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 Val-Maria :A romance of the time of Napo 
 
 3 1924 022 206 738 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022206738 
 
fAL-MARIA. ^- 4- 
 
 A ROMANCE OF THE 
 TIME OF NAPOLEON I. 
 BY MRS. LAWRENCE TURNBULL, 
 AUTHOR OF THE CATHOLIC MAN. 
 
 "A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
 1893. 
 
A. 
 
 'xx'i^-o'=^ 
 
 Copyright, 1893, 
 
 BY 
 
 Francese L. Turnbull. 
 
 Printed bv J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. 
 
MOST 
 TENDERLY INSCRIBED 
 
 TO 
 
 A LITTLE CHILD 
 
 WHO HAS ATTAINED TO THE FULNESS OF 
 LIFE AND LOVE. 
 
CHAPTER FIRST. 
 
 VER the edge of the lawn, as far as 
 the eye could reach, one of the 
 windings of the river that crossed 
 and recrossed the estate of Val-Maria was 
 spanned by a bridge of stone wrought with 
 rude carving, after the fashion of the days in 
 which the chateau had been built ; one of the 
 piers on the farther side had been finished as 
 a shrine, rising into a column above the railing 
 of the bridge, upon which, under a Gothic 
 canopy somewhat unevenly corroded by the 
 touch of time, was an image of the tutelary 
 saint of Val-Maria, statue and shrine alike pre- 
 
 3 
 
4 yal-Maria. 
 
 senting but the most primitive conception or 
 realization of art ; neither had conception nor 
 realization gained in beauty, as some rude 
 art-creations do, from that mellowing touch 
 which had stained its surfaces and obliterated 
 its outlines. But the faithful, who still came 
 occasionally with votive offerings and whis- 
 pered requests, were the freer to find on this 
 Virgin's face whatever expression it was in 
 their hearts to give her, while with her lack 
 of beauty these simple village-folk were not 
 concerned. 
 
 This bridge divided the quarters of the 
 dependants of the chateau, as distinguished 
 from the house-servants, from the chateau it- 
 self; for the one street of the modest village 
 started directly from the small square on 
 which the bridge fronted, and the low stone 
 cottages, tiled and moss-softened, which lined 
 one side of the unshaded street, began on the 
 square, with the cottage of the laundress, 
 which was precisely like the others, save for 
 its great advantage of being nearer the wil- 
 lows that grew on the river's bank, to whose 
 
Val-Maria. 5 
 
 great roots a little space had been graciously 
 granted before the uncompromising pave- 
 ment of the square began. Under these trees 
 the laundress kept her benches, with the tubs, 
 where she and her mother before her had been 
 seen whitening the fine linen of the chateau ; 
 so impressed was she with the dignity of her 
 oifice that she would gladly have brought up 
 her little daughter to the same post of honor, 
 but that the times were filled with a great 
 unrest, whose echo — of the scantest and faint- 
 est, still an unsettling echo — had penetrated 
 even to that short, sun-flooded, cobble-paved 
 street. 
 
 It was not always talk of the doings at the 
 great house, nor even of the threadbare village 
 gossip, when the baker, in his white cap and 
 apron, having delivered his daily quota of rolls 
 to the grand liveried servant from the chateau, 
 and having duly measured off his pain-du- 
 pays in the required lengths to his village cus- 
 tomers, passed under his low door-way — 
 decorated, by way of sign, with the black and 
 
 gold card announcing his baker's license — for 
 I* 
 
6 Val-Maria. 
 
 the mid-day lounge under the willows, which 
 was his custom in fine weather. With dis- 
 cretion, too, he left his door ajar, displaying 
 his few remaining metres of bread ranged 
 against the wall, and reaching from floor to 
 ceiling, that his thrifty neighbors might see 
 how far the day's baking had gone beyond its 
 needs, and avail themselves of the few cen- 
 times of reduction at evening sale, to make 
 their family provision for the following day ; 
 thus should he calculate more exactly how 
 large a sponge to provide at the evening's 
 mixing — for every village-mouth and its aver- 
 age capacity was estimated by each baker who 
 had held the post, and who put his mind in 
 his work — and thus it happened, not unfre- 
 quently, that the baker's family also had eaten 
 luxuriously of bread of the day's baking, 
 without transgressing that provincial Instinct 
 which held extravagance in horror. 
 
 Ncm, as he settled himself comfortably vWth 
 his pipe under the willows, it was frequently 
 with a part of the ^ms Journal from the great 
 house, as a text for his simple comments. 
 
yal-Maria. 7 
 
 delivered sermon-wise, to his unwilling audi- 
 tor, his sister, who had been wont to sing at 
 her work as the suds foamed up over her bare 
 arms, and overflowed into the crevices of the 
 round cobbles below, with rich possibilities of 
 moss. She had been taught that life was 
 good in Val-Maria; the children had always 
 enough to eat, and new sabots when the old 
 ones were outgrown ;, and the countess was 
 pleased with her work, and there was not too 
 much to do ; and when they were sick, the 
 countess came herself; and once, when little 
 Jean had died, she had sent a grand physician 
 from the chiteau, who came from Paris for 
 Monsieur Felix, and she had thought the 
 Virgin of Val-Maria was very kind to them ! 
 But Pierre said it was not so ; he said any 
 man could be a soldier, and soldiers could be 
 generals, and the generals were the nobles 
 nowadays, and the nobles had the power — 
 the people gave them the power. And if it 
 wasn't for the musket — for he was stronger 
 in his arms than in his shoulders and his legs, 
 from kneading so much bread — why, he'd 
 
8 yal-Maria. 
 
 rather deal with blood than flour, and leave 
 a title to little Nanette — who knows ? 
 
 Then for Pierre would follow a period of 
 tranquil dreaming over the sweetness of a title 
 for little Nanette, or at least some glory for 
 himself, under the great Napoleon ; while his 
 sister absently rubbed holes in the fine damask 
 of the chiteau, as she wondered what it all 
 meant, and why Pierre was sometimes so 
 bitter against the sweet lady at the chateau ; 
 and Monsieur le Comte — Pierre said he had no 
 right to be a count — he hadn't won by fight- 
 ing, and if his father was there, and his 
 father's father before him, it was no reason at 
 all, Pierre said, but all the more, he had had it 
 long enough. 
 
 But when the neat-capped Jeanne came out 
 of her cottage to call Pierre to his soup, he 
 stopped his grumbling without an effort, and 
 helped his sister in with her long board piled 
 high with snowy linen twists, contentedly 
 enough, and whistled over his bread when he 
 was kneading, just as he used to do — that day 
 and many days thereafter — and no more talk 
 
yal-Maria. 9 
 
 of battles and titles until the fit came upon 
 him again, with some new grand doings in 
 Paris, of which accounts had sifted to Val- 
 Maria. And this time, perchance, it would be 
 a new tune. "Everything fine was in Paris 
 — there was no life in living away from its 
 fetes ! Napoleon kept everything stirring — he 
 was a man ! He could turn the world round 
 his finger ! And here in Val-Maria !" 
 
 And Yvonne, who had interposed with a 
 timid, "Come then, Pierre, we have still our 
 Madonna Val-Maria ; thou should'st burn a 
 candle to her, if all goes so badly," would be 
 met with a shrug of the shoulders, and per- 
 haps a silence, or words not more comforting. 
 
 "Ah, well then, 1 forget ; thou sayest true ; 
 we have still our Madonna Val-Maria. In 
 Paris, va, it is not of the Madonna Val-Maria 
 that one occupies oneself ; but of the ' Little 
 Corporal !' Thou, then, find me the candles, 
 and I will burn them !" 
 
 And again Pierre returned to knead his 
 bread, often with the snatch of an army 
 song ; while Yvonne, not understanding 
 
10 yal-Marta. 
 
 Pierre's restless words, but wholly contented 
 with her own lot, was yet sad at heart, and 
 sometimes dropped a tear on the polished bit 
 that was still hot from her iron. 
 
 And when the day was done she would 
 raise one of the children in her arms to offer 
 a flower to the Madonna Val-Maria, and to ask 
 her to be always good to them and to the 
 sweet lady of the chateau. 
 
CHAPTER SECOND. 
 
 ^ADONNA Mia!" said the boy, caress- 
 ingly, " tell me about our Consul ; 
 oh, 1 want to see him 1" 
 The musical tones took on a sudden eager- 
 ness as the boy clasped his hands about his 
 mother's neck and laid his beautiful head for 
 an instant upon her shoulder, pressing his 
 glowing cheek to hers. But before she could 
 answer him, he unwound his arms and 
 bounded across the velvet lawn to gather a 
 rose that had caught his restless glance in the 
 very moment of his caress, but it was only 
 another tribute of the adoring love with which 
 Felix ceaselessly worshipped the pale, beauti- 
 
12 yal-Maria. 
 
 ful mother whose life was devoted to him. 
 Presently he was beside her again, opening a 
 jewelled clasp in her dress to fasten his bud, 
 using the freedom of one who knows himself 
 so tenderly beloved that he can do nothing 
 amiss : and she watched him, smiling silently 
 down on his loving homage, while the eager 
 fingers rearranged the folds he had disturbed 
 in introducing his flower. 
 
 Oh, Love, artist beyond all others, creating 
 the highest beauty, and imparting the power 
 to receive its fullest and holiest impression, 
 how is it possible to convey in words the 
 feelings with which this mother clasped her 
 treasure ; her exquisite realization of the gift, 
 in the nearness of the child-heart to her own, 
 almost triumphing for the moment over the 
 dumb, hopeless agony which held her cease- 
 lessly in thrall, beneath the outward sunshine 
 of a home that seemed too near to heaven to 
 know the touch of pain ! 
 
 "My rose is like the sunset!" he cried, 
 joyously, as he threw himself down on the 
 lawn beside her, and laid his head on her 
 
Val^Maria. 13 
 
 knee. "It is so beautiful up there in the 
 clouds ; everything is so beautiful. Now tell 
 me, Madre mia," the childish voice rang out, 
 eagerljr. 
 
 "What is it you want to know, my darling?" 
 "Oh, everything, for our Consul is such a 
 wonderful man! Monsieur I'Abbe likes me 
 to know about noble men. Is his face beauti- 
 ful too ? I should like his face to be beautiful, 
 so all the people would love him." 
 
 A slight shadow crossed the mother's face 
 and her hand strayed soothingly through the 
 rich hair tossed back on her lap, which seemed 
 almost to make a radiance about the head of 
 the boy, as he lay there looking up into the 
 sky : he was like a bird, full of eager twitter- 
 ing motions which came from the exuberance 
 of his nature, yet he was almost an artist in 
 his passionate, unchildlike appreciation of 
 beauty, and the changes in the glowing even- 
 ing clouds reflected themselves in answering 
 moods and varying lights upon the upturned 
 mobile face. He grew quieter under the 
 caressing touch, lying almost still, which was 
 
14 Val^Maria. 
 
 rare for him. He was absorbed in delight and 
 he forgot to repeat his question. 
 
 " Do you remember the little bust that 
 stood on papa's study-table before we came 
 home?" (the great house in Paris was never 
 "home" to them ; all the dearer associations 
 had clustered about this estate of Val-Maria to 
 which the count had brought his bride very 
 early in their married life : here little Felix was 
 born, and here had been granted days so filled 
 with joy that if no more such golden hours 
 were to follow them, it would still be possible 
 to live through long years upon their memory ; 
 and in this thought the young countess had 
 grown more beautiful, year by year, with a 
 nun-like beauty, as she became paler, while 
 the deepening shadows about her eyes and 
 mouth changed to a smile of ineffable tender- 
 ness at the mere sight of her husband or her 
 child). The luminous eyes fixed full upon 
 her recalled her to a sense of needed effort — 
 it was so easy to drift into a yearning revery of 
 the time before she knew the truth ! She 
 stooped and kissed the child passionately. "I 
 
Valr-Maria. 15 
 
 forget how little you were when I took you 
 to Paris; you could not remember the bust. 
 I must have it brought for your very own. 
 You shall see that it is a beautiful head, my 
 Felix." 
 
 "Oh, dear mamma! I know it must be 
 beautiful," the boy cried, springing to his feet. 
 " But what is it like ? I cannot wait to know 1" 
 
 "One must wait sometimes," the mother 
 said, smiling at his impatience. " Sometimes, 
 my Felix, it is strong and beautiful to wait." 
 
 " To wait means to grow strong in patience," 
 said Monsieur I'Abbe, when the boy told him 
 of his mother's gift, repeating her words 
 almost as she had spoken them. "And to 
 be strong in patience makes men noble." 
 
 It was pathetic to see how the mother and 
 teacher strove together to store the fullest 
 sweetness against life's time of stress for their 
 beautiful Felix. 
 
 "It makes men noble and beautifUl," Felix 
 assented, coming close to his tutor with exu- 
 berant, springing motions, and emphasizing 
 with his whole graceful little figure the two 
 
1 6 Fal^Maria. 
 
 chief words. "Is our Consul like that? Is he 
 strong and noble?" 
 
 " Madame la Comtesse will order the bust 
 at once ; I must hasten to make this waiting 
 short," the kind abbe responded with a smiling 
 evasion of the eager question. 
 
 There had been a memorable day in the 
 lives of Montal and his wife of which they 
 never spoke, though often as they paced the 
 lawn together, with the child flitting from 
 flower to flower before them, its memory 
 tightened his hand-clasp on the fragile fingers 
 resting on his arm — for they were lovers yet. 
 It was the day when the count had first felt 
 sure that she was breaking her heart in silence 
 over the sorrow he had tried to keep from her. 
 "We must bear all things together," he had 
 said, putting his strong arm around her and 
 turning up her face to his ; " we have no sepa- 
 rate life." 
 
 Her eyes were swimming in tears, through 
 which she could not force the quivering smile 
 that had never before failed her, and she 
 needed his silent comforting, before she could 
 
Fat-Maria. \ 7 
 
 say brokenly, "It is about Felix : let me not 
 tell you, Louis — it will be too hard for you." 
 
 " My wife is first," he answered, vainly try- 
 ing to command his voice. "And Felix " 
 
 They bowed their heads and fell into each 
 other's arms : the cross seemed too heavy for 
 them to bear. God only knows, as He alone 
 gives the strength, how one may rise from 
 such unutterable agony and take up the com- 
 mon life again, and seem to live above the 
 shadow. 
 
 It was Louis who broke the long silence; 
 his words were very low and calm. "It is 
 God's will. Dear, shall we cloud the little life 
 of our darling by our grief — I think he is 
 troubled sometimes at your sadness — or, shall 
 we rouse ourselves and make it the happiest 
 life that ever gladdened our earth ?" 
 
 She assented with a wan smile. 
 
 Her husband watched her with troubled 
 
 eyes. He would have given his own for the 
 
 life of the child, but he had wrestled with his 
 
 agony until submission had come. She was 
 
 awed by the expression of his face as he bent 
 i 2* 
 
1 8 Kal^Maria. 
 
 over her — pale, set, inexpressibly tender — for 
 she recognized suddenly that it was strength- 
 ened and spiritualized by the consecration of 
 this accepted sorrow. 
 
 She clung to him, convulsed with pity. 
 "Oh, Louis, how long have you known it?" 
 
 " Always, my darling ; they told me at his 
 birth." The words came very slowly, but 
 his tones and motions quieted her. 
 
 "And you have never had one happy hour 
 with our boy ! My poor Louis!' 
 
 He could only soothe her silently, as she lay 
 like a crushed flower in his arms. 
 
 "It is only that we know," he said, at 
 length, "and it may not be for years, they 
 say. To others these separations come often 
 without warning. We will fill his life with 
 gladness, my darling — it shall be your mis- 
 sion — and, together, God shall make us strong 
 to miss no gladness while Felix is left us." 
 
 Perhaps no other words could have held 
 such strength for her; she felt the greatness 
 of a struggle which could thus have con- 
 quered, and she must be brave to comfort 
 
Fal-Maria. 1 9 
 
 him : how precious, too, should be the days 
 that were already numbered 1 their grief must 
 not be the undoing of all the joy of the beau- 
 tiful childish presence ; and she, too, lifted her 
 cross with consecrated hands. 
 
 As she looked up and tried to smile, her 
 pale face flushed with a sudden resolve. 
 "Since he is never to be a man," she said, 
 bravely, "since he will not have to battle 
 with life, and he has everything that love can 
 give — I can only think of this to make him 
 happier — do you think it would be right, Louis, 
 to keep all knowledge of evil from him ?" 
 
 "It is like the mother of our Felix," he 
 answered, with all his heart in his eyes, tri- 
 umphing over his pain : and more slowly — 
 for the simple words were burdened with the 
 meaning of their heavy cross — "For our little 
 child, I think it would be right." 
 
 From that hour they never again named 
 their trial to each other, only when some rec- 
 ognition of it became necessary in planning 
 for their darling's welfare, they would look 
 into each other's faces and gather strength for 
 
20 Valr-Maria. 
 
 their promise to keep the sunshine very bright 
 on the pathway of little Felix. 
 
 They had scarcely controlled their emotion 
 when the boy came bounding towards them, 
 over the orange-terrace upon which the long 
 windows opened, with his arms full of flowers 
 for " Madre mia!" 
 
 "Why is my beautiful mamma so sorry?" 
 he cried, pressing up against her with tender 
 sympathy. " Papa will bring you out into the 
 sunshine : it is so beautiful out there, you 
 can't be sorry any more. And I have made 
 your garden-chair so pretty for you to sit in !" 
 
 And so she went with her two lovers — 
 her Christian knight and their beautiful boy — 
 over the broad stone terrace with its great tubs 
 of royal pottery, filled with orange-trees, fra- 
 grant with perfume and beautiful with their 
 red-gold fruit, down the steps of other ter- 
 races, gravelled, marble-bordered, and set with 
 oleanders and cacti and palms, all in their 
 royal vases, a decoration as costly as the statues 
 that gleamed among them. And still another, 
 box-trimmed, in quaint fantasies, where prim. 
 
yalr-Maria. 2 1 
 
 old-fashioned garden-flowers grew in their 
 own beds of carefully-kept earth, led to a stiff 
 alley of giant poplars, in which were scattered 
 stone seats made of thick slabs, resting on 
 elaborately carved supports, grotesque and black 
 with time. And still beyond, out on the 
 smooth lawn, where all the sky was clear 
 and bright above them, stood the rustic mod- 
 ern chair which the little artist's hands had 
 interlaced with morning-glories. 
 
 As the mother sat on her throne of love, 
 made beautiful by that fragile, passing bloom, 
 the sunlight flooded the upturned faces of the 
 group — that perfect, mysterious group of three 
 — with a glory like a halo, and though her 
 heart was breaking, she tried not "to be sorry 
 any more." 
 
CHAPTER THIRD. 
 
 EANWHILE the child had grown in 
 knowledge and in beauty day by day, 
 and still more in that undefinable 
 charm which is independent of either, but 
 more potent than both, a winsomeness and 
 grace which drew all hearts to him. His joy- 
 ousness was infectious ; his power of loving 
 combined the perfect confidence of childhood 
 with the fervor of a maturer nature ; and his 
 passionate, unchildlike appreciation of beauty 
 proved the depth of the poet-artist soul that 
 illumined his face and modulated his voice so 
 exquisitely that one who had ever heard its 
 tones could not forget them. 
 
yal-Maria. 23 
 
 This love of beauty had come down to him 
 through generations, nourished and quickened 
 by the art-treasures which filled the old 
 Florentine palace in which his mother had 
 passed her girlhood ; and knowing well the 
 strength of this passion for beauty, by it his 
 wise and tender watchers guided the boy into 
 a rare knowledge of the thoughts and motives 
 that make life noble. And very beautiful it 
 was to see the young soul growing fair and 
 strong in the sunlight of their loving minis- 
 trations, and knight-like through his stanch, 
 unswerving fealty to truth — a noble legacy 
 that had come to him direct from the English 
 side of his father's house. 
 
 The boyhood of Louis, Comte de Montal, 
 the father of little Felix, had been passed in 
 the gracious Christian home of his grandfather 
 on his mother's side, where, in an atmosphere 
 that was vocal with the best thought of the 
 best minds, in which neither heart nor head 
 has been forgotten, the old man and the boy 
 lived in close and loving companionship, the 
 scholar renewing his youth as he saw his 
 
24 Fal-Maria. 
 
 grandchild rapidly advancing in his own quaint 
 admirations. So rapid, indeed, had this prog- 
 ress been, that when, at the age of fourteen, 
 Louis lost this cherished companion and men- 
 tor, and returned to his home in France, to 
 receive the education of a young French noble- 
 man of those days, he had already acquired 
 a love of knowledge, a fund of information, 
 an acquaintance with the choicest biographies 
 and the utterances of great men, that was 
 unusual at a much riper age, together with a 
 remarkable power of memorizing. With this 
 habit, his early teachings had been, so to 
 speak, woven into the boy's character; he 
 could forget nothing that had been wrought 
 for him with so much love ; the books he 
 had studied became his living friends, their 
 teachings were vivified with his grandfather's 
 voice, and the education of these early days 
 laid the strong substructure of English sim- 
 plicity and Christian truth upon which all that 
 was added in later years, of grace or wisdom 
 or courtliness, grew the more roundly, until 
 Louis de Montal was known as one of the 
 
yal-Maria. 2^ 
 
 most Christian, enlightened, and devoted 
 statesmen of his time. 
 
 From his mother Felix inherited his won- 
 drous beauty and his passionate artistic tem- 
 perament, the fervor of which had been 
 tempered and vivified with the joyousness of 
 his French ancestral blood, until the shadows 
 that brooded over the darker faces of his Ital- 
 ian ancestry were sought in vain on the child's 
 pure brow, and in the glorious eyes whose 
 sternest moods showed only a sweet serious- 
 ness, intensifying at rare moments, with a 
 spiritual meaning that seemed almost un- 
 earthly. 
 
 This intense love of beauty had its incon- 
 veniences at times. Felix was scarcely more 
 than a baby when he first made acquaintance 
 with the Madonna Val-Maria — quite too little 
 to comprehend the importance of its position 
 in the quaint village community — and Yvonne 
 crossed herself even now, whenever she re- 
 called the scene — the little one lifted high in 
 the arms of Lucie the bonne, to reach the 
 shrine with his dimpled, flower-filled hands, 
 B 3 
 
26 Val-Maria. 
 
 and lay his offering of roses at the Virgin's 
 feet. Yvonne had left her linen and come for- 
 ward with eager interest, for in her gentle 
 soul she loved the child of the sweet lady at 
 the chateau, and she wished that the Madonna 
 might keep him from all harm. 
 
 "Come, then. Monsieur Felix, my angel! 
 A little kiss with the rosy mouth for the good 
 Madonna; it shall be like a prayer for thee!" 
 
 But Felix had dropped his flowers and was 
 struggling downward with all the force of his 
 baby strength. "No, no!" he protested, 
 with the uncompromising frankness of his 
 three years; "she is not a beautiful lady like 
 my mamma! She is ugly — ugly; and she 
 hasn't any face at all. I will not come to see 
 her any more." 
 
 " De grace, Monsieur Felix!" the nurse ex- 
 postulated, as she smoothed out the multiform 
 creases made in her fine embroidered apron 
 by the little struggling feet ; while Felix, set 
 free, ran eagerly across the bridge to the spot 
 where his mother stood waiting to receive his 
 confidence of disappointment, reiterating as 
 
yal-Maria. 27 
 
 he clasped her close with his little loving 
 arms, "She is so ugly — so ugly, Madremia! 
 I do not love her ; why can't my papa get a 
 beautiful one for me to love?" 
 
