A SAD CONCLUSION.
The interruption to the story was caused by Gervais Monjoy observing
that before us rose the ivy-covered ruins of an ancient schloss,
which seemed to inform him, as he said, that in the interest which he
took in his unfortunate love affair he had lost or mistaken the way.
We were on the brow of a high eminence, and far away in distance
spread the snowy landscape. In the foreground were some leafless
woods and ridges of rock, which like the ruins of the old castle
shone in russet and pink, as the yellow and rosy dawn stole across
the eastern quarter of the sky. A star or two still twinkled
overhead, and one shone brightly through the gaping windows of the
square keep of the old schloss.
"_Morbleu_, my friend! my mind has been so full of Isabelle that I
have proved but an indifferent guide. We are on the road to Waldeck.
That is the old castle of Count Heinrich, who slew Ferdinand of
Brunswick at Fritzlar, in 1400. Let me consider. We are not very
far from Zuschen, and a bend of the Lahn lies about two miles distant
on our right. Fortunately here is a peasant. Halloa! my friend, who
or what are you?" asked Monjoy, in German, as a man attired in an
overcoat of some dark stuff trimmed with black wolf's fur, and
wearing a cap and boots of deerskin, with a horn-hafted knife in his
girdle, a musket in his hand, and attended by a dog, appeared by the
wayside, where he was leisurely lighting his large pipe, and quietly
surveying us while doing so.
"I am a woodman," he answered somewhat gruffly.
"You are abroad betimes, friend."
"Those who have their bread to earn in a country swarming with
soldiers, who help themselves to the best of everything, have need to
be so, Mein Herr."
"Do you know the Lahn?"
"Right well. I am Karl Karsseboom, a forester of the Baron Von
Freyenthal. This path to the right will bring you to it straight.
Two miles from this is the ford; the water is shallow and frozen; but
the King of Prussia's Black Hussars are in a village on the other
side, so be wary."
"My friend, we thank you," said Monjoy, as the peasant touched his
fur cap respectfully, and, with his musket shouldered, strode off,
not in search of game, as we thought then, but to fulfil his duty of
scout, by acquainting some followers of Bourgneuf that I was to cross
the Lahn at the frozen ford.
"I have seen you some fifteen miles or so on your way," said my
companion, gradually reining in his horse, "and further would I go,
monsieur, but for those plans of Dillenburg which I must lay before
the maréchal, and which our friend Boisguiller must convey to
head-quarters. Farewell: I have enjoyed much the few hours we have
had of your society; but the best we can wish each other, if this war
lasts, is that we may seldom or never meet again, as we shall only do
so when bayonets are fixed and bullets are flying."
Monjoy shook my hand, and wheeling round his horse, rode off. I
remained for some minutes watching his retiring figure, the shadow of
which was thrown across the snow by the rising sun, in the light of
which his silver epaulettes flashed and glittered, and in the clear
frosty air the echoes of his horse's hoofs long came distinctly
ringing to the car.
I felt depressed and lonely now, for the suavity of manner and
gentleness of expression possessed by this young officer made him a
singularly winning and pleasing companion.
How much more would I have been interested in him then, could I have
foreseen his terrible future!
Turning, I rode slowly along the path indicated. It was distinctly
visible even amid the snow, as day had dawned and the sun was up; and
while I traversed it at an easy pace (my horse being indifferently
frosted in the shoes, and halting at every step), with the reader's
permission I will give him--may I add, _her_?--the sad sequel to the
story of Monjoy, as I afterwards read it in the _Mercure Français_,
and the _Gazette de Bruxelles_, in our camp at Warburg in Prussian
Westphalia.
Monjoy returned to Paris with Maréchal de Contades, the Marquis de
Voyer, the Comte de Luc, and other officers who declined for various
admitted reasons to serve under the Duc de Broglie, and he lived
there a somewhat secluded life, exerting himself sedulously in the
study of his profession. But he could not fail to hear from time to
time of her he had lost, and how the neglect, and what was worse, the
querulous tyranny, even the _blows_, of M. d'Escombas she endured
with meek and silent patience--a patience that galled Monjoy; for as
year succeeded year she had become the mere nurse of a petulant and
selfish old man.
"Many a good woman's life is no more cheerful," says a certain
writer; "a spring of beauty and sunshine; a bitter disappointment,
followed by pangs and frantic tears, and then a long, long and
monotonous story of submission."
As yet such had been the tenor of the life of Isabelle, but never did
she and Gervais meet, save once in the boxes of the Opera House of
the Palais Royal--the same theatre which had been built of old by
Cardinal Richelieu, and was burned down four years after Minden.
They were seated very near each other. She seemed wondrously pale
and beautiful; she was clad in light blue silk, her delicate neck,
her white taper arms, and her golden hair all glittering with
diamonds--the badges of her wedded slavery.
