Mlle. de la Seiglière;

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Chapter I

Should it ever happen, in passing through Poitiers, that one of the thousand httle accidents that make up human Hfe compelled you to sojourn an entire day in that city, where, as I suppose, you have neither relations, nor friends, nor any interest that appeals to you, you would infallibly be overtaken at the end of an hour or two by the sad and profound enmd that envelops the province like an atmosphere, and is exhaled more particularly by the capital of Poitou.

Throughout the entire kingdom I know no other place, save Bourges perhaps, where this invisible fluid, a thousand times more fatal than the mistral or the sirocco, is so penetrating, and so subtle — infiltrating one's entire being in the most sudden and unexpected manner. At Bourges, moreover, to exorcise the scourge, you can make pilgrimage to one of the finest cathedrals ever erected by art and by the Catholic faith. There you will find enough to fill you with admiration for a week or more, without counting the Hôtel de Jacques Cœur, another marvel, where as a further distraction you can meditate at your leisiu-e on the ingratitude of kings.

In short, along these deserted streets, where the grass grows between the paving-stones in front of those vast hotels, sadly retired within their silent courts, that ennui will soon, and all unconsciously, assume a character of melancholy that is not without its charm. Bourges offers the poetry of the cloister; Poitiers is a tomb.

Should, therefore, some malevolent genius, some untoward fate, despite my heartfelt vows to Heaven on your behalf, arrest your steps within these sombre walls, it will be well for you to quit them hastily. The open country is within a step; the environs, though not picturesque, have a fresh and smiling aspect. Go to the banks of the Clain. The Clain is a tiny river to which the Vienne yields the honour of watering the capital of its department. The Clain is not for that more turbulent or more proud. Equable in its moods, modest in its ways, it is a decorous brook, with no affectation of pretensions on passing at the foot of a royal court, an episcopal palace, and a prefecture. If you pursue the path, walking up-stream, after a couple of hours you will come upon a valley moulded by the circular expansion of two hills, between which the Clain has carved its bed. Imagine two verdant amphitheatres, upHfted face to face, and separated by the river that reflects them both. An ancient bridge, with arches set with moss and maiden-hair, is thrown across from shore to shore. At this spot, the Clain, widening with the swelling banks in which it is embosomed, forms a basin of still waters, unruffled as a mirror, which might indeed be taken for a sheet of glass, till at the weir the crystal breaks and floats in iridescent dust.

To the right, seated proudly on the uplands, the Chateau de la Seiglière, a very jewel of the Renaissance period, contemplates the bosky windings of the park beneath; while to the left, on the opposite bank, and partly hidden by a grove of oaks, the modest Castel de Vaubert seems to watch the superb attitude of its opulent neighbour with an air of suffering humihty.

This corner of the earth will please you, and if you have been previously told the story of the drama enacted in the theatre of this peaceful valley, you may perhaps in visiting it experience something of the mysterious charm that is felt on revisiting the sacred scenes of history; perchance you may discover vanished traces on this velvet sward; perchance you will wander to and fro with slow and dreaming steps, invoking here a shade, and there a memory.

Sole heir to a name destined to expire with him, the last Marquis de la Seiglière lived royally upon his estates, hunting, keeping up great style, doing well by his peasants without prejudice to his privileges, when of a sudden the soil trembled, and a hollow rumbHng made itself heard, like the sound of the sea, when it is about to be upHfted by a tempest. It was the prelude to the great storm that was on the point of shaking the world. The Marquis de la Seiglière was in no way troubled by it, hardly disturbing himself at all. He belonged to those heedless and charming beings who, having seen nothing, and understood nothing, of what was passing around them, allowed themselves to be surprised by the revolutionary flood, as children are by the , rising tide. Whether chasing the stag in mid-forest, or seated luxuriously upon the cushions of his carriage, beside his young and beautiful wife, enjoying the sensation of driving behind his galloping horses, under the shade of his trees, over the sand of his woodland alleys; whether, from the height of his balcony, he contemplated with pride his meadows, cornfields, forests, farms, and droves — in fact, from whatever point of view he studied the social and poUtical question, the present order seemed to him to be so perfectly organized that he did not admit the possibility of any serious consideration of replacing it by something better.

At the same time, less from prudence than from good form, he joined in the first emigration, which was, in point of fact, nothing more than a pleasure party, a trip enjoined by fashion and fancy — a mere matter of letting the rainy clay go by and giving the heavens time to clear again. Instead, however, of blowing over, the shower threatened to become a deadly storm, and the heavens, far from clearing, belched clouds of blood, and discharged themselves in lightnings and thunder-bolts.

