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THE ROMANCE 
 
 OF A 
 
 POOR YOUNG MAN 
 
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M ^ 
 
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 Lc <^Y 
 
THE ROMANCE 
 
 OF A 
 
 POOR 
 
 YOUNG MAN 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF 
 
 OCTAVE FEUILLET 
 
 With Illustrations by MOUCHOT, engraved by MEAULLE 
 
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 X 
 
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Sursum cor da ! 
 
Paris, April 20th, 185 
 
 This is the second evening that I have spent in this 
 wretched room, looking gloomily at the empty hreplace, 
 listening mechanically to the monotonous buzz and rollino- 
 of wheels in the street, and feeling myself, in the midst 
 of this great city, more lonely, more deserted, and nearer 
 to despair than the shipwrecked sailor shivering in mid- 
 ocean on his broken plank. Enough of this weakness ! I 
 
2 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 will look my destiny in the face, to rob it of its spectral 
 air ; I will also open my heart, which is overflowing with 
 grief, to the sole confidant whose pity cannot be an insult — 
 to that pale and last-remaining friend who looks upon me 
 from my mirror. I will therefore write down my thoughts 
 and my life, not with a daily and childish precision, but 
 without any important omission, and, above all, without false- 
 hood. I shall love this journal : it will be as it were a brotherly 
 echo to cheat my loneliness; it will furnish me at the 
 same time with a kind of second conscience, warning me 
 to allow no trait to imprint itself upon my life which 
 my own hand cannot steadily delineate. 
 
 I now seek in the past, v^ith a sorrowful eagerness, for 
 all those facts and incidents which should long ago have 
 enlightened me, had not my eyes been closed to an illumination 
 by filial respect, by custom, and the indifll^erence of indolent 
 happiness. The constant deep melancholy of my mother 
 is now explained; I understand, too, her distaste for society; 
 and that simple and unchanging dress of hers, which was 
 the object sometimes of my father's sarcasms, sometimes 
 of his anger : " You look like a servant," he would say. 
 
 I could not disguise from myself that our domestic life 
 was at times disturbed by quarrels of a more important 
 nature ; but I was never an eye-witness of them. The 
 angry and imperious tones of my father, the murmurs 
 of a voice apparently entreating, stifled sobs, this was all 
 I could hear of them. I attributed these storms to violent 
 and ineffectual attempts to bring back my mother's inclination 
 for the elegant and stirring life which she had loved as 
 much as a good woman can, but into which she no longer 
 followed my father, save with a dislike which every day 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 3 
 
 made more determined. It was seldom that after these 
 scenes my father did not hasten to buy some costly trinket, 
 which my mother would find under her serviette on sitting 
 down to table, and which she never wore. One day in 
 mid-winter, she received from Paris a large case of exotics ; 
 she thanked my father warmly, but as soon as he had left 
 her room, I saw her slightly shrug her shoulders and cast 
 towards heaven a look of hopeless despair. 
 
 During my childhood and early youth, I had great respect 
 for my father, but little enough of affection. Through 
 the whole of that time I knew, in fact, only the dark side 
 of his character — the only side which displayed itself in pri- 
 vate life, for which my father was not made. Later, when my 
 age allowed me to go with him into society, I was astonished 
 and delighted to find in him a characteristic of which I 
 had no suspicion. It seemed as if within the inclosure of 
 our old family chateau, he felt himself under the weight 
 of some fatal enchantment; scarcely was he beyond the 
 gates, when I saw his brow grow clear, and his chest 
 expand — he grew young again. " Come, Maxime," he 
 would cry, " now for a gallop ! " And we flew gaily over 
 the ground. At those times he had shouts of boyish joy, 
 an enthusiastic bearing, a nimble fancy, and a flow of 
 feeling which charmed my young heart, and of which I 
 would but too gladly have brought something back to my 
 poor mother, forgotten in her corner. It was then I began 
 to love my father; and my tenderness for him was increased 
 by real admiration,^when I saw him in all the festivities of 
 worldly life, in the hunting-field, at races, balls, and dinners, 
 bringing out the sympathetic qualities of his brilliant nature. 
 An admirable horseman, a dazzling converser, a skilful player. 
 
4 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 a fearless heart, an open hand, I regarded him as a finished 
 type of manly grace and chivalrous nobility. He used to 
 call himself, smiling with a kind of bitterness, the last gentle- 
 man. Such was my father in society ; but he was no 
 sooner returned home, than my mother and I had before 
 our eyes again only the restless, moody, violent old man. 
 
 My father's outbursts against so sweet and delicate a 
 creature as my mother would certainly have been revolting 
 to me, had they not been followed by those quick returns 
 of tenderness, and those redoubled attentions of which I 
 have spoken. Justified in my eyes by these tokens of 
 repentance, my father seemed to me only a man of naturally 
 kind feelings, but carried beyond himself at times by stubborn 
 and systematic opposition to all his tastes and likings. I 
 fancied my mother attacked by a sort of nervous disorder, 
 a kind of hypochondria. My father gave me to under- 
 stand as much, though always maintaining with regard to 
 the subject a reserve which I thought very fitting. 
 
 My mother's feelings towards my father seemed to me 
 indefinable. The looks which she fixed on him seemed at 
 times inflamed with a strange expression of harshness ; but it 
 was only a flash, and the next moment her beautiful 
 humid eyes, and her countenance, which had an unalter- 
 able charm, testified to nothing save tender devotion and 
 most loving deference. 
 
 My mother was married at fifteen, and I was close on 
 my twenty-second year when my sister, my poor Helen, 
 came into the world. A short time after her birth, my 
 father, issuing one morning with anxious brow from the 
 room where my mother was languishing, made me a sign 
 to follow him into the garden. After two or three turns 
 
THE RO^IANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 in silence, he said to me : " Maxime, your mother is grow- 
 ing stranger than ever ! " 
 
 " She suiters so much, father ! " 
 
 " Yes, no doubt ; but she has a veiy singular fancy : 
 she wishes that you should study law." 
 
 " Study law ! How can my mother want me, at my 
 age, with my birth and position, to go and dawdle on 
 the benches of a school ? It would be ridiculous ! " 
 
 "So I think," said my father drily; "but your motJier 
 is ill, there is nothing more to say." 
 
 I was at that time a simpleton, very much inflated by 
 my name, my youthful consequence, and little successes in 
 society, but my heart was sound : I adored my mother. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 with whom I had lived for twenty years in the closest 
 intimacy that can bind two human souls. I ran to assure 
 her of my obedience ; and she thanked me with an inclina- 
 tion of the head and a sorrowful smile, at the same time 
 bidding me kiss my sister, who was asleep on her knee. 
 
 We lived within half a league of Grenoble, so that I 
 could go through a course of law without quitting the 
 paternal roof. My mother informed herself day by day 
 as to the progress of my studies, with an interest so lively 
 and persevering, that I came to ask myself whether there 
 was not behind this unusual attention something more than 
 a sick woman's fancy ; whether, perhaps, my father's dislike 
 and contempt for the positive and troublesome side of life 
 had not wrought some secret ravages in our resources, 
 which an acquaintance with law, and a familiarity with 
 business, might, my mother hoped, enable his son to repair. 
 However, I could not dwell on this thought. I remembered, 
 it is true, having heard my father complain bitterly of 
 the disasters which our fortunes had undergone in the 
 revolutionary times; but his complaints had long since ceased; 
 and indeed I had never been able to avoid thinking them 
 quite unjust, as our position with regard to property seemed 
 to me most satisfactory. We lived, in fact, near Grenoble, 
 in our hereditary family chateau, which was spoken of 
 throughout the country for its grand seignorial air. 
 
 My father and I would often hunt for a whole day with- 
 out leaving our own land or our own woods. Our stables 
 were ancient and large, and always filled with valuable 
 horses, which were my father's passion and pride. We 
 had besides at Paris, on the Boulevard des Capucines, a 
 Jiandsome house, where a comfortable abode was secured 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 to US. Lastly, in the habitual style of our house, there 
 was nothing to betray the shadow of pinching or contri- 
 vance. Our table, too, was always served with a particular 
 and refined delicacy, which my father appreciated. 
 
 Meanwhile my mother's health was almost insensibly 
 but steadily declining. A time came when that angelic 
 disposition changed. That mouth, which — in my presence 
 at least — had uttered none but gentle words, became bitter 
 and attacking ; every step that I took outside the chateau, 
 drew forth sarcastic and painful remarks. My father, who 
 was spared no more than I was, bore these attacks with a 
 patience which seemed to me meritorious on his part; but 
 he began to spend his time more than ever away from 
 home, feeling, as he said, the want of ceaseless diversion 
 and change. He always desired me to accompany him ; 
 and my love of pleasure, the impatient eagerness of my 
 age, and, in a word, the weakness of my heart, made him 
 find me only too ready to obey. 
 
 One day in the month of September, 185-, some races, 
 for which my father had several horses ■ entered, were to 
 take place on a course at no great distance from the 
 chateau. We started, my father and I, early in the morn- 
 ing, and breakfasted on the course. Towards the middle 
 of the day, as I was galloping on the border of the race- 
 course, so as to follow more closely the progress of the 
 struggle, I was suddenly joined by one of our servants, 
 who had sought me, he said, for more that half an hour; 
 he added that my father had already returned to the 
 chateau, where my mother sent for him, and where he 
 begged me to follow him without delay. 
 
 " But, in Heaven's name, what is the matter ? " 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 " I believe Madame is worse," the man replied. And I 
 set off like a madman. 
 
 On arriving, I saw my sister at play on the grass-plot 
 in the middle of the great courtyard, which was silent 
 and deserted. She ran to meet me as I got down from 
 my horse, and while embracing me, said with a mysterious 
 air of business, and almost of joy, " The cure is come." 
 
 Still I saw no unusual excitement in the house, no sign 
 of disorder or alarm. I hastily ascended the staircase, and 
 was crossing the boudoir which adjoined my mother's room 
 when the door gently opened, and my father appeared. I 
 stopped before him : he was very pale, and his lips were 
 trembling. " Maxime," he said, without looking at me, 
 " your mother wants you." 
 
 I would have questioned him ; but he made a sign with 
 his hand, and hastened to a window, apparently to look 
 out. 
 
 I entered the room. My mother was half-reclining in 
 her easy chair, over the side of which hung one of her 
 arms, as if nerveless. Suddenly I discerned once more on 
 her face, now of a waxen pallor, the exquisite gentleness 
 and delicate grace which suffering had recently banished : the 
 angel of eternal rest was already plainly spreading his wing 
 over that calm forehead. I fell on my knees : she half- 
 opened her eyes, raised with difficulty her drooping head, 
 and covered me with a long look. Then with a voice 
 which was only an interrupted breathing, she slowly said 
 these words : " Poor child ! — I am worn out, you see — do 
 not weep ! You have neglected me a little latterly : but I 
 was so ill-tempered ! — We shall meet again, Maxime : all 
 will be explained, my son. — I can speak no longer ! — 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 Remind your father of what he has promised In the 
 battle of hfe be strong, and forgive the weak ! " 
 
 She seemed exhausted, interrupted herself for a moment, 
 then raising her finger with an effort, and looking steadily 
 at me, said : " Your sister ! " Her death-coloured eyelids 
 closed, then she opened them again suddenly, and stretched 
 out her arms with a stiff and ominous gesture. I uttered 
 a cry, my father ran in, and pressed for a long time to 
 his breast, with heart-rending sobs, the poor corpse of a 
 martyr. 
 
 Some weeks later, at the formal request of my father, 
 who, he said, was only obeying the last wishes of her 
 whose loss we wept, I left France, and began that life of 
 wandering in the world which I have led almost to this 
 day. In a year of absence my heart, which became more 
 and more loving as the wretched impetuosity of my age 
 died out — my heart, I say, urged me, more than once, to 
 go and plunge again in the fountain of my life, between 
 my mother's grave and my little sister's cradle ; but my 
 father had himself fixed the exact duration of my travels, 
 and he had not brought me up to treat his wishes lightly. 
 His correspondence, affectionate but brief, announced no 
 impatience about my return. I was all the more terrified, 
 when, on landing two months ago at Marseilles, I found 
 several letters from him, all recalling me with feverish 
 haste. 
 
 It was on a gloomy evening in the month of February 
 that I again saw the massive walls of our ancient dwelling, 
 standing in relief from a slight fall of snow which covered 
 the country. A bitter icy blast blew at intervals ; flakes 
 of hoar-frost fell like dead leaves from the trees in the 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 avenue, and settled on the damp earth with a slight but 
 mournful sound. On entering the court-yard I saw a 
 shadow, that seemed to be my father's, on one of the 
 windows of the great saloon on the ground-floor, which in 
 the latter part of my mother's life was never opened. I 
 rushed forward. On seeing me, my father uttered an in- 
 distinct exclamation ; then opened his arms to me, and I 
 could feel his heart beating violently against mine. "Thou 
 art frozen, my poor child," he said (contrary to his custom, 
 he used the "thou"). "Warm yourself. This room is 
 cold; but I keep to it now by preference, for one can at 
 least breath in it." 
 
 " Your health, my father ? " 
 
 " Passable, you see." And leaving me near the fire- 
 place, he resumed the walk which I seemed to have 
 interrupted, pacing to and fro the immense saloon, which 
 was faintly lighted by two or three tapers. 
 
 This strange reception astounded me. I looked at my 
 father in a state of stupefaction. 
 
 "Have you seen my horses?" he asked suddenly, with- 
 out stopping. 
 " My father ! " 
 
 "Ah ! stay- — you are right ! You are just come." (After 
 a silence.) " Maxime," he resumed, "I wish to speak 
 with you." 
 
 " I am listening, father." 
 
 He seemed not to hear me, continued walking for some 
 time, and repeated several times at intervals : "I wish to 
 speak with you, my son ! " At last he heaved a deep 
 sigh, passed one hand across his forehead, and suddenly 
 sitting down, pointed me to a chair in front of him. Then 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 13 
 
 as if he wished to speak, but could not summon up the 
 courage, he fixed his eyes on mine, and I read in them an 
 expression of anguish, meekness, and entreaty, which, in so 
 proud a man as my father, touched me deeply. Whatever 
 might be the wrongs he had so much difficulty in con- 
 fessing, I felt in the depth of my soul that they were 
 already freely forgiven, when on a sudden this look, which 
 did not quit my face, assumed a wonderful and vaguely 
 terrible fixity ; his hand tightened on my arm ; he rose in 
 his chair, and sinking back immediately, fell heavily on the 
 floor. He was no more ! 
 
 The heart neither reasons nor calculates. That is its 
 glory. In an instant I had divined it all : a single minute 
 had sufficed to reveal all at once, without a word of ex- 
 planation, but by a flash of irresistible light, the fatal truth, 
 of which a thousand facts repeated daily before me for 
 twenty years had aroused in me no suspicion. I under- 
 stood that ruin was about me, in the house and on my 
 head. Alas ! I know not whether if my father had left 
 me overwhelmed with benefits it would have cost me more 
 and bitterer tears. My regret and deep sorrow were united 
 to a pity, which, ascending from a son to a father, caused 
 a strangely bitter feeling. I had ever before me that 
 entreating, humiliated, distracted look : I was in despair that 
 I had been unable to say a word of solace to that unhappy 
 heart before it broke, and I cried madly to him who no 
 longer heard me : " I forgive you ! I forgive you ! " O 
 God ! what moments were those ! 
 
 As far as I have been able to conjecture, my mother 
 when dying made my father promise to sell the larger por- 
 tion of his property, to pay off entirely the enormous debt 
 
14 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 which he had contracted by spending every year a third 
 more than his income, and afterwards to reduce his ex- 
 penditure strictly in proportion to what remained. My 
 father had tried to keep his engagement : he had sold his 
 timber, and part of his land ; but finding a considerable 
 sum thus in hand, he had employed only a small part of it 
 for the extinction of his debt, and had essayed to restore 
 his fortune by entrusting the remainder to the detestable 
 chances of the Bourse. This completed his ruin. 
 
 I have not yet been able to sound the depths of the abyss 
 in which we are swallowed up. A week after my father's 
 death I fell seriously ill, and it was with difficulty that, 
 after two months of suffering, I was able to leave our 
 hereditary chateau on the day when a stranger took possession. 
 Happily an old friend of my mother, living at Paris, who 
 formerly had charge of our affairs as notary, came to my 
 help in this sad position, and offered to take upon himself 
 the task of liquidation, which to my inexperience seemed 
 one of inextricable difficulty. I left the care of arranging 
 the business of succession to the property entirely in his 
 hands ; and I presume that his task is finished to-day. No 
 sooner had I arrived yesterday morning, than I ran to his 
 house : he was in the country, and is not to return until 
 to-morrow. These two days have been cruel : uncertainty 
 is truly the worst of all evils, for it is the only one which 
 suspends the elasticity of the soul and postpones its courage. 
 Ten years ago I should have been greatly surprised, had any 
 one prophesied that the old notary, whose formal language 
 and stiff politeness so highly amused my father and myself, 
 would one day be the oracle from whom I awaited the 
 decree that was to decide my destiny ! I do my best to be 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 on my guard against exaggerated hopes : I have made 
 approximate calculations that there would remain to us, after 
 all debts are paid, a sum of from a hundred and twenty 
 to a hundred and fifty thousand francs. It is strange if a 
 fortune of live millions does not leave at least this wreck. 
 I purpose to take ten thousand francs for my share, and 
 seek my fortune in the new States of the Union ; the 
 remainder I shall leave to my sister. 
 
 Enough of writing for to-night. It is a sad occupation 
 to evoke such remembrances. Still I feel that it has some- 
 what restored my calmness. Truly labour is a sacred law, 
 for even the slightest application of it will result in an 
 indescribable satisfaction and serenity. For all that, man 
 does not love work: he cannot slight its indisputable bless- 
 ings ; he tastes them daily, and makes a boast of them : 
 and on the morrow betakes himself to work again with 
 the same distaste. There seems to me a singular mystery 
 and contradiction about work ; as if we felt in it at the 
 same time punishment and the divine fatherly nature of 
 our Judge. 
 
If, 
 
 
 Thursday. 
 
 On awaking this morning I received a letter from old 
 M. Laubepin. It was to invite me to dinner, apologizing 
 at the same time for so great a liberty : it contained no 
 communication relative to my affairs. I drew an ill omen 
 from this reserve. 
 
 In the interval before the hour appointed I brought mv 
 sister from her convent, and took her for a walk about 
 Paris. The child has no suspicion of our ruin. In the 
 course of the day she indulged in several pretty expensive 
 fancies. She laid in a large stock ot gloves, rose-tinted 
 paper, sweetmeats for her friends, perfumes, extraordinary 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 17 
 
 kinds of soap, and small pencils — all very useful things no 
 doubt, but not so necessary as a dinner. May she never 
 know it ! 
 
 At six o'clock, I was at M. Laubepin's house. Rue 
 Cassette. I do not know what our old friend's age may 
 be ; but as far back as I can recollect, I remember him 
 just such as I saw him to-day — tall, lean, with a slight stoop, 
 white hair in some disorder, a piercing eye under bushy 
 black eye-brows, a face showing both vigour and refine- 
 ment. I recognised too the old-fashioned black coat, the 
 professional white cravat, and the hereditary diamond in his 
 frill; in short, all the outward marks of a grave methodical 
 mind, that was attached to traditions. The old gentleman 
 awaited me before the open door of his little drawing-room ; 
 after a low bow he took my hand lightly with two of his 
 fingers, and led me up to an old lady of a very plain 
 appearance, who was standing before the mantelpiece. 
 " The Marquis de Champcey d'Hauterive ! " said M. 
 Laubepin in a strong, deep, emphatic voice. Then imme- 
 diately turning toward me, and in a more humble tone : 
 " Madame Laubepin." 
 
 We sat down, and for a moment there was an em- 
 barrassed silence. I had looked for immediate instruction 
 as to my exact position ; perceiving that it was deferred, I 
 presumed it could not be of an agreeable nature, and this 
 presumption was strengthened by the looks of discreet com- 
 passion with which Madame Laubepin furtively honoured 
 me. As for M. Laubepin, he watched me with a curious 
 attentiveness which I fancied not free from maUce. I 
 remembered then, that my father had always claimed to 
 discern in the heart of the punctilious scrivener, under all 
 
 3 
 
i3 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 his pretence of respect, traces of the leaven of the bourgeois, 
 the roturier, and even of the Jacobin. This leaven I thought 
 was fermenting a little just now ; and the old man's secret 
 dislikes seemed gratified at the sight of a gentleman thus on 
 the rack. I began talking at once, in the attempt to show, 
 spite of the prostration I really felt, that my mind was 
 perfectly easy. "Why, M. Laubepin," I said, "you have 
 left the Place des Petits Peres, that dear Place des Petits 
 Peres. I would not have believed you could make up your 
 mind to it." 
 
 " The truth is. Marquis," said M. Laubepin, " it is not 
 a fickleness that suits my age ; but when I gave up the 
 office, I had to give up the house, since one cannot take 
 down an escutcheon so easily as a sign." 
 
 " But you still do some business ? " 
 
 " Yes, Marquis, in the way of friendly assistance. Some 
 families of distinction and consideration, whose confidence I 
 have been so happy as to gain in the course of a forty-five 
 years' practice, are still pleased, in cases of unusual delicacy, 
 to seek advice from my experience ; and I think I may add, 
 that they seldom repent following it." 
 
 When M. Laubepin had finished paying himself this 
 tribute, an old servant came in to announce dinner ; and I 
 had the advantage of conducting Madame Laubepin into 
 the adjoining room. The conversation throughout the meal 
 turned on the most insignificant trifles ; M. Laubepin not 
 ceasing to fix on me a piercing look of doubtful meaning, 
 while Madame Laubepin, when ofi^ering me any dish, would 
 use that tone of grief and compassion which we assume by 
 a sick man's bed. At length we rose, and the old notary 
 led me into his study, where coffee was immediately served. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 19 
 
 Bidding me to be seated, and turning his back to the fire- 
 place, M. Laubepin then began : " Marquis, you have done 
 me the honour to intrust to my care the settlement of the 
 inheritance of the late Marquis Champcey d'Hauterive, your 
 father. I was preparing to write to you no later than 
 yesterday, when I learned your arrival in Paris, which enables 
 me to give you a viva voce account of the results of my zeal 
 and labours." 
 
 " I have a presentiment. Sir, that the result is not a 
 happy one." 
 
 " No, Marquis, it is not ; and I will not conceal from 
 you that you will have need of courage to hear it: but I 
 am used to proceeding methodically. 
 
 " It was in the year 1820, Sir, that Mademoiselle Louise 
 Helene Dugald Delatouche d'Erouville was sought in marriage 
 by Charles Christian Odiot, Marquis de Champcey d'Hauterive. 
 Invested by a tradition of ages, as it were, with the manage- 
 ment of the affairs of the Dugald Delatouche family, and 
 moreover long since on a footing of respectful intimacy with 
 the young heiress of that house, I had to use all the argu- 
 ments reason could furnish to oppose the inclination of 
 her heart, and turn her aside from this melancholy alliance. 
 I say melancholy alliance, not that M. de Champcey 's 
 fortune, spite of certain mortgages with which it was even 
 then burdened, was unequal to that of Mademoiselle Dela- 
 touche ; but I knew M. de Champcey's disposition and 
 temper, which were partly hereditary. Under the seductive and 
 chivalrous exterior, which marked him and all of his house, 
 I plainly saw an obstinate thoughtlessness, a hopeless im- 
 prudence, a mad love of pleasure, and lastly, implacable 
 selfishness " 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 "Sir," I broke in roughly, "my father's memory is 
 sacred to me, and I expect it to be so to all who speak of 
 my father in my presence." 
 
 " Sir," the old man resumed with a sudden violent 
 emotion, " I respect the feeling ; but when I speak of your 
 father, I can with great difficulty forget that I speak of 
 the man who killed your mother, who was a heroine, a 
 saint, an angel ! " 
 
 I rose in great agitation. M. Laubepin took a few 
 paces up and down the room, and seized my arm. " Pardon, 
 young man," he said, " but I loved your mother. I wept 
 for her. Be kind enough to forgive me." Then standing 
 before the mantlepiece he added in the most impressive tone 
 habitual to him : " I had the honour and vexation of drawing 
 up your mother's marriage-contract. In spite of all I could 
 say, your mother's property was not settled on herself; and it 
 was not without great effort that I contrived to introduce into 
 the deed a protecting clause, declaring inalienable, without 
 your mother's legal consent, about a third of her real pro- 
 perty. A vain, and I might say. Marquis, cruel precaution 
 of blundering friendship ; for this fatal clause had only the 
 effect of preparing the most unendurable torture for her 
 whose peace it was intended to secure : I mean those struggles, 
 quarrels, and scenes of violence, the echo of which must 
 more than once have reached your ears, and in which was 
 torn piecemeal from your unhappy mother, the last inheritance 
 — the very bread of her children." 
 
 " Spare me. Sir, I beg." 
 
 " I bow to your wish. Marquis. — I will speak of the 
 present only. As soon as I was honoured with your con- 
 fidence, my first duty. Sir, was to request you not to accept 
 
, THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 23 
 
 an inheritance which would bring with it such heavy- 
 obligations." 
 
 " That measure, Sir, seemed to me an outrage on my 
 father's memory, and I had to refuse it." 
 
 M. Laubepin darted at me one of his familiar inquisitive 
 glances, and resumed : " Apparently you are not unaware. Sir, 
 that for want of having adopted this course, legally open to 
 you, you stand responsible for the burdens of the estate, even 
 should they exceed its value. Now, it becomes my painful 
 duty to inform you. Marquis, that this is exactly the case 
 offered by the premises. As you will see in these papers, it 
 is quite clear that, after selling your hotel on unhoped-for 
 terms, you and your sister will remain indebted to your father's 
 creditors in a sum of forty-five thousand francs." 
 
 I was truly overwhelmed by this news, which surpassed 
 my most painful apprehensions. For a minute I listened 
 stupidly to the monotonous ticking of the clock, on which 
 I fixed a vacant stare. 
 
 "And now," M. Laubepin resumed after a silence, "the 
 time is come to tell you. Marquis, that your mother, in 
 anticipation of possibilities which to-day are unhappily realized, 
 deposited with me certain jewels, the value of which is 
 estimated at about fifty thousand francs. To prevent this 
 slight sum, henceforth your sole resource, from passing into 
 the hands of the creditors of the estate, we can avail our- 
 selves, I believe, of a legal subterfuge which I shall have 
 the honour of pointing out to you." 
 
 " It is entirely useless. Sir. I am too happy to be able, 
 by the help of this unexpected reserve, to pay off my father's 
 debts in full, and I will ask you to devote it to that 
 purpose." 
 
24 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 M. Laubepin bowed slightly. " Be it so," he said ; " but 
 it is impossible for me not to point out to you, Marquis, that 
 when once this deduction is made from the deposit in my 
 keeping, there will remain, as the whole fortune of Made- 
 moiselle Helen and yourself, only a sum of four or five 
 thousand francs, which, at the present rate of money, will 
 give you an income of two hundred and twenty-five francs. 
 After saying this. Marquis, allow me in a confidential, friendly, 
 and respectful manner, to ask you whether you have thought 
 of any means for securing your subsistence and that of your 
 sister and ward, and what are your plans ? " 
 
 " I confess I have no longer any plans. Sir. Any which 
 I might have formed are irreconcilable with the absolute 
 destitution to which I find myself reduced. If I were alone 
 in the world, I would become a soldier ; but I have my sister, 
 and I cannot bear the thought of seeing the poor child 
 reduced to labour and privation. She is happy in her convent, 
 and is young enough to stay there some years longer. I 
 would accept with all my heart any occupation which would 
 enable me, by practising the strictest economy, to earn 
 enough to keep my sister at school, and save up a dowry 
 for her in the future." 
 
 M. Laubepin looked at me steadily. " To attain this 
 honourable end, you ought not at your age. Marquis, to 
 think of entering on the slow promotion of the public service 
 or official duties. You would want a situation that should 
 secure you, from the outset, five or six thousand francs a year. 
 I am bound to tell you, that in the present state of society, 
 this desideratum can certainly net be had for stretching out 
 your hand for it. Happily I have to make certain pro- 
 positions touching yourself, of a nature to influence your 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 25 
 
 position at once, and with no great trouble." M. Laubepin 
 fixed his eyes upon me with a more penetrating gaze than ever, 
 and continued : " In the first place. Marquis, 1 am to be the 
 spokesman fi^r a clever, rich, and influential speculator. This 
 individual has conceived the idea of a considerable enterprise, 
 the nature of which shall be presently explained to you, and 
 which can only succeed with the special co-operation of the 
 aristocratic class of this country. He thinks that an ancient and 
 noble name like your own. Marquis, figuring among the 
 founders of the undertaking, would win for him some sym- 
 pathy among the special public to which the prospectus is to be 
 addressed. In consideration of this advantage, he offers you, 
 to begin with, what is commonly called a bonus, namely, ten 
 shares which will cost you nothing, their value being reckoned 
 at ten thousand francs now, and probably at three times that 
 amount if the speculation succeeds. Besides " 
 
 " Stop, Sir ; such degradation is not worth the pains you are 
 taking to explain it." 
 
 I saw the old man's eye suddenly gleam under his thick 
 brows, as if a spark had shot from them. A slight smile 
 relaxed the stiif wrinkles on his countenance. " If the proposal 
 does not please you. Marquis," he said, speaking thickly, " it 
 pleases me no more than yourself. In any case, I thought it 
 my duty to submit it to you. Here is another, which may 
 gratify you more, and it is really more attractive. I count. Sir, 
 in the number of my oldest clients, a worthy merchant who 
 has retired from business some little time, and now quietly 
 enjoys, with an only and therefore adored daughter, an aurea 
 mediocritas which I estimate at twenty-five thousand francs a 
 year. Chance would have it, that three days ago my client's 
 daughter was informed of your position ; I had occasion to 
 
26 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 think, and even reason to know, that the young lady, who, by 
 the way, is pleasant to look on, and possessed of an estimable 
 character, would not hesitate for a second to accept from your 
 hand the title of Marchioness of Champcey. The father 
 consents, and I await only a word from you. Marquis, to 
 tell you the name and abode of this — interesting family." 
 
 " This decides me altogether, Sir. From to-morrow I will 
 renounce a title which, in my position, is ridiculous, and which 
 seems, moreover, to expose me to the most wretched schemes 
 of intrigue. The original name of my family is Odiot ; it is 
 the only one I will henceforth bear. And now. Sir, while I 
 admit to the full, how lively was the interest which induced 
 you to become the bearer of these curious proposals, I will beg 
 you to spare me any others of a similar character." 
 
 " In that case. Marquis," M. Laubepin replied, " I can say 
 absolutely nothing further." 
 
 Here being taken with a sudden fit of merriment, he rubbed 
 his hands together with a noise like cracking parchment. Then 
 he added, smiling : " You will be hard to dispose of. Monsieur 
 Maxime. Yes, yes, very hard to dispose of. It is strange. Sir, 
 that I did not sooner notice the striking likeness which nature 
 has been pleased to exhibit in your face to your mother's. The 
 eyes and the smile especially — but let us keep to the point, and 
 as you are determined to owe your living to honourable labour 
 alone, allow me to ask what talents and aptitudes you 
 may possess .? " 
 
 " My education has naturally been. Sir, that of a man 
 brought up to riches and idleness. Still I have studied law, 
 and even have the title of advocate." 
 
 " Advocate ! The deuce, you are an advocate, are you ? 
 But the title is not enough ; in the career of the bar more 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 27 
 
 depends on yourself than in any other — -and in it — well — do 
 you feel yourself to be eloquent, Marquis ? " 
 
 " So far from it. Sir, that I believe myself quite incapable of 
 speaking two sentences extempore in public." 
 
 " Hm ! That is not exactly what you can call being a 
 born orator. You will therefore ne^d to look elsewhere ; but 
 the matter requires fuller consideration. Besides, I see you are 
 tired. Marquis. Here are your papers, which I beg you will 
 examine at your leisure. I have the honour to wish you good 
 night. Sir. Allow me to light you. Pardon, am I to wait for 
 fresh instructions before I apply the proceeds of the sale 
 of the gems and jewels in my keeping to the payment of 
 your creditors ? " 
 
 " Certainly not. And I expect you further to deduct from 
 this reserve the proper remuneration for your kind offices." 
 
 We had reached the landing on the stairs. M. Laubepin, 
 who stoops a little in walking, drew himself up to his full 
 height " In all that concerns your creditors. Marquis," he 
 said, " I will respectfully obey you. As to myself, I was a 
 friend of your mother's, and I humbly but earnestly beg your 
 mother's son to treat me as a friend." I gave the old man my 
 hand ; he pressed it warmly, and we parted. 
 
 Returned to the little room which I occupy under the roof 
 of this hotel, now no longer mine, I wished to prove to myself 
 that the certainty of my utter misery did not plunge me in a 
 despondency unworthy a man. I set myself to write an 
 account of this decisive day in my history, studying to keep the 
 precise style of the old notary, and his language, compounded 
 of stiffness and courtesy, of mistrust and good feeling, which, 
 even while my soul was overwhelmed, more than once made 
 my spirit smile. 
 
28 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 This, then, is poverty; no longer the hidden, proud, poetic 
 poverty which in imagination I bravely bore in mighty forests, 
 deserts, and savannahs ; but sheer misery, want, dependence, 
 humiliation, something even worse — the bitter poverty of the 
 sometime rich man ; poverty in a black coat, hiding its bare 
 hands from old friends passing by ! Courage, my brother. 
 
 courage 
 
 ^ 
 
Monday, Apnl zjtii. 
 
 I HAVE waited five days in vain for tidings from 
 M. Laubepin. I confess I did seriously reckon on the 
 interest he seemed to take in me. His experience, business 
 acquaintance, and extensive connection gave him the means of 
 serving me. I was ready to take all necessary steps, under his 
 guidance; but, left to myself, I have absolutely no idea m 
 
30 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 which direction to turn. I thought him one of those who 
 promise Httle and perform much. I am afraid I was mistaken. 
 This morning I decided to go to his house, under pretence of 
 returning the documents which he intrusted to me, and which 
 I have found painfully correct. They told me that the good 
 man had gone to taste the pleasures of the country, in some 
 chateau or other in the heart of Brittany. He will be away 
 two or three days longer. This news completely upset me. I 
 not only experienced the vexation of meeting with apathy and 
 neglect where I had expected to find the warmth of devoted 
 friendship; I had, in addition, the annoyance of returning as I 
 went, with an empty purse. My intention was to have asked 
 M. Laubepin to make me an advance on the three or four 
 thousand francs which we shall have left after paying off our 
 debts in full ; for, in spite of living like a hermit since 
 coming to Paris, the trifling sum which I managed to 
 put aside for my journey is completely exhausted, so 
 completely exhausted that after making a genuine pastoral 
 breakfast this morning, 
 
 " Castaneae molles et pressi copia lactis," 
 
 I was obliged, for my dinner this evening, to have recourse to 
 a kind of swindle, the melancholy history of which I will 
 here record. 
 
 The slenderer a man's breakfast, the stronger his desire for 
 dinner. I felt the full force of this axiom to-day, even before 
 the sun had finished his course. Among the promenaders who 
 were attracted this afternoon to the Tuileries by the mildness of 
 the weather, and who watched the first smiles of spring playing 
 on the marble faces of the sylvan deities, might have been 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 31 
 
 noticed a man, still young, and irreproachably dressed, apparently 
 studying the re-awakening of nature with unusual anxiety. Not 
 satisfied with devouring the fresh verdure with his gaze, it was 
 not seldom that this person might be seen to pluck from their 
 stems young appetizing shoots, and half-unfolded leaves, and to 
 lift them to his lips with the curiosity of a botanist. I am in a 
 position to assert that this alimentary resource, which had been 
 pointed out to me by narratives of shipwreck, is of a very 
 middling value. Still, I have enriched my experience with 
 some interesting ideas ; thus I know for the future that the 
 leaves of the chestnut are exceedingly bitter to the taste, no less 
 than to the heart ; the rose-tree is not bad ; the lime is oily and 
 pretty agreeable ; while the lilac, seasoned with pepper, is, I 
 think., unwholesome. 
 
 Still reflecting on these discoveries, I walked in the 
 direction of Helen's convent. On setting foot in the parlour, 
 which I found as full as a hive, I felt more than usually 
 deafened by the noisy chat of the young bees. Helen came in, 
 her hair in disorder, her cheeks inflamed, and her eyes red and 
 flashing. She held in her hand a piece of bread as long as her 
 arm. As she kissed me with an absent air, I said : " Well, 
 my child, what is the matter now? You have been 
 crying ? " 
 
 " No, no, Maxime, there's nothing the matter." 
 
 " What is it now ? Come " 
 
 She lowered her voice. " Oh ! I am very unhappy, my 
 poor Maxime, there." 
 
 " Indeed ! Tell me about it while you eat your bread." 
 
 " Oh ! I am sure I am not going to eat my bread ; I am 
 far too unhappy to eat. You know Lucy, l.ucy Campbell, my 
 best friend .? Well, we have had a deadly quarrel." 
 
33 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 " Bless me ! But make yourself easy about it, my darling ; 
 you will be friends again, I am sure." 
 
 " O Maxime ! it's impossible, you see. Things have been 
 too serious. It was nothing at first, but one gets warm, you 
 know, and loses one's head. Fancy, we were playing at 
 shuttlecock, and Lucy counted the points wrong. I had six 
 hundred and eighty, and she had only six hundred and fifteen, 
 and would have it she had six hundred and seventy-five. It 
 was a little too bad, you must confess. Of course I stuck to 
 my number, and she to hers. 'Very well. Mademoiselle,' I 
 said, ' let us consult these young ladies ; I appeal to them.' 
 ' No, Mademoiselle,' she said, ' I am certain my number is 
 right, and you don't play fair.' ' Very well. Mademoiselle,' I 
 said, ' and you are a liar ! ' And then she said : * For my part. 
 Mademoiselle, I despise you too much to answer you.' It was 
 lucky Sister Sainte Felix came in at that moment, for I believe 
 I should have struck her. After what has passed, you can see 
 if it is possible for us to be friends any more. It's impossible ; 
 it would be mean. Still I can't tell you what I suffer ; I don't 
 believe there is anybody in the world so unhappy as I am." 
 
