A Sheaf of Bluebells E-Book

Baroness Emmuska Orczy

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Two émigré families petition Emperor Napoleon for the restoration of their lands under the conditional amnesty offered. The first is Monsieur le comte de Courson, for himself and his daughter Fernande. The second is Madame la marquise de Mortain and her son Laurent. And it just do happens that these two elders, brother and sister, have long ago arranged for their children to wed. Now the Marquise has been out of the country, but her elder son, from her first marriage, is Ronnay de Maurel, a good Republican, brought up by his uncle Gaston–who “eats peas with his knife and wears sabots and a blouse” and voted for the death of the King. With this sort of upbringing, the warrior-trained Ronnay, so long ago deserted by his mother, seems by report to be a very heathen and a mere provincial. And yet he lives in the Château de la Vieuville and enjoys the title of Monsieur le comte and enjoys the trust of the Emperor himself. What will happen when the brothers and their cousin are brought suddenly into close proximity to each other?

Leseprobe

Baroness Emmuska Orczy

A SHEAF OF BLUEBELLS

Copyright

First published in 1917

Copyright © 2018 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

THE MASTERS OF FRANCE

I

Among the many petitions presented, that year by émigrés desirous of returning to France under the conditional amnesty granted to them by the newly-crowned Emperor, was one signed by Madame la marquise de Mortain and by her son Laurent, then aged twenty-one years, and one signed by Monsieur le comte de Courson for himself and his daughter Fernande. Gaillard says in his memoirs of Fouché that the latter was greatly averse to the petition being granted; but that Napoleon, then on the point of starting for his campaign in Prussia, was inclined to leniency in-this matter — leniency which roused the ire and contempt of the Minister of Police — the man who, of a truth, and above the Emperor himself, was virtual dictator of France these days.

“A brood of plotters and intriguers,” he said scornfully. “I should have thought your Majesty had had enough of those soi-disant great ladies and gentlemen of Normandy and Brittany. I wouldn’t have them inside these dominions if I had my way.”

It seems that this phrase: “If I had my way,” highly amused the Emperor. Was it not a well-known fact that in all matters pertaining to the internal organization of the new Empire of France, Fouché ruled far more absolutely than did Napoleon? He knew more. He suspected more. Minister of Police and Minister of the interior at this time, Fouché had made himself feared even — so it was said — by his imperial and capricious master.

And so — the obscure secretary who was present at this interview tells us — the Emperor laughed, and for once Fouché did not have his way. On the eve of the campaign which was to culminate in the humiliation of Prussia and the Peace of Tilsit, the soldier-Emperor had a throe of compassion, of mercy, a shrugging of the shoulders which meant immunity from exile for hundreds of men and women — a home for countless wanderers in foreign lands.

Fouché argued. “The Fouvielles I don’t mind, nor yet Joubert, nor those Fumels. They won’t do much harm. We might allow the Liancourts to return, though their property has been sold by the State, which always leads to trouble. But the Mortains!!! and the Coursons!!… Why! I would as lief grant the shades of Fox and Pitt a free permit to wander through France at will.”

But we may take it that for once his arguments were of no avail. Napoleon’s clemency was extended to the Mortains, as it was to the Coursons — this we know, seeing that both the young Marquis and the Comte de Courson, his maternal uncle, figured so prominently in the events which this true chronicle sets forth to record. As to the cause of this clemency, or, rather, as to the cause of Fouché not getting his way this once… well, ’tis our turn to shrug our shoulders.

Had Fouché really desired to keep the Mortains and the Coursons out of France, Fouché would have had his way. Of this there can be no doubt, seeing that Napoleon left the country at the head of his army soon after the day when he had that interview with his Minister of Police, leaving the latter more absolutely master of France than he had ever been before; so why should Fouché not have had his way with the Mortains and with Baudouin de Courson and his daughter Fernande?

Have we not cause for shrugging our shoulders? and for giving credence to the rumours which were current throughout France at this time — namely, that the dreaded Minister of Police had at this time begun to coquet with the Royalist party, as well as with the Jacobins and the English agents, with Talleyrand and with the Comte d’Artois — with any and every party in fact, who plotted against the master whom in his heart he had already betrayed.

II

The aforesaid obscure secretary who hath so aptly described the interview between the Emperor and Fouché, tells us that the latter, after he had bowed himself out of the Presence, returned to his private chamber in the ministry, and promptly sent for Monsieur Dubois — then Chief Préfet of Police.

“Monsieur Dubois,” he commanded, “I want the dossier of the Mortains and also of the de Coursons now at once. The Emperor is inclined to grant them leave to return… but I don’t know… I must consider…”

“I can tell you all about the Mortains and the Coursons without referring to their dossier,” retorted Dubois gruffly.

“Well?”

“The ci-devant Marquise de Mortain…”

“Not ci-devant any longer, Monsieur Dubois,” broke in Fouché with a suave smile. “The lady is Madame la marquise now… you yourself are ‘Monsieur,’ are you not? We have left the ‘citizen’ and ‘citizeness’ of our revolutionary era well behind us, remember, since our illustrious Master placed the crown of Imperial France upon his own head. France is an Empire now, Monsieur Dubois. There are no ci-devants any more, and quite a number of aristocrats.”

Dubois gave a growl of understanding. It was not easy for his rough, uncultured mind to grasp all the various subtleties of Fouché’s irony. He hated Napoleon’s all-powerful Minister, hated him all the more that Fouché astute and tortuous mentality was beyond his comprehension, and that he never knew whether the great man was laughing at him or not.

“Well,” he said finally, with a shrug of his wide shoulders, “Marquise or ci-devant I care not; but, anyhow, she is not a woman I would care to trust, and the Emperor is very ill-advised…”

“The Emperor, my dear Monsieur Dubois,” once more broke in the Minister urbanely, “takes advice from no one. He starts next week for Prussia at the head of his army; he will return anon, having won fresh laurels for France and further undying glory for himself… today he is inclined to clemency. Madame la marquise de Mortain and her son will be allowed to return to France, so will Monsieur le comte de Courson and his daughter Fernande; they will be allowed to retake possession of their château and of such of their lands as have not been sold by the State…”

“The lands have all been sold,” rejoined the préfet curtly, “to worthy farmers whom it were a scandal to dispossess…”

“Are we dispossessing any one, my dear Monsieur Dubois?” queried Fouché, with an indulgent smile directed at the other’s Republican ardour, “any one, I mean, who happens to have bought confiscated land?”

