The day after the arrival of the Comte de Bonneville and his companion
at the château de Souday, the marquis returned from his expedition, or
rather, his conference. As he got off his horse it was quite evident
that the worthy gentleman was in a savage ill-humor.
He growled at his daughters, who had not come even so far as the door
to meet him; he swore at Jean Oullier, who had taken the liberty to go
off to the fair at Montaigu without his permission; he quarrelled with
the cook, who, in the absence of the major-domo, came forward to hold
his stirrup, and instead of grasping the one to the right, pulled with
all her strength on the one to the left, thus obliging the marquis to
get off on the wrong side of his horse and away from the portico.
When he reached the salon M. de Souday's wrath was still exhaling
itself in monosyllables of such vehemence that Bertha and Mary,
accustomed as their ears were to the freedom of language the old
_émigré_ allowed himself, did not, on this occasion, know which way to
look.
In vain they attempted to coax him and smooth his angry brow. Nothing
did any good; and the marquis, as he warmed his feet before the fire
and switched his top-boots with his riding-whip, seemed to regret
bitterly that Messieurs Blank and Blank were not the top-boots
themselves, to whom he addressed, as he flourished his whip, some very
offensive epithets indeed.
The fact is, the marquis was furious. For some time past he had been
sadly conscious that the pleasures of the chase were beginning to pall
upon him; also he had found himself yawning over the whist which
regularly concluded his evenings. The joys of trumps and odd tricks
were beginning to be insipid, and life at Souday threatened to become
distasteful to him. Besides, for the last ten years his legs had never
felt as elastic as they did now. Never had his lungs breathed freer,
or his brain been so active and enterprising. He was just entering
that Saint-Martin's summer for old men,--the period when their
faculties sparkle with a brighter gleam before paling, and their
bodies gather strength as if to prepare for the final struggle. The
marquis, feeling himself more lively, more fit than he had been for
many a year, growing restless in the little circle of his daily
avocations, now insufficient to occupy him, and conscious, alas! that
ennui was creeping over him, took it into his head that a new Vendée
would be admirably suited to his renewed youth, and did not doubt that
he should find in the adventurous life of a partisan those earlier
enjoyments the very memory of which was the charm of his old age.
He had therefore hailed with enthusiasm the prospect of a new uprising
and call to arms. A political commotion of that kind, coming as it
did, proved to him once more what he had often in his placid and naïve
egotism believed,--that the world was created and managed for the
satisfaction and benefit of so worthy a gentleman as M. le Marquis de
Souday.
But he had found among his co-royalists a lukewarmness and a
disposition to procrastinate which fairly exasperated him. Some
declared that the public mind was not yet ripe for any movement;
others that it was imprudent to attempt anything unless assured that
the army would side with legitimacy; others, again, insisted that
religious and political enthusiasm was dying out among the peasantry,
and that it would be difficult to rouse them to a new war. The heroic
marquis, who could not comprehend why all France should not be ready
when a small campaign would be so very agreeable to him,--when Jean
Oullier had burnished up his best carbine, and his daughters had
embroidered for him a scarf and a bloody heart,--the marquis, we say,
had just quarrelled vehemently with his friends the Vendéan leaders,
and leaving the meeting abruptly, had returned to the château without
listening to reason.
Mary, who knew to what excess her father respected the duty of
hospitality, profited by a lull in his ill humor to tell him gently of
the arrival of the Comte de Bonneville at the château, hoping in this
way to create a diversion for his mind.
"Bonneville! Bonneville! And who may that be?" growled the irascible
old fellow. "Bonneville? Some cabbage-planter or lawyer or civilian
who has jumped into epaulets, some talker who can't fire anything but
words, a dilettante who'll tell me we ought to wait and let Philippe
waste his popularity! Popularity, indeed! As if the thing to do were
not to turn that popularity on our own king!"
"I see that Monsieur le marquis is for taking arms immediately," said
a soft and flute-like voice beside him.
The marquis turned round hastily and beheld a very young man,
dressed as a peasant, who was leaning, like himself, against the
chimney-piece, and warming his feet before the fire. The stranger had
entered the room by a side door, and the marquis, whose back was
toward him as he entered, being carried away by the heat of his wrath
and his imprecations, paid no heed to the signs his daughters made to
warn him of the presence of a guest.
Petit-Pierre, for it was he, seemed to be about sixteen or eighteen
years old; but he was very slender and frail for his years. His face
was pale, and the long black hair which framed it made it seem whiter
still; his large blue eyes beamed with courage and intellect; his
mouth, which was delicate and curled slightly upward at the corners,
was now smiling with a mischievous expression; the chin, strongly
defined and prominent, indicated unusual strength of will; while a
slightly aquiline nose completed a cast of countenance, the
distinction of which contrasted strangely with the clothes he wore.
"Monsieur Petit-Pierre," said Bertha, taking the hand of the
new-comer, and presenting him to her father.
The marquis made a profound bow, to which the young man replied with a
graceful salutation. The old _émigré_ was not very much deceived by
the dress and name of Petit-Pierre. The great war had long accustomed
him to the use of nicknames and aliases by which men of high birth
concealed their rank, and the disguises under which they hid their
natural bearing; but what did puzzle him was the extreme youth of his
unexpected guest.
"I am happy, monsieur," he said, "if my daughters have been able to be
of service to you and Monsieur de Bonneville; but all the same I
regret that I was absent from home at the time of your arrival. If it
were not for an extremely unpleasant interview with some gentlemen of
my political opinions, I should have had the honor to put my poor
castle at your service myself. However, I hope my little chatterers
have been good substitutes, and that nothing our limited means can
procure has been spared to make your stay as comfortable as it can
be."
"Your hospitality, Monsieur le marquis, can only gain in the hands of
such charming substitutes," said Petit-Pierre, gallantly.
"Humph!" said the marquis, pushing out his lower lip; "in other times
than these we are in, my daughters ought to be able to procure for
their guests some amusement. Bertha, here, knows how to follow a
trail, and can turn a boar as well as any one. Mary, on the other
hand, hasn't her equal for knowing the corner of the marsh where the
snipe are. But except for a sound knowledge of whist, which they get
from me, I regard them as altogether unfit to do the honors of a
salon; and here we are, for the present, shut up with nothing to do
but poke the fire." So saying, Monsieur de Souday gave a vigorous kick
to the logs on the hearth, proving that his anger was not yet over.
"I think few women at court possess more grace and distinction than
these young ladies; and I assure you that none unite with those
qualities such nobility of heart and feeling as your daughters,
Monsieur le marquis, have shown to us."
"Court?" said the marquis, interrogatively, looking with some surprise
at Petit-Pierre.
Petit-Pierre colored and smiled deprecatingly, like an actor who
blunders before a friendly audience.
"I spoke, of course, on presumption, Monsieur le marquis," he said,
with an embarrassment that was obviously factitious. "I said the
court, because that is the sphere where your daughters' name would
naturally place them, and also, because it is there I should like to
see them."
The marquis colored because he had made his guest color. He had just
involuntarily meddled with the incognito the latter seemed anxious to
preserve, and the exquisite politeness of the old gentleman reproached
him bitterly for such a fault.