 " Certainly, my child, it is hard to fancy a heavier mis- 
 fortune than yours ; but, to tell you my mind about it, you 
 brought it on yourself a little, for the most wounding expres- 
 sion in the quarrel came from your mouth. Tell me, is your 
 Lucy in the parlour ? " 
 
 " Yes, there she is in the corner yonder." And she pointed 
 out to me, with a dignified and discreet nod of the head, a very 
 fair-complexioned little girl, who also had inflamed cheeks and 
 red eyes, and seemed to be giving to a very attentive old lady 
 an account of the drama which Sister Sainte Felix had so 
 luckily interrupted. While speaking with a fire worthy of the 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 33 
 
 subject, Mile. Lucy darted from time to time a furtive glance 
 at Helen and me. 
 
 " Well, my dear child," I said, " have you confidence 
 m me r 
 
 "Yes, I have great confidence in you, Maxime." 
 
 " Well, then, this is v^hat you will do ; you vs^ill go and 
 place yourself quite gently behind Mile. Lucy's chair ; you 
 will take hold of her head like this, from behind, and kiss her 
 on both cheeks, like that, heartily, and then you'll see what 
 she will do." 
 
 Helen seemed to hesitate a few seconds, then set off in 
 haste, and falling like a thunderbolt on Mile. Campbell, caused 
 her nevertheless the sweetest surprise. The two unhappy 
 children, now united again for ever, mingled their tears in 
 a touching group, while the aged and worthy Mme. Campbell 
 blew her nose with a sound like bagpipes. 
 
 Helen came back all radiant to find me. " Well, my 
 love," I said to her, " I hope now you will eat your bread ? " 
 
 " Oh ! indeed no, Maxime ; I have been too much excited, 
 you see, and besides, I must tell you a new scholar came to- 
 day, and gave us a feast of puffs and cakes and cream chocolate, 
 so that I'm not at all hungry. Indeed I am very much 
 troubled, because in my distress I forgot just now to put my 
 bread into the basket again, as we ought to do when we are not 
 hungry at lunch, and I am afraid of being punished ; but when 
 I go through the courtyard I shall try to throw my bread down 
 the cellar-grating, without any one seeing it." 
 
 " What ! my little sister," I returned, blushing slightly, 
 " you are going to throw away that great piece of bread ? " 
 
 " Well, I know it isn't right ; for perhaps some poor people 
 would be very glad to have it, wouldn't they, Maxime .? " 
 
34 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG ]\IAN. 
 
 " Certainly they would, my dear child." 
 
 " But what am I to do ? Poor people don't come in here? " 
 
 " Let us see, Helen ; you give me the bread, and I will give 
 it in your name to the first poor man I meet : shall I ? " 
 
 " Oh ! that will do ! " It struck the hour for retiring : I 
 broke the bread in two, and ignominiously slipped the pieces 
 into my overcoat pockets. 
 
 " Good-bye, dear Maxime," said the child; "come again, 
 soon, won't you ? And you'll tell me if you met a poor man 
 and gave him my bread, and whether he liked it." 
 
 Yes, Helen, I did meet a poor man, and gave him your 
 bread ; he carried it away like a stolen loaf to his lonely garret, 
 and he did like it ; but it was a poor man with no courage, lor 
 he wept while devouring the gift bestowed by your beloved 
 little hands. I will tell you all this, Helen, for it is good you 
 should know that there are heavier troubles in the world than 
 your child's troubles ; I will tell you everything, except the 
 poor man's name. 
 
Friday, April litk. 
 
 This morning, at nine o'clock, I rang at M. Laubepin's 
 door in the vague hope that something might have hastened 
 his return ; but he is not expected before to-morrow. The 
 thought occurred to me to address myself to Mme. Laubepin, 
 and to tell her of the extreme annoyance to which her husband's 
 absence subjected me. While I was hesitating between shame 
 and want, the old servant, apparently frightened at the hungry 
 look which I fixed on her, cut the discussion short by suddenly 
 shutting the door. I then came to a determination, and 
 resolved to fast until to-morrow. I said to myself, after all a 
 
36 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 man does not die of a single day's fasting ; if I was to be 
 blamed in this course for an excess of pride, I alone had to 
 suifer for it, and consequently it concerned no one but 
 myself. 
 
 Upon this I took my way to the Sorbonne, where I 
 attended several lectures in succession, trying, by dint of intel- 
 lectual enjoyment, to fill the void which made itself felt in the 
 flesh ; but the time came when this resource failed me, and I 
 soon began to find it ineffectual. I felt particularly an intense 
 nervous irritation, which I hoped to soothe by walking. It 
 was a cold and foggy day. As I was crossing the bridge des 
 Saints Peres, I stopped for a moment in spite of- myself; I 
 leaned on the parapet, and watched the troubled waters of the 
 river tumbling through the arches. I know not what accursed 
 thoughts at that moment crossed my weary and weakened 
 brain ; on a sudden I pictured to myself, in the most dreary 
 colours, the future of ceaseless strife, of dependence and 
 humiliation, on which I was entering through the gate of 
 hunger ; I felt a deep and positive loathing and, as it were, an 
 incapability for life. At the same moment a flood of wild and 
 brutal rage rushed to my brain, a dizzy sensation seized me, 
 and, leaning over the empty space, I saw the whole surface of 
 the river studded with stars. 
 
 I will not say in common phrase, " It was not God's will." 
 I do not like those unmeaning expressions. I venture to say, 
 it was not my will! God has made us free; and if I could 
 have doubted it previously, that supreme moment when the 
 soul and the body, courage and cowardice, good and evil, were 
 so clearly in mortal combat within me, that moment would 
 have removed my doubts for ever. 
 
 Once more master of myself, I no longer felt, in looking on 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 39 
 
 those dreadful waters, anything save the very harmless and 
 tolerably stupid temptation to quench the thirst which was con- 
 suming me. I reflected moreover that in my own room I 
 should find much clearer water, and I quickly made my way 
 towards the hotel, summing up a delightful image of the 
 pleasures which awaited me there. In my wretched childish- 
 ness I was astonished, nay, could not get over the fact, that I 
 had not sooner thought of this victorious device. On the 
 Boulevard I suddenly came across Gaston de Vaux, whom I had 
 not seen for two years. After a moment's hesitation he stopped, 
 shook me cordially by the hand, said a word or two about my 
 travels, and left me hastily. Then returning, he said, " My 
 friend, you must allow me to share with you a piece of good 
 luck which has befallen me within these few days. I have got 
 hold of a treasure ; I have received a lot of cigars which cost 
 me two francs apiece, but they are above price. Here's one, 
 you'll tell me what you think of it. Good morning, my dear 
 fellow." 
 
 I mounted painfully the six stories, and, trembling with 
 emotion> seized my lucky carafe, the contents of which I swal- 
 lowed in little mouthfuls ; after which I lighted my friend's 
 cigar, giving myself an encouraging smile in the glass. I left 
 the house again at once, convinced that walking and the sights 
 in the street were good for me. On opening my door, I was 
 surprised and displeased to see in the narrow passage the wife 
 of the porter of the hotel, who seemed disconcerted by my 
 sudden appearance. This woman was formerly in the service 
 of my mother, who became fond of her, and gave her a 
 husband and the lucrative post which she still holds. I had 
 thought I noticed for several days that she was keeping a watch 
 on me, and, surprising her this time almost in the very fact, I 
 
40 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 said violently, " What do you want ? " " Nothing, Monsieur 
 Maxime, nothing," she replied, much agitated ; " I was turning 
 on the gas." I shrugged my shoulders, and walked away. 
 
 The day was closing. I could walk in the most frequented 
 places without fear of the annoyance of meeting acquaintances. 
 I was obliged to throw away my cigar, which disagreed with 
 me. My walk lasted two or three hours, hours of torture. 
 There is something peculiarly bitter in feeling yourself attacked, 
 in the midst of all the splendour and opulence of civilized life, by 
 the scourge of savage life, by hunger. It is akin to madness, it 
 is a tiger that springs at your throat on the crowded Boulevard. 
 
 I made fresh reflections. It is not, then, an idle word, this 
 hunger ! There is really a disease of this name ; there really 
 are human beings who sufl?er usually, almost every day, what I 
 am suffering by chance once in my life. And for how many 
 of those beings is not that suffering increased by complications 
 which are spared me ? The only person in the world for whom 
 I care, I know her at least to be sheltered from the evils which 
 I am undergoing; I see her dear face happy, rosy, and smiling. 
 But those who do not suffer alone, those who hear the heart- 
 rending cry of their own bowels repeated by beloved and 
 supplicating lips, those for whom in their cold lodgings wait 
 pale-cheeked wives and little ones that cannot smile ! Poor 
 people ! O holy charity ! 
 
 These thoughts robbed me of the courage to complain ; and 
 gave me the courage to endure the trial to the end. I had, in 
 fact, the means of shortening it. There are two or three 
 restaurants here where I am known, and it often happened, 
 when I was rich, that I would enter them unhesitatingly though 
 I had forgotten my purse. I could make use of this device. 
 It would not have been more difficult for me to manage to 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 41 
 
 borrow a hundred sous in Paris ; but these plans, which 
 savoured of wretchedness and trickery, decidedly displeased me. 
 It is a slippery descent for the poor, and I will not even set 
 foot on it. I would as soon, I think, lose honesty itself, as lose 
 the delicacy which is the distinguishing mark of that common 
 virtue. Now I have so often observed with what a dreadful 
 facility this exquisite sentiment of honour loses its flower and 
 its rank even in the best endowed souls, not only at the breath 
 of misery, but on simple contact with difficulties ; that I must 
 watch over myself with strictness, and reject henceforth, as 
 suspicious, the most harmless seeming compromises of con- 
 science. When evil days come on us, we must not accustom 
 the soul to pliancy ; it has only too much inclination of itself to 
 yield. 
 
 Weariness and cold brought me to the house again towards 
 nine o'clock. The door of the hotel happened to be open ; and 
 I was making for the stairs with the step of a ghost, when I 
 heard from the porter's lodge the sound of an animated con- 
 versation, apparently at my expense, for just at that moment the 
 tyrant of the place pronounced my name in a contemptuous 
 tone. 
 
 "Do me the favour, Mme. Vanberger," he said, "to 
 leave me in peace about your Maxime. Did I ruin 
 your Maxime for you ? Very well, then, why do you keep 
 talking about him? If he kills himself, he'll be buried, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 " I tell you, Vanberger," the woman rejoined, " it would 
 have cut you to the heart if you had seen him swallow the 
 carafe of water. And if I thought that you mean what you 
 say, when you say so coolly, like an actor, * If he kills himself, 
 he'll be buried ! ' But I don't think so, because you are a 
 
42 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 good man at heart, though you don't Hke to have your 
 habits disturbed. Just think, Vanberger, to be in want 
 of fire and bread ! A gentleman who has been fed 
 all his life on blanc-mange, and wrapped in furs like a 
 pet cat ! It isn't a shame and a disgrace, oh no ! and it 
 isn't a queer government to allow such things, I suppose, 
 either ! " 
 
 " But that doesn't concern the government at all," Mr. 
 Vanberger replied, reasonably enough. "And then you're 
 mistaken, I tell you — he's not in that position — he doesn't want 
 for bread. It's impossible ! " 
 
 " Well, Vanberger, I will tell you everything : I have 
 followed him, played the spy on him up there, and set 
 Edward to play the spy, too; well, I'm certain he did not 
 dine yesterday and ate no breakfast this morning, and as I have 
 searched all his pockets and all his drawers, and there is not a 
 red farthing left in them, it is quite certain that he will have 
 had no dinner again to-day; for he is too proud to go and 
 beg a dinner." 
 
 " Well, so much the worse for him. When a man 
 is poor, he must not be proud," said the worthy porter, 
 who seemed to me to be expressing the true feelings of a 
 door-keeper. 
 
 I had had enough of this dialogue, and closed it abruptly 
 by opening the door of the lodge, and asking M. Vanberger for 
 a light ; I think he would not have been more astonished if I 
 had asked him for his head. In spite of all the desire I felt to 
 keep a good countenance before these people, I could not help 
 stumbling once or twice on the staircase ; my head was going 
 round. On entering my room, generally icy cold, I was sur- 
 prised to find a genial temperature, pleasantly kept up by a 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 43 
 
 bright, cheerful fire. I had not the asceticism to put it out; 
 I blessed the excellent hearts that there are in the world, and 
 stretched myself in an old arm-chair, covered with Utrecht 
 velvet, which, like myself, had been driven by stress of fortune 
 from the ground floor to the garret, and tried to slumber. 
 I had been plunged for about half-an-hour in a kind of stupor, 
 in which one uniform dream oflfered me the phantom ot 
 luxurious feasts, and fat thanksgiving-days, when the noise of 
 the door opening made me spring up wide awake. I thought 
 I was still dreaming, when I saw Mme. Vanberger come in, 
 adorned with a huge tray on which smoked two or three 
 savoury dishes. She had already set the tray down on the 
 floor, and began to spread a cloth on the table, before I 
 was able entirely to shake oif my lethargy. At last I 
 rose abruptly. " What is that ? " I said. " What are you 
 doing ? " 
 
 Mme. Vanberger feigned great astonishment. 
 
 " Did not Monsieur ask for his dinner .? " 
 
 " Not at all. Edward has made a mistake ; it is some 
 lodger close by ; see if it is not." 
 
 " But there is no lodger on the same landing with Monsieur 
 .... I don't understand." 
 
 " At any rate it was not I. What can it mean ? You 
 weary me ! Take it away ! " 
 
 The poor woman hereupon began sorrowfully to fold up 
 her cloth again, looking at me meanwhile as mournfully as a 
 beaten dog. " Monsieur has dined, probably ? " she resumed 
 in a timid voice. 
 
 " Probably." 
 
 " It is a pity, for the dinner was all ready. It will be 
 wasted, and the child will get a scolding from his father. If 
 
44 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 Monsieur had happened not to have dined. Monsieur would 
 have done me a favour." 
 
 I stamped violently. " Go away, I tell you ! " Then, as 
 she was leaving the room, I walked towards her. " My good 
 Louise, I understand you, and thank you ; but I am not quite 
 well this evening, I am not hungry." 
 
 " Ah, Monsieur Maxime ! " she cried, weeping, " if you 
 knew how you mortify me ! Well, then, you shall pay me for 
 the dinner, if you like ; you shall put money in my hand, when 
 you have some again ; but you may be sure that you might 
 give me a hundred thousand francs, and it would not 
 please me so much as seeing you eat my poor dinner ! 
 Why, it would be giving me alms ! You are a sensible 
 man. Monsieur Maxime, and you must see that it 
 would ! " 
 
 " Well, my dear Louise, what shall I do ? I cannot 
 
 give you a hundred thousand francs, but I am going 
 
 to eat your dinner. You will leave me by myself, won't 
 you .? " 
 
 " Yes, Sir. Oh, thank you. Sir 1 Thank you sincerely. 
 Sir. You have a good heart ! " 
 
 " And a good appetite, too, Louise, Give me your hand ; 
 it is not to put money in it, don't be afraid. There . . . Good- 
 bye, Louise." 
 
 The excellent woman went away sobbing. 
 
 I was finishing writing these lines, after doing honour to 
 Louise's dinner, when I heard the sound of a heavy, steady 
 step ; at the same time I thought I distinguished the voice of 
 my humble providence, speaking in the tone of a hasty and 
 agitated communication. A few seconds afterwards came a 
 knock, and while Louise disappeared in the darkness, I saw. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 45 
 
 appearing in the frame formed by the doorway, the solemn 
 profile of the old notary. M. Laubepin cast a rapid glance on 
 the tray on which I had placed the remnants of my dinner ; 
 then advanced towards me, and opening his arms, in token at 
 once of confusion and reproach, " Monsieur le Marquis, in 
 
 Heaven's name, why did you not let me " He interrupted 
 
 himself, walked with great strides across the room, and stop- 
 ping suddenly, resumed, " Young man, this is not well : you 
 have wounded a friend, you have made an old man blush.'' 
 He was much agitated. I looked at him, a little agitated 
 myself, not clearly knowing how to answer ; when he abruptly 
 caught me to his breast, and pressing me as if he would stifle 
 me, murmured in my ear, " My poor child ! "... A moment's 
 silence ensued. He sat down. " Maxime," M. Laubepin then 
 resumed, " are you still in the same mind in which I left you ? 
 Should you have the courage to accept the most humble labour, 
 the most modest employment, provided only it is honourable, 
 and, while securing a livelihood for yourself, remove your 
 sister, for the present and for the future, from the pains and 
 dangers of poverty ? " 
 
 " Most certainly. Sir ; it is my duty, and I am ready to 
 do it." 
 
 " In that case, my friend, listen to me. I have just come from 
 Brittany. There is in that ancient province a wealthy family, 
 of the name of Laroque, which for many years has honoured 
 me with its entire confidence. This family is represented at 
 present by an old man and two women, whose age or dispo- 
 sition renders them all alike useless for business. The Laroques 
 possess considerable landed estate, the management of which 
 was entrusted, latterly, to a bailiff, whom I took the Hberty of 
 considering as a scoundrel. I received the news, the day after 
 
46 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 our interview, Maxime, of this individual's death; I set off 
 immediately for the chateau of the Laroque family, and asked 
 for the vacant office for you. I made the most of your title of 
 advocate, and especially of your moral qualities. In con- 
 formity w^ith your wish, I did not speak of your birth : 
 you are and will be known in the house only under 
 the name of Maxime Odiot. You will live in a cottage 
 by itself, and your meals will be served there, whenever 
 you may not like to appear at the family table. Your salary 
 is fixed at six thousand francs a year. Does that suit 
 you .? " 
 
 " It suits me perfectly, and I am deeply touched by all the 
 delicate precautions your friendship has taken ; but, to tell you 
 the truth, I am afraid of being somewhat strange and new as 
 a business man." 
 
 " Make yourself easy on that score, my friend. My 
 scruples came into play before yours, and I have concealed 
 nothing from those concerned. ' Madame,' I said to my 
 excellent friend, Mme. Laroque, ' you want a bailiff to manage 
 your affairs ; I offer you one. He is far from having the skill 
 of his predecessor ; he is utterly unversed in the mysteries of 
 rents and leases ; he does not know the first syllable of any 
 business you may deign to entrust to him. He has no pro- 
 fessional knowledge, no practice, no experience ; nothing of 
 that which any one can learn ; but he has something which 
 was wanting in his predecessor, which sixty years' practice 
 could not have given him, and which ten thousand years could 
 not have given him in larger measure ; he has integrity, 
 Madame. I have seen him in the crucible, and I answer for 
 him. Take him ; you will do a favour both to him and to me.' 
 Mme. Laroque laughed a good deal, young man, at my way of 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 47 
 
 recommending people, but finally it seems to have been a good 
 way, for it succeeded." 
 
 The worthy old man here offered to give me some ele- 
 mentary and general notions on the kind of management 
 with which I am to be invested ; and he will add to these, 
 certain particulars touching the interests of the Laroque 
 family, which he has taken the trouble to collect and arrange 
 for me. 
 
 " And when shall I have to start, my dear Sir ? " 
 " Why, to speak the truth, my boy " (no mention any 
 longer of Monsieur le Marquis) — " the sooner the better, 
 for those people yonder are not capable, all put together, 
 of drawing up a receipt. My excellent friend, Mme. 
 Laroque, especially, a woman otherwise respectable on 
 many accounts, is, in business matters, careless, incapable, 
 and childish beyond all imagination. She is a Creole." 
 
 " Ah ! she is a Creole ! " I repeated with some 
 eagerness. 
 
 " Yes, young man, an old Creole," M. Laubepin replied 
 drily. " Her husband was a Breton, but these details will 
 come in their tjme. . . . Till to-morrow, Maxime, keep 
 a good heart ! . . . Ah ! I was forgetting. ... On 
 Thursday morning, before my departure, I did a thing 
 which will not be unpleasant to you. You had among 
 your creditors some scoundrels whose affairs with your 
 father were plainly tainted with usury ; armed with the 
 thunders of the law, I reduced their claims one half, and 
 I have procured a receipt for everything. There now 
 remains to you a clear sum of twenty thousand francs. 
 By adding to this reserve the savings you may be able 
 to lay aside each year out of your salary, we shall 
 
48 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 have, in ten years' time, a nice fortune for Helen. . . . 
 Ah, well, come and dine to-morrow with Master 
 Laubepin, and we will finish arranging all this. . . . 
 Good night, Maxime, a good night's rest, my dear 
 child." 
 
 " God bless you. Sir." 
 
Chateau de Laroque (d'Arz), JMay \st. 
 
 I LEFT Paris yesterday. My last interview with M. Laubepin 
 was a painful one. I tendered to the old man the feelings ot 
 a son. It was then needful to say good-bye to Helen. To 
 make her understand the necessity I am in of linding employ- 
 ment, it was indispensable to give her a glimpse ot a portion of 
 the truth. I spoke of some temporary embarrassment in our 
 affairs. The poor child understood more, I think, than I told 
 
 7 
 
so THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 her ; her large wistful eyes filled with tears, and she threw 
 herself on my neck. 
 
 At last I set out. The railway brought me to Rennes, 
 where I passed the night. This morning I took my seat in a 
 diligence which was to set me down, some hours later, in a 
 small town in the department of Morbihan, situated not far 
 from Laroque chateau. I had ridden half a score leagues 
 beyond Rennes without being able to account for the reputation 
 which the ancient Armorica enjoys generally for picturesque- 
 ness. A flat, green, and monotonous country, everlasting apple 
 trees in everlasting meadows, ditches and wooded slopes bound- 
 ing the view on each side of the road ; at best but a few nooks 
 of a rustic grace ; blouses and oil-skin hats to enliven these 
 vulgar pictures ; all this gave me a strong idea since yesterday 
 that this poetical Brittany is but a pretentious and somewhat 
 leaner sister of Lower Normandy. Tired of deceptions and 
 apple trees, I had ceased for an hour to pay any attention what- 
 ever to the landscape, and I was sadly slumbering, when I 
 seemed all of a sudden to perceive that our heavy vehicle was 
 leaning forward more than was fit, and sure enough the pace 
 of the horses became perceptibly slower, and a sound of iron, 
 accompanied by a peculiar friction, told me that the last of con- 
 ductors had just fastened the last of drags to the wheel of the 
 last diligence. An old lady who was sitting near me, seized 
 my arm with that lively sympathy which springs from com- 
 mon danger. I put my head out at the window ; we were 
 going, between two high banks, down an extremely steep hill, 
 a conception of some engineer who was certainly too fond of 
 the straight line. Half-sliding, half-rolling, we were not long 
 in finding ourselves in a narrow, gloomy-looking valley, in the 
 bottom of which a puny rivulet flowed with difficulty, and 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. sr 
 
 without sound, through thick reeds ; on the crumbHng banks 
 were a few crooked, old mossy trunks of trees. The road 
 crossed this rivulet by a bridge of a single arch, and then 
 ascended the opposite hillj drawing its white furrow across a 
 boundless moor, barren and absolutely bare, the heights of 
 which stood out boldly against the sky before us. Near the 
 bridge, and by the roadside, stood a lonely ruin ; the air of 
 utter desolation about it made the heart ache. A stout young 
 man was busy chopping wood before the door : a black ribbon 
 fastened his long fair hair at the back of his head. He raised 
 his head, and I was astonished at the foreign character of his 
 features, and the calm gaze of his blue eyes ; he saluted me in 
 an unknown tongue, with a short, sweet, and wild accent. At 
 the window of the cottage was a woman spinning : her head- 
 dress and the cut of her garments brought before me, with the 
 exactness of the stage, the image of those slender stone figures 
 of ladies that we see reposing on old tombstones. These people 
 had not the appearance of peasants ; they had in the highest 
 degree that look of ease, grace, and dignity, which is called a 
 distinguished air. Their faces wore that sad and dreamy 
 expression which I have often noticed with emotion in nations 
 that have lost their nationality. 
 
 I had got down to walk up the hill. The moor, which 
 was not fenced off from the road, stretched all round me, far as 
 the eye could see ; everywhere straggling rushes were creeping 
 over a black soil ; here and there were ravines, holes, abandoned 
 quarries, and a few rocks just showing above the surface of the 
 ground; but not a tree. Only on reaching the height, I saw 
 the dusky line of the moor meeting on my right, in the far 
 distance, a band on the horizon still more distant, slightly 
 indented, blue as the sea, bathed in sunlight, and apparently 
 
52 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 opening out in the midst of this desolate scene the sudden 
 prospect of a radiant fairy land ; it was Brittany at last I 
 
 I had to charter a post-chaise in the little town of , in 
 
 order to accomplish the two leagues which still lay between 
 me and my journey's end. During the ride, which was none 
 of the quickest, I dimly recollect seeing woods, lawns, lakes, 
 and oases of fresh green hidden in valleys; but on approaching 
 Laroque chateau, I felt myself attacked by a thousand painful 
 thoughts, which left little room for the observations of the 
 tourists. In a few minutes I was about to enter an unknown 
 family, on the footing of a kind of disguised servitude, with a 
 position that would scarcely secure me the attention and respect 
 of the servants of the house ; this was a new thing to me. At 
 the time when M. Laubepin proposed to me this situation as 
 bailiff, all my instincts and habits revolted strongly against the 
 character of peculiar dependence attached to such an office. I 
 thought however that I could not refuse it, without seeming 
 to disparage and discourage my old friend's cordial efforts on 
 my behalf. Besides, I could not hope to obtain, for several 
 years, in a more independent situation, the advantages here 
 afforded me at the outset, which would allow me to work with- 
 out delay for my sister's prospects. Accordingly, I had over- 
 come my distaste, but it was very strong, and awoke again 
 with greater strength before the impending reality. I had 
 need to read again, in the code which every man carries in his 
 breast, the chapters on duty and sacrifice ; and, at the same 
 time, I repeated to myself that there is no situation, however 
 humble, in which personal dignity cannot be maintained, and 
 which it cannot elevate. Then I marked out a plan of con- 
 duct towards the members of the Laroque family, promising 
 myself to show a conscientious zeal for their interests, and a 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. S3 
 
 becoming deference for their persons, equally removed from 
 servility and stiffness. But I could not disguise from myself 
 that this last, and indisputably most delicate part of my task, 
 would be wonderfully simplified or complicated by the par- 
 ticular nature of the dispositions and minds with which I was 
 thus brought into contact. Now, M. Laubepin, while fully 
 recognizing the legitimate character of my anxiety on this 
 personal matter, had shown himself studiously sparing of 
 information and detail on this point. Nevertheless, at the 
 moment of my departure, he had given me a confidential note, 
 with a recommendation to throw it in the fire after using it. I 
 drew this note from my portfolio, and began to study its 
 sibylline contents, which I will reproduce exactly : — 
 
 "Laroque Chateau (Arz), 
 
 " Description of the inmates of the said chateau. 
 
 " I St. M. Laroque (Louis Auguste), octogenarian, head of 
 the family, principal source of its fortune ; old sailor, celebrated 
 under the first Empire as a privateer with letters of marque ; 
 appears to have become rich, while following the sea, by 
 legitimate undertakings of various kinds ; has lived long in the 
 colonies. Originally from Brittany; he returned there to 
 settle, thirty years ago, with the late Pierre Antoine Laroque, 
 his only son, husband of — 
 
 " 2nd. Mme. Laroque (Josephine Clara), daughter-in- 
 law of the above ; Creole by birth ; forty years of age ; 
 indolent disposition, romantic mind, some insane ideas ; noble 
 soul. 
 
 " 3rd, Mile. Laroque (Marguerite Louise), grand- 
 daughter, daughter, and presumptive heiress of the above ; 
 
54 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 twenty years of age ; Creole and Breton ; some caprices ; 
 noble soul. 
 
 " 4th. Mme. Aubry, widow of the Sieur Aubry, broker, 
 deceased in Belgium ; second cousin, received into the family ; 
 embittered spirit, 
 
 " 5th. Mile. Helouin (Caroline Gabrielle), twenty-six ; 
 formerly governess, now companion ; cultivated mind ; 
 disposition suspicious. 
 
 "Burn this." 
 
 This document, in spite of the reserve which stamps it, has 
 not been useless to me ; I felt a part of my apprehensions 
 vanish with the horror of the unknown. Besides, if there 
 were, as M. Laubepin asserted, two noble souls in Laroque 
 chateau, it was certainly more than one had a right to expect 
 among five inmates. 
 
 After a two hours' ride the driver drew up before a gate 
 flanked by two cottages, serving as a porter's lodge. I left the 
 bulk of my luggage there, and took the way towards the 
 chateau, in one hand holding my little bag, and with the other 
 switching with my cane the daisies which studded the turf. 
 After walking a few hundred paces between two rows of 
 enormous chestnuts, I found myself in a vast garden of circular 
 form, which seemed to change into a park a little further on. 
 I saw to the right and left deep vistas opening between thick 
 clumps of trees already in leaf, sheets of water retreating under 
 the trees, and white boats housed under rustic sheds. Before 
 me rose the chateau, a large building, in the elegant and 
 semi-Italian style of the early years of Louis XIII. Before 
 it is a terrace, which forms, at the foot of two rows of steps 
 and under the high windows of the front, a kind of private 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 55 
 
 garden, reached by several wide and easy flights of steps. The 
 smihng and luxurious look oi this 
 abode caused me real disappoint- 
 ment; which did not diminish, 
 when, on approaching the terrace, 
 I heard the sound of young and 
 merry voices rising above the more 
 distant murmurs ot a piano. De- 
 cidedly I was entering a place oJ: 
 pleasure, far different from the old 
 frowning keep which I had loved 
 to fancy. Still the time for reflec- 
 tion was past ; I mounted the steps 
 lightly, and found myself suddenly 
 facing a scene, which, under any 
 other circuin- 
 stances, I should 
 have thought suffi- 
 ciently graceful. 
 
 On one of the lawns of the garden, half-a- 
 dozen young girls, in laughing couples, were 
 whirling in a gleam of sunlight, while a 
 piano, touched by a skilful hand, sent out to 
 them, through an open window, the measures oi an impetuous 
 waltz. I had scarcely time to note the animated 
 faces of the dancers, their loose flowing hair, the 
 large hats floating over their shoulders ; my sudden 
 appearance was greeted by a general shout, followed 
 immediately by a deep silence ; the dancing ceased, 
 and the whole band, in order of battle, gravely waited for the 
 stranger to pass. Nevertheless the stranger stopped, not 
 
56 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 without showing a Httle embarrassment. Although, for some 
 time, my thoughts scarcely meddled with mundane things, I 
 confess I would have sold my little bag at a bargain just then. 
 It was necessary to decide. As I advanced, hat in hand, 
 towards the double flight of steps which leads to the hall of the 
 chateau, the piano suddenly became still. I saw first an 
 enormous dog of the Newfoundland breed appear at the open 
 window, resting his lion-like muzzle between two velvety paws 
 on the cross-bar ; then a moment afterwards appeared a young 
 girl of a tall figure, whose somewhat brown face and serious 
 countenance were set in a thick mass of lustrous black hair. 
 Her eyes, which seemed to me of an unusual size, interrogated 
 with careless curiosity the scene which was going on outside. 
 
 " Well ! what is the matter .? " she said, in a tranquil tone. 
 I made her a deep bow, and, once more cursing my bag, which 
 clearly amused the young ladies, I hastened to cross the terrace. 
 
 A gray-haired servant, dressed in black, whom I found in 
 the hall, took my name. In a few minutes I was ushered into 
 a viist parlour, hung with yellow silk, where I at once recog- 
 nized the young lady whom I had just seen at the window, 
 and who was really extremely beautiful. Near the fireplace, in 
 which a real furnace was blazing, sat a middle-aged lady, whose 
 features strongly attested the Creole type, buried in a large 
 easy chair, which was arranged with eider-pillows, cushions, 
 and ottomans cf all sizes. A tripod of antique shape, sur- 
 mounted by a lighted brazier, was placed within her reach, and 
 at intervals she extended towards it her thin pale hands. By 
 the side of Mme. Laroque sat a lady knitting ; by her morose 
 and displeasing countenance I could not mistake the second 
 cousin, the widow of the broker deceased in Belgium. 
 
 The first look which Mme. Laroque cast on me seemed 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 57 
 
 Stamped with a surprise bordering on stupefaction. She made 
 me repeat my name. " Pardon ! Monsieur ? " 
 
 " Odiot, Madame." 
 
 "Maxime Odiot, the agent, the manager whom M. 
 Laubepin — — ■" 
 
 "Yes, Madame." 
 
 " You are quite sure } " 
 
 I could not help smiling. " Yes, Madame, perfectly." 
 
 She gave a rapid glance at the broker's widow, then at 
 the young girl with the serious brow, as if to say, "Think 
 of that ! " 
 
 After which she shuffled a little among the ottomans, 
 and resumed : 
 
 " Please to take a seat. Monsieur Odiot. I am much 
 obliged to you. Sir, for being so kind as to devote your talents 
 to us. We have great need of your help, I assure you ; for, 
 in fact, we have, it cannot be denied, the unhappiness of being 
 very rich." Perceiving that at these words the second cousin 
 shrugged her shoulders. " Yes, my dear Mme. Aubry," 
 continued Mme. Laroque, " I maintain it. In making me 
 rich, God determined to try me. I was in reality born for 
 poverty, privation, devotedness, and sacrifice ; but I have always 
 been crossed. For instance, I should have liked to have an 
 infirm husband. Well, M. Laroque was a man of admirable 
 health. That is the way my destiny has been, and will be, 
 thwarted from beginning to end." 
 
 " StoD there," said Mme. Aubry drily, " poverty would suit 
 you finely ; you who cannot deny yourself a single luxury, a 
 single refinement ! " 
 
 " With your permission, my dear lady," replied Mme. 
 Laroque, " I have no taste for useless self-denial. If I should 
 
58 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 condemn myself to the greatest hardships and privation, who, 
 or what would get any good by it ? If I were to freeze from 
 morning to night, should you be any the happier ? " 
 
 Mme. Aubry gave it to be understood by an expressive 
 gesture that she should be none the happier, but that she 
 considered Mme. Laroque's language excessively affected and 
 absurd. 
 
 " Well," continued the latter, " happiness or unhappiness, 
 it matters little. We are very rich then, M. Odiot ; and how- 
 ever little I may care for this wealth myself, it is my duty to 
 preserve it for my daughter, though the poor child troubles 
 herself about it no more than I ; do you. Marguerite ? " 
 
 At this question a slight smile half parted the disdainful 
 lips of Mile. Marguerite, and the long arch of her eyebrows 
 was slightly raised, after which that serious and superb 
 countenance returned to its repose. 
 
 " Monsieur," Mme. Laroque resumed, " you shall be shown 
 the apartment selected for you at the express desire of M. 
 Laubepin ; but first, allow them to conduct you to my father- 
 in-law, who will be very glad to see you. Will you ring, my 
 dear cousin ? I hope, M. Odiot, you will do us the pleasure to 
 dine with us to-day. Good-bye, Sir, for the present." 
 
 I was entrusted to the care of a servant, who begged me to 
 wait, in a room adjoining that I had just left, till he had 
 received M. Laroque's orders. The man had left the door of 
 the parlour half opened, and I could not help hearing these 
 words spoken by Mme. Laroque in the tone of good-natured 
 banter which is habitual with her. 
 
 " Who can understand Laubepin, who announces a bachelor 
 of a certain age, very simple and very grave, and then sends me 
 a gentleman like that ? " 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 59 
 
 Mile. Marguerite murmured a few words which escaped 
 me, to my lively regret, I own, and to which her mother 
 immediately replied. " I say nothing to the contrary, my 
 daughter, but it is none the less absurd of Laubepin. How 
 can you expect a gentleman like that to go trotting about in 
 sabots over ploughed ground } I wager the man has never 
 worn sabots. He does not even know what sabots are. Well, 
 perhaps I am wrong, my daughter, but I cannot fancy a good 
 bailiff without sabots. What do you say. Marguerite, to going 
 with him to see your grandfather ? " 
 
 Mile. Marguerite entered almost immediately the room 
 where I was. She seemed but little satisfied on seeing me. 
 " Pardon, Mademoiselle; but the servant told me to wait 
 here." 
 
 "Please to follow me. Sir." 
 
 I followed her. She led me up a staircase, through several 
 passages, and finally showed me into a kind of gallery, where 
 she left me. I began to examine some pictures on the wall. 
 These paintings were mostly very indifferent sea-pieces, devoted 
 to the glory of the old privateer of the Empire. There were 
 several sea-fights, somewhat smoky, in which it was neverthe- 
 less apparent that the little brig Aimable, Captain Laroque, 
 twenty-six guns, was causing John Bull the most evident 
 dissatisfaction. Then came some full-length portraits of 
 Captain Laroque, which naturally attracted my particular 
 attention. They all represented, with slight variations, a man 
 of a gigantic size, wearing a kind of republican uniform with 
 large facings, his hair like Kleber's, and sending straight before 
 him a look of energy, ardour, and melancholy ; on the whole a 
 kind of man with nothing cheerful about him. While I was 
 curiously studying this tall form, which wonderfully realized 
 
6o THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 the idea we generally fashion to ourselves of a privateer, and 
 even of a pirate. Mile. Marguerite begged me to enter. I 
 then found myself in the presence of a thin, decrepit old man. 
 w^hose eyes scarcely preserved the vital spark, and w^ho, in token 
 of welcome touched with a trembling hand a black silk cap, 
 which covered a skull shining like ivory. 
 
