestors; and the noble estates of
which he had been once the improvident possessor passed to his next
male heir, the Marquis of St. Real. To St. Real it was pointed out by
skilful and honest lawyers that, as the creditors who had claims upon
the late Count could not easily prove their right, his estates might
be rendered clear by a very simple process of law. But St. Real
preferred a simpler process still; and from the funds accruing from
large and well-managed lands discharged the debts, and freed the
inheritance. The claims which were the most difficult to arrange were
those of the heirs and successors of one Albert of Wolfstrom, who
having been executed, under a judicial sentence regularly pronounced
by a competent tribunal, for various transactions which did not even
permit the harlot compassion of public excitement to attend his end,
it was more than doubtful whether any of the demands which were made
upon St. Real in his name were really to be sustained. There were some
through which the young Marquis at once struck his indignant pen, and
others which, though equally illegal, he paid at once; but in the end,
as so often happens, the debts which had seemed overwhelming to him
whose bad management had incurred them, were easily liquidated by a
more provident though not a less liberal lord; and the estates of
Aubin made a splendid addition to those of the Marquis of St. Real.
The young lord himself saw Eugenie de Menancourt reinstated in her
ancestral halls, and wandered with her for a few days through the
scenes they had both loved in childhood--scenes where the memories of
the past, both dark and bright, blended into a solemn, but a sweet and
soothing light, which, shining mellow and calm upon the happy present,
gradually brightened into hope as the eye turned towards the future.
It was like the twilight of the summer sky in a far northern land,
where the night and the day mingle together in the west; and the soft
and shaded, yet radiant, sunset continues till the dawning of the
morning appears on the opposite horizon, so that the beams of the past
and the future day meet in the zenith of the present.
It might be said that the experience which Eugenie de Menancourt and
Huon St. Real already had of the past was sufficient to have justified
their immediate marriage. But Eugenie had her scruples, and St. Real
had a confidence derived from higher sources than either the usual
happy fortunes of his house, or the promising turn which the war had
taken. An old female relation was sought to bear the young heiress
company for the next six months. To her Eugenie's education had been
principally confided during her youth; her instructions had greatly
tended to render her what she was, and St. Real thought that the
society of no one could be better for her he loved till the day of
their marriage at length arrived. In the meantime, he rejoined the
king's army, and took part in the various events of the war which
ultimately placed Henry IV. in possession of the capital of his
kingdom, and put an end to the troublous times by which his reign
began; but it will be remembered by all persons well versed in that
portion of the history of France, that the part of the country in
which the estates of Eugenie de Menancourt were situated never fell
again into the hands of the League. Various detached towns in Normandy
and Maine that faction did indeed continue to hold for some time, but
the progress of the king after the battle of Ivry was uninterrupted,
though gradual, till peace crowned his efforts; and his people learned
to love, nay, almost to adore, the monarch against whom many of them
had drawn their swords.
At length, six months after the death of Beatrice of Ferrara, Eugenie
de Menancourt gave her hand to him whom she was not now ashamed to own
she had loved from her earliest youth. Henry signed the marriage
contract; and when the young Marquis, having seen him firmly seated on
the throne of his ancestors, took leave of the monarch and his court,
resolved to spend the rest of his life, as his fathers had done before
him, in the calm tranquillity of his paternal domains, Henry placed
round his neck the order of the _St. Esprit_, saying, that as he well
knew he should but seldom see his face again, he was resolved to give
him something whereby to remember the days he had passed with Henry
Quatre.
Do we need to inquire how St. Real and Eugenie passed their after
life? It sometimes happens, indeed, that two people who have loved
well and truly in the first burst of youthful passion, crossed,
disappointed, and soured, persevere against all opposition through
long years of withering anxiety, till they meet together at length,
with tempers irritated, and hearts no longer the same; and find
nothing but misery in that union, from which they had anticipated
nothing but happiness. Not so, however, St. Real and Eugenie de
Menancourt. They had long loved without knowing it; and had chiefly
had to struggle with the opposition of their own principles to their
own wishes. They had been thwarted, but not disappointed; they had
been grieved, but not irritated. Their sorrows had served like the
black leaf on which the diamond is set, to increase, not tarnish, the
lustre of the happiness they now enjoyed. But happiness will not bear
description. It is the calm stream that neither foams nor murmurs; and
theirs continued flowing on like a mighty river, which, troubled and
obstructed at its source, soon overbears all obstacles, and then,
having once reached the calm level of the open country, flows on
increasing in volume, though it loses in brightness, till the full
completed stream falls into the bosom of the eternal ocean.
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1: The passion for dwarfs as attendants in great houses was
so universal in France at this time, that the most extravagant sums
were given for them. Henry III. is reported to have had no less than
nine at one time; and at his court there was a regular _tailleur_ and
_valet des nains_.]
[Footnote 2: This speech of the dwarf applies to various modes of
travelling then known in France, which it might be tedious to explain
more fully in this place.]
[Footnote 3: The Duke of Guise, who held the throne of Henry III. and
was afterwards barbarously assassinated by command of that monarch,
had been his bosom friend in youth.]
[Footnote 4: In English, a mortgage. This sort of encumbrance was but
too frequently created in France during the wars of the League and the
epoch of debauchery which preceded, accompanied, and followed them.]
[Footnote 5: I have, in another romance, published long since this
work was written, given a description of the phenomenon here
mentioned, and have in that tale attempted to depict it as it appeared
to the Royalists.]
WOODFALL, AND KINDER PRINTERS, LONG ACRE, LONDON.
End of Project Gutenberg's One in a Thousand, by George Payne Rainsford James