The pupil of the Legion of honor

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CHAPTER I. AVRANCHES is a charming town

The very first view of it captivates the traveller. He desires to stop there; and regrets passing too rapidly. The ancient city, always young, is situated on a promontory commanding the distant sea, and a horizon of vast fields watered by the S6e, a pretty little river, which unrolls to the sun her mirror of smooth water.

Avranches, as so many other towns, has seen fall, under the hand of man, and under the scythe of time, its ancient crown of battlements, its diadem of bells and all its ornaments of the middle ages. Still it has always kept its great masses of foliage thrown out between the coquettish houses, and waving under the roofs as waves a bunch of feathers on the crest of a helmet.

Around the town, along all the roads, rise the most coquettish little houses in the world — little Renaissant castles, Gothic manors, modern chateaux, Italian villas, English cottages, Swiss chalets, mixed with Normandy huts.

If, on leaving the suburbs, you take the road leading to Saint Malo, you will soon find, in an exquisite country, where by nature and by man, all seems arranged just as you would desire to please the eye, a little original edifice, picturesque and fanciful.

It is built of stone and brick, of earth and wood, full of fancies and caprice — an outside staircase, uncomfortable, but very ornamental, surrounds the house, and serves as its only stairway, or rather, open balcony, carved in oak, and on which open the doors and windows of the apartments. A gigantic rose tree, a hundred years old, with its pliant branches, its innumerable flowers, carpets the walls, festoons the staircase, mounts to the top of the balcony, and embroiders the roof with its perfumed garlands. I know nothing more beautiful than its petals of snow, tinted with an imperceptible cloud of flesh color, so pale that it scarcely mars their immaculate whiteness.

Before the house, to which this enormous shrub has given the name of the Rosery, a thick impervious turf, which rises from the foot that has trampled on it, unrolls its best carpet of green velvet.

A clear rivulet with a silver foam runs between two banks bordered with mosses, cresses, and these “ myosotes,” friends of the water, which timidly open themselves as the blue eyes of a German. It crosses the grass-plat, drawing there some ingenious lines, maintaining its vigorous freshness, and feeds a basin, whose borders are filled with the shell-fish that the tide of the sea has left in withdrawing from the coast. All this makes one involuntarily dream of those grottoes of stones, where the nymphs and goddesses came in olden times, to bathe their naked feet.

At the top of the staircase, is a small pepper-box shaped turret with a turned spire, extending as high as the vine-covered roof, whilst on the other end, an octagonal tower terminates in a platform, whose stone balustrade rests in the midst of sweet-scented clematis, its head dressed in the green of an old ivy.

The roof, which holds three chimneys, lacks a little in height. One does not have to search long in order to see all

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the bluish slate, nor all these varnished tiles, which trace on the house the brilliant arches.

In the neighboring fields, one is struck by the thatched huts which content the peasant for his home, and which by the alternatives of rain and of sunshine, of darkness and of light, have given them by the variable seasons, shades of the richest and most incomparable variety of browns. As nothing is immutable in the eternal changes of nature, as nothing dies for ever in this everlasting fruitfulness, new vegetation shoots forth on this vegetation cut short. A thousand little plants spring up and blossom on this dry straw and make a bouquet of each house. /

On the top, in the place that elsewhere, (in other houses,) is occupied by the carved brass tile-ridge, the plumet, fashioned like an ear of corn, and the turning weathercocks, is quilted in a light bed of soil and of clay, the dark roots of these beautiful ires, with their brilliant petals, which bathe in the freshness of the air, drink the pure dew, play in the sunshine, and allow themselves to float in the wind, a trail of variegated light.

It is spring time. Perfumed scents breathe from the bosom of the earth. The bushes sing. The hedges blossom. The wild broom with its golden flower glows in the midst of the thorn. The large rocks are clothed with a mantle of saxifrages, of heath, of roses, and of green mosses. On the sand, too often forlorn and desolate, the waves murmur as far as the horizon, so sweetly that one might imagine they are singing.

The Mont Saint Michel with its elegant and stern profile, outlining itself on a double ,blue, the ocean below, the heavens above, adds the greatest charm to the landscape.

No person could stop before the white barrier which separates the Rosery from the road, without murmuring to himself and perhaps with a sigh of envy, “ This must be the abode of happiness 1 ”

Alas ! does one ever know where happiness dwells ?

Chapter II

T1ITHILST we admire the sweet and H smiling appearance of the Rosery; whilst in our minds we select this lovely spot to locate there the peaceable scenes of happiness, the Rosery is the theatre of one of those dark and hidden dramas which unrolls itself each day. Alas ! in our discreet mansions, and the bitter reality of which far outstrips the darkest inventions of the dramatist or novelist.