 " Grandfather," said Mile. Marguerite, raising her voice, 
 "this is M. Odiot." 
 
 The poor old privateer rose a little in his easy-chair, and 
 looked at me with a dim and undecided expression. At a sign 
 from Mile. Marguerite I took a seat, and she repeated : " M. 
 Odiot, the new bailiff, father ! " 
 
 " Ah ! Good-morning, Sir," the old man murmured. A 
 pause of most painful silence followed. Captain Laroque, his 
 body bent double and his head drooping, continued to fix on 
 me an unmeaning stare. At last, apparently finding a subject 
 for conversation which was of the highest interest, he said 
 to me, in a dull and deep voice, " M. de Beauchene is 
 dead ! " 
 
 I could find no answer to this unexpected communication. 
 I was absolutely ignorant who this M. de Beauchene might be, 
 and, as Mile. Marguerite did not take the trouble to inform 
 me, I confined myself to expressing, by a slight exclamation 
 of condolence, the interest which I took in the unhappy 
 event. Apparently this did not quite satisfy the old captain's 
 expectation, for he repeated a moment afterwards, in the same 
 mournful tone : 
 
 " M. de Beauchene is dead ! " 
 
 My embarrassment was doubled at this perseverance. I 
 I saw Mile. Marguerite's foot tapping impatiently on the floor : 
 despair took possession of me, and seizing the first expression 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 63 
 
 that came into my mind : " And what did he die of ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 This question had no sooner escaped me than an angry- 
 look from Mile. Marguerite warned me that I was suspected of 
 some sarcastic disrespect. Although I felt myself guilty of 
 nothing but foolish awkwardness, I hastened to give the con- 
 versation a happier turn. I spoke of the pictures in the gallery, 
 of the strong emotions they must recall to the captain, of the 
 respectful interest I felt in seeing the hero of those glorious 
 annals. I even went into detail, and spoke with some warmth 
 of two or three engagements in which the Aimable seemed to 
 me really to have performed miracles. While I was practising 
 this refined politeness. Mile. Marguerite, to my extreme sur- 
 prise, continued to look at me with evident dissatisfaction and 
 vexation. Still her grandfather gave me an attentive ear ; I 
 saw his head gradually rise. A strange smile lighted up his 
 emaciated face, and seemed to eiface its wrinkles. Suddenly, 
 seizing with both hands the arms of his chair, he drew himself 
 up to his full height ; a warlike flame shot from his deep-set 
 eyes, and he cried in a sonorous voice, which made me tremble : 
 " Keep her up to the wind ! Full up to the wind ! Fire on 
 the larboard side ! Close with her ! close with her ! Throw 
 out the grappling-irons ! Quick ! Now we have her. Fire 
 yonder ! a good clean sweep, clear her deck ! Now follow 
 me ! All together ! Down with the Englishman, the accursed 
 Saxon ! Hurrah ! " While uttering this last cry, which rattled 
 in his throat, the old man, ineffectually supported by the pious 
 hands of his granddaughter, fell back, as if crushed, in his 
 chair. Mile. Laroque made me an imperious sign, and I left 
 the room. I found mv way back as well as I could through 
 the maze of passages and staircases, congratulating myself 
 
64 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 warmly on the tact which I had displayed in my interview 
 with the old captain of the Aimable. 
 
 The gray-haired servant who had received me on my 
 arrival — his name is Alain — was waiting for me in the hall, to 
 tell me, from Mme. Laroque, that I had not time now to go 
 to my own apartment before dinner, and that my dress would 
 do as it was. At the moment that I entered the parlour, a 
 company of about twenty persons was leaving it with the usual 
 ceremonies to go to the dining-room. It was the first time, 
 since the change in my circumstances, that I had been at a 
 fashionable party. Accustomed formerly to the little dis- 
 tinctions which the etiquette of society usually makes in favour 
 of birth and fortune, I did not receive without bitterness the 
 first tokens of neglect and disdain to which my new position 
 unavoidably condemns me. Repressing as well as I could the 
 rising of false pride, I offered my arm to a young girl of a short 
 but well-shaped and graceful figure, who was staying alone 
 behind all the guests, and who was, as I supposed, Mile. 
 Helouin, the governess. My place at table was set near hers. 
 While we were taking our seats. Mile. Marguerite appeared, 
 leading, like Antigone, the slow and heavy steps of her grand- 
 father. She came and took a seat on my right, with that air 
 of calm majesty which belongs to her, and the powerful New- 
 foundland who seems to be the accredited protector of this 
 princess, did not fail to take his position as sentinel behind her 
 chair. I thought it my duty to express to my neighbour, 
 without delay, the regret which I felt at having awkwardly 
 awakened memories which seemed to disturb and annoy her 
 grandfather. 
 
 " It is for me to excuse myself. Sir," she replied ; " I 
 ought to have warned you never to mention the English 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 65 
 
 before my father. . . . Are you acquainted with Brittany, 
 Sir ? " 
 
 I said that I had no acquaintance with it before to-day, but 
 that I was very happy to know it now ; and further, to prove 
 myself worthy of it, I spoke in lyrical style of the picturesque 
 beauties which had struck me on the journey. Just when I 
 was thinking that this adroit flattery was gaining me the young 
 Breton's good will in the highest degree, I was astonished to 
 see symptoms of impatience and weariness depicted on her 
 brow. I was decidedly unlucky with this young girl. 
 
 " Come, Sir," said she with a peculiar ironical expression, 
 " I see you love what is beautiful, all that speaks to the 
 imagination and the soul ; nature, greenness, heather, rocks, 
 and the fine arts. You will get along wonderfully with Mile. 
 Helouin, who also adores all those things ; for my own part, I 
 scarcely love them at all." 
 
 " Why, in Heaven's name, what then do you love, 
 Mademoiselle ? " 
 
 At this question, which I addressed to her in a tone of 
 amiable pleasantry, Mile. Marguerite turned abruptly towards 
 me, and answered drily : 
 
 " I love my dog. Here, Mervyn ! " 
 
 Then she affectionately plunged her hand into the thick 
 fur of the Newfoundland, who was seated on his haunches and 
 already thrusting his formidable head between my plate and 
 that of Mile. Marguerite. 
 
 I could not help observing with a fresh interest the 
 countenance of this strange person, and looking for the out- 
 ward signs of the deadness of soul which she professed. 
 Mile. Laroque, who had at first seemed to me very tall, owes 
 that appearance only to the full and perfectly harmonious style 
 
 9 
 
66 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 of her beauty. She is really of the ordinary height. Her face, 
 of a slightly rounded oval, and her neck, exquisitely and 
 proudly set, are lightly covered with a tint of dusky gold. 
 Her hair, which forms a thick setting to her forehead, throws 
 wavy bluish reflections with every movement of her head ; the 
 nostrils, delicate and thin, seem copied from the divine model 
 of a Roman Madonna, and sculptured in living mother-of- 
 pearl. Below the large, deep, pensive eyes, the golden-brown 
 tint of the cheeks is shaded by a kind of browner glory, which 
 seems a mark, projected by the shadow of the eyelashes, or as 
 it were burnt in by her ardent gaze. I can with difficulty give 
 the supreme sweetness of the smile, which at intervals animates 
 that fine face, and tempers, by a kind of graceful shrinking, the 
 brilliancy of those large eyes. Certainly the very goddess of 
 poesy, the goddess of dreams and enchanted worlds, might 
 boldly offer herself for human worship under the form of that 
 child who loves nothing but her dog. Nature often prepares 
 these cruel mysteries for us in her choicest works. 
 
 For the rest, it matters little enough to me. I am con- 
 vincd that I am destined to play in Mile. Marguerite's 
 imagination the part which might be played by a negro ; an 
 object, as is known, of slight attraction for a Creole. Still, I 
 flatter myself I am as proud as Mile. Marguerite ; the most 
 impossible of all attachments for me would be one that would 
 expose me to suspicions of intrigue and scheming. I do not 
 think moreover that I shall need arming with any great moral 
 force against a danger which does not seem to me a probable 
 one ; for Mile. Laroque's beauty is of the kind which calls for 
 the pure contemplation of the artist, rather than for any more 
 human and tenderer feeling. 
 
 Be that as it may, at the name of Mervyn which Mile. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 67 
 
 Marguerite had given to her body-guard, my neighbour on the 
 left, Mile. Helouin, launched under full sail into the cycle of 
 Arthur, and was so kind as to inform me that Mervyn was the 
 true name of the famous enchanter whom the vulgar style 
 Merlin. From the Knights of the Round Table she ascended 
 to the times of Cassar, and I saw pass before me in a somewhat 
 tedious procession, the whole hierarchy of druids, bards, and 
 Ovates, after which we fell fatally from "menhir" to 
 " dolmen," and from " galgal " to " cromlech." 
 
 While I was losing myself in the Celtic forests under the 
 guidance of Mile. Helouin, who wants nothing but a little 
 more flesh to be a very passable druidess, the broker's widow, 
 seated near us, was waking the echoes with a continued 
 monotonous complaining, like that of a blind man ; they had 
 forgotten to give her a foot-warmer ; they gave her cold soup ; 
 they gave her bones without any meat ; that was the way they 
 treated her. But she was used to it. It is sad to be poor, very 
 sad. She wished she was dead. 
 
 " Yes, doctor " — she addressed herself to her neighbour, 
 who seemed to be listening to her grievances with a rather 
 ironical affectation of interest — " yes, doctor, I am not joking ; 
 I wish I was dead. Besides, it would be a great relief to 
 everybody. Think, doctor, when one has been in my position, 
 and dined off plate with one's own crest on it, to be reduced to 
 charity, and to find one's self a plaything for servants ! It is not 
 known, it never will be known, how much I suffer in this 
 house ! Those who are proud can suffer without complaining ; 
 and so I hold my peace, doctor, but I think none the less." 
 
 " Exactly, my dear lady," said the doctor, whose name, I 
 think, is Desmarets ; " let us speak no more of it ; drink some 
 cold water, it will calm you." 
 
68 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 " Nothing will calm me, doctor ; nothing but death." 
 
 " Very well, Madame, whenever you please," the doctor 
 replied resolutely. 
 
 At a more central part of the table, the attention of the 
 guests was riveted by the careless, caustic, conceited rattle of a 
 person whom I heard called M. de Bevallan, and who seems to 
 enjoy here all the rights of particular intimacy. He is a man 
 of tall figure, past his first youth ; his head recalls with toler- 
 able fidelity that of King Francis I. He is listened to like an 
 oracle, and Mile. Laroque herself bestows on him as much 
 interest and admiration as she seems able to conceive for any- 
 thing in the world. For my own part, as the majority of the 
 sallies which I heard applauded related to local stories and 
 events of the immediate neighbourhood, I could appreciate thus 
 far but imperfectly the merits of this Armorican lion. 
 
 I had occasion however to congratulate myself on his 
 politeness ; he offered me a cigar after dinner, and took me to 
 the smoking-room. He did the honours at the same time to 
 three or four young men, scarcely past boyhood, who evidently 
 regarded him as a model of good manners and exquisite 
 wickedness. 
 
 " Well ! Bevallan," said one of these young rufflers, " you 
 don't give up the priestess of the sun, then ? " 
 
 " Never ! " replied M. de Bevallan. " I will wait ten months, 
 ten years if need be ; but I will have her, or no one shall." 
 
 *' You are not unlucky, old fellow ; the governess will help 
 you to keep patient." 
 
 " Shall 1 slit your tongue or your ears, young Arthur ? " 
 replied M. de Bevallan in an undertone, advancing towards the 
 speaker, and pointing out my presence to him by a rapid 
 gesture. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 69 
 
 Then they brought on the carpet, in charming confusion, 
 all the horses, all the dogs, all the women of the neighbour- 
 hood. It might be wished, by the by, that women could be 
 present, once in their lives, in secret, at one of those con- 
 versations which take place between men in the first excitement 
 after a generous repast; they would there learn the exact 
 measure of the delicacy of our morals, and of the confidence 
 with which it should inspire them. I do not in any degree 
 pique myself on prudishness ; but the conversation at which I 
 was present had, in my opinion, the grave fault of overstepping 
 the bounds of the freest pleasantry : it touched lightly on every- 
 thing, outraged everything gaily, and finally assumed a very 
 uncalled-for tone of universal desecration. Now, my education, 
 doubtless too imperfect, has left in my heart a fund of respect, 
 which, it seems to me, should be kept intact even in the 
 liveliest outbreaks of gaiety. Still we have nowadays in France 
 our Young America, which is not happy if it does not 
 blaspheme a little after drinking ; we have some agreeable 
 little ruffians, the hope of the future, who have had neither 
 father nor mother^ who have no country and no God, but seem 
 to be the brute production of some heartless and soulless 
 machine, which has dropped them by chance upon this globe, 
 to become its very indifferent ornament. 
 
 In short, M. de Bevallan, who is not afraid to appoint 
 himself professor of cynicism to these beardless rakes, did not 
 please me, any more than I think I pleased him. I alleged a 
 little fatigue, and took my leave. 
 
 At my request, old Alain armed himself with a lantern, 
 and led me across the park towards the apartments intended 
 for me. After a walk of a few minutes, we crossed a brook 
 by a wooden bridge, and found ourselves before a massive 
 
70 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 arched doorway, surmounted by a kind of belfry, and flanked 
 by two turrets. It is the entrance of the old chateau. Aged 
 oaks and firs form a mysterious girdle round this feudal ruin, 
 and give it an air of deep retirement. It is in this ruin that 
 I am to live. My apartments, consisting of three rooms very 
 prettily hung with chintz, stretched above the gate from one 
 turret to the other. This melancholy abode did not fail to 
 please me ; it suits my fortunes. As soon as I was released 
 from old Alain, who is of a somewhat garrulous disposition, I 
 began to write an account of this important day, stopping 
 now and then to listen to the gentle murmur of the brooklet 
 running beneath my windows, and to the cry of the legendary 
 owl, celebrating his mournful loves in the neighbouring 
 
 woods. 
 
 
 
July \st. 
 
 It is time to try and unravel the thread of my personal 
 and private existence, which has been a little lost these two 
 months in the active duties of my ofiice. 
 
 The day after my arrival, after several hours spent in my 
 retirement in studying the papers and registers of Father 
 Hivart, as they call my predecessor, I went to breakfast at the 
 chateau, where I found only a few remaining of the guests 
 of the day before. Mme. I.aroque, who lived a good deal in 
 
72 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 Paris before the health of her father-in-law condemned her to 
 a perpetual country life, faithfully preserves in her retirement 
 the taste for the elevated, elegant, or frivolous pursuits, which 
 were reflected in the kennel of the Rue du Bac, in the time of 
 Mme. de Stael's turban. She seems moreover to have visited 
 most of the great cities of Europe, and has brought back from 
 them certain literary inclinations which go beyond the usual 
 bounds of Parisian learning and curiosity. She takes in a 
 number of papers and reviews, and endeavours to follow from 
 afar, as much as may be, the movements of that refined 
 civilization, of which the theatres, museums, and new books, 
 are the more or less transient flower and fruit. In the course 
 of breakfast, a new opera was spoken of, and Mme. Laroque 
 addressed a question relative to it to M. de Bevallan ; he was 
 not able to answer it, though, if he is to be believed, he has 
 always one foot and one eye on the Boulevard des Italiens. 
 Mme. Laroque then fell back on me, though showing, by her 
 distracted look; the small hopes she had of finding her man of 
 business well acquainted with such things ; but, unluckily, they 
 are precisely the only things I do know. I had heard in Italy 
 the opera which had just been played in Paris for the first 
 time. The very reserve of my reply excited Mme. Laroque's 
 curiosity, and she began to press me with questions, and soon 
 condescended to impart to me, of her own accord, her impres- 
 sions, remembrances, and enthusiastic ideas of travel. In short, 
 we did not stop before reviewing in company the most cele- 
 brated theatres and galleries of the Continent ; and our 
 conversation was so animated when we left the table, that, not 
 to break it off, she took my arm without noticing it. We 
 went into the drawing-room, and continued our sympathetic 
 outpourings; Mme. Laroque forgetting more and more the 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN, 73 
 
 tone of kind protection, which hitherto had a good deal jarred 
 on me in her language to me. 
 
 She confessed to me that the demon of the theatre 
 tormented her in a high degree, and that she contemplated 
 having a play represented at the chateau. She asked my advice 
 as to the management of this diversion. I spoke to her in 
 some detail of the private theatricals which I had had the 
 opportunity of seeing in Paris and St. Petersburg ; and then, 
 not wishing to presume upon her favour, I rose abruptly, stat- 
 ing that I intended to inaugurate my office without delay, by 
 exploring a large farm situated two short leagues from the 
 castle. At this announcement, Mme. Laroque seemed sud- 
 denly astounded : she looked at me, shuffled among her 
 ottomans, stretched out her hands to the brasier, and finally said 
 in a half-whisper : " Oh ! what does that matter ? Leave it 
 for the present." And when I persisted : " But, good heaven ! " 
 she returned with charming embarrassment, " the roads are 
 frightful ! At least wait for fine weather ! " 
 
 " No, Madame," said I, laughing, " I will not wait a 
 minute ; I am bailiff or I am not." 
 
 " Madame," said old Alain, who happened to be in 
 the room, "we could harness Father Hivart's wagon 
 for M. Odiot; it has no springs, but it is all the stronger 
 for that." 
 
 Mme. Laroque looked thunderbolts at the unlucky Alain 
 for daring to propose Father Hivart's wagon to a bailiif of my 
 stamp, who had been at a play in the palace of the Grand 
 Duchess Helen. " Would not the buggy get through the 
 roads ? " she asked. 
 
 " The buggy, Madame ? No, indeed. No fear of its 
 getting through," said Alain ; " or if it does get through, it 
 
74 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 won't all of it get through ; and besides I don't think it can 
 get through." 
 
 I asserted that I could go perfectly well on foot. 
 
 " No, no, impossible ; I won't have it ! Let us see, let us 
 see. We have half-a-dozen saddle-horses doing nothing— but 
 probably you do not ride ? " 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Madame ; " but really it is useless ; I 
 will go — " 
 
 "Alain, have a horse saddled for Monsieur. Which, 
 Marguerite ? " 
 
 " Give him Proserpine," murmured M. de Bevallan, 
 laughing in his beard. 
 
 " No, no, not Proserpine ! " cried Mile. Marguerite, 
 impetuously. 
 
 " Why not Proserpine, Mademoiselle ? " I asked. 
 
 " Because she would throw you," said the young girl, 
 flatly. 
 
 " Ah, would she really ? Pardon, will you allow me to 
 ask if you ride the animal in question. Mademoiselle ? " 
 
 " Yes, Sir ; but I have some trouble." 
 
 " Well, perhaps you will have less after I have ridden her 
 two or three times. That decides me. Have Proserpine 
 saddled, Alain." 
 
 Mile. Marguerite knitted her black brows, and sat down, 
 making a gesture of the hand, as if to disclaim all share in the 
 responsibility of the catastrophe which she foresaw to be 
 impending. 
 
 " If you want spurs, I have a pair at your service," said 
 M. de Bevallan, who certainly expected that I should not 
 return. 
 
 Without seeming to notice the reproachful look which 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 75 
 
 Mile. Marguerite directed at the obliging gentleman, I accepted 
 his spurs. In five minutes, a sound of irregular pawing 
 proclaimed the arrival of Proserpine, who was being led with 
 some difficulty to the foot of the steps leading to the private 
 garden. I may state that she was a fine half-bred mare, as 
 black as jet. I immediately descended the steps. Some young 
 men, with M. de Bevallan at their head, followed me on the 
 terrace, out of humanity, I fancy; and at the same time the 
 three windows of the drawing-room were opened for the 
 benefit of the ladies and the old men. I would willingly have 
 dispensed with all this ceremony, but, of course, I had to 
 submit to it ; and, besides, I had no great anxiety as to the 
 upshot of the adventure ; for if I am a young bailiff, I am a 
 very old horseman. I could scarcely walk when my father 
 began to set me on horseback, to my mother's great despair ; 
 and subsequently he spared no pains to make me his equal in 
 an art in which he excelled. He had even carried this branch 
 of my education to a refinement, occasionally making me put 
 on some old, heavy armour that was in the family, that I 
 might go through my exercises of the grand manege more at 
 my ease. 
 
 Meanwhile Proserpine allowed me to untie the bridle, and 
 even to touch her shoulder, without giving the least sign of 
 hesitation ; but she no sooner felt the weight of my foot in the 
 stirrup than she swerved abruptly aside, giving three or four 
 magnificent flings above the large marble vases which orna- 
 mented the steps ; then reared, by way of doing the agreeable, 
 beating the air with her fore-feet, after which she stood still, 
 trembling. " Not easy to mount," said the groom, with a 
 wink. " So I see, my boy ; but I'll astonish her, you'll see." 
 At the same time I sprang into the saddle without touching the 
 
76 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 Stirrup, and while Proserpine was thinking over what had 
 occurred to her, I got a firm seat. The next moment we were 
 vanishing at a hand-gallop down the avenue of chestnuts, 
 followed by a sound of clapping of hands, for which M. de 
 Bevallan had had the wit to give the signal. 
 
 This incident, trifling as it was, did not fail, as I could 
 perceive even the same evening in the faces of the party, 
 wonderfully to raise my credit. A few other accomplishments, 
 of equal value, completed the work of securing for me all the 
 importance I wish for here, enough to guarantee my personal 
 dignity. For the rest, they can easily see that I make no 
 attempts to abuse the care and consideration which are shown 
 me, with an idea of playing a part in the chateau out of 
 keeping with the modest post which I fill. I shut 
 myself up in my tower as often as I can, without dis- 
 tinctly failing in politeness ; in a word, I keep strictly in 
 my place, that no one may ever be tempted to put me 
 down into it. 
 
 A few days after my arrival, when I was present at one of 
 these dinners of ceremony, which are almost of daily occurrence 
 here in this season, my name was pronounced in a tone of 
 inquiry by the burly Sub-Prefect of the neighbouring small 
 town, who was seated at the right of the lady of the chateau. 
 Mme. Laroque, who is liable to such abstraction, forgot that I 
 was not far from her, and, in spite of myself, I did not lose a 
 word of her reply. 
 
 " Good heavens ! Don't mention him ! There is some 
 impenetrable mystery. We think he is a prince in disguise. 
 There are so many strolling up and down the world ! This 
 one has every conceivable accomplishment : he rides, he plays 
 the piano, he draws, and all in perfection. Between ourselves. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 79 
 
 my dear Sub- Prefect, I believe with all my heart he is a very 
 poor bailiff", but he is really a very agreeable man." 
 
 The Sub-Prefect, who is also a very agreeable man, or 
 thinks himself so, which comes to the same thing for his own 
 satisfaction, replied gracefully, caressing his magnificent 
 moustache with one of his plump hands, that there were 
 beautiful eyes enough in the chateau to account for many 
 mysteries ; that he strongly suspected the disguised prince of 
 being a lover in disguise, and that, moreover. Love was the 
 legitimate parent of Caprice, and the natural bailiff" of the 
 Graces. Then, suddenly changing his tone : " For the rest, 
 Madame, if you have the slightest uneasiness as to this indi- 
 vidual, I will have him questioned to-morrow by the 
 Brigadier of Gendarmes." 
 
 Mme. Laroque protested against this excess of gallant zeal ; 
 and the conversation went no further, as far as concerned me ; 
 but it left me much piqued, not at the Sub-Prefect, who, on 
 the contrary, delighted me extremely, but at Mme. Laroque; 
 for, though she did more than justice to my personal qualifi- 
 cations, she did not seem to be duly impressed with my official 
 merits. 
 
 It so happened that I had next day to renew the lease of a 
 considerable farm. This business had to be done with a very 
 cunning old peasant, whom I nevertheless contrived to bewilder 
 by a skilful combination of a few legal terms and prudent 
 diplomatical reserve. Our terms agreed upon, the good man 
 quietly laid down three rouleaus of gold coins on my desk. 
 Although the meaning of this payment, which was not due, 
 entirely escaped me, I kept from showing any inconsiderate 
 astonishment; but while opening the rouleaus, I learned by 
 some indirect questions that this sum was the earnest-money of 
 
8o THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 the bargain ; in other words, the pot of wine, which it seems 
 the farmers are in the habit of paying their landlord at each 
 renewal of a lease. I had no idea of claiming this earnest- 
 money, having found no mention of it in the former leases, 
 drawn up by my able predecessor, which had served as my 
 model. At the time I drew no conclusion from this incident ; 
 but when I went to give Mme. Laroque this lucky present, her 
 surprise astonished me. " What is that ? " she asked. I 
 explained to her the nature of the payment. She made me 
 repeat it. "That is not the custom, is it? " she resumed. 
 
 " Yes, Madame, every time you consent to a fresh lease." 
 
 " But there have been more than ten leases renewed, to my 
 knowledge, within these thirty years. How comes it that we 
 have never heard of such a thing ? " 
 
 " I cannot tell, Madame." 
 
 Mme. Laroque fell into an abyss of thought, at the bottom 
 of which she perhaps encountered the venerable shade of 
 Father Hivart, after which she shrugged her shoulders slightly, 
 looked at me, then at the money, then at me again, and seemed 
 to hesitate. Finally, throwing herself back in her chair, and 
 sighing deeply, she said to me, with a simplicity for which I 
 felt grateful : " That will do. Sir ; I thank you." 
 
 This mark of stupid integrity, about which she had the 
 good taste not to compliment me, nevertheless caused Mme. 
 Laroque to form a high idea of the ability and virtues of her 
 bailiff. I could judge of it a few days afterwards. Her 
 daughter was reading to her an account of a journey to the 
 Pole, in which an extraordinary bird was mentioned, that does 
 not steal. " Stop," she said, " that is like my bailiff." 
 
 I firmly hope that since that time, by the strict care which 
 I bring to the task I have accepted, I have acquired some title 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 8i 
 
 to respect of a less negative kind. M. Laubepin, when I went 
 to Paris lately to embrace my sister, thanked me with much 
 feeling for the honour I had done to the engagements he had 
 accepted for me. " Courage, Maxime," he said : " we shall 
 portion Helen. The poor child will, so to speak, have known 
 nothing. And as for yourself, my friend, feel no regret. Believe 
 me, you have in yourself the thing most like happiness in this 
 world, and, thank heaven, I see you will always have it ; a 
 peaceful conscience, and the strong serenity of a soul wholly 
 devoted to duty." 
 
 The old man is doubtless right. I am calm, but still I 
 scarcely feel happy. There are in my soul, not yet ripe for the 
 austere delight of sacrifice, some outbursts of youth and of de- 
 spair. My life, unreservedly dedicated and devoted to another 
 life, more feeble and more dear to me than my own, no longer 
 belongs to me : it has no future, it is in a cloister for ever closed. 
 My heart must no longer beat, my brain must no longer think, 
 save for another. Only let Helen be happy ! Years are already 
 coming on me ; let them come quickly ! I beseech them to 
 come ; their coldness will strengthen my courage. 
 
 For the rest, I cannot complain of a situation, which, in a 
 word, has degeived my most painful fears, and even surpasses my 
 highest hopes. My work, my frequent journeys into the neigh- 
 bouring departments, and rny taste for solitude, keep me much 
 away from the chateau, the noisy gatherings at which I especially 
 avoid. Perhaps I owe to the infrequency of my visits a good part 
 of the friendly reception I meet with. Mme. Laroque, especially, 
 shows me real affection ; she makes me the confidant of her 
 strange and very sincere chimeras about poverty, about devoted- 
 ness and poetical self-denial, which contrast amusingly with the 
 manifold precautions of the chilly Creole. Sometimes she 
 
82 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 envies the gipsy women, carrying their children, dragging a 
 wretched cart along the roads, and cooking their dinner under a 
 hedge ; sometimes it is the sisters of charity, and sometimes 
 canteen women, to whose heroic toils she aspires. Lastly, she 
 does not cease to reproach the late M. Laroque the younger 
 with his admirable health, which never allowed his wife to dis- 
 play that genius for nursing with which she felt her heart sur- 
 charged. Still, she has had the fancy, within these few days, 
 to add to her easy-chair a kind of nook, shaped like a sentry- 
 box, to protect her from draughts. I found her the other morn- 
 ing triumphantly installed in this kiosk, waiting pleasantly 
 enough for martyrdom. 
 
 I have hardly less cause to be satisfied with the other inmates 
 of the chateau. Mile. Marguerite, always buried like a Nubian 
 sphinx in some unknown dream, nevertheless condescends with 
 thoughtful kindness to repeat for me my favourite airs. She 
 has a beautiful contralto voice, which she manages with con- 
 summate skill, but also with a negligence and coldness of man- 
 ner that one would think was intentional. She does sometimes 
 accidentally let some impassioned notes escape her lips, but she 
 immediately seems humiliated and ashamed at thus forgetting 
 her character or her part, and hastens to return within the 
 bounds of icy correctness. 
 
 A few games at piquet, which I have had the easy politeness 
 to lose with M. Laroque, have won me the good graces of the old 
 man, whose looks rest on me sometimes with a perfectly singular 
 degree of attention. One would say that some dream of the 
 past, some fancied likeness, is half-awaked in the clouds of that 
 wearied memory, on the bosom of which float the confused 
 shadows of a whole century. But they would not return me the 
 money I had lost to him ! It seems that Mme. Aubry, who 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 83 
 
 plays habitually with the old captain, makes no scruple what- 
 ever of accepting this restitution as a regular thing, which does 
 not hinder her from frequently winning from the old privateer, 
 with whom she then has noisy disputes. 
 
 This lady, whom M. Laubepin treated very gently when he 
 described her merely as an embittered spirit, inspires me with 
 no sympathy. Still, out of respect for the house, I compelled 
 myself to win her good will, which I have accomplished by 
 lending a friendly ear, sometimes to her wretched lamentations 
 over her present lot, sometimes to the emphatic description of 
 her past splendour, of her plate, her furniture, her laces and 
 pairs of gloves. 
 
 I must own that I am in a good school for learning to despise 
 the property I have lost. Everybody' here, in fact, preaches 
 me, by their behaviour and language, an eloquent sermon on 
 the contempt of riches ; first Mme. Aubry, who may be com- 
 pared to those shameless gluttons whose disgusting greediness 
 takes away your appetite, and gives you a deep loathing for the 
 dishes of which they boast ; then the old man, who is decaying 
 over his millions as sorrowfully as Job on his dunghill; then this 
 excellent, but romantic and used-up, woman, who dreams 
 amid her obstinate prosperity of the forbidden fruit of 
 wretchedness ; and lastly, the superb Marguerite, who wears 
 the diadem of beauty and wealth, with which heaven has 
 burdened her brow, as if it were a crown of thorns. 
 
 Strange girl ! Almost every morning, if the weather is 
 fine, I see her pass beneath the windows of my belfry; she 
 salutes me with a grave bow, which sets the black feather in 
 her hat waving, and then disappears slowly down the shaded 
 path which crosses the ruins of the old chateau. Generally 
 old Alain follows her at a little distance ; sometimes she 
 
84 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 has no companion but the huge and faithful Mervyn, who 
 steps out at the side of his fair mistress like a thoughtful 
 bear. With this escort she goes the round of the whole 
 neighbouring country, seeking for charitable adventures. She 
 might dispense with any protector; there is not a cottage 
 within six leagues that does not know her, and venerate her as a 
 good fairy. The peasants call her simply " Mademoiselle," 
 when they speak of her, as if they were speaking of one of 
 those king's daughters who adorn their legends, and whose 
 beautyi power, and mystery, she seems to them to possess. 
 
 I try, however, to explain to myself the cloud of gloomy 
 thought which continually overshadows her brow, the haughty 
 and defiant severity of her look, and the bitter dryness of her 
 words. I ask myself, are these the natural features of a 
 curiously compounded character, or the symptoms of some 
 secret trouble, whether remorse, fear, or love, gnawing that 
 noble heart. No matter how disinterested one may be in the 
 case, it is impossible to help feeling a certain curiosity in 
 the presence of so remarkable a person. Yesterday evening, 
 while old Alain, with whom I am a favourite, was waiting 
 on me at my lonely dinner, I said to him, "Well, Alain, 
 ft has been a fine day ; have you had a ride to-day ? " 
 
 " Yes, Sir, this morning with Mademoiselle." 
 
 " Ah, indeed." 
 
 " Perhaps Monsieur saw us go by .? " 
 
 " Possibly, Alain. Yes, I see you go by sometimes. You 
 look well on horseback, Alain." 
 
 " Monsieur is too kind. Mademoiselle looks better than 
 I do." 
 
 " She is a very pretty young lady." 
 
 " Oh, perfect. Sir ; and inside as well as outside, like her 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 85 
 
 mother. I will tell Monsieur something. Monsieur knows 
 that this property belonged formerly to the last Count de 
 Castennec, whom I had the honour to serve. When the 
 Laroques bought the chateau, I confess my heart swelled a 
 little, and I hesitated about staying in the house. I had 
 been brought up with a respect for the nobility, and it cost me 
 a great deal to serve people of no birth. Monsieur may have 
 noticed that I feel a particular pleasure in discharging my duty 
 towards him ; it is because I think Monsieur has the ways of a 
 gentleman. Are you quite sure you are not of a noble family. 
 Sir?" 
 
 " I fear I am, my poor Alain," 
 
 " However, as I was going to tell Monsieur," Alain resumed 
 with a graceful bow, " I have learned in the service of 
 these ladies that the nobility of the feelings is as good as 
 the other kind, particularly that of M. le Comte de 
 Castennec, who had a weakness for beating his servants. 
 Still, Sir, I say it's a pity Mademoiselle doesn't marry a 
 gentleman of good name. Nothing more Would be needed to 
 make her perfect." 
 
 " But it seems to me, Alain, that it depends only on herself." 
 
 " If Monsieur refers to M. de Bevallan, it really does depend 
 only on herself, for he asked her in marriage six months 
 ago. Madame did not seem much opposed to the marriage, 
 and in fact M. de Bevallan is the richest man in this 
 neighbourhood, next to the Laroques ; but Mademoiselle, 
 without giving a positive answer, wished to take time to 
 think over it." 
 
 " But if she loves M de Bevallan, and can marry him when 
 she pleases, why is she always so sad and abstracted as we 
 see her ?" 
 
86 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 " It is a fact. Sir, that Mademoiselle is entirely changed 
 these two or three years. Formerly she was as gay as a bird, 
 and now one would say something is worrying her; but I 
 may say respectfully, that I don't think it is love for that 
 gentleman." 
 
 " You don't seem too fond of M. de Bevallan yourself, my 
 
 good Alain. And yet he is of a good noble family " 
 
 " That doesn't hinder him from being a rascal, and spending 
 his time in seducing the country girls. And if Monsieur has 
 eyes, he may see that he wouldn't mind playing the Sultan in 
 the chateau, in default of anything better." 
 
 There was a pause of silence ; after which Alain continued, 
 "Pity Monsieur hasn't a hundred thousand a year." 
 
 " Why so, Alain ? " 
 
 Because- 
 
 said Alain, tossing his head thoughtfully. 
 
July ri'-.th. 
 
 f the month which has just passed, 1 have 
 I, the course of the mont ^^^^_^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^ 
 
 n.ade one fnend, and, I th.nk ^^^ ^^.^^^^ .^ ^^ 
 
 are Mile. Marguente, and Mlk. H .^ ^^^^ .^ 
 
 old maid, eighty-eight years old. 
 compensation. . , __^_ f „,;ii settle accounts first, is an 
 
 Mile. 
 
 Helouin, with whom I will set 
 
88 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 ungrateful person. My alleged wrongs to her ought rather to 
 recommend me to her esteem ; but she seems to be one of those 
 women who are pretty common in the world, who do not 
 count esteem in the number of the feelings which they care 
 either to inspire or to feel. From the very beginning of 
 my life here, a kind of similarity between the fortunes of the 
 governess and the bailiff, the modest position we each hold in the 
 chateau, had impelled me to form relations of affectionate 
 kindness with Mile. Helouin. At all times, I have made it a 
 point to show the interest in these poor girls, which their 
 thankless task, and their precarious situation, at once humiliating 
 and without a future, seem to me to bespeak for them. Mile. 
 Helouin is moreover, pretty, intelligent, and accomplished ; 
 and, though she spoils it all somewhat by the nervous vivacity 
 of manner, feverish coquettishness, and slight pedantry, which 
 are the usual mistakes of her situation, I had but little merit, 
 I own, in playing the chivalrous part towards her which I had 
 assigned myself. This part assumed the character of a kind of 
 duty in my eyes, when I perceived, as several warnings had 
 previously suggested to me, that a devouring lion, with the 
 features of king Francis the First, was furtively roaming about 
 my young protegee. This duplicity, which does credit to M. de 
 Bevallan's boldness, is carried on under colour of friendly 
 familiarity, with a policy and coolness which easily deceive 
 unobservant or unsuspecting eyes. Mme. Laroque and her 
 daughter, especially, are too much strangers to the perversity of 
 the world, and live too far from any reality to feel the shadow 
 of suspicion. As for myself, who am greatly irritated at this 
 insatiable eater of hearts, I took a pleasure in spoiling his plans ; 
 more than once I have attracted the attention which he sought 
 to appropriate ; and I have particularly taken pains to lessen in 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 89 
 
 Mile. Helouin's breast that feeling of neglect and isolation, 
 which in general gives so great an advantage to the style of 
 consolation offered her. Have I ever, in the course of this ill- 
 advised contest, gone beyond the delicate bounds of brotherly 
 protection ? I do not think so ; and the very terms of the 
 short dialogue vs^hich has suddenly changed the character of our 
 intercourse, seem to speak in favour of my reserve. One even- 
 ing last week we were all taking the fresh air on the terrace. 
 Mile. Helouin, to whom it happened that I had occasion to 
 show some particular attention during the day, took my arm 
 gently, and, picking to pieces an orange-flower with her delicate 
 white teeth, said to me, with a little emotion in her voice, 
 " You are kind. Monsieur Maxime." 
 