 "See, Felix, you have made poor Yvonne 
 so sorry!" his mother answered, gently, point- 
 ing back to the shrine where the peasant knelt 
 telling her rosary. " It is not beautiful to 
 make any one sorry ! We will go back, and 
 my little one can pick up the flowers for 
 Yvonne to give to the Madonna ; perhaps that 
 will make her glad. And then you shall 
 come with me to the chapel and see the 
 beautiful Saint Elizabeth, and mamma will tell 
 you about the Madonna Val-Maria. When 
 you are older, darling, you will know that 
 love makes many things seem beautiful 1" 
 
 In connection with the name of the estate 
 there was a tradition to the effect that the first 
 Count of Montal had made a pilgrimage to 
 Rome to obtain the Papal benediction upon 
 the chateau about to be erected, and that he 
 had brought back with him, as a sign of favor, 
 and specially blessed as a protectress of the 
 
28 Val-Maria. 
 
 peasantry, this Madonna, for whom the rude 
 shrine had been constructed before one stone 
 had been laid for the walls of the chMeau— 
 as a token, said the legend, that the counts 
 of Montal should ever hold first the welfare 
 of their people. The story, like the time- 
 worn Madonna, was a relic of old feudal days, 
 but its meaning flowed deep in the veins of 
 the counts of Montal, making them gentle 
 and considerate masters ; and in later days, 
 when feudalism was abolished, inclining them, 
 aristocrats though they were, to a partial 
 advocacy of radicalism — so far as the rights of 
 the people were concerned ; while the peasants, 
 on their part, largely ascribed the favorable 
 conditions of their life to the beneficent in- 
 fluence of the tutelary Saint of Val-Maria. 
 Nor were they altogether wrong, since it was, 
 indeed, to the teachings of the legend that 
 they owed the valorous attitude of these true 
 knights of Montal. 
 
 Something of this, as a reason for Yvonne's 
 feeling for the Madonna Val-Maria, the count- 
 ess tried in simple words to convey to little 
 
Val-Maria. 29 
 
 Felix, but she was doubtful whether the child 
 understood her, in spite of the intentness of 
 his gaze while he listened to her story. 
 
 But the little fellow went back obediently, 
 and gravely picking up the scattered flowers 
 he laid them silently in Yvonne's hands, stand- 
 ing quite still beside her, and watching her 
 curiously as she placed them at the foot of 
 the shrine ; but when she turned towards him 
 he fled hastily back to his mother's side, as if 
 for protection from further demands of hom- 
 age, and seizing her hand he tried to hasten 
 her steps homeward, a strange look of per- 
 plexity still puckering his baby brows. Sud- 
 denly a light broke over his face, and darting 
 to a flower-bed, he gathered the bright blos- 
 soms ruthlessly with both hands at a time, 
 stems and blooms and delicate trailing roots 
 in his vigorous grasp, and eagerly running 
 back, with a face all sunshine, he showered 
 them over his mother's feet, calling to her 
 triumphantly in her own sweet language, 
 which they always spoke together, "Madonna 
 mia I" 
 
 3* 
 
30 yalr-Maria. 
 
 It had been very quiet at the chateau dur- 
 ing those days of the early childhood of little 
 Felix, for the count and his young wife 
 belonged to the haute noblesse, which in those 
 days, so closely following upon the Revolu- 
 tion, scarcely deserved the usual English inter- 
 pretation of privileged class. Their circle had 
 been p'ainfully decimated by death and cramped 
 by confiscation; and although now, since the 
 soldier-ruler of the land was beginning to 
 dream of a court more magnificent than that 
 of his Bourbon predecessors, he was slowly 
 restoring the lands and revenues to those 
 nobles whose favor he desired to win, this 
 circle was -still widely pervaded by sadness 
 and restraint, and the Count and Countess de 
 Montal could have been but heavy-hearted in 
 the gayety of the growing court of the First 
 Consul* and his gracious Josephine, had there 
 been no deeper sorrow of their own to live 
 above. 
 
 Thus it was not strange that the beautiful 
 Hotel Montal, in the Faubourg St. Germain, 
 stood closed and desolate ; for the Consul, in 
 
Fal-Maria. 3 1 
 
 his eagerness to attach to himself and his 
 growing fortunes all who might by their dis- 
 tinction of birth, of manner, and of education 
 supply the elements which he knew he could 
 not create, was imperative in his orders that 
 those he designated should constantly attend 
 him. And Monsieur de Remusat, who was 
 at this time prefect of the palace, a wise and 
 unfailing guide in all matters of etiquette and 
 of court-ceremonial, and to whom, in these 
 early days of his grandeur. Napoleon always 
 deferred, had signified that Monsieur and 
 Madame de Montal were not only to be 
 sought, but also to be conciliated ; and the 
 countess, to whom the gaucheries of the 
 parvenu court were distasteful, had found that 
 she might not absent herself with impunity 
 when Madame Bonaparte received. So the 
 mere suggestion, rumor-wise, that Madame 
 de Montal, the wife of the senator, was to be 
 named lady-in-waiting to Josephine, hastened 
 her decision to withdraw from Paris to their 
 country-seat of Val-Maria, and make of it their 
 permanent home. 
 
J2 Fal^Maria. 
 
 Josephine, with her infinite tact and delicate 
 appreciation of the sympathies of her high- 
 born friend, shrank from urging her attend- 
 ance at the Tuileries, and manoeuvred to 
 avert the storm which threatened to break 
 upon the head of the fair young countess, 
 who, though much younger, had been inti- 
 mate with Josephine as Madame de Beau- 
 harnais, and had, during the Directory, been 
 an habitue of the charming salon of Madame 
 Bonaparte in the Rue Chantereine while the 
 general of the Army of Italy was winning his 
 brilliant victories at Dego, Mondovi, and Milan. 
 The influence of Josephine with her imperious 
 husband was then at its height ; thus, when 
 Madame de Remusat saw fit to urge upon the 
 Consul to remember how useful it might be to 
 him to number among his friends in the Sen- 
 ate one of such distinguished position, ability, 
 and influence, with such gifts of manner and 
 of oratory as the Count de Montal possessed, 
 he controlled his impatience under the thwart- 
 ing, and suffered himself to be conciliated. 
 The countess was not named lady-in-wait- 
 
Fal-Maria. ^3 
 
 ing, but received in lieu of the appointment 
 a gracious note from Josephine, regretting her 
 withdrawal from Paris, with a charming re- 
 minder that the private salon of her old friend 
 was always open to her in the Tuileries, as it 
 had been in the hotel of the Rue de Chan- 
 tereine. 
 
 Affairs of this kind did not invariably termi- 
 nate so happily in the days of the Consulate and 
 Empire, for the man who became accustomed 
 to bend kingdoms to his sway found an ex- 
 traordinary leisure for the smallest details of 
 his court, and would not tolerate the least 
 resistance to his tyrannical will. 
 
 As for Monsieur de Montal, aristocrat 
 though he was by birth and endowment, 
 his education and the strong Christian bent of 
 his character had made of him, at heart, a 
 lover of men : whether as patriot for his coun- 
 try or, in a larger sense, for his race, he 
 scarcely knew in the early days of his career, 
 when life lay open to him, beckoning him to 
 choose his field of influence. His extraordi- 
 nary powers of eloquence, even then, gave 
 
34 Fal-Maria. 
 
 him promise of mastery over men, and his 
 devotion to his church, and his intimate 
 friendship with some of the finer minds 
 among the priests, with whom he often dis- 
 cussed the deeper problems of life and man's 
 relation to them and to the Infinite, led him 
 to ask himself seriously, in a period of youth- 
 ful religious enthusiasm, if he should not be- 
 come a priest and put himself in the way of 
 suffering for his faith. "But no," he con- 
 cluded, with a characteristic confession of self- 
 study and self-knowledge, not ignoring those 
 propensities of his nature which to him, in 
 that visionary age, seemed decidedly human 
 rather than intrinsically noble, and thus the 
 decision cost him the more, for it was a con- 
 fession that he found the world with its rapid 
 movement of life full of attraction. And for 
 a time he waited the issue, stirring up public 
 sentiment in the direction of his chivalrous 
 impulses by his pen, or by vehement orations 
 which early won for him a name. With his 
 intense love of liberty, his scorn of oppression, 
 his sympathy with the needs of the poor, his 
 
yal-Maria. 35 
 
 absolute graciousness to those beneath him in 
 rank and fortune, among whom he had many 
 loyal and beloved friends whom he received 
 with the greatest tenderness and courtesy, 
 it was nevertheless true that he had all his 
 life a horror of the sway of democracy ; that 
 he believed in an aristocratic government, and 
 that he never ceased to retain his visionary 
 admiration for his own class, judging it for 
 practical purposes, too much as a woman or 
 a poet judges, from self-consciousness ; and 
 out of his own lofty estimate of the duties 
 and responsibilities of that class, repeating 
 often to himself the motto carved over the 
 quaint fireplace of the hall of Val-Maria "No- 
 blesse oblige." It seemed to him no hardship 
 that the people should be ruled by such a 
 body of men as he told himself the nobles 
 ought to be. 
 
 While yet a very young man, and while the 
 memory of the Reign of Terror was still vivid, 
 he had caused his friends great anxiety by the 
 publication in one of the provincial papers of 
 an intolerant article called out by the rumor 
 
36 yal^Maria. 
 
 that a certain general, stationed in Paris, 
 had refused to admit to his regiment the sons 
 of noble families who had proffered him their 
 services. He asks, "why the new govern- 
 ment had divided sympathies, proclaiming it- 
 self the enemy of half the nation?" "And 
 what has made us your enemies ?" he asks, 
 angrily. "Is it because we write a de before 
 our names, or because we make the sign of a 
 cross when we enter a church ? Then your 
 liberty is nothing but a lying and cruel op- 
 pression !" 
 
 But, fortunately, this was in the early days 
 of the Directory, when a brighter atmosphere 
 was beginning to dawn over France ; there 
 was not always time to punish the utterances 
 of discontent, for the government was begin- 
 ning to occupy itself with reconstruction 
 rather than in seeking out offences. In fact, 
 one of the five in whom the supreme power 
 was vested thus outlined to a colleague the 
 new pacific policy: "We must let them talk 
 about politics as they please ; we ought to be 
 more liberal than the Convention ; they under- 
 
Walr-Maria. 37 
 
 took to coerce the thoughts of men, but it is 
 the duty of the Directory to give the mind 
 free scope. It is, perhaps, the surest means 
 of ascertaining public opinion, and of remedy- 
 ing those evils into which an abuse of power 
 may betray us." 
 
 The knowledge of this greater freedom of 
 speech and more catholic spirit in the heads 
 of the government tempted Monsieur de 
 Montal to emerge from his provincial seclu- 
 sion and return to Paris for a while, merely 
 as an onlooker, taking up his abode in the 
 Hotel Montal, in the Faubourg St. Germain, 
 which had been vacant since the death of his 
 father, many years before, and which there- 
 fore required much expenditure of time and 
 thought in its re-establishment, before it 
 should be fit for the reception of the young 
 wife who had remained with their infant child 
 in their country home. 
 
 Meanwhile, it was an absorbing fascination to 
 one of his statesman-hke and philanthropic pro- 
 clivities to watch the intricacies of this great 
 drama of government which was being per- 
 4 
 
38 Val-Maria. 
 
 formed, without previous rehearsal, on a stage 
 subject to upheavals, with new actors ever 
 taking up the important roles, before a people 
 of whose applause there could be no certainty. 
 There was something in the acquaintance 
 of both Carnot and Barras, the more im- 
 portant members of the Directory, to attract 
 the young Count de Montal, who accepted 
 with pleasure the unusual advances made to 
 him by Monsieur Carnot, whose quiet home- 
 circle and philosophic talk offered a strange 
 and welcome contrast to the excitement and 
 splendor of Paris, where this austere student 
 seemed almost an Anomaly. That so staunch 
 a republican should be quite indifferent to the 
 dignity of his " directorial purple" was easy 
 to comprehend ; but that one who had turned 
 his profound studies to such advantage that 
 his advice on all matters within the province 
 of the Directory was confessed to be ever the 
 wisest, could satisfy his conscience by giving 
 his signature, as a mere matter of form, to 
 decrees of which he knew nothing, as often 
 happened, was more difficult to account for. 
 
yal-Maria. 39 
 
 Sometimes, in the quiet of his study, when 
 the philosopher had forgotten himself and the 
 presence of his guest, to wax eloquent over 
 some absorbing theme, the young aristocrat, 
 listening in delight, would suddenly remember 
 with a thrill of horror, "This man sat in 
 judgment over Louis XVI. I" And then he 
 would ask himself, " How can he ever again 
 yield himself calmly to these intellectual ab- 
 stractions? Does such impassivity belong to 
 age, or only to this strange period ?" And it 
 would seem to him, as he sat restlessly wait- 
 ing for a pause in which he might escape and 
 be alone with himself, that the eloquent words 
 were no longer more than the dust and ashes 
 of a decoying and deceiving fire. He could 
 find no beauty in them, no hope ; they became 
 terrible to him, with his burning love of truth 
 and beauty, because they bore the semblance 
 of a noble reality ; and this condemnation of 
 the unhappy king was a crime he was not 
 yet old enough, nor dispassionate enough, 
 to forgive Carnot. 
 
 At such moments his fierce young nature 
 
40 yal-Maria. 
 
 rose up in rebellion, and Paris, the brilliant 
 city, seemed to him a hell, a capital without 
 religion, a people truly divided against itself, 
 — the upper half, the wealthy class, living in 
 reckless gayety ; the other, the people over 
 whom his generous soul yearned, besieging 
 the bakers' shops with long hours of patient 
 waiting, for a few ounces of miserable, dark 
 bread, weighed off with discreet economy, 
 so much for each mouth of the household, 
 to the cry of " Your certificates, messieurs !" 
 
 Your certificates ! your sworn statement of 
 numbers, lest we sell you too much — for 
 words are but base coin in times like these ! 
 It made him ill at heart; but how was it all 
 to end ? From whence should help come ? 
 
 Sometimes he wrote himself calm, in pas- 
 sionate protestations, in midnight vigils in his 
 solitary hotel in the Faubourg St. Germain, 
 publishing his unsigned articles in some pro- 
 vincial paper, for at least he was beginning to 
 learn discretion in Paris, not from fear, but 
 from the assured conviction that God had 
 given him his talents to use in His service. 
 
Fal-Maria. 4 1 
 
 and he must be wise in tliis his strange gen- 
 eration — ^the Reign of Terror was not so long 
 past ! 
 
 Yet sometimes he grew desperate with the 
 wish to scatter something from his superfluity 
 among the underfed masses ; he dared not do 
 it rashly, and fearing that his youthful impet- 
 uosity needed some restraint, he broached his 
 project of concerted help by the aristocracy 
 in one of the long-closed salons, whose gra- 
 cious mistress, dignified, silver-haired, and sad- 
 dened by the events of the past years, was 
 beginning once more to gather friends about 
 her. 
 
 She shook her head imperatively ; but she 
 gave him her tapering white hand with a warm 
 grasp of admiration. "A modest largesse, 
 with a quiet, unknown hand," she said; "in 
 these times we cannot do more, we few who 
 have not been despoiled. We must wait! 
 And, meanwhile, it is better than the Conven- 
 tion." 
 
 " It is much better," declared a young offi- 
 cer, who stood by. " One can live on little, 
 4* 
 
42 yal^Maria. 
 
 if the heart is gay I And they have still the 
 strength — these people for whom you weep — 
 to visit the theatres and applaud to the skies 
 'The Abolition of Royalty' or the 'Apothe- 
 osis of Marat.' Life goes not so badly for 
 them." 
 
 With Barras, Louis de Montal felt that he 
 had more in common ; for this director was 
 known to favor the return of the Bourbons, 
 and to pretend that the Directory was to pre- 
 pare the way for this event. He found the 
 audiences of this ruler intensely interesting, as 
 his salons were not only the centre of the 
 political movement of the time, but were 
 frequently rendered pathetic by the appeals of 
 disinterested friends for the recall of some 
 noble family from banishment, or for the res- 
 toration of lands and revenues to others who 
 had been despoiled. More than once he had 
 seen a petition presented by the gracious and 
 systematic Madame de Beauharnais, who came 
 more often than others on these kindly mis- 
 sions, and whose heart in these days, as in 
 later ones, was with the Royalists and with 
 
yal-Maria. 43 
 
 those to whom she felt that power belonged 
 by divine right. 
 
 If at times Barras appeared too much the 
 friend of all parties to direct his power by any 
 fixed principle, he was still an enigma, and a 
 most interesting one, and in his salon the hope 
 of France — its fate at least — seemed to centre. 
 Here Louis de Montal first met the man upon 
 whom all eyes were turning, the young Cor- 
 sican general. Napoleon Bonaparte, of whom 
 Barras thought most highly, though the other 
 directors disliked him and spoke contemptu- 
 ously of " the little leather breeches." 
 
 Perhaps this very contempt first occasioned 
 the knightly Montal, with his scorn of injustice, 
 to turn his attention to the study of this new 
 and unique figure, for whose oddity, brusque- 
 ness, and ignorance of all polite forms some 
 allowance was necessary. But it was not long 
 before the general, as chief of the Army of 
 Italy, had signally distinguished himself, and 
 Montal, watching with keen interest, not only 
 realized how varied were the gifts and grasp of 
 the victorious soldier, but gave him credit for 
 
44 yahMaria. 
 
 an absorbed and disinterested love for France, 
 which finally overcame his reluctance to take 
 part in the great political struggle of his time ; 
 and scarcely confessing to himself that he was 
 already counting upon Bonaparte as the saviour 
 of his country, he accepted the appointment 
 of senator, which came to him later, throwing 
 himself enthusiastically into every real ques- 
 tion that came up for debate. 
 
 And this man, with the mighty intellect and 
 magnificent projects centred upon the pros- 
 perity of France, was he to be their leader? 
 
CHAPTER FOURTH. 
 
 HERE was indeed much time for this 
 ideal culture of the boy to which the 
 countess devoted herself, for since 
 the days of the old regime life had been very 
 quiet at the Chateau of Val-Maria. "Too 
 quiet !" grumbled the villagers, as the distant 
 echo of the fetes of the gay capital reached 
 their ears ; for they too liked the occasional 
 chance of grumbling at overwork instead of 
 stagnation, and the excitement of holding an 
 indignation meeting, as they were doing just 
 now in the little square, to relate to each other 
 how Monsieur Charles, the grand chef-de-cuisine 
 at the chateau, had not been satisfied with 
 
 45 
 
46 yal-Maria. 
 
 the best fruit of their gardens, "because he 
 was in a humor impossible to please !" And 
 how he had sent word to Jacques, who had 
 been growing choux-fleurs all his life, that they 
 should be " white" the next time he brought 
 them to serve to such guests, as if one could 
 find much whiter than the choux-fleurs of 
 Jacques ! It was quite possible that German 
 Karl, the vegetable cook, might have his head 
 turned too by such grand company, coming 
 from such a barbarous Protestant country, and 
 not being used to the grands seigneurs, and 
 forget to put milk in the pot, all to bring dis- 
 grace on Jacques ! 
 
 "And then there had been pates from 
 Paris, with ornaments to make you afraid !" 
 interposed Henri, the vender of sabots. 
 
 But Pierre, who could be magnanimous, 
 feeling himself the great man of the village — 
 Pierre confessed that these pites were "truly 
 divine." There had been no occasion, in his 
 day, for such pdtes in Val-Maria, or he could 
 show them ! But he had studied them, these 
 pates, he had studied them well, when he had 
 
l^al-Maria. 47 
 
 helped Monsieur Charles to unpack them ; and 
 to-morrow he would show them a wonder — 
 a pate — but such a one as they had never 
 tasted 1 And this they should all eat in the 
 square, with some good vin-du-pays, for 
 Madame la Comtesse made announcement by 
 him that to-morrow, at four o'clock, there 
 should be a supper for the villagers, with 
 " friandises" from the chateau, and he, Pierre, 
 would furnish the pSte! "Come then, my 
 malcontents !" 
 
 Thus it was always Pierre who made him- 
 self of consequence ; he had much time for 
 talking and he was not lazy with his tongue ; 
 and he went often to the chateau to arrange 
 affairs with Monsieur Charles. For Monsieur 
 Charles had quite particular ideas about the 
 shapes of the little cakes for the table of Madame 
 la Comtesse, thinking each day that, if they 
 were different, madame might give them more 
 attention, for, as it was now, it was scarcely 
 worth while to serve them at all ! And truly, 
 he, Pierre, led the life of a dog to suit the 
 whims of Monsieur Charles ; verily he thought 
 
48 VahMaria. 
 
 sometimes he would enlist and finish all this 
 tumult about little cakes! 
 
 " Wait, then, till we have well eaten our 
 p^te, we others !" shouted a chorus of jubilant 
 voices, for fetes had been rare, of late, in Val- 
 Maria. 
 
 " Or, well, for the conscription, my son," 
 recommended old Jean, placidly, with the air 
 of one who seldom spoke, but who knew his 
 subject well, having much time for listening 
 and thinking, as he sat in the door-way of his 
 shop, day after day, patching the working 
 blouses of the men, or now and then making 
 a new one, "The conscription comes also 
 to Val-Maria, and that is soon enough for 
 thee !" 
 
 So it was one day grumbling because it was 
 too quiet ; and another, grumbling because 
 their old-fashioned ways did not suit the grand 
 staff of servants at the chateau, when the 
 village-help was required ; and the next day, 
 maybe, placid to stagnation, not even an apple 
 falling from a tree, and everything going on 
 peacefully, and the Madonna keeping everything 
 
l^al-Maria. 49 
 
 in order, that was what you might expect in 
 Val-Maria ! And then the discontent would 
 begin again, just for a change, or there would 
 come news, and everybody wanted something 
 to happen, and nobody knew what it should 
 be, except Pierre, who would have it one thing 
 on Thursday and another on Friday ; and it 
 was confusing, indeed, to keep one's head 
 in such times ! It had always been that way 
 in Val-Maria since the days of the Bour- 
 bons. 
 
 Monsieur le Cure was growing silver-haired 
 and infirm ; he had learned his politics in the 
 days of the old regime, and he could not rouse 
 himself to a comprehension of this state of 
 things. He was glad to leave the harangues 
 to Monsieur I'Abbe, who was a learned gentle- 
 man, quite capable of comprehending these 
 strange new times. The politics of the father 
 of Monsieur le Comte sufficed for a quiet old 
 cure, who had no part in the affairs of the great 
 world, and there was no time to change them 
 now. "To love one's neighbor, and to do 
 one's work, like children of the good God," 
 
 C d 5 
 
50 Val-Maria. 
 
 that was his creed, under one regime or 
 another, it mattered not ! 
 
 So he did not often linger under the willows 
 when Pierre unfolded his news — ^it was a dis- 
 traction from better things — for his time was 
 not very long, and there were the children to 
 teach, and many sweet old legends and his- 
 tories of the Saints to be conned, for sometimes, 
 now, he feared his memory was growing 
 vague. So he more often shook his head in 
 mild deprecation, when there was much talk 
 in the square, and turned aside for a stroll 
 down the river bank, meditating upon some 
 holy theme which seemed to come to him the 
 better for the mere touch of the quaint old 
 volume he carried with him, rarely opened, 
 for he had eyesight for but little reading now. 
 His tall figure was slightly bowed over the cane 
 he was beginning to depend upon to stay his 
 slackening footsteps ; his long, thin silver locks 
 flowed back from his benevolent bronzed face, 
 under the black three-cornered hat; only his 
 dark, kind eyes looked out from the features — 
 once rough, but now changed, sharpened by 
 
Fal-Maria. 5 1 
 
 age and spiritualized by his holy life — with the 
 glow and charm of youth ; for, as years passed, 
 the creed of the good cure had grown more 
 simple and loving, and the beauty of his heart 
 was in his eyes. 
 
 Some of the older peasants could have told 
 you his name, but if you had asked the chil- 
 dren for Monsieur Simon, even on Sunday, 
 they would have smiled up at you with blank, 
 rosy faces, answering " savons-pas," we do 
 not know, though Monsieur le Cure had but 
 just left his touch of benediction on their sun- 
 burnt locks. 
 