The marquis began to perceive that matters might be far more serious, and last much longer than he had at first anticipated. He hastily returned to France, quickly gathered up as much as he was able to realize of his enormous fortune, and hurried ofif to join his wife, who was waiting for him on the banks of the Rhine. They retired to a little town in Germany, set up a modest household, and lived in unadorned mediocrity — the marquise full of grace and resignation and of touching beauty, the marquis full of hope and confidence in the future — until the day came when he learned in a succession of blows that a handful of scamps, without bread or shoeleather, had not scrupled to defeat the armies of the rightful cause, and that one of his farmers, Jean Stamply by name, had permitted himself to buy, and now possessed, as his own and lawful property, the park and château of La SeigHère.

So long as Stamplys and La Seiglières had existed there had always been Stamplys in the service of the latter — so much so that the Stamplys had good reason to boast that they dated from as far back as the family of their masters. They represented one of those races of devoted and faithful servants, the type of which has disappeared with the large, seigneurial properties. From at first, from father to son, being simple rangers, the Stamplys had become farmers. Little by Httle, by dint of hard work and economy, thanks also to the favours of the château, which never failed them, they found themselves eventually the owners of a certain wealth. No one knew the exact amount of their fortune, but they were held to be richer than they would admit; and no one in the country was surprised when, after the decree of the Convention which proclaimed the whole of the territory of the émigrés to be national property, the abode of his former masters was knocked down to Jean Stamply at the auction. Having accomplished this, he continued to live on his farm as before, active, industrious, keeping himself to himself; buying silently, bit by bit, at the lowest prices, the lands that had already been sold or that remained in sequestration; each year reuniting, readjusting some new fragments of the dismembered property.

Finally, when France was beginning to breathe once more, and tranquility again reasserted itself, on a certain fine spring morning he placed his wife and son in the wicker carriage that was his customary vehicle, and, seating himself on the shaft, whip in one hand and reins in the other, set out to take possession of the château that formed, as it were, the capital of his little kingdom.

This taking possession was less triumphant and less joyous than you might be pleased to suppose. In passing through those vast apartments, to which desertion had lent a grave and solemn character — beneath those ceilings, upon those parquets, between those wainscots still impregnated with the memory of the ancient owners, Mme. Stamply, who was in last resort nothing but a worthy farmer's wife, felt singularly troubled. When she found herself before the portrait of the marquise, whom she at once recognised by her gay and gracious smile, the good woman could no longer contain herself. Stamply himself could not shake off a strong emotion that he did not try to dissimulate.

" See, Jean," said his wife, drying her eyes, " do not let us stay here; we should be uneasy. Already I feel ashamed of our fortune, when I think that Mme. la Marquise may perhaps be enduring misery. It is all very well to tell myself that we have worked hard for this good luck; I feel almost remorseful about it. Does it not seem to you that these portraits are watching us with an air of irritation, and are on the verge of speaking? Let us go. This chateau was not built for us; we should have bad nights in it. Believe me, it is already too much that we should want for nothing, while there are La Seiglières in misery. Come, let us go back to our farm. Your father died there; your son was born there; it is there that we have lived happily. Let us continue to live our simple life. Honest people will be pleased with us, the envious will respect us; and God, seeing that we enjoy our riches with modesty, will behold us without anger, and will bless our fields and our little Bernard."

Thus the farmer's wife, for her heart was in the right place, and though she had no education to start with, she was a woman of good sense and sound judgment. Seeing that her husband was listening to her thoughtfully, and appeared on the verge of yielding, she doubled her entreaties; but Stamply soon got the upper hand of the emotion that he had at first been unable to repress. He had received a certain amount of instruction, and had rubbed up against the new ideas. While retaining some measure of respect and even of gratitude for the Marquis de la Seiglière, though less than for the marquise, in proportion as he had grown richer, the instincts of the proprietor had gained upon him, and of late had finally invaded and absorbed him. Moreover, he had a child, and children are at all times a marvellous pretext for encouraging and legitimizing

ID any family excesses of egoism, and abuses of personal interest.

" All that is well and good," he said in his turn, " but a chateau is made to be inhabited, and you surely don't suppose we have bought this one in order to pen up our sheep and cattle in it. If our masters have left the country, it is not our fault; it is not we that have outlawed their persons and sequestered their goods. We have not stolen this property; we hold it in virtue of our labour, and from the nation. There are no more masters; all titles have been abolished, all Frenchmen are free and equal, and I do not know why the Stamplys should sleep less well here than the La Seighères."