“Not yet,” muttered the other under his breath, “but…”

“As you were saying, Monsieur le préfet?…” here interposed the Minister more haughtily, “Madame la marquise de Mortain is a widow, I think.”

“Yes. For the second time.”

“She was first the wife of Bertrand de Maurel…”

“Who would have been a good patriot had he lived.”

“We must imagine so,” said Fouché, with a smile.

“He died in ’82 — separated from his wife whom he hated.”

“But there was a child of that marriage.”

“Yes, Ronnay de Maurel, a loyal patriot… a fine Republican…”

“Shall we say a fine Bonapartist, my good Monsieur Dubois?” said the Minister of Police significantly. “I like and trust Ronnay de Maurel. I would not like to see him tarred with the worn-out brush of the past decade.”

“Well… Republican or Bonapartist— ’tis all the same — what? I was one of those who voted for the proclamation and Ronnay de Maurel was another. First Consul for life, with all the splendours of past monarchies, or frankly Emperor of the French, there was not much to choose. You were an ardent Republican, too, at one time — eh, Monsieur le Ministre?”

“Quite so — quite so. But we were not speaking of mine unworthy self, but of Madame la marquise de Mortain and of her son Ronnay de Maurel.”

“Son, indeed!” retorted Dubois, with a gruff laugh. “Monsieur de Maurel has been taught to execrate his mother. He was only four years old when his father died, but an uncle brought him up — old Gaston de Maurel — a magnificent patriot if ever there was one. Nothing of the whilom aristo about him… eats peas with his knife and wears sabots and a blouse… he voted for the death of the King… just as you did — eh, Monsieur le Ministre?”

“Just as I did, my dear friend — and I am proud of it. Gaston de Maurel and I sat in the Assembly of the Convention as representatives of the people of France, and in the name of the people we decreed that the tyrant Louis Capet, known to the world as Louis XVI, King of France, should die upon the scaffold as a traitor to the nation which he had set out to govern. Gaston de Maurel may eat peas with a knife, but he rendered the Republic and the Directorate infinite services in quelling the so-called Royalist risings in his own province of Normandy.”

“Now he is old. Some say that he has not many months to live. Ronnay de Maurel dwells, with him in his Chateau de la Vieuville, near Villemor. They both live like peasants in a couple of rooms in the sumptuous château. The old man is a miser: he has accumulated immense wealth in these past twenty years. Ronnay de Maurel, on the other hand, owns the sumptuous demesnes of La Frontenay, which he inherited from his father, together with the foundries, where he employs five thousand men and manufactures war material for the Grand Army. He is already one of the richest men in France — and he is his uncle’s sole heir; when old Gaston dies the de Maurel riches will be uncountable…”

“And he, too, eats peas with his knife,” concluded Fouché, with a sardonic smile.

“And hardly knows how to read and write,” assented the préfet of police. “A succession of tutors at La Vieuville testify to the rough temper and the obstinate savagery of this descendant of aristos.”

“Yes, so I have been told,” mused Fouché. “I understand that a de Maurel fought in the First Crusade, that another was Captain of Musketeers under Louis XIII; but the present holder of the historic name is an ardent Bonapartist, as you say. He fought like a lion against the Royalists in Vendée; he crossed the Alps with Napoleon, and was wounded at Marengo and at Hohenlinden. At Austerlitz, where he accomplished prodigies of valour, an Austrian bullet lamed him for life. He is a Grand Eagle of the Legion of Honour. His religion is Bonaparte… he knows no science save that of arms — reads no books and does not know the Carmagnole from the Marseillaise — he is illiterate, uncultured, almost a savage… These are all facts, are they not, Monsieur Dubois?”

“Aye! Ronnay de Maurel is all that and more. He lives at La Vieuville, not ten kilomètres from Courson, where Madame la marquise, his mother, will now be taking up her abode. Oh!” added the préfet of police with a malevolent grin, “how those two will execrate one another!”

“And watch over one another,” commented Fouché with his enigmatic smile. “Ronnay de Maurel will act as a check on the intrigues which might be hatching presently in Madame de Mortain’s fertile brain.”

“Nothing — and no one can act as a check on that woman’s love of intrigue,” growled Dubois surlily. “She and her son Laurent will give us all plenty to do until…”

He made a significant gesture with his hand against his neck. Fouché smiled. “We can always give them plenty of rope,” he said. “How old is Laurent de Mortain?”

“Twenty-one or two… but he has fought against his own country since he was sixteen. Madame de Mortain favours a marriage for him with Fernande de Courson, his cousin.”

“The daughter of Baudouin de Courson?”

“Yes. His only daughter. He is Madame de Mortain’s only brother. Their properties adjoin.”

“I know. He, too, has been granted leave by the Emperor to return to France.”

“A whole pack of those confounded émigrés,” once more growled the préfet of police — this time with a savage oath, “settled down in the most disaffected province of France. Joseph de Puisaye still at large… the department seething with discontent… everything ready for rebellion… the Emperor away… Ah! we shall have a fine time down there, I reckon.”

“Bah!” quoth Fouché lightly, “they are not very dangerous now. For one thing, the Mortains, the Coursons and the whole pack of them are as poor as church mice. Their lands and farms have all been sold; the Mortains have not even a château in which to live.”

“The Château of Courson stands.”

“A dilapidated barrack.”

“Quite so — but large enough to harbour every rebel who chooses to hatch a plot against the safety of the Empire. The Mortains and Coursons will herd together there: Joseph de Puisaye, François Prigent and D’Aché will use it as their headquarters. From there their bands of brigands will be let loose upon both departments — highway robbery, intimidation, pillage and arson — those Chouans stick at nothing nowadays. England no longer supplies them with money for their so-called Royalist cause, and they must get money somehow. You remember their criminal outrage upon old Monsieur de Ris, and their theft in his château of money, valuables and jewellery. You remember the murder of Andrein, the Constitutional Bishop of Quimper, and the abduction of the Bishop of Vannes — all for purposes of robbery… Well, in my opinion, those exploits will sink into insignificance beside the ones which will be invented and organized in Courson under the presidency of Madame la marquise and her precious son and brother.”

Monsieur Dubois, préfet of police, had, while he spoke, worked himself up into a passion of fury. He gesticulated wildly with both arms, shrugged his wide shoulders, and banged his fist from time to time upon the desk in front of him, so that the inkstand and the papers rattled unceasingly and Monsieur le Ministre’s nerves were irritated beyond endurance. Now Monsieur Dubois had perforce to pause for want of breath. He drew his large coloured handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead, which was streaming.