 Sometimes, when Pierre had talked more 
 than. was good for his peace. Monsieur I'Abbe 
 would come over the bridge from the chateau 
 and make it all quite plain to them that every- 
 thing was going well; that France was pros- 
 perous beyond all past times ; that they should 
 all thank heaven that so great a man as the 
 First Consul was their chief ruler. Had he 
 not opened the churches for the people ? Had 
 he not constantly shown the highest consider- 
 ation for the clergy, reinstating them in their 
 
52 yal^Maria. 
 
 dignities? Might they not read in the A/o«/- 
 teur of yesterday, that now, in his journey 
 through Belgium, the one who accompanied 
 him to do him highest honor — considered and 
 attended like the prince he was — was none 
 other than his Highness, the Cardinal Caprara? 
 " And is it not the first time since the Revolu- 
 tion that we can say our religion is re-estab- 
 lished? Come, then, my children, forget not 
 to give thanks, and to pray for our victorious 
 Consul." 
 
 And then Monsieur Felix, who was often 
 with his tutor when he made his speeches to 
 the admiring crowd — little Felix, now a beau- 
 tiful boy of six, who had been listening eagerly 
 with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes to the 
 harangue — would burst out impetuously like 
 an inspired orator, "My friends, we must 
 love Napoleon. He is very great, and brave, 
 and noble, and he loves France !" 
 
 And once when Monsieur I'Abbe paused 
 for breath, the little fellow bounded upon 
 the old stone bench under the willows, 
 his bright hair blowing about his spirited 
 
Val-Maria. 53 
 
 face as he tossed off his plumed cap, shout- 
 ing with an enthusiasm that carried his 
 audience by storm, " I love him ! He is my 
 hero !" 
 
 It was quite true ; for now it was more 
 than two years since the beautiful Parian bust 
 of this wonderful leader of men had held a 
 place of honor in the apartment of the boy, 
 on a pedestal draped with rich crimson velvet 
 by the countess's own hands; and lately a 
 little curtain had been placed behind it, against 
 which the noble outlines showed in clearer 
 relief, for beyond all his treasures Felix prized 
 this beautiful head. 
 
 It had first taken possession of the little 
 artist's soul by its beauty ; but his heart was 
 so tender, his childish imagination so vivid, 
 and his temperament so strangely poetic — his 
 unusual training, withal, leading him always 
 to associate the higher inward beauty with 
 every outward manifestation — that gradually 
 this bust became to him like a living friend, 
 passionately adored for every noble quality the 
 perfect lineaments seemed to indicate ; and 
 
54 yal-Maria. 
 
 later, as years passed, endowed, in his gener- 
 ous and undiscrlminating belief, with what- 
 ever attributes of loftiness the world's truest 
 heroes had possessed. 
 
 He talked to it as if it could answer him 
 back ; his lessons with his tutor, his daily ex- 
 periences and fanciful visions of greatness; 
 above all, his growing acquaintance with the 
 characters of the great men of the past — an 
 acquaintance which opened very early for the 
 child, because of his father's unusual fund of 
 historic knowledge and the use he made of 
 it in training his son — all these came to be 
 shared with the unresponsive marble friend 
 around whom the boy's growing, enriching 
 life had so strangely centred. 
 
 Yet, in a certain sense, this friend was not 
 unresponsive. It was he who enforced every 
 lesson ; he who fostered the child's memory ; 
 above all, he who, growing day by day in the 
 boy's noble soul-growth, held constantly be- 
 fore him the lofty ideal of a manhood regal 
 with every virtue his youthful imagination 
 could conceive, and crowned with every gift 
 
yal-Maria. 
 
 55 
 
 of intellect of which so boyish a worshipper 
 might dream. 
 
 And for the face — was it not very beautiful, 
 as the face of one so great and good should 
 be? How could one see it and not love? 
 
CHAPTER FIFTH. 
 
 HE count, who was obliged to be 
 much in Paris during the session of 
 the Senate, found his wife growing 
 paler each time that he returned from the 
 capital ; or it might be — for love admits slight 
 pretexts — it might be only that the singular 
 spirituality of her face struck him more vividly 
 after these short absences; it could not be 
 that a few days had changed her, for he never 
 left her for any length of time. 
 
 " I will give up the Senate, my wife," he 
 said with infinite tenderness. " It will be 
 better for you, and we will go away for a 
 long time ; perhaps to Florence." 
 56 
 
^air-Maria. 57 
 
 "Oh, Louis, no! We cannot leave Val- 
 Maria; it is best for Felix; he is so happy 
 here ! And you would feel laid aside without 
 your life at the Senate ; you would be un- 
 happy. And you are needed there." 
 
 He shook his head in deprecation which 
 might not have been playful. He was begin- 
 ning to question the value of individuals in 
 that august body of France which he had 
 entered, two years before, with such exalted 
 hopes and aims, as he had already doubted 
 his own fitness for the position ; for with 
 sympathies warm for the needs of his nation, 
 and a conscience that was semi-English, he 
 felt that all countries which aspired to freedom 
 or sought for its equivalent in a government 
 based upon the welfare of its people, should 
 encourage the bold pleading of all great causes 
 before its public tribunals. But sometimes he 
 fancied he detected a strange paralysis of will 
 in the words and actions of men who had 
 hitherto seemed to him great; it was as if 
 some mastering force swayed them in a direc- 
 tion uncomprehended by themselves, and his 
 
58 yal-Maria. 
 
 whole soul rebelled, for to one of his mind 
 great results could not be compassed with 
 closed eyes. 
 
 "There shall be no changes that do not 
 please you/' he said, "yet I should hke a 
 little change at Val-Maria. You are over- 
 strained with incessant dwelling upon this 
 one brooding thought ; this tension must be 
 broken by duties not so dear. We must see 
 friends occasionally ; it is growing dull for 
 you." 
 
 "Not with you and Felix," she pleaded. 
 "You know I want nothing more." 
 
 "But if it is not wise? sweet mother of 
 our child." 
 
 The pet name, added after a moment's 
 pause, said so much to her it could not be 
 resisted ; naming her objection and refuting 
 it at once. 
 
 "It will be best for Felix, too," he said 
 when she had acquiesced and they had talked 
 together of those whom the count should 
 bring with him on his return from Paris. 
 "His mind is so awake, and his love is so 
 
Fal-Maria. 59 
 
 keen, that I have seen him watch your dear 
 face furtively and almost with a look of pain. 
 He will be so proud of his mother among her 
 guests ! 
 
 " And afterwards we will have much time 
 to ourselves," he continued, wishing to re- 
 assure her with what she liked best, for his 
 heart was heavier about her than over Felix. 
 "Our Consul goes for a tour of conquest 
 through Belgium in a few days, with Joseph- 
 ine, duly attended — a cardinal in his suite. 
 After that there will be nothing for the Senate 
 to do until we are called together by the 
 President to prepare a triumphant address of 
 welcome." 
 
 She was surprised at his tone and looked 
 up anxiously. " What is it, Louis? You have 
 changed." 
 
 " Oh, no, I have not changed," he answered, 
 lightly. "If anything has changed it is not I ! 
 Sometimes I think I am too stable, too posi- 
 tive, for these times of change. I am not sure 
 that I like the thought of Cardinal Caprara 
 attending on the movements of General Bona- 
 
6o Fal-Maria. 
 
 parte, nor to see his wife at the Tuileries in a 
 state so much greater than my own would 
 keep." 
 
 " Dear Louis, you are not jealous ! We do 
 not care for state." 
 
 " No, my beloved one ; we do not indeed. 
 If it ended with the pleasure to them, it would 
 not matter. But it has its meaning. Some- 
 times I wonder if it is all wise, if the people 
 trust too much !" 
 
 Thus it chanced that the chiteau, which had 
 so long seemed almost to sleep amid its stately 
 gardens and groves, put on a brighter air of 
 welcome to receive the group of guests who 
 came with the count from Paris, the day of 
 the meeting in the little square of Val-Maria. 
 The banqueting-hall, long disused, was re- 
 opened ; and here, amid its too florid decora- 
 tions of scroll-work and gilding, and roses 
 and loves, untouched since the early time of 
 the Renaissance, the gracious countess seemed 
 a fairer thing than ever, with her lovely face 
 and her unworldly ways. 
 
 A Florentine sculptor of great reputation. 
 
l^al-Maria. 6 1 
 
 who had been invited by the Consul to visit 
 Paris, was among this group of friends. He 
 was intimate with the family of the countess 
 in Florence, and was looking forward with 
 pleasure to the meeting promised him by the 
 count, not only because he had known her in 
 her girlhood, but because he had heard of her 
 beauty, and the count was eager to have a 
 marble bust of his wife when Signore Alfonte 
 should sufficiently have studied her face to 
 undertake the work. 
 
 In the moment of greeting there had been a 
 flush on her pale face which slightly modified 
 its habitual sadness, and of her beauty there 
 could be no question. But as the unusual 
 glow of animation wore away, the artist was 
 disappointed, and indignant with himself that 
 he could think of nothing but a mater dolo- 
 rosa, as he furtively watched the exquisite 
 face of his unconscious hostess. The pale- 
 rose satin court-dress, with its jewelled bands 
 of ruby and pearl, was not inappropriate to the 
 count's young wife ; but the pure sanctity of 
 the brow and eyes, which seemed to tell of a 
 
62 yahMaria. 
 
 great pain, borne through a greater love, 
 would have seemed nearer to his ideal had 
 she appeared more fittingly clothed in simple 
 garments without form or fashion, flowing 
 into lines of grace with her queenly motions, 
 and whiter than her pale face when the flush 
 had passed. 
 
 His artist soul had seized the presence of a 
 mystery which he felt it impossible to fathom, 
 as he watched the mistress of this beautiful 
 home, and recalled the tones of profound ten- 
 derness in which the count had spoken of his 
 wife : to him, with his history of utter desola- 
 tion, this home-life seemed to offer such incal- 
 culable riches! 
 
 At dinner the talk was brilliant, and it was 
 impossible to permit himself to be absorbed by 
 this single thought ; but when they passed into 
 the drawing-room, and the countess moved 
 about among her guests, the fascination be- 
 came irresistible, and he forgot his interest in 
 the topic he had himself broached — of the 
 state of art in France — for he noticed that she 
 was growing restless and distrait, turning her 
 
yalr-Maria. 63 
 
 eyes frequently towards the long windows that 
 opened on the terrace, with an air of expect- 
 ancy that was almost painful. The banquet 
 had been interminable to her ; she was unac- 
 customed of late to these long society hours, 
 and it seemed to her that she could not wait 
 for Felix, who was to come to them in the 
 drawing-room when dinner was over; to her 
 morbid fancy this first break in the quiet of 
 their idyllic life was almost like an infidelity to 
 Felix, who had always been with them at this 
 hour, and now she was waiting breathlessly 
 for him to come. 
 
 Her husband stepped quickly to her side 
 with a whispered word of reassurance, for 
 he, too, found the waiting long, and as she 
 turned more calmly, quieted by his tender 
 comprehension, her whole face became sud- 
 denly transfused with a passionate love-light 
 and content, as Felix came bounding towards 
 her and was clasped for an instant in her 
 longing arms. 
 
 But in that moment the artist had fathomed 
 his mystery. This radiant child was the source 
 
64 Val^Maria. 
 
 of her anguish and its cure ; her whole being 
 was wrapped i.n his. He never forgot that 
 beautiful group of mother and child, as he first 
 saw it through a mist that seemed to swim 
 before his eyes and dim the rich coloring and 
 the perfect outlines to the vagueness and ideal- 
 ity of a dream. The faces and the attitudes 
 were perfect models for the group he dreamed 
 of leaving to the world as his great work, his 
 group of Mother-Love, which had. dwelt in his 
 heart ceaselessly as the divine passion, ever 
 since he had roused himself to interest in his 
 art, after those dark days which brought him 
 his desolation — the loss of his wife and their 
 infant child. 
 
 The count had been eagerly watching for 
 the impression his wife should produce upon 
 his friend, who had given him no promise in 
 regard to the bust which he so eagerly desired. 
 To his continued insistence but one answer had 
 been returned: "My friend, my time is not 
 my own ; it belongs to my art ; and I am 
 studying still — though I am no longer young — 
 for the great work of my life. I shall take 
 
yal-Maria. 65 
 
 no more portraits unless the face moves me in 
 the direction of my ideal. Beyond my art, 
 life holds nothing for me." 
 
 "Madonna, mia! you are so beautiful to- 
 night!" the eager words in a caressing, child- 
 ish voice broke in upon his revery, as the 
 countess came towards him leading little Felix 
 by the hand ; and with a mighty effort he 
 brought himself back to the claims of the 
 moment, as he tried to ingratiate himself with 
 the beautiful child, who was truly a delight 
 for the eyes of an artist, in his gala suit of 
 crimson velvet and rare old lace. 
 
 The count had observed his absorption with 
 satisfaction. "That is how they spoil each 
 other!" he said, lightly, to his friend, as his 
 wife's attention was claimed by another group. 
 "But you look as if you had already chosen 
 your pose." 
 
 "Ah, yes; there is but one possible for her. 
 We must have them both ; without the boy 
 she is not herself. It shall be a great work ! 
 We must have the figure, too, for there is 
 meaning in her motion as in her face ; the im- 
 
 6* 
 
66 Val-Maria. 
 
 pression is not complete unless her movement 
 is suggested, and the boy shall be always with 
 her when I work. It shall be just as I have 
 seen it, only the draperies more noble, and 
 lilies instead of jewels. But later we will talk 
 of it — not here." 
 
 " You recall me to my duty as host," Men- 
 tal said, turning with him in the direction of 
 the terrace. 
 
 "No, no; it is not that we may not talk; 
 you do not understand me — and what can be 
 more beautiful than art ? It is only that I can- 
 not ! For me it means too much, and we must 
 be alone. My friend, you are blessed indeed. 
 I have my art, but I have nothing else ; and 
 to-night it comes over me like a passion 1" 
 
 The three were alone in the middle of the 
 great drawing-room, and the words seemed to 
 have been wrung from him in a moment of 
 uncontrollable emotion. No answer was pos- 
 sible. As one who knows that life brings 
 moments that must be borne alone, his friend 
 wrung his hand with a convulsive pressure, 
 and without a look or a word, hastened for- 
 
yal^Maria. 67 
 
 ward to join the others on the terrace, leaving 
 his boy beside him. 
 
 The sensitive child, with all his holier in- 
 stincts prematurely quickened by his unusual 
 training, knew that some great pain must be 
 hidden in the words he had overheard without 
 fully understanding ; he hesitated only for a 
 moment, and then pressing closer, with quick, 
 caressing movements of his childish fingers on 
 the hand that had been dropped just within 
 his reach, he looked up into the artist's face 
 with the whole wealth of his soul shining in 
 his glorious spirit-eyes. 
 
 "Mon ami — mon cher ami!" he cried, "I 
 love you I" 
 
CHAPTER SIXTH. 
 
 I FTLE Felix flitted about on the moon- 
 lit terrace, coming and going from 
 group to group, now and then paus- 
 ing to listen with delight as he caught the 
 name of his hero; if seldom seizing the full 
 intent of the speaker, yet retaining a vivid 
 impression that he had become a sort of demi- 
 god upon whom the fortunes of France de- 
 pended. 
 
 Meanwhile the conversation was animated, 
 as the shades of opinion were sufficiently 
 diverse to give it sparkle. Several of Montal's 
 colleagues in the Senate had returned with 
 
 him, and one of them was giving an enthu- 
 68 
 
yahMaria. 69 
 
 siastic account of the "Resume of the condi- 
 tion of the Republic," recently laid before the 
 Corps Legislatif. 
 
 "To name only a few of the points," he 
 said, rising impetuously, and almost forgetting, 
 in his excitement, that he was not addressing 
 "the House." "First, there was peace with 
 foreign powers ; a partition of Germany recog- 
 nized by all the sovereigns ! The Swiss 
 Constitution ; the Concordat ! Regulation of 
 public education ; the Institute of France ; 
 improved administration of justice ; improved 
 condition of finances; the civil code. Mon- 
 sieur Andre, you helped to pass upon some 
 of its provisions when it came before the 
 Assembly ; you know how the prodigious in- 
 tellectual grasp of the man came out ! Then 
 we have public works in France and on the 
 frontiers : plans for Mont Cenis and the banks 
 of the Rhine ; the Canal d'Oureq ; Elba ; St. Do- 
 mingo ; proposals of laws to cover every interest 
 in the Republic, without limit ! Indirect taxa- 
 tion ; chambers of commerce ; manufactures ; 
 laws for the exercise of the medical profession ; 
 
70 yal-Maria. 
 
 and so on. It is gigantic. And as to the 
 enthusiasm ! " 
 
 " What should one expect but enthusiasm, 
 when it is all true ? Not written on paper, 
 but in responsive France. The people are not 
 ingrates !" 
 
 "You are right, my friend," said Monsieur 
 Andre, warmly. ' ' If there have been grumblers 
 because we have a soldier at the head of a 
 royal nation, it is because the day of fools is 
 not past ; but they have learned, at least, that 
 discipline at the top means discipline in rank 
 and file, right down through the core of the 
 nation ! 
 
 "Another OM-^iV; the army grumbles now 
 and then because they have not all the honors ; 
 but what difference does that make to us? 
 This is what the men who kncm say of our 
 Soldier-Consul (Monsieur de Vaublanc, in the 
 Corps Legislatif, word for word ; I was there 
 and heard him speak) : ' What chief of a nation 
 has ever shown a greater love of peace?' 
 Furor impossible to describe !" 
 
 "Deputations to Saint-Cloud of devotion 
 
yal^Maria. 7 1 
 
 and congratulation from our body," said an- 
 other senator ; "a day of prosperity for 
 France I" 
 
 " And of glory for the man who makes 
 France," said another voice, rounding the 
 sentence which had been simply finished with 
 a point of profound admiration. "Montal, 
 your eloquence is in repose to-night." 
 
 " To leave a place courteous for that of my 
 guests," responded Montal, with an attempt 
 to rouse himself more completely from the 
 meditative mood in which his talk with Al- 
 fonte had plunged him. "Monsieur Andre, 
 you spoke of the ' soldier at the head of a 
 royal nation.' Was it a word of chance or 
 an enigma?" 
 
 "As you please, and for you to .explain; 
 at one time you saw much of General Bona- 
 parte. We are all friends, and the subject is 
 large and interesting." 
 
 " I know nothing, absolutely nothing," the 
 count declared with emphasis. 
 
 " Precisely ; in the Senate, of course, one 
 knows whatever may be convenient, or what- 
 
72 yal-Maria. 
 
 ever may have been declared," said an old 
 nobleman who had been listening in silence; 
 "but otherwheres one has opinions. There 
 was a rumor in Paris, in the Faubourg, not 
 so long since, of a promise from General 
 Bonaparte to Barras, as to the final recall of 
 the old dynasty when the way should be 
 prepared. And Madame Bonaparte espouses 
 that cause openly." 
 
 "Barras has confessed as much to me," 
 Montal acknowledged. " But even yesterday 
 is 'long since' in our times, and from the 
 Directory to the Consulate is longer still, 
 though it took but an hour to make the 
 transit." 
 
 "But Madame Bonaparte is always charm- 
 ing, always ' sympathique ;' she pleads for 
 all in distress," said a white-haired dowager 
 who knew both the court and the Faubourg. 
 "And if there are too many deprivations for 
 the share of the Royalists, it is a strength the 
 more for our party; so the Consul knows 
 how to listen ! It was the Little General who 
 pleaded in the days of the Directory, and 
 
Fal-Maria. 73 
 
 Madame de Beauharnais who coquetted. She 
 is our hope." 
 
 " Excuse me, my dear, if I am not so 
 sanguine," said the old marquis ; " but a word 
 which the Consul has recently dropped has 
 come to me quite faithfully : ' I am the man of 
 the State ; I am the French Revolution.' " 
 
 "Through Madame de Remusat?" queried 
 
 one of the group, after an instant's pause of 
 
 consternation. " For at the Tuileries there 
 
 are not too many epigrams. The talk is like 
 
 ice, with a snow of reserve to hide the glitter 1 
 
 One is taught what one may speak, and it is 
 
 easier for those who have thoughts to keep 
 
 silence. It is always Madame de Remusat 
 
 who makes the Consul talk more freely ; she 
 
 is so young, so witty, so simple, so wise, so 
 
 discreet, and so entirely aristocrate! It was 
 
 almost a coup d'etat to secure Monsieur and 
 
 Madame de Remusat for the new court at 
 
 the Tuileries, and the Consul is proud of it 
 
 yet. Sometimes he actually converses with 
 
 the first lady-in-waiting." 
 
 " But in the next room one hears nothjng," 
 D 1 
 
74 VaUMaria. 
 
 said the old marquis. " If such a word has 
 wings, it was spoken to be heard." 
 
 "It is charged, you think, with a mission 
 for La Vendee ?" his wife suggested. 
 
 " I can give you a better one," interposed 
 Montal, who was growing uneasy at the tone 
 of the conversation. " And for my authority, 
 — I had it from Monsieur de Talleyrand. — 
 Felix, come here ; listen to a word you may 
 learn by heart, for it was spoken by your 
 hero. 'The man who has courage, the man 
 who serves his country, the man who illus- 
 trates his character by great deeds, has no 
 need of ancestors ; he is of himself every- 
 thing.' Now go, my boy, to Signore Alfonte, 
 who is beckoning to you. How say you. 
 Monsieur le Marquis? If a new aristocracy 
 is to be created from the people, it is at least 
 a noble thought to base it on such a founda- 
 tion." 
 
 " Your word does more honor to the Consul 
 than mine," the marquis returned, courte- 
 ously; "but I leave it to madame to judge 
 whether it. requires greater gifts to make it 
 
Fal^Maria. 75 
 
 conform to the conduct of the extraordinary 
 man who first uttered them." 
 
 " I have been too little at court to have 
 opinions," the countess answered, with a 
 smile. 
 
 "Pardon, ma chere ; we were saying before 
 you joined us," explained the marquis, turn- 
 ing towards Madame de Montal, "that only 
 those who are not at court can afford the 
 luxury of opinions at all. There was an 
 effort to push opinions — innocent ones, on 
 literary matters — two or three weeks ago at 
 the Tuileries. General Bonaparte had decided 
 that it was time to begin to gather men of 
 letters at the reunions of Madame Bonaparte ; 
 for no one can deny that he has a most 
 marvellously comprehensive brain — our Con- 
 sul ; nothing is forgotten ; and a vigilance upon 
 all this machinery he sets in motion — a vigil- 
 ance which is scarcely human ! No one 
 thinks for himself, but every one does Us 
 bidding, and in the end it is as well to let 
 one's brain rest, for the Consul has enough 
 for all, and keeps it always going." 
 
76 yal-Maria. 
 
 " But about these literary receptions?" 
 
 " Well, the first one goes off charmingly. 
 Monsieur de Remusat sends the invitations; 
 there were the new Lyceums to talk of; the 
 collection of French paintings just placed at 
 the Musee ; above all, the pensions and re- 
 wards just decreed to men of letters ; with a 
 fair sprinkling of academicians and savants — 
 it was an inspiring change for some of us 
 weary ones ; and to crown all, Bonaparte 
 himself, in a good humor and really bril- 
 liant." 
 
 "I am so glad for Josephine's sake!" the 
 countess exclaimed, with keen interest. "You 
 know her salon in the Rue Chantereine was 
 charming, but at the Tuileries it has always 
 seemed different." 
 
 " A difference with a reason, my dear ! Of 
 course we come a second time a little freer of 
 movement, like birds who have tried our 
 wings. We talk among ourselves with more 
 elan. The Consul is late. We are in the 
 second salon, where Madame Bonaparte cannot 
 hear : some one remembers Monsieur de Lille, 
 
yal-Maria. 77 
 
 and the question goes, if it would not be a 
 little triumph to charm him back to the court 
 from his quiet rooms across the Seine, and 
 whether he could be made to accept the honors 
 he has declined, since our literary evenings 
 may make us worthier of his society. Sud- 
 denly the Consul appears. Something has 
 vexed him, or he is seriously arranging some 
 weighty matter of state ; but he looks at us 
 under his eyebrows quite silently, and the 
 whole atmosphere changes. The Abbe Mo- 
 rellet perceives nothing, and has the misfor- 
 tune to wax eloquent on your theme. Mon- 
 sieur de Montal — liberty of thought and speech, 
 and the advantages it secures for nations! 
 It is a pretty theme when its surroundings are 
 made for it like a frame ; but at last Monsieur 
 I'Abbe discovers that he has talked for an in- 
 terminable time, and no one has answered 
 anything but a few little, freezing words." 
 
