CHAPTER XI
CHÂTEAU DES NOIRES-FONTAINES
The Château of Noires-Fontaines, whither we have just conducted
two of the principal characters of our story, stood in one of
the most charming spots of the valley, where the city of Bourg
is built. The park, of five or six acres, covered with venerable
oaks, was inclosed on three sides by freestone walls, one of
which opened in front through a handsome gate of wrought-iron,
fashioned in the style of Louis XV.; the fourth side was bounded
by the little river called the Reissouse, a pretty stream that
takes its rise at Journaud, among the foothills of the Jura,
and flowing gently from south to north, joins the Saône at the
bridge of Fleurville, opposite Pont-de-Vaux, the birthplace of
Joubert, who, a month before the period of which we are writing,
was killed at the fatal battle of Novi.
Beyond the Reissouse, and along its banks, lay, to the right and
left of the Château des Noires-Fontaines, the village of Montagnac
and Saint-Just, dominated further on by that of Ceyzeriat. Behind
this latter hamlet stretched the graceful outlines of the hills
of the Jura, above the summits of which could be distinguished
the blue crests of the mountains of Bugey, which seemed to be
standing on tiptoe in order to peer curiously over their younger
sisters' shoulder at what was passing in the valley of the Ain.
It was in full view of this ravishing landscape that Sir John
awoke. For the first time in his life, perhaps, the morose and
taciturn Englishman smiled at nature. He fancied himself in one
of those beautiful valleys of Thessaly celebrated by Virgil,
beside the sweet slopes of Lignon sung by Urfé, whose birthplace,
in spite of what the biographers say, was falling into ruins
not three miles from the Château des Noires-Fontaines. He was
roused by three light raps at his door. It was Roland who came
to see how he had passed the night. He found him radiant as the
sun playing among the already yellow leaves of the chestnuts
and the lindens.
"Oh! oh! Sir John," cried Roland, "permit me to congratulate
you. I expected to find you as gloomy as the poor monks of the
Chartreuse, with their long white robes, who used to frighten
me so much in my childhood; though, to tell the truth, I was
never easily frightened. Instead of that I find you in the midst
of this dreary October, as smiling as a morn of May."
"My dear Roland," replied Sir John, "I am an orphan; I lost my
mother at my birth and my father when I was twelve years old.
At an age when children are usually sent to school, I was master
of a fortune producing a million a year; but I was alone in the
world, with no one whom I loved or who loved me. The tender joys of
family life are completely unknown to me. From twelve to eighteen
I went to Cambridge, but my taciturn and perhaps haughty character
isolated me from my fellows. At eighteen I began to travel. You who
scour the world under the shadow of your flag; that is to say, the
shadow of your country, and are stirred by the thrill of battle,
and the pride of glory, cannot imagine what a lamentable thing
it is to roam through cities, provinces, nations, and kingdoms
simply to visit a church here, a castle there; to rise at four in
the morning at the summons of a pitiless guide, to see the sun
rise from Rigi or Etna; to pass like a phantom, already dead,
through the world of living shades called men; to know not where
to rest; to know no land in which to take root, no arm on which
to lean, no heart in which to pour your own! Well, last night, my
dear Roland, suddenly, in an instant, in a second, this void in
my life was filled. I lived in you; the joys I seek were yours.
The family which I never had, I saw smiling around you. As I looked
at your mother I said to myself: 'My mother was like that, I am
sure.' Looking at your sister, I said: 'Had I a sister I could
not have wished her otherwise.' When I embraced your brother,
I thought that I, too, might have had a child of that age, and
thus leave something behind me in the world, whereas with the
nature I know I possess, I shall die as I have lived, sad, surly
with others, a burden to myself. Ah! you are happy, Roland! you
have a family, you have fame, you have youth, you have that which
spoils nothing in a man--you have beauty. You want no joys. You
are not deprived of a single delight. I repeat it, Roland, you
are a happy man, most happy!"
"Good!" said Roland. "You forget my aneurism, my lord."
Sir John looked at Roland increduously. Roland seemed to enjoy
the most perfect health.