“You exaggerate, my good Monsieur Dubois,” said Fouché soothingly. “You have an excellent colleague at Caen in the person of Monsieur Vincent…”

“Bah!” ejaculated Dubois contemptuously. “He is hand in glove with the Royalists.”

“And there’s Monsieur Caffarello, the préfet…”

Again an expressive shrug of the shoulders from Monsieur Dubois, who apparently had not much faith in the capabilities of his subordinates.

“And in Ronnay de Maurel you will have a valuable adjunct,” added the Minister, “unless…”

He paused, then continued with seeming irrelevance:

“Is Fernande de Courson pretty?”

“She has a reputation for beauty,” replied Dubois. “Why do you ask?”

“Nothing… nothing… a passing thought… a dart shot at random… You will have to keep your eyes very wide open, my good Monsieur Dubois.”

“You may trust me to do that, Monsieur le Ministre,” rejoined Dubois, with a leer of comprehension; there was no subtlety about the suggestion, and he had understood it well enough this time.

“There’s not much of the lady-killer about Ronnay de Maurel,” he added, laughing.

“Perhaps not,” rejoined Fouché dryly.

“And he may rejoin the army, after all.”

“No. He cannot do that. The Emperor won’t let him. He is far too useful in Normandy just now to be mere food for Prussian cannon.”

There was a pause. The préfet of police was tacitly dismissed. Monsieur le Ministre drew some papers close to him, and his delicate, blue-veined hand toyed with the pen.

“You don’t want me any more?” queried Dubois abruptly. He was always thankful to shake the dust of the ministerial chamber from his feet.

“Well… unless you have anything else to report, my good Monsieur Dubois,” rejoined Fouché pleasantly, “or any further information to impart to me about those Mortains — or the Coursons.”

“There’s nothing else. But I wish to God that the Emperor would reconsider his decision.”

“The Emperor seldom reconsiders any decision, my dear Dubois… once it is a decision. The Mortains and the Coursons have probably landed in France by now.”

“May they break their necks on the gangway,” growled Dubois.

“Amen to that,” quoth Fouché lightly. “In the meanwhile, will you see Monsieur de Réal on that subject and send special recommendations to the préfet and the commissary of police at Caen?…”

“And to Ronnay de Maurel, I should say.”

“No,” interposed the Minister peremptorily, “leave de Maurel alone. I will write to him myself.”

Such in substance was the interview between the Minister of Police and the chief préfet The secretary, among whose papers was found the above account, goes on to say that Monsieur Dubois, having taken his leave, the great man was busy for the next half-hour writing a letter with his own hand. With his own hand also he folded it, sealed it and addressed it. Then he handed it to his secretary with the express order that it should be sent to its destination by the next ministerial courier.

The letter was addressed to Monsieur le comte Ronnay de Maurel, at his Château de la Vieuville, near Villemor, Département de l’Orne.

Chapter 2

THE RETURN OF THE NATIVES

I

“What devastation! What wanton devastation!

Oh, those fiends! those cruel, callous fiends!” Madame la marquise de Mortain, for once in her life, was thoroughly unnerved. She was ready to cry… but tears had not come to her eyes for the past twenty years; their well-spring had run dry under the influence of an unconquerable energy and of a glowing enthusiasm for a cause which, at any rate, for the moment was doomed. Madame la marquise did not shed tears when she first arrived on a cold, showery night early in May to what had been the luxurious home of her childhood. She did not cry when she wandered half aimlessly through the salons and apartments of the Chateau de Courson — all that was left to her brother of his once splendid patrimony — a mere barrack now where most windows were cracked, where the paper hung in strips from the walls and the ceilings painted by Boucher were stained with smoke and damp.

It was just fourteen years now that the chateau had been standing empty and desolate — fourteen years during which snow, rain and tempest had worked their cruel way with shutters and window frames, with stucco, plaster and roofs. It was only the fabric itself — the fine solid stone walls of sixteenth century architecture which had remained intact — the monumental staircase, with its marble balustrade, the terraces and facades. True, the stone was stained by damp and mildew, and the ivy, which fourteen years ago had been a pretty and romantic feature of the copings, was now a danger to them through the vigour and rankness of its growth; but these were matters which could easily be remedied, and which in themselves enhanced rather than detracted from the picturesqueness of the stately pile.

It was the aspect of the interior of the château which had wrung from Madame la marquise de Mortain that cry of bitter sorrow. Fourteen years!!! She herself had been staying at Courson when her brother was at last compelled to dismiss all his servants, and to flee from the country, as many an aristocrat had done already in order to save not so much himself as his family — his young children — from the terrible doom which daily appeared more inevitable. Baudouin de Courson was then a widower, his daughter Fernande was a mere baby. He himself intended and did join the army of the Princes at Coblentz, together with Arnould de Mortain, his brother-in-law; Madame la marquise, with her son Laurent and with little Fernande de Courson, found refuge and hospitality in England, as many fugitive Royalists had already done; and the Château de Courson remained for a while under the care of old Matthieu Renard and of his wife Annette — faithful servants of the family.

Monsieur de Courson had left some money with them to cover the strictly necessary expenses of upkeep, and he promised to send them more from time to time. He was so sure that this abominable Revolution would not last. God and the Allied Powers would soon avenge the murder of King Louis, and sweep the country clean from all these assassins and cut-throats. He would restore the Dauphin to the throne of his fathers and the loyal adherents of their King to their lands!

Fourteen years had gone by since then. Military autocracy had succeeded the excesses of tyrannical democracy; the Directorate had supplanted the Republic; the Consulate had followed, and now Napoleon Bonaparte, the son of an obscure Corsican citizen, was Emperor of the French — conqueror of half Europe, master of the world — and the cause of the Bourbons appeared more hopeless than it had ever been before. Even the truculent Vendeans — the Royalists of Brittany and Normandy — had been pacified. It was no use fighting any longer. Cadoudal, the invincible champion of a lost cause, had perished on the scaffold, and his scattered followers were having recourse to robbery, arson and pillage, in order to collect funds for their needs, since England had ceased to pour money and treasure into their bottomless coffers.

Matthieu Renard and Annette, his wife, had long since been forced to abandon the château. No money was forthcoming from Coblentz or from England. Food was dear and Matthieu still vigorous. He took up work with the farmers and cultivators who had supplanted his aristocratic masters on the domain of Courson. The degree of the National Convention of the 1st of February, ’92, had finally dispossessed of their lands those émigrés who did not choose to return to France; the land and farms were sold for the benefit of the State. Worthy bourgeois and peasants settled down on them and planted their cabbages in the former well-preserved enclosures of Monsieur le comte’s pleasure grounds. Alone, the vast château, with its reception-rooms in enfilade, its numerous state-bedrooms, elaborate servants’ quarters, stablings and coach-houses, proved unsaleable. It remained the property of the nation until the day when the soldier-Emperor with a stroke of his pen restored it to its original owners.