 " But surely Madame Bonaparte was there ; 
 and you, who can always talk, my dear mar- 
 quise, why did you not say something for the 
 
 honor of the court? The Consul cannot 
 7* 
 
78 yal-Maria. 
 
 always be free for the thoughts of the mo- 
 ment ; it is inconceivable !" 
 
 " My dear, we were all of us there, and we 
 could none of us talk. I give you my word ! 
 In the Faubourg we are quite capable of 
 whatever you please : that is the extraordinary 
 influence of the man ! Whatever he will not 
 do, we may not do. If he is absorbed, we 
 may not shine. But pardon me if I fatigue 
 you : I am giving you the history of a ' move- 
 ment,' for it positively has that importance. 
 
 "Third evening: everybody thinks of the 
 Abbe de Lille and the Abbe Morellet ; and 
 nobody makes mistakes, because nobody talks ; 
 and every one tries to smile, enough to hide 
 the mortal fatigue, and not enough to look as 
 if we were thinking about anything in par- 
 ticular ; for opinions were not en regie for this 
 famous evening ; and the savants are out of 
 place ; and we are out of place ; and the Con- 
 sul is preoccupied and appears to notice noth- 
 ing. And this is the glorious finale of our 
 • soirees litteraires.' For of course there 
 went forth a decree to Monsieur de Remusat." 
 
Val-Maria. 79 
 
 " I do not understand it at all," the countess 
 exclaimed. "One must have moments of 
 absorption, and for one at the head of a gov- 
 ernment ! — The wonder is that he can give 
 any attention to these details." 
 
 " My dear, you are very young, as Mon- 
 sieur de Talleyrand remarks to Madame de 
 Remusat, who still permits herself emotions. 
 But that is the man I Everybody else may 
 have moments of absorption without results. 
 We women of the Court of France might be 
 capable of directing a salon, if it were not 
 decreed that we should not. The whole 
 thing explains itself by the Consul's objection 
 to Madame de Stael : ' This woman teaches 
 people to think who never thought before.' 
 And now, when Louis Bonaparte will not keep 
 away from her salons, although tlie Consul has 
 forbidden his attendance — for the discussion is 
 free upon all political subjects — our Monsieur 
 Louis Bonaparte is watched, by order of the 
 Consul!" 
 
 "Rumor is not always candid — not always 
 exact," the countess said, with a feeling of 
 
8o yal-Maria. 
 
 depression, "and I think you are very hard 
 upon the Consul. Every one acknowledges his 
 magnetism." 
 
 "I grant you his magnetism, my dear 
 countess; he is as magnetic as an infernal 
 machine ! As for me, 1 do not like this modern 
 kind of sorcery. It reminds me of this curious 
 invention our academicians were raving over 
 not long ago — 'electricity,' I believe they call 
 it. My own son was one of them, as crazy as 
 the rest, and they were all in my salon dis- 
 cussing their scheme for carrying the new 
 power — no one knows how far — through a 
 tube under one of the basins of the Tuileries. 
 They had a queer-looking little machine of 
 glass, and wire coils, and Victor was charm- 
 ingly polite. 'It shall be madame my mother 
 who touches it the first,' he said, bringing me 
 a little handle at the end of a cord. 1 give you 
 my word, I was at the other end of the room 
 from his innocent-looking box, but I never 
 felt such a thrill ! Pouf ! and after that I was 
 numb ! ' It's the kind of work the Little Corpo- 
 ral likes, and no good will come of introducing 
 
Val-Maria. 8 1 
 
 it,' I told Victor. But it seems the savants 
 have known about it for a long time, and the 
 English are more learned than we in this kind 
 of foolishness. I confess I owe them no 
 grudge for it; and all the more because it 
 makes the little man at our end gnash his 
 teeth." 
 
 "My dear marquise," the young countess 
 pleaded. 
 
 " My dear countess, would it be drole, do 
 you think, if the Little Corporal got hold of 
 the end that pricks? and — allons, we are all 
 of us discreet, and I really must tell you my 
 discovery. You see the Consul thinks himself 
 superior to everybody else, but he is always 
 afraid of superiority in others ! It is so sim- 
 ple that it is almost naive ; but I like the 
 Consul better for it : it makes him more 
 human." 
 
 "Signore Alfonte must tell us what he 
 thinks of this beginning of art-culture in 
 France, of which Monsieur de Montal has 
 seen something since I have left Paris," the 
 countess suggested, eagerly seizing the oppor- 
 / 
 
82 yal-Maria. 
 
 tunity of introducing a new subject, as the 
 artist came up the steps of the terrace re- 
 freshed by a stroll with the child. This breath 
 from the court was so at variance with her 
 retired home-life and the thoughts that filled 
 her leisure, that she hoped to turn from it to 
 something more real. It seemed to her that 
 Bonaparte was so great there was scarcely 
 room for any unkindness of judgment ; but as 
 she had said, she could not have opinions 
 until, at least, she had questioned her husband 
 freely. 
 
 " Madame gives me a subject to which I 
 cannot do justice," Alfonte answered with a 
 warmth that was reassuring. "Partly be- 
 cause of my amazement that in times of such 
 upheaval there should be this extraordinary 
 blossoming of art, and partly because the line 
 of its progression is not in my own field, I 
 am not qualified." 
 
 "Is it by courtesy that you refuse?" 
 "Ah, no ; I only say what I had believed 
 before I came to France, and now I find it 
 true. Since the Revolution I had heard so 
 
Val-Maria. 83 
 
 much of this rapid development among your 
 painters that I wished to see for myself, and 
 1 am not disappointed, David, Gerard, Isabey 
 — their names we know. But besides their 
 canvases and miniatures, by which they are 
 known among us already, I find that they 
 have greatly influenced your society, your 
 customs, your dress, your decorations ; the 
 artist element has gotten into them all and 
 made them charming." 
 
 "You prove your fitness, signore, in try- 
 ing to disprove it." 
 
 He made a motion of deprecation as he 
 went on — "And I find still further, that your 
 school of artists is chiefly historic, and the 
 time develops them historically ; they have 
 had much to do with bringing back the 
 classic outlines which are creeping into your 
 draperies and your coiffures." 
 
 " At least, my dear marquise," the countess 
 said, turning to her, " you will admit that if 
 the Consul is cold towards the expression of 
 strong opinions, he knows how to fire the 
 imagination of our artists; for we owe it 
 
84 Val^Maria. 
 
 to him. — Do you not think so, Signore Al- 
 fonte ?" 
 
 " Your Revolution has done this for France : 
 it has made genius recognizable socially; it 
 has made a place for the new, or at least has 
 made the displacement of existing traditions 
 possible." 
 
 " It is one of the growths which the Consul 
 nurses with his extraordinary watchfulness, 
 and to which, by his wise policy, he contrib- 
 utes, even if the times produce it," said the 
 count. "But if Signore Alfonte can say so 
 much for our progress in art, I hope he can 
 also tell us that he has decided to accept the 
 Consul's invitation to make his home in 
 France." 
 
 There was a storm of flattering interroga- 
 tions, while Monsieur de Mental explained 
 with what promise of preferment the invita- 
 tion had been accompanied. 
 
 "It is true your Consul has been most 
 gracious. He has told me he wishes to make 
 his country great in all arts. I appreciate his 
 offers as an honor to my art. But France, 
 
yalr-Maria. 85 
 
 with all her splendor and prosperity, is not 
 the home for my noble mistress. I must 
 remain where she would best thrive." 
 
 "Then, signore, your words have been but 
 flatteries, after all !" the countess exclaimed in 
 disappointment. 
 
 "Not so, madame, I beg of you ; my words 
 are always true. I spoke but of painters, and 
 those only in the field of history or portraiture 
 — not in the field of religion, you will observe, 
 nor of ideality. It is the sort of art that is 
 developed by an epic period: it grows in 
 movement and struggle and change. My art 
 demands an atmosphere of repose, and this 
 your Consul, great as he is, cannot create 
 for me !" 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTH. 
 
 1^ 
 
 HE days that followed were full of 
 new experiences for Felix, of which 
 lie took in the delight, quite uncon- 
 scious that he himself played an unusual part 
 in the group which he found so charming. 
 The beautiful boy, so naive yet so mature, was 
 full of enthusiasm and of quaint ways begot- 
 ten from the lack of youthful companions and 
 the substitution of heroes, known only through 
 books, for daily friends of living charms and 
 failings: eagerly imitating his elders in every 
 gracious attention of host to guest which this 
 
 bountiful hospitality was first making known 
 86 
 
Val-Maria. 87 
 
 to him, yet escaping self-consciousness and ped- 
 antry from his delight in ministering to those 
 about him, he seemed indeed a little prince. 
 
 "If the throne of France were to be fitted 
 with a sovereign by vote," the old marquis 
 exclaimed, jocosely, one day, "I believe that 
 boy could unite us all I" 
 
 But the child passed harmlessly through 
 the admiration lavished upon him, for his was 
 the unconscious mastery of love, instead of 
 the force of ambition and conscious, unrelent- 
 ing, self-centred will by which his hero swayed 
 the world. 
 
 The development was certainly as charming 
 as it was rare, though in ordinary cases it 
 might not have been a healthy one ; nor could 
 it have been produced had life held for Felix 
 the same promise and responsibilities of man- 
 hood that it did for other children. But his 
 battle of life was fought for him by those who 
 kept from him all its pain, seeking only his 
 happiness. Guarded, idolized as he was, he 
 was in danger of but one temptation, and 
 selfishness was triumphed over by the ruling 
 
88 Valr-Maria. 
 
 motive of his education, the love which also 
 became the central strength of his own charac- 
 ter. To this, and to keeping his mind fed on 
 noble thoughts, his parents had trusted for his 
 happiness. 
 
 Even the countess found an unexpected sat- 
 isfaction in noting the deep impression her 
 child was making upon their friends, which 
 partly atoned for the unwonted sense of hurry 
 and confusion of thought produced by this 
 attrition of diverse minds in the hitherto poetic 
 and constant atmosphere of the Chateau of 
 Val-Maria. 
 
 The little fellow was strangely modifying 
 the talk of the circle, for his intense admira- 
 tion of their First Ruler had been made known 
 to them both by the count and by his own 
 artless and enthusiastic confessions, and not 
 one of them would have pained him by any 
 expression of disloyalty. Thus his eager desire 
 for further information from those who had 
 the great happiness of being continually with 
 the Consul was gratified with every reminis- 
 cence that could contribute to the impression 
 
yal-Maria. 89 
 
 the child had already gained, and as they vied 
 with each other in culling these bits for Felix, 
 it was instructive to note how the child's spirit 
 of love had affected their judgment in anec- 
 dotes to which a different complexion was 
 sometimes given in other circles. 
 
 He had much to talk over with his marble 
 friend when left alone with him at night, and 
 through the door that opened to his mother's 
 dressing-room she often caught some mur- 
 mured tones of admiration that seemed to 
 come from the depths of his heart, and one 
 evening she distinctly overheard the ardent 
 words, "Oh, mon ami — 'noblesse oblige;' and 
 thou art like a king!" 
 
 "Who told you that, my darling?" she 
 asked, going quickly to him. 
 
 " It was Monsieur le Cure, when he was 
 here to-day," he answered, to her great sur- 
 prise. " When Monsieur I'Abbe was reading 
 to us from the Moniteur about the Consul's 
 trip in Belgium ; and how, often, when the 
 people wanted to make him king, he always 
 
 answered that it would be ' unworthy of him 
 8* 
 
90 Val-Maria. 
 
 to usurp the authority which must affect the 
 existence of the Republic' " 
 
 The child's training had made such senti- 
 ments comprehensible to him, but he repeated 
 the words with pauses, as if he were reciting 
 a lesson imperfectly learned. 
 
 " See, Madonna mia, here it is ; Monsieur 
 I'Abbe gave me the paper. You know I am 
 making my collection for a history I mean to 
 write some day, when I grow up." 
 
 She kissed him silently. "But, Felix," after 
 a pause, " what did Monsieur le Cure say?" 
 
 " At first he looked as if he did not hear. 
 I thought he did not love our Consul so much 
 as he ought. I thought he was thinking, and 
 perhaps he did not understand. So Monsieur 
 I'Abbe read it once more, very slowly. Mon- 
 sieur le Cure heard him then, and his eyes 
 grew very bright, and he said, ' My little son, 
 remember that "he that ruleth his spirit is 
 greater than he that taketh a city." It was 
 like a king to refuse the temptation. I am glad 
 the Consul was so noble.' " 
 
 Monsieur le Cure had come, as usual, to the 
 
Val-Maria. 91 
 
 chateau for dejeuner that morning, regardless 
 of the grands seigneurs whom he had declined 
 to meet at dinner, when the countess had 
 pressed him to join their party each evening ; 
 for she was proud of the old man, whom she 
 tenderly loved not alone for his own noble 
 character, but also for a fancied resemblance 
 to the grandfather of whom her husband had 
 so often told her. To this fancy he largely 
 owed the gentle care of which he never knew 
 the full measure; the watchfulness over his 
 wardrobe, which showed a fineness of cloth 
 and daintiness of cambric and rufides as un- 
 suspected by their wearer as they were beyond 
 his appreciation ; the comfort and freshness 
 and sufficiency of his simple household belong- 
 ings, at whose unfailing lease of usefulness 
 and youth he never wondered ; the overflow 
 that was possible from his modest purse or 
 home, whenever the rare need occurred ; the 
 cheerfulness with which his worthy house- 
 keeper — his one servant — met all their modest 
 expenses with the still more modest sum he 
 placed at her disposal — a sum which bore no 
 
92 yal-Maria. 
 
 reference to the articles it was intended to 
 purchase, but was simply the remainder from 
 her wages and his disproportionate alms- 
 giving. 
 
 If he ever allowed himself a gentle wonder 
 at the time and thought that such matters cost 
 so many of his flock, it passed as quickly as it 
 came — with a sigh for the Marthas cumbered 
 with too much serving — and not without some 
 self-chiding, lest he should be dealing with 
 things he did not understand, for he had a 
 vague consciousness that all "worldly details," 
 as he called everything practical, were beyond 
 his province — not below him, only he was not 
 fitted for them. 
 
 If his good Therese had ever confessed to 
 the countess's share in the smoothness of his 
 home-ongoings, it might have taken away 
 some of his delight in the dear sense of de- 
 pendence on the One who had provided that 
 the widow's cruse of oil should not fail, and 
 his gracious friend thought it would be sweeter 
 to him not to know the intervention of any 
 human hand. Thus the little romance had 
 
f^al-Maria. 93 
 
 gone on in secret from year to year ; and the 
 life wiiich her poetic sympathy thus kept free 
 from earthly frettings often brought its fra- 
 grance of peace and holy meditation to enrich 
 the lives of the dwellers in the chateau. 
 
 " I thank you, my daughter," he had said ; 
 " I do not change my ways, for I am old, and 
 I have not so many hours left. The evening 
 is my time for going over my ' Legends of 
 the Saints.' " 
 
 " Well, then, dear father, you will come to 
 Felix, as usual, for your 'Thursday fete'?" 
 
 " Yes, my daughter, I will come," he 
 answered, simply; "I do not change my 
 ways." 
 
 So Felix had gone with Monsieur I'Abbe to 
 bring him to the chateau at the hour which he 
 spent with them each week, and which he 
 called his 'Thursday fete,' from the gentle 
 petting which made it so sweet to him. The 
 countess went forward to receive him, placing 
 him beside her at the table in his special chair, 
 as she was wont to do when they were quite 
 alone. The gentle old pastor made a noble 
 
94 yalr-Maria. 
 
 picture, as simple and dignified among this 
 brilliant group of courtiers and senators as 
 when he stood in the midst of his peasant 
 flock, and as far removed ; for he knew but 
 little of the things which filled their thoughts. 
 Nay, further — for these men of the world, 
 trained to the subtle appreciation of differences, 
 were more conscious of the aloofness of this 
 naive yet imposing figure of peace and duty 
 well fulfilled, so nearly at the bourn of this 
 world of change that its changes no longer 
 either affected or interested him. Little Felix 
 hovered about him as if he were indeed a 
 beloved grandfather, and the countess noticed 
 with content that he carried his atmosphere 
 with him and was neither confused nor abashed 
 by the unaccustomed presences in which he 
 found himself. It was a proof, she thought, as 
 her glance followed him tenderly, of the power 
 of a loving life and noble thought to place 
 those whom the world calls lowly born upon 
 its highest plane. For the old pastor had 
 never left his native village, except during the 
 period of his studies; and with the little 
 
Kal-Maria. 95 
 
 observances of etiquette usual in the classes 
 above his own, the omission of which would 
 have been distinctly observable here, a lifetime 
 of warm intercourse with the inmates of the 
 chateau had made him so familiar, that their 
 modes of courtesy seemed the natural expres- 
 sion of his own gentle nature. 
 
 The talk had turned that morning, before 
 the cure came, on the triumphal proces- 
 sion through Belgium, of which the Moniteur 
 gave each day an account more extraordinary 
 than the last ; but although the topic had first 
 been introduced by the count, as promising a 
 rest from political discussions that were not 
 always cool, it was soon evident that the 
 event was too important to be without its 
 deductions of still graver import. 
 
 For never had a legitimate monarch been 
 received with such a frenzy of enthusiasm — 
 ancient customs wherewith the cities of Bel- 
 gium had been wont to honor the visits of 
 royalty having been voluntarily offered in 
 testimony of an adulation scarcely befitting 
 a mortal man. On his way thither, at Amiens 
 
$6 t^al-Maria. 
 
 a crowd of thirty thousand people present their 
 hero with an ovation that savors of fanaticism ; 
 some of the most eager unharness his horses 
 and drag the carriage themselves into the city, 
 amidst the vivas of the people. It is easy to 
 imagine the tears of joy of the impressionable 
 Josephine; but it was also said that the eyes 
 of the impassive conqueror were humid as he 
 received from the ancient city the tribute of the 
 four white swans which it was its wont to 
 offer only to a sovereign, and the descendants 
 of these royal birds still recite their tale of 
 homage in the garden of the Tuileries. 
 
 Everywhere there are illuminations, addresses, 
 throngs gathering from the neighboring towns 
 for one glimpse of this man who sways the 
 world ; processions of young maidens clothed 
 in white, bringing offerings of flowers ; solemn 
 ceremonials of mighty functionaries, with pres- 
 entations of keys symbolizing the freedom 
 of cities of which he is already master ; gro- 
 tesque representations of his victories that make 
 the great man smile. 
 
 In the midst of all these ovations, Josephine 
 
Val-Maria. 97 
 
 is more gracious, more winning, more queenly 
 than ever; but Napoleon does not forget to 
 weigh and measure, with an accuracy that is 
 not blinded by all this blaze of glory, the pre- 
 cise degrees of enthusiasm — one city against 
 another — and where one is wanting in degree, 
 he is fertile and politic in resources. "This 
 people is under the influence of the priests," 
 he says to Josephine; " we must spend a long 
 time in the church before we continue our 
 route." Hence, in the Moniteur, the record of 
 his profound attention at Mass — his most 
 gracious words to the archbishop ; hence, also, 
 the acclamations they receive at the grand ball 
 given by the city, and the allegorical drama 
 played in the public fete in the great square, 
 where the rivers of Belgium, conquering the 
 pride of the Thames, make a peaceful alliance 
 with the waters of the Seine ! 
 
 At Antwerp there is no 'need of an act of 
 devotion to encourage the enthusiasm of the 
 jubilant populace ; and outside of Brussels a cor- 
 tege of twelve thousand men is waiting, with 
 
 a guard of honor of five hundred of the elite 
 ^ g 9 
 
98 yal-Maria. 
 
 of the young Belgian nobility, to escort the Con- 
 sul in safety through the triumphal arch which, 
 modelled after the arch of Titus in Rome, had 
 been erected in his honor, into the streets filled 
 with a joyous crowd, amid the continuous 
 salute of cannon and pealing of chimes and 
 vociferous shouting of " Vive Bonaparte! vive 
 le grand iomme !" while Josephine follows in a 
 superb carriage presented by the city, and 
 welcomed, as she passes, by a shower of 
 flowers ! 
 
 The clergy, too, will not be outdone in works 
 of adulation. They stand, in imposing sacer- 
 dotal robes, rank upon rank, on the steps of 
 St. Gudule, preceded by the bearer of the Holy 
 Cross, awaiting the victorious Consul : on the 
 steps of this same cathedral that offers him a 
 solemn grand Mass in music on the Sunday 
 that follows, celebrated with extraordinary 
 pomp, where he is received by the clergy and 
 the cross, and conducted by them, under a 
 canopy, to the grand altar. Were ever such 
 honors multiplied upon mortal man ? It is no 
 wonder that even a speechless statue, symbolic 
 
yal-Maria. 99 
 
 of its department, after the fashion of France, 
 must flatter him with its legend : 
 
 " I bear the name of my department ; but 
 thou givest thine to the century !" 
 
 The religious aspect and significance of this 
 journey, upon which the Consul had started 
 with the oflFicial blessing and prayers of bishops 
 and archbishops, tendered upon his request,' 
 had also its keen interest for those who watched 
 the development of France ; and the Moniteur's 
 reports of everything bearing upon this ques- 
 tion were closely studied. Nor were these 
 priestly mandates lacking in devotion to the 
 great ruler of the nation, "who knew," said 
 the Archbishop of Paris, with a tone which in 
 these days of analysis seems strangely naive, 
 "that the only way to secure the success of 
 his arms was to interest the God of armies!" 
 But he then proceeds, in a strain of loving 
 earnestness and simplicity which deserved and 
 obtained large results, " He desires that we 
 command your prayers to bring the blessing 
 of heaven upon his righteous undertakings. 
 The love that you bear to your country, my 
 
loo Val-Maria. 
 
 beloved brethren, the gratitude that you owe 
 to a government so mild, so beneficent, so 
 paternal, are a sure guarantee of the zeal with 
 which you will respond to this religious feel- 
 ing." 
 
 Nor was the Archbishop of Rouen behind- 
 hand in zeal. " Let us pray God that this 
 man who, under His command, has done so 
 much for the re-establishment of His worship, 
 who proposes to do still more, shall be, like 
 Cyrus, the Christ of Providence. May Provi- 
 dence watch over his life and cover him with 
 His wings, and remove from his august person 
 the dangers found in war for one of such great 
 courage, and those to be feared from envy and 
 detraction for one of such great merit." 
 
 "After these benedictory mandates of the 
 archbishops, and the courtly address of Mon- 
 seigneur of Roquelaure which was reported 
 the other day," said the marquise, looking up 
 from the latest Moniteur, " they might have 
 spared themselves the fatigue of preserving 
 this speech of Monsieur le Cure d' Abbeville, 
 for its climax, en petissant, seems like a reductio 
 
Val-Maria. loi 
 
 ad absurdum. ' Religion, like France, owes to 
 you all that she is ; we owe to you all that we 
 are ; / owe to you all that 1 am,' Monsieur de 
 Talleyrand did not sift these despatches." 
 
 The countess flushed and hastily took a 
 copy of the "Genie du Christianisme" from the 
 table, turning to the dedication. " There is 
 no praise equal to these beautiful words," she • 
 said, " and 1 have heard that the Consul was 
 greatly touched by them. Dear marquise, 
 must he not be noble to deserve such elo- 
 quence? You remember how the dedication 
 closes : ' Still extend a protecting hand to 
 thirty millions of Christians who pray for you 
 at the foot of the altars you have restored to 
 them.' " 
 
 " Bonaparte can be as eloquent as Chateau- 
 briand, I assure you, when the spirit moves 
 him," the marquise answered, with an amiable 
 desire to cover the slight malice of her last 
 remark; "and it may have been Chateau- 
 briand's tribute that moved him to say, not 
 long ago — ^you know the book only came out 
 last year — 'Human pride finds the public it 
 
I03 y air-Maria. 
 
 desires in that ideal world which is called 
 posterity, and he who believes that a hundred 
 years hence a fine poem will recall a great 
 action of his own, has his imagination fired 
 by that idea.'" 
 