For, even at this moment, the master of the Rosery is dying !

He dies on this adorable morning of May. Around him all seems reborn — everything invites him to live. He dies when insensible nature, clothing herself with all her graces, makes herself more beautiful than ever for those very eyes which will never see her more.

In the best room, transformed into an impromptu chapel, we see near the bed, on a table covered with white linen, to resemble an altar, several silver can-' dlesticks, where burn the little tapers placed around the censers.

The dying man lies stretched on his death-bed. On his left a young nun, as pale as a ghost, prays in a low tone ; on his right a gray-haired priest, surpliced and with stole, holds with one hand the hand of the patient, and with the other points him to heaven. Near the window a chorister, with the indifference of his age, looks at the passing clouds. He who dies thus is not an old man — one would scarcely set him at fifty years. His noble countenance, on which death has already cast his shadow, shows all the characteristics of the particular kind of beauty called military beauty. A large forehead, the imperious frown of the commander; large, straight features, breathing frankness and energy with firmness — firmness in life and in the presence of death. There is something loyal in the whole countenance. On the lips is goodness, and in the eyes, now nearly extinguished, a pathetic look by which one feels involuntarily moved to sadness.

At the head of the bed you see a sword, with the handle and guard made of gold ; an epaulet on either side ; and underneath, the cross, on a ribbon of the Commander of the Legion of Honor.

The priest offers to the dying man the consolations of Faith and the encouragement of Hope — those two divine virtues which aid us in dying. He spoke of the life without end, succeeding this dream

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of a day — which is our sad lot on earth. And he endeavored to soothe the agony of death by talking of the goodness of God.

“ My dear cure,” said the dying man, with a feeble but distinct voice, uyou know perfectly that my faith is yours. All you tell me I myself believe; and then, besides, we have so often looked each other in the face — death and I — that we can no longer fear each other ; and I am ready to report to the roll-call that they beat on high. And lo, my dear cure, I believe that call will come before seven o’clock to-day ; but I have expected this for six months.”

“A good death is the reward of a good life,” said the priest, with consoling kindness.

“ But my daughter ; my poor little Jeanne ! What will become of her ? Oh, my God ! when I am gone who will take care of her ? Who will love her ? No one ! Behold ! this is what makes me desperate and frightens me 1”

' “ God is great ! He is as good as he is powerful. He gives food to the little birds — how can you think he will abandon a creature made in his own image ?”

“Alas ! he has so many children !” said the dying man with a pale smile. “ besides, man so often frustrates his intentions. My dear cure, pardon me for speaking thus to you, but do you see, I should be less uneasy if, in place of being a child — a daughter of my heart and of my blood — Jeanne was one of those swallows who hang their nest in my window ; or one of those little birds who sing in the honeysuckle.”

“ Do not speak so, I implore !”

“ What do you expect ? Since I feel I am dying, these ideas engross and agitate me more than I can tell. Sometimes they assume the form of remorse.”

“ Of remorse ! You talk of remorse, colonel ?”

“ Yes ; I feel myself guilty towards my daughter, whom I love so much. I have, in part, squandered her little patrimony, and I have fatally entangled, in the desire, to increase it, the little inheritance left by her mother.”

The cure remained a moment without replying, and a tear ran down the blanched cheek of the colonel.

“ Do not distress yourself thus, my honored friend,” at last replied the good priest. “Will not the Bosery pass entirely to your daughter?”

“ Alas ! the Bosery is mortgaged for three-quarters of its value. It would have been much better if I had sold it long ago, but I had not the courage. What could I do ? — One is but human ! It was here I knew Jeanne’s mother, my dear Elise, she who made the happiness of my life. To lose the Bosery was to lose her a second time. I could not do it. This weakness — which she may some day excuse— compromised, alas ! the interest of my daughter. When my debts are settled, she will barely have, for her whole possessions, this house, where she was born.”

“ But your friends ?”

“ The dead have no friends.”

“ Your family?”

“ I have no family. My father was a soldier — like myself an officer of fortune — namely, without fortune. He has left me his name without stain, his reputation for honor, and his sword.”

The priest sat down.

“ Are there no relations on your wife’s side ?”

“ My wife was also an orphan. She inherited her little property from an uncle — her only relative. My daughter will remain alone in this vast world.”

“ And I ! ungrateful one ! You count me as nothing.”

“You, my dear cure ! You are like the good God — very good — but you belong to all the world. Y"ou seem as if you did not belong tjo any one.”

“Ah ! colonel, you have such a way of saying those things !”