It was little more now than an empty husk — swept clean by ruthless, thieving hands of every relic from the past — stripped of every object of value. When Monsieur le comte arrived, the tri-colour flag was still waving on its staff up aloft, and across the stone façade was writ in large letters the great Republican device: “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!”

Madame la marquise de Mortain, who accompanied her brother on his return to his home, as she had done in exile, had the flag torn down and the device erased; but it would take months of labour and a mint of money to restore the chateau to its former splendour; and labour was scarce these days when the Grand Army, fighting half Europe risen in coalition against the Corsican usurper, was taking heavy toll of the manhood of the country and winning undying laurels at Marengo and Austerlitz, in Italy and in Prussia. And even labour was less scarce than money.

Madame la marquise, wandering through the dismantled salons and through the dank apartments eaten into by rust and damp, did not cry, nor did she wring her hands, but the hatred which had burned in her heart for fourteen years against the persecutors of her caste and the murderers of her King stirred within her with renewed violence, and she registered an oath that all the energy, the strength and the cunning which she possessed would more than ever be devoted to the undoing of the usurper and the triumph of the cause of her King.

“And for this,” she said to Monsieur le comte de Courson, who had viewed his devastated patrimony in moodiness and silence, “for this the château is admirably situated. The country round seems more lonely than it ever was before, the woods are more dense, the moors more inaccessible, The spies of that infamous Bonaparte can never penetrate to our villages. We are within easy reach of Brest and of the English agents, and the whole country is seething with revolt against the tyranny of militarism, the dearness of food, the excessive taxation. We have not come here, Baudouin,” she continued vehemently, “in order to lament and to sit still under crying injustice and the rule of a base-born usurper. We have come in order to do and to fight.

It is going to be war to the knife in Normandy once again, and let the Corsican and his crowd look to themselves. Cadoudal’s bomb failed — daggers, poisons have failed… Bonaparte is surrounded and guarded by the most astute and the most unscrupulous police the world has ever known. Well, we’ll bribe his guard and outwit his police. Never for one single hour of the day or night shall the usurper feel that his life is safe from lurking executioners! Daggers? poisons? We’ll try them all again in turn. He has stuck at nothing — we’ll stick at nothing; an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; we’ll meet murder with murder and pillage with pillage. And, in the meanwhile, we’ll fight — fight to the last man — fight with every resource at our command. Money we must have… we’ll loot and we’ll rob and we’ll burn… They are all bandits, those revolutionary cut-throats; well, we’ll be bandits, too, and cutthroats and assassins if need be, and we’ll not cry ‘peace’ or ‘halt’ until Louis XVIII, by the grace of God, has come into his own again.”

Later in the day, fired by her own enthusiasm, lashed into fury by the sight of her ruined childhood’s home, Madame la marquise was still making wild plans for the coming guerrilla campaign against the Corsican and his army. Monsieur de Courson tried to pacify her with a few counsels of prudence.

“At any rate, for the moment, my dear Denise,” he said, “we must not brusque matters. We must let Joseph de Puisaye and Prigent make their plans quietly. Enough that for the moment they know that this house is at their disposal…”

“Enough?” retorted Madame vehemently. “Nothing will be enough, save the death of that abominable Bonaparte. Oh!” she added, with a sigh of desperate impatience as she stretched out her arms in longing, “how I long to be even with that usurper and his crowd of vulgar sycophants!

How I long to see him fawn for mercy and cringe at Versailles at the foot of King Louis’ throne, whilst…”

“We are not there yet, my dear Denise,” quoth the Comte gently, “and you must remember that our party has become very scattered and very weak. Bonaparte has an enormous following at this moment. His victories have caused this blind and stupid nation to deify him. Indeed, the people of France look on him as nothing less than a god. His popularity is immense, his power unlimited. The loyal adherents of our rightful King are a mere handful now — a few of us of the old régime have remained true — a few unruly peasants have rallied to the fleur-de-lys. What can a few hundred of our men do against some thousands of Bonaparte’s trained troops? And he has threatened to send a hundred thousand against our Chouans, if they should ever rise in a mass again.”

“Bah!” exclaimed Madame exultantly. “We’ll oppose him with ten thousand whose ardour will outweigh his numbers.”

“He has threatened to burn down our cities.”

“We’ll take refuge in our villages.”

“He’ll burn our villages.”

“We’ll seek shelter in the woods. Nay, my good Baudouin,” added Madame la marquise firmly, “counsels of prudence come ill from you. You and Laurent will lead our brave peasants to victory — of this I am as convinced as that I am alive. And if we cannot fight in the open we’ll fight in the dark; we’ll oppose force with ruse and power with cunning. The brutal Corsican may, in the meanwhile, destroy the homes of peaceful citizens, or min the properties of worthy bourgeois who have nothing to do with this war; but as for us, he shall only find us when our brave little army is ready for him — and not before; and then we’ll destroy him and his battalions one by one.”

It was impossible to resist for long the power and influence of Madame’s wonderful enthusiasm. For her there was no lost cause — no hopelessness. Louis, the eighteenth of his name, was effectively King of France in her sight, whether the Corsican usurper chose to place an imperial crown on his own head or not; and God was bound by the decrees of His own laws to see that King Louis — King by divine right — did eventually sit upon the throne of his forbears after this unexplainable period of exile and of stress.

II

In the evening when, in the small boudoir which had been made habitable, the lamps were lit and a fire burned in the tall hearth, when the shutters were closed and chairs drawn nearer to one another, the place looked a trifle less desolate. Matthieu Renard and his wife Annette had thrown up their work under the farmers and cultivators whom they despised, and returned to serve the masters, whom even in their poverty they recognized as alone worthy of their services. Annette had cooked a good dinner, Matthieu had unearthed a bottle of wine from a disused cellar, which had almost miraculously escaped perquisition. The world did not appear so callous or so inimical as it had done earlier in the day.

“What about Ronnay?” Monsieur de Courson had asked as soon as Matthieu and Annette had gone and the doors were closed on the intimate family circle.

“What about him?” retorted Madame la marquise. The sound of her eldest son’s name grated unpleasantly on her ear.

“Does he know you have arrived?”

