MARIE
I was placed in the home of a lady, who was the widow of a Swiss officer
who had been beheaded on the memorable tenth of August. In her country
place I was screened from curious eyes. Being overcome by a languid
illness, I remained indoors for eight months. My hostess dared not call
in a physician, for strange children awakened suspicion, inasmuch as the
lost Dauphin was being eagerly sought by spies. She fed me on milk and
arranged that I should have unlimited repose and fresh air. These simple
restoratives at length effected a cure. On leaving my bed, I was again
overpowered by the consciousness of a dual personality. I at times felt
convinced that I had always lived in that fair green villa and that my
insistent past was a delusion. My guardian spoke French brokenly, and
we, therefore, conversed in German, which had been my mother's native
tongue. I had therefore become habituated to its use. Later in life I
was obliged to employ it constantly.
During my convalescence, and while walking one morning in the fields, I
was captured by the police and dragged back to prison. What prison? I
know not. With equal swiftness was I snatched thither by deputies of my
vigilant protectress, the gentle creole, and placed in the home of a
noble family who received me with respect, almost reverence. The head of
the family was the Marquis de Bray, a partisan of our House. There it
was that I formed the first friendship of my life, that with the Count
of Montmorin, a youth older than I and who, like myself, was in
concealment, being disguised as a hunter. Montmorin's life had been
miraculously saved during one of the ferocious tides that swept our
country, and that life he generously consecrated to me. Subterfuges,
manoeuvres, almost witch-craft did he employ for the deluding of my
persecutors, and to that end valued not his own security and happiness.
Under the protection of de Bray and Montmorin, I lived tranquilly and
the spectre of political ambition seemed no longer to haunt me. But my
friends feared, owing to the waxing power of Napoleon, that France was
no appropriate refuge for me and we removed for a season to Venice,
thence to Trieste and finally to Rome, where I enjoyed the gentle
protection of Pope Pius VI. My former hostess and nurse, the Swiss lady,
had in the interval married a compatriot of her own, who was an expert
watch-maker. It chanced that they became our neighbors and so gave me
the opportunity to learn the craft of which my father was so fond. The
minute and prolix labor enchanted me and, following the advice of Jean
Jacques, I mastered it.
A friend of the Pontiff offered me for residence a villa near Rome. How
beautiful were the lemon and fig groves! In the garden's centre was a
marble pillar surmounted by a nymph which had stood there since the
Roman Empire. Amid the fragrance of those flowers were passed the
dearest days of my youth. Marie, daughter of Bray and fiancée of
Montmorin, a gentle girl, five years my senior--a trifle it seemed to
me--accompanied me often with affectionate solicitude.
Her white hands smoothed my golden curls, fastened my lace collar and
rested on my shoulder, during our rambles. Montmorin, on seeing us
together, would turn away and re-enter the house. My head, resting upon
Marie's breast, seemed again to repose in the sweet nest from which the
Revolution had torn me. Once when Marie flung a flower in my face, the
image of my mother rose so vividly to my eyes, as she appeared when
romping with us in the royal gardens, that my emotion overcame me and I
threw myself into the arms of Montmorin's fiancée. I kissed her lips and
asked: "Marie, what have they done to my mother?"--for since the
terrible day when I was separated from her, I had never spoken her name,
nor received intelligence of her fate. I pictured her still as a pale,
worn prisoner and my duty seemed to be to deliver her. This sudden
tempest of passion transformed me from boy to man. Marie wept softly in
my arms.
"My mother,--where is she?" I insisted.
"She is dead," said Marie gently.
"O my mother!" I cried out, falling senseless to the ground.
On regaining consciousness, I saw Marie at my pillow.
"O die with me," I said. "Let us be with my mother."
When I was strong enough to leave my bed, I noticed that Marie, under
numerous pretexts, absented herself from me. Our rambles ceased and she
was often with Montmorin. This at first enraptured her lover but he soon
discovered that she was preoccupied and sad, while I, jealous and
melancholy, walked alone in the woods. I wandered near the margins of
pestilential lakes, in the hope that, being overcome by malaria, Marie
would again sit by my bed.
Montmorin's generous heart divined the cause of my sadness and of
Marie's enforced fidelity to him. He said:
"Marie, our first duty is to make Augustus" (for so he called me)
"happy. I shall go to France in his interests."
And he left us. Consider Montmorin's action, Thérèse, and realize to
what a generous and absurd height a loyal soul is raised by the
principle symbolized in royalty. Montmorin renounced his plighted wife
as later on he renounced his life in devotion to the PRINCIPLE. And
Marie, beholding in me not a hapless castaway but the incarnation of the
PRINCIPLE, erected like a second Lavallière an altar whereon she
radiantly idealized me, after having vainly sought to idealize her
betrothed.
On the day after Montmorin's departure, we walked through the fields
scarcely touching the ground. Reaching the border of the pestilential
lake, we seated ourselves near the verdant fringe of delicate flowers.
My head rested on her breast and our eyes promised what our lips could
not utter, for very happiness.
On returning home, Marie complained of feeling cold. The next day she
lay shivering in bed. The malaria was having its effect. Her clear eyes
grew clouded and after some days her dear form became emaciated.
Montmorin was summoned, but she could scarcely greet him. The bells from
the Capuchin convent near by were pealing out into the air and we knelt
by her bed as she said:
"Eugene, brother of my soul, forgive me."
For answer, Montmorin took my hand in his.
"Watch over him, Eugene."
Montmorin, shedding hot streaming tears, promised. Together we watched
beside her until she died.