“ I tell things as they are. Don’t you see? You have your poor, or rather your poor liaye you. You cannot take a new charge — a charge as heavy as that of an orphan.”

The cure felt the colonel was right, and did not insist any longe^.

“ When I am dead,” continued the colonel, — “ to-morrow, or sooner, perhaps,— you will take the child to the village, to the house of Madame La Marquise de Boutaric, who honors me with some regard. Give her this letter, and place Jeanne in her hands. All is provided for and arranged in these,” continued he, with a still firm voice, handing the priest a large package sealed with black wax, “ and I know the mar-

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quise too well not to be certain she will carry out my wishes. Tell her, however, that my thoughts of her, and confidence in her, have aided me to die.”

“ I will do all you desire. You cannot doubt that.”

“ Ah ! I do not doubt ; but my eyes tremble. It is the commencement of the end. The end will soon come.” He turned himself towards the nun. who was still praying. “ My sister,” said he, softly, “ will you be kind enough to call the child ?”

The sister went out.

The colonel, when alone with the priest, showed him, by a glance, the portrait of a beautiful lady hanging by a child’s. The cure handed it to him. It was a charming head, with an expression of refined though delicate sensibility. The oval outline of the face perhaps rather long; an intellectual brow, surrounded with light chestnut-colored hair hanging in soft waves on the cheeks; eyes of a light orange brown, shining in a liquid light.

“ To see her again ! To see ■ her again !” said the colonel, with an accent of deep tenderness, and a look which seemed to rekindle the last spark — a last lightning flash of passion.

The sister now returned with the child.

“ Jeanne, is it thou? Where art thou ?”

“ Here I am, father — here I am,” replied a young, pure, fresh and thrilling voice, whose tones sounded like silver.

At the same time, a large child (for ten years of age) whose features and expression recalled so faithfully the image of her mother, ran to the bed, and seized in her hands one of the hands already cold, and covered it with her tears, and re-warmed it with her kisses.

“ You love me well, then, Jeanne ?”

“ Do I love thee, father ? I love, thee as I love the good God !” replied the child, pressing her lips still lighter on the hand of the colonel.

“ And I must leave her?” murmured the unhappy father, casting on the priest a sorrowful look.

“ The separations of Christians are never eternal.”

“ Are they less painful for that ?”

“Yes for Faith softens them and Hope consoles them !”

The colonel raised himself on his elbow, and leaned towards his child; caressing with his other hand her long floating curls.

“Dear little one,” said he, speaking very low, “ I must leave you.”

“ Leave me, father ! thou dost not then love me. Why wilt thou leave? Why dost thou wish to leave me ?”

“ I do not wish it, my poor child ! and if I go, it is because I cannot help myself.”

“And where, then, dost thou go, father ?”

The colonel hesitated, not knowing how to reply.

“I am going to see thy mother,” he said at last. “ Thy little mother, who loves thee so much. Thou must remember her.”

“ Ah ! thou art then going to mamma, whom the men in black have carried away, and who never came back again. Thou wilt do as she has done. Thou wilt return no more !”

“ Fear nothing, my child, only be good and gentle, obeying the mistresses who will have the charge of raising and instructing thee, and we will meet again. I promise you that we will meet again.”

“ Yes,” replied Jeanne, the big tears running silently down her cheeks. “Yes,, mamma said the same thing, and I have never seen her since. Oh father ! father ! please do not leave me !” and her little arms .clung to the dying man, and tried to embrace him; as if to prevent him from leaving.

The colonel made no reply : but big drops of cold perspiration formed at the roots of his hair and moistened his forehead. Nervous sighs shook his breast, agitated his arms and contorted his face; whilst his fingers fidgeted without ceasing, trying by a movement entirely mechanical, to pull up the bed clothes and curtains of his bed.

A familiar witness of those dark movements which accompany the last act of the human drama, the cure recognised with too much certainty, the foreshadowing of death, and to spare the child this frightful spectacle while remembrance in later years would darken her thoughts, he motioned silently to the sister to lead her away.

Trembling, overpowered by her emotions, Jeanne, alas ! had neither the will nor strength to resist. The sister put

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Tier arms round the child’s waist, the little hands unclasped, and she suffered herself to be carried away.

The colonel, who had closed his eyes, feeling his child no more near him, understood too well the details of this sad scene.

“ It is well ;” said he to the cure ; “you are right! I should frighten her; she must see me no more.”

“ No — No more in this world !”

The colonel made no reply, and fell apparently into a stupor. From time to time he raised himself with a sudden violence, his breathing became hard and painful. The priest knelt, and recited in a low^tone those beautiful prayers for the dying, full of pity, full of tears, which the church sends to their aid — to aid the soul of the Christian in leaving this world. Suffocation, want of breath, and vertigo, soon overcame the unhappy mortal. He spoke but incoherent words, without connection, among which ■one could yet distinguish the names of his wife and daughter, Elise and Jeanne. His two loves ! Then some short lamentations, followed by long faintness and •prostrations, so entire that one would believe he was already gone.

After coming out of one of these death-like swoons, “ My cross !” he said, holding out his arms, as if to seize something.

The priest tried to unfasten his cross of commander from the head of the bed.

“ No ! not that !” cried he ; “ my cross, of a Chevalier !”

The cure brought from the mantelpiece a cross of artillery, which hung by a faded, rumpled, discolored ribbon. The cross seemed to have been broken by sabre blows on the breast of the soldier, and in more than one place little pieces of the enamel were gone. After dusting it, the priest placed it in the colonel’s hand; but the slight weight seemed too heavy ; for he let it fall. It is always our first success that causes pleasure.

“ I had first left school a second lieutenant when the general fastened this to my coat* Oh, that happy day ! It must, to-morrow, be fastened on my white clothes !”

His eyes closed, this time for ever. The priest held a looking-glass to his mouth, but no breath tarnished its pure surface. He placed his hand on the heart, but no movement was perceptible.

Already, the violet paleness of death spread over the forehead, cheeks and lips of the one who, still living, was no more than a corpse.

“ All is ended for him in this world !” murmured the cure in a low voice: He then placed the cloth over his face; and assisted by the trembling chorist, arranged the tapers for the funeral watches, and recalled the sister, whose duty it was to recite by the deceased the prayers for the dead.

After this he descended into the garden, where he found the little Jeanne, seated in a thoughtful mood, alongside of the fountain, crying silently, her eyes watching intently her father’s window. A

Seeing him coming, the child very seriously walked to meet him, looking in his face, without daring to speak. “ My child,” said the good cure, taking her little hand, “ your father orders us both to go to Avranches, to the house of a good lady you know, and whom I am certain you will love, Madame de Boutaric.”

Jeanne understood all ; but she had neither tears, cries, nor sobs ; only she became greener than the grass her little feet trod on. “ My poor father !” said she, in a tone of deep, almost fierce despair, “ I will never see him again ! — Never any more I Oh, my God !”

“ You will see him again in Heaven, with your mother !”

“ Oh, that is not the same thing,” she murmured.

Her self-control left her suddenly. Burning tears flowed from her eyes. Sobs, much more violent from having been so long restrained, shook her breast, and she threw herself, with her face on the ground, before the door of the house. The priest, who knew, alas ! too well, the weakness and misery of human creatures, unable to bear for any length of time the intensity of such feelings, allowed this sorrow to wear itself out by degrees, from its own excess. In a few moments he bent towards the child, and with an authoritative sweetness touched her gently on the shoulder :

“Jeanne, get up,” said he; “it is your father’s wish.”

The child rose, and without even try-

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ing to dry her tears which continued to flow, she said : “ Sir, I am ready.”

In a few moments the priest and the child, seated in a miserable country vehicle, drawn by a Normandy pony, drove towards Avranches.

Chapter III

THE Colonel Fab re Herville, after rapidly passing the first steps of his noble career ; and conquering, whilst still young, the grades that promised to his ambition the most glorious future, had been stopped by a most unlooked-for circumstance. A fever, taken in the marshes of Algiers, rendered a leave of absence necessary, which lasted for two years. At* the time when he was about to join his regiment, the colonel, who was thirty-nine years of age, met near Avranches, Mademoiselle de Myrians. Of an ancient family, Mademoiselle de Myrians was one of those accomplished women the world seldom offers us, as if to show us that if perfection is a rarity, it is not a myth. Nothing had spoiled the happy disposition of her sweet nature. To all her other qualities she added the charm of perfect goodness, which makes the happiness of those among whom we live. Colonel Derville understood all the treasures of this adorable soul, for he confided his future to her with a security and abandonment that nothing ever disturbed.

Much younger than her husband, Elise nevertheless felt for him a deep affection, which, with years, became a rare passion. He was everything for her, even as she was everything to him. It was real conjugal love; a rare phenomenon in the heart of our old worn-out society; conjugal love in its greatest height, the most brilliant and the most pure. With this radiant serenity, which the calm and satisfied conscience alone can give, a great poet has said, “ They love well who love in sin and fear.” Perhaps there may be, for certain natures, unfortunately, too powerful an attraction in those passions where an incessant fear intensifies the always-troubled joys.

The daughters of Adam are also the daughters of Eve, and the forbidden fruit, although it is no longer offered by the serpent, has not the less an irresistible attraction. There are others, on the contrary, for whom happiness is never separated from duty , and to whose heart it is necessary to feel its sweetest desires, sanctioned by Heaven and by earth, to be surrounded by the favor of God and the respect of men.

Such a one was Mile. Elise de Myrians ; she was one of those souls that the Northern poets, with a graceful flattery, call “ the white souls ;” and like the white ermine, she could have taken this motto of an old British heraldry — “ A stain will kill me.”

This stain never came. She died in her beauty, in her youth, and in the joys of her first love. They could give her for a shroud, her bridal robe, and place in her tomb, instead of the yellow immortelles, the crown of orange blossoms, emblem of the ideal purity of the virgin soul.

Sometimes in the evenings, seated by her husband on the doorstep, Elise would nurse the little Jeanne, while he read aloud.

In looking at her, with that beautiful forehead, those transparent temples, with her large eyes veiled by the long lashes whose shadows moved on her cheeks, one would involuntarily dream of those beautiful Madonnas, of the most illustrious painters of the Virgin Mother ; for whom Raphael exhausted all the resources of the divine art, and who are for us to-day, in their adorable type, the emblem of this fecund purity, and of this chaste maternity, of which the Christian alone has been able to realize the idea upon this earth.

Mme. Derville’s face was truly the index of her soul. Her mind never had one thought, nor her heart an emotion of which her husband was not the object.

There are times in men’s lives when the entire, deep, exclusive love they inspire in a woman has for them a dear value — it is when they reach the end of their youth ; when they approach mature age ; when they generally cause a calm, lasting affection, rather than an enthusiastic passion. Then this intense devotion of a young and charming girl, makes them envied by every one, and is for them one of the most delicious of flatteries. It brings back to them the

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bright hopes of the past. They feel it is their last chance of happiness — an unexpected, unhoped for chance, that will never return again ; and they seize and cling to it with that ardor which all departing blessings inspire.

Have you ever contemplated the last rose of the fall ? That pale rose which seems already fading on its stem ? It has the charm of passing beauty, which dies and disappears. A deep, fleeting charm — a melancholy symbol of our momentary pleasures, our rapid endings, onr ephemeral joys. We gather it with an involuntary emotion, and we breathe its sweet perfume with unexpected pleasure. ThiS symbolizes the whole history of this sweet love-marriage.

Col. Derville had for this young wife, who gave herself entirely to him, an unbounded affection — she was everything to him, as he was everything to her. The little kingdom that she ruled became his universe. The present caused him to forget the future. He forgot glory in love, and the white hedges of the Bosery bordered his horizon.

A little girl, born to them in the second year of their marriage, completed their happiness, and gave the last joy which they needed. This happiness, deeper than all other human joys. To see their love live again in the fruit of this same love, to see her increase and develop before their eyes, alongside of them, between them, this little soul — daughter of their soul !

A child ! is it not, between two lovers, as a living treaty of union ?

The colonel adored Jeanne, for her exact likeness to her mother; Mme. Derville, because she felt her husband’s love increase after the child’s birth ; or, without looking for so many reasons, both loved her because she was their own. Thus was completed this perfect, harmonious whole called a the family,” in the midst of which our best feelings are developed, and which is perfect when the father, the mother and the child are combined in the same group. A thought often found in ancient writings, has caused me a vague superstitious terror. It represents the gods as jealous of men, and with difficulty permitting their happiness. I am perfectly aware that man, according to ancient theology, was not created by the gods, but, on the contrary, against their will. Whilst the Supreme Being, such as modern theories teach, is at the same time a Creator and a Father.

And, alas ! when we see how rapidly our few days of allotted happiness escape, never to return, we unconsciously turn towards the ancient belief, and ask if it is not possible that a superior antagonistic power takes a wicked delight in blighting our joys in their birth. The worm always attacks the most brilliant flowers or the most delicious fruit.

Suddenly, in the midst of her delights of mother and of wife, Mme. Derville was taken with a mysterious, deep-rooted disease, that science soon declared incurable. At first, it was languor and depression, but, as it increased, soon turned to an unquiet restlessness. The disease overcame her, spread through her entire system, and resisted all remedies with a determined obstinacy. In watching her incessant walks, one could note her steps towards the fatal end. Already the eye increased in size, whilst the pupil shone with fervent brilliancy in the midst of liquid waters. Already one could see on her attenuated cheeks, blossom those roses of sickness, those flowers of death, which foretell the consumption of human creatures, as the violets and primroses herald forth the spring.