“Yes. I have written to him.”

“So soon?”

“There was no object in wasting time. He and I will have to meet within the next few days. I want to get that first meeting over.”

“You have asked him to come here?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think that he will come?”

“He cannot refuse to pay his respects to his mother.” Monsieur de Courson shrugged his shoulders and stared moodily into the fire.

“Have you heard anything fresh about Ronnay de Maurel, Baudouin?” queried Madame la marquise sharply. “Anything that I ought to know?”

“Only what is common talk round the neighbourhood, my dear,” he replied.

“And that is?…”

“That Gaston de Maurel has brought up his nephew — your son, my dear Denise — as little better than the workmen in his factories. Ronnay, it seems, is quite illiterate, and his manners are those of a peasant. The most violent democratic principles have been inculcated into him from childhood…”

“Ever since the law freed me from his father’s brutalities…” broke in Madame coldly.

“Exactly,” assented Monsieur de Courson, in an obviously conciliatory spirit, “when your husband died, my dear, his brother Gaston took up his work with the boy. You know the type of man Gaston de Maurel always was — the Revolution suited his temperament exactly. Cruel, vindictive, jealous, violent, he voted for the September massacres and for the execution of the King. Had Ronnay been old enough he, too, would have been a regicide.”

Madame la marquise shuddered.

“And even you, Baudouin,” she said, “have oft rebuked me for my hatred to the boy.”

“Your son, Denise, your own flesh and blood. Aye!” he added more emphatically, “so much your own flesh and blood, that he has your character in a great measure — your energy, your enthusiasm… Unfortunately he misapplies both…”

“To crime and disloyalty.”

“Yes; there is the pity of it. He is a dangerous man, Denise,” continued Monsieur de Courson earnestly. “It were best to keep him at arm’s-length.”

“At arm’s-length,” retorted Madame hotly. “My dear Baudouin, are you serious?”

“I have never been so serious in my life. I think that it ‘is a boundless pity that you have already made overtures in the direction of the de Maurels. I would have left the whole pack of those revolutionary brigands severely alone.”

He spoke with unwonted energy, for in all matters of argument Monsieur de Courson invariably gave in to his more energetic sister. But he felt strongly on the subject, and looked as if he were determined to assert his will this time, at any rate. But Madame la marquise was not prepared to give in, and she broke in once more, in her authoritative way:

“I shall not leave the revolutionary brigands alone, my good Baudouin,” she said. “I mean to try and win my son Ronnay over to our cause…”

“You are mad, Denise!” exclaimed Monsieur le comte.

“Will you deny that he would be invaluable to us if he were on our side?” she argued.

Then as Monsieur le comte remained silent, with frowning eyes fixed in deep puzzlement before him, she added with evergrowing energy:

“Remember that Ronnay is passing rich, and that old Gaston cannot last long, so they say. I hear that he is dying. When he dies all his accumualted wealth, which is immense, will also go to Ronnay, who will certainly then be one of the richest men in France. Moreover, he already disposes of five thousand skilled men, and of the means of making engines and munitions of war. The men, so I am told, are devoted to him — except for a few malcontents. They look upon him as one of themselves; they would as soon follow him on our side as on that of Bonaparte. Think what that means, my dear Baudouin! Men and money to our cause! and we need both sadly. It means conciliating an ogre who no doubt is too stupid, too illiterate to have any rooted convictions of his own. Tell me!” she concluded, with a note of triumph at her own unanswerable argument, “were it not passing wise to make friends with such a man?”

“Ah! if you could do that, Denise…!” quoth Monsieur de Courson, with an impatient sigh and a dubious shrug of the shoulders. “But if your son Ronnay hath aught of the de Maurels in him, you will fail. Bertrand de Maurel was not amenable, remember, and you tried hard in those days to win him over to our side.”

Madame la marquise was silent for a moment or two. It was her turn now to stare moodily into the fire. Memory had carried her back to those early years of her marriage, when Bertrand de Maurel’s dictatorial ways and crude love-making had caused her ever-rebellious spirit to chafe under his tyranny. Brought up under the strict regime of the time which made of the jeune fille little more than a puppet to dance to the piping of her parents, Denise de Courson had hoped to find emancipation in marriage. Bertrand de Maurel, however, soon taught her that a husband’s yoke can be more irksome than a father’s. Where Denise hoped to find independence of thought and of action she found a tyrant whose democratic ideals amounted to bigotry; where she hoped to lead a free and intellectual life of her own, she found herself a slave to a system of philanthropy which was repugnant alike to her aristocratic sense and to her love of her own comforts. Bertrand de Maurel had mapped out for his young wife a life of usefulness and of sound influence among his dependents, and Denise loathed the very propinquity of those whom she was wont to call “the great unwashed.” Bertrand had schemes for improving the conditions of labour, the housing of his peasantry, the production of the land. They were crude, embryotic ideas, perhaps, but they sprang from a mind attuned to the growing discontent of one class against the glaring injustice imposed upon it by the other; they sprang from a heart that was warm and sympathetic, if not always logical. He was at first only feeling his way toward a better understanding with his dependents, scenting the approaching danger of those horrible reprisals which were destined to remain a perpetual stain upon the history of the nation, and which a little conciliation, a little goodwill, a few more men like Bertrand and Gaston de Maurel might perhaps have averted.

But with none of her husband’s aims or his ideals had Denise the slightest sympathy. It was a case of hopeless incompatibility of tempers, further aggravated by irascible and imperious characters on both sides. Bertrand de Maurel had no more understanding of his wife’s nature than she had of his; no more sympathy with her ideals and her train of thought Perpetual bickering led to outbursts of passionate recrimination; an impassable abyss of divergent political views did the rest. Revolutionary and democratic ideals had already eaten into the soul of Bertrand de Maurel and of his brother Gaston; and with Denise, belief in the divine right of kings was an integral part of her religion. After five years of miserable and acrimonious conflicts separation appeared the only solution of an impossible situation. Denise shook the dust of La Frontenay from her aristocratic feet, leaving all her illusions behind her, together with the child born of this unfortunate marriage — a boy not yet three years old, whom she had already learned to hate.