 At this point Monsieur le Cure had arrived 
 and the countess went forward to receive him, 
 •but all attempts to draw him into the general 
 conversation proved unavailing. The marquise 
 took a chair beside him, hoping for more suc- 
 cess, for his simplicity seemed to her ideal. 
 
 " Do you not think with us, Monsieur 
 I'Abbe, that France has at last reached a period 
 of great prosperity ?" 
 
 "Pardon me, madame; the title does not 
 belong to me; I am a simple village priest," 
 he said, in tones that were full of courtesy, 
 although they slightly betrayed the peasant 
 accent of his province. "I cannot answer 
 your question, for 1 know nothing of these 
 things." 
 
 " Yet sometimes, out of the turmoil of the 
 world, we come to those who live in quiet 
 for the wisdom of their thoughts ; for great 
 
Val^Maria. 103 
 
 thoughts grow in quiet, and priests have 
 swayed the world." 
 
 The intended flattery entirely escaped his 
 simplicity. 
 
 " I have heard that it has been so," he 
 answered, quietly ; " but God has given me, 
 for my duty, only my little parish of Val- 
 Maria, and it has filled my life." 
 
 " But, my father," said one of the gentle- 
 men, approaching him with gentle deference, 
 and using the address which he thought would 
 place him most at ease, " surely you are in- 
 terested in what General Bonaparte has done 
 for the Church ? He is called its restorer." 
 
 The old man rose quickly, with a deeper 
 light in his eyes. 
 
 " That honor is for no man," he said, glanc- 
 ing around him in grave defiance. " God 
 never ceases to care for His Church \" 
 
 Passing through the silenced group, he had 
 reached the terrace windows, when Felix fol- 
 lowed and slipped his soft hand in the cure's 
 withered one. The old man turned suddenly 
 with all his former mildness in his face, look- 
 
I04 
 
 yahMaria. 
 
 ing down at the boy with a smile. " I was 
 going to seek you in the gardens," he said, 
 "for our Thursday talk. My daughter, will 
 you excuse me to your friends ? It is the hour 
 which belongs always to Felix and me." 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTH. 
 
 IT last the gay company had left, and 
 the chateau had returned to its for- 
 mer quiet. But there was a great 
 change in Felix, into whose life his new friend 
 Alfonte had poured his own art-wealth. 
 Every morning they had been together for 
 hours in the great library, deep in old folios 
 which brought them into a world of art-treas- 
 ures, the artist guiding and developing the 
 child's wonderful artistic instincts into a 
 growth which filled his own soul with amaze- 
 ment. 
 
 " Never," he declared to the count, " had he 
 found such genius ! It was a holy gift !" 
 
 105 
 
io6 yal~Maria. 
 
 But he spoke of it only when they were 
 quite alone, as if it were a coy presence that 
 might not linger if confessed. 
 
 " And do not tell the child," he said. " Let 
 us reverence it in silence till I have led him 
 farther on this holy ground. Then he will 
 know it for himself; and the moment of 
 revelation should come within his own soul !" 
 
 Often the two friends spoke together of 
 these things, as they strolled up and down the 
 terraces at night, when little Felix was sleep- 
 ing, filled with new, vague dreams of ecstasy : 
 the beauty that had always ministered so largely 
 to his young and joyous life seemed to whisper 
 to him of shapes that were more tangible, and 
 of a purpose that should make men loftier be- 
 cause he had lived. But it was always beauty 
 whispering, beckoning, eluding — an ideal that 
 he could not reach — with a promise of some- 
 thing divine, beyond his understanding. 
 
 One morning he came running to his friend 
 and clasped him close — close — with clinging, 
 passionate arms and cheeks burning with a 
 delicious shame. "I shall be an artist, too !" 
 
yal-Maria. 107 
 
 he said, in a broken voice. "God told me so 
 last night !" 
 
 And the two friends — the lonely artist 
 and the little child whose whole being was 
 wrapped and glorified by love — burst into 
 sobs together. . . . 
 
 " Little brother," said Alfonte, at last, " shall 
 we go to the sweet mother and tell her now?" 
 
 The child threw back his head, with a clear, 
 ringing laugh, for the mood of quick emotion 
 had passed, leaving him glad-hearted as a 
 bird. 
 
 "1 cannot tell Madonna mia anything," he 
 said. " She knows it always : 1 think God tells 
 her first." 
 
 "Felix, why do you always call her 'Mor- 
 donna mia'?" 
 
 "I cannot call her anything else," the boy 
 answered, seriously ; " there are so many rea- 
 sons. First, 1 think it is because I love her so 
 much — the way some one who is very good, 
 like Monsieur le Cure, loves the true Ma- 
 donna; he tells me about it often when he 
 comes. 1 love my Madonna like that ! And 
 
io8 yal^Maria. 
 
 I chose that name for her from all the saints 
 of Monsieur le Cure's legends, because I liked 
 it best." 
 
 "And then? " 
 
 " And then her eyes are like the beautiful 
 Madonna of Raffaello that my papa brought 
 home from Dresden. I think 1 remember that 
 her eyes used to look at me so when I was a 
 little baby like the Holy Child. 1 don't know 
 if I really remember it, because I was so little. 
 I may know it without remembering. 1 do 
 not always know how 1 know things." 
 
 "And then? " the artist asked again, 
 
 after a little silence, hesitating to recall the 
 child from his revery, yet fearing to lose some 
 of the sweetness of his thought in its first 
 expansion. 
 
 "And then — and then — of course, she 
 would be my Madonna if 1 were a real knight 
 like those in Froissart's 'Chronicles,' and the 
 olden time my papa tells me about, because 
 she is the sweetest lady in all the world ! He 
 says she can be my lady now, and lead me on 
 to everything that is holy and noble, as the 
 
yal-Maria. 109 
 
 ladies of the old romance used to do. It is 
 more beautiful to hear my papa talk than even 
 Monsieur le Cure, when he tells me these 
 things ! ... 1 do not know my other rea- 
 sons." 
 
 " Felix," Alfonte said, reverently, "it is a 
 very beautiful love. It will make you a noble 
 knight and a great artist. All true artists have 
 been guided by holy loves. Our greatest 
 master, Angelo, was made greater yet by a 
 beautiful and holy lady who taught him the 
 deeper sacredness of art. And the divine 
 Dante — the greatest poet in the world — was 
 made a poet by the dream of a little maiden 
 he had seen but once, and whom he fancied 
 growing more beautiful and saintly every day, 
 until she became his ideal, and the whole 
 world knows the story of this holy love." 
 
 "It is a pretty story," said Felix, carelessly; 
 " but it is not like my Madonna ! 1 want some 
 one to love me, too ; I want some one to love 
 me very much !" 
 
 " One cannot always have that happiness," 
 Alfonte answered, sadly. "It is possible to 
 
no yal-Maria. 
 
 live without the presence of an earthly love to 
 cheer us, but without an ideal one cannot be 
 an artist. You remember the face of the 
 'Laureate/ Felix? I showed it to you the 
 other day." 
 
 "Yes; and I did not like it so well as the 
 Sanzio's : it made me afraid." 
 
 "Yes, but that is only now; later it will 
 not be so. Felix" — he laid his hand solemnly 
 on the radiant young head — " art will ask 
 more and more of us as time passes, and we 
 must not be afraid of her sublimity. She 
 makes men lonely, for they must meditate in 
 solitude, or they cannot hear her speak. She 
 must be a great love ; she must be a religious 
 passion ; she must make men loftier; she must 
 lift them up to heaven itself. Art is the echo 
 of the voice of God within us and about us, 
 and she is divine!" 
 
 The child looked at him with great shining 
 eyes. 
 
 "Dear master," he said, very softly and 
 slowly, as if pledging himself to the noble 
 creed, " I know it ! and now" — with the quick 
 
change of mood vibrating, bird-like, tlirough 
 his tones and his joyous, rhythmic motions — 
 " I must go to Madonna mia ; so many things 
 have happened since she kissed me this morn- 
 ing !" 
 
 Oh, the long delight of the time that fol- 
 lowed, when the boy was led, step by step, by 
 his artist friend to a comprehension — beyond 
 his years, and possible only to true genius — 
 of the science and technique that were needed 
 at the very threshold of this glorious Temple 
 of Art which he aspired to enter as a disciple. 
 The resources of the chateau had offered much 
 for their study, and the exhaustless stores of 
 the master's mind had endued its treasures 
 with a living interest they had never before 
 possessed, as they studied in gallery, chapel, or 
 library, or dwelt on old myths and classic 
 stories among the marble images on the ter- 
 race. 
 
 Meanwhile a studio had been prepared for 
 Alfonte's group, his " master-work of Mother- 
 Love," as even then he dared to name it, be- 
 fore he had touched his model — so sure had 
 
1 12 yal-Maria. 
 
 he felt from the beginning of his inspiration ; 
 nor were they satisfied with the rude studio 
 first intended when the group had been dis- 
 cussed, for was it not to belong to Felix? and 
 after the words Alfonte had spoken, must they 
 not do all that was possible to aid in the de- 
 velopment of their child's wondrous gift? So 
 a vast room, connecting with Felix's chamber, 
 and opening directly back of it upon a large 
 upper terrace or gallery, was dismantled of its 
 guest-chamber furnishings and completely re- 
 fitted as Alfonte directed; and here he was 
 bidden to order everything as he would have 
 it for a model studio. Great boxes came from 
 Florence and Rome, with treasures, rich in 
 educational value, that were to belong to 
 Felix, many of them gifts from Alfonte's own 
 store ; there were trained assistants from his 
 studio in Florence, with implements and artists' 
 belongings ; and finally all was complete. The 
 studio was an artist's realization, with draper- 
 ies and bits of color against which the carefully- 
 selected antique casts were outlined ; with 
 cosey spots inviting to meditation by their rugs 
 
Valr-Maria. 1 1 3 
 
 and cushions and quaint deep chairs, here and 
 there, among the ample rougher spaces that 
 permitted work. But when all was finished, 
 it was Felix who thought of the special couch 
 and easy-chair, the little table for her work of 
 book, and the great vases of growing plants 
 for mamma's own corner, and who led her 
 to it as if she had been a queen, with a beau- 
 tiful, grave, and courtly grace ; and who, the 
 moment she was established there, danced 
 about with the most childish and vehement 
 expressions of delight, quite inappropriate to 
 the master of such a studio. Mamma, too, first 
 arrayed him in the long white linen tunic she 
 had had prepared to slip over his velvet suit, 
 and fitted his crimson cap over his bright hair, 
 with an air of robing him for some great ini- 
 tiation ceremony. And here the little acolyte 
 began his apprenticeship, while Alfonte, who 
 had replaced his brilliant court-dress with a 
 loose gray studio tunic and dark-green velvet 
 cap, gave himself up to the joy of his creation ; 
 and the countess worked or read on her low 
 couch, or talked with the count, who, in the 
 k 10* 
 
1 1 4 Val^Maria. 
 
 first days of this great new interest, was often 
 with them. 
 
 An immense old-fashioned dormer-window, 
 that was in fact a projecting gable, and had 
 always been used as a dressing-room, opened 
 from one end of this great chamber, and this 
 had been remodelled with added lights in the 
 roof, and a system of easy mechanism, by 
 which these and the original lower lights 
 could be adjusted, had been provided; stone 
 columns had been carried down to the lower 
 terrace, affording an ample support ; and the 
 floor of this space, which was in all respects 
 much rougher than the rest of the apartment, 
 had been plainly tiled to receive the drippings 
 from the modeller's work; and here rose the 
 first rude semblance of the group upon which 
 Alfonte labored with a zeal that was infectious. 
 
 "Take something you know thoroughly 
 for your first attempt," the master said, as he 
 left the boy dreamily pondering over the first 
 mass of clay he was to shape quite alone. 
 
 His mother smiled at him from her distant 
 corner, and the happy thought that came with 
 
Val^Maria. 1 1 5 
 
 the smile was soon pulsating through his eager 
 finger-tips, and with a deft manipulation of 
 the little wooden spaddles that astonished the 
 assistant who was bringing water and clay for 
 the master. Alfonte, who had been wholly ab- 
 sorbed in indicating his attitudes and massing 
 his draperies, folded him closely in his arms 
 when Felix showed lym the first offering of his 
 culte, for so perfectly had he delineated his 
 mother's hand that it could not be mistaken. 
 
 " It is my guiding hand," he said, his sweet 
 face all aglow. 
 
 There were often days when the countess 
 or her child, or both, would be asked to pose, 
 and the work would proceed with enthusiasm ; 
 then there would be others when Alfonte 
 would see no one but Felix, sending away his 
 assistant, and begging that no other footsteps 
 might come near his studio ; he would even 
 send the boy away, with a command that he 
 should not return unless he were summoned ; 
 for there were times when the passion of his 
 creation led him through stormy places, and he 
 needed to be alone to work out his inspiration. 
 
ii6 yalr-Maria. 
 
 And again there were periods of suspension 
 in which nothing of his thought could be 
 evolved, mornings in which work was done 
 and undone in the pliant clay ; and others when 
 he would not enter the studio at all, except 
 for Felix. 
 
 And once, when Alfonte, with a face that 
 glowed like a vision, had bolted himself in 
 alone with Felix, showing him by an imperious 
 gesture that he must not speak, the child, 
 breathless and awe-stricken, had watched the 
 quick strokes with a swelling pity in his loving, 
 sympathetic soul, for on his dear master's face 
 the light of inspiration was changing to a pas- 
 sion of pain ; but before his little, pleading 
 hands could arrest the motion, Alfonte, in a 
 frenzy of disappointment, had thrust his spad- 
 dle deep into the clay, undoing not only the 
 troubled work of the morning, but much that 
 had been wrought with careful and responsive 
 touch, and seizing the child's hand with a grasp 
 so passionate that he instinctively shrank from 
 it, though his whole soul yearned to comfort 
 his beloved master, Alfonte strode out with 
 
yahMaria. 117 
 
 steps so quick and uneven that Felix could 
 scarcely keep pace with them as he ran by his 
 side. 
 
 Yet the little hand was not too tightly pris- 
 oned to convey a faint caress, and presently 
 Alfonte's grasp relaxed as he felt it struggling 
 within his own, and looking down with a ten- 
 derness the deeper for his momentary forgetful- 
 ness, he saw that Felix was trying to repress 
 a sigh of fatigue. 
 
 " It was because I loved you that 1 brought 
 you !" he cried, as he gathered the little fellow 
 close in his arms as a mother might have done, 
 and pressed the fresh cheek passionately against 
 his own. "I love you so much that I could not 
 do without you, and yet I have hurt you, my 
 Felix ! But you cannot know, my child — ^you 
 cannot know ! — ^This morning, when I woke, 
 and all through the night, I had been longing 
 for the day, for I heard my art calling to me, 
 urging me on, so that I felt I could not fail her! 
 But art was born in me too late, my Felix. I did 
 not grow and live in her life through a beauti- 
 ful childhood, as thou art doing. God has filled 
 
ii8 yalr-Maria. 
 
 my soul full of her passion, but my hands were 
 late in training to her cunning, and sometimes 
 I cannot speak my thought. Live close to art ; 
 think only this one thought, of God and Art !" 
 
 "And Love," said Felix, very softly, and 
 nestling closer. 
 
 " Ay. God and Love and Art are one ; only 
 God and Love can create Art." 
 
 And so, through many months, the work 
 grew with uneven steps of progress, while the 
 greater work of the developing of an artist 
 grew daily with rapid pace that never turned 
 backward, and in this unfolding Alfonte's in- 
 terest never flagged. 
 
 One day when they were alone together, 
 Alfonte said, with great emotion, " Once I 
 thought but of my work : I dreamed that I 
 lived for that! Now, my child, I live for 
 yours 1" 
 
 But there came a day when the exquisite 
 model was completed — when the artist, with 
 hands that feared to add another touch, stood, 
 battling with his disappointment, before his 
 realization, questioning if he had uttered all 
 
yalr-Maria. 1 1 9 
 
 his thought, and how much more that marble 
 " resurrection" which is the sculptor's hope 
 should emphasize its spirituality. 
 
 But the count was speechless from emotion, 
 and Felix was in a turmoil of delight. 
 
 " My hope was far beyond this — far beyond," 
 Alfonte said later, as they all gathered about 
 his group. " But there are lines that are too 
 subtle for the clay. I do not know — ^the trans- 
 parency of the marble has promise in it, and it 
 shall be begun at once, while my conception 
 is still vivid. I will write to-night to Carrara 
 to reserve the first choice for me ; and when 
 the casting is finished, I will go at once. 
 
 " And, my friend, Felix must go with me. 
 I shall take him to Florence and to Rome ; it is 
 needful for him to get into an atmosphere of 
 art. He must know the immortal Angelo by 
 his works. He must study now from the 
 divinest of our masters, for I alone might 
 dwarf his gift." 
 
 After that, while he remained at Val-Marla, 
 he was always watching the mother and child 
 whenever they were together. 
 
120 VahMaria. 
 
 "There is always something beyond our 
 art," he confessed to the count, " in an ideal 
 human life ; a suggestion of the infinite which 
 artists may seize but not convey. And this 
 group which I have dreamed of so long — so 
 long — the veriest sublimity of human love — I 
 fear it has a thought of too much passion to be 
 wrought in marble. 1 have come so near to 
 my ideal only to be saddened by art's limita- 
 tions and my own." 
 
 In vain his friend sought to reassure him. 
 "It is the mothers only who are artists with 
 a hope," Alfonte said ; "for they are the sculp- 
 tors of deathless souls !" 
 
 Were they right in feeling that a new radiance 
 had crept into their child's life? the father 
 and mother asked each other, mutely, as they 
 followed the eager movements of the young 
 priest of art, in his fair white garments of con- 
 secration, and wondered at the forms of beauty 
 that responded to his magic touch. Was it 
 only that his artist soul was satisfied to create ? 
 or did the wondrous glow of cheek and lip, 
 the strange, glad fire that had deepened in 
 
y air-Maria. 121 
 
 his eyes, the richer flow of life that rounded 
 each swaying motion, echoing the fulness of 
 his happiness as words utter the thoughts of 
 others — did these indeed indicate a new glow 
 of physical life for their beloved one ? 
 
 "My wife," the count said at length, in 
 answer to her mute, pathetic inquiry, " shall 
 we have the courage wo^to ask? Men know 
 so little — even those who think they know !" 
 
 " But, Louis, if they were to tell us, our fear 
 might end." 
 
 "Beloved, think how their words have 
 blighted the joy of all these beautiful years ! 
 God's ways are more merciful than man's. 
 Let us not seek to know." 
 
 " But, Louis," she persisted, piteously, yet 
 relentless to herself, in the strength and weak- 
 ness of her great love, " do you not think it 
 may be fuller life ?" 
 
 She looked up beseechingly in his face : it 
 was full of a solemn light of peace — the look 
 of one who has struggled and conquered. 
 
 He held her close for a moment, without 
 speaking. " God help you, my darling," he 
 
122 Val-Maria. 
 
 said ; " it is fuller life. Let us be grateful for 
 His gifts. But, sweet mother of our child, do 
 you remember how we pledged each other to 
 make his life the happiest that had ever glad- 
 dened God's earth? And has not the answer 
 come most wondrously — in a life so rich — as if 
 the joy of years were lived in each of its full 
 hours ? He radiates joy like the sunlight 1" 
 
 " You mean it is too much ? Louis, it makes 
 you afraid ?" 
 
 " No, darling, not afraid, for God has sent it, 
 and it must be well. But it is very wonderful ; 
 and sometimes, when I remember that a thou- 
 sand years in His sight are but as a moment, 
 and a moment may mean His fulness of time, 
 I think we may not measure human life with 
 human measures." 
 
 They were silent for a while, and she felt the 
 quiet of the night, or the holier quiet of his 
 speech, steal into her soul like balm. " I have 
 come to understand the sweetness of not know- 
 ing," he said at length, "when knowledge 
 rests with One who is all love !" 
 
 " You comfort me, dear Louis." 
 
yalr-Maria. 125 
 
 "Let me do more than that," he said, very 
 earnestly, " as gladness is higher than comfort 1 
 I stand in awe before my own little child, for 
 a power has awaked within him that is beyond 
 our guiding, and we must give it sway. But 
 shall we not also yield to his mission? For 
 I trust we live in the knowledge and faith of 
 God, but Felix seems wholly to outbreathe the 
 Eternal Love and Joy !" 
 
CHAPTER NINTH. 
 
 T was perhaps more difficult in the 
 last days of the Consulate and the 
 first of the Empire for a Frenchman 
 to analyze the state of the mind of France in 
 regard to its government, than it is for us, 
 nearly a century later, to determine how it 
 was then regarded. For a man like Montal, 
 feeling that he ought to devote his talents 
 to the immense problems of his time, the 
 struggle was a great one ; for he would not 
 submit to bow to mere intellectual force, how- 
 ever splendid, unless he felt that force to be 
 ruled by principle, and the man who swayed 
 
 the Empire and its great dependencies pos- 
 124 
 
yalr-Maria. 125 
 
 sessed an inscrutable personality that was never 
 fully revealed to friend or foe. 
 
 If Napoleon had astonished the v^^orld by the 
 soldier-craft which had so increased the do- 
 minion of France, he was yet more wonderful 
 in his comprehensive statesmanship, seeing all 
 things at once with those keen "eyes under the 
 narrowed lids, and dropping no thread of the 
 vast machinery he had set in motion, yet keep- 
 ing one hand always free for the tracing of 
 new plans and charts in the sleepless midnight 
 hours ; for so abnormally was he constituted 
 that from time also he could command double 
 service, three hours suflficing for his nightly 
 sleep and fifteen minutes for his most cere- 
 monious meal ! 
 
 If the world knew him on one side only, it 
 would have called him great ; but he was so 
 many-sided that he became incomprehensible. 
 
 We find ourselves touched by the sight of 
 the Emperor reviewing his troops with one of 
 Josephine's grandchildren in his arms — the one 
 whom he had chosen for his heir : he was fond 
 of children and charming to them ; and at 
 II* 
 
126 Val-Maria. 
 
 times in the family circle he was genial, un- 
 bending, interested in trifles, showing some- 
 thing of the fondness of ordinary men; but 
 these were mild interludes: the glory of 
 France was always supreme, and to this every- 
 thing must be sacrificed. But he had expanded 
 in this forcing atmosphere of his own success 
 with an unprecedented bloom ; the gaucheries 
 of his first entree into circles that had looked 
 upon him askance were no longer remem- 
 bered ; everywhere he dominated. 
 
 In the first days of the Consulate he used 
 more largely the gifts of charming with which 
 he was endowed, winning men rather by their 
 hearts than forcing their assent to his empire ; 
 and while he was still climbing, he relied upon 
 those who were competent in fields unknown 
 to him, leading them by honors and munifi- 
 cence to do their best for France. 
 
 "It is strange," thought Montal, "that one 
 who so newly wears the purple can grasp these 
 vast interests and direct their minutest details ; 
 but it is not strange that the world should bow 
 to such dominance, for he puts forth every 
 
Fair-Maria, 127 
 
 energy to achieve it." For the statesman and 
 aristocrat found himself ceaselessly occupied 
 with this extraordinary personality and with 
 France, as separate entities, not necessarily 
 opposed, neither necessarily one, as they 
 seemed to others, and yet together composing 
 an inscrutable problem ; and for a time circum- 
 stances strangely favored his investigations, 
 bringing him, almost against his will, into a 
 closer intimacy with the circle in power than 
 he would have chosen ; for he was early aware 
 that he was being rather weighed than con- 
 sulted, when there had been occasional con- 
 versations of some length between Bonaparte 
 and himself, where the apparent deference of 
 the First Consul had filled the hearts of those 
 who craved such favor with thoughts that were 
 not gracious. Mental's attendance had been 
 often required in matters of importance, and 
 he had had many opportunities, in this close 
 contact which he had not sought, for the study 
 which fascinated him the more because he was 
 conscious that in the presence of this conqueror 
 of wills his own inner self was not dominated ; 
 
128 Fal^Maria. 
 
 he also could weigh and judge, if a little in- 
 dignant with himself at a suspicious temper 
 which he felt to be almost at variance with 
 knightly grace. 
 