" Hush, hush, Stamply! " cried the farmer's wife. Respect misfortune; do not outrage the family that has nourished yours from all time."

" I do not outrage any one," replied Stamply, a Uttle confused. I only say that even if we went on Uving at the farm it in no way alters the question; as far as I can see, there are only rats here to profit. It is true that we are only peasants. I admit that our education and our position do not harmonize; but if we suffer from that we must take care that our son does not pay for it also in his turn. It is our duty to bring him up in the position which our fortune win permit him to take up later on. Shall you want much pity when you see that monkey Bernard

II with a sword at his side and two gold-beaded epaulets? And for yourself, why, I should like to know, at the end of the chapter, should you not become, like Mme. la Marquise, the providence of this country-side, and the ornament of the château?"

If our son does not grow up in a chateau he will have all the more stuff in him, and when Mme. la Marquise abandoned her dwelling she did not leave the secret of her beauty and her grace behind her," repHed the good woman stoutly, tossing her head. " Look you, Stamply, those people had something which will always be wanting in ourselves; you may rob them of their lands, but you will never take that other thing from them."

''Well, then, we shall do without; let them keep it, and much good may it do them. At all events, here we are at home, and here we are going to stay."

What was said was done. The season was verging on that of spring, the first of the century. Little Bernard was at most eight years old. He was, in the fullest sense of the word, an urchin, eminently endowed with all the charms of his age — noisy, obstinate, romping, unmanageable, hanging on to all the rascals of the village, alternately beating and being beaten, never returning home without a torn waistcoat or a bruise on his face. In the first place Stamply procured a tutor for this amiable child; then, intrusting to a pedagogue the charge of making him into a man, prepared to enjoy peacefully and unostentatiously the position he had made for himself by the co-operation of his own labour and of events. Unfortunately it was inscribed above 'that his life was to be one long and seldom intermitted series of mortifications, tribulations, and of appalling misfortunes.

At the outset, young Stamply showed himself as rebellious as he could to the benefits of education; not that he was wanting in intelligence and aptitude, but inasmuch as he had an untamable nature, the turbulent instincts of which stifled or contradicted all the rest.

He wore out the patience of three tutors in succession, till, weary of the struggle, they relinquished the task after losing their Latin over it. Himself discouraged. Père Stamply resolved on placing his son in one of the Paris lycées, hoping that banishment, dry-bread impositions, and the military régime which governed the colleges at that period would overcome the nature of the cherub. The separation was not efïected without laceration. Such as we have described him, Bernard was the love, the pride, and the joy of his mother. When she saw him go, the worthy woman felt that her heart was breaking; when she took him in her arms at the hour of parting, she had a kind of presentiment that she would never see him again, and that she was embracing him for the last time.

And, in fact, the poor mother was destined never to see her son again. Her health had altered perceptibly. Accustomed to work on the farm, the idleness of her Hfe devoured her. By day she wandered Uke a soul in purgatory through her apartments; at night, when she succeeded in sleeping, she dreamed that she saw the Marquise de la Seiglière asking alms at the door of her château. There was no one but Bernard to make a cheerful movement around her, a little life and gaiety. When the house no longer rang with his joyous voice, and the farmer's wife no longer had her little Bernard at hand, to enliven and distract her, she felt overcome with sombre melancholy, and ere long began to pine away. It was some time before her husband noticed it. He had kept up his habits of work and of activity. He was rarely at home, roamed incessantly over hills and valleys, kept an eye on everything, and sometimes gave himself the satisfaction of shooting a few hares and partridges on the estates where his ancestors had guarded the seigneurial game. At last, however, he remarked the languid condition of the sad and humble châtelaine.

''What is the matter with you?" he said sometimes. You ought to be a happy woman. What do you want? What is missing? Tell me what you desire."

"Alas!" she would reply, ''I miss the modest comfort of our former days. I should like to milk our cows and churn our butter as of old. I should like to make soup for our shepherds and our farmhands; I want to see my httle Bernard again; I would like to bring our eggs, our cream, our steaming milk here every morning. Don't you remember, Stamply, how much Mme. la Marquise used to Hke our cream! Who knows if the dear soul has any so good nowadays? "

''Tut! tut!" repHed Stamply; "cream is cream, all the world over. You may be sure that Mme. la Marquise wants for nothing. The marquis did not go off empty-handed, and I will take my oath that he has more good loiiis d'or in his strong drawer than the rest of us have wretched crown pieces. If he didn't carry off his château, park, and lands in his portfoHo we can't help that; it is no use finding fault with us on that account. As to your little Bernard, you will see him fast enough; the scamp is not dead. Think you that instead of sending him off to study and to get his education, it would have been more reasonable to keep him here to look for birds'-nests in the summer, and in winter to play snowball with all the good-for-nothings of the country? "

" No matter, Stamply, this is not our place. Vol. 7-3 15 and it was an evil day on which we quitted our farm."

On hearing these words, which were repeated incessantly in every conversation with his wife, Stamply shrugged his shoulders, and departed in a bad temper. The evil, however, grew apace. Enfeebled in mind, with a timid conscience, the poor chatelaine soon began to ask herself in terror if her husband had not cheated her, if the thing had been accompHshed as honestly as he said, if it were true that all this wealth had been legitimately acquired, and that the château had no reproach to make against the probity of the farm. Thanks to her perpetual preoccupation, she passed promptly from doubt to conviction, from scruple to remorse. Thenceforward she atrophied under the notion that Stamply had stolen from his masters, and traitorously dispossessed them. In a little w^hile this became a monomania, which gave her neither peace nor rest. Notwithstanding all the efforts of her husband to convince her that she was mad, her mania developed. At this stage Stamply, who thought he would be driven out of his own senses, found himself obliged to shut her up and keep watch over her, for she went all over the place repeating that her husband, herself, and her son were nothing but a family of rogues, bandits, and extortioners. She died in a state of excitement impossible to describe, believing that she heard the

i6 police coming to arrest her, and imploring her husband to give back to the La SeigHères their château and the whole demesne — happy," she added with her last breath, if he could at this price save his head from the scaffold, and his soul from eternal fire."

Maître Stamply was not altogether one of the strong-minded. Apart from the grief he felt, the death of his wife affected him strangely. Although he pretended to a certain disdain for the aristocracy, at bottom he cherished a fund of antiquated veneration for the masters he had replaced; and though, on questioning his conscience, he had judged himself blameless, he could not help being often troubled at the remembrance. Still, the funereal impressions once dispersed, he pursued the tenor of his Hfe, and set all his thoughts and his ambitions upon his absent son.

At sixteen, when his education was completed, Bernard came home. He was then a fine young man — tall, slender, with a fiery heart, a lightning glance, filled with the ardent impulses of his age, and still further stimulated by the belHcose influence of an epoch enamoured of glory and combat. Till now the life at the château had not differed greatly from that at the farm. After the return of Bernard, everything took on a different complexion. Ignorant of the facts of the past, having but a vague memory of the La Seiglières, with a confused idea of the events that had enriched him, this young man could enjoy the advantages of his position without scruple, without trouble, and without remorse. Young, he had all the tastes, all the instincts of youth. He hunted, rode his horses to death, astonished the country-side by the luxury of his equipages, and did his best to scatter the parental fortune — all to the entire satisfaction of the worthy Stamply, who was beside himself with pleasure at recognising in his son these manners of a grand seigneur. Nothing could have been better, when Bernard went one morning to look for his father, and delivered himself as follows:

Father, I love you, and ought to be happy in merely passing my Hfe beside you. Yet I am weary, and my one wish is to go away. What can you expect? I am eighteen, and it is shameful to waste one's powder on rabbits, when one might consume it gloriously in the service of France. The existence I am leading stifles and kills me. Night after night I see the Emperor on horseback, at the head of his battalions, and start up, thinking that I hear the sound of cannon. The hour has struck for the accomplishment of my dream. Would you rather see my youth consumed in vain pleasures? If you love me you ought to be proud in your tenderness. Do not weep. Smile rather in thinking of the happiness

i8 of the return. What joy, indeed! what revels! I shall come back a colonel. I shall hang my cross up by your bedside, and at night, at the corner of the fire, I shall tell you about my battles."

And the cruel boy went off. Neither remonstrances, nor tears, nor prayers could keep him back. At that epoch they were all the same. Soon his letters were arriving like glorious bulletins, all exhaling the smell of powder, all written the day after a battle. Enlisted as volunteer in a cavalry regiment, non-commissioned officer after the battle of EssUng, officer a month later, after the battle of Wagram, he was noticed by the Emperor, he advanced in strides, pushed on by the demon of glory. He was one of those who proved, after Puisaye, that one practical year is worth more than all manoeuvres and apprenticeships on parade. Each of his letters was a hymn to the war and to the hero who was its god. When at the beginning of 1811 his regiment came to Paris, Bernard profited by a few days' holiday to go and embrace his father. How charming he was in his uniform as lieutenant of hussars! How well the blue dolman with its silver braiding showed off the elegance of his figure, slim and supple as the shoot of a young poplar! How gallantly he wore the fur-bordered pelisse across his shoulder! How proudly the brown mustache curled away from his fine and rosy lip! How magnificent he looked with his big sabre, and what a noise the parquet made under his sounding spurs! Stamply never tired of looking at him with a feeUng of naïve admiration, kissing his hands the while, and wondering if this could really be his own offspring.