"Your aneurism against my million, Roland," said Lord Tanlay,
with a feeling of profound sadness, "providing that with this
aneurism you give me this mother who weeps for joy on seeing
you again; this sister who faints with delight at your return;
this child who clings upon your neck like some fresh young fruit
to a sturdy young tree; this château with its dewy shade, its
river with its verdant flowering banks, these blue vistas dotted
with pretty villages and white-capped belfries graceful as swans.
I would welcome your aneurism, Roland, and with death in two
years, in one, in six months; but six months of stirring, tender,
eventful and glorious life!"
Roland laughed in his usual nervous manner.
"Ah!" said he, "so this is the tourist, the superficial traveller,
the Wandering Jew of civilization, who pauses nowhere, gauges
nothing, judges everything by the sensation it produces in him. The
tourist who, without opening the doors of these abodes where dwell
the fools we call men, says: 'Behind these walls is happiness!'
Well, my dear friend, you see this charming river, don't you?
These flowering meadows, these pretty villages? It is the picture
of peace, innocence and fraternity; the cycle of Saturn, the
golden age returned; it is Eden, Paradise! Well, all that is
peopled by beings who have flown at each other's throats. The
jungles of Calcutta, the sedges of Bengal are inhabited by tigers
and panthers not one whit more ferocious or cruel than the denizens
of these pretty villages, these dewy lawns, and these charming
shores. After lauding in funeral celebrations the good, the great,
the immortal Marat, whose body, thank God! they cast into the
common sewer like carrion that he was, and always had been; after
performing these funeral rites, to which each man brought an
urn into which he shed his tears, behold! our good Bressans,
our gentle Bressans, these poultry-fatteners, suddenly decided
that the Republicans were all murderers. So they murdered them
by the tumbrelful to correct them of that vile defect common
to savage and civilized man--the killing his kind. You doubt
it? My dear fellow, on the road to Lons-le-Saulnier they will
show you, if you are curious, the spot where not six months ago
they organized a slaughter fit to turn the stomach of our most
ferocious troopers on the battlefield. Picture to yourself a
tumbrel of prisoners on their way to Lons-le-Saulnier. It was a
staff-sided cart, one of those immense wagons in which they take
cattle to market. There were some thirty men in this tumbrel,
whose sole crime was foolish exaltation of thought and threatening
language. They were bound and gagged; heads hanging, jolted by the
bumping of the cart; their throats parched with thirst, despair and
terror; unfortunate beings who did not even have, as in the times
of Nero and Commodus, the fight in the arena, the hand-to-hand
struggle with death. Powerless, motionless, the lust of massacre
surprised them in their fetters, and battered them not only in
life but in death; their bodies, when their hearts had ceased
to beat, still resounded beneath the bludgeons which mangled
their flesh and crushed their bones; while women looked on in
calm delight, lifting high the children, who clapped their hands
for joy. Old men who ought to have been preparing for a Christian
death helped, by their goading cries, to render the death of these
wretched beings more wretched still. And in the midst of these
old men, a little septuagenarian, dainty, powdered, flicking his
lace shirt frill if a speck of dust settled there, pinching his
Spanish tobacco from a golden snuff-box, with a diamond monogram,
eating his "amber sugarplums" from a Sevres bonbonnière, given him
by Madame du Barry, and adorned with the donor's portrait--this
septuagenarian--conceive the picture, my dear Sir John--dancing
with his pumps upon that mattress of human flesh, wearying his
arm, enfeebled by age, in striking repeatedly with his gold-headed
cane those of the bodies who seemed not dead enough to him, not
properly mangled in that cursed mortar! Faugh! My friend, I have
seen Montebello, I have seen Arcole, I have seen Rivoli, I have
seen the Pyramids, and I believe I could see nothing more terrible.
Well, my mother's mere recital, last night, after you had retired,
of what has happened here, made my hair stand on end. Faith! that
explains my poor sister's spasms just as my aneurism explains
mine."
Sir John watched Roland, and listened with that strange wonderment
which his young friend's misanthropical outbursts always aroused.
Roland seemed to lurk in the niches of a conversation in order to
fall upon mankind whenever he found an opportunity. Perceiving
the impression he had made on Sir John's mind, he changed his
tone, substituting bitter raillery for his philanthropic wrath.