Both were deeply agitated, but neither spoke, till Isabelle, unable
to restrain her emotion, whispered to Monjoy behind her fan--
"I can read your secret in your eyes, my poor Gervais, and so will
others if you do not retire."
"My secret?" he faltered.
"That you love me--love me still, though I am the slave of this
Dives. Oh, my God! fly me--leave me to my misery--a misery known to
myself and Heaven only!"
Almost suffocated by his emotions--the grief and tenderness the
familiar sound of her voice and this pathetic appeal all served to
kindle in his breast, he rose abruptly and quitted the theatre,
followed by a threatening glance from d'Escombas.
That evening he wandered long about the streets, but an irresistible
fatality always lured him towards the Rue de Tournon, where Isabelle
resided.
The night came on, clear and cold; there was no moon, but the stars
shone brightly, and he saw all the windows of the street glittering
in their pale light, and those also in that noble façade of the
palace of the Luxembourg which faces the Rue de Tournon, with its
pavilions at each end, and the great cupola which rises above the
entrance door.
While wandering here, a person jostled him with great rudeness, and
turning with a hand on his sword, he encountered the remarkably
forbidding and somewhat grizzled visage of----M. d'Escombas!
"Monsieur will apologize?" said Monjoy in a husky voice, after
recovering from his surprise.
"Monsieur will do nothing of the kind," growled the old man. "What
the devil brings you here, Gervais Monjoy? But it matters nothing to
me--so you had better walk off, and take your hand from your sword,
or _parbleu!_ remember that I have the same cane for you that has
made Madame d'Escombas wince more than once!"
Maddened by the insult, the man, his words and the inferences to be
drawn from them, Monjoy prayed aloud--
"Great source of strength, assist me! Beware! old man," he added,
"lest you drive me to despair. Remember that it is neither the sixth
nor the seventh commandment in the Decalogue that may prevent me from
punishing you as you deserve, and rescuing a poor victim from your
tyranny."
M. d'Escombas, who was insanely jealous, grew white and livid with
rage at these words; and, as he did not want for courage, laid his
hand on his walking sword, for people still wore such weapons at
night in the streets of Paris.
"Dare you say this to me?" he exclaimed.
"_Oui, monsieur le scélérat_, and more if I choose. A selfish father
sells his timid daughter to a sordid wretch who buys her for rank.
Was it not so, old man?"
"Granted--though she preferred a beggarly student who should have
stuck to his Vauban and his Coehorn," said the other, grinding his
teeth; "and what then?"
"Coldness and placid endurance of life--perhaps contentment, might
have followed; but never happiness."
"But for what, you would say?"
"Your querulous tyranny--your unmanly cruelty, with the story of
which all Paris rings. You have even dared to strike her--to strike
her with your clenched hand, and even with your cane. Oh,
malediction, my gentle Isabelle! and here, old man, I tell you _you
are a coward_!"
"A coward--and your Isabelle! ha--we shall see what we shall see,"
exclaimed d'Escombas, boiling with ungovernable fury, as he swiftly
drew his sword, and rushing upon Monjoy before the latter was aware,
wounded him severely in the side.
This was too much for human endurance. The engineer drew his sword,
and locking in, tossed up, or wrenched away the weapon of M.
d'Escombas, which glittered in the starlight as the blade went twenty
feet into the air. At the same moment the sword of Monjoy pierced
the lungs of his adversary, who, as he whirled round in his agony
before falling, received it a second time in his back. He fell on
his face and expired without a groan, and Monjoy fled, full of
horror, leaving his weapon in the street, behind him.
All that dreadful night he wandered about the streets, the quays, and
bridges of Paris, haunted by what seemed a dream, a nightmare, to
endure for ever; and when day dawned he repaired straight to a
Commissary (an official similar to our justice of the peace) and
declared upon oath "that he had slain M. d'Escombas in the Rue de
Tournon; but in a fair duel, sword in hand, in self-defence."
The Commissary deplored the circumstance, but accepted the
declaration, and perceiving that he was dreadfully agitated, gave him
some wine and water.
"And now, dear Isabelle," he muttered wildly, "you are free--but by
my hand--alas, by _my_ hand!"
"How, monsieur," exclaimed the Commissary, sharply, looking up from
his desk, and surveying the miserable Monjoy through his
spectacles--"what's this you say?"
Monjoy remained silent, but grew, if possible, paler.
"Hah! _mon Dieu_!" exclaimed the Commissary, changing colour; "I
remember now. Is it true that you were a discarded lover of Madame,
when she was Mademoiselle du Platel, and a boarder with les dames de
Notre Dame de Charité on du réfuge de St. Michel, in the Rue de St.