 " I try to be. Mademoiselle." 
 
 " You are a true friend." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " But what sort of a friend ? " 
 
 " A true one, as you have said." 
 
 "A friend who loves me?" 
 
 " Doubtless." 
 
 " Much ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " Passionately ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 At this monosyllable, which I pronounced very distinctly, 
 and followed up by a firm look. Mile. Helouin impetuously 
 threw away the orange-flower, and left my arm. Since that 
 unlucky hour, I have been treated with a disdain, which I have 
 not come by dishonestly, and I should most assuredly believe that 
 friendship between the sexes, is a delusive feeling, had I not 
 received the very next day a kind of set-off against my mishap. 
 
90 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 I had gone to spend the evening at the chateau; two or three 
 famiHes, who had come for a fortnight's visit, had gone away 
 in the morning. I found there none but habitual guests, the 
 cure, the collector, and Doctor Desmarets ; and, lastly, General 
 de Saint Cast and his wife, who, like the doctor, live in the 
 adjoining small town. Mme. de Saint Cast, who appears to 
 have brought her husband a handsome fortune, was engaged in 
 lively conversation with Mme. Aubry when I entered. These 
 two ladies understood each other perfectly; as usual, they were 
 celebrating, each in her turn, like two shepherds in a pastoral 
 poem, the incomparable advantage of riches, in language in 
 which elegance of expression vied with elevation of thought. 
 "You are quite right, Madame," said Mme. Aubry, "there is 
 but one thing in the world, and that is to be rich. When 
 I was rich, I despised with all my heart those who were 
 not, and so I find it quite natural now that I should be 
 despised, and I do not complain of it." 
 
 "You are not despised for it, Madame," returned Mme. de 
 Saint Cast, " certainly not, Madame ; but it is a fact that 
 it makes a tremendous difference whether one is rich or 
 not. The General there knows something about it ; he had 
 positively nothing when I married him, except his sword, and 
 a sword doesn't put butter in one's soup, does it, Madame? " 
 
 " No, no, indeed, Madame," cried Mme. Aubry, applaud- 
 ing this bold metaphor. " Honour and glory are all very fine in 
 romances ; but I prefer a good carriage, don't you, Madame ? " 
 " Yes, certainly, Madame ; that's what I was telling the 
 General this morning as we were on our way here ; eh, 
 General?" 
 
 " Hm ! " grunted the General, who was playing dismally in 
 a corner with the old privateer. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 91 
 
 "You had nothing when I married you. General," Mme. 
 de Saint Cast continued ; " you don't think of denying it, 
 I hope?" 
 
 " You've said so already ! " the General muttered. 
 
 "That doesn't alter the fact that but for me you would 
 have to go afoot, General, which would not be pleasant with 
 your wounds. You couldn't ride in your carriage with your 
 pension of six or seven thousand francs, my friend. I told 
 him so this morning, Madame, speaking of our new carriage, 
 which is as easy as it is possible for a carriage to be. I 
 paid for it handsomely, though; it makes four thousand 
 good francs less in my purse, Madame ! " 
 
 " I can easily believe it, Madame ! My best carriage 
 cost me full five thousand, reckoning in the tiger-skin for 
 the feet, which was worth five hundred by itself." 
 
 " I have been obliged to be a little economical about 
 mine," returned Mme. de Saint Cast, "for I have just been 
 refurnishing my drawing-room, and for carpet and hangings 
 alone it stands me in fifteen thousand francs. That's too 
 good for a hole in the provinces, you'll tell me, and it's quite 
 true. But the whole town is on its knees before it, and 
 one likes to be respected, isn't it so, Madame?" 
 
 "No doubt one likes to be respected, Madame," Mme. 
 Aubry replied, " and one is only respected in proportion to 
 one's money. For my part, I console myself for being no 
 longer respected, by thinking that if I were again what I 
 once was, I should see the people who despise me at my 
 feet." 
 
 " Except me, damn it ! " cried Doctor Desmarets, rising 
 suddenly. "You might have a hundred millions a year, and 
 you wouldn't see me at your feet I give you my word of 
 
92 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 honour. And so I shall go out into the fresh air, for devil 
 take me if I can breathe here any longer." 
 
 " And the worthy doctor left the room, taking with him 
 my heartfelt gratitude, for he had done me a real service, 
 by comforting my heart, overburdened with indignation and 
 disgust. 
 
 Although M. Desmarets is established in the house on the 
 footing of a Saint John Chrysostom, and allowed the greatest 
 freedom of speech, his exclamation was too spirited not to 
 cause the company a feeling of uneasiness, which resulted in 
 an embarrassed silence. Mme. Laroque broke it skilfully, by 
 asking her daughter if it had struck eight. 
 
 "No, mother," Mile. Marguerite replied, "for Mile, de 
 Porhoet has not come yet." 
 
 A moment afterwards, as the clock was on the point of 
 striking, the door opened, and Mile. Jocelynde de Porhoet- 
 Gael, leaning on Dr. Desmarets' arm, entered the room with 
 astronomical punctuality. 
 
 Mile, de Porhoet-Gael, who has this year seen her eighty- 
 eighth spring, and looks like a reed preserved in silk, is the 
 last scion of a very noble race, whose earliest ancestors 
 are thought to be discovered among the fabled kings of 
 ancient Armorica. Still the family does not occupy a serious 
 footing in history until the twelfth century, in the person of 
 Juthael, son of Conan le Tort, issue of the younger branch of 
 the house of Brittany. Some drops of the blood of the 
 Porhoets have flowed in the most illustrious veins of France, 
 in the Rohans, the I,usignans, the Penthievres ; and these great 
 lords admitted that it was not the least pure of their blood. 
 I remember, when studying one day, in a fit of youthful vanity, 
 the history of the alliances of my family, that I noticed this 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 95 
 
 queer name Porhoet, and that my father, who was very learned 
 in such matters, was very proud of it. Mile, de Porhoet, now 
 the only one left of her name, would never marry, that she 
 might so preserve as long as possible in the firmament of 
 French nobility the constellation of these magic syllables, 
 Porhoet-Gael. It chanced that one day some one was speaking 
 in her presence of the house of Bourbon. "The Bourbons," 
 said Mile. Porhoet, plunging her knitting-needle several times 
 into her white wig, " the Bourbons are a good noble family ; 
 but " (suddenly assuming an air of modesty) " there are 
 better ! " 
 
 It is impossible, however, not to do homage to this august 
 old lady, who wears with unexampled dignity the threefold 
 burdensome majesty of birth, age, and misfortune. An un- 
 happy lawsuit, which she has obstinately carried on out of 
 France for fifteen years, has gradually reduced her already very 
 slender fortune ; probably she scarcely has an income of a 
 thousand francs left. This distress has taken away nothing from 
 her pride, added nothing of ill-temper ; she is cheerful, equable, 
 and courteous; she lives, no one knows how, in her cottage 
 with a small servant, and yet finds means to give a good deal in 
 alms. Mme. Laroque and her daughter have formed an 
 attachment to their noble and poor neighbour, which does 
 them honour; she is in their house the object of an attentive 
 respect, which confounds Mme. Aubry. I have often seen 
 Mile. Marguerite leave the liveliest dance to make the fourth 
 at Mile, de Porhoet's game at whist ; if Mile, de Porhoet 
 should miss her whist (five centime points) for a single 
 day, the world would come to an end. I am myself 
 one of the old lady's favourite partners, and, on the evening 
 of which I speak, we were not long, the cure, the doctor. 
 
96 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 and I, before we were seated round the whist-table, opposite, 
 and on each side of the descendant of Conan le Tort. 
 
 It is needful to state, that at the beginning of the last 
 century a great- uncle of Mile, de Porhoet, who was 
 attached to the household of the Duke of Anjou, crossed 
 the Pyrenees in the retinue of the young prince, afterwards 
 Philip the Fifth, and formed in Spain a prosperous establish- 
 ment. His direct descendants appear to have become extinct 
 fifteen years ago, and Mile, de Porhoet, who had never lost 
 sight of her ultramontane relatives, at once declared herself the 
 heiress of their property, which is said to be considerable. 
 Her rights were contested, too justly, by one of the oldest 
 houses of Castile, allied to the Spanish branch of the Porhoet 
 family. Thence arose the suit which the unlucky octogenarian 
 prosecutes at great expense from court to court with a 
 perseverance bordering on madness, which causes grief to 
 her friends, and amusement to the indifferent. Dr. Desmarets, 
 in spite of the respect which he professes for Mile, de Porhoet, 
 does not fail to make common cause himself with the 
 laughers, all the more so, that he decidedly disapproves of 
 the use to which the poor woman in fancy devotes her 
 chimerical inheritance, namely, the erection, in the neighbour- 
 ing town, of a cathedral in the finest flamboyant style, 
 which is to disseminate to the end of ages yet to come, 
 the name of the founder, and of a great and vanished race. 
 This cathedral, a dream engrafted on a dream, is the harmless 
 plaything of this aged child. She has had plans drawn for it; 
 she spends her days and sometimes her nights in contemplating 
 its glories, in changing its arrangement by the addition 
 of some ornaments ; and she speaks of it as of a building 
 already erected and fit for use : 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 97 
 
 " I was in the nave of my cathedral ; I have noticed 
 something very unbecoming in the north aisle of my cathedral ; 
 I have changed the dress of the Swiss," et castera. 
 
 "Well, Mademoiselle," said the doctor, while shuffling 
 the cards, " have you been at work on your cathedral 
 since yesterday ? " 
 
 " Yes, doctor. I have even hit on a very happy idea. I 
 have replaced the dead wall, separating the choir from the 
 vestry, by foliage of carved stone, in imitation of the Clisson 
 chapel in the church at Josselin. It has a much lighter 
 effect." 
 
 " Yes, to be sure ; but what news from Spain, in the 
 meantime .? Ah ! is it true, as I think. I saw in the Revue des 
 Deux Mondes this morning, that the young Duke de Villa 
 Hermosa makes you an offer of marriage, by way of settling 
 the suit amicably ? " 
 
 Mile, de Porhoet shook, with a disdainful toss of the 
 head, the faded ribbons which stream over her cap, and 
 said : " I should refuse it flatly." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! you say so, Mademoiselle ; but what is the 
 meaning of that sound of a guitar that has been heard several 
 nights under your windows ? " 
 " Pooh ! " 
 
 " Pooh ? And that Spaniard in a cloak and yellow boots, 
 who is seen roaming about the neighbourhood, and is always 
 sighing 1 " 
 
 " You are humorous," said Mile, de Porhoet, calmly open- 
 ing her snuff-box. " But if you wish to know, my lawyer 
 wrote to me two days since, from Madrid, that with a 
 little patience we shall no doubt see the end of our 
 
 troubles." 
 
 13 
 
98 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUN-G MAN. 
 
 " I think so, indeed ! Do you know where he comes 
 from, this lawyer of yours ? From Gil Bias's cave, direct. 
 He will take your last crown from you, and then laugh 
 at you. Ah, if you would only consent just to bury this 
 mad idea, and live in peace ! What good would millions 
 do you, come ? Are you not happy and respected, and what 
 more do you want ? As for your cathedral, I don't speak of 
 it, because it is nothing but a bad joke." 
 
 " My cathedral is a bad joke only in the judgment of bad 
 jokers. Dr. Desmarets ; besides, I am defending my right, 
 and fighting for justice ; this property belongs to me, I 
 have heard my father say so a hundred times, and it shall 
 never, with my consent, go to people who are really just 
 as much strangers to my family as you, my dear friend, 
 or as Monsieur," she added, nodding at me. > 
 
 I was childish enough to be piqued at the compliment, 
 and at once rejoined : " As far as concerns me. Mademoiselle, 
 you are mistaken, for my family has had the honour of being 
 allied to yours, and yours to mine," 
 
 On hearing these audacious words. Mile, de Porhoet 
 instinctively carried to her pointed chin the cards which 
 were spread like a fan in her hand, and drawing up her 
 thin figure, first looked into my face as if to assure herself 
 of my sanity, then by a superhuman effort regained her 
 composure, and lifting a pinch of Spanish snuff to her nose, 
 said : " You will prove that to me, young man," 
 
 Ashamed of my absurd boast, and much embarrassed by the 
 looks of curiosity which she had drawn down on me, I bowed 
 awkwardly without replying. Our whist was finished in 
 gloomy silence. It was ten o'clock, and I was preparing to 
 escape, when Mile, de Porhoet touched my arm: "Will 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 99 
 
 Monsieur the bailiff," she said, " do me the honour to 
 accompany me to the end of the avenue ? " 
 
 I bowed again once more, and followed her. 
 
 July 2C,tk. 
 
 We soon found ourselves in the park. The little servant, 
 in the costume of the country, walked in advance, carrying a 
 lantern ; then Mile, de Porhoet, stiff and silent, holding up in 
 a careful and becoming manner the scanty folds of her silken 
 sheath : she had dryly refused the offer of an arm ; and I 
 walked on at her side, my head drooping, and much dissatisfied 
 with myself. At the expiration of a few minutes of this 
 funeral march, the old lady said to me, " Well, Sir, speak, I 
 am waiting. You said that my family was allied to yours, and 
 as an aUiance of that kind is an entirely new point in history 
 to me, I shall be much obliged to you if you will be 
 kind enough to clear it up for me." 
 
 I had in secret decided that I ought at any cost to keep 
 the secret of my incognito. " Indeed, Mademoiselle," I said, 
 " I venture to hope you will overlook a joke, which escaped me 
 in the course of conversation." 
 
 " A joke ! " cried Mile, de Porhoet. " A fine subject for 
 jokes indeed. And what name do you give nowadays. Sir, to 
 jokes courageously levelled at an unprotected old woman, 
 jokes which you would not venture on to a man .? " 
 
 " Mademoiselle, you leave me no possibility of retreating ; 
 it only remains for me now to trust myself to your discreet- 
 ness, I do not know. Mademoiselle, if the name Champcey 
 d'Hauterive is know-n to you } " 
 
■oo THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 "I am perfectly acquainted. Sir, with the Champcey 
 d'Hauterives, who are a good, nay, an excellent Dauphine 
 family. How does that bear on the case } " 
 
 " I am at this moment the representative of that family." 
 
 " You ! " said Mile, de Porhoet, coming to a sudden 
 haltr " you a Champcey d'Hauterive ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mademoiselle." 
 
 " This alters the case," said she ; give me your arm, 
 cousin, and tell me your history," 
 
 I thought it best, in this state of things, just to hide 
 nothing from her. I was ending the painful account of the 
 disasters of my family, when we came before a singularly 
 narrow, low cottage, flanked at one corner by a sort of ruinous 
 tower with pointed roof. " Come in. Marquis," said the 
 daughter of the Kings of Gael, stopping on the threshold of her 
 sorry palace ; " come in, I beg." A moment afterwards I was 
 ushered into a little dismal parlour, with a brick floor ; on the 
 pale tapestry which covered the walls were crowded together 
 half a score portraits of her ancestors, robed in ducal ermine ; 
 above the mantelpiece sparkled a magnificent timepiece, made 
 of tortoise-shell, inlaid with copper, and surmounted by a 
 group representing the Chariot of the Sun. A few oval- 
 backed arm-chairs, and an old sofa with rickety legs, completed 
 the decoration of the room, in which everything betokened 
 a severe propriety, and you smelt a powerful odour of iris, 
 Spanish snufl^, and sundry other perfumes. 
 
 " Sit down," said the old lady, taking a seat herself on 
 the sofa ; " sit down, cousin ; for though in reality we are 
 not related, and cannot be so, as Jeanne de Porhoet and 
 Hugues de Champcey, between ourselves, were foolish 
 enough to have no issue, it will be agreeable for me, with 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. loi 
 
 your leave, to treat you as a cousin when we are alone, 
 that I may for a moment cheat the painful feeling of my 
 present loneliness. So then, cousin, your position is as you 
 have told me ? It is a hard pass assuredly. Still I will 
 suggest to you a few thoughts which have become habitual 
 with me, and seem to me of a kind to offer you sterling 
 comfort. In the first place, my dear Marquis, I often 
 say to myself, that in the midst of these ignoramuses and 
 old servants whom we see nowadays riding in their carriages, 
 poverty has an odour of distinction and good taste. 
 
 " Besides, I am not far from believing that God has 
 intentionally reduced some of us to straitened circumstances, 
 that this gross, material, gold-seeking age may always have 
 before it, in our persons, a style of worth, dignity, and renown, 
 which owes nothing to gold and material things, which 
 nothing can purchase, which cannot be sold ! To all appear- 
 ance, cousin, that is the providential account of your position 
 and mine." 
 
 I testified to Mile, de Porhoet all the pride I felt at 
 having been chosen along with her to give the world the 
 noble lesson which it needs, and by which it seems so little 
 disposed to profit. Then she resumed : " For my ovrn part. 
 Sir, I am formed for poverty, I suffer little from it ; when one 
 has seen, in the course of a life too long protracted, a 
 father worthy of his name, and four brothers, worthy of 
 their father, fall before their time by the bullet or the 
 steel ; when one has seen all the objects of one's affection 
 and devotion perish one after the other, one must needs have a 
 very little soul to be anxious about the plenteousness of 
 the table or the newness of one's dress. Certainly, Marquis, 
 if my personal comfort were alone concerned, you may. believe 
 
102 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 that I should care but little for my Spanish millions ; but 
 it seems to me proper, and setting a good example, that a 
 family like mine should not disappear from the earth without 
 leaving behind it some lasting trace, some striking monument, 
 of its greatness and its faith. Therefore, in imitation of some 
 of my ancestors, cousin, I have formed the idea, and v/ill never 
 renounce it while I live, of the pious foundation of which you 
 have certainly heard 1 " 
 
 After assuring herself of my assent, the old and noble lady 
 seemed wrapped in contemplation, and, while she cast a 
 melancholy glance over the half-effaced portraits of her 
 ancestors, the hereditary timepiece alone broke the midnight 
 stillness of the dimly-lighted room. "There will be," Mile, 
 de Porhoet suddenly resumed, " a chapter of regular canons 
 attached to the service of this church. Every day, in the 
 private chapel of my family, low mass will be said for the 
 repose of mv soul, and of the souls of my ancestors. The feet 
 of the officiating priest will tread on a nameless stone, which 
 will form the step before the altar, and will cover my remains." 
 
 I bowed with an emotion of visible respect. Mile, de 
 Porhoet took my hand and pressed it gently ; " I am not 
 mad, cousin," she said, " whatever they may say. My father, 
 who never told me a lie, always assured me that, on the 
 direct descent of our Spanish branch becoming extinct, we 
 alone should have a right to the inheritance ; his sudden 
 violent death unhappily did not permit him to give us 
 more exact information on the matter ; but not being able 
 to doubt his word, I do not doubt my right. Still," she 
 added after a pause, and in a tone of touching sadness, " if 
 I am not mad, I am old, and those people yonder know 
 it well. They have dragged on my case for fifteen years. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 103 
 
 with all sorts of delays ; they are waiting for my death, which 
 will end it all. And you see they will not have long to wait; 
 one of these days I shall have, I feel, to hear mass for the last 
 time. This poor cathedral, my only love, which had supplied 
 the place in my heart of so many destroyed or crushed 
 affections ; it will never have but one stone, and that my 
 tombstone." 
 
 The old lady was silent. She wiped away with her 
 emaciated hands two tears which were trickling down her 
 withered cheeks, and then added, with a forced smile : 
 *' Forgive me, cousin ; you have plenty of troubles of your 
 own. Excuse it. Besides, it is late ; go home, you will 
 compromise me." 
 
 Before going, I once more recommended to Mile, de 
 Porhoet's discreetness the secret which I had been forced to 
 confide to her. She answered me somewhat evasively, that 
 I might make myself easy, she would know how to secure 
 my peace and dignity. Still, in a few days I suspected, by 
 the redoubled attention with which Mme. Laroque honoured 
 me, that my worthy friend had repeated my communication to 
 her. Mile, de Porhoet, in fact, did not hesitate to own it, 
 assuring me that she could do no less for the honour of her 
 family, and that Mme. Laroque was, besides, incapable of 
 betraying, even to her daughter, a secret entrusted to her 
 delicacy. 
 
 Still my conversation with the aged lady had left me 
 penetrated with a tender respect, of which I tried to give 
 her proof. The very next evening, I applied all the resources 
 of my pencil to the interior and exterior decoration of her 
 dear cathedral. This attention, to which she showed herself 
 sensible, has gradually assumed the regularity of a habit. 
 
it4' The romance of a poor young man. 
 
 Almost every evening, after our whist, I set to work, and 
 the ideal building is enriched with a status, a pulpit, or a 
 gallery. Mile. Marguerite, who seems to pay her neighbour a 
 kind of worship, has been pleased to join in my labour of love 
 by devoting to the temple of the Porhoets a special sketch- 
 book, which I am to fill. 
 
 I further ofl^ered my old acquaintance to take my share 
 in the proceedings, researches, and cares of all kinds, which her 
 lawsuit may cause her. Ths poor woman owned that I did 
 her a service ; that, though she still could keep up her 
 correspondence, her weak eyesight refused to decipher the 
 manuscripts in her collection of documents, and that she had 
 never been willing hitherto to get any help in her work, 
 however important it might be to her case, for fear of giving a 
 fresh handle to the uncivil jokes of the neighbours. In short, 
 she accepts my advice and co-operation. Since then, I have 
 conscientiously studied the voluminous papers in her suit, and 
 remain convinced that the affair, which will be tried some day 
 soon on final appeal, is positively lost already. M. Laub^pin, 
 whom I have consulted, shares my opinion, which however 
 I shall try to keep from my old friend as long as circumstances 
 will allow. Meantime, I do her a pleasure by ransacking her 
 family archives, in which she is always hoping to find some 
 decisive title in her favour. Unhappily these archives are very 
 rich, and the little tower is filled with them from roof to 
 cellar. 
 
 Yesterday I went early to Mile, de Porhoet's, that I might 
 finish before breakfast the examination of bundle number 1 1 5, 
 which I had begun the day before. The mistress of the house 
 not having yet risen, I installed myself quietly in the parlour, 
 with the connivance of the small servant, and set solitarily to 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 105 
 
 my dusty task. After about an hour, as I was perusing with 
 extreme delight the last folio of bundle 115, I saw Mile, de 
 Porhoet come in, with difficulty dragging along an enormous 
 packet, very neatly covered with white linen. " Good morn- 
 ing, my good cousin," she said. " Learning that you were 
 giving yourself some trouble this morning on my account, 
 I wished to give myself some on yours. Here I bring you 
 bundle 116." 
 
 There is a story somewhere, in which an unhappy princess 
 is locked up in a tower, and a fairy, who is a foe to her family, 
 sets her an endless series of out-of-the-way, impossible 
 tasks : and I own that just then, in spite of all her virtues. 
 Mile, de Porhoet seemed to me a near relation of that 
 fairy. 
 
 "I dreamed last night," she continued, "that this bundle 
 contained the key to my Spanish treasure. You will therefore 
 oblige me greatly by not delaying the examination of it. This 
 labour over, you will do me the honour to partake of a modest 
 repast which I wish to offer you under the shade of my 
 arbour." 
 
 Accordingly I resigned myself to my fate. 
 
 It is needless to say that the lucky bundle 1 1 6 contained 
 like the former ones nothing but the idle dust of ages. 
 Precisely at noon, the old lady came to offer me her arm, 
 and led me ceremoniously into a little garden trimmed with 
 box, which forms, with a piece of adjoining meadow land, all 
 the present domains of the Porhoets. The table was set under 
 a bower of hornbeams, and the sun of a fine summer's day cast 
 through the leaves a few rainbow-tinted rays on the shining 
 and perfumed table-cloth. I was finishing doing honour to 
 the poulet dore, the fresh salad, and the bottle of old Bordeaux 
 
 14 
 
io6 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 which formed the bill of fare of the banquet, when Mile. 
 de Porhoet, who seemed delighted with my appetite, turned 
 the conversation to the Laroque family. 
 
 " I confess," she said, " that the old privateer does not please 
 me at all. I remember when he came here he had a large pet 
 ape, whom he dressed up as a servant, and with whom he seemed 
 to have a perfect understanding. The animal was a real pest in 
 the village, and none but a man of no education or decency 
 could have been so wrapped up in it. They said it was an 
 ape, and I assented ; but I really think it was nothing but 
 a negro, all the more as I always suspected his master of having 
 dealt in that commodity on the coast of Africa. The late M. 
 Laroque the younger however was a good man, and quite a 
 gentleman. As for the ladies, speaking of course of 
 Mme. Laroque and her daughter, and by no means of 
 the widow Aubry, who is a creature of mean condition ; 
 as for the ladies, I say, there is no praise they do not 
 deserve." 
 
 We were at this point when the stately step of a horse 
 was heard on the path which skirts the outer side of the garden- 
 wall. At the same moment several smart taps were struck on 
 a little door near the arbour. 
 
 " Well ! " said Mile, de Porhoet, " who's there ? " 
 
 I raised my eyes, and saw a black feather waving over the 
 top of the wall. 
 
 " Open ! " cried gaily a rich, musical voice : " open, it 
 is the fortune of France ! " 
 
 " What ! is it you, my darling ? " cried the old lady. 
 " Run quickly, cousin." 
 
 In opening the door I was almost knocked down by 
 Mervyn, who rushed between my legs, and I saw Mile. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 107 
 
 Marguerite busy tying the bridle of her horse to the rail 
 of a fence. 
 
 " Good morning, Sir," she said, without showing the least 
 surprise at finding me there. Then gathering over her arm 
 the long folds of her riding-habit, she walked into the 
 garden. 
 
 " Welcome this beautiful day, my beautiful child," said 
 Mile, de Porhoet ; " embrace me. You have been galloping, 
 you young madcap ; your face is all over a bright purple, and 
 your eyes absolutely flash fire. What can I oifer you, my 
 love ? " 
 
 " Let us see," said Mile. Marguerite, giving a glance at the 
 table ; " what have you there ? Has Monsieur eaten every- 
 thing ? But I am not hungry, only thirsty." 
 
 " I certainly shall forbid you drinking in the state you 
 are in ; but stop, there are still a few strawberries in that 
 bed." 
 
 " Strawberries ! O goija ! " the young girl cried. " Take 
 one of these large leaves quickly. Sir, and come with 
 me. 
 
 While I ,was selecting the largest leaf from a fig-tree. Mile, 
 de Porhoet half shut one eye, and with the other followed, 
 with a smile of delight, the proud walk of her favourite down 
 the sun-lit paths. 
 
 " Look at her, cousin," she whispered to me ; " would 
 she not be worthy to be one of us .? " 
 
 Meanwhile Mile. Marguerite, stooping over the strawberry 
 bed, and stumbling at every step on her habit, greeted with a little 
 shout of joy each strawberry as she discovered it. I kept near 
 her, holding the fig-leaf spread out in my hand; and from time 
 to time she would drop into it one strawberry for two which 
 
io8 
 
 THE ROMANXE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 she munched by wav o^ gaining patience. When the harvest 
 
 ^Hfe. '^4>-, 
 
 
 
 was sufficient for her taste we returned in triumph to 
 the arbour, and what remained of the strawberries was 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 109 
 
 powdered with sugar and then eaten by the prettiest of 
 pretty teeth. 
 
 "Ah ! that does me good! " said Mile. Marguerite when 
 she had finished, and threw her hat on a bench, and leaned 
 back against the hornbeam hedge. '' And now, to make my 
 happiness complete, my dear lady, won't you tell me some 
 stories of the past, of the time when you were a fair 
 warrior ? " 
 
 Mile, de Porhoet, smiling with delight, needed no further 
 entreaty, but drew from her memory the most striking episodes 
 in her bold forays under the Lescures and the Larochejaquelins. 
 I had here a fresh proof of my aged friend's loftiness of soul, 
 when I heard her pay a passing homage to all the heroes of 
 those gigantic struggles, without distinction of standard. She 
 spoke of General Hoche, especially, whose prisoner of war she 
 had been, with an almost tender admiration. Mile. Marguerite 
 lent a passionate attention to these stories that astonished me. 
 Now half-buried in her niche of hornbeam, and her long lashes 
 drooping a little, she showed the immovable repose of a 
 statue ; then, as the interest became keener, she leaned her 
 elbows on the little table, and thrusting her fair hand into the 
 waves of her loosened hair, she darted at the old Vendean the 
 continuous lightning of her looks. I must certainly say that I 
 shall always count among the pleasantest hours in my sorrowful 
 life those which I spent in watching the reflection of a radiant 
 sky mingled in that noble countenance with the feelings of a 
 courageous heart. 
 
 The story-teller having finished her narration. Mile. 
 Marguerite embraced her, and waking Mervyn, who was 
 asleep at her feet, she said she was going back to the 
 chateau. I made no scruple of leaving at the same time. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 being convinced that I could cause her no annoyance. For, 
 apart from the extreme insignificance in the eyes of the 
 rich heiress, both of myself and of my company, a tete-a- 
 tete conversation usually is no discomfort to her, her mother 
 having resolutely given her the liberal education which 
 she herself received in one of the British colonies ; 
 for the English custom, as is well known, allows 
 women before marriage all the liberty, which we sagely 
 grant them from the day when any abuse of it becomes 
 irreparable. 
 
 We left the garden together then ; I held the stirrup while 
 she mounted her horse, and we set out for the chateau. After 
 a few paces she said to me, " Upon my word, Sir, I fancy I 
 disturbed you yonder very unluckily. You were getting on 
 charmingly," 
 
 " It is true. Mademoiselle ; but as I had been there a long 
 time, I forgive you, and even thank you." 
 
 " You are very attentive to our poor neighbour. My 
 mother is very grateful to you for it." 
 
 " And your mother's daughter ? " said I laughing. 
 
 " Oh, I am not so easily moved. If you want me to 
 admire you, you must have the goodness to wait a little longer 
 first. I am not in the habit of judging lightly of human 
 actions, which generally have two faces. I confess your 
 conduct towards Mile, de Porhoet looks well, but — — " Here 
 she paused, tossed her head, and continued in a serious, bitter, 
 thoroughly insulting tone : " But I am not quite sure that you 
 are not paying your court to her in the hope of becoming 
 her heir." 
 
 I felt that I turned pale. Still reflecting on the absurdity 
 of answering this young girl in a hectoring style, I restrained 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. iii 
 
 myself, and said to her gravely: "Allow me. Mademoiselle, 
 sincerely to pity you." 
 
 She seemed much surprised. " To pity me. Sir ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mademoiselle, allow me to express the respectful 
 pity to which you seem to me to be entitled." 
 
 " Pity ! " she said, stopping her horse, and turning towards 
 me her eyes half shut in disdain. " You have the advantage 
 of me, for I do not understand you." 
 
 " Yet it is very simple. Mademoiselle : if the loss of faith 
 in goodness, if doubt and deadness of soul, are the bitterest 
 fruits of a long life's experience, nothing in the world deserves 
 more compassion than a heart that is withered by mistrust 
 before it has lived." 
 
 " Sir," replied Mile. Laroque, with a vivacity far removed 
 from her ordinary way of speaking, " you do not know 
 what you are talking about ! And," she added, more sternly, 
 " you forget to whom you are speaking ! " 
 
 " True, Mademoiselle," I replied quietly, with a bow ; 
 " I am speaking somewhat without knowledge, and I am 
 forgetting somewhat to whom I speak ; but you set me the 
 example." 
 
 Mile. Marguerite, with her eyes fixed on the tops of the 
 trees that skirted the road, returned with ironical haughtiness, 
 " Must I ask your pardon ? " 
 
 "Certainly, Mademoiselle," I replied firmly, "if one of 
 us two had palrdon to ask of the other, it would be you; 
 you are rich, and I am poor ; you can lower yourself, I 
 cannot'! " 
 
 There was a silence. Her compressed lips, her distended 
 nostrils, a sudden paleness on her forehead, proved the com- 
 bat that was raging within her. Suddenly, lowering her 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A TOOK VoUNG MAN. 
 
 whip as if for a salute — " Very well ! " she said. " Pardon ! 
 And immediately she gave her horse a fierce cut with the 
 whip, and set off" at a gallop, leaving me in the middle of 
 the road. 
 
 I have not seen her since. 
 
 ^-^^^^y^^ 
 
July loth. 
 
 The theory of chances is never more idly employed than 
 on the thoughts and feelings of a woman. Not caring to 
 £nd myself soon in Mile. Marguerite's company, after the 
 painful scene between us, I had passed two days without 
 showing my face at the chateau. I scarcely expected that 
 this short interval could have suflced to soothe the resent- 
 ment I had stirred up in that haughty heart. Nevertheless, 
 the morning of the day before yesterday, towards seven o'clock, 
 
114 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 as I was at work near the open window of my turret^ I heard 
 myself suddenly called, in a tone of friendly gaiety, by the 
 very person of whom I thought I had made an enemy. 
 
 " Monsieur Odiot, are you there ? " 
 
 I went to the window, and perceived, in a boat stationed 
 near the bridge. Mile. Marguerite, pushing aside with one 
 hand the brim of her large brown straw hat, and raising 
 her eyes towards my half-invisible tower, 
 
 " Here I am. Mademoiselle," said I promptly. 
 
 " Will you come for a walk ? " 
 
 After the just alarm, by which I had been tormented for 
 two days, so much condescension made me fear that, according 
 to the saying, I was the plaything of a senseless dream. 
 
 " Pardon, Mademoiselle ; what do you say ? " 
 
 " Will you take a little walk with Alain, Mervyn, and 
 me ? " 
 
 " Certainlv, Mademoiselle." 
 
 " Very well ; bring your sketch-book." 
 
 I made haste to come down, and ran towards her on 
 the bank of the stream. 
 
 " Ah ! " said the young girl, laughing, " you are in a good 
 humour this morning, it seems." 
 
 I muttered awkwardly some confused words, intended to 
 intimate that I was always in a good humour, which Mile. 
 Marguerite seemed not to believe very firmly; and then I 
 jumped into the boat, and took a seat by her side. 
 
 " Row on, Alain," said she immediately ; and old Alain, 
 who piques himself on being a masterly boatman, began to 
 take methodical strokes with the oars, which gave him the 
 look of a heavy bird trying in vain to fly away. Then Mile. 
 Marguerite continued, " I am actually obliged to come and 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 115 
 
 fetch you from your tower, as you have been obstinately 
 sulking these two days." 
 
 " I assure you, Mademoiselle, nothing but discretion — 
 respect — fear " 
 
 " Oh, heavens ! ' respect ' — 'fear.' You were sulking, that's 
 what it was. Positively we are too good for you. My mother, 
 who insists upon it, I don't clearly know why, that we ought 
 to treat you with a very distinguished consideration, begged 
 me to immolate myself on the altar of your pride, and, like 
 an obedient daughter, I immolate myself." 
 
 I frankly expressed my lively gratitude. 
 
 " Not to do things by halves," she went on, " I resolved 
 to give you a treat that would suit you: so here is a fine 
 summer morning for you, wood and glades with all the 
 desirable effects of light and shade, birds singing under the 
 leaves, a mysterious boat gliding over the water. You who 
 like stories of that kind, you must be pleased ? " 
 
 " I am enchanted. Mademoiselle." 
 
 " Oh, that is not unlucky." 
 
 I found myself, in fact, for the moment pretty contented 
 with my lot. The two banks between which we were gliding 
 were strewn with newly-cut hay which perfumed the air. I 
 saw retreating all around us the dark avenues of the park, 
 pierced with lines of brightness by the morning sun ; millions 
 of insects were intoxicating themselves with dew in flower cups, 
 humming gaily the while. Before me was old Alain, at every 
 stroke of the oars smiling on me with an air of satisfaction and 
 protection: still nearer isat Mile. Marguerite, contrary to her 
 custom dressed in white ; beautiful, fresh, and pure, she shook 
 away with one hand the dewy pearls which the early hour 
 hung around the lace of her hat, and offered the other as a bait 
 
ii6 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 to the faithful Mervyn, who was swimming after us. Truly, I 
 should not have needed very much entreaty to go to the 
 world's end in that little white boat. 
 
 As we were leaving the limits of the park, passing through 
 one of the arches that pierced the boundary wall, the young 
 Creole said to me : " You don't ask me where I am leading 
 you. Sir ? " 
 
 " No, no, Mademoiselle, it is all the same to me." 
 " I am leading you into fairyland." 
 " I suspected it." 
 
 " Mile. Helouin, who is more competent to speak of 
 poetical matters than I am, ought to have told you that the 
 clumps of wood which cover the country for twenty leagues 
 round are all that remains of the old forest of Brocelyande, 
 where the ancestors of your friend Mile, de Porhoet, the Kings 
 of Gael, used to hunt, and where the grandfather of Mervyn 
 here, enchanter as he was, was enchanted by a king's daughter 
 named Viviane. Now we shall soon be in the very heart of 
 the forest. And if that is not enough to excite your imagina- 
 tion, know that these woods still preserve a thousand traces 
 of the mysterious religion of the Celts ; they are paved with 
 them. You have the right therefore to fancy under each of 
 these shady places a white-robed Druid, and to see a golden 
 sickle shining in every ray of the sun. The worship of those 
 unendurable old men has even left near here, on a site that is 
 lonely, romantic, picturesque, et castera, a monument, at the 
 sight of which persons, given to ecstasy generally faint away ; 
 I thought it would give you pleasure to draw it, and, as the 
 place is not easy to find, I resolved to serve as your guide, 
 asking nothing in return, except that you will spare me any 
 outbursts of an enthusiasm in which I cannot join." 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 117 
 
 '' Very good. Mademoiselle, I will restrain myself." 
 