 Thus he knew that in the hours that others 
 give to sleep. Napoleon was shaping his great 
 schemes in his wonderful brain ; in times of 
 war busy with chart and pencil planning the 
 campaign, choosing the lines of march from a 
 thorough knowledge of the country laboriously 
 gained, or studying, as his army marched for- 
 ward, the needs of conquered provinces or 
 neglected cities ; decreeing buildings, or roads, 
 or vast border works, or planning new con- 
 stitutions with equal ease and judgment. In 
 times of peace taking thought for the arts 
 iand sciences and letters, conferring honors to 
 tempt to their pursuit, and inviting artists from 
 other lands to make their home in France. 
 
 If there were too great a rush of leisure in 
 these days and nights, there was the Code 
 Napoleon, raised stone by stone, little by little, 
 into the masterly monument the world has 
 received ! 
 
yaJr-Maria. 129 
 
 The Moniteur was his organ ; and in its 
 columns, carefully revised on their literary side 
 by his secretaries, to guard against the defects 
 of his speech, appeared the opinions he thought 
 it wisest for his people to hold upon all mat- 
 ters of the government — views he wished to 
 present of questions yet to be decided ; ac- 
 counts that seemed to him most politic, of the 
 battles fought, accounts often written in his 
 own hand, illegible and badly spelled, hot from 
 the battle-field — sometimes translating an 
 actual defeat by the more gracious word of 
 "victory," and choosing his own terms of 
 self-laudation, as in this authentic report of a 
 phrase dictated by the Emperor in a war-bul- 
 letin : "The panegyric of the army may be 
 pronounced in two words, ' It was worthy of 
 its leader.'" 
 
 Yet, although the officers often murmured 
 loudly at the false reports returned, which 
 stripped some of their honors and conferred 
 laurels where they were not due, the wonder- 
 ful strategic power of their great general, his 
 bravery, his magnetism, his way of putting 
 
130 Val^Maria. 
 
 young men in places where they might dis- 
 tinguish themselves ; the gift of an unequalled 
 memory for faces and names and deeds that 
 are dear to the soldier's heart, his power of 
 associating these deeds with the face, leading 
 him to recall them aloud whenever he was 
 brought face to face with a decorated man of 
 the ranks, made him deservedly an idol with 
 his army. This power, like so many of his 
 qualities, came largely from his genius for 
 work, for Josephine tells us that when he was 
 a young officer he committed to memory, each 
 night, the names and deeds on the honor-roll 
 of his command, continuing the habit of re- 
 peating these lists aloud until he feel asleep. 
 
 The only possible way of accounting for 
 some visible incongruities in a character that 
 seemed so largely under its own control was 
 that in all that concerned the government he 
 felt himself to be the State ; here he was always 
 judicial, inflexible, unmoved by any suspicion 
 of feeling, ungoverned by any principle except 
 that of the glory of the country he ruled ; and 
 his family, to its remotest branches, must 
 
yal-Maria. 131 
 
 centre in himself and live for this sole end. 
 Hard as it is to offer such an estimate of any 
 human being, when we remember the little- 
 ness of man without his noblest attribute, it 
 seems as if Napoleon, having reached the im- 
 perial throne, became devoid of pure affec- 
 tions; as if all that appeared like evidences 
 of such emotion were simply simulated from 
 policy, so entirely were all who depended upon 
 him ignored when their wishes or happiness 
 crossed, at any angle, his vision of the Apo- 
 theosis of Self. 
 
 This estimate of Napoleon, which Montal 
 reached very slowly and after great perplexity, 
 he hesitated to acknowledge by an open defec- 
 tion from his post, lest he should be recording 
 an unfair judgment ; not realizing that a step 
 which meant so much for him was of no 
 feather's weight in that stately legislative body 
 which no longer echoed any but the imperial 
 will. But his vehement protestations against 
 the abuse of the right's of the people had ceased ; 
 one voice was powerless ; and while his sense 
 of right had not changed, he was dazed and 
 
1 33 yaU-Maria. 
 
 bewildered by the wonderful personality which 
 imposed upon such a body of men, that seemed 
 equal to directing all things, and had crowned 
 France with an unequalled prosperity. 
 
 Thus he watched eagerly and silently, won- 
 dering at his own lack of enthusiasm when 
 thickening honors were voted — a Roman 
 Triumph, an Imperial Column, the writing of 
 the conqueror's words in deathless marble; 
 when the Pope himself deigned to respond to 
 the summons for the Imperial Coronation, and 
 the whole nation breathed out incense. 
 
 Should he still hold his own views of right 
 above those of all the world ? Montal asked 
 himself. How was it possible that he alone 
 should have light ? he alone, while appreciating 
 this enormous talent, feel such terrible distrust ? 
 Yet he could not act against his own inner 
 light, however feeble or erring ; and this very 
 loyalty to his own convictions, against the 
 judgment of a nation, constituted in his fair 
 mind a plea for the man in whom he no longer 
 believed. For Napoleon, too, he told himself, 
 might be honestly living according to his light; 
 
Valr-Maria. 1 53 
 
 he might honestly believe himself created to 
 replace the ancient dynasty, by whatever 
 means ; for had ever man received more 
 overwhelming recognition of his power, more 
 surprising responses to his schemes ? The con- 
 fusion was paralyzing, and Montal at length felt 
 that he must resign his post, while he still 
 asked himself, "What have 1 done for France, 
 that I may venture to censure this man who 
 has done so much ?" 
 
 It was a curious sight, this Parisian throng, 
 whose study had so attracted the young sen- 
 ator-philosopher as he reviewed the changing 
 drama of the Convention and Consulate and Em- 
 pire. Motley, contented — singing snatches of 
 the various songs composed for the superb fetes 
 to which they were treated in these days — very 
 republican it was in theory, while uncon- 
 sciously subservient to the slightest indication 
 of the will of its dictator. People and army 
 were hand-in-hand, for was it not the army 
 who had made France ? And when the army's 
 chief had been formally installed in the Palais 
 du Gouvernement — the royal home of the 
 
1 34 yal^Maria. 
 
 ancient, overturned kings of France — what 
 a triumph for democracy, who thronged the 
 ways and filled the air with their exultations, 
 as the procession passed the hedge of the Con- 
 sular Guard, from the Place du Carrousel to the 
 door of the palace, in sight of that inscription 
 written with red revolutionary fingers on the 
 palace wall. "The loth of August, 1792, 
 royalty was abolished in France, never to be 
 revived !" 
 
 Upon the palace walls, too, was graven in 
 letters of gold the word " Republique :" it 
 gleamed a glorious safeguard in the eyes of the 
 happy people, as Napoleon passed under the 
 portal of the Tuileries ; but they did not hear 
 his words to Josephine, as the days wore on, 
 " I leave it there as one writes the name on a 
 picture it is hard to recognize !" 
 
 How should the people fear for their rights 
 when the very hacks that followed in that 
 strange procession were the confiscated coaches 
 of the crushed nobility, shabby and misused, 
 with plebeian numbers pasted over their humili- 
 ated crests, their owners — emigres — stealing 
 
Val-Maria. 135 
 
 back into France under feigned names, to plead 
 for tlie restoration of their rights ? 
 
 Surely the people need not fear with a chief 
 who pledged them thus loyally at the grand 
 banquet of the national fete: " To the 14th of 
 July and the French people — our Sovereign !" 
 Had they not listened to the strong republican 
 speech of Carnot, the Minister of War, in the 
 Temple of Mars, on the anniversary of the 
 founding of the Republic ? 
 
 And could they forget the eloquent words of 
 the Minister of the Interior, Lucien Bonaparte, 
 at the fete generate de la paix : " O France ! 
 Republic cemented by the blood of heroes and 
 of victories, may Liberty — so much the more 
 precious because she has cost so dear — and 
 Peace, the repairer of every ill, ever remain your 
 tutelary deities !" 
 
 And were not these the words of one who 
 had vowed to pierce the heart of his own 
 brother with his sword, if ever that brother 
 should prove false to the liberties of France ? 
 
 But now, as Montal paced the streets of Paris 
 — how changed from the days of the Directory! 
 
136 yal-Maria. 
 
 — filled with a brilliant throng and echoing 
 with the vivas of the coronation f^te, he was 
 reasoning against his reason, to quiet his dis- 
 content. The very names had been changed 
 to record the victories and prosperity of the 
 times. The Place de la Concorde was a souve- 
 nir of the glorious fete de la paix generale, that 
 phcEnix which had risen from the ashes of the 
 1 8th Brumaire, the wings brilliantly feathered 
 with the treaties of peace with England, La 
 Porte, Tunis, Algiers, Bavaria, and Russia ! And 
 a brother of the Consul held the pen with 
 which these negotiations were signed. 
 
 Still pacing this storied square, the ancient 
 Place de la Revolution, through which, ever 
 and anon, carriages passed him bearing ancient 
 crests, while the old faces looked out at the 
 windows to direct the footmen who wore the 
 ancient familiar liveries, or to exchange greeting 
 with occupants of other carriages wearing the 
 liveries and crests of new titles of the Empire, 
 Montal remembered that it was not alone of 
 the people that Napoleon had declared "Lux- 
 ury and glory have never failed to turn the 
 
yal-Maria. 137 
 
 heads of the French !" While Consul he had 
 discovered that the noblesse also would come 
 and shine for him, if his court but offered 
 sufficient glitter to reflect their brilliancy ; and 
 with slow steps, befitting their dignity, the 
 proud habitues of the salon of Josephine on 
 the rez-de-chaussee of the Tuileries — emigres. 
 Royalists and representatives of the old regime, 
 who had always felt themselves at home in her 
 gentle and gracious presence — had overcome 
 their prejudices, and mounted the stairs that 
 led to the reception-rooms of the First Consul. 
 Memories of other fetes came to Montal as 
 he stood pondering, each one emphasizing some 
 great advance in restoration, pacification, ac- 
 quisition, or reform — the words seemed almost 
 synonymous to him in his confusion and dis- 
 quiet, and in his vexation at his own irritabil- 
 ity in the face of such radiant prosperity. The 
 coming of the Papal legate, bringing the Con- 
 cordat, on the 15th of July, 1801 ; the addresses 
 of congratulation from all sides that the Consul 
 had shared with the Senate. Why could he 
 not rejoice more whole-heartedly in the present 
 12* 
 
138 Val^Maria. 
 
 position of the Church ? Was not this alone 
 sufficient to win the unswerving fealty of every 
 son of the Church to the restorer of its liber- 
 ties ? It had been no easy matter for the great 
 chief of the army to secure that first brilliant 
 celebration of Mass at Notre-Dame, on Easter 
 Day, 1 802 ; and the murmurings and scoffs of 
 the officers had not been uttered sotto voce; 
 for they did not profess to abandon the license 
 of the Revolution for a loftier faith. Yet Mon- 
 tal could not disabuse himself of the ungener- 
 ous thought that this restitution also was the 
 triumphant result of policy, entirely divorced 
 from any true religious feeling, and with a 
 man so staunch and uncompromising as the 
 count this effectually chilled all response. He 
 could stand unmoved, except by a feeling akin 
 to indignation, before the windows of the 
 book-stores which displayed an allegorical 
 engraving representing the " Triumph of re- 
 ligion in France over revolutionary atheism, 
 with the Cross of Christ upheld by the sword 
 of Bonaparte." 
 There was always a little group before these 
 
yal-Maria. 139 
 
 windows, chiefly in caps and blouses, with 
 often a priest to explain the sentence that was 
 written underneath : "The 28th Germinal of 
 the French Republic, Easter Day, by the tri- 
 umphant arm of Napoleon Bonaparte, First 
 Consul of France, religion arose from the 
 abyss where she had been plunged by the 
 godless and atheists." And a little judicious 
 commotion was kept up by the police before 
 these book-stalls with their oft-repeated " Ah 
 Ions, messieurs; move on, if you please. A 
 little more space !" in tones sufficiently insist- 
 ent to attract the oncoming blouses and caps, 
 who also paused to learn the lesson set them 
 and to hear echoed from mouth to mouth how 
 the Archbishop of Paris said Mass every Sun- 
 day at the Tuileries ; and how the Sunday 
 was always a holiday now in the official bu- 
 reaus, "as it used to be before the Revolu- 
 tion." 
 
 " Allans, messieurs; move on !" for the word 
 had a dangerous ring that neutralized the 
 loyalty of the sentiment, and the police were 
 trained to vigilance. 
 
140 yal-Maria. 
 
 "Every one is trained to vigilance !" Montal 
 mused. " Is this man wfio calls himself our 
 Emperor, superhuman — a monarch of souls ?" 
 
 Thence he glided easily into thoughts of the 
 Roman Empire, the deification of the Emperor 
 arising as a natural consequence of the Roman's 
 strict obedience to will, whence the chief 
 ruler became the living symbol of law, and 
 the people acknowledged that he held the 
 position by divine right. Yet the Romans 
 believed that the laws which they obeyed with 
 such unquestioning devotion had been framed 
 by their human law-giver through a divine 
 inspiration : it was a thought that might com- 
 mand the allegiance of strong men, through 
 which their government became the highest 
 earthly expression of their religion. "It is in 
 this effete Roman sense of the word," Montal 
 thought, bitterly, "that our Emperor would 
 have France regard religion in our modern day 
 — as obligation, or binding power, to an abso- 
 lute despot! He looks on war, too, with the 
 Roman mind, as a religious act ; hence these 
 thickening complications with England and this 
 
yal-Man'a. 141 
 
 growing recklessness of life!" Some familiar 
 words of Virgil glided into his scholarly mind 
 — "Thy work, O Roman! is to rule the na- 
 tions ; these be thine arts : to impose the con- 
 ditions of the world's peace, to show mercy 
 to the fallen, and to crush the proud," and as 
 he mused on the points of similarity between 
 the Napoleonic and the Roman ideal, he felt 
 that as a pagan, owning no will higher than 
 his own. Napoleon would indeed have been 
 very great. 
 
 This, then, gave him a hint of the lacking 
 element. 
 
 Montal was convinced that the French peo- 
 ple by their blind adulation were responsible 
 for the form which the government had now 
 assumed, and which they were henceforth 
 powerless to direct, having voluntarily yielded 
 up their liberties. He had seen much of Bona- 
 parte in the early days of the Republic, and he 
 was strongly inclined to the belief that at that 
 time he was a loyal supporter of republican 
 principles, intending faithfully to guard the 
 liberties of the people, possibly to aid in the 
 
1 42 yal-Maria. 
 
 restoration of a constitutional monarchy, to be 
 represented by a prince of the House of Bour- 
 bon. He had often spoken of this belief with 
 Carnot, who confirmed him in it; and with 
 Joseph Bonaparte, who had absolute faith in 
 the republican principles of his brother ; even 
 with Josephine, who was not only a friend of 
 the Royalists, but an open espouser of their 
 cause, and a firm believer in the restoration 
 by her husband's hand. 
 
 At this time it had been evident that Napo- 
 leon's feeling for Josephine was real, and deep 
 enough to be the noblest influence of his life — 
 deep enough to have deepened to save him ; 
 while now, at the period of the coronation, the 
 condition of court morality was one of the 
 terrible symptoms to which Montal could no 
 longer blind himself. 
 
 Yet there were gracious memories of a life 
 at Malmaison, poetic and charming, when 
 Bonaparte had been a genial and delightful 
 host, seemingly unspoiled by the greed of 
 power, — his sterner qualities softened by his 
 love for poetry, his delight in sounds that were 
 
Val-Maria. 143 
 
 soft and sweet, in music, in church-bells, in the 
 human voice, his half-confessions of faith in 
 old superstitions and traditions which moved 
 him still on the side of romance, though his 
 reason had grown away from them — a re- 
 membrance of early faith still reverent, though 
 not dominant. It seemed more than probable 
 that there had been an early turning-point in 
 the life of the boy who had been from his 
 childhood poetic and dreamy, when he chose 
 his life of action instead of that of a poet or 
 dreamer, in which some critics think he would 
 have been very great — so vivid and far-reaching 
 was his imagination, and so indomitable was 
 he in whatever he elected to accomplish. 
 
 While his thoughts were absorbed by this 
 master-figure of his century, Montal found 
 himself often going back to this fancied turn- 
 ing-point with a strange fascination, seeking 
 out all the noble attributes of this man's nature, 
 watching their gradual development until they 
 had mastered his weaknesses, realizing his life 
 dominated by the religious principle which was 
 to him an essential of greatness. What might 
 
1 44 Valr-Maria. 
 
 not such a man have accomplished for the good 
 of the world 1 
 
 But there was no one with whom he could 
 share this dream, which always ended in a 
 great wave of pity for the possible greatness 
 that had been surrendered to reach this height 
 of earthly glory. It was the dream of a poet, a 
 statesman, and a religious enthusiast — the con- 
 ception of one who realized the nobility of these 
 callings and the divine possibilities of man's 
 nature in the acknowledged strength of God. 
 
 Perhaps, in those early days of the Con- 
 sulate, Napoleon's character had really touched 
 its height; perhaps he was then truly fired 
 with a patriotic love for France, feeling himself 
 extraordinarily endowed for its rescue. But 
 watching keenly, it was easy to trace the 
 growth of absolutism in the schemes of the 
 chief of the Republic, gradually gaining empire 
 until his thought had framed a government as 
 arbitrary as that of imperial Rome, with a 
 system of religion and of feudal accessories, 
 studied from the time of Charlemagne, that 
 tended greatly to increase the central power. 
 
f^al-Maria. 145 
 
 Perhaps it might have been well for the 
 lustre of Napoleon if the extension of the Con- 
 sulate to the ten years first offered him had 
 been the term of the Senate's homage, instead 
 of that quick submission of " Consulate for 
 life," so closely followed with imperial honors 
 and rights of imperial succession. It would 
 surely have been better for the liberties of 
 France ; for since the nation had placed him on 
 its highest pinnacle, and could offer him nothing 
 more, although he still felt that the destiny of 
 the nation was indissolubly connected with his 
 own, it was, even to himself, an imperceptible 
 change to seek whatever tended to his own 
 glory as best for France, while, as by some 
 subtle fallacy of mathematical progression, the 
 point of passing could not be distinguished. 
 
 Neither Montal nor Carnot had been of those 
 who voted to change the Republic to an Em- 
 pire, and when the senators dashed from the 
 Chamber to their carriages, to be the first to 
 carry the news to St. Cloud and make their 
 obeisance to the new Cassar, Montal had gone 
 sadly to the library of Carnot and confessed to 
 G i 13 
 
146 yal-Maria. 
 
 him, in deep humiliation, that his faith in Na- 
 poleon was gone, and his resignation must 
 follow. 
 
 Carnot listened with an uncompromising 
 silence that chafed the younger man almost 
 unbearably, for although he had not unfolded 
 the beautiful dream which his generous soul 
 had wrought from his early hopes of Napoleon, 
 he had spoken hotly of the conclusion reached 
 through strong travail of spirit; for it was a 
 bitter thing to him to be forced to abandon all 
 part in public life because he had lost his faith 
 in the man who had usurped the supreme 
 power over the country and the institutions 
 that he revered. 
 
 Montal had not expected full sympathy, 
 but he had looked for some comprehension 
 of his trial. " Either I am wrong," he cried 
 out, desperately, " or France is in great 
 danger!" 
 
 But the man who had signed the death- 
 warrant of Louis XVI. could answer him with- 
 out emotion, as, from the Place de la Bastille 
 up to the royal palace of the Tuileries, and 
 
yal-Maria. 
 
 '47 
 
 down through the ancient Place de la Revo- 
 lution, the rejoicing of the fickle city flashed 
 forth in long lines of illumination over the 
 death of the Republic and the birth of the 
 Empire. 
 
CHAPTER TENTH. 
 
 
 ^ the first loneliness of the surrender 
 of his ideal, Montal had felt too 
 weak to bear the vast emptiness of 
 Paris ; its atmosphere, shot through and 
 through with splendor, chilled and oppressed 
 him ; he could find no satisfaction even in the 
 reforms which he knew to be good per se, 
 for his whole nature was in a state of fierce 
 revolt, and he felt that he could not breathe 
 freely until he was again surrounded by the 
 love and truth of his home-life in Val-Maria ; 
 and thither he went at once, to reflect upon 
 the action he should take. 
 
 When he reached the bridge between the 
 chateau and the village street, he stopped before 
 148 
 
yalr-Maria. 1 49 
 
 the quaint shrine, descending from his travel- 
 ling-carriage, as if he would pay homage to the 
 rude, time-scarred image ; and standing there 
 reverently for a moment with uncovered head, 
 he was pleased to see that a few fresh field- 
 flowers lay at the feet of this Madonna Val- 
 Maria. In the little village, at least, there were 
 still those who kept to the simple faith of the 
 olden days, he said to himself with a sigh of 
 relief, as he passionately renewed the vow with 
 which he had entered so hopefully upon his 
 young manhood, to struggle for right and truth 
 and for justice towards the classes who could 
 not plead for themselves — the vow of every 
 true knight of Montal. He would still use his 
 birthright of nobility and his strength as a 
 man, independent of all parties, to wield what- 
 ever influence God had given him. In Paris, if 
 it seemed best, when he had regained his com- 
 posure, or even here, in his own province, he 
 might still labor with his pen, for words of 
 truth have outlived empires, and God only asks 
 of each human soul its own possible best ; He, 
 
 the Merciful, does not weigh the weakness of 
 ,3* 
 
1 50 Fal-Maria. 
 
 one against the power of another, and find the 
 weak one wanting. 
 
 The very sight of this peaceful home, sleep- 
 ing in the moonlight, and the little village 
 calmly trusting to the guardianship of the 
 time-defaced Madonna, who was still clothed 
 with the graceful strength of the old tradition, 
 had revived his heart. He, the master of the 
 chateau, would not fail them ! and the sense 
 of the duty that depended upon him, small as 
 it would have seemed to the legislators he had 
 left, came upon him with a new sweetness ; 
 and he could meet his wife more calmly than 
 he had dreamed possible in the great hall of the 
 chateau, whose quaint carved rafters of feudal 
 days, enriched with mottoes and quarterings 
 of successive generations, seemed to offer him 
 an unlooked-for support, an assurance that 
 those who had lived before him in the long 
 line of noble ancestry looked to him, at this 
 crisis, to be worthy of an honorable past. 
 And for one of the count's strong beliefs the 
 help was real rather than visionary. 
 
 Later there was a long, quiet talk, wearing 
 
yal-Maria. 1 5 1 
 
 into the morning, in which Montal revealed 
 his bitter disappointment to his wife, not 
 hiding his fears for France ; for between these 
 two everything was shared. 
 
 " And Felix ?" she asked, when their discus- 
 sion of the case was finished. 
 
 " Ah, Felix ?" he questioned, in quick alarm. 
 
 " Dear Louis, you know how he worships 
 the Emperor ; you know it would break his 
 heart to tell him the truth !" 
 
 He looked at her, smiling, from his sense of 
 relief. " Ah, well," he said. " Do you re- 
 member Pilate's question ? We need tell Felix 
 nothing. It is well indeed that some of us 
 may keep our beautiful faiths." 
 
 Finally, Montal, feeling himself refreshed and 
 invigorated by the true and tranquil home-life 
 of Val-Maria, had again returned to Paris, de- 
 ciding for a little longer to hold his post and 
 watch if by any means he might yet serve 
 France with speech or vote within the Senate. 
 