Jacques?"
"Yes," moaned Monjoy; "it is too true."
"Detain M. Gervais Monjoy in custody; send for a surgeon; bring the
body of M. d'Escombas here, and let us have it examined," said the
other to his officials.
In less than an hour all this was done.
"How is this?" exclaimed the surgeon, the Commissary; and all
present; "there is a sword wound _in the back_, and the sword is
still remaining there!"
"He has been murdered!" said the Commissary, sternly.
"Dare you say so?" exclaimed Monjoy, with equal fury and indignation.
"In my official capacity, I may say anything," replied the
commissary, with a grimace--"to La Force with the prisoner!"
Within another hour Monjoy found himself in that formidable
prison--formerly the hotel of the Maréchal Duc de la Force--accused
of murder. Maréchal de Contades was in disfavour at court; Maréchal
de Broglie was still in Germany, where the Seven Years' War was
raging as fiercely as ever; his aunt the Prioress was dead. Thus
Monjoy had no friend in Paris, save _one_, for whom he dare not send;
so he remained in his vault, sunk in misery, and careless for the
future.
In this prison are detained until the day of trial those who are
accused of crimes. It is a spacious edifice, divided into several
departments, and having eight courts, all watched and guarded well.
At last, in the extremity of his misery. he sent for Isabelle, that
he might, to her at least, absolve himself from the crime of which he
was accused. She came clad in deep mourning, and the meeting between
them was painful and affecting. But as it was known that they had
been lovers in their youth, Paris was ready to believe the worst; and
as the sordid M. du Platel and d'Escombas' kinsman, the Governor of
the Conciergerie, cried "fire and sword" against them both, rumour
succeeded in having Madame accused of being "art and part" in her
husband's death. So she was arrested, and committed to a separate
vault in La Force, one of the places named _les Secrets_ in that
formidable edifice, which is formed entirely of hewn stone and
enormous bars of iron, and in the construction of which neither wood
nor plaster are employed.
There they languished for many months without a trial, as it happened
that just about this time the chief court of justice in France, the
_Parlement de Paris_--without the full concurrence of which no
criminal can be arraigned--was removed, first to Pontoise and
thereafter to Soissons, on account of their severe proceedings
against the Archbishop of Paris, who (to repress the disorderly lives
of the people) had issued a pastoral letter "forbidding all priests
and curs to administer the sacrament to any one, no matter of what
rank, unless they could produce a certificate from their father
confessor"--a pastoral which gave great offence to the court of the
Most Christian king.
To be brief: when the Court ultimately assembled, poor Monjoy was
brought to trial, and on being put to torture admitted that he was
guilty of the murder in the Rue de Tournon, and consequently was
sentenced to be broken alive upon the wheel.
When asked who were his accomplices, amidst torments the most
excruciating, he persisted in affirming that he had none; that Madame
d'Escombas was guiltless and pure as when she left her convent.
French medical skill was brought to bear upon his quivering limbs,
and then, maddened by agony, he continued deliriously to acknowledge
himself guilty of the murder again and again; but on being questioned
for the last time concerning Madame d'Escombas, he accused her too!
On this the windlass of the rack was instantly relaxed, and he
fainted, with blood pouring from his mouth and nostrils.
When his keener agony was over, on his knees, before my old friend
Père Celestine (once curé of St. Solidore, and now coadjutor Bishop
of Paris), with tears of blood and agony the unhappy Monjoy retracted
all that had been wrung from him under torture; but it was too late.
On _his_ accusation and confession she too was tried, and sentenced
to death, and then both were committed to the Conciergerie du Palais,
and to the care of that grim governor, the kinsman of d'Escombas--he
of whom Monjoy had such an instinctive dread of old.
The entrance to this frightful old prison is by a low and narrow
door, over which might well be carved the well-known line from
Dante's "Inferno."
Isabelle was conducted to the greffe or female prison, by that sombre
vestibule which is lighted by lamps even at mid-day; but Monjoy was
thrust, bleeding and mangled, perspiring in every limb with recent
torture, into one of the old and dark dungeons of the Conciergerie,
from whence, after a time, they were both conveyed in a tumbril, and
clad in sackcloth, to the Place de Greve, where she was hanged by the
neck, and he, after making a pathetic declaration of her innocence,
underwent the dreadful death of being broken alive upon the wheel!
With his last breath he implored the executioner to see that a blue
ribbon, some gift of happier years, which he wore round his neck,
should be buried with him.
Such was the miserable fate of this young Frenchman who befriended me
so much at Ysembourg, and whom I last saw galloping gallantly along
the road from the old ruined schloss, with his epaulettes and gay
uniform glittering in the morning sunshine.
And now, with a pardon for this digression, I return to my own more
matter-of-fact story.