 " I beg you will ! " 
 
 " That is understood. And what do you call this 
 monument ? " 
 
 " I call it a heap of big stones ; antiquaries call it, some 
 simply a dolmen, others, who are more pretentious, a 
 cromlech ; the country people call it, without explaining 
 why, the migourdit." ^ 
 
 Meanwhile we were gently following the course of the 
 stream, between two lines of dewy meadow-land ; small cattle, 
 mostly black, and with long sharp horns, rose here and there 
 at the sound of the oars, and watched our passage with a 
 fierce gaze. The valley, down which the stream meandered, 
 widening in its course, was shut in on both sides by a chain of 
 hills, covered, some with furze and dry broom, some with 
 verdant underwood. From time to time, we crossed a ravine 
 which opened out between two slopes a winding prospect, in 
 the depth of which was to be seen the rounded blue summit 
 of a distant mountain. Mile. Marguerite, spite of her 
 " incompetence," did not fail to direct my attention to the 
 several charms of this sweet and rugged landscape, not 
 omitting however to accompany every remark with an 
 ironical exception. 
 
 By this time a dull, continuous sound had begun to 
 announce to us that we were probably near a water-fall, when 
 suddenly the valley closed up, and assumed the appearance 
 of a wild and sequestered gorge. On the left rose a high 
 wall of moss-covered rock; oaks and firs, intermingled with 
 hanging ivy and briars, stood in the chinks even up to the 
 
 1 In the wood of Cadoudal, department of Morbihan. 
 
118 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 top of the cliff, casting a mysterious shade on the deeper 
 water which bathed the rocks below. Before us, at the 
 distance of a few hundred paces, the waters boiled, foamed, 
 and suddenly disappeared; while the broken line of the 
 river stood out through a whitish smoke, against a distant 
 background of obscure verdure. On our right, the bank 
 opposite the cliff now presented only a narrow strip of steep 
 meadow, to which the thickly wooded hills gave a fringe 
 of sombre velvet. 
 
 " Pull to the bank ! " said the Creole. While Alain 
 made the boat fast to the branches of a willow she con- 
 tinued, springing out lightly on the grass, " Well, Sir, you 
 don't feel uncomfortable ? You are not upset, petrified, 
 thunderstruck ? And yet they say this place is very pretty. 
 For my part I like it because it is always cool here. But 
 follow me into the wood — if you dare — and I will show 
 you these famous stones." 
 
 Mile. Marguerite, lively, nimble, and gay, as I had never 
 seen her before, crossed the meadow-land at two bounds, 
 and took a path which buried itself among the thick trees 
 as it ascended the slope. Alain and I followed her in 
 Indian file. After a few minutes quick walking our guide 
 stopped, seemed to consult with herself for a moment, and 
 to be finding the right way; then, deliberately parting two 
 entangled boughs, she left the beaten path, and struck 
 directly into the underwood. The journey then became less 
 agreeable. It was very hard to force one's way through the 
 already sturdy young oaks, of which this underwood was 
 composed, their sloping trunks and thick-leaved boughs 
 interlacing like Robinson Crusoe's hedge. At any rate, 
 Alain and I got on with difficulty, bent double, hitting our 
 

 '1 If^ 
 
 '■*■. llin.li''^ » ' 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 121 
 
 heads at every step, and bringing down, at each of our heavy 
 movements, a shower of dew on us ; but Mile. Marguerite, 
 with the greater address and cat-like suppleness of her sex, 
 glided without apparent effort through the openings in the 
 labyrinth, laughing at our sufferings, and carelessly letting fly 
 back behind her the flexible branches which would hit us 
 in the eyes. 
 
 We reached at length a very narrow open space, which 
 seems to crown the summit of the hill, and there I perceived, 
 not without emotion, a gloomy and monstrous table of stone, 
 supported by five or six enormous blocks, which are half- 
 buried in the ground, and form there a cavern truly full of 
 religious terror. At first sight there is in this uninjured 
 monument of almost fabulous times and of primitive religions 
 a power of truth, a sort of real presence, which seizes the soul 
 and makes one shiver. A few rays of sunlight, penetrating the 
 foliage, filtered through the disjointed rows of stone, played 
 on the gloomy slab above, and lent an idyllic grace to this 
 barbarous altar. Mile. Marguerite herself seemed pensive 
 and absorbed. As for me, after penetrating into the cavern, 
 and examining the dolmen on all sides, I set about the task 
 of drawing it. 
 
 I had been absorbed in this work for about ten minutes, 
 paying no attention to what might be going on around, when 
 Mile. Marguerite said to me suddenly : " Would you like a 
 Velleda to give life to the picture ? " 
 
 I raised my eyes. She had twined round her brow a thick 
 
 chaplet of oak-leaves, and was standing at the head of the 
 
 dolmen, leaning slightly against one of a group of young trees ; 
 
 in the half-light under the branches her white dress assumed 
 
 the brilliancy of marble, and the pupils of her eyes sparkled 
 
 16 
 
122 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 with a strange fire in the shadow cast by her projecting crown. 
 She was beautiful, and I think she knew it. I looked at her 
 without finding a word to say, and she continued: "If I 
 inconvenience you, I will move away." 
 
 " I beg you will not." 
 
 " Very well, make haste ; put in Mervyn too ; he shall be 
 the Druid, and I the Druidess." 
 
 I was so happy as to reproduce with tolerable fidelity, thanks 
 to the vagueness of a sketch, the poetical vision with which I 
 had been favoured. She came to examine my drawing with an 
 appearance of eagerness. 
 
 " That's not bad," she said. Then she threw away her 
 crown, laughing, and added, "Confess that it was good of me." 
 
 I confess it, and would even have owned too, had 
 she wished it, that she did not want for a grain of coquet- 
 tishness : but she would not be a woman without that, and 
 perfection is detestable ; the goddesses themselves, to be loved, 
 would need something more than their immortal beauty. 
 
 We reached once more, through the dense undergrowth, 
 the path traced through the wood, and descended again towards 
 the river. " Before we got back," the young Creole said to me, 
 " I should like to show you the waterfall, all the more as I 
 intend to have a little amusement in my turn. Come, Mervyn ! 
 come, my good dog ! How beautiful you are ! " We were 
 soon on the bank in front of the shelf of rock which dammed 
 up the river's bed The water dashed from a height of several 
 feet to the bottom of a large deep-set pool of a circular shape, 
 which seemed to be bounded on all sides by an amphitheatre 
 of green turf, studded with dewy rocks. Still some invisible 
 fissures received the overflow of the little lake, and these 
 streamlets united again at a little distance in one common bed. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 123 
 
 "It is not exactly Niagara," said Mile. Marguerite, raising 
 her voice a little so as to be heard above the din of the fall ; 
 " but I have heard connoisseurs and artists say that it was pretty 
 enough. Have you admired ? Good ! Nov\^ I hope you will 
 give Mervyn all the enthusiasm you have remaining. Here, 
 Mervyn ! " 
 
 The New^foundland came and stood by the side of his 
 mistress, and watched her, trembling with impatience. The 
 young girl weighted her handkerchief with a few stones, and 
 then threw it into the stream a little above the fall. At the 
 same moment Mervyn fell like a lump into the lower pool, and 
 quickly left the bank ; the handkerchief meanwhile followed 
 the course of the water, reached the shelf of rock, danced for a 
 second in an eddy, then suddenly passing like an arrow over the 
 rounded rock, came whirling in a flood of foam before the eyes 
 of the dog, who seized it with quick and unerring tooth. 
 After this, Mervyn proudly regained the bank, where Mile. 
 Marguerite stood clapping her hands. 
 
 This charming sport was repeated several times with the 
 same success. It was now the sixth time, when it happened, 
 either from the dog starting too late, or from the handkerchief 
 being thrown too soon, that poor Mervyn missed his aim. 
 The handkerchief was caught in the eddy of the falling water, 
 and carried among some thorn-bushes which showed them- 
 selves above the water a little further down. Mervyn went in 
 search of it ; but we were much surprised to see him struggle 
 convulsively, loose his prey, and raise his head towards us with 
 piteous cries. " Gracious heaven ! what is the matter ? " cried 
 Mile. Marguerite. 
 
 "It seems as if he was caught in those bushes. But he 
 will get free, don't doubt it." 
 
124 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 However, we soon had to doubt it, and even to despair of 
 it. The network of weeds in which the unhappy Newfound- 
 land was caught, as if in a snare, rose directly beneath an 
 opening in the ledge of rock, which poured an incessant 
 stream of foaming water on Mervyn's head. The poor beast 
 half-suffocated, ceased making the slightest effort to loose his 
 bonds, and his plaintive bark took the strangled sound of the 
 death-rattle. At this moment Mile. Marguerite seized my 
 arm, and said in a low tone, almost in my ear : " He is 
 lost, come away. Sir. Let us go." I looked at her. Grief, 
 anguish, and necessity were working violently in her pale 
 features, and forming a hollow livid ring beneath her eyes. 
 
 " There is no way," I said, " of getting the boat down 
 here ; but, if you will allow me, I can swim a little, and I 
 will go and hold out a paw to this gentleman." 
 
 " No, no, don't try. It is a great distance. And besides, 
 I have always heard that the stream was deep and danger- 
 ous under the fall." 
 
 " Make yourself easy, Mademoiselle : I am prudent." At 
 the same time, I threw my jacket on the grass, and stepped 
 into the little lake, taking the precaution to keep at a certain 
 distance from the fall. The water was really very deep, for 
 I found no footing except at the moment when I came near 
 the suffering Mervyn. I do not know if some little island 
 were formerly there, and had been loosened or undermined 
 gradually, or if a rise of the river has swept away and lodged 
 in that channel fragments torn off from the bank : but it 
 is certain that a thick network of briars and roots lies hid 
 under those treacherous waters and thrives there. I placed 
 my feet on one of the stems from which the bushes seem 
 to rise, and managed to free Mervyn, who recovered all his 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 125 
 
 Strength immediately he became master of his motions, and 
 made use of it without delay to swim to the bank, abandoning 
 me with all his heart. This proceeding was in little con- 
 formity with the chivalrous reputation ascribed to his species ; 
 but good Mervyn has lived much among men, and I suppose 
 he has become a bit of a philosopher. When I would have 
 taken a start to follow him, I discovered with annoyance 
 that I was caught in my turn in the net of the jealous and 
 mischievous water-nymph, who apparently reigns over these 
 channels. One of my legs was entangled in some knots of 
 weeds which I vainly tried to break through. Deep water 
 with a slimy bottom is not the place to exert all one's strength 
 with comfort ; I was moreover half blinded by the continual 
 spray of the foaming waterfall. In short, I felt that my 
 position was becoming equivocal. I cast my eyes on the bank : 
 Mile. Marguerite, hanging on Alain's arm, was leaning over 
 the gulf, and fixing on me a look of deadly anxiety. I said 
 to myself that it now perhaps only rested with me to be 
 wept for by those beautiful eyes, and to put an enviable 
 termination to a wretched existence. Then I shook off the 
 weak thought; a violent effort set me free. I tied round 
 my neck the little handkerchie*^, which was all in shreds, 
 and peacefully reached the bank. 
 
 As I landed Mile. Marguerite gave me her hand, which 
 trembled a little. That seemed sweet to me. " What mad- 
 ness ! " she said, " what madness ! you might have lost your 
 life ! and for a dog ! " 
 
 " It was yours," I replied in a half whisper, as she had 
 spoken to me. 
 
 The word seemed to vex her ; she abruptly withdrew her 
 hand, and turning to Mervyn, who was yawning and drying 
 
126 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 himself in the sun, she began to beat him, " Oh, the fool ! 
 the great fool ! " she said. " How stupid he is ! " 
 
 Meanwhile I was dripping on the grass like a watering- 
 pot, and did not quite know what to do with myself, when the 
 young girl returned to me, and kindly went on to say : 
 " Monsieur Maxime, take the boat and go home very quickly. 
 You will get a little warmth again as you row. I can return 
 with Alain through the wood : the way is shorter." As this 
 arrangement seemed to me most suitable on all accounts, I 
 made no objection to it. I took my leave, had for the second 
 time the pleasure of touching the hand of Mervyn's mistress, 
 and threw myself into the boat. 
 
 Returned home, I was surprised, while dressing, to find 
 round my neck the little torn handkerchief, which I had 
 entirely forgotten to give back to Mile. Marguerite. She 
 certainly thought it was lost, and I decided without any scruple 
 to appropriate it as the prize of my watery tournament. 
 
 In the evening I went to the chateau. Mile. Laroque 
 received me with that air of disdainful indolence, gloomy 
 abstractedness, and bitter ennui, which habitually marks her, 
 and which now formed a striking contrast to the graceful 
 pleasantry and hearty liveliness of my companion of this 
 morning. At dinner, M. de Bevallan being present, she spoke 
 of our excursion, as if to take away any mystery from it ; 
 aimed, as she went along, some brief sarcasms at the cleverness 
 of lovers of nature, and then ended by telling of Mervyn's 
 accident ; but she suppressed in this last episode everything 
 about me. If this reserve was intended, as I think, to set the 
 tune for my own discretion, the young lady gave herself very 
 useless trouble. However that may be, M. de Bevallan, on 
 hearing the story, deafened us with his cries of despair. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 127 
 
 " What ! Mile. Marguerite had endured that long suspense, the 
 brave Mervyn had run that danger, and he, Eevallan, was not 
 by ! Fatality ! he should never console himself for it ; nothing 
 was left him now, except to hang himself, like Crillon ! " 
 
 '* Well ! if there was nobody but me to cut him down," 
 said old Alain to me in the evening when conducting me 
 home, " I'd take my time about it ! " 
 
 Yesterday did not begin so pleasantly for me as the day 
 before. I received in the morning a letter from Madrid, 
 instructing me to inform Mile, de Porhoet of the decisive loss 
 of her suit. Her lawyer told me moreover that the family 
 against whom she brought the suit does not seem likely to 
 profit by its victory, for it is now engaged in a struggle with 
 the Crown, which bestirred itself at the sound of these millions, 
 and maintains that the disputed inheritance belongs to it as an 
 escheat. After long reflection it seemed to me that it would 
 be a charity to conceal from my old neighbour the utter ruin of 
 her hopes. I therefore purpose to secure the complicity of her 
 Spanish agent ; he will make the excuse of fresh delays ; on 
 my side, I will continue to ransack her archives, and, in short, 
 do my best to enable the poor woman to continue to cherish 
 her dear illusions to her latest day. However legitimate may 
 be the character of this deceit, I still felt the need of having it 
 sanctioned by some delicate conscience. I went to the chateau 
 in the afternoon, and made my confession to Mme. Laroque ; 
 she approved of my plan, and even praised me for it more than 
 the occasion seemed to me to demand. It was not without 
 great surprise that I heard our conversation terminated by these, 
 words : *' It is now time to tell you. Sir, that I am deeply 
 grateful to you for your attentions, and that I feel every day 
 more taste for your company, and more respect for yourself. 
 
128 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 I would wish, Sir — I beg your pardon for it, as you can 
 scarcely share my desire — I could wish that we should never 
 part. I humbly beseech Heaven to do all the miracles that may 
 be wanted for that end ; for miracles would be needed, I do 
 not disguise it from myself." I could not grasp the exact 
 meaning of this language, any more than I could account 
 for the sudden emotion which shone in the eyes of this ex- 
 cellent woman. I thanked her suitably, and went to carry 
 my sorrowfulness out into the field. 
 
 Chance, and by no means a strange chance, to speak 
 frankly, led me, at the end of an hour's walking, into the 
 secluded valley, and to the brink of the pool which had been 
 the theatre of my recent prowess. The circle of foliage and 
 rock, which incloses this little lake, realizes the very ideal of 
 solitude. There you are really at the end of the world, in a 
 virgin country, in China — where you will. I stretched myself 
 on the heather, and went over in imagination the whole of my 
 promenade of the day before, which is one of those which do 
 not occur twice in the course of the longest life. I felt already 
 that a similar piece of good fortune, should it ever be offered 
 me again, would not possess nearly the same charm of unex- 
 pectedness, of serenity, and, in a word, of innocence. I had 
 good need to tell myself that this fresh romance of youth, 
 which now perfumed my thoughts, could have but one chapter, 
 but one single page ; and I had read it. Yes, this hour, this 
 hour of love, to give it its true name, had been supremely 
 sweet, because it was unforeseen ; because I had not thought of 
 giving it a name until I had exhausted it ; because I had 
 enjoyed the intoxication of it without blame ! Now, my 
 consciousness was awakened ; I saw myself on the incline of a 
 love that was impossible^ absurd, nay, worse, culpable ; it 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 129 
 
 was time to watch over myself, poor disinherited man that 
 I arn ! 
 
 I was giving myself this advice in this lonely place, and 
 it would not have been specially needful to go there for that 
 purpose, when a hum of voices roused me from my abstraction. 
 I rose, and saw coming towards me a company of five or 
 six persons, who had just stepped out of a boat. First came 
 Mile. Marguerite, leaning on M. de Bevallan's arm ; 
 then Mile. Helouin and Mme. Aubry, followed by Alain 
 and Mervyn. The sound of their approach had been covered 
 by the rumbling of the falling water ; they were but two paces 
 off, I had no time to beat a retreat, and I had to be resigned to 
 the annoyance of being surprised in the attitude of a dilettante 
 hermit. My presence here could however awake no par- 
 ticular attention ; only I thought I saw a trace of displeasure 
 flit over Mile. Marguerite's brow, and she returned my greeting 
 with marked stiffness. 
 
 M. de Bevallan, standing on the brink of the pool, for 
 some time wearied the echoes with the commonplace clamour 
 of his admiration : " Delicious ! picturesque ! what a tasteful 
 spot ! The pen of Georges Sand ; the pencil of Salvator Rosa ! " 
 The whole accompanied with energetic gestures, which seemed 
 to snatch from these two great artists in turn the instruments of 
 their genius. At length he grew calm, and had pointed out to 
 him the dangerous channel in which Mervyn had nearly 
 perished. Mile. Marguerite told the story again, still observing 
 however the same discretion with regard to the part I had 
 taken in the issue. She even dwelt with a kind of cruelty, 
 relatively to me, on the ability, courage, and presence of mind 
 which, according to her, her dog had displayed in this heroic 
 affair. She apparently fancied that her momentary kindness, 
 
 17 
 
130 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 and the service I had been so fortunate as to render her, must 
 have sent up to my brain some fumes of presumption which it 
 was important to drive down again. Still, as Mile. Helouin 
 and Mme, Aubry showed an eager desire to see Mervyn's 
 highly boasted exploits repeated before their eyes, the young 
 girl called the Newfoundland and threw her handkerchief into 
 the stream of the river, as on the day before ; but at this signal 
 the brave Mervyn, instead of plunging into the lake, ran along 
 the bank, coming and going with a terrified air, barking 
 furiously, wagging his tail, and in short giving a thousand 
 proofs of a powerful interest, but at the same time of an 
 excellent memory. Reason decidedly rules the heart in that 
 animal. In vain Mile. Marguerite, angry and confounded, 
 employed caresses and threats by turns to overcome the 
 obstinacy of her favourite ; nothing could persuade the 
 intelligent beast to entrust his precious person again to 
 those terrible waters. After such pompous announcements, 
 the stubborn prudence of the dauntless Mervyn had really 
 something droll about it. I had a better right than any one 
 to laugh at it, I think, and did not blame myself for doing so. 
 However the mirth soon became general, and Mile. Marguerite 
 at length joined in it herself, though but slightly. 
 
 " And after all that," she said, " there is another hand- 
 kerchief lost ! " 
 
 The handkerchief, swept away by the constant motion of 
 the eddy, had naturally been stranded in the branches of the 
 fatal bush, at a very short distance from the opposite bank. 
 
 " Trust to me. Mademoiselle," cried M. de Bevallan ; " in 
 ten minutes you shall have your handkerchief, or I shall exist 
 no longer ! " 
 
 I fancied that Mile. Marguerite, on this magnanimous 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 131 
 
 declaration, furtively darted at me an expressive look, as if 
 to say : " You see that devotion is not so rare around me ! " 
 Then she replied to M. de Bevallan, "For God's sake, don't 
 do anything mad ! The water is very deep. There is real 
 danger." 
 
 " It is perfectly the same to me," replied M. de Bevallan. 
 *' Alain, you ought to have a knife about you." 
 
 " A knife .? " Mile. Marguerite repeated, in a tone of 
 surprise. 
 
 " Yes. Leave me alone, leave me alone ! " 
 
 " But what do you propose to do with a knife .? " 
 
 " I propose to cut a switch," said M. de Bevallan. 
 
 The young girl looked at him steadily. " I thought," 
 she muttered, " you were going to swim .? " 
 
 " To swim ! " said M. de Bevallan ; " excuse me. 
 Mademoiselle. In the first place, I am not in swimming 
 costume ; and then, I will confess that I don't know how 
 to swim." 
 
 " If you don't know how to swim," the young girl 
 replied, in a dry tone, " it matters little enough whether 
 you are in swimming costume or not." 
 
 " That is perfectly correct," said M. de Bevallan, with 
 amusing calmness ; " but you don't particularly insist on my 
 being drowned, do you ? You want your handkerchief, 
 that is your object. As soon as I have attained it you will 
 be satisfied, isn't it so ? " 
 
 " Very well ! go," said the young girl resignedly ; " go 
 and cut your switch. Sir." 
 
 M. de Bevallan, who is not easily put out of countenance, 
 hereupon disappeared in an adjoining thicket, where we heard 
 for a moment the creaking of branches ; then he returned 
 
133 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 armed with a long nut-stem, which he began to strip of 
 its leaves. 
 
 " You don't calculate on reaching the other bank with that 
 stick," said Mile. Marguerite, whose gaiety was plainly 
 beginning to awake. 
 
 " Leave me alone, leave me alone, I beg ! " said the 
 imperturbable gentleman in reply. 
 
 He was left alone ! He finished preparing his switch, and 
 then walked towards the boat. We now understood that his 
 plan was to cross the stream in the boat above the fall, and, 
 once on the other bank, to harpoon the handkerchief, which 
 was at no great distance from it. On this discovery, there was 
 nothing but a cry of indignation from the group ; ladies being 
 generally, as is known, very fond of dangerous adventures — for 
 other people. 
 
 " A fine invention, indeed ! Fie, fie, Monsieur de 
 Bevallan ! " 
 
 " Gently, gently, ladies ! It is like Christopher Columbus 
 and the egg. The thing was to think of it." 
 
 And yet, contrary to all expectation, this expedition, 
 apparently so peaceful, was not to end without emotion, nor 
 without danger. M. de Bevallan, in place of reaching the 
 other bank directly opposite the little recess in which the boat 
 was moored, conceived the unlucky idea of going down to 
 some point nearer to the waterfall. He accordingly pushed the 
 boat off into the middle of the current, and then let it drift for 
 a moment ; but he was not long in finding out that in the 
 neighbourhood of the fall, the stream, as if attracted by the 
 gulf and seized with dizziness, quickened its speed with an 
 uneasy rapidity. We had a revelation of the danger in seeing 
 him suddenly turn the boat, and begin to ply the oars with 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 133 
 
 feverish energy. He struggled against the current for some 
 seconds with very doubtful success. Still he w^as gradually 
 nearing the opposite side, although the drifting of the boat 
 continued to hurry him on with terrific impetuosity towards 
 the falls, the threatening din of which must then have 
 been filling his ears. He was now but a few feet from the 
 brink, when a tremendous effort carried him near enough to 
 the shore for his safety at least to be secured. He then took a 
 vigorous spring, and leapt on the slope of the bank, in spite of 
 himself kicking away the abandoned boat, which was imme- 
 diately upset over the ledge, and floated about the pool, keel 
 uppermost. 
 
 As long as the peril lasted we had no other feeling, in 
 looking on the scene, than one of lively anxiety ; but as soon 
 as our minds were set at rest, they were of course vividly pene- 
 trated with the contrast offered by the issue of the adventure to 
 the usual coolness and assurance of him who was the hero of it. 
 Moreover, laughter is as easy as it is natural after alarm has 
 been successfully calmed down. Accordingly, there was not 
 one among us who did not give way to unrestrained mirth as 
 soon as we saw M. de Bevallan out of the boat. It must be 
 told how, at this very moment, his misfortune was completed 
 by a truly afflicting circumstance. The bank for which he had 
 made a leap offered a steep, wet, sloping surface ; he had no 
 sooner set foot on it than he slipped, and fell back again ; some 
 solid branches were luckily within his reach, and he fastened 
 both hands on them with frenzy, while his legs worked about 
 like a pair of oars in the water, not however of any depth, 
 which washed the bank. Every shadow of danger having now 
 vanished, the sight of this struggle was simply laughable, and I 
 suppose this cruel thought infused into M. de Bevallan's efforts 
 
134 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YoUNG MAN. 
 
 an awkward haste which delayed his success. He succeeded 
 however in raising himself up and getting fresh foothold on 
 the slope : then suddenly we saw him slip again, tearing away 
 
 the brambles, and he began once more, with evident despair, 
 his irregular pantomime in the water. It was positively 
 impossible to restrain one's self. Mile. Marguerite, I fancy, had 
 never seen such fun. She had utterly lost any care about her 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN., 135 
 
 dignity, and, like a nymph intoxicated with the grape, she filled 
 the air with the outbursts of her almost convulsive joy. She 
 clapped her hands together while she laughed, shouting with a 
 spasmodic voice : " Bravo ! bravo ! Monsieur de Bevallan ! 
 very pretty ! delicious ! picturesque ! Salvator Rosa ! " 
 
 M. de Bevallan had however at length lifted himself upon 
 firm ground ; when he turned towards the ladies, and addressed 
 them in a speech which the roar of the fall did not allow to be 
 distinctly heard ; but by his animated gestures, by the descriptive 
 movements of his arms, and by the awkward smile on his face, 
 we could understand that he was giving us an apologetic 
 explanation of his disaster. 
 
 " Yes, Sir, yes," Mile. Marguerite replied, continuing to 
 laugh with the implacable cruelty of a woman, " it is an 
 excellent success^ a very excellent success ! Congratulate 
 yourself on it." 
 
 When she had become somewhat serious again, she asked 
 me about the means of recovering the boat that had been 
 upset, which, by the way, is the best in our flotilla. I 
 promised to return the next day with some workmen, and 
 preside over its rescue ; then we took our way gaily across the 
 meadows in the direction of the chateau, while M. de Bevallan, 
 not being in swimming costume, had to give up the idea of 
 joining us again, and hid himself with a melancholy air be- 
 hind the rocks that skirt the other bank. 
 
August 20th. 
 
 i^T length this extraordinary soul has 
 yielded up to me the secret of its tempests ' 
 Would she had kept it for ever ! 
 
 For some days after the last scenes 
 which I have related, Mile. Marguerite, as if ashamed 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 137 
 
 of the impulses of youth and freedom to which she 
 had for an instant yielded, had allowed to fall over 
 her brow a thicker veil of sorrowful pride, defiance, 
 and disdain. In the midst of the noisy pleasures, fetes, and 
 dances, which followed one another at the chateau, she glided 
 like a shadow, indifferent, icy, and sometimes irritated. Her 
 irony attacked with inconceivable bitterness, sometimes the 
 purest enjoyments of the mind, those which spring from con- 
 templation and study ; and sometimes even the noblest and 
 most inviolable feelings. If any exhibition of courage or virtue 
 was mentioned before her she would at once turn it over to 
 find its selfish side ; if one had the misfortune to light in her 
 presence the smallest grain of incense on the altar of art, she 
 would extinguish it with a back-hand blow. Her short, dry, 
 terrible laugh, which sat on her lips like the mockery of a 
 fallen angel, was furiously withering against enthusiasm and 
 passion the noblest faculties of the human soul wherever she 
 saw a trace of them. This strange spirit of calumniation took, 
 I noticed, a character of especial persecution and downright 
 hostility with regard to me. I did not understand, and do not 
 yet very clearly understand, how I could have deserved these 
 particular attentions ; for, if it is true that I bear in my heart a 
 firm religious belief in ideal and eternal things, of one of which 
 only death can deprive me (Great God ! what should I have 
 left, if that were gone !), I am in no way inclined to public 
 ecstasy, and my admiration, like my love, will never be an 
 inconvenience to any one. But I in vain observed, with more 
 scrupulousness than ever, the kind of modesty which befits true 
 feeling. I gained nothing by it ; I was suspected of poetry. 
 Romantic chimeras were imputed to me, for the pleasure of 
 
 combating them; a ridiculous harp of some sort was put 
 
 18 
 
138 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 in my hands, simply for the diversion of breaking its 
 strings. 
 
 Although this war, declared against everything that rises 
 above the material interests and dry realities of life, was no new 
 feature in Mile. Marguerite's character, it was abruptly 
 exaggerated and envenomed, so far as to wound the hearts 
 which are most attached to the young girl. One day Mile, 
 de Porhoet, tired out by this incessant sarcasm, said to her, 
 before me, " My darling, for some time there has been a 
 devil in you, which you will do well to exorcise as soon as 
 possible ; otherwise you will end by making an unholy trio 
 with Mme. Aubry and Mme. de Saint Cast ; I warn you 
 plainly. For my own part, I don't pretend to be or have 
 ever been a very romantic person, but I like to think that 
 there still are in the world some souls capable of generous 
 feeling ; I believe in disinterestedness, were it only in my 
 own ; I even believe in heroism, for I have known heroes. 
 Moreover, I take a pleasure in hearing the little birds sing 
 under my hornbeam, and in building my cathedral in the 
 clouds as they pass by. All that may be very absurd, my 
 sweet child ; but I will venture to remind you that these 
 illusions are the treasures of the poor, that Monsieur and I 
 have no other treasures, and that we are singular enough 
 not to complain about it." 
 
 Another day, after enduring with my usual impassibility 
 Mile. Marguerite's scarcely veiled sarcasms, her mother took 
 me aside : " Monsieur Maxime," she said, " my daughter 
 torments you a little; I beg you to excuse it. You must 
 notice that her character is changed for some time past." 
 
 " Your daughter seems more abstracted than usual." 
 
 " And not without reason, too ; she is on the point of 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 139 
 
 making a very serious resolution, and it is a moment when a 
 young girl's humour is tossed about by any wind of folly." 
 
 I bowed without replying. 
 
 "You are now," Mme. Laroque continued, "a friend of 
 the family ; in which capacity I shall be obliged if you will 
 tell me what you think, of M. de Bevallan;" 
 
 " M. de Bevallan, Madame, has a very fine fortune, I 
 believe ; a little less than yours, but a very fine one still ; 
 about one hundred and fifty thousand francs a year." 
 
 "Yes, but what is your opinion of the man himself, of 
 his character ? " 
 
 " Madame, M. de Bevallan is what is called a very polished 
 gentleman. He does not want for sense, and passes for an 
 upright man." 
 
 " But do you think he will make my daughter happy ? " 
 
 " I do not think he will make her unhappy ; he has not 
 a malicious spirit." 
 
 " What on earth am I to do .? He does not please me 
 at all, but he is the only one who does please Marguerite 
 at all ; and then there are so few men with a hundred and 
 fifty thousand a year ! You can understand that my daughter, 
 in her position, has not wanted for suitors. For two or three 
 years we have been literally besieged. Well, this must come 
 to an end. I am ill, and may go oif any day ; my daughter 
 will be left without any protection. And since this is a 
 marriage which will satisfy all the requirements of society, 
 and which the world will certainly approve of, I should be 
 to blame if I did not lend myself to it. I am accused 
 already of suggesting romantic ideas to my daughter : the 
 truth is, I suggest nothing to her. She has a head entirely 
 her own. And now what do you advise me to do?" 
 
140 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 " Will you allow me to ask what is Mile, de Porhoet's 
 opinion ? She is a person of great judgment and experience, 
 and is, besides, entirely devoted to you." 
 
 " Ah, if I took Mile, de Porhoet's advice, I should send 
 M. de Bevallan far enough. But she speaks about it very 
 much at her ease. When he is gone, it is not Mile, de 
 Porhoet who will marry my daughter ! " 
 
 " In point of fortune, Madame, M. de Bevallan is certainly 
 an unusual match, it must not be disguised from you ; and 
 if you rigorously demand a hundred thousand a year " 
 
 " But I don't demand a hundred thousand francs a year, 
 any more than a hundred sous, my dear Sir. Only it doesn't 
 concern me, it concerns my daughter. Well, I can't give her 
 to a mason, can I ? I should like well enough myself to be a 
 mason's wife ; but what would have made me happy, perhaps 
 would not make my daughter so. When I give her in 
 marriage, I have to consult generally received ideas, and not 
 my own." 
 
 "Well, Madame, if this marriage suits you, and if it 
 equally suits your daughter — " 
 
 " But it does not, it does not suit me, or my daughter 
 either ; it is a marriage — why, it is a marriage of convenience, 
 and that is all ! " 
 
 " Am I to understand that it is quite decided on ? " 
 
 " No, for I am asking your advice. If it were so, my 
 daughter would be calmer. It is this hesitation that upsets 
 her, and then — ■" 
 
 Mme. Laroque plunged into the shade of the little dome 
 that surmounts her easy-chair, and added : " Have you any 
 idea of what is going on in that unhappy brain } " 
 
 " None whatever, Madame." 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 141 
 
 Her sparkling glance dwelt on me for a moment. She 
 heaved a deep sigh, and said in a gentle and sorrowful tone : 
 " Go, Sir ; I will not detain you any longer." 
 
 The confidence with which I had just been honoured, had 
 caused me small surprise. For some time it was evident that 
 Mile. Marguerite was devoting to M. de Bevallan all the 
 sympathy she could still retain for humanity. These tokens, 
 nevertheless, were the appearance of friendly preference rather 
 than of passionate tenderness. It must be said however that 
 this preference is capable of being explained. M. de. Bevallan, 
 whom I have never liked, and of whom I have given in these 
 pages, in spite of myself, a caricature rather than a portrait, 
 combines the greatest number of the qualities and defects which 
 usually enlist the sympathies of women. Modesty is abso- 
 lutely wanting to him ; but that suits him wonderfully, for 
 women do not like it. He has that witty, sarcastic, and calm 
 assurance which nothing can intimidate, which readily intimi- 
 dates others, and which everywhere secures to a man who is 
 endowed with it, a kind of rule and an appearance of 
 superiority. His tall figure, his large features, his skill in 
 physical exercises, his renown as a steeple-chaser and hunter, 
 lend him a manly authority which imposes on the timid sex. 
 Lastly, he has in his eyes a spirit of boldness, of enterprise 
 and conquest, which is not contradicted by his manners ; 
 which troubles women, and stirs up a secret ardour in their 
 souls. It is right to add that advantages of this kind have 
 full value in general only with vulgar hearts ; but Mile. 
 Marguerite's heart, which I had at first been tempted, as is 
 always the case, to rate as highly as her beauty, seemed to be 
 making a display, this some time past, of sentiments of a very 
 inferior order ; and I thought her quite capable of yielding, 
 
142 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 without resistance and without enthusiasm, with the passive 
 coldness of a sluggish imagination, to the charms of this 
 common - place conqueror, and the subsequent yoke of a 
 marriage of respectability. 
 
 In all this it was highly necessary to come to a decision^ 
 and I did so more easily than I could have thought possible 
 a month sooner; for I used all my courage to combat the 
 first temptations to a love, of which good sense and honour 
 equally disapproved ; and she herself, who, without knowing 
 it, made this combat necessary, had, also without knowing 
 it, powerfully aided me. If she had been unable to hide her 
 beauty from me, she had at least unveiled her soul, and my own 
 at once half returned within itself A trifling unhappiness, no 
 doubt, to the young millionaire, but a real happiness to me ! 
 
 Meanwhile I made a journey to Paris, whither I was called 
 by Mme. Laroque's interests, and by my own. I came back 
 two days ago, and on my arrival at the chateau, I was told that 
 old M. Laroque had been asking for me repeatedly since the 
 morning. I hastened to his apartment. As he perceived me, 
 a pale smile flitted over his withered cheeks ; he fixed on me a 
 look in which I thought I read an expression of malignant joy 
 and secret triumph, and then said to me in a dull, hollow voice : 
 " Sir ! Monsieur de Saint Cast is dead ! " 
 
 This news, which the singular old man had insisted on 
 giving me himself, was correct. During the preceding night, 
 poor General de Saint Cast had been attacked with a fit of 
 apoplexy, and in one hour he had been taken away from the 
 wealthy and luxurious existence which he owed to Mme. de 
 Saint Cast. Immediately the event was known in the chateau, 
 Mme. Aubry had caused herself to be speedily conveyed to her 
 friend's house ; and these two companions. Doctor Desmarets 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 143 
 
 told US, had passed the day in exchanging a whole string of 
 original and striking ideas, on death, the swiftness of its attacks, 
 the impossibility of foreseeing or guarding against them, the 
 uselessness of I'egret, which will not bring the dead to life again, 
 and on time as a consoler. After which they sat down to 
 dinner, and recruited their strength very sweetly. " Come, 
 eat, Madame ; you must sustain yourself, God wishes it," said 
 Mme. Aubry. At dessert, Mme. de Saint Cast had a bottle of 
 some Spanish wine brought up, which the General used to 
 adore, in consideration of which she begged Mme. Aubry to 
 taste it. Mme. Aubry obstinately refusing to taste it alone, 
 Mme. de Saint Cast let herself be persuaded that God also 
 wished she should take a glass of Spanish wine and a crust. 
 They did not drink the general's health. 
 