Ronnay had never been her child. As a tiny baby he was already the image of his father — with the same wilful and tyrannical temper, the same outbursts of passionate wrath, the same characteristic toss of the head that shook recalcitrant curls from the low, square forehead. Ronnay had his father’s auburn hair, his father’s deep-set eyes, which at times were almost black, at others of a deep violet-blue; he had his father’s massive limbs and square-set jaw. Oh, yes! Ronnay was a true de Maurel. Not all the upbringing in the world, not all a mother’s influence, would have trained the lad to walk in the footsteps of his aristocratic forbears. The word “democrat” was already writ plainly upon the sturdy form of the tiny child, as he toddled, unaided, through the sheds of his father’s foundries, scorning the delicate feminine hands of nurse or governess, who would have guided his footsteps, clinging to the overseers and the roughly-clad workmen, who placed their tools in his little hands and showed him the way to use them. The spirit of democracy shone out of the lad’s blue eyes when, standing between his Uncle Gaston’s knees, he listened spellbound to marvellous tales of the tyranny of kings and of the heroic stand which was even then being made in the New World over the ocean far away by a nation which was resolved to be free.

Yes, Ronnay de Maurel Was, indeed, a true son of his father — a worthy nephew of Gaston de Maurel and the godson of La Fayette; he had nothing of the de Coursons in him. And in the years that ensued, when Gaston had voted for the death of his King and Ronnay had won his first laurels under the base-born Corsican adventurer fighting against his own kith and kin and against the King’s most holy Majesty, Denise de Mortain — as she now was — often wished that some beneficent Fate had smothered her firstborn at birth.

III

Madame la marquise roused herself from her meditations. There had been silence between her and her brother for some time, while her mind took this sudden incursion into the past; but at the further end of the room Fernande de Courson and Laurent de Mortain were whispering and laughing together. Madame turned and looked over her shoulder at the two young people; then she said abruptly and with seeming irrelevance to her brother:

“Fernande is getting too old for all that childishness.”

“Childishness, my dear,” said the Comte, somewhat bewildered at this sudden change in his sister’s train of thought “I don’t understand…”

“You can’t wish her to become the butt of all the gossips in the village… which she will do if you allow this childish philandering to go on.”

“You mean Laurent?” he queried blankly.

“Why — of course. Fernande is seventeen — Laurent has not a soul to bless himself with…”

“For the moment,” interposed the Comte. “When King Louis comes into his own again, Laurent will retake possession of his heritage…”

Madame la marquise shook her head impatiently. “Confiscated lands will never be restored,” she said firmly, “not even by King Louis. The process would be too dangerous; it would kindle a fresh revolution. Those of us whose lands have been sold by that execrable Revolutionary government will remain poor and dispossessed to the end of our days.”

Baudouin de Courson looked keenly at his sister, still not understanding her sudden new mood.

“Does that mean,” he asked, “does that mean that the project of marriage between our children is not to come to pass?”

“No, no,” Madame broke in hurriedly, “I did not mean that, of course. You know, dear, that I could not nave meant that… You misunderstood me… or I mayhap, expressed myself clumsily. Pessimism led me too far…no wonder — eh, my dear Baudouin? The spectacle of our ruined home has grated harshly on my nerves. No, no! I did not mean that. King Louis — may God guard him! — will richly reward those of us who have given up everything for his sake. There will be money compensation for you and money compensation for Laurent… and, please God, the past splendours of Mortain will one day be revived… but it will all take time… years perhaps… and, in the meanwhile, I think you should talk seriously to Fernande. She ought to be a little more circumspect, and not proclaim her affection for Laurent quite so openly as she has done hitherto.”

“Would it not be best, in that case,” rejoined Monsieur de Courson coldly, “if Fernande and I took up our abode elsewhere and left you in possession of Courson? We might go to Caen, perhaps, or to Brest… We should still be in touch with you…”

“Impossible, my good Baudouin,” interposed Madame decisively. “You must remain here while our army is being organized; this place is most central — it shall be our headquarters. Already we have arranged that it shall be the meeting-place whenever any of our leaders wish to communicate with us. No, no, there can be no question of your going! Moreover…”

“Yes?” he queried, seeing that she had paused, obviously hesitating whether to go on or not.

“I don’t see why I should not tell you of my project, my dear Baudouin,” she said quietly. “I propose to take up my abode at La Frontenay.”

“La Frontenay? I don’t understand…”

“There is no doubt that old Gaston de Maurel is dying.

Ronnay is his heir. La Vieuville will then become his home… Why should not La Frontenay become mine? It was my husband’s.”

“But…” stammered the Comte, reluctant to put into words the thought that was uppermost in his mind.

“You mean,” broke in the Marquise coldly, “you mean that Ronnay de Maurel has been taught to hate me as bitterly as did his father to the day of his death, as bitterly as does old Gaston de Maurel to this day. I know that; but, remember, my dear Baudouin, that there is nothing in the world which I would not do for the sake of our cause, and that, as I told you just now, it would be of immense help to us if Ronnay and I became good friends and I could take up my abode at La Frontenay. I should get the control of his house… of his money, too, to a great extent. The château is vast… three times the size of Courson; it has extensive cellars, which would be immeasurably useful for the storing of arms. Even if Ronnay desired to live there after Gaston’s death rather than at La Vieuville, he still would probably be absent from time to time, and then the château would be entirely at our disposal… Oh!” she added more warmly, “the advantages of my residing at La Frontenay are too numerous to name.”

“I don’t deny it, but I fear me that you will find it difficult to get over your son’s dislike…and over his mistrust.”

“Difficult, I know. But not impossible. I must play my cards well… that is all.”

“You must also remember, my dear Denise, that — even if you succeed in your designs, which I take leave to doubt — you will, first of all, have to make sure that Ronnay de Maurel has no thought of marriage. If you take up your residence at La Frontenay — if we are to make use of the château for our campaign — we ought to be certain that a young bride won’t turn us out within the first few months if she found La Vieuville not sufficiently to her liking.”

Madame mused for a second or two in silence, then she said quietly:

“I had thought of marriage in connection with Ronnay… I must confess, in fact, that such an eventuality has very much entered into my calculations, but…”

“But what?”

“I’ll tell you my project later on, my good Baudouin — not just now. But be assured that if my son Ronnay marries, it will be a wife of my choice. For the moment there is no danger of his turning his thoughts to courtship. If rumour has spoken correctly, he is little better than a savage, and if he has turned his sentimental thoughts to some village wench — as illiterate and rough-mannered as himself — why, she must be got out of the way, that is all.”

Baudouin de Courson said nothing more. He stared back into the fire, and to his mind also there came back some memories of the past. While his sister spoke with that air of authority which became her proud beauty and majestic figure so well, his thoughts had flown back to the dead husband — to Bertrand de Maurel, dictatorial and authoritative, too, the martinet who tried to drill this imperious woman into submission. No wonder that husband and wife had quarrelled! No wonder that the passion of a brief and romantic courtship had so soon changed to invincible hate!