"It is true," said he, "that, apart from this excellent aristocrat
who finished what the butchers had begun, and dyed in blood the
red heels of his pumps, the people who performed these massacres
belonged to the lower classes, bourgeois and clowns, as our ancestors
called those who supported them. The nobles manage things much
more daintily. For the rest, you saw yourself what happened at
Avignon. If you had been told that, you would never have believed
it, would you? Those gentlemen pillagers of stage coaches pique
themselves on their great delicacy. They have two faces, not
counting their mask. Sometimes they are Cartouche and Mandrin,
sometimes Amadis and Galahad. They tell fabulous tales of these
heroes of the highways. My mother told me yesterday of one called
Laurent. You understand, my dear fellow, that Laurent is a fictitious
name meant to hide the real name, just as a mask hides the face.
This Laurent combined all the qualities of a hero of romance,
all the accomplishments, as you English say, who, under pretext
that you were once Normans, allow yourselves occasionally to
enrich your language with a picturesque expression, or some word
which has long, poor beggar! asked and been refused admittance
of our own scholars. This Laurent was ideally handsome. He was
one of seventy-two Companions of Jehu who have lately been tried
at Yssen-geaux. Seventy were acquitted; he and one other were
the only ones condemned to death. The innocent men were released
at once, but Laurent and his companion were put in prison to
await the guillotine. But, pooh! Master Laurent had too pretty a
head to fall under the executioner's ignoble knife. The judges who
condemned him, the curious who expected to witness him executed,
had forgotten what Montaigne calls the corporeal recommendation of
beauty. There was a woman belonging to the jailer of Yssen-geaux,
his daughter, sister or niece; history--for it is history and
not romance that I am telling you--history does not say which.
At all events the woman, whoever she was, fell in love with the
handsome prisoner, so much in love that two hours before the
execution, just as Master Laurent, expecting the executioner,
was sleeping, or pretending to sleep, as usually happens in such
cases, his guardian angel came to him. I don't know how they
managed; for the two lovers, for the best of reasons, never told
the details; but the truth is--now remember; Sir John, that this
is truth and not fiction--that Laurent was free, but, to his great
regret, unable to save his comrade in the adjoining dungeon.
Gensonné, under like circumstances, refused to escape, preferring
to die with the other Girondins; but Gensonné did not have the
head of Antinous on the body of Apollo. The handsomer the head,
you understand, the more one holds on to it. So Laurent accepted
the freedom offered him and escaped; a horse was waiting for him
at the next village. The young girl, who might have retarded
or hindered his flight, was to rejoin him the next day. Dawn
came, but not the guardian angel. It seems that our hero cared
more for his mistress than he did for his companion; he left his
comrade, but he would not go without her. It was six o'clock,
the very hour for his execution. His impatience mastered him.
Three times had he turned his horse's head toward the town, and
each time drew nearer and nearer. At the third time a thought
flashed through his brain. Could his mistress have been taken,
and would she pay the penalty for saving him? He was then in
the suburbs. Spurring his horse, he entered the town with face
uncovered, dashed through people who called him by name, astonished
to see him free and on horseback, when they expected to see him
bound and in a tumbrel on his way to be executed. Catching sight
of his guardian angel pushing through the crowd, not to see him
executed, but to meet him, he urged his horse past the executioner,
who had just learned of the disappearance of one of his patients,
knocking over two or three bumpkins with the breast of his Bayard.
He bounded toward her, swung her over the pommel of his saddle,
and, with a cry of joy and a wave of his hat, he disappeared like
M. de Condé at the battle of Lens. The people all applauded,
and the women thought the action heroic, and all promptly fell
in love with the hero on the spot."
Roland, observing that Sir John was silent, paused and questioned
him by a look. "Go on," replied the Englishman; "I am listening.
And as I am sure you are telling me all this in order to come
to something you wish to say, I await your point."
"Well," resumed Roland, laughing, "you are right, my dear friend,
and, on my word, you know me as if we had been college chums.
Well, what idea do you suppose has been cavorting through my brain
all night? It is that of getting a glimpse of these gentlemen of
Jehu near at hand."
"Ah, yes, I understand. As you failed to get yourself killed
by M. de Barjols, you want to try your chance of being killed
by M. Morgan."
"Or any other, my dear Sir John," replied the young officer calmly;
"for I assure you that I have nothing in particular against M.