 "^'esterday morning, Mme. Laroque and her daughter, 
 dressed in deep mourning, stepped into the carriage. I took 
 a seat by them. We reached the little neighbouring town 
 towards ten o'clock. While I attended the general's funeral, 
 these ladies joined with Mme. Aubry to form the customary 
 circle round the widow. The sad ceremony over, I returned 
 to the house of mourning, and was ushered, with some friends 
 of the family, into the celebrated drawing-room, the furniture 
 of which cost fifteen thousand ffancs. In the funereal half- 
 light which reigned there, I distinguished, on a sofa worth 
 twelve hundred francs, the inconsolable shadow of Mme. de 
 Saint Cast, enveloped in much crape, of which we soon learned 
 the price. By her side was Mme. Aubry, presenting an image 
 of the greatest physical and moral weakness. Half-a-dozen 
 relations and friends completed the mournful group. While 
 we were arranging ourselves in line at the other end of the 
 room, there was a sound of moving feet and creaking of the 
 
144 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 floor; then a gloomy silence once more reigned in the mauso- 
 leum. Only from time to time there rose from the sofa a 
 lamentable sigh, which Mme. Aubry immediately repeated 
 like a faithful echo. 
 
 At length came in a young man, who had delayed a little 
 in the street, to take time to finish a cigar which he had lighted 
 on leaving the cemetery. As he glided discreetly into our 
 ranks, Mme. de Saint Cast saw him. 
 
 " Is that you, Arthur ? " she said in a voice like a breath. 
 
 " Yes, aunt," said the young man, advancing like a vedette 
 in front of our line. 
 
 " Well," returned the widow, in the same plaintive, 
 drawling tone, " is it over ? " 
 
 " Yes, aunt," was the answer given in a curt and deliberate 
 tone, by the young Arthur, who seemed to be a young fellow 
 that was pretty well satisfied with himself. 
 
 A pause followed, after which Mme. de Saint Cast drew 
 from the depths of her soul this new series of questions : " Did 
 it go off well ? " 
 
 " Very well, aunt, very well." 
 
 " Many people present ? " 
 
 " The whole town, aunt, the whole town." 
 
 " The troops ? " 
 
 " Yes, aunt, the whole garrison and the band." 
 
 Mme. de Saint Cast groaned audibly, and then added : 
 " The sappers ? " 
 
 " The sappers too, aunt, most assuredly." 
 
 I do not know what it was in this last circumstance that 
 could so painfully lacerate Mme. de Saint Cast's heart, but 
 she did not resist it ; a sudden fainting fit, accompanied by an 
 infantine wailing, called round her all the resources of female 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 14S 
 
 sensibility, and gave us an opportunity to escape, I took good 
 care, for my part, to profit by it. I could not endure to see 
 that ridiculous harpy performing her hypocritical mummery over 
 the grave of the weak, but good and true man, v^^hose life she 
 had embittered, and whose end she had probably hastened. 
 
 A few minutes later, Mme. Laroque sent to propose to me 
 to accompany her as far as the farm-house at Langoat, 
 situated five or six leagues farther, in the direction of the coast. 
 She calculated on going to dine there with her daughter. The 
 farmer's wife, who had been Mile, Marguerite's nurse, is ill at 
 present, and the ladies have for some time proposed giving her 
 this mark of their interest. We set out at two in the after- 
 noon. It was one of the hottest days of this hot season. The 
 open curtains let into the carriage the thick scorching effluvia 
 which a burning sky spread abundantly over the parched 
 moorland. 
 
 The conversation sufl?ered from the languor of our minds. 
 Mme, Laroque, who alleged she was in Paradise, and who had 
 at length dispensed with her furs, remained buried in a quiet 
 ecstasy. Mile. Marguerite played with her fan, with Spanish 
 gravity. While we ascended the endless hills of this country, 
 we saw legions of small, silver-backed lizards swarming on the 
 calcined rocks, and heard the continual cracking of the broom 
 opening its ripe pods in the sun. 
 
 In the middle of one of these laborious ascents, a voice 
 cried suddenly from the roadside : " Stop, if you please ! " 
 And a tall, bare-legged girl, holding a distaff in her hand, and 
 wearing the antique costume and ducal cap of the peasants of 
 the district, quickly crossed the ditch ; she upset some terrified 
 sheep, whose shepherdess she seemed to be, settled herself on 
 the step, and showed us in the frame of the carriage-window 
 
 19 
 
146 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 her brown, composed, and smiling face. " Excuse me, 
 ladies," she said, in the short, melodious accent which marks 
 the speech of the people of the country, " would you be so 
 kind as to read to me that ? " And she drew from her bosom 
 a letter, folded in the old fashion, 
 
 " Read it. Sir," said Mme. Laroque, laughing, " and read 
 it aloud, if it is possible." 
 
 I took the letter, which was a love-letter. It was very 
 minutely addressed to Mile. Christine Oyadec, Borough of 
 
 , Commune of , Farm of . The writing was 
 
 that of a very uncultivated hand, but one that seemed sincere. 
 The date proclaimed that Mile. Christine had received the 
 missive two or three weeks before ; apparently the poor girl, 
 not being able to read, and not wishing to reveal her secret to 
 the malice of her neighbours, had waited till some passing 
 stranger, both benevolent and instructed, should come and give 
 her the key to the mystery which had burned her bosom for 
 a fortnight. Her widely opened blue eye was fixed on me 
 with a look of inexpressible eagerness, while I painfully deci- 
 phered the slanting lijies of the letter, which was conceived 
 in the following terms : 
 
 " Mademoiselle, this is to tell you that since the day 
 when we spoke together on the moor after vespers, my 
 mind has not changed, and that I am anxious to learn 
 yours ; my heart. Mademoiselle, is all yours, as I desire 
 that yours should be all mine, and if that is the case, you may 
 be very sure and certain that there is not a more loving 
 
 soul on earth or in heaven than your friend , who does 
 
 not sign ; but you know very well who. Mademoiselle." 
 
 " Why, you don't know who, do you Mademoiselle 
 Christine ? " said I, giving her back the letter. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 147 
 
 " Very possibly," she said, showing her white teeth, and 
 gravely shaking her young head, radiant with happiness. 
 " Thank you, ladies, and you. Sir." She jumped down 
 from the step, and soon disappeared in the underwood, 
 flinging towards the sky the joyous and sounding notes of 
 a Breton song. - 
 
 Mme. Laroque had followed with evident delight all 
 the details of this pastoral scene, which sweetly flattered 
 her chimera; she smiled, she dreamed in the presence of 
 that happy bare-footed girl, she was charmed. Still, when 
 Mile. Oyadec was out of sight, a strange idea suddenly came 
 into Mme. Laroque's thoughts : it was that, after all, she 
 would not have done so much amiss to give the shepherdess 
 a five franc piece, besides her admiration. 
 
 " Alain ! " she cried, " call her back ! " 
 
 "What for, mother?" said Mile. Marguerite eagerly, 
 who had hitherto seemed to pay no attention to the 
 occurrence. 
 
 " Why, my child, perhaps the girl does not understand 
 altogether what pleasure I should find, and she herself ought 
 to find, in running about barefoot in the dust : in any case 
 I think it fitting to leave her something to remember 
 me by." 
 
 " Money ! " returned Mile. Marguerite ; " oh ! mother, 
 don't do that ! Don't mix up money with the child's 
 happiness ! " 
 
 This expression of a refined feeling which poor Christine, 
 by the way, would perhaps not have immensely appreciated, 
 did not fail to astonish me, coming from the mouth of 
 Mile. Marguerite, who does not generally pique herself on 
 this quintessence. I even thought that she was joking. 
 
U8 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 although her face showed no inclination to merriment. 
 However that may be, her caprice, joke or no joke, was 
 taken very seriously by her mother, and it was enthusiasti- 
 cally decided that the idyl should be left with its innocence 
 and its bare feet. 
 
 After the display of this fine trait, Mme. Laroque, 
 evidently well pleased with herself, sank back in smiling 
 ecstasy, and Mile. Marguerite went on playing with her 
 fan with redoubled gravity. In another hour we reached 
 the end of our journey. Like the majority of the farms 
 in this country, where the heights and the table land are 
 covered with barren moors, the farm of Langoat is situated 
 in the hollow of a valley traversed by a water-course. The 
 farmer's wife, who was recovering her health, began without 
 delay to prepare the dinner, for which we had taken care 
 to bring the chief ingredients. It was served on the 
 natural turf of a meadow, in the shade of an enormous 
 chestnut. Mme. Laroque, though installed in a vastly 
 inconvenient position on the cushions of the carriage, 
 looked none the less radiant. Our party, she said, reminded 
 her of the groups of reapers we see in summer time, 
 gathering under the shade of a hedge, and whose rustic 
 banquets she could never contemplate without envy. For 
 my part, I might perhaps under other circumstances have 
 found a singular sweetness in the close and easy intimacy 
 which a repast on the grass, like all scenes of the kind, 
 did not fail to establish between the guests ; but I thrust 
 away with painful feelings of self-restraint, a charm too 
 liable to repentance, and the bread of this transient brother- 
 hood seemed bitter to me. 
 
 As we were finishing dinner, Mme. Laroque said to 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 149 
 
 me : " Have you ever been up yonder ? " and pointed to 
 the summit of a very high hill that overlooked the plain. 
 
 "No, Madame." 
 
 " Oh, that is a pity. There is a very fine view from 
 it. You must see it. While they put to the horses. 
 Marguerite will take you there; won't you. Marguerite?" 
 
 " I, mother .? I have been there but once, and that a long 
 time ago. But I shall easily find the way. Come, Sir, and 
 prepare for a rough climb." 
 
 We began at once. Mile, Marguerite and I, to ascend a 
 very steep path that wound along the side of the mountain, 
 passing here and there through a clump of trees. The young 
 girl stopped from time to time in her light and rapid ascent, to 
 look if I was following, and smiled at me without speaking, 
 being a little out of breath with running. On reaching the 
 bare moor, which formed the table-land, I perceived at a little 
 distance a village church, the little belfry standing out with its 
 square edges clear against the sky. " That is the place," said 
 my young guide, walking more swiftly. Behind the church 
 was a walled graveyard. She opened the gate, and made her 
 way with difficulty through the tall grass and trailing brambles 
 that encumbered the field of repose, towards the extremity of 
 it, where there is a kind of semicircular arrangement of steps. 
 Two or three steps, loosened by time, and very strangely 
 ornamented with massive spheres, lead to a narrow platform of 
 the same height as the wall ; a granite cross rises in the centre 
 of the semicircle. 
 
 Mile. Marguerite had no sooner reached the platform and 
 cast a look over the space thus revealed to her, than I saw her 
 place her hands obliquely above her eyes, as if she felt a sudden 
 dizziness. I hastened to join her. The beautiful day, now 
 
I50 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 near its close, lighted up with its dying splendours a vast, 
 strange, and sublime scene, which I shall never forget. Before 
 us, and at an immense depth below our elevation, extended, as 
 far as the eye could reach, a kind of marsh studded with 
 shining spots, and offering the appearance of a world not quite 
 abandoned by a subsiding deluge. This wide bay came right 
 under our feet, into the heart of the hollowed mountains. On 
 the ridges of sand and mud that separated the occasional pools, 
 was a mingled growth of reeds and marine grasses, dyed with a 
 thousand shades, all equally sombre and yet distinct, which 
 contrasted with the brilliant surface of the waters. At each of 
 its rapid steps towards the horizon, the sun illuminated or 
 plunged in shade some of the numberless lakes that speckled 
 the half dried-up bay. It seemed to be drawing from its 
 heavenly casket the most precious things, silver, gold, rubies, 
 and diamonds, to make them sparkle in their turns on every 
 point of the magnificent plain. When the sun touched the 
 bounds of its career, a vaporous and watery band, which skirted 
 in the distance the extreme limit of the marshes, suddenly grew 
 purple with the glare of a conflagration, and preserved for a 
 moment the radiant transparence of a cloud furrowed by the 
 thunderbolt. I was wholly absorbed in contemplating this 
 picture, so truly stamped with the divine greatness, and which 
 was traversed by the memory of Czesar as another ray of light, 
 when a low and apparently stifled voice murmured near me : 
 " O God ! how beautiful it is ! " 
 
 I was far from expecting this sympathetic expression of 
 feeling from my young companion. I turned towards her with 
 the eagerness of surprise, which was not lessened when the 
 change in her features and the slight trembling of her lips 
 attested the deep sincerity of her admiration. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. iS3 
 
 " You confess it is beautiful ! " I said to her. 
 
 She shook her head ; but at the same moment two tears 
 escaped from her large eyes ; she felt them trickling down her 
 cheeks, and made a gesture of vexation ; then, suddenly casting 
 herself upon the granite cross, the base of which served as her 
 foothold, she embraced it with both hands, pressed her head 
 strongly against the stone, and I heard her sob convulsively. 
 
 I thought it my duty not to disturb by a single word the 
 free course of this sudden emotion, and I retreated a few paces 
 with respect. After a moment, seeing her raise her forehead, 
 and arrange with a troubled hand her disordered hair, I drew 
 near again. 
 
 " How ashamed I am ! " she murmured. 
 
 " Be happy rather, and cease, believe me, to seek to dry 
 up the fountain of those tears : for it is sacred. Moreover 
 you will never succeed." 
 
 " I must ! " the young girl cried, with a kind of violence. 
 " And it is done ! This fit was only a surprise. Everything 
 that is beautiful and everything that is lovely I will hate, 
 and I do hate ! " 
 
 " And why, in God's name ? " 
 
 She looked me in the face, and added, with a gesture of 
 unspeakable pride and sorrow, " Because I am beautiful, and 
 yet cannot be loved ! " 
 
 Then, like a long-restrained torrent at length bursting its 
 banks, she went on with extraordinary impetuosity. " Still 
 it is true," and she placed her hand on her breast, " God 
 placed in this heart all the treasures that I mock at, that I 
 blaspheme every hour of the day ! But when He inflicted 
 wealth upon me, alas ! He took back with one hand what 
 He lavished on me with the other. Of what good is my 
 
154 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 beauty, of what good the devotion, the tenderness, the 
 enthusiasm, with which I feel myself consumed ? Ah, it is 
 not these charms to which is paid the homage with which so 
 many villains weary me ! I divine it, I know it — I know it 
 too well! And if ever some disinterested, generous, heroic 
 soul should love me for what I am, and not for what I am 
 worth, I should not believe it. Mistrust always ! That is 
 my penalty, my punishment. And so I am resolved ; I will 
 never love ! Never will I risk the pouring into a vile, 
 unworthy, venal heart the pure passion that burns my heart. 
 My soul shall die a maid within my breast ! Well, I am 
 resigned; but all that is beautiful, all that makes me dream, 
 all that speaks to me of forbidden skies, all that stirs within me 
 a useless flame — I put it away, I hate it, I will none of it ! " 
 She stopped, trembling with emotion ; then, in a lower tone, 
 she added: "I have not sought this moment. Sir; I have not 
 weighed my words ; I had not intended all this confidence for 
 you ; but I have at length spoken, and you know all : and if I 
 may ever have wounded your feelings, I think you will forgive 
 me now." 
 
 She gave me her hand. As my lip touched that warm 
 hand, still wet with tears, a mortal languor seemed to descend 
 into my veins. As for Marguerite, she turned aside her head, 
 fixed her eyes for a moment on the darkened horizon, then, 
 slowly descending the steps, said, " Let us go." 
 
 August 20th. 
 
 A LONGER but easier road than the steep slope of the 
 mountain, brought us back to the farmyard without a single 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 155 
 
 word having been spoken between us. Alas ! what could I 
 have said ? I was more liable to be suspected than another. 
 
 I felt that every word escaped from my too full heart would 
 only have widened still further the distance that separates me 
 from that overshadowed and adorable soul. 
 
 The night had now fallen, and took from our eyes any 
 trace of our common emotion. We set out. Mme. Laroque, 
 after again telling us of the pleasure which she carried away 
 with her from this day, began to dream of it. Mile. 
 Marguerite, invisible and motionless in the thick shade of 
 the carriage, seemed asleep like her mother ; but when a turn 
 in the road allowed a ray of pale brightness to fall on her, her 
 open, fixed eyes proved that she was watching in silence, alone 
 with her inconsolable reflection. For my part, I can hardly 
 tell what I thought : a strange sensation, compounded of deep 
 joy and deep bitterness, had taken entire possession of me, and 
 I gave myself up to it, as we sometimes give ourselves up to a 
 dream of which we are conscious, and of which we have not 
 the strength to shake oif the charm. 
 
 We reached home towards midnight. I got out of the 
 carriage at the beginning of the avenue, in order to reach my 
 apartments by the shorter way across the park. As I was 
 entering a dark path, a slight sound of steps and voices near me 
 struck upon my ear, and I dimly distinguished two shadows in 
 the darkness. The hour was late enough to justify the 
 precaution which I took, of remaining concealed in the thick 
 clump of trees, and observing these two nocturnal marauders. 
 They passed slowly before me : I recognized Mile. Hdlouin, 
 leaning on M. de B6vallan's arm. Just then the roll of the 
 carriage gave them the alarm, and, after a pressure of the 
 hand, they parted hastily. Mile. Hdouin escaping in the 
 
156 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 direction of the chateau, and the other on the side of the 
 wood. 
 
 Returned to my room, and still full of this adventure, I 
 asked myself angrily if I should allow M. de Bdvallan freely to 
 pursue his double-dealing in love matters, and to seek a bride 
 and a mistress at the same time in the same house. I am 
 certainly too much a man of my age and times to feel the 
 vigorous hatred of a Puritan for certain weaknesses, and I have 
 not the hypocrisy to affect it ; but I think that the freest and 
 laxest morality on this point still admits some degrees of 
 dignity, elevation, and delicacy. People walk more or less 
 straight in these by-paths. After all, the excuse for love is 
 loving; and the senseless profusion of tenderness on M. de 
 Bdvallan's part took away all appearance of absorbing passion. 
 Such loves cease to be faults ; they have not enough moral 
 value ; they are nothing but the calculations and wagers of a 
 stupid jockey. 
 
 The various incidents of this evening, standing side by side 
 in my mind, proved satisfactorily to me how utterly unworthy 
 this man was of the hand and heart which he dared to covet. 
 This union would be monstrous. And yet I soon felt that 
 I could not, with the purpose of frustrating his designs, make 
 use of the weapons which chance had just furnished to me. 
 The best of ends cannot justify vile means, and there is nothing 
 honourable in any kind of tale-bearing. This marriage will 
 take place, then ! Heaven will allow one of the noblest 
 creatures it has ever formed, to fall into the arms of this 
 cold libertine ! It will permit this profanation ! Alas, it 
 permits so many others ! 
 
 I then sought to discover by what process of false reasoning 
 this young girl had chosen this man from among all. I think 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 157 
 
 I hit upon it. M. de Bdvallan is very rich : he will bring a 
 fortune almost equal to that which he will receive ; that seems 
 a kind of guarantee : he could dispense with this increase of 
 riches, and he is presumed to be more disinterested than others, 
 because he is less needy. A melancholy argument ! What a 
 boundless disdain, to estimate characters by the degree of their 
 venality ! Three quarters of the time, greediness swells 
 with wealth ; and the poorest people are not the greatest 
 beggars ! 
 
 But was there no appearance that Mile. Marguerite might 
 be able to open her eyes of herself to the unworthiness of her 
 choice, and to find, in some secret prompting of her own heart, 
 the advice which it was forbidden me to suggest to her .? 
 Might there not suddenly spring up in that heart, some new, 
 unexpected feeling, which should extinguish the vain deter- 
 minations of reason, and annihilate them ? Was not this very 
 feeling already born there ? And had I not received irrefragable 
 proof of it ? So many strange caprices, hesitations, combats, 
 and tears, of which I had for some time been the occasion or 
 the witness, undoubtedly announced a reason that was wavering 
 and far from master of itself. I was no longer sufficiently 
 fresh to life to be unaware that a scene, like that of which 
 chance made me on that very evening the confidant, and almost 
 the accomplice — however unpremeditated it may be — does not 
 burst forth in an atmosphere of indifference. Such emotions, 
 and such convulsions, presuppose two souls already troubled 
 by a kindred tempest, or about to be so. 
 
 But if it were true, if she loved me, as it was already too 
 certain that I loved her, I might say of this love as she said of 
 her beauty, " Of what good is it ? " For I could not hope 
 that it would ever have strength enough to triumph over the 
 
THE ROAIAN'CE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 eternal mistrust which is the fault and the virtue of this noble 
 girl; a mistrust, the insult of which my character, 1 venture to 
 say, repels ; but which my situation, more than any other, is 
 calculated to inspire. Between this terrible gloom and the 
 reserve that it imposes on me, what miracle could fill up the 
 abyss ? And even should this miracle be interposed, should she 
 
 condescend to oiTer me that hand for which I would give my 
 life, but which I will never ask, would our union be happy ? 
 Shall I not have to fear, sooner or later, some dim revival of 
 ill-repressed mistrust in that restless imagination ? Could T 
 defend myself from all painful after-thought in the midst of 
 borrowed riches ? Could I enjoy without uneasiness a love 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 159 
 
 that was tainted by a benefit? Our part of protection towards 
 women is so formally imposed on us by every feeling of honour, 
 that it cannot be inverted for a single moment, even in all 
 honesty, without some shade of doubt or suspicion being spread 
 about us. In truth, riches are not so great an advantage that 
 they can have nothing set against them in this world, and I 
 suppose that a man who brings to his wife, in exchange, 
 certain bags of gold, a name which he has made famous, 
 eminent deserts, a high position, or a future, need not be 
 overwhelmed with gratitude ; but as for me, my hands are 
 empty, my future is no more than my present ; of all the 
 advantages which the world appreciates, I have but one, my 
 title ; and I should be very determined not to bear it, so that 
 it might not be said it was the price of the bargain. In short, 
 I should be receiving everything and giving nothing ; a king 
 may marry a shepherdess, it is generous and pleasing, and he 
 may safely be congratulated on it ; but a shepherd who should 
 allow himself to be married to a queen, that would not look 
 quite so well. 
 
 I have passed the whole night in revolving all these matters 
 in my poor brain, and in seeking for a conclusion which is yet 
 to seek. Perhaps I ought without delay to leave this house 
 and this country. Wisdom would have it so. All this can 
 come to no good end. What mortal vexation we should often 
 spare ourselves by a single minute's courage and decision ! I 
 ought at any rate to be overwhelmed with sorrow; I never 
 had so fine an opportunity. Well, I cannot do it ! In the 
 depth of my confounded and tortured mind lies a thought 
 which prevails over everything, and fills me with superhuman 
 gladness. My soul is as light as a bird of the air. I incessantly 
 see, I always shall see, that little graveyard, that distant 
 
l6o THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 sea, that boundless horizon, and on that radiant summit 
 that angel of beauty, bathed in divine tears ! I still feel 
 her hand beneath my lip ; I feel her tears in my eyes, in 
 my heart ! I love her ! Well, to-morrow, if need be, I 
 will make a resolution. Till then, for God's sake, let me 
 be left in quiet. It is long since I have abused happiness. 
 It may be that I shall die of this love ; I wish to live 
 peacefully with it one whole day ! 
 
r- 
 
 *^^v. 
 
 
 "^^%ik*^' 
 
 :.-^C 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 August 26t/i. 
 
 Th-\t day, that single 
 day which I besought, was 
 notgnen tome. My sliort 
 weakness had not long to 
 w ait for Its expiation, which 
 will be a long one. How 
 had I foi gotten it.? In the 
 moial, as in the physical 
 order, there are laws which we never transgress with impunity, 
 
l62 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 and whose certain effects form in this world the permanent 
 intervention of what we call Providence. A weak and 
 great man, writing with an almost insensate hand the 
 gospel of a sage, said of those very passions which formed 
 his wretchedness, his opprobrium, and his genius : " All 
 passions are good, when you remain master of them ; all 
 are bad, when you let them hold you in subjection." What 
 is forbidden us by nature is, to extend our attachments 
 beyond our strength ; what is forbidden us by reason is, 
 to wish for what we cannot obtain ; what is forbidden us 
 by conscience is, not to be tempted, but to let ourselves 
 be overcome by temptation. To have passions, or not to 
 have them, does not depend on us ; it depends on us to 
 govern them. All feelings of which we have the mastery 
 are lawful ; all those which have the mastery of us are 
 criminal. 
 
 Set thy heart only on the beauty which does not perish ; 
 let thy condition limit thy desires ; let thy duties go before 
 thy passions ; extend the law of necessity to moral things ; 
 learn what may be taken away from thee ; learn to leave 
 all when virtue bids it ! Yes, such is the law ; I knew 
 it; I violated it; I am punished. Nothing more just. 
 
 I had scarcely set foot in the clouds of this mad love, when 
 I was violently hurled down, and I have hardly regained, after 
 five days, the necessary courage to relate the almost ridiculous 
 circumstances of my fall. Mme. I.aroque and her daughter 
 had gone in the morning to pay a fresh visit to Mme. de Saint 
 Cast, and then to bring back Mme. Aubry. I found Mile. 
 Helouin alone at the chateau. I brought her a quarter's 
 salary ; for though my duties leave me in general an entire 
 stranger to the interior management and discipline of the house. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 163 
 
 the ladies desired, doubtless out of consideration for Mile. 
 Caroline and for me, that her moneys and mine should be an 
 exception, and be paid by my hand. The young lady was in 
 the little boudoir adjoining the drawing-room. She received 
 me with a pensive sweetness that touched me. I felt just then 
 that fulness of heart which disposes one to trustfulness and 
 kindness. I resolved, like a true Don Quixote, to extend a 
 helping hand to the poor isolated girl. " Mademoiselle," I 
 said suddenly, " you have withdrawn your friendship from me, 
 but mine has remained entirely true to you ; will you let me 
 give you a proof of it ? " 
 
 She looked at me, and murmured a timid yes. 
 
 " Well, my poor child, you are ruining yourself." 
 
 She rose abruptly. " You saw me that night in the 
 park ? " she cried. 
 
 "Yes, Mademoiselle." 
 
 She took a step towards me, and said : " Monsieur 
 Maxime, I swear to you that I am an honest girl ! " 
 
 " I believe it, Mademoiselle ; but I am bound to tell you 
 that in this little romance, very innocent doubtless on your 
 part, but perhaps less so on the other side, you are very 
 seriously risking your honour and your peace. I beg you to 
 think of it, and I beg you at the same time to be very well 
 assured that no one save yourself shall ever hear a word on the 
 subject from my mouth." 
 
 I was going to withdraw; she sank on her knees near a 
 sofa, and burst out sobbing, her forehead resting on my 
 hand, which she had taken. I had but a short while ago seen 
 more beautiful and worthier tears flow ; but still 1 was moved. 
 " Let us see, my dear young lady," I said ; " it is not too late, 
 is it ? " She shook her head strongly. " Well, my dear child. 
 
i64 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 take courage. We shall come out of it all right. What can 
 I do for you, tell me ? Is there in this man's hands any 
 pledge, any token, that I can demand of him for you ? Com- 
 mand my services as if I were your brother." 
 
 She gave up my hand angrily. " Ah, how hard you are ! " 
 she said. "You speak of saving me ; it is you who are ruining 
 me ! After pretending to love me, you repelled me ; you have 
 driven me to humiliation and despair. You are the sole cause 
 of whatever happens ! " 
 
 "Mademoiselle, you are not just; I never pretended to 
 love you ; I had a very sincere affection for you, which I still 
 feel. I confess that your beauty, your wit, and your talents, 
 give you a perfect right to expect from those who live near you 
 something more than brotherly friendship ; but my position in 
 the world, and the family duties that devolve on me, did not 
 allow me to pass that limit with you without failing in 
 uprightness. I tell you plainly I think you are charming, and 
 I assure you that in restraining my feelings towards you within 
 the bounds that my duty prescribed, I was not without merit. 
 I see nothing so humiliating to you in that. Mademoiselle ; it 
 might much more justly humiliate you to be very resolutely 
 loved by a man who is very resolute not to marry you." 
 
 She gave me a malicious look. " What do you know about 
 it ? All men are not fortune-hunters." 
 
 " Ah ! do you happen to be a malicious little lady. Mile. 
 Helouin ? " I said very calmly. " That being the case, I have 
 the honour to wish you good-bye." 
 
 " Monsieur Maxime ! " she cried, suddenly rushing forward 
 to stop me. " Forgive me ! Have pity on me ! Alas ! under- 
 stand me, I am so unhappy ! Picture to yourself what can be 
 the thoughts of a poor creature like me, cruelly endowed with 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 165 
 
 a heart, a soul, an intellect, and who can use them all only to 
 
 suffer and to hate ! What is my life ? what is my future ? 
 
 My life is the feeling of my poverty, continually strengthened 
 
 by all the refinements of the luxury that surrounds me ? My 
 
 future will be regret .and bitter weeping some day for even 
 
 this life, this slave's life, odious as it is ! You speak of my 
 
 youth, my wit, my talents. Ah, would that I had never any 
 
 other talent than that of breaking stones on the road ! I 
 
 should be happier. My talents ! I shall have passed the 
 
 best of my life in adorning another woman with them, that 
 
 she might become beautiful, and yet more adored and more 
 
 insolent. And when the purest of my blood shall have passed 
 
 into the veins of this doll, she will go away on the arm of a 
 
 happy husband, to take her part in the fairest scenes of life ; 
 
 while I alone, old and neglected, shall go and die in some 
 
 corner, with the pension of a lady's maid. What have I done 
 
 to heaven, to destiny, tell me ? Why is it I, rather than these 
 
 women ? Am I not as good as they are ? If I am bad, it is 
 
 unhappiness, it is injustice that has ulcerated my soul. I was 
 
 born like them, perhaps more than they, to be good, loving, 
 
 and charitable. Oh, benefits cost so little when one is rich, 
 
 and benevolence is easy to those who are happy ! If I were 
 
 in their place, and they in mine, they, they would hate me — 
 
 as I hate them ! You cannot love your masters ? Ah, what I 
 
 tell you is horrible, is it not ? I know it well, and that is what 
 
 undoes me. I feel my abject position, and blush at it; and I 
 
 keep it ! Alas ! you will despise me now more than ever. Sir ; 
 
 you whom I should have loved so much, if you had allowed 
 
 it! you who might* have restored to me all that I have lost, 
 
 hope, peace, goodness, self-respect ! Ah, there was a moment 
 
 when I thought myself saved, when I had for the first time a 
 
i66 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 thought of happiness, of a future, of pride. Unhappy that I 
 am ! " She had seized my two hands ; she bowed her head 
 upon them, her long curls floating round it, and wept madly. 
 
 " My dear child," I said to her, " I understand better than 
 any one the annoyance and bitterness of your condition : but 
 let me tell you that you add to it greatly by cherishing in 
 your heart the melancholy feelings which you have just 
 expressed to me. All this is very ugly. I will not conceal it 
 from you, and you will end by deserving the full rigour of 
 your destiny ; but come, your imagination exaggerates its 
 rigour strangely. At present, whatever you may say about it, 
 you are treated here on the footing of a friend ; and I see 
 nothing in the future to hinder you from leaving this house on 
 the arm of a happy husband. As for myself, I shall all my 
 life be grateful to you for your afi^ection ; but I wish to tell you 
 once more, for the last time on this subject, that I have duties 
 to which I belong, and I will not and cannot marry." 
 
 She looked at me suddenly. " Not even Marguerite ? " 
 she said. 
 
 " I do not see what Mile. Marguerite's name has to 
 do here." 
 
 She threw back, with one hand her hair, which was over- 
 spreading her countenance, and stretching the other towards 
 me with a menacing gesture, she said in a dull voice : " You 
 love her ! or rather you love her fortune ; but you shall not 
 have it ! " 
 
 " Mademoiselle Helouin ! " 
 
 " Ah," she continued, " you are pretty much of a child, 
 if you thought to deceive a woman who had the madness to 
 love you ! I can read your manoeuvres plainly, I warn you. 
 Besides, know who you are. I was not far off when 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 167 
 
 Mile, de Porhoet repeated to Mme. Laroque your wily 
 confidence " 
 
 " What ! you listen at doors, Mademoiselle ! " 
 
 " I care little for your insults. Moreover, I will avenge 
 myself, and that soon. Ah, you are certainly very clever. 
 Monsieur de Champcey, and I offer you my compliments 
 upon it. You have played beautifully the little part of 
 disinterestedness and reserve, that your friend Laubepin did 
 not fail to i-ecommend to you when he sent you here. He 
 knew with whom you had to do He knew well enough the 
 absurd mania of this beautiful girl ! You think you have 
 already secured your prey, don't you ? Some good millions, 
 of which the. source is more or less pure, they say, but 
 which would still do very well to put fresh plaster on a 
 Marquisate, and fresh gilding on an escutcheon. Well, 
 you may give up the idea from this moment ; for I swear 
 that you shall not wear your mask another day, and this 
 is the hand that shall tear it off." 
 
 " Mademoiselle Helouin, it is high time to put an end 
 to this scene, for we are bordering on the melodramatic. 
 You have made it a fair game for me to forestal you in 
 the field of tale-bearing and calumny; but you can descend 
 into it in full security, for I give you my word that I shall 
 not follow you there. And so, your servant." 
 
 I left the unhappy creature with a deep feeling of disgust, 
 but also of pity. Although I had always suspected that the 
 best endowed organization might, in the very proportion of its 
 gifts, be irritated and distorted in the equivocal and mortifying 
 position that Mile. Helouin holds here, my imagination had 
 not been able to sound the abyss of gall just opened before 
 my eyes. Certainly, when you think of it, you can hardly 
 
l68 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 conceive a kind of life that subjects a human soul to more 
 venomous temptations, that is more capable of developing 
 and sharpening in one's heart the covetousness of envy, of 
 raising the revolt of pride at every moment, of exasperating 
 all the natural vanities and jealousies of a woman. It can- 
 not be doubted that the greatest number of the unhappy girls 
 whose destitution or talents have set them apart for this 
 employment, so honourable in itself, escape by the moderation 
 of their feelings, or, with God's help, by the firmness of their 
 principles, the lamentable emotions against which Mile. 
 Helouin has not been able to secure herself; but the trial 
 is terrible. For my own part, the thought had sometimes 
 occurred to me that my sister might be destined by our 
 misfortunes to enter some rich family as a governess ; and 
 I now took an oath, whatever future might be in store for 
 us, rather to share with Helen in the poorest garret the 
 bitterest bread of toil, than ever to allow her to sit down at 
 the poisoned banquet of this wealthy and hateful servitude. 
 
 Still, if I was firmly determined to leave a clear field to 
 Mile. Helouin, and on no account to enter myself into the 
 recriminations of a degrading contest, I could not look with- 
 out disquiet at the probable consequences of the war which 
 had been declared against me. I was plainly threatened in 
 everything where I am most sensitive, in my love and in my 
 honour. Possessed of the secret of my life and the secret of 
 my heart, mingling truth and falsehood with the skill of her 
 sex. Mile. Helouin could easily present my conduct under a 
 suspicious light, and turn against me the very precautions, the 
 very instincts of my delicacy, so as to lend to my simplest 
 proceedings the colour of premeditated intrigue. It was 
 impossible for me to know exactly what turn her malevolence 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 169 
 
 would take ; but I trusted in her, and was certain she would 
 make no mistake in the choice of her means. She knew 
 better than any one the weak points of the imaginations she 
 wished to impress. She possessed, over the minds of Mile. 
 Marguerite and her mother, the natural power of dissimulation 
 over frankness, of cunning over candour ; she enjoyed with 
 them all the confidence that arises from long habit and daily 
 intimacy, and her masters, as she called them, were far from 
 suspecting, under the exterior of graceful amiability and 
 obsequious attention, in which she wraps herself with con- 
 summate art, the existence of the frenzied pride and ingratitude 
 that are preying upon that wretched soul. It was too probable 
 that so sure and skilful a hand would pour its poison with full 
 success into hearts thus prepared for it. It is true Mile. 
 Helouin might be afraid, in yielding to her resentment, of 
 placing Mile. Marguerite's hand once more in that of M. de 
 Bevallan, and of hastening forward a marriage that would be 
 the ruin of her own ambition ; but I knew that a woman's 
 hatred calculates nothing, and risks everything. I expected 
 then the promptest and blindest of vengeance on her part, 
 and I was right. 
 
 I passed in painful anxiety the hours that I had intended 
 for sweeter thoughts. All the poignancy that dependence can 
 cause in a proud heart, all the bitterness that suspicion can 
 cause in an upright conscience, all the pain that contempt can 
 cause in a loving heart,— I felt it all. In my worst days, my 
 cup of adversity had never been more full. Still I tried to 
 work as usual. Towards five o'clock I went to the chateau. 
 The ladies had returned in the afternoon. I found in the 
 drawing-room Mile. Marguerite, Mme. Aubry, and M. de 
 Bevallan, with two or three passing guests. Mile. Marguerite 
 
170 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 seemed not to notice my presence ; she continued conversing 
 with M. de Bevallan in an animated tone unusual to her. 
 They were speaking of an extempore ball that was to take place 
 that very evening at a neighbouring chateau. She was to go 
 there with her mother, and she pressed M. de Bevallan to 
 accompany them ; he excused himself on the ground that he 
 had left home in the morning before receiving the invitation, 
 and that his dress was not suitable. Mile. Marguerite persisted 
 with an affectionate, eager coquettishness, at which he himself 
 seemed surprised ; and told him that he certainly still had time 
 to go back home, dress, and return to take them. A nice little 
 dinner should be kept for him. M. de Bevallan objected that 
 all his carriage horses were sick, and that he could not come 
 on horseback in ball dress. " Well, then ! " Mile. Marguerite 
 returned, " you shall be driven in the buggy." At the same 
 time she, for the first time, turned her eyes towards me, and 
 covering me with a look in which I saw the thunderbolt 
 breaking out, she said in a short, commanding tone, " Monsieur 
 Odiot, go and tell them to put to the horse ! " 
 
 This servile order was so different from those usually 
 addressed to me here, and from what I may be thought 
 disposed to obey, that the attention and curiosity of the 
 most indifferent were immediately aroused. There was an 
 embarrassed silence. M. de Bevallan cast an astonished 
 glance on Mile. Marguerite, then looked at me, assumed a 
 serious look, and rose. If they looked for any mad display 
 of anger, they were deceived. True, the insulting words 
 which had just fallen on my ear, from so beautiful, so 
 beloved, and so barbarous a mouth, had penetrated with 
 the chill of death to the deepest fountains of my life ; and 
 I doubt -whether a blade of steel, finding its way through 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 173 
 
 my heart, would have caused me a worse sensation ; but I 
 was never so calm. The bell which Mme. Laroque is in 
 the habit of using, to summon her attendants, was on a 
 table within my reach ; I pressed my finger on the spring. 
 A servant entered almost immediately. I believe I said to 
 him : 
 
 " Mile. Marguerite has some orders to give you." 
 