Monsieur de Courson sighed. He loved and admired his sister, whose aims and ideals were akin to his own, whose stem virtues guided her every action; but all that he had heard about Ronnay de Maurel did not lead him to think for a moment that he would be amenable to his mother’s tyranny. Rumour had described him as rude of manner, abrupt of speech and turbulent in his ways; nor had this description of his nephew altogether displeased Monsieur de Courson. A wild creature is more easily tamed than one which is crafty and subtle, and where passions are most tumultuous there gentleness and love have easier access. But gentleness and love only — not tyranny. Ronnay de Maurel as an enemy might prove as dangerous as he was undoubtedly powerful. His active sympathy or even passive indifference would be of inestimable value to the Royalist cause; this Monsieur de Courson was bound to admit. But he was equally convinced that it would require all a woman’s tenderness and tact to win Ronnay over, and, even so, success was more than doubtful and the task a risky one at best. A spark of motherly love, a touch of womanly sympathy might succeed; peremptory ways, a harsh, authoritative manner was inevitably doomed to failure.

What his sister’s plans were with regard to this delicate matter Baudouin de Courson did not attempt to guess. Like all men of action, he was wholly unversed in that subtle knowledge of the feminine heart which no man has ever completely fathomed. Perhaps if at this moment he could have read what was going on in Denise’s fertile brain, he might have been spared all the heart-burnings which lay in wait for him in the near future; he and those he cared for might have been spared the coming bitter conflict ‘twixt warring ideals; they might have been spared more than one abiding sorrow.

But Madame la marquise did not choose to take her brother into her confidence then, and he did not try to penetrate her secrets. And thus were the Fates left to weave unmolested the threads of five people’s destinies.

Chapter 3

THE HERMITS OF LA VIEUVILLE

I

At the self-same hour, whilst Denise de Mortain and her brother, the Comte de Courson, were discussing their future plans for rousing the country-side once more into open revolt, Gaston de Maurel and his nephew Ronnay were poring over a letter which was written in a bold and firm hand, and which a village courier had brought over from Courson an hour ago.

The letter by now was little more than a rag, stained with finger marks, with comers torn off and contents blurred by constant crushing of the paper in hot, impatient hands.

Gaston de Maurel sat in a huge arm-chair, his head leaning against a number of pillows which had been piled up behind his back; his eyes — the deep-set eyes of the Maurels — were fixed inquiringly, almost appealingly, upon the bowed head of his nephew, who, with elbows resting upon the table, was effectually shielding his face from the searching gaze of the invalid.

The room in which the two men sat was one of the kitchens of the small old-fashioned Chateau of La Vieuville — the appanage of the younger sons of the house-granted to them in perpetual fief by the head of the family in the days when the de Maurels were Dukes of Montauban and held their lands direct from the King. Bertrand de Maurel, the last holder of the title, fired by democratic ideals, had cast aside what he termed an empty bauble, long before the wave of social equality had swept over the land.

His younger brother Gaston had followed in his footsteps. A passionate and uncompromising Republican, he had voted for the death of the King — dispassionately and from a firm conviction that such a course was vital for the welfare of the nation; and thenceforward he divested himself voluntarily of every appurtenance and privilege of rank. He lived up to his convictions from the first day that he gave expression to them in the National Assembly; and from that time forth not one single contradiction, not one single concession to past traditions or past love of ease and luxury, marred the Spartan-like purity of his life. He mixed with the proletariat, lived with the proletariat; and the boy Ronnay, whom his dead brother Bertrand had committed to his care and wholly to his discretion, he brought up in the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same ideals as his own.

Bertrand de Maurel had left his boy an immense fortune; Gaston administered it by turning the celebrated iron foundries of La Frontenay into a gigantic factory for the manufacture of munitions of war. That was the time when the people of France were called to arms by the Revolutionary Government against the whole of Europe. France demanded of all her children that they should give the best of what they had in order to help her to fight all the foreign nations who had banded themselves in coalition against her. Gaston de Maurel was in the forefront of those who gave their all. An incurable affection of the heart prevented his taking up arms for the Republic which he had helped to create; but he had talent, brains, money, influence, a genius for organizing and an inexhaustible fund of patriotism and self-sacrifice. At once he marshalled up for the benefit of the State all the vast industrial forces over which his brother’s will had given him absolute control, until the day when Ronnay chose to take up the reins of government himself.

He toiled side by side with the workmen in the factory. To each man he assigned his part, so that each man was able to do his best. He sorted, sifted, arrayed the manpower at his disposal, so that every individual in his turn was able to give of his best. And his own eye was everywhere. He methodized everything; he supervised everything.

And — almost despite himself — he accumulated immense wealth, not only for his nephew, but also for himself. He, too, had inherited quite a substantial fortune from his mother, who was the sister and co-heiress of the Marquis de Rouverdain. His capital he lent to the State at interest, and he kept up the fabric of his Château of La Vieuville; but beyond that he spent nothing on himself. He only looked upon himself as the administrator of his nephew’s patrimony — as the chief overseer of the Maurel foundries. People called him a miser, and he was that in a sense, for money in his hands perpetually begat money.

The gossip of the village had it that Ronnay de Maurel hardly knew how to read and write. That, of course, was mischievous. The days of the Terror and the Revolution did not allow of grand tours abroad, of courses at the Sorbonne, or of dancing and deportment classes; but old Gaston taught Ronnay all that he knew himself, even though he brought him up as a peasant. The lad wore a peasant’s blouse and sabots on his feet; he was ten years old before he tasted any meat, twelve before he opened a book. But when, at fifteen years of age, he joined the army of the Republic, he fought like a hero until that Austrian bullet disabled him; then he retired — a Grand-Eagle of the Legion of Honour, one of the twenty men in the whole of France whom the newly-crowned Emperor thus honoured and trusted most.

It was at Austerlitz that Ronnay de Maurel got the wound which had lamed him for life. Napoleon sent him home to look after the de Maurel munitions factory, and, incidentally, to keep an eye on the hot-headed Royalists of Normandy, who were still brewing mischief against the new Empire and trafficking with the foreigners against their own country. Ronnay de Maurel returned to La Frontenay covered with honours, but eleven years’ campaigning in Italy and on the Danube, under General Bonaparte, did not tend to the softening of manners or the acquisition of social graces. In the early days of the Republic and the Directorate — and even of the Consulate — campaigning meant fighting often on an empty stomach, nearly always with insufficient clothing; it meant tramping shoeless through the snows of the Alps or sleeping shelterless on the sodden bog-lands of Belgium. It meant living in comradeship with all the scum of humanity which the Republican Government had scraped together, in order to compose an army numerous enough to stand up against the overwhelmingly superior forces arraigned against France. It meant all that and more for many years; and when de Maurel obtained at twenty-six the grade of general of division — for promotion was over-quick then under the eye of the greatest war-lord the world has ever known — and donned the gorgeous uniform of an officer of high rank in the Imperial army, he knew neither how to enter a drawing-room nor how to kiss a lady’s hand. He knew less than did the sons of the more prominent overseers of his own factory; his manners were more uncouth — his speech more rude.

Having laid aside his fine uniform as general of division, he once more took up the peasant’s blouse and the sabots which his Uncle Gaston — on his part — had never laid aside.

The days of democracy were at an end; the Imperial Court vied in brilliancy with the royal courts of long ago, but Ronnay de Maurel saw nothing of it. He had never been to Paris, and when he had stood face to face with his Emperor, both were covered with the grime and smoke of battle, both had their clothes half torn off their backs, both had muddy boots and unwashed hands.

“You fight our enemies with both hands, General,” Napoleon had said to de Maurel on that occasion, “with one you wield a sword, with the other you make our cannon balls. In you France has two citizens — our beloved country two sons.”

Yes! the days of democracy were at an end, nor had old Gaston de Maurel ever aught to do with the new days of splendour. He had continued to live in two rooms of his beautiful château, both on the ground-floor and away from the main façade; to these rooms one of the small back doors gave access; he lived like a workman, he fed and dressed and toiled like a workman.

One evening there was a knock at the back door. Gaston went to open it, for he only had an old woman from the village to cook his dinner for him and to make his bed, and she had gone back home an hour ago. On the threshold stood a man in a tattered uniform covered with tarnished gold lace; on his breast was the highest insignia of the newly-created order. Uncle and nephew shook one another silently by the hand. No warmer greeting passed between them. That evening Ronnay de Maurel shared his uncle’s frugal supper, and the next morning saw him at the factory, having already taken over the command of the gigantic undertaking of which henceforth he became sole master.

And from that same day onwards a tall, massive figure, with head erect and deep-set, violet eyes fixed upon the horizon far away, could be seen every morning at break of day wending its way across the fields from the château to the factory, a matter of three kilomètres, in all weathers — wet or fine, snow or rain, in the teeth of a gale or of blinding sleet — a woolen cap upon his head, his bare feet thrust into sabots. The country-folk, as he passed them by, would nudge one another and murmur “The General!” and would point to his left leg, which he dragged slightly as he trudged across a newly-ploughed field.

II

“If you go, my lad, mark my words, you’ll rue it to your dying day. That woman is dangerous, I tell you.”

The sick man spoke as forcibly, as emphatically as his growing weakness would allow; he brought his emaciated hand down upon the table with extraordinary vigour; his eyes, hollow and circled, were fixed upon his nephew, who still held his head persistently buried in his hands.

“I am not one to turn my back on danger,” said de Maurel after a while, “and I must obey the Minister’s orders.”

“The Minister of Police does not know your mother, Ronnay,” rejoined the invalid insistently.

“It is because he does know her — or, at any rate, because he suspects her — that he wants me to keep an eye on her and her doings. I cannot do that very well if we are to persist in this open enmity.”

“Aye! in open enmity!” exclaimed the old man, whilst a look of bitter rancour crept into his hollow eyes. “Open enmity,” he reiterated firmly, “that is the only correlation possible between us and a de Courson.”

“The Minister thinks otherwise,” responded Ronnay dryly. “And from what he says, so did the Emperor. My mother apparently thinks otherwise, too, else she had not sent for me so soon. She says that she desires speech with me. I’d better, in any case, hear what she hath to say.”

“Oh, I can tell you that, my boy, without your troubling to go all the way to Courson to hear it. Your mother, my good Ronnay, has realized that you are passing rich; she has heard that I am dying, and that after my death your wealth and influence will vie with that of any man in France. She wants to see if she can cozen you into placing it at her service.”

“I am not easily cozened,” muttered de Maurel stubbornly, “and fear of her wiles is not like to make me disobey the Minister’s orders.”

“You will do as you like, my lad,” rejoined the invalid dryly, “you are as self-willed and as obstinate as your father was before you. And I can do nothing save to warn you.”

“Warn me of what?” queried Ronnay impatiently. “Am I a child that I cannot be trusted to look after myself?”

“You are a child in many ways, my dear General. A child in this, that you are no match for the pin-pricks which your lady-mother knows so well how to deal.”

“I care nothing for women’s pin-pricks. My hide is tough and smooth-tongued stabs will glide off me like water off a duck’s back. If my lady-mother is disagreeable, I can be disagreeable, too. If she refuses to be friends, I need never set foot inside her doors again.”

“Oh, she will not refuse to be friends with you, my lad! Have I not said that Madame la marquise de Mortain knows her eldest son to be wealthy and influential? She will not refuse to be friends with a man who might prove useful to her in her many and varied intrigues. Your lady-mother, my good Ronnay, will pour honey and sugar on you, I have no doubt of that. ’Twas not against an open enmity on her part that I desired to warn you.”

“Against what, then?”

“Against her protestations of goodwill and of love.”

“Love?” commented de Maurel, with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “I am not like to listen to protestations of love. But what use is there to argue the matter at such length, Uncle Gaston?” he added, with obvious exasperation. “Have I not read you the Minister’s letter and told you that my mind was made up? How could I act otherwise when — as the Minister tells me — the Emperor himself, ere he left for Prussia, desired me to try and make friends with the de Coursons,”

“Friends!” ejaculated the invalid, and a sardonic grin almost distorted for the moment his thin, pale face. “Friends!”

Then he continued more calmly: “There is no friendship possible, my lad, between us and the de Coursons. I know that I may as well be talking to that bedstead over there as to you. You say your mind is made up, and you have all your father’s obstinacy and more. You will go to Courson, in spite of what I say. You’ll go and you’ll weep bitter tears of repentance for the rest of your life; of that I am as convinced as that I have one foot in the grave and am dragging the other one in as fast as may be. I am sick and weak; some will tell you that old Gaston de Maurel is already in his dotage; but you are the one being in the world whom I care for now, and I am not going to let my weakness get the better of me, and allow you to run your stupid head against a stone wall which will bruise, if it will not crush you, without raising my feeble voice in protest.”