Morgan; quite the contrary, though my first impulse when he came
into the room and made his little speech--don't you call it a
speech--?"
Sir John nodded affirmatively.
"Though my first thought," resumed Roland, "was to spring at
his throat and strangle him with one hand, and to tear off his
mask with the other."
"Now that I know you, my dear Roland, I do indeed wonder how
you refrained from putting such a fine project into execution."
"It was not my fault, I swear! I was just on the point of it when
my companion stopped me."
"So there are people who can restrain you?"
"Not many, but he can."
"And now you regret it?"
"Honestly, no! This brave stage-robber did the business with
such swaggering bravado that I admired him. I love brave men
instinctively. Had I not killed M. de Barjols I should have liked
to be his friend. It is true I could not tell how brave he was
until I had killed him. But let us talk of something else; that
duel is one of my painful thoughts. But why did I come up? It
was certainly not to talk of the Companions of Jehu, nor of M.
Laurent's exploits--Ah! I came to ask how you would like to
spend your time. I'll cut myself in quarters to amuse you, my
dear guest, but there are two disadvantages against me: this
region, which is not very amusing, and your nationality, which
is not easily amused."
"I have already told you, Roland," replied Lord Tanlay, offering
his hand to the young man, "that I consider the Château des
Noires-Fontaines a paradise."
"Agreed; but still in the fear that you may find your paradise
monotonous, I shall do my best to entertain you. Are you fond of
archeology--Westminster and Canterbury? We have a marvel here,
the church of Brou; a wonder of sculptured lace by Colonban.
There is a legend about it which I will tell you some evening
when you cannot sleep. You will see there the tombs of Marguerite
de Bourbon, Philippe le Bel, and Marguerite of Austria. I will
puzzle you with the problem of her motto: 'Fortune, infortune,
fort'une,' which I claim to have solved by a Latinized version:
'Fortuna, in fortuna, forti una.' Are you fond of fishing, my
dear friend? There's the Reissouse at your feet, and close at
hand a collection of hooks and lines belonging to Edouard, and
nets belonging to Michel; as for the fish, they, you know, are
the last thing one thinks about. Are you fond of hunting? The
forest of Seillon is not a hundred yards off. Hunting to hounds
you will have perforce to renounce, but we have good shooting.
In the days of my old bogies, the Chartreuse monks, the woods
swarmed with wild boars, hares and foxes. No one hunts there
now, because it belongs to the government; and the government
at present is nobody. In my capacity as General Bonaparte's
aide-de-camp I'll fill the vacancy, and we'll see who dares meddle
with me, if, after chasing the Austrians on the Adige and the
Mamelukes on the Nile, I hunt the boars and deer and the hares
and foxes on the Reissouse. One day of archeology, one day of
fishing, and one of hunting, that's three already. You see, my
dear fellow, we have only fifteen or sixteen left to worry about."
"My dear Roland," said Sir John sadly, and without replying to
the young officer's wordy sally, "won't you ever tell me about
this fever which sears you, this sorrow which undermines you?"
"Ah!" said Roland, with his harsh, doleful laugh. "I have never
been gayer than I am this morning; it's your liver, my lord,
that is out of order and makes you see everything black."
"Some day I hope to be really your friend," replied Sir John
seriously; "then you will confide in me, and I shall help you
to bear your burden."
"And half my aneurism!--Are you hungry, my lord?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Because I hear Edouard on the stairs, coming up to tell us that
breakfast is ready."
As Roland spoke, the door opened and the boy burst out: "Big
brother Roland, mother and sister Amélie are waiting breakfast
for Sir John and you."
Then catching the Englishman's right hand, he carefully examined
the first joint of the thumb and forefinger.
"What are you looking at, my little friend?" asked Sir John.
"I was looking to see if you had any ink on your fingers."
"And if I had ink on my fingers, what would it mean?"
"That you had written to England, and sent for my pistols and
sword."
"No, I have not yet written," said Sir John; "but I will to-day."
"You hear, big brother Roland? I'm to have my sword and my pistols
in a fortnight!"
And the boy, full of delight, offered his firm rosy cheek to
Sir John, who kissed it as tenderly as a father would have done.
Then they went to the dining-room where Madame de Montrevel and
Amélie were awaiting them.