 At these words, which she heard in a kind of stupor, 
 the young girl violently made a sign in the negative with 
 her head, and dismissed the servant. I made great haste to 
 leave the room, for I was stifling there ; but I could not 
 withdraw before the attitude of provocation which M. de 
 Bevallan then assumed. 
 
 " Upon my word," he muttered, " this is something very 
 peculiar." 
 
 I pretended not to hear him. Mile. Marguerite said two 
 words abruptly to him in a whisper. 
 
 *' I bow to your wish, Mademoiselle," he returned in a 
 higher tone ; " only allow me to express the regret which 
 I feel at not having the right to interfere." 
 
 I immediately rose. " Monsieur de Bevallan," I said, 
 standing within two paces of him, " that regret is quite 
 superfluous, for if I did not think it my duty to obey 
 Mademoiselle's orders, I am entirely at yours, and I shall 
 await them." 
 
 " Very well. Sir, very well, nothing better," replied M. 
 de Bevallan, gracefully waving his hand to reassure the 
 women. 
 
 We bowed to each other, and I went out. 
 
 I dined alone in my tower, waited on as usual by poor 
 Alain, whom the rumours of the servants' hall had doubt- 
 
174 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 less informed of what had taken place; for he did not 
 cease to fix upon me piteous looks, heaving deep sighs at 
 intervals, and, contrary to his custom, keeping a gloomy 
 silence. Only, in reply to my question, he informed me 
 that the ladies had decided not to go to the ball that 
 evening. 
 
 My brief repast over, I set my papers in a little order, 
 and wrote two words to M. Laubepin. Under any circum- 
 stances, I recommended Helen to his care. The idea of 
 the neglect in which I should leave her, in case of 
 accident, wounded my heart, without shaking the least in 
 the world my immovable principles. I may be wrong, but I 
 have always thought that, in our modern society, honour 
 is at the top of the whole hierarchy of duties. It supplies 
 the place nowadays of so many half obliterated virtues in 
 men's consciences, so many half dead beliefs ; it plays in 
 the present condition of society, so much the part of a 
 guardian deity, that it will never enter my mind to weaken 
 its rights, to discuss its decrees, or to lower its obligations. 
 Honour, in its indefinite character, is something superior 
 to law and morality : we do not reason it out, we feel 
 it. It is a religion; If we no longer have the foolish- 
 ness of the cross, let us keep the foolishness of honour ! 
 
 Moreover, there is no feeling deeply planted in the 
 human soul, that is not sanctioned by reason, if you think 
 of it. Better at all hazards is a daughter or a wife 
 alone in the world, than protected by a brother or a 
 husband dishonoured. 
 
 I was every moment expecting a message from M. de 
 Bevallan. I was preparing to call upon the collector of 
 the borough, who is a young officer, wounded in the 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 175 
 
 Crimea, and to ask his aid, when some one knocked at 
 my door. It was M. de Bevallan himself who came in. 
 His countenance expressed, with a sUght shade of embarrass- 
 ment, a sort of open, joyful good-humour. 
 
 " Sir," he said, while I looked at him with a very 
 lively surprise, " this is a somewhat irregular proceeding ; 
 but, upon my word, I have seen service which puts my 
 courage above suspicion, thank God ! On the other hand, 
 I have occasion to feel this evening a happiness which 
 leaves no room for hostility or rancour. Lastly, I am 
 obeying orders which must now be more sacred to me 
 than ever. In short, I come to give you my hand." 
 
 I bowed gravely, and took his hand. 
 
 " Now," said he, taking a seat, " here I am very much 
 at my ease to discharge the duties of my embassy. Mile. 
 Marguerite, Sir, just now, in a moment of abstraction, gave 
 you some instructions which certainly were not proper for 
 your position. Your feelings were very justly hurt, we 
 acknowledge ; and the ladies have charged me to make 
 you accept their regret. They would be in despair if 
 this momentary mistake should deprive them of your good 
 offices, of which they appreciate the full value, and should 
 dissolve a relation on which they set an infinite price. 
 For myself. Sir, I have this evening acquired, to my 
 great joy, the right to join my request to that of the 
 ladies : the wishes I long ago formed, have just been 
 gratified, and I shall be personally obliged to you if you 
 will not mingle with the happy recollections of this 
 evening the recollection of a separation which would be 
 at once prejudicial and painful to the family into which 
 I have the honour to enter." 
 
176 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 " Sir," said I, " I cannot but be very sensible to the 
 testimony which you are so good as to give me, in the name 
 of those ladies and in your own. You will forgive me if I 
 do not at once reply by a formal determination, which 
 would require more freedom of mind than I can yet 
 feel." 
 
 " You will at least allow me," said M de Bevallan, " to 
 carry away a good hope. Come, Sir, as the opportunity 
 now offers, let us break for ever any shadow of coolness 
 that may have existed between us. For my own part, I 
 am strongly disposed that way. In the first place, Mme. 
 Laroque, though without giving up a secret that does not 
 belong to her, has not left me unaware that the most 
 honourable circumstances are concealed under the species 
 of mystery with which you surround yourself. Then I 
 owe you gratitude on my own account : I know that you were 
 recently consulted on the subject of my pretensions to the 
 hand of Mile. Laroque, and that I can flatter myself on 
 your estimate of me." 
 
 " Indeed, Sir, I do not think I have deserved — " 
 
 " Oh ! I know," he returned, laughing, " that you 
 were not insanely fluent in my favour ; but at any rate you 
 did me no harm. I even admit that you gave proof of 
 true sagacity. You said that if Mile. Marguerite would 
 not be absolutely happy with me, she would not be unhappy 
 either. Now the prophet Daniel could not have spoken 
 better. The fact is, that the dear child would not be absolutely 
 happy with any one, because she could not find in the whole 
 world a husband who would speak to her in verse from 
 morning to night. There are none such ! I am not a 
 man of that calibre, any more than another, I admit; but. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 177 
 
 as you in fact did me the honour to say, I am an upright 
 man. When we know each other better, you will certainly 
 have no doubt of it. I am not a wicked devil ; I am a 
 good sort of fellow. Good heavens, I have my faults ; 
 above all I have had them ! I have loved pretty women, 
 — there, I cannot deny it ! But what ! that is a proof that 
 one has a good heart. Besides I am now in port; and I 
 am even delighted at it ; because — between ourselves — I 
 was beginning to grow a little rusty. In short, for the 
 future I will think of nothing but my wife and children. 
 Therefore I conclude with you, that Marguerite will be 
 perfectly happy, that is to say, as much as she can be 
 in this world, with a head like hers : for I am sure I 
 shall be charming, I shall refuse her nothing, and even 
 anticipate her wishes. But if she were to ask me for the 
 moon and stars, I cannot go and hook them down to 
 please her, the thing is impossible ! And so, my dear 
 friend, your hand once more ! " 
 
 I gave it to him. He rose. " There, I hope you will 
 stay with us now. Come, clear that forehead of yours a 
 little. We will make your life as agreeable as can be ; but, 
 devil take it, you must help a little ! You take pleasure 
 in your sadness. You live, if you will allow me the expres- 
 sion, exactly like an owl. You are a kind of Spaniard 
 that one never sees ! Shake off this, come ! You are 
 young, and a handsome fellow ; you have wit and talents ; 
 take advantage of all these things somewhat. Come, why 
 should you not pay some court to little Hdouin ? It 
 would amuse you. She is agreeable, and would do 
 very well. But, the deuce ! I am somewhat forgetting 
 my promotion to high dignities ! Well, good-bye, 
 
 23 
 
■ cK.i11 c-ee vou to-aiori-ow, shall 
 
 Monsieur Maxime ; we shall see yo 
 
 we not? " 
 
 " To-morrow, certainly." ^^ ^^- 
 
 And this upright man-who, on his side, is a 
 And tnis up j, reflections. 
 
 Spaniard that one otten sees -kit me y 
 
October \st. 
 
 A SINGULAR occurrence ! Althou(i;h 
 its consequences have been hitherto none of the happiest, it 
 has done me tjood. After the rude blow tliat had struck, I 
 remained as il^ stunned with grief. This has at least restored 
 to me the feeling of existence, and for the first time in 
 three long weeks, I have the courage to open these sheets, 
 and take up my pen again. 
 
 Every satisfaction being given me, I thought I had no 
 
l8o THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAX. 
 
 longer any cause to throw up, at least abruptly, a position 
 with advantages that after all are necessary to me, and for 
 which I should have great difficulty in finding an equivalent 
 at a day's notice. The prospect of the merely personal 
 sufferings which remained to be met, and which I had 
 moreover brought on myself by my own weakness, could 
 not authorize me to flee from duties in which my own 
 interests are not the ones concerned. Besides, I did not 
 mean Mile. Marguerite to be able to interpret my sudden 
 retreat as vexation at losing a rich match, and I made it a 
 point of honour to show an impassible front, even to the 
 steps of the altar; as for the heart, she should not see that. 
 Briefly, I contented myself with writing word to M. Laubepin 
 that certain aspects of my situation might at any moment 
 become unendurable, and that I was eagerly desirous for 
 some less highly paid, and more independent employment. 
 
 The next day I presented myself at the chateau, where 
 M. de Bevallan welcomed me cordially. I saluted the ladies 
 as naturally as I could. Of course there was no explanation. 
 Mme. Laroque seemed to me agitated and pensive ; Mile. 
 Marguerite a little excited still, but polite. As for Mile. 
 Hdlouin, she was very pale, and kept her eyes bent on 
 her embroidery. The poor girl had not cause to con- 
 gratulate herself excessively on the final result of her 
 diplomacy. True, she tried from time to time to dart at 
 the triumphant M. de Bevallan a look full of disdain, and 
 threatening; but in that stormy atmosphere, which would 
 have tolerably discomposed a novice, M. de Bevallan breathed, 
 moved, and flew about with the most perfect composure. 
 This supreme self-command plainly irritated Mile. Helouin, 
 but at the same time it subdued her. Still, but for the 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. i8l 
 
 risk of ruining herself along with her accomplice, I do 
 not doubt she would have done him immediately, and with 
 more justice, a service similar to that with which she had 
 obliged me the day before ; but it was probable that, by 
 yielding to her jealous rage and confessing her ungrateful 
 duplicity, she would only ruin herself, and she had sense 
 enough to see it. M. de Bdvallan, in fact, was not the 
 man to have pushed an affair with her, without reserving 
 for himself a strict defence, which he would use with 
 merciless coolness. Mile. Hdlouin might say to herself with 
 truth that they had yesterday believed, on her bare word, her 
 otherwise lying accusations ; but she was not unaware that a lie 
 which flatters or wounds the heart, finds credence more readily 
 than a truth that is a matter of indifference. She resigned 
 herself therefore, not, I suppose, without feeling bitterly that 
 the weapons of treason sometimes turn against the hand 
 that uses them. 
 
 Throughout that and the following days I was subjected 
 to a kind of torture which I had foreseen, but of which I had 
 not been able to calculate all the bitter details. The marriage 
 was fixed to take place in a month. All the preparations had 
 to be made in haste and without delay. Mme. Prevcst's 
 bouquets came regularly every morning. The laces, stuffs, 
 and jewels then flowed in, and were exhibited every evening 
 in the drawing-room before the eyes of busy and jealous 
 friends. I was obliged to give my opinion and advice on 
 everything. Mlle^ Marguerite asked for them with a sort of 
 cruel affectation. I obeyed with a good grace ; then returned 
 to my tower, and taking from a secret drawer the little torn 
 handkerchief that I had saved at the peril of my life, I wiped 
 my eyes with it. Still this weakness! But what can I do? 
 
i82 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 I love her ! Treachery, enmity, irreparable misunderstandings, 
 her pride and my own, separate us for ever : be it so ! but 
 nothing shall hinder my heart from being full of her in life 
 and death. 
 
 Meanwhile, a mocking demon whispered in my ear, 
 that, according to all the foresight of human wisdom. 
 Marguerite would find more peace and real happiness in 
 the moderate friendship of a reasonable husband, than she 
 could have met with in the passionate attachment of the 
 romantic lover. Is it then true .? Is it then possible ? I 
 do not believe it ! She will have peace ; good ! but after 
 all, peace is not the last word of life, not the highest 
 symbol of happiness. If absence of suffering and petri- 
 faction of the heart sufficed to make one happy, too many 
 people would be happy, who do not deserve it. By dint 
 of prosaic reasoning, we come at last to slander God, and to 
 degrade His work. God gives peace to the dead, passion 
 to the living. Yes, there is in life, by the side of the 
 vulgarity of common and daily interests, from which I am 
 not childish enough to pretend to escape, there is poetry 
 allowed — what do I say ? — commanded ! It is the part 
 of the soul that is endowed with immortality. This soul 
 must of necessity feel itself and arouse itself at times, were 
 it by transports that go beyond reality, were it by aspira- 
 tions that go beyond possibility, were it by tempests or by 
 tears. Yes, there is a suffering more valuable than happiness^ 
 or rather, which is happiness itself; the suffering of a living 
 creature which knows all the troubles of the heart and all 
 the phantasms of the brain, ands hares in these noble tortures 
 with a steadfast heart and kindred thoughts ! There lies 
 the romance which every one has the right, and, to speak 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 183 
 
 plainly, the duty to work out in his life, if he bears the 
 name of man and wishes to prove his claim to it. To 
 return : this much boasted peace itself, the poor child will not 
 possess. Let the marriage of two sluggish hearts and two 
 frozen imaginations beget the repose of annihilation, I am 
 quite willing ; but the union of life and death cannot be 
 maintained without horrible constraint and perpetual lacer- 
 ation. 
 
 In the midst of this internal misery, which redoubled 
 in intensity every day, I found a little relief only with my poor 
 and aged friend. Mile, de Porhoet. She did not know, 
 or pretended not to know, the state of my heart ; but, in 
 veiled allusions, perhaps unintended, she passed lightly over 
 my bleeding wounds the delicate and skilful hand of a 
 woman. There is moreover in that soul, living emblem 
 as it is of sacrifice and resignation, and already seeming 
 to hover above the earth, a seclusion, a calmness, and a 
 gentle firmness which communicated themselves to me. 
 It made me understand her harmless mania, and even join 
 in it with a sort of childishness. Leaning over my sketch- 
 book, I shut myself up with her for long hours in her 
 cathedral, and 1 breathed in it for a moment the vague 
 odours of an ideal serenity. 
 
 "Nevertheless, as the fatal time drew near, Mile. 
 Marguerite lost the feverish vivacity which had seemed 
 to animate her from the day on which the marriage had 
 been definitely arranged. She fell back, at least now and 
 then, into her old familiar attitude of passive indolence 
 and gloomy dreaming. I even caught her looks once or 
 twice fixed on me with a kind of unusual perplexity. Mme. 
 Laroque, on her part, often looked at me with an air of 
 
i84 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 disquiet and indecision, as if she at the same time wished 
 and feared to enter on some painful subject of conversation 
 with me. The day before yesterday, I happened to be alone 
 with her in the drawing-room. Mile. Helouin having suddenly 
 gone out to give some order. The indifferent talk, in which 
 we were engaged, ceased in a moment, as if by a secret 
 agreement ; after a short silence Mme. Laroque said to me, 
 in a searching tone : " You place your confidences very 
 badly. Sir!" 
 
 " My confidences, Madame ! I cannot understand you. 
 Apart from Mile, de Porhoet, no one here has received 
 from me the shadow of a confidence." 
 
 " Alas ! " she returned, " I wish to think so, I do think 
 so ; but that is not enough ! " 
 
 At that moment Mile. Helouin came back, and all 
 was said. 
 
 The following day, yesterday, I had gone out riding in 
 the morning to overlook the cutting of some wood in the 
 neighbourhood. Towards four in the afternoon I was 
 returning in the direction of the ch&.teau, when, at an abrupt 
 turn in the road, I found myself suddenly face to face 
 with Mile. Marguerite. She was alone. I was going to 
 pass her with a bow; but she stopped her horse. 
 
 "A fine autumnal day. Sir," she said. 
 
 " Yes, Mademoiselle. You are taking a ride ? " 
 
 " As you see. I am using my last days of independence, 
 and even abusing them, for I feel a little embarrassed by 
 my loneliness. But Alain was wanted yonder. My poor 
 Mervyn is lame. You will not take his place perhaps ? " 
 
 " With pleasure. Where are you going ? " 
 
 " Why I almost had the idea of going as far as Elven 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 185 
 
 Tower." She pointed out with the end of her whip a 
 misty hill-top that rose on the right of the road. " I 
 think," she added, "you have never made the pilgrimage ? " 
 
 " That is true. I have often been tempted, but have 
 always put it off, I don't know why." 
 
 "Well, that will do perfectly; but it is already late, and 
 we must make haste a little, if you please." 
 
 I turned my bridle, and we set off at a gallop. 
 
 While we were riding, I sought to account for this 
 unexpected whim, which did not fail to look rather pre- 
 meditated. I supposed that time and reflection might have 
 weakened in Mile. Marguerite's mind the first impression 
 of the slanders by which she had been troubled. Apparently 
 she had at last conceived some doubts as to the veracity of 
 Mile. Helouin, and had profited by the opportunity to offer 
 me, under a disguised form, a sort of reparation that might 
 be due to me. 
 
 Amid the reflections which then besieged me, I attached 
 little importance to the particular end which we proposed 
 to ourselves in that strange ride. Still, I had often heard 
 this Elven Tower mentioned as one of the most interesting 
 ruins in the country, and I had never travelled over either 
 of the two roads leading to the sea from Rennes and 
 Jocelyn without contemplating with an eager eye the 
 undefined mass that is seen rising up in the midst of those 
 distant moors like a stone set on end ; but time and 
 opportunity to go there had been wanting. 
 
 The village of Elven, which we passed through at a 
 somewhat gentler pace, gives a truly striking picture of what 
 a borough might have been in the middle ages. The form 
 of the low, gloomy houses had not altered for five or six 
 
 24 
 
i85 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 centuries. You think you are dreaming when you see, through 
 the arched openings without any frames that serve for windows, 
 those groups of wild-eyed women, in sculpturesque costume, 
 spinning with the distaff in the shade, and talking in low tones 
 in an unknown tongue. It seems as if these grizzly spectres 
 had just left their tombstones, to enact together some scene of 
 another age, of which you are the only living witness. It 
 causes a kind of oppressed feeling. The little life that is to be 
 seen around you in the only street of the town, wears the same 
 stamp of antiquity and foreignness, faithfully preserved from a 
 vanished world. 
 
 At a little distance from Elven we took a by-path, which 
 led us to the top of a barren hill. From it we distinctly saw, 
 though still at a considerable distance, the feudal Colossus 
 overtopping a wooded height in front of us. The moor on 
 which we were went down, with a pretty stiff descent, towards 
 marshy meadows, skirted by thick brushwood. We descended 
 its other side, and were soon in the woods. 
 
 Here we followed a narrow causeway, the loose and rugged 
 pavement of which must have rung again under the tramp of 
 iron-shod horses. I had long ceased to see Elven Tower, the 
 position of which I could no longer even conjecture, when 
 suddenly it disclosed itself out of the foliage, and rose within 
 two paces of us with the suddenness of an apparition. This 
 tower is not in ruins ; it still preserves its original height, more 
 than a hundred feet, and the .regular courses of granite which 
 compose its magnificent octagonal form give it the look of a 
 formidable block cut out but yesterday by the purest chisel. 
 There is nothing more imposing, more proud, and more 
 gloomy than this old keep, unaffected by the lapse of ages, and 
 isolated in the deptTi of these woods. Trees have grown to 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 187 
 
 their full height in the deep recesses that surround it, and their 
 tops scarcely touch the sills of the lowest windows. This 
 gigantic vegetation, in which the base of the building is 
 bewildered and lost, completes its air of fantastic mystery. In 
 that solitude, in the midst of those forests, in front of that sud- 
 denly-rising mass of strange architecture, it is impossible to 
 help thinking of those enchanted towers, in which beautiful 
 princesses sleep a sleep of ages. 
 
 " Up to this day," said Mile. Marguerite, to whom I 
 tried to convey this impression, " this is all I have seen ; but if 
 you are anxious to awake the princess, we can go in. So far 
 as I know, there is always a shepherd or shepherdess in the 
 neighbourhood, who is provided, he or she as the case may be, 
 with a key. Let us fasten our horses yonder, and set to work 
 to look, you for the shepherd, and I for the shepherdess." 
 
 The horses were stationed in an inclosure near the ruin, 
 and Mile. Marguerite and I parted for a moment, to beat up 
 the neighbourhood as it were. We had the annoyance of 
 finding neither shepherd nor shepherdess. Our desire to see 
 the inside of the tower naturally increased with all the attraction 
 of forbidden fruit, and we crossed at a venture a bridge thrown 
 over the moat. To our lively satisfaction the massive door of 
 the keep was not fastened : we had only to push it in order to 
 enter a narrow, dark, rubbish-covered hovel, which might have 
 served formerly as a guard-house ; thence we passed into a vast 
 hall of almost circular shape, the fireplace still showing on an 
 escutcheon the bezants of the Crusades ; a large window 
 opening before us, and traversed by the symbolical cross 
 cleanly cut out in the stone, gave a full light in the lower 
 region of the inclosure, while the eye lost itself in the 
 uncertain shadow of the high open arches. At the sound of 
 
i88 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 our Steps a flock of unseen birds flew away out of the gloom, 
 
 and shook down on our heads the dust of ages. Ascending the 
 
 granite flags which are arranged in steps on each side of the 
 
 wall, we could have glanced outside at the depth of the moat 
 
 and the'ruined portions of the stronghold, but we had observed 
 
 on coming in, the first steps of a staircase in the thickness of 
 
 the wall, and we felt a childish eagerness to push our discoveries 
 
 further. We undertook the ascent. I opened the march, and 
 
 Mile. Marguerite followed me courageously, managing her 
 
 long skirts as well as she could. From the height of the roof 
 
 the view is vast and delightful. The sweet tints of twilight 
 
 were just touching the ocean of foliage, half gilded by the 
 
 autumn, the dark marshes, the green expanses of turf, the 
 
 slopes that interlocked on the horizon, where they mingled and 
 
 succeeded each other before our eyes into the extreme distance. 
 
 In the presence of this graceful, melancholy, and boundless 
 
 landscape, we felt the peace of solitude, the stillness of evening, 
 
 the melancholy of time past, all sinking together, like a potent 
 
 charm, into our spirits and our hearts^ What could be added 
 
 to this charm, for me at least, by the presence of an adored 
 
 being, all who have loved can understand. That hour of 
 
 contemplation in common, of emotions shared between us, of 
 
 pure deep pleasure, was doubtless the last that was to be given 
 
 me to live near her and with her, and I clung to it with a 
 
 sensitiveness almost painfully violent. For Marguerite, I know 
 
 not what went on within her ; she was seated on the edge of 
 
 the parapet, looking into the distance, and silent. I heard 
 
 only the slightly quickened drawing of her breath. 
 
 I could not say how many moments thus glided away. 
 When the vapours became thick upon the low-lying meadows, 
 and the furthest horizons began to fade in the growing shadow, 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 189 
 
 Marguerite rose. " Let us go," she said in a half whisper, as 
 if the curtain had fallen on a drama that had touched her ; " it 
 is over ! " Then she began to go down the staircase, and I 
 followed her. 
 
 When we would have left the keep, great was our surprise 
 to find the door fast. Apparently, the young guardian, unaware 
 of our presence, had turned the key while we were on the roof. 
 Our first impression was one of merriment. The tower was 
 really an enchanted tower. I made some vigorous efforts to 
 break the spell ; but the enormous bolt of the old lock was 
 firmly shot into the granite, and I had to give up the 
 attempt to loosen it. I then directed my attacks against the 
 door itself; but the massive hinges, and oak panel plated with 
 iron, opposed the most unconquerable resistance. Two or 
 three large stones that I found in the rubbish, and dashed 
 against the obstacle, only shook the archway, and loosened 
 some fragments which came tumbling at my feet. Mile. 
 Marguerite would not let me continue an attempt that was 
 evidently hopeless, and that was not unattended with danger. 
 I then ran to the window, and shouted several times for help ; 
 but no one answered. For ten minutes I repeated my shouts 
 every instant, with the same want of success. At the same 
 time we hastily took advantage of the last gleams of daylight to 
 explore minutely the whole interior of the keep; but, apart 
 from this door, which was as a wall against us, and the large 
 window, separated from the moat by an abyss of nearly thirty 
 feet, we could find no outlet. 
 
 Meanwhile, night had fallen over the country, and darkness 
 had invaded the old tower. Only a few rays of the moon 
 penetrated into the depth of the window, and cast a slanting 
 white light over the stone steps. Mile. Marguerite, who 
 
I90 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 had gradually lost all appearance of mirthfulness, ceased even 
 to reply to the more or less probable conjectures with 
 which I tried to beguile her anxiety. While she remained 
 silent and motionless in the shade, I was seated in a full 
 light on the step nearest the window, and from that position 
 I made signals of distress at intervals : but, to tell the truth, 
 in proportion as the success of my efforts became more 
 uncertain, I felt myself seized by a feeling of irresistible joy. 
 I saw, in fact, suddenly realized for me the most eternal, the 
 most impossible dream of lovers ; I was shut up in the depth 
 of a desert and in the closest solitude with the woman I 
 loved ! For long hours there would be none but she and I in 
 the world, no life but hers and mine ! I thought of all the 
 tokens of gentle protection, of tender respect, which it would 
 be my right and my duty to lavish upon her ; I imagined to 
 myself her terrors appeased, her trustfulness, her slumber ; I 
 said to myself, with deep delight, that this happy night, if it 
 could not give me the love of this dear creature, would at least 
 secure me for ever her most unshaken esteem. 
 
 As I was giving myself up, with all the selfishness of 
 passion, to my secret ecstasy, of which some reflection perhaps 
 was depicted on my countenance, I was suddenly aroused by 
 these words, addressed to me in a dull voice, and with a tone 
 of affected calmness: "Monsieur le Marquis de Champcey, 
 have there been many villains in your family before you } " 
 
 I rose up, and immediately fell back again on the stone 
 flag, fixing a stupid gaze on the darkness, through which I 
 saw dimly the outline of the young girl. One single idea 
 occurred to me, a terrible one : it was that fear and 
 vexation were disordering her brain — that she was going 
 mad. 
 
■'V-s''^i 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 193 
 
 " Marguerite ! " I cried, without even knowing that I 
 spoke. The word, no doubt, completed her irritation. 
 
 " Good heavens, how odious he is ! " she resumed. " What 
 a villain he is ! yes, I repeat it, a villain ! " 
 
 The truth began to dawn on my mind. I went down a 
 step, and said coldly, " Well, what is the matter ? " 
 
 " It is you ! " she said, with abrupt vehemence, " it is you 
 who have paid this man — or boy, I do not know which — to 
 imprison us in this wretched tower. To-morrow I shall be 
 ruined, dishonoured in public opinion, and I shall no longer 
 be able to belong to any but you. That is your calculation, is 
 it not ? But I promise you it shall not succeed, any more than 
 the rest. You know me yet very imperfectly if you think that 
 I would not prefer dishonour, the cloister, death, anything, to 
 the degradation of linking my hand, my life, to yours ! And 
 even should your infamous tricks succeed, should I have the 
 weakness — as I assuredly shall not — to give you my person, 
 and — what touches you more nearly — my fortune, in exchange 
 for this stroke of cunning, what sort of man can you be, of 
 what slime are you made, to be willing to have a wife and a 
 fortune acquired at that price ? Ah ! thank me. Sir, thank me 
 for not yielding to your wishes. Your wishes are imprudent, 
 believe me ; for, if ever shame and public derision threw me 
 into your arms, I should have such contempt for you that it 
 would crush your heart! Yes, were it as hard and icy as these 
 stones, I would draw blood from it — I would fetch tears 
 from it ! " 
 
 " Mademoiselle," I said, with all the calmness I could 
 command, " I beseech you to return to yourself. I declare, 
 upon my honour, that you are insulting me. Be pleased to 
 think of it. Your suspicions rest on no probability. I have 
 
194 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 had no possible way of preparing this treachery of which you 
 accuse me, and even had I, how have I ever given you the 
 right to think me capable of it ? " 
 
 " Everything I know of you gives me the right," she said, 
 slashing the air with her whip. " I must tell you, once for 
 all, what I have too long had in my mind. What did you 
 come to do in our house under an assumed name and 
 character ? We were happy and in peace, my mother and I. 
 You have brought us trouble, anxiety, and vexations that we 
 did not know before. To attain your end, to repair the 
 breaches of your fortune, you have insinuated yourself into our 
 confidence, you have trampled under foot our repose, you have 
 played with our purest, truest, most sacred feelings, you have 
 bruised and broken our hearts without mercy ! That is what 
 you have done — or wished to do ; it matters little which ! 
 Well, I am profoundly weary and sore under all this, I tell 
 you ! And when at this moment you offer me the security of 
 your honour as a gentleman, which has already permitted you 
 so much unworthiness, I have a right not to believe it, and I 
 do not believe it ! " 
 
 I was beside myself; I grasped her hands in the violent 
 transport that carried me away : " Marguerite ! my poor child ; 
 listen to me ! I love you, it is true, and never entered into 
 man's heart a love more holy, more disinterested, or more 
 ardent ! But you too, you love me. You love me, unhappy 
 girl, and you are killing me ! You speak of a bruised and 
 broken heart : ah, what are you doing to mine ! Yet it 
 belongs to you, I give it up to you. But as for my honour, 
 I keep it : it is intact ! and before long I will compel you to 
 acknowledge it. And on that honour I swear to you, that, if 
 I die, you will weep for me ; and that if I live, never — all 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 195 
 
 adored as you are — were you eyen on your knees before me — 
 never will I marry you, unless you are as poor as I, or I as 
 rich as you ! And now, pray, pray ; ask God for miracles, for 
 it is time ! " 
 
 I then pushed her abruptly away from the recess of the 
 window, and rushed to the topmost steps; I had formed a 
 desperate project which I immediately put in execution with 
 the hastiness of downright insanity. As I have said, the tops 
 of the beeches and oaks, which grow in the moat round the 
 tower, rose to the level of the window. With the help of my 
 twisted whip, I drew towards me the extremities of the nearest 
 boughs, caught them at hazard, and let myself go into the air. 
 I heard above my head my name " Maxime! " suddenly uttered 
 with a piercing shriek. The branches to which I clung bent 
 all their length towards the abyss ; then there was an ominous 
 crack, they snapped with my weight, and I fell roughly on the 
 ground. 
 
 I suppose the rotten character of the soil deadened the 
 violence of the shock, for I felt myself alive, though wounded. 
 One of my arms had struck against the sloping masonry of the 
 face of the wall, and I felt so sharp a pain that my heart sank 
 within me. I was stunned for a moment. I was aroused 
 by the distracted voice of Marguerite, crying, "Maxime! 
 Maxime ! for pity, for mercy's sake ! In the name of God, 
 speak to me, and forgive me ! " 
 
 I rose, and saw her in the arch of the window, in the 
 midst of a gleam of pallid light, her head bare, her hair 
 falling loose, her hand clasped on the bar of the cross, her 
 eyes eagerly fixed on the dark precipice. 
 
 " Fear nothing," I said, " I am not hurt. Only be 
 patient an hour or two. Give me time to go to the 
 
196 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 chateau, it is the safest plan. Be sure that I will keep 
 your secret, and save your honour, as I have just saved my 
 own." 
 
 I got out of the moat with difficulty and went to find 
 my horse. I used my handkerchief to tie up my left arm, 
 which was no longer of any use, and gave me a good deal 
 of pain. Thanks to the brightness of the night, I easily 
 found the way back. In an hour I reached the chateau. 
 They told me that Doctor Desmarets was in the drawing- 
 room. I hastened to go there, and found him with a dozen 
 people whose faces betokened their condition of anxiety and 
 alarm. "Doctor," said I, gaily, as I entered the room, "my 
 horse has just taken fright at his shadow, and thrown me 
 on the road ; I am afraid my left arm is dislocated. Will 
 you look at it ? " 
 
 " What, dislocated ! " said M. Desmarets, after untying 
 the handkerchief; " why it is regularly broken, my poor 
 boy ! " 
 
 Mme. Laroque gave a slight cry, and came towards me. 
 " Why, it is an evening of accidents," she said. 
 
 I feigned surprise. " What else is the matter ? " I 
 cried. 
 
 " Oh, heavens ! I am afraid some accident has happened 
 to my daughter. She went away on horseback at three 
 o'clock; it is now eight, and she is not yet returned." 
 
 " Mademoiselle Marguerite ! why, I met her " 
 
 " What ! where ? at what time ? Pardon me. Sir ; it 
 is a mother's selfishness." 
 
 "Why, I met her towards five o'clock, on the road; 
 we passed. She told me she thought of riding as far as 
 Elven Tower." 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 197 
 
 " Elven Tower ! She must be lost in the woods. Some 
 one must go promptly. Let orders be given." 
 
 M. de Bevallan immediately ordered horses. I affected 
 at first a wish to join the company in their search ; but 
 Mme. Laroque and the doctor forbade it strenuously, and 
 I easily let myself be persuaded to go to bed, which, to 
 tell the truth, was what I greatly needed. M. Desmarets, 
 after applying the first dressing to my wound, went away 
 in a carriage with Mme. Laroque, who was to wait in 
 Elven for the result of the search M. de Bevallan would 
 make in the neighbourhood of the tower. 
 
 It was about ten o'clock when Alain came to tell me 
 that Mile, Marguerite was found. He told me the story 
 of her imprisonment, without omitting any circumstances, 
 except of course those which the young girl and I alone 
 were to know. The story was soon confirmed by the 
 doctor, then by Mme. 1-aroque herself, who came both in 
 succession to pay me a visit ; and I had the satisfaction of 
 seeing that no suspicion of the exact truth had entered into 
 any of their minds. 
 
 I passed the whole night in repeating, with the most 
 tiresome perseverance, and with the oddest complications of 
 dream and fever, my dangerous leap from the height of the 
 window of the keep. I could not get used to it. At every 
 moment the sensation of the empty space rose in mv throat, 
 and I awoke out of breath. At last came day, and calmed 
 me. At eight o'clock I saw Mile, de Porhoet come in ; 
 she installed herself by my pillow, with her knitting in her 
 hand. She did the honours of my room to the visitors who 
 kept coming all day. Mme. Laroque came the first after my 
 aged friend. As she held with a prolonged pressure the hand 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 I Stretched out to her, I saw two tears glistening on her cheeks. 
 Has she received a communication from her daughter ? 
 
 Mile, de Porhoet informed me that old M. Laroque had 
 taken to his bed yesterday. He had a slight attack of paralysis. 
 To-day he cannot speak, and his state causes anxiety. It has 
 been decided to hasten the marriage. M. Laubepin has been 
 sent for from Paris ; he is expected to-morrow, and the 
 settlements are to be signed the day alter, under his 
 
 management. 
 
 I have been able to sit up for some hours this evening ; 
 hut if I am to believe M. Desmarets, I have done wrong in 
 writing, with my fever, and I am a great ass. 
 
 m \^ 
 
Octolicr yd. 
 
 It seems really as if a malignant power was tasked to 
 invent the strangest and most cruel trials, to propose them in 
 turns to my conscience and my heart. 
 
 M. Laubepin not having arrived this morning, Mme. 
 Laroque sent to ask me for some particulars which she wanted 
 for the arrangement of the preliminaries of the marriage settle- 
 ment, which, as I said, is to be signed to-morrow. As I am 
 
200 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 condemned to keep my room for a few days yet, I begged 
 Mme. Laroque to send me the title-deeds and private docu- 
 ments which are in her father-in-law's possession, that I might 
 settle the difficulties that were stated to me. They immediately 
 sent up to me two or three drawers full of papers, which had 
 been secretly carried away from M. Laroque's study ; advantage 
 being taken of a time when the old man was asleep, for he has 
 always shown himself very jealous of his private archives. In 
 the first paper which I opened, my family-name, several times 
 repeated, caught my eye suddenly, and excited my curiosity 
 irresistibly. Here is the literal text of the document : 
 
 "TO MY CHILDREN. 
 