 Carnot received him without surprise or 
 comment, and they took their seats together. 
 But the fire had died outof Montal's utterances ; 
 
1 52 yal-Maria. 
 
 he scarcely knew himself when he stood up, 
 single-handed and sore at heart, to deliver some 
 argument which he had wrought out fiercely, 
 in solitary vigils in the Hotel Montal, meaning 
 by his eloquence to carry the House upon some 
 point that concerned the liberties of the peo- 
 ple. But the words that had first been flung 
 like hot lead into the cold bath of this unsym- 
 pathetic atmosphere, soon dropped brokenly, 
 cooling before they reached the ears of a body 
 scarcely tolerant of any interruptions in offering 
 their assent to a measure that had been pro- 
 posed by the Emperor. The result was always 
 the same, and his courage was well-nigh spent, 
 for it was a thankless task to represent the 
 opposition unsupported. Carnot said nothing, 
 but was unapproachable, and invited him to 
 no more conferences in his study ; Monsieur 
 de Remusat bestowed a kindly word of cau- 
 tion ; and Monsieur de Talleyrand reminded 
 him, with his admirable tact, that a courtier 
 deals rather with success than theories, how- 
 ever praiseworthy. 
 Thus, in despondence and mental isolation. 
 
Val-Maria. 1 53 
 
 he sat in solitary judgment upon the brilliant 
 events that were passing around him, exchang- 
 ing a rare confidence with Madame de Remusat, 
 who, if not of his opinion, once showed her- 
 self willing to think for herself by confessing, 
 " The situation is greatly changed ; so are 
 men's minds." 
 
 This was in 1805, and the Emperor's life 
 now offered an unbroken succession of pomps 
 and triumphs. In May he assumed, in re- 
 sponse to the petition of the Italian republic, 
 conveyed through a deputation from Milan, the 
 Iron Crown of Italy, the Senate naturally apv 
 proving, with addresses of commendation ; for 
 surely this was a legitimate increase of the 
 national prestige, since, seated on his throne, 
 the Emperor had listened to the request of the 
 Council that he would graciously consent to 
 reign over the Ultramontane republic also. 
 "Our present government," said the vice- 
 president, "cannot continue, because it throws 
 us behind the age in which we live. Consti- 
 tutional monarchy is everywhere indicated by 
 the finger of progress." 
 
1 54 yal-Maria. 
 
 The pomp of the ceremonial and the ring 
 of the antique formula, " II cielo me la diede, 
 guai a chi la tocchera," caused new rejoicing 
 among the people ; but Montal was of the few 
 who questioned the policy of the investiture of 
 the Iron Crown, fearing that war with Austria 
 might result, as he recalled with anxiety the 
 words Napoleon had spoken of that other 
 diadem he wore with such superb assurance : 
 "\ found the crown of France lying on the 
 ground, and I picked it up on the point of my 
 sword !" In fact, the Austrian discontent was 
 at that moment being skilfully fanned into 
 life by the hatred of England, and preparations 
 for war were going on in secret, while there 
 was no open rupture between France and 
 Austria. 
 
 Early in June, when the coronation fete was 
 scarcely ended, the Doge of Venice reached 
 Milan with a fresh sprig of laurel for the con- 
 queror's crown, imploring that his republic 
 might form part of the Empire. It is difficult 
 to say whether this presentation, had been 
 previously commanded, but it added a distinct 
 
yalr-Maria. 155 
 
 note to the chorus of jubilee, although but a 
 few months before the voice of the dictator 
 of Europe had proclaimed without disguise, 
 "The dynasty of Naples has ceased to reign. 
 Its existence is incompatible with the repose of 
 Europe and the dignity of my crown !" 
 
 Meanwhile this extraordinary prosperity con- 
 tinued without rebate, at home and abroad, 
 at the dawning of the year 1806, when Reg- 
 nault de St. Jean d'Angely, the Councillor of 
 State, declared in a remarkable report which 
 seemed to echo the feeling of the nation, 
 "France has nothing to ask from heaven but 
 that the sun may continue to shine, the rain 
 to fall on our fields, and the earth to render 
 the seed fruitful." But late in March an im- 
 portant session of the Senate gave rise to 
 something akin to discussion, for which Mon- 
 tal prepared himself with a return of his old 
 ardor and not a little hope, for the Emperor had 
 communicated a long list of decrees that would 
 importantly affect the welfare of Europe. 
 
 But the statesman's insight, however co- 
 gently reasoned, fell flat upon the specious 
 
156 Val^Maria. 
 
 speech of Cambaceres: " You will receive with 
 gratitude these fresh proofs of the Emperor's 
 confidence in the Senate and his love for the 
 people, and hasten, in conformity with his 
 Majesty's intention, to inscribe them on your 
 registers." 
 
 The supplies were immediately voted as 
 desired, all the proposed measures were ap- 
 proved, and the new titles were created ; again 
 addresses of compliment were carried in the 
 Senate and published in the Moniteur, and 
 later there were glowing accounts of the tri- 
 umphal entrees of these princes without 
 pedigrees into the principalities they were 
 henceforth to rule ; but already an undertone 
 of disbelief was beginning to whisper that truth 
 was not an essential ingredient of the tidbits 
 of " current opinion" that were served out 
 daily to the French people, 
 
 Montal, utterly disheartened, gave up his 
 seat and withdrew altogether from public life, 
 feeling that he no longer cared to utter opinions 
 so at variance with the judgment and action 
 of the most important men of his time, while 
 
yal-Maria. 1 57 
 
 he was yet conscientiously unable to conform 
 to the popular belief of infallibility which, to 
 the prejudiced eyes of a loyal son of the 
 Church, seemed to have moved its centre from 
 Pope to monarch with the easy grace that 
 made such revolutions a matter of course in 
 these strange times. 
 
 He would have liked to forget the gov- 
 ernment, if he might ; he longed to get 
 himself out of the blaze of this mastering 
 personality which, like too intense a sun- 
 light, seemed to dazzle the world into 
 blindness. He would have liked to persuade 
 himself that, without disloyalty to himself or 
 to his nation, he might abandon the perplex- 
 ing problems with which he had so vainly 
 striven, and yield himself freely to the rest of 
 body and spirit which he now sought in Val- 
 Maria. 
 
 But even in this tranquil spot, which 
 charmed him like a bit of old-time romance 
 when he first returned to it wearied with the 
 strain of his unsatisfying political life, he soon 
 found that the shadow of the glory of the 
 14 
 
158 yal-Maria. 
 
 mastering personality, if less dominant, had 
 penetrated also. 
 
 In his first visit to Monsieur Simon, he found 
 the old cure in poignant distress over a copy 
 of Bo^suet's "Catechism," which Monsieur 
 I'Abbe had procured for him by special favor, 
 soon after the decree establishing this as the 
 new catechism of the Galilean Church had been 
 promulgated. 
 
 "I wish not to fail in my duty," the vener- 
 able priest explained, when the count had 
 patiently listened to his scruples, "and my 
 judgment belongs to another age. But the 
 good God has made my judgment thus. And 
 if Monsieur le Comte desires that this cate- 
 chism be taught to the children of Val-Maria, 
 might not Monsieur I'Abbe, who is more 
 learned than I, better understand this duty ?" 
 
 "Do not distrust yourself, dear father; let 
 your conscience be your guide for all duty," 
 the count answered, reverently. " I will talk 
 the matter over with Monsieur I'Abbe, and 
 meanwhile, will you lend me your copy ?" 
 
 It was a pardonable subterfuge to free the 
 
yal-Maria. 159 
 
 old man's tender conscience from the ceaseless 
 perusal of the clauses that offended him, and 
 he gave it to the count with a look of intense 
 relief. 
 
 Montal had not yet given this catechism close 
 study, though he knew, of course, of its pro- 
 mulgation, and a copy lay among other papers 
 on his desk ; but the good cure's strong feel- 
 ing invested the subject with a new interest, 
 and he turned over the pages of the pamphlet 
 with a lively curiosity the moment he reached 
 the chateau, being first attracted, as was nat- 
 ural, to a reading of some passages against 
 which a wavering pencil-line was traced. 
 
 " Question. What are the duties of Chris- 
 tians towards their rulers ; and what, in par- 
 ticular, are our duties towards Napoleon I., our 
 Emperor ? 
 
 "Answer. Christians owe to the princes 
 who govern them, and we, in particular, owe 
 to Napoleon I., our Emperor, love, respect, 
 obedience, fidelity, military service, and the 
 tributes ordained for the preservation and 
 defence of the Empire and of his throne. To 
 
i6o Val^Maria. 
 
 honor and serve the Emperor is, therefore, to 
 honor and serve God. 
 
 " Question. Are there any special reasons 
 which should more strongly attach us to our 
 Emperor Napoleon I. ? 
 
 "Answer. Yes; for it is he whom God 
 raised up in difficult circumstances to restore 
 the public profession of the holy religion of 
 our forefathers, and to be its protector. He 
 has restored public order by his profound and 
 active wisdom ; he defends the state by his 
 powerful arm ; and he has become the anointed 
 of the Lord through the consecration of the 
 Sovereign Pontiff, the head of the Universal 
 Church. 
 
 " Question. What ought we to think of 
 such persons as may fail in their duties towards 
 our Emperor? 
 
 "Answer. According to the Apostle St. 
 Paul they would therefore be resisting the 
 orders of God Himself, and would become 
 worthy of eternal damnation." 
 
 The document was indeed a curious one, 
 and Montal could scarcely view it with uncon- 
 
Valr-Maria. i6i 
 
 cern when he remembered the unpleasant 
 rumors that were gaining credence about the 
 court, and the imperious purpose of the man 
 thus deified — a purpose unassailable either by 
 love or right. 
 
 But the next day's Moniteur seemed to 
 reproach him for his lack of faith, with its 
 glowing review of the interior growth and 
 prosperity of the Empire, and its special indi- 
 cations in the imperial city. A triumphal 
 arch was commenced at the Place du Carrousel, 
 through which, on great occasions, the im- 
 perial cortege should be more fittingly received 
 in the ancient palace that had hitherto been 
 only the abode of kings. The beautiful column 
 for the Place Vendome, of which the model 
 had been displayed early in the spring, was al- 
 ready begun, — a victor's column indeed, to be 
 moulded from the cannon he had captured in 
 battle, their deadly voices stilled into a running 
 commentary of his praise, from base to capitol ; 
 and how could it be otherwise when the con- 
 queror himself kept guard over their speech, 
 whether actually, in the tale they told, of 
 14* 
 
1 62 yalr-Maria. 
 
 silently, immovable as they? — an effigy in 
 bronze scarcely sterner than the man it repre- 
 sented ! 
 
 A plan for embanking the Seine with new 
 quays had been adopted, and the work of 
 demolition upon the neighborhood between 
 the boulevards and the Tuileries had made con- 
 siderable progress with a view to the embellish- 
 ment of that entire portion of the city, in 
 which ancient Paris would soon be no longer 
 recognizable. One might read the names of 
 the Napoleonic victories at the very street- 
 corners, and seek, without disappointment, 
 for the thread of each new drama, in some 
 motif of that extraordinary life — the color 
 being always eulogistic — as one might trace in 
 permanant sculptured cornices, or ephemeral 
 triumphant decorations, the glorified emblem- 
 atic " N" embroidered with bees and fleur- 
 de-lis. 
 
 The new stone bridge near the Jardin des 
 Plantes bore the name of Austerlitz, appropri- 
 ately enough, for the gardens were largely 
 enriched with the spoils of Schonbrunn. The 
 
Valr-Maria, 163 
 
 colonnade of the lordly building of the Louvre 
 was nearly completed, its pediment had been 
 given into the hands of a distinguished sculptor 
 to receive its final decoration, and opposite this 
 palace a wide and beautiful street, to be chris- 
 tened "Rivoli," was contemplated. Military 
 schools were founded at Fontainebleau and 
 Sainte-Cyr ; and in the fields of art and science 
 and literature every encouragement was devised 
 by medals and pensions and princely orders for 
 work. There was a new idea — whose might 
 it be but his ? — of an " Exhibit des Industries," 
 in which the product of every existing species 
 of industry should be represented for its further 
 stimulus. Yet it was not so long since the 
 clamoring people, scarcely better than a cowed 
 mob, stood in the narrow streets crying for 
 bread — bread, for which they paid extortion- 
 ately with their scanty pence. The very streets 
 they had darkened were beginning to disap- 
 pear. Had the people and their grievance been 
 utterly changed by the touch of this magic 
 sceptre ? 
 How could a grievance exist in the face of 
 
164 yal-Maria. 
 
 such prosperity? or how might a doubting 
 heart excuse itself before such unexampled 
 proof? 
 
 But even while the atmosphere of this won- 
 derful, smiling peace-activity seemed domi- 
 nant, there was an undertone contradictory 
 and ominous. There was a vast military force 
 to be kept occupied, lest it should rise in re- 
 bellion, filling the lengthy hours of idleness 
 with schemes of dethronement too many hu- 
 miliated princes were ready to lead — too many 
 discontents from other nations, stung by jeal- 
 ousy, were eager to enforce. 
 
 Hence ceaseless plans for new campaigns ; 
 while with new triumphs grew the unappeas- 
 able desire to be everywhere victorious — by 
 land or sea; with a special, vindictive stir- 
 ring up of English jealousies, and a constant 
 satirical, yet petty, agitation of differences 
 already sufficient. By the end of December, 
 1806, the conscription for 1807 had been 
 already levied ; yet in April of 1 807 Napo- 
 leon demanded from the Senate the levy for 
 1809. 
 
yal-Maria. 165 
 
 If there was a party in France who watched 
 for some outbreak of discontent at this unusual 
 demand, it suffered in silence, for the pages 
 of the faithful Moniteur continued to report the 
 flattering addresses of the always obsequious 
 Senate, calling attention to the Emperor's 
 fatherly tenderness in guarding the inexperience 
 of his children by thus summoning them so 
 long before the legal levy, that they might be 
 in training when required to march. Instead of 
 any public protestations against the immense 
 force that was being drained from the life of 
 the nation to satisfy the ambitious projects of 
 Napoleon, there were new and vehement 
 assurances of gratitude. 
 
 Pierre still read out with unction to his little 
 group in the square of Val-Maria such frag- 
 ments of news as offered fitting texts for his 
 homilies, retaining his large views for France, 
 his pride in the army, and his patronizing ap- 
 probation of the Emperor, although he had 
 prudently abandoned his hopes of a duchy for 
 the little Nanette, who had now grown into 
 a rosy, brown-eyed maiden very pleasant to 
 
1 66 yaJr-Maria. 
 
 behold, and of an age to suggest the dot 
 with which Pierre's thoughts had been recently 
 occupied (failing the duchy), and which had 
 already assumed very creditable proportions 
 for a peasant bride. This pleasant state of 
 things might have continued indefinitely, had 
 it not been for an unexpected circumstance 
 which one morning brought Yvonne in tears 
 to the chateau to tell the countess that Pierre 
 had drawn his " numero" in the last conscrip- 
 tion, " and there is only to go ; but Pierre is 
 pale as death and speaks never a word, for 
 you see, madame, he is very brave, my good 
 Pierre ; he could march with the best ; but 
 when one has handled flour for so long, the 
 gun goes not so well! and it takes cour- 
 age to touch the dot of the little one, mais 
 enfin " 
 
 "Papa! papa!" Felix cried, imploringly, 
 to the count, who was on the terrace with 
 them. 
 
 ' ' 1 understand, my boy," his father answered, 
 smiling at his flushed and eager face. "You 
 may help them if you wish. But you do not 
 
l^al-Maria. 
 
 167 
 
 think it is the duty of Pierre to give loyal ser- 
 vice to his Emperor ?" 
 
 "I think Pierre will love him best if he 
 stays !" the boy answered, impetuously. "I 
 want no one to serve my Emperor, except for 
 love !" 
 
CHAPTER ELEVENTH. 
 
 HEN the count had returned to Val- 
 Maria in the summer of 1806, after 
 greeting his wife, his eyes had sought 
 hers with troubled inquiry, for it was still early 
 in the evening, and Felix was not waiting to 
 welcome him. 
 
 "Dearest Louis, he is well and more beau- 
 tiful than ever. Come and see," she had 
 answered, reassuringly, as she led the way 
 into her dressing-room and parted the curtain 
 that fell between them and the chamber where 
 their child lay sleeping. " He has never been 
 so well ; but he expends so much energy in 
 the day that our dear Alfonte thinks he needs 
 more sleep than other children." 
 168 
 
yal-Maria. 1 69 
 
 She had paused on the threshold, speaking 
 in low, cautioning tones. " I would not tell 
 him you were coming, for he might not have 
 slept all night, and he will be so happy in the 
 morning ! You cannot think what he is like 
 when you only see him sleeping, for in the 
 day he is so full of life — never for an instant 
 still ! You cannot look at him without know- 
 ing how happy he is ; a radiance seems to flash 
 from him and make a halo about him — about 
 everything where he passes. He is like a 
 great, glowing ruby in our home !" 
 
 " She has lost herself completely in the joy 
 of the child," her husband thought, in wonder 
 at the new tones of gladness in her beloved 
 voice, as she glided from him and stood, half 
 hidden by the draperies of the little white couch, 
 smiling down on their child with a face that 
 was glorified by her passionate mother-love. 
 
 The room was flooded with moonlight, and 
 in his sleep the child was indeed very beautiful 
 — yet an ideal of motion at rest rather than of 
 absolute rest — so instinct with life did he seem 
 as he lay in his wonderful grace, the waves of 
 H 15 
 
1 70 Val^Maria. 
 
 soft hair tossed back on his pillow stirring 
 softly in the odorous breeze that floated in at 
 the open window ; the exquisite curves of the 
 face and limbs, touched with the soft rose- 
 flushes of sleep, seemed to throw off a shim- 
 mer of content with the rhythmic pulsations 
 of his breath. He was very child-like in his 
 sleep, only the brow and the large-lidded, 
 sleeping eyes with their long, dark fringes 
 were too noble for a little child, and as Montal 
 stood watching, the tumult of joy that had 
 come over him changed to a feeling of awe, 
 for it was like the brow of a seraph, he thought. 
 But as he looked, a holy calm grew upon him 
 and possessed him wholly, and he saw the 
 calm deepen on the rapt face of the mother, 
 which seemed fairer and rounder than when 
 he had seen it last, as she clasped her hands 
 and slowly drooped her head until it touched 
 the face of her boy, who, stirring in his 
 dream, half opened his eyes, with a smile, to 
 murmur, " Madonna mia I" 
 
 When at last they turned away, the count 
 made a motion to enter the studio, but she 
 
VaU-Maria. 1 7 1 
 
 held him back, " Felix must take you through 
 the studio himself," she said; " for, Louis, you 
 cannot think how wonderful his studies are ; 
 even Alfonte calls them extraordinary !" 
 
 And so in truth the father thought them the 
 next morning, as Felix, all animation, drew him 
 with eager steps from one point to another, 
 touching each cast with caressing fingers as he 
 explained its meaning. It was always the same 
 face — no one of them completed, but each 
 sufficiently evolved to bring out the central 
 thought. 
 
 "My boy, this brow is superb!" his father 
 said, lingering before a study which revealed 
 only the upper part of the head. "Why do 
 you not finish your idea ?" 
 
 " Oh, it is all there," Felix answered, care- 
 lessly. " You see, papa, these are only moods. 
 I learned that from the great Angelo when we 
 were in Italy. I do not think that thought 
 would change the lower part of the face: 
 Signore Alfonte says so, too. Here he is plan- 
 ning for the good of France in the ' Code Napo- 
 leon; but in this one" — drawing his father 
 
1 72 Fal^Maria. 
 
 swiftly across the room — " I had to model both 
 the mouth and eyes; for here he is grieving 
 over the soldiers he has lost in battle, and the 
 soldiers worship him. Do you think the 
 mouth would be like that? Signore Alfonte 
 has not seen this one yet." 
 
 "It is like the other — too fine not to be 
 finished," his father answered, in astonish- 
 ment that the boy could regard his work so 
 lightly. 
 
 "Oh, they are only studies for my master- 
 work," Felix explained, with charming sim- 
 plicity. " When I want to keep an expres- 
 sion in my mind, I model it. 1 might forget 
 some of the ways he looks to me, for I am 
 always thinking about him. I want to hnow 
 the face in all its changes before 1 begin. Oh, 
 papa, do you see these copies of the little bust 
 you brought me from Paris ? I have changed 
 them a little — I wanted to put another thought 
 in. Are they better, or not so good ?" 
 
 The youthful artist was flitting from side to 
 side of the great studio while he talked, with 
 motions as impetuous as his words, turning his 
 
yal^Maria. 173 
 
 miniature casts to secure tiie best light for the 
 expression he wished to emphasize. 
 
 " Felix, they are all wonderful. You have 
 grown into an artist already ; you will be a 
 great artist some day. We must thank God." 
 
 His face was, if possible, more radiant than 
 ever as he came back to his father's side. "I 
 do, dear father, always. I am very happy. I 
 have known for a long time that I should be 
 a great artist: God told me so when I was 
 very little." 
 
 " How did He tell you, my child?" his father 
 questioned, reverently ; the boy seemed like an 
 inspiration — so beautiful and masterful — com- 
 pelling belief in his strange moods. 
 
 "I cannot remember — it is so long ago ; but 
 you have to know a thing when God tell5 you. 
 Michael Angelo always knew." 
 
 Felix stood in the midst of his models, turn- 
 ing his glowing glance from one to another, 
 while a deep flush of content overspread his 
 beautiful face. " I believe I know him now 
 almost perfectly !" he exclaimed, with sudden 
 conviction ; "and the next time Signore Alfonte 
 15* 
 
1 74 yal-Maria. 
 
 comes from Italy I shall be ready to block out 
 my work. I believe 1 am ready now I" he cried, 
 with the growing eagerness that was so char- 
 acteristic, as he dwelt upon the idea. "It 
 almost makes me tremble to wait." 
 
 Montal turned suddenly to hide the pain that 
 the eager words awakened. It had seemed 
 impossible not to be hopeful in this exuberant 
 presence, and the association of his child's rare 
 promise with the ripened genius and honored 
 age of the great master, Angelo, had appeared 
 like a natural and happy augury. The boy was 
 so beautiful in his mood of inspiration that it 
 was not strange to hear the young lips speak 
 of "master-work;" and they were in truth 
 wonderful, these " studies for the master- 
 work," fashioned upon an ideal that had grown 
 with the boy's life into a development that 
 was nearly perfect, spiritually, intellectually, 
 artistically — a conception that was possible only 
 to a nature supremely endowed and exception- 
 ally surrounded. But in some unaccountable 
 way the young artist's soul seemed enthralled 
 by the individuality of this man whom he had 
 
yal-Maria. 1 75 
 
 never seen ; even in the least-finished bits the 
 identity of the face was unmistalcabie. 
 
 " I shall teach the people who do not know 
 hica to Icyve my Emperor !" Felix cried, with an 
 enthusiasm that filled his father's eyes with 
 tears. 
 
 That evening, after Felix had left them, the 
 count and countess strolled up and down the 
 terrace together, far into the night, discussing 
 the boy's marvellous gift, which had developed 
 with almost inconceivable rapidity during the 
 count's last long absence, and Montal seemed 
 especially struck with the intense spirituality 
 the always beautiful head had assumed under 
 the boy's adoring touch, 
 
 " What shall we do ?" the countess asked, 
 with a sigh, " since he means it for a portrait. 
 Yet his illusions are so beautiful, and he is so 
 happy in them !" 
 
 "Shall we dispel his illusions, sweet mother, 
 or he ours? Must we not hold such genius 
 sacred ?" Montal answered, reverently. " The 
 child is nearer heaven than we." 
 
 The beautiful faith touched and tranquillized 
 
1 76 yal-MarJa. 
 
 him, and was essentially helpful in overcoming 
 the cynicism towards which his mental rest- 
 lessness was tending. For perhaps the child, 
 whose eyes were too pure to behold iniquity, 
 had a lesson for his world-saddened heart, he 
 told himself, yearningly ; for he still longed, 
 with the eagerness of youth, to believe in the 
 nobility of one who might have been so great. 
 
 For several winters, during the sessions of 
 the Senate, the countess had passed some 
 months in her old Florentine home, that Felix 
 might have every advantage for the study of 
 his art, in which, boy as he was, he had already 
 become absorbed. From thence they had gone 
 to Rome ; and in every art-gallery and studio, 
 in the churches and public squares, the gentle, 
 courteous, white-haired master and the beauti- 
 ful boy — the brother artists — were familiar fig- 
 ures. But Rome had not the permanent charm 
 for the little artist that Florence possessed. 
 
 He had astonished his mother by his reply 
 to her question as to why he was so anxious 
 to leave Rome for Florence. 
 
 "It is beautiful to see the Holy City once; 
 
f^al-Maria. 1 77 
 
 but I think I have not time for Rome, Madonna 
 mia; for God has told me that 1 must be an 
 artist." 
 
 "But, my darling, Rome is full of art- 
 treasures — full of the work of your great 
 master, Angelo. You must come here to study 
 him at his best." 
 
 " I love to stand under the grand duomo," 
 the boy responded, musingly, "because he 
 planned it. And the ' Moses' is so sublime 
 that it makes me tremble. But I do not want 
 to stay in Rome always, because — because I 
 think in Rome they only care for the religion 
 of the Pope ; they do not love my art, as they 
 do in Florence." 
 
 "Is not the religion of the Pope our re- 
 ligion ?" the countess asked, hurt and startled. 
 
 "1 used to think so. Madonna mia, when 
 we were always in Val-JVIaria, and Monsieur 
 le Cure told me about the Holy Father. But 
 now I do not feel it so. 1 think often of 
 Monsieur le Cure : it is good for him not to be 
 in Rome. He would not love the Church so 
 much if he were here." 
 
178 VahMaria. 
 
 " You are only a child, my Felix," his mother 
 answered, in a voice full of tender reproof, " or 
 you would know that we may not speak so of 
 our Holy Church." 
 
 Felix threw his arms caressingly about his 
 mother, full of self-chiding for the pain in her 
 face and tone. 
 
 " If I could tell you what 1 mean. Madonna 
 mia carissima I" he cried, imploringly, and fill- 
 ing the soft Italian syllables with a wealth of 
 love and reverence, " you would not think me 
 wrong. I want to go away to love it more. 
 These great festivals at St. Peter's make me 
 afraid. God seems so far away — on Easter Day 
 I could not think of Him at all, it was all so 
 magnificent to see, like the court of a Roman 
 emperor. 1 do not think Monsieur le Cure 
 would be happy here." 
 
 She did not know what to answer him, 
 and Alfonte, who had been listening in silent 
 amazement, returned to a thought which had 
 also seemed strange to him. 
 
 "Felix, why do you say they love out art 
 less in Rome than in Florence ?" 
 
Fal-Maria. 1 79 
 
 " You have the same reason, dear master/' 
 the boy answered, brightly. 
 
 " Ah, well, it has passed from me uncon- 
 sciously, then, into the keeping of my pupil," 
 Alfonte returned, entering at once into his 
 playful humor. " And I must ask it of him 
 again." 
 
 Felix was instantly grave. 
 
 " I feel it so much, 1 cannot make you 
 understand," he said, after a moment's pause 
 of hesitation, but his words were as impetuous 
 as ever. "It is more beautiful here, but 1 
 think art has come to Rome to make it beau- 
 tiful ; and in Florence it had to be there, 
 because the air was full of it: it was born 
 there." 
 
 "I have spoiled you with my tales of Lo- 
 renzo dei Medici, and our dreamings over the 
 gardens of San Marco, with its wonderful art- 
 treasures," Alfonte confessed, laughing. " But 
 it was a fairy tale fit for the food of an artist," 
 he continued, the enthusiasm which had nat- 
 urally infected Felix returning at the mere 
 mention of these days of the greatness of 
 
1 8o Val-Maria. 
 
 Florence, " and if the school of that beautiful 
 past were still there, 1 myself would obtain 
 admission for you like a modern Granacci, and 
 perhaps we should see another Angelo, though 
 I think we should not have a subject half-pagan 
 for our first work, like the faun in the Uffizzi. 
 
 " But what a part for a prince to act !" Al- 
 fonte cried, warming into the tale of which 
 Felix never wearied, of the boyhood of Michael 
 Angelo, of Lorenzo's munificence, his judg- 
 ment, his keen interest in youthful talent, his 
 wise discoveries that seemed akin to predic- 
 tions of genius, the judicious criticism and 
 stimulus and attrition of the brilliant circle 
 into which he introduced his youthful aspir- 
 ants for art, teaching them to know and to 
 strive for excellence. "Ah, truly, for this it 
 were worth being a prince !" 
 
 "If an artist were not better, dear master," 
 said Felix, softly, coming very close to him, 
 and looking up with happy, luminous eyes. 
 
 " Dear countess," said Alfonte then quite 
 pleadingly, for he thought she still looked sad 
 at the confession of Felix, "can you not pardon 
 
yal-Maria. 1 8 1 
 
 your two capricious artists if they sigh, even 
 here, for the Loggia and the Gates of Paradise?" 
 
 ********** 
 
 After the count's withdrawal from political 
 life, it had cost him a great effort to abandon 
 the hope of still doing something for the 
 France he loved ; but as the months passed, 
 rumors of discontent were rising — there was 
 more than one attempt at assassination ; the 
 current of court-life grew no clearer, and when 
 Josephine finally retired heart-broken to Mal- 
 maison, and the Senate theatrically proclaimed 
 that their Emperor had given to his people the 
 last and costliest proof of sacrifice, Montal 
 turned so bitter in his heart against the man 
 he had once striven to uphold, that he felt 
 there was no safety for him so long as he occu- 
 pied himself with thoughts of the France of 
 the present. 
 
 At first there was a blank, in which he 
 seemed capable of nothing except the fierce 
 resolution to keep himself from following 
 events as they were daily chronicled. The 
 peals of rejoicing that sounded so soon along 
 
 i6 
 
1 82 yal^Maria. 
 
 the route from Vienna to Paris penetrated even 
 the depths of his quiet study at Val-Maria, and 
 were almost maddening to him ; for it was 
 not an easy matter for this statesman who had 
 striven so faithfully to serve his country, to go 
 back, with a headlong plunge, to the old lit- 
 erary interests of early days. But the won- 
 derful journals of his grandfather, inwrought 
 with so much that was dear in his childhood, 
 brought back these memories, his conscience 
 helped him, and the calm, beautiful, loving 
 atmosphere of his home-life made it possible 
 for him at last. 
 
 And then came beautiful days, when he had 
 struggled up into an ideal world of aspiration 
 and of art, where the frettings of the tempest 
 out of which he had been tossed scarcely 
 reached him'; he found it again possible to 
 realize a living companionship in the great 
 minds of the past, and to find comfort in the 
 greatness of those who had lived for noble ends. 
 
 The beautiful child had developed into a tall, 
 slender youth, with a face and bearing remind- 
 ing one of Raphael's portrait as given us by 
 
yal~Maria. 183 
 
 the Sanzio himself — a resemblance that was 
 possibly increased by his usual dress of dark- 
 green velvet, fashioned like the tunic of 
 Raphael which had pleased the young artist's 
 fancy. His soft, bright hair curled loosely 
 about his throat, in a mode that was usual with 
 young noblemen of those days, but it had a 
 peculiar richness, as if light were always play- 
 ing through it, ready at any moment to touch 
 the brown waves with the red-gold tints that 
 artists love. His brow was very sweet and 
 serious, almost contradicting the spirit of the 
 dark, luminous eyes, which were radiant with 
 an intense glow of love and joy that was 
 almost unearthly. The bounding, exuberant 
 life of his childhood seemed gradually ethereal- 
 izing into a spirituality which ruled those about 
 him resistlessly while under the spell of his 
 presence. 
 
 Thus the days seemed flooded with sunshine 
 for mother and son, as they worked and talked 
 in the great studio of the Chateau of Val- 
 Maria. Often the master was with them, for he 
 could no longer be parted from Felix, and now 
 
1 84 yal-Maria. 
 
 he made but short journeys to his old home, 
 seeming only to live fully when in the boy's 
 presence ; frequently the count left his books 
 and joined them there ; sometimes the old 
 cure was with them ; but Felix was always the 
 centre of the group, his slim, tapering fingers 
 trembling with artistic instinct, eagerly work- 
 ing out his last new thought, while, in his 
 unsconscious, masterful way, giving the key- 
 note to the talk which rippled with life, glad- 
 ness, and love over an ever-implied, yet rarely 
 spoken, thought of God and art which made it 
 a ceaseless song of praise. 
 
 Such was his spell. 
 
 Only in the wakeful hours that would come 
 to her at night did the mother remember that 
 he had seemed slighter, more easily fatigued ; 
 but in the morning his smile would compel 
 hers again, while the spell of his radiance 
 overcame her anxiety. 
 
 "There is nothing to make you sad, Afo- 
 donna mia," he said, one morning, as she 
 raised the portiere of his studio and confronted 
 him suddenly, before the shadow of the night's 
 
. Valr-Maria. 1 85 
 
 grieving had left her face. "God is so good, 
 and life is so beautiful, and love is so sweet!" 
 
 " Yes, my treasure," she answered, clinging 
 to him with an uncontrollable yearning, "life is 
 beautiful, and love is sweet — oh, very sweet !" 
 
 He passed his arm around her and drew her 
 head very tenderly to his shoulder — for he 
 was already taller than she — and standing so 
 for a moment, he smiled down upon her 
 silently with a great love that calmed and com- 
 forted her, until the light of the wonderful 
 joy in his smile drew her again under the spell 
 that made the sunshine of her days. 
 
 " You are too sad, sweet mother," he said, 
 still charming her with his eyes, full of a great, 
 tender, understanding love, " so 1 have made 
 this for you, with a face 1 should love you to 
 wear — for life is very beautiful." 
 
 She started and shrank as he drew the cover 
 from a little marble bust he had placed upon 
 her table : it was her own face that she recog- 
 nized, but radiant as if she had never known 
 a sorrow. 
 
 "Oh, Felix!" she cried, almost with invol- 
 16* 
 
1 86 Fal-Maria. 
 
 untary reproof, "my darling, you do not know! 
 I shall never look like that." 
 
 He clasped her closer, looking at her steadily 
 with that wonderful, growing light in his eyes. 
 
 " Madonna mia," he said, in a low voice full 
 of assurance, "you will look like that some 
 day. God has shown you to me in my dreams, 
 and I have made this portrait for you : it is so 
 beautiful to be glad !" 
 
 "Dear Felix, we cannot always be glad," 
 
 " I wish I could show you my dreams, sweet 
 mother ; they comfort me." 
 
 "They comfort you, Felix? Why do you 
 need comfort ? Do you suffer ?" she questioned, 
 in quick alarm. 
 
 " Only because you are sad sometimes," he 
 answered, very tenderly, " But God is good, 
 and life and love have no end ; you will grow 
 to look like my dream — some day," 
 
CHAPTER TWELFTH. 
 
 [HERE was a slight stir among the 
 ceremonious groups of courtiers 
 who were required to attend in the 
 Emperor's apartments at the Tuileries at the 
 hour of his earliest levee, as a cavalier in his 
 riding-dress, which showed the disorder of 
 haste, passed quickly from chamber to chamber, 
 unannounced, his only passport being the 
 words "extreme urgency," which he repeated 
 from door to door, with a face whose look of 
 tortured strength could not be gainsaid. He 
 had ridden all night, fresh horses awaiting him 
 at each post, and the courier who had been 
 sent before to crave an audience had ridden 
 not so fast as he. 
 
 187 
 
1 88 yal-Maria. 
 
 Monsieur de Talleyrand was just leaving the 
 Emperor's private study as the Count of Men- 
 tal reached it, and the punctilious, unemotional 
 minister received his old acquaintance with a 
 glance of unfeigned disapproval, as, scarcely 
 pausing for recognition, he passed unannounced 
 into the imperial presence. 
 
 He had the air of a courier fresh from a 
 battle-field, with news of grave import, and 
 the Emperor, always on the alert, turned 
 to him with instant attention, recognizing, 
 to his surprise, before he could speak, the 
 senator who had formerly done him good ser- 
 vice, but who had not for years appeared at 
 court. 
 
 "Sire!" Montal cried to the astonished 
 monarch, without preamble or apology, "My 
 only child lies dying! Out of his passionate 
 love for you he has wrought a great work 
 for France. He asks to deliver it into your 
 hands." 
 
 For the day had come when the great work 
 was finished, and the Chateau of Val-Maria was 
 again filled with guests. Alfonte, the master. 
 
l^al^Maria. 189 
 
 had been summoned from Italy, and he stood, 
 bowed with emotion, before his pupil's mar- 
 vellous achievement. "It is wonderful!" he 
 answered to the mother's questioning eyes, 
 " and I know not if the angels or the spirit of 
 the great Angelo himself has taught him, for 
 he has a white, white soul !" 
 
 And then, in a voice that struggled to be 
 calm, he pleaded to be left alone with the lesson 
 of this great creation. 
 
 "My God, my God!" he prayed, in uncon- 
 trollable anguish, " how inscrutable are Thy 
 ways ! If but my gray hairs and my life full 
 of years might be given for the life of the boy ! 
 If my death might but save his genius to the 
 world ! And oh, my God ! I thought myself 
 his master — forgive the presumption. Yet it 
 was Thy will ; for had 1 not been blind, I had 
 not dared to teach his little artist feet to stand. 
 I was not worthy of the honor, and Thy ways 
 are past finding out. But, oh, my Father, it 
 would be sweet to give my life for the life of 
 the child !" 
 
 Later the good old cure came and stood 
 
190 yal-Maria. 
 
 spell-bound before the image, unconsciously re- 
 moving the close-fitting black cap that crowned 
 his flowing locks, as if in a majestic presence. 
 "The boy knows no evil," he said. " My God, 
 1 thank thee ! So are our hearts at peace, for 
 heaven must soon be his home. Yet 1 knew 
 not that the good God permitted men to be 
 so godlike ! If our Emperor is thus, let him 
 have all power !" 
 
 The court physician, an early friend of Mon- 
 tal, who had known Felix from his birth, had 
 arrived with his suite and occupied one of the 
 wings of the chateau. And the other wing 
 contained the chapel which the effigies and 
 tombs of the knights of Montal and the gifts 
 of a long line of devoted ancestry had enriched 
 and filled with historic charm ; and here Mon-. 
 seigneur the Archbishop of Paris had deigned 
 to pass the night, that he might offer the 
 Church's consolation with fullest honors to a 
 daughter so faithful and self-sacrificing as the 
 countess had proved herself in caring for the 
 Church's interests. 
 
 These two great men who knew the Em-- 
 
l/'al-Maria. 191 
 
 peror so intimately had crossed the threshold 
 of the studio together and stood before the 
 statue in amazement, avoiding each other's 
 gaze, as its full, sublime meaning grew upon 
 them. The archbishop crossed himself, but 
 spoke no word, as he passed into the chamber 
 where the countess sat, with bright, strained 
 eyes and heightened color, watching her boy ; 
 but when he had lingered over him in silent 
 and awe-struck blessing, he reverently kissed 
 the mother's hands that were folded each upon 
 each, as if in a convulsive prayer for calm, with 
 a touch so sympathetic that they lay together 
 more lightly. 
 
 Another guest was coming, more mighty 
 than they — unbidden, invisible ; yet, in his 
 approach, subduing that household with the 
 majesty that none may resist. Only in the 
 eyes of the boy the smile brightened and inten- 
 sified with a beauty they could scarcely bear to 
 look upon. The faces of those that loved him 
 had turned away from his as Felix sought them, 
 and the faithful abbe had knelt beside the 
 couch and buried his face in the pillows. Only 
 
1 92 Val-Maria. 
 
 the mother grew strong for the need of the 
 moment, and smiled back at her darling with 
 a look of unutterable love, that she might 
 not seem to fail in sharing this last joy of 
 his life, as she realized the meaning of the 
 sounds from without that had reached his 
 eager ears. 
 
 " He comes," he said, simply. "1 know his 
 step !" 
 
 A moment before the imperial travelling- 
 carriage had dashed through the little square 
 that led to the bridge : the evening bells were 
 sounding for vespers, with a rustic chime that 
 recalled the bells of the little church at Rueil 
 where Josephine lay buried. Always, in the 
 olden days. Napoleon had paused to listen as 
 those bells rang out, and now the chime cleared 
 like magic the brow knitted with complicated 
 schemes for the subjugation of Austria, for the 
 humiliation of England, for the reconciliation of 
 Murat — schemes which were maturing to his 
 unprecedented satisfaction in the solitude and 
 rapid motion of the journey. 
 
 It calmed for an instant that bitter longing 
 
for a word from Marie Louise — for news of the 
 boy for whom he had sacrificed his honor as 
 a man — his pledge of all that was sacred — the 
 happiness, nay, perhaps the life of the wife he 
 had once truly loved. 
 
 Across the fierce conflicts, the dangers, the 
 triumphs, the machinations of these Hundred 
 Days which should be forever memorable in 
 the annals of the world, the sound swept 
 like a cool, beneficent wave obliterating the 
 feverish consciousness of the now, bearing 
 him back into the past, and enveloping him 
 with the charm of those early days at Saint- 
 Cloud. 
 
 As in those days it had been his wont, 
 he yielded himself wholly, for the moment, 
 to the spell of those rustic church-bells, and 
 in an instant the rushing horses had been 
 checked by his imperious signal, and he 
 alighted from the carriage and stood, with 
 bowed head, listening till the chime had 
 ceased. 
 
 The shrine of the Madonna Val-Maria was 
 dimly illuminated with sputtering candles 
 in 17 
 
1 94 yal^Maria. 
 
 which still further defaced its ugliness, as they 
 burned with a sickly glare in the beautiful rich 
 light of the sunset, with slow, ceaseless drip- 
 pings down the blackened stone. And before 
 it knelt a peasant woman so absorbed in grief 
 and prayer that she was unconscious of any 
 disturbing presence, as the hot tears dropped 
 on the toil-worn hands in which the crucifix 
 was so tightly clasped that its image left its 
 impress on their rough surfaces. A strong, 
 true, loving face was visible under the white 
 coifFe, and from her simple and beautiful heart 
 had come the votive oflfering so inconsonant 
 with the strength and purity of her emotion, 
 and which, in this supreme moment, failed to 
 give her any comfort ; though never before — 
 even when her own little Jean had died — had 
 she brought half this number to the shrine of 
 the Madonna Val-Maria. 
 
 "Oh, Holy Mother!" she prayed, with 
 streaming tears, " thou knowest the grief will 
 kill our sweet lady ! And Monsieur Felix ! 
 — he is an angel to the people. Oh, Madonna 
 Val-Maria, have mercy !" 
 
yal-Maria. 195 
 
 " Is there one now living who could weep 
 so for me?" the great Emperor questioned in 
 his softened heart, as he entered his carriage 
 again without attracting the suppliant's notice, 
 and was borne swiftly on to the interview for 
 which Felix so eagerly waited. 
 
 As the door of the sick-chamber opened 
 to admit him, the boy raised himself on 
 his couch with feverish strength, stretching 
 out both hands, and turning towards him a 
 face transfigured by indescribable emotion. 
 "Sire!" he cried, in a voice that rang like 
 an electric thrill through the group, "how 
 holy it is to have power over the joy of the 
 world !" 
 
 And after a moment's pause to rally strength, 
 the words came slowly and unsteadily, with 
 a pathetic intensity — 
 
 " I leave you — the message of my life — for 
 France : my love for my Emperor " 
 
 There was an irresistible gesture of com- 
 mand in the frail, extended hand, and uncon- 
 sciously the Emperor moved forward. The 
 heavy folds of the velvet curtain which had been 
 
196 yahMaria. 
 
 placed in Felix's hand, in answer to his mute 
 appeal, swung aside from the boy's failing grasp 
 as the Emperor reached it, the bullion fringes 
 sweeping the floor like the muffled crash of 
 artillery, and the Man of Destiny stood face to 
 face — and alone — with the boy's masterful 
 work of love. 
 
 It was like a chapel for stillness: the litter 
 of the workshop all removed ; the rude out- 
 lines hidden under the deep crimson hang- 
 ings that swept from skylight to floor; only 
 on the left the lower casements were open, 
 and the western light flooded the marble 
 that rose majestic and beautiful before him, 
 wrought with the passion of the pure young 
 life. 
 
 It was of heroic size and mysteriously beauti- 
 ful — the conception of an intense love, spirit- 
 ualized by the boy's holy dreams. 
 
 The perfect outlines of the face the world 
 knows well had been preserved : the brow, 
 noble with an intellect never surpassed, here 
 showed a further grandeur, almost as of a 
 divine prescience ; the mouth, beautiful and 
 
yalr-Maria. 197 
 
 sweet and stern, wore the added grace of love ; 
 all the noble and poetic possibilities of his 
 nature had been sought out and carried to their 
 loftiest height ; everything that was ignoble 
 had been purged away. It was as if once, in 
 awe of his own great gifts and power, the 
 man had communed with himself and with 
 God in solemn consecration, praying, "Con- 
 form me to Thine image I " 
 
 It -was the face of the man with the soul of 
 an angel. 
 
 He was alone in the stillness, with the 
 glory of the tribute, and the conqueror's eyes 
 gleamed with triumph. Should the world 
 indeed know him thus — so magnificent — so 
 godlike ? 
 
 The intoxication of past triumphs floated like 
 incense about him ; the shouts of adoring 
 multitudes caressed him with his greatness ; 
 yet even this one more added proof was sweet 
 — naming him Caesar — Invincible ! 
 
 But suddenly these pageants faded as the 
 light sank in the west ; the flush paled on the 
 beautiful marble image, and the white, lover 
 17* 
 
198 Val-Maria. 
 
 wrought message of the statue chilled him to 
 the soul. 
 
 The lost opportunities of his life thronged 
 about him, stifling the air with their presence 
 and voices : 
 
 An all-embracing intellect divorced from the 
 rule of right. 
 
 Great gifts perverted ; the mastery of men's 
 hearts — used to crush them ; the comprehen- 
 sion of men's characters — used to dwarf them. 
 
 Holy rights violated; sacred influences dis- 
 regarded; the voices of overturned princes 
 calling to him from the steps of desolated 
 thrones ; the voices of hapless men and women 
 calling to him from the downward paths he 
 had made it easy for them to tread. 
 
 The wail of exiles who had thwarted his 
 will reached him across the distance ; the 
 death-groans of thousands who died for love 
 of him came back from silenced battle-plains ; 
 and above them all the voice of the murdered 
 D'Enghien saying, "He is noble ; plead my 
 cause before him;" the voice of Josephine, full 
 of prayers and tears 
 
l^al^Maria. 199 
 
 And through this havoc of greatness, pitiless 
 and cold as hail, stormed the memory of his 
 own words, uttered as a creed, " I am not an 
 ordinary man, and the laws of morals and of 
 customs were never made for me I" 
 
 And out of the shadows that deepened 
 around him did some near vision of the future 
 loom ? Did he see the young Empress, stand- 
 ing on the ashes of her broken faith, recreant 
 to France, deaf to his imploring words, barter- 
 ing her freedom for an Italian duchy ? Did he 
 see the English, lashed to fury by his jealous 
 pride, wreaking their vengeance in his betrayal? 
 Did he see his own little child, a prisoner in 
 the imperial palace of Schonbrunn, with yearn- 
 ing, unhappy eyes and outstretched arms, 
 calling to him in tones that sobbed like the rise 
 and fall of waves against the relentless rocks of 
 St. Helena ? 
 
 The unwelcome guest — the invincible mon- 
 arch — had entered that hushed chamber as the 
 curtain fell behind the Emperor, and on the 
 
200 
 
 VaU-Maria. 
 
 couch Felix lay — peaceful, smiling, still — his 
 little life rounded in the knowledge of per- 
 petual love, his fair spirit crowned with the 
 unfading strength God holds in store for those 
 who love the Beauty of Holiness. 
 
 THE END. 
 
By the Author of this Volume. 
 
 The Catholic Man 
 
 A STUDY. 
 By Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull. 
 
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 Since the time of " Robert Elsmere," no book has ap- 
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 The passionate appreciation and affection with which 
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