Like the setting sun, the imperial star was shining with its most brilliant light, when a mortal shudder passed through the heart of France. An army of 500,000 men, among whom the mother-country reckoned 270,000 of her strongest and most valiant sons, had just passed the Niémen to strike a blow at England through the icy breast of Russia. Bernard's regiment formed part of the cavalry reserve commanded by Murat. A letter dated from Wilna was received at the château, and then another, in which Bernard related that he had been made a major after the affair at Volontina, then a third; after that, nothing. Days and weeks and months went by; no news came. It was only known that a battle, the most terrible of modern times, had been fought in the plains of the Moskova, the victory having cost 20,000 men to the French army. Twenty thousand men killed, and no letters! The Emperor is at Moscow, but there are no letters from Bernard. Stamply still hopes; he tells himself that it is a far cry from the Château de la Seiglière to the Kremlin, and that at such distances the postal service could not be very regular, above all in time of war.

Then sinister reports begin to circulate; very soon these dull rumours change into a cry of terror, and mourning France counts in stupefaction the little remaining to her of her legions. What was happening at the château? What happened, alas, in all the poor distracted hearts that were seeking a son in the ranks that had been thinned by cold and grape-shot? When Stamply at last made up his mind to address inquiries to the Minister of War in order to ascertain the fate of Bernard, he had not long to wait for an answer. Bernard had been killed at the battle of the Moskova.

Grief does not kill. Stamply still stood erect. Only he aged by twenty years in the course of a few months, and was for some time steeped in a sort of melancholy resembling imbecihty. He was to be met, in sunshine or in rain, wandering across his fields, bareheaded, with a smile upon his lips, that vague and uncertain smile that is sadder and more heart-breaking than tears. When he emerged from this state the poor old man began by slow degrees to notice what he had never stayed to think about before — the fact, namely, that he had round him neither friendships nor relations of any kind, and that he was living in absolute isolation. He even fancied himself an object of contempt and of general reprobation in the country.

And, in truth, this had been the case for many 21 years. As long as the Terror lasted, and while Maître Stamply remained modestly on his farm, the neighbours round had paid little attention to his fortune and successive acquisitions. But when calmer days succeeded to that time of frenzy, and the farmer had installed himself pubUcly in the seigneurial château, people began to open their eyes. When, finally, armorial bearings and titles reappeared on the waters, like the débris from the flood, a formidable concert of abuse and calumny was hurled from all sides against the unhappy châtelaine. What they said! What did they not say? Some that he had thieved, had ruined, expelled, and dispossessed his masters. Others that he had only been the secret agent of the marquis and marquise, and that by an abuse of their confidence he refused to give up the lands and château that he had bought back with the money of the La SeigHères. The worthy souls, who in '93 would have rejoiced to see the marquis lose his head, now took to chanting his praises, and wept over his exile. The fools and rogues enjoyed themselves to their hearts' content; even in the eyes of honest people the probity of the Stamplys was, to say the least of it, equivocal. The sad end of the good mistress of the farm, the remorse by which she was consumed in her latter days, gave weight to the most outrageous suppositions. Bernard's mode of life during his stay with his father had put the finishing touches to the general envy. In Poitiers and in the environs the hue and cry had been universal. Even the death of the young man afforded merely a fresh pretext for insult; people recognised in it the expression of divine anger, the expiation, richly merited, yet all too mild, in the eyes of some of the judges. Far from pitying Stamply, they overwhelmed him; instead of being softened at his fate, they flung the corpse of his son at his head.

So long as Bernard had lived, and while Stamply was absorbed in his paternal joy and pride, he had not merely failed to notice the kind of reprobation that was hanging over him, but had further no suspicion of the calumnies spread abroad as to his affairs. Things usually fall out thus; the world is preoccupied, is agitated, uneasy, and cries aloud, while for the most part the persons against whom all the disturbance is directed stay peacefully and happily in their own corner, without even suspecting the honour done them by their world.