 "The name which I bequeath to you, and to which I have 
 done honour, is not my own. My father's name was Savage. 
 He was an overseer on a plantation of some size in the island 
 of St. Lucia (then a French island), which belonged to a rich 
 and noble Dauphine family called Champcey d'Hauterive. In 
 1793 my father died, and I inherited, though still young, the 
 confidence which the Champceys had reposed in him. Towards 
 the close of that fatal year, the French Antilles were taken by 
 the English, or were given up to them by the insurgent 
 colonists. The Marquis de Champcey d'Hauterive (Jacques 
 Auguste), not yet overtaken by the orders of the Convention, 
 then commanded the frigate 'Thetis, which had cruised in those 
 waters for three years. A pretty large number of French 
 colonists, throughout the Antilles, had contrived to turn their 
 property into money, as it was threatened daily. They had 
 arranged with Commandant de Champcey to organize a flotilla 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 201 
 
 of light transports, in which they had embarked their pos- 
 sessions, and which was to undertake the voyage back to 
 France, under the protection of the guns of the Thetis. I had 
 long ago, in anticipation of impending disasters, received orders 
 myself to sell, at any price, the plantation which I managed 
 after my father's time. On the night of the 14th of December, 
 1793, I embarked alone in a boat at Point Morne au Sable, 
 and secretly quitted St. Lucia, which was already occupied 
 by the enemy. I carried away in English notes and guineas 
 the price I had contrived to get for the plantation, M. de 
 Champcey, thanks to the minute knowledge he had acquired 
 of those coasts, had succeeded in eluding the English cruiser, 
 and taking refuge in the difficult and unknown channel of 
 Gros Ilet. He had ordered me to meet him there that very 
 night, and only waited for my arrival on board before leaving 
 the channel in company with the flotilla which he was to 
 convoy, and steering for France. In crossing to him I had the 
 misfortune to fall into the hands of the English. These 
 masters in treachery gave me the choice of being shot on the 
 spot, or to sell them, for the million of which I was the bearer, 
 and which they would leave me, the secret of the channel 
 where the flotilla lay sheltered. I was young, the temptation 
 was too strong ; and in half an hour the Thetis was sunk, the 
 flotilla taken, and M. de Champcey severely wounded. A year 
 went by, a year that brought me no peace. I was going 
 mad. I resolved to make the accursed Englishmen pay for 
 the remorse by which I was torn. I crossed to Guadaloupe, 
 changed my name, and devoted the greater part of the price of 
 my crime to the purchase of an armed brig, and fell upon the 
 English. For fifteen years I washed with their blood and my 
 
 own the stain I had inflicted, in an hour of weakness, on my 
 
 26 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 country's flag. Although my present fortune has, more than 
 three-fourths of it, been won in glorious combats, the 
 origin of it was none other than I have said. 
 
 " Returned to France in my old age, I inquired into the 
 position of the Champcey d'Hauterive family : it was a happy 
 and wealthy position. I continued to hold my peace. May 
 my children forgive me ! I have not been able to find 
 courage, during my life, to blush before them ; but my death 
 must deliver my secret to them, and they will use it according 
 to the dictates of their consciences. For myself, I have but 
 one entreaty to address to them : sooner or later there will be 
 a final war between France and her neighbour across the way ; 
 we hate each other too much; whatever may be done, we 
 shall have to eat them, or they to eat us ! Should this war 
 break out in the lifetime of my children or grandchildren, I 
 desire that they should present to the State a corvette, armed 
 and manned, on the sole condition that she be called the 
 Savage, and be commanded by a Breton. At every broadside 
 she discharges against the Carthaginian shore, my bones 
 will tremble with joy in their grave ! 
 
 " Richard Savage, called Laroque." 
 
 The recollections suddenly awakened in my mind by 
 reading this terrible confession, confirmed its correctness. I 
 had heard my father a score of times tell, with mingled pride 
 and bitterness, the episode in my grandfather's life here alluded 
 to. Only it was believed in my family that Richard Savage, 
 whose name was perfectly present to my mind, was the victim, 
 and not the furtherer, of the treachery or chance which gave 
 up the commander of the Thetis. 
 
 I could now account for the singularities that had often 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 203 
 
 Struck me in the old sailor's character, and particularly his 
 pensive and timid bearing before me. My father always told 
 me that I was the living portrait of my grandfather, the 
 Marquis Jacques, and doubtless some glimpse of the likeness 
 from time to time pierced through the old man's clouded 
 brain, even to his uneasy conscience. 
 
 No sooner possessed of this revelation, I fell into terrible 
 perplexity. I could not, as far as I was concerned, feel more 
 than a feeble malice against this unfortunate man, the" defect 
 in whose moral sense had been atoned for by a long life's 
 repentance, and by a passionate despair and hatred, which were 
 not lacking in grandeur. I could not even breathe without a 
 sort of admiration the fierce breath which still animated the 
 lines, traced by that culpable but heroic hand. Still, what was 
 I to do with this terrible secret ! The first thing that struck 
 me was, that it destroyed any obstacle between Marguerite and 
 me, that henceforth this fortune which had kept us apart would 
 be almost a bond of obligation between us, since I alone, of all 
 the world, could give her a legal title to it, by sharing it with 
 her. In reality, this secret was not mine, and though the most 
 innocent chance had revealed it to me, strict integrity perhaps 
 required that I should let it await its time in the hands of 
 those for whom it was intended ; but what ! meanwhile that 
 which was irreparable would be accomplished ! An indis- 
 soluble knot would be tied ! The tomb would close for ever 
 over my love, my hopes, my inconsolable heart ! And should 
 I allow this, when I could stay it by a single word? And 
 these poor women themselves, when the fatal truth should one 
 day put them to blush, would they share my regrets and my 
 despair .? They would be the first to say to me : " If you 
 knew it, why did you not speak ? " 
 
204 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 Well ! no ! not to-day, nor to-morrow, nor ever, as far as 
 I am concerned, shall those two noble foreheads blush with 
 shame, and I will not purchase happiness at the price of their 
 humiliation. This secret which belongs only to me, which the 
 old man himself, now mute for ever, can no longer betray ; 
 this secret has ceased to exist ; the flames have devoured it. 
 
 I thought it over well. I knew what I ventured to do. 
 It was a testament, a deed, and I destroyed it. Besides, it 
 would not have advantaged me only. My sister, entrusted to 
 my care, might have found a fortune in it ; and without con- 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 205 
 
 suiting her, I have with my own hand plunged her back, into 
 poverty. I know all that; but two pure, lofty, and proud 
 souls will not be crushed and withered under the burden of a 
 crime that was unknown to them. A principle of equity was 
 involved, which seemed to me superior to the mere letter of 
 justice. If I have committed a crime in my turn, I will 
 answer for it ! But this struggle has ground me to powder ; 
 I can no more ! 
 
October 4t/i. 
 
 M. LAUBliPiN at length arrived yesterday evening. He 
 came to shake hands with me. He was abstracted, abrupt, 
 dissatislied. He spoke briefly of the marriage which was 
 afoot. " Very successful operation," he said ; " very laudable 
 combination on all accounts ; nature and society both receive 
 the securities they have a right to demand on such an occasion. 
 Whereupon, young man, I wish you a good-night, and I shall 
 set about clearing the delicate ground of the preliminaries, so 
 that the car of these interesting hymeneals may reach its 
 journey's end without jolting." 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 207 
 
 There was a gathering in the drawing-room at one 
 o'clock this afternoon, amid the customary preparations and 
 company, to proceed to signing the settlements. I could 
 not be present at this ceremony, and blessed my wound 
 that spared me that torture. I was writing to my little 
 Helen, to whom I strive more than .ever to devote my 
 whole soul, when, towards three o'clock, M. Laubepin and 
 Mile, de Porhoet walked into my room. M. Laubepin, in 
 his frequent visits to Laroque, could not fail to appreciate 
 the virtues of my venerable friend ; and there has long 
 existed between these two old people a platonic and 
 respectful attachment, the character of which Doctor 
 Desmarets in vain strives to misrepresent. After an 
 exchange of- ceremonies, endless bowing and curtseying, 
 they took the seats which I brought them, and both 
 began to contemplate me with an air of serious bliss. 
 "Well," said I, "is it over?" 
 
 " It is over ! " they replied in unison. 
 
 " Did it go off well .? " 
 
 " Very well," said Mile, de Porhoet. 
 
 " Excellently well," M. Laubepin added. Then, after 
 a pause, " The Bevallan is gone to the devil ! " 
 
 " And the young Helouin on the same road," continued 
 Mile, de Porhoet. 
 
 I uttered a cry of surprise. " Good heavens ! what does 
 that mean .? " 
 
 " My friend," said M. Laubepin, " the projected union 
 offered all the advantages that could be desired, and would 
 no doubt have secured the joint happiness of the parties 
 to it, were marriage a purely commercial partnership ; but 
 it is not so. My duty, when my assistance was called in 
 
2oS THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 for this interesting circumstance, was therefore to regard 
 the inclination of their hearts and the suitability of their 
 characters, no less than the proportion of their fortunes. 
 Now, I thought I observed, from the first, that the nuptials 
 in preparation had the awkwardness of not exactly pleasing 
 anybody; neither my excellent friend, Mme. Laroque, nor 
 the amiable bride, nor the most enlightened friends of those 
 ladies ; in short, no one, unless perhaps it may please the 
 bridegroom, about whom I do but little care. It is true 
 (and I am indebted for this remark to Mile, de Porhoet), 
 it is true, I say, that the bridegroom is a gentleman." 
 
 " Ought to be ! if you please ! " was the severe interrup- 
 tion of Mile, de Porhoet. 
 
 " Ought to be a gentleman," M. Laubepin resumed, 
 " but he is a kind of ' ought to be ' gentleman that does 
 not suit me." 
 
 " Nor me either," said Mile, de Porhoet. " It was 
 fellows of that stamp, unmannerly grooms like this man, 
 whom we saw in the last century, under the lead of the 
 Duke of Chartres, coming out of the English stables to pave 
 the way for the Revolution." 
 
 " Oh ! if they had only paved the way for the Revolu- 
 tion," said M. Laubepin sententiously, " one could forgive 
 them." 
 
 " A million excuses, my dear Sir ; but pray speak for 
 yourself! However, that is not the question. Be so good as 
 to go on." 
 
 " Well, then," continued M. Laubepin, " seeing that every 
 one was going to this wedding as if to a funeral, I sought for 
 some means, at once honourable and legal, if not to return 
 to M. de Bevallan his promise, at least to induce him to take it 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 209 
 
 back. The step was all the more allowable, as, in my absence, 
 M. de Bevallan had taken advantage of the inexperience of my 
 excellent friend, Mme. Laroque, and of the pliability of my 
 colleague in the adjoining town, to secure himself exorbitant 
 advantages. Without departing from the letter of the stipu- 
 lations I succeeded in sensibly modifying the spirit of them. 
 Still, honour and the promise given imposed limits upon me, 
 which I could not overstep. The settlements, after all, remained 
 still quite advantageous enough for a man of some loftiness of 
 soul, and animated with true tenderness, to accept them with 
 confidence. Would M. de Bevallan be the man .? We had to 
 run the risk of it. I confess it was not without emotion that I 
 began this morning, before our imposing audience, to read the 
 irrevocable deed." 
 
 "As for me," Mile, de Porhoet broke in, " I had not a 
 drop of blood in my veins. The first part of the deed was so 
 advantageous to the enemy, that I thought all was lost." 
 
 "No doubt. Mademoiselle; but as we augurs say,' the 
 poison is in the tail, ' in caudd venenum.' It was amusing, 
 my friend, to see M. de Bevallan's face, and the face of my 
 colleague of Rennes, who was present, when I suddenly 
 unmasked my batteries. At first they looked at each other in 
 silence, then whispered in each 'Other's ears, and at last rose, 
 and coming to the table before which I was seated, asked me 
 in a low tone for explanations. 
 
 " ' Speak up, if you please, gentlemen,' said I ; ' we must 
 have no mystery here. W hat do you want ? ' 
 
 "The public was beginning to listen. M. de Bevallan, 
 without raising his voice, insinuated to me that the deed 
 was a work of mistrust. 
 
 " ' A work of mistrust. Sir ! ' I replied, in the highest tone 
 
 27 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 of my organ. ' What do you mean by that ? Is it at Mme. 
 Laroque, at me, or at my colleague here, that you aim this 
 strange imputation ? ' 
 
 " ' Hush ! silence ! no noise ! ' said the notary of 
 Rennes, in his discreetest tone; 'let us see; it was agreed 
 on at first that the lady's property should not be settled on 
 herself.' 
 
 " ' Not settled on herself. Sir.? And where do you see any 
 mention of its being settled on herself? ' 
 
 " ' Come, my colleague, you know very well you are 
 bringing it about by a subterfuge.' 
 
 '"A subterfuge, my colleague? Allow me, as your 
 senior, to persuade you to erase that word from your 
 vocabulary.' 
 
 " ' But,' M. de Bevallan muttered, ' my hands are tied on 
 every side ; I am treated like a little boy.' 
 
 " ' What, Sir ! What are we at this moment doing, 
 according to you ? Is this a marriage-settlement or a will ? 
 You forget that Mme. Laroque is living, that her father is 
 living, that you are marrying. Sir, and not inheriting — not yet. 
 Sir ; a little patience, what the devil ! ' 
 
 " At these words Mile. Marguerite rose. ' Enough of 
 this, M. Laubepin,' she said ; ' throw that deed into the fire. 
 Mother, have Monsieur's presents returned to him.' And she 
 left the room with the step of an insulted queen. Mme. 
 Laroque followed her. At the same time I hurled the deed 
 into the fireplace. 
 
 " ' Sir,' said M. de Bevallan, in a threatening tone, ' that 
 is a imanoeuvre of which I well know the secret ! ' 
 
 " ' Sir, I will tell it you,' I replied. ' A young lady, who 
 respects herself with a just pride, had conceived a fear that your 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 211 
 
 attentions were addressed only to her fortune ; she has no 
 longer any doubt of it. I have the honour to wish you 
 good-day.' 
 
 "Thereupon, my friend, I went to join the two ladies, who 
 actually threw their arms round my neck ! A quarter of an 
 hour later M. de Bevallan left the chateau with my colleague 
 from Rennes. His departure and disgrace had the inevitable 
 effect of unloosing against him all the servants' tongues, and 
 his shameless intrigue with Mile. Helouin soon came to light. 
 That young lady, already for some time an object of suspicion 
 on other accounts, tendered the resignation of her situation, and 
 it was not refused her. It is unnecessary to add that the ladies 
 have secured an honourable livelihood for her. Well, my boy, 
 what have you to say to all that? You are not in great pain, 
 surely ? You are as pale as a corpse ! " 
 
 The truth is, that this unexpected news stirred up so 
 many emotions, both happy and painful, in my breast, that 
 I felt on the point of losing consciousness. 
 
 M. Laubepin, who is to go away at daybreak to-morrow, 
 came again this evening to say good-bye to me. After a 
 few embarrassed words on both sides, he said, '' Come, now, 
 my dear child, I will not question you as to what is going 
 on here ; but if you should happen to need confidential 
 advice, I would ask you to come first to me." 
 
 In truth I could not unburden myself to a more friendly 
 or more trusty heart. I gave the worthy old man a detailed 
 account of all the circumstances since my coming to the 
 chateau that have marked my intercourse with Mile. 
 Marguerite. I even read him some pages of this journal, 
 to give to him a more exact idea of the character of this 
 intercourse, and also of the state of my mind. Except 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN 
 
 only the secret that I had discovei-ed the day before in 
 M. Laroque's archives, I hid nothing from him. 
 
 When I had ended, M. Laubepin, whose forehead had for 
 a moment looked very thoughtful, spoke in his turn: "It is 
 useless to disguise from you, my friend," he said, " that, in 
 sending you here, I looked forward to a union between you 
 and Mile. Laroque. At first everything succeeded as well as 
 I could wish. Your two hearts, which, in my opinion, are 
 worthy of each other, could not meet without understanding 
 each other ; but that strange event, on the romantic theatre of 
 Elven Tower, completely disconcerts me, I confess. What the 
 deuce ! my friend, to jump down from the window, at the risk 
 of breaking your neck, was quite sufficient proof, allow me to 
 tell you, of your disinterestedness ; it was very superfluous to 
 add to that honourable and delicate proceeding a solemn oath 
 never to marry the poor child, unless under conditions that are 
 absolutely impossible to expect. I boast myself to be a man of 
 resources, but I acknowledge myself entirely incapable of giving 
 you two hundred thousand francs a year, or of taking them 
 away from Mile. Laroque ! " 
 
 " Well, Sir, advise me. I have more confidence in you 
 than in myself, for I feel that my reduced circumstances, 
 always liable to breed a suspicious temper, may have irritated 
 to an excess the sensitiveness of my honour. Speak. Do you 
 authorize me to forget the indiscreet, but still solemn oath, 
 which is now all, I believe, that separates me from the 
 happiness you dreamed of for your adopted son ? " 
 
 M. Laubepin rose ; his thick eyebrows contracted over his 
 eyes, he paced the room with long strides for several minutes ; 
 then, stopping before me and grasping my hand strongly, he 
 said : " Young man, it is true I love you as my own child ; 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 but should your heart break, and mine after it, I will not 
 tamper with my principles. It is better to go too far than to 
 stop short in honour ; and of oaths, all that are not exacted 
 at the point of the knife, or at the muzzle of a pistol, ought 
 either not to be taken, or ought to be observed. That is my 
 opinion." 
 
 " And mine too. I will go with you to-morrow." 
 " No, Maxime, stay here some time longer. I do not 
 believe in miracles, but I believe in God, who seldom lets us 
 perish by our virtues. Let us give Providence some delay. I 
 know that I am asking you for a great effort of courage, 
 but I ask it formally of your friendship. If, in a month, 
 you do not hear from me, well, you can then go." 
 
 lie embraced me, and left me with tranquillity in my 
 conscience and desolation in my soul. 
 
October 1 2th. 
 
 It is two days since I became well enough to leave my 
 retirement, and visit the chateau. I had not had a chance of 
 seeing Mile. Marguerite since the moment we parted at Elven 
 Tower. She was alone in the drawing-room when I entered ; 
 on recognizing me she made an involuntary movement, as if to 
 rise ; then she remained motionless, and her countenance was 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 215 
 
 suddenly dyed a becoming purple. It was contagious, for I 
 felt that I too blushed up to the eyes. 
 
 "How do you do. Sir?" she said, giving me her hand; 
 and she uttered these simple words in a tone so gentle and 
 humble — so tender, alas ! that I could have wished to throw 
 myself on my knees before her. But I was obliged to reply 
 to her in a tone of cold politeness. She looked at me sorrow- 
 fully, then lowered her large eyes with a resigned air, and 
 resumed her work. 
 
 Almost at that moment her mother sent for her to go to 
 her grandfather, whose state was becoming very alarming. 
 For several days he had been unable to speak or to move ; 
 paralysis had got almost entire possession of him. The last 
 gleams of mental activity were extinct ; sensation and pain 
 alone remained. They could not doubt that the old man's 
 death was at hand, but life was too strongly entrenched in that 
 energetic heart to leave it without obstinate struggling. The 
 doctor had predicted that the conflict would be a long one. 
 Still at the first appearance of danger, Mme. Laroque and her 
 daughter had lavished their attentions and watchings with the 
 passionate self-denial and the unreserved devotedness which are 
 the peculiar virtue and glory of their sex. In the evening of 
 the day before yesterday they had succumbed to weariness and 
 feverishness, and Doctor Desmarets and I offered to take their 
 places beside M. Laroque during the ensuing night. They 
 consented to take a few hours' rest. The Doctor, who was 
 himself very weary, soon told me he was going to lie down on 
 a bed in the room adjoining. "I am no good here," he said; 
 " the thing is over. You see he doesn't even suffer any longer, 
 poor man ! it is a condition of stupor that is quite painless. 
 Awakening from it will be death. So we can make ourselves 
 
2i6 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 easy. If you notice any change call me ; but I don't think 
 any change will take place before the morning. Meanwhile, 
 I am fainting with sleepiness, absolutely ! " He gave a loud 
 yawn, and went out of the room. His language, in presence 
 of the dying man, shocked me. He is an excellent man, 
 nevertheless ; but to pay death the respect which is its due, 
 we must not only see the senseless matter which it destroys, 
 but we must believe in the undying principle which it sets 
 free. 
 
 Left alone in the chamber of death, I took a seat near the 
 foot of the bed, from which the curtains had been turned 
 back, and tried to read by the light of a lamp which stood on 
 a little table near me. The book fell from my hands. I could 
 think of nothing but the strange combination of events which, 
 after so many years, gave to this guilty old man the grandson 
 of his victim as the witness and guardian of his last sleep. 
 Then, amid the profound stillness of the time and place, in 
 spite of myself, I thought of the scenes of tumult, and violence, 
 and blood, of which this dying existence had been so full. I 
 sought for the distant impression of them on the countenance 
 of this suffering aged man, on the large features which stood 
 forth in pale relief against the shade, like a plaster mask. I 
 saw there nothing save the seriousness and premature repose 
 of the grave. At intervals I approached his pillow, to assure 
 myself that the breath of life still dilated his weakened 
 breast. 
 
 At length, towards the middle of the night, an irresistible 
 drowsiness took possession of me, and I fell asleep, my fore- 
 head resting on my hand. I was suddenly awakened by a 
 kind of mournful shivering. I raised my eyes, and felt a 
 thrill dart through the marrow of my bones. The old man 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 217 
 
 had half risen on his bed, and fixed on me an attentive and 
 astonished gaze, in which shone an expression of Hfe and 
 intelligence unknown to me before that moment. When my 
 eye met his, the spectre trembled ; he stretched out his arms 
 on each side of him, and said to me in a tone of entreaty, 
 whose strange, unfamiliar sound stopped the beating of my 
 heart : " Marquis, forgive me ! " 
 
 I tried to rise, to speak, but in vain. I was petrified 
 in my chair. 
 
 After a silence, during which the dying man's gaze, still 
 riveted on mine, continued its entreaty, he went on : 
 " Marquis, deign to forgive me ! " 
 
 At length I summoned up strength to advance towards 
 him. As I drew near, he drew back as if in pain, and 
 trying to avoid a touch of terror. I raised my hand, and 
 gently lowering it before his eyes, which were dilated beyond 
 measure and stupefied with fear, I then said, " Be at peace ! 
 I forgive you ! " 
 
 I had scarcely uttered these words when his withered face 
 brightened with a flash of joy and youth. At the same 
 moment two tears started from the dried-up sockets of his 
 eves. He stretched out his hand towards me ; then the hand 
 suddenly shut with violence, and clenched itself in the 
 empty air with a threatening gesture ; his eyes rolled within 
 the open eyelids, as if a bullet had struck him in the 
 heart, " Oh, the Englishmen ! " he murmured ; and im- 
 mediately fell back on the pillow a lifeless mass. He was 
 dead. 
 
 I called out in haste ; some one came running in. He 
 was soon surrounded with pious tears and prayers. As for me, 
 
 I withdrew, my soul deeply troubled by this extraordinary 
 
 28 
 
2i8 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 scene, which must remain for ever a secret between the 
 dead man and me. 
 
 This sad event in the family at once burdened me with 
 the cares and duties of which I stood in need, to justify, 
 in my own sight, my prolonged stay in this house. I am 
 unable to conceive for what motives M. Laubepin advised 
 me to put off my departure. What can he hope from this 
 delay ? I fancy he has, in this matter, yielded to a kind of 
 vague superstition and childish weakness that ought never 
 to have influenced a mind of that temper, and to which I 
 have myself done wrong to submit. 
 
 riow comes it that he did not see that he was assigning 
 me additional useless suffering, and a position of no freedom 
 or dignity ? What am I doing here now ? Is not now the 
 time when I can justly be reproached with playing with 
 the most sacred feelings ? My first interview with Mile. 
 Marguerite sufficed to prove to me the full rigour of the test 
 to which I had condemned mvself, when M. Laroque's 
 death happened, and restored for a short time some degree of 
 naturalness to my intercourse, and a kind of propriety to 
 my stay. 
 
Rexnes, 
 
 October 2f)tli. 
 
 All is said ! O God ! how strong was that tie ! how 
 it encompassed my whole heart ! how it has torn my heart 
 to break it ! 
 
 Yesterday evening, about nine o'clock, as I was leaning 
 out at my open window, I was surprised to see a faint light 
 approach my room through the dark paths in the park, and 
 in a direction which people Irom the chateau were not in 
 
220 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 the habit of taking. A moment after, there was a knock at 
 my door, and Mile, de Porhoet came in, quite out of breath. 
 " Cousin," she said, " I want to talk to you." 
 
 I looked her in the face. " Some bad news ? " 
 
 "No, not exactly that. However you shall judge for 
 yourself. Sit down. My dear child, you have passed two 
 or three evenings of this week at the chateau : have you 
 noticed nothing new, nothing strange, about the ladies 
 there ? " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 " Have you not at least noticed in the expression of their 
 faces a sort of unusual tranquillity } " 
 
 " Perhaps so. Apart from grief at their recent loss, they 
 have seemed to me more calm, and even more happy, than 
 formerly." 
 
 " Doubtless. Other peculiarities would have struck you, 
 if you had lived, as I have, in daily intimacy with them the 
 past fortnight. For instance, I have often detected signs 
 of a secret understanding and some mysterious arrange- 
 ment passing between them. Moreover, their habits have 
 altered noticeably. Mme. Laroque has put away her brazier, 
 her sentry-box, all her harmless Creole inanities ; she rises 
 at fabulous hours, and sits down at the work-table with 
 Marguerite before daybreak. They are both smitten with a 
 passionate taste for embroidery, and are learning how much 
 money a woman can earn a day in that kind of employment. 
 In short, there was an enigma, of which I strove to find the 
 key. The key has just been revealed to me, and, though 
 perhaps intruding on your private affairs sooner than suits 
 you, I have thought it right to give it you without delay." 
 
 After the protestations of perfect secrecy which I eagerly 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 221 
 
 made to her. Mile, de Porhoet went on to say, in her own 
 gentle, firm language : " Mme. Aubry came this evening to 
 see me by stealth ; she began by throwing both her ugly 
 arms round my neck, which displeased me very much; then, 
 in the thick of a thousand selfish lamentations which I spare 
 you, she entreated me to stop her relations on the brink of 
 ruin. This is what she has learned by listening at doors, as 
 her graceful custom is ; the ladies are at this moment asking 
 for power to make over all their property to a religious society 
 at Rennes, so as to destroy the inequality of fortune which 
 still separates Marguerite and you. Not being able to make 
 you rich, they are making themselves poor. I thought I could 
 not leave you in ignorance, cousin, of this revolution, which is 
 equally worthy of their generous souls and their fantastic 
 brains. You will excuse me for adding that it is your duty to 
 put a stop to their design at any cost. What repentance is 
 laying up for our friends, and with what frightful responsibility 
 it threatens you, it is unnecessary to tell you ; you understand 
 it as well as I do, at a glance. If you could now, my friend, 
 accept Marguerite's hand, that would settle everything in the 
 happiest way in the world ; but you are tied down in this 
 respect by an engagement, which, blind and rash as it was, 
 is none the less binding on your honour. There remains 
 therefore but one thing for you to do : to leave Brittany 
 without delay, and resolutely to cut the ground from under the 
 hopes which your presence here must inevitably result in 
 fostering. When you are no longer here, it will be easy for 
 me to bring those two children to reason again." 
 
 "Well ! I am ready ; I will go away this very night." 
 "That is right," she said. "In giving you this advice, 
 my friend, I myself obey a very rigorous law of honour. You 
 
THE ROMANCE CF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 cheered the last moments of my loneliness ; you restored to me 
 the illusion of the sweetest attachments of this life, attachments 
 lost to me for many years. In sending you away, I am offering 
 up my last sacrifice : it is an immense one." She rose, and 
 looked at me for a moment without speaking. " At my age 
 we do not embrace young men," she resumed, smiling sadly, 
 " we bless them. Farewell, dear child, and thank you ! May 
 the good God help you ! " I kissed her trembling hands, and 
 she left me precipitately. 
 
 I hastily made preparations for my departure, and then 
 wrote a few lines to Mme. Laroque. 1 entreated her to 
 renounce a determination, the full scope of which she had not 
 been able to estimate, and to which I was firmly resolved, on 
 my part, not to become an accomplice. I gave her my 
 word — and she knew that it could be relied on — that I would 
 never accept happiness at the cost of her ruin. At the close of 
 the letter, the better to divert her from her mad plan, I spoke 
 vaguely of a near future, in which I pretended to discern 
 chances of fortune. 
 
 At midnight, when all were asleep, I said farewell, a cruel 
 farewell, to my retreat, to the old Tower where I had suffered 
 so deeply, where I had loved so deeply ! and stole into the 
 chateau by a secret door, of which a key had been given me. 
 I stealthily crossed, like a criminal, the empty and sounding 
 galleries, finding my way as well as I could in the darkness, 
 and at last reached the drawing-room where I had seen her for 
 the first time. She and her mother had left it scarcely an hour 
 ago ; their recent presence was still betrayed by a sweet, warm 
 perfume, with which I was suddenly intoxicated. I sought 
 and touched the basket, in which her hand had, a few moments 
 previously, replaced her newly-begun embroidery. Alas ! my 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 22 "X 
 
 poor heart ! I fell on my knees before the place which she 
 usually occupies ; and there, my forehead throbbing against 
 the marble, I wept and sobbed like a child. O God ! how I 
 loved her ! 
 
 I took advantage of the last hours of the night to be 
 driven secretly into the small neighbouring town, where I 
 this morning took the coach for Rennes. To-morrow evening 
 I shall be in Paris. Poverty, loneliness, and despair ; you 
 whom I left there, I come to find you again ! Last dream 
 of youth — dream of heaven, farewell ! 
 
f ARIS. 
 
 Next day, in the morning, as I was about to go to 
 the railway, a post-chaise drove into the courtyard of the 
 hotel, and I saw old Alain get down out of it. His 
 countenance brightened when he saw me. " Ah, Sir ! what 
 good fortune, you are not gone away yet ! Here is a letter 
 for you ! " I recognized Laubepin's handwriting. He told 
 me in two lines that Mile, de Porhoet was seriously ill, 
 and was asking for me. I only took time to change horses> 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 225 
 
 and then threw myself into the chaise, after persuading 
 
 Alain, not without difficulty, to take the seat opposite me. 
 
 I then pressed him with questions. I made him repeat the 
 
 news he had told me, which seemed to me incredible. 
 
 Mile, de Porhoet had received, the previous evening, from 
 
 Laubepin's hands, a ministerial document, announcing that she 
 
 was put into full and entire possession of the inheritance of her 
 
 friends in Spain. " And it seems," Alain added, " that she 
 
 owes it to you. Sir, who discovered some old papers in the 
 
 Tower that nobody thought of, but which have proved the old 
 
 lady's good rights. I don't know what truth there is in it ; 
 
 but if it is so, it's a pity, I said to myself, that such a 
 
 respectable lady should have got such ideas into her head 
 
 about a cathedral, and won't let them go; for you must 
 
 know she holds to them more than ever. Sir. At first when 
 
 she received the news, she fell flat on the floor, and they 
 
 thought she was dead ; but in an hour she began to talk 
 
 without end or break about her cathedral, choir and nave, 
 
 chapter and canons, north aisle and south aisle, so much, that 
 
 they had to bring her an architect and some masons, and lay 
 
 all the plans of her cursed building on her bed. At last, after 
 
 three hours' talking about it, she dozed a little, then woke 
 
 up and asked to see Monsieur Monsieur le Marquis " 
 
 (here Alain shut his eyes and bowed), " and they sent 
 
 me quickly after you. Sir. It seems she wishes to consult 
 
 Monsieur about the aisle." 
 
 This strange event threw me into profound astonishment. 
 
 Still, by the help of my own recollections, and the confused 
 
 particulars given me by Alain, I contrived to hit on an 
 
 explanation which more positive information was soon to 
 
 confirm. As I have said, the case of the succession to the 
 
 29 
 
225 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 Spanish branch of the Porhoets had gone through two phases. 
 First, there was a long lawsuit between Mile, de Porhoet and 
 a great house of Castile, which my aged friend had finally lost 
 in the highest court ; then a new suit had arisen, in which 
 Mile, de Porhoet was not even concerned, about the same 
 succession, between the Spanish heirs and the Crown, which 
 alleged that the property had devolved to it as an escheat. 
 Meanwhile, still prosecuting my researches among the Porhoet 
 archives, I had, about two months before my departure from 
 the chateau, laid my hand on a curious document, of which 
 I here give the literal text : 
 
 " Don Philip, by the Grace of God, King of Castile, Leon, 
 Aragon, the Two Sicilies, Jerusalem, Navarre, Grenada, 
 Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Majorca, Seville, Cordova, Cadiz, 
 Murcia, Jaen, the Algarves, Algesiras, Gibraltar, the Canary 
 Islands, the Eastern and Western Indies, and Islands and 
 Continents of the Ocean ; Archduke of Austria ; Duke of 
 Burgundy, Brabant, and Milan ; Count of Hapsburg, 
 Flanders, the Tyrol, and Barcelona; Lord of Biscay and 
 Molina, &c. 
 
 "To thee, Herve Jean Jocelyn, Sieur de Porhoet-Gael, 
 Count Torres Nuevas, &c., who hast followed me into my 
 realms and served with exemplary faithfulness, I promise by 
 special favour, that, in case of thy direct and lawful descendants 
 becoming extinct, the possessions of thy house shall revert, 
 even to the detriment of the rights of my crown, to the direct 
 and lawful descendants of the French branch of the Porhoet- 
 Gael family, as long as any shall exist. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 229 
 
 " And I make this engagement for myself and my 
 successors, on my kingly faith and word. 
 
 "Given at the Escurial, April i6th, 171 6. 
 
 "Yo, EL Rey." 
 
 Side by side with this document, which was only a 
 translated copy, I had found the original text, with the 
 Spanish arms on it. The importance of the document had 
 not escaped me ; but I had been afraid of exaggerating it. 
 I had great doubts as to whether the validity of a title, over 
 which so many years and events had rolled, would be ad- 
 mitted by the Spanish Government ; I even doubted whether 
 it would have the power to do justice to it, in case it should 
 have the will. I therefore decided to leave Mile, de Porhoet 
 in ignorance of a discovery of such apparently problematical 
 effect, and I confined myself to despatching the deed to 
 Laubepin. Not receiving any answer, I had soon forgotten 
 it in the midst of the personal anxieties which then over- 
 whelmed me. However, contrary to my unjust suspicion, the 
 Spanish Government did not hesitate about redeeming the 
 promise of Philip V., and immediately that a final decree gave 
 to the Crown the immense inheritance of the Porhoets, the 
 Government nobly restored it to the lawful heir. 
 
 It was nine o'clock in the evening when I got out of the 
 chaise, before the threshold of the humble cottage, which that 
 almost royal fortune had so tardily entered. The little servant 
 came to the door. She was weeping. I immediately heard 
 M. Laubepin's deep voice, at the top of the stairs, saying : " It 
 
230 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 is he ! " I hastily ascended the stairs. The old man pressed 
 my hand warmly, and ushered me, without a word, into Mile, 
 de Porhoet's room. The physician and the curd from the 
 town sat silently in the shade of a window. Mme. Laroque 
 was kneeling on a chair near the bed ; her daughter, standing 
 near the head of the bed, was supporting the pillows on which 
 my poor friend's head rested. When the sick woman saw me, 
 a slight smile passed over her greatly changed features ; and 
 she with difficulty disengaged one of her arms. I took her 
 hand, I fell on my knees, and could not restrain my tears. 
 
 " My child ! " she said, " my dear child ! " Then she 
 looked steadily at M. Laubepin. The old notary took up a 
 sheet of paper which was on the bed, and, appearing to finish 
 reading something that had been interrupted, said : 
 
 " For these reasons, I appoint by this will (the whole 
 of which is written by my own hand), universal legatee of 
 all my property, as well in Spain as in France, without 
 any reserve or conditions, Maxime-Jacques-Marie Odiot, 
 Marquis de Champcey d'Hauterive, of noble heart and noble 
 race. Such is my will. 
 
 " Jocelynde-Jeanne, 
 
 " Comtesse de Porhoet-Gael." 
 
 In my excessive surprise I rose with a sort of abruptness 
 and was about to speak, when Mile, de Porhoet, gently 
 guiding my hand, placed it in Marguerite's. At the sudden 
 touch the dear girl trembled ; she bowed her young forehead 
 over the pillow of death, and murmured, blushing, some words 
 in the dying woman's ear. As for me, I could find no words ; 
 
THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 231 
 
 I fell on my knees again, and prayed to God. Some minutes 
 had passed amid solemn silence, when Marguerite withdrew 
 her hand from mine suddenly, and made a sign of alarm. 
 The doctor approached hastily, and I rose. Mile, de Porhoet's 
 head had sunk back suddenly ; her looks were fixed, radiant, 
 and turned towards heaven ; her lips parted a little, and as if 
 she had been talking in a dream, she said : " O God ! God of 
 mercy ! I see it — yonder ! Yes ; the choir, the golden lamps, 
 the windows — the sun everywhere ! Two angels kneeling 
 before the altar — in white robes — they wave their wings. 
 
 God ! they are alive ! " This cry died away on her mouth, 
 and left it smiling ; she closed her eyes, as if falling asleep, and 
 suddenly an air of undying youth spread over her countenance, 
 which could no longer have been recognized. 
 
 Such a death, crowning such a life, carries with it lessons, 
 with which I wished my soul to be filled to its depths. I 
 begged to be left alone in the room with the priest. That 
 pious vigil, I trust, will not be lost upon me. As I looked 
 on that countenance which wore the impress of glorious peace, 
 and over which some reflection of the supernatural seemed 
 dimly to stray, more than one forgotten or doubted truth came 
 before me with irresistible evidence. My noble, holy friend, 
 
 1 well knew that you had possessed the virtue of sacrifice : 
 I then saw that you had received its reward. 
 
 Towards two o'clock in the morning, giving way to 
 weariness, I felt a wish to breathe the fresh air for a moment. 
 I descended the staircase in the dark, and walked into the 
 garden, avoiding going through the parlour on the ground 
 floor, where I had observed a light. The night was profoundly 
 gloomy. As I approached the turret at the end of the little 
 inclosure, a slight noise sounded under the hornbeams, and an 
 
232 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A POOR YOUNG MAN. 
 
 indistinct form at the same moment emerged from among the 
 leaves. I felt a sudden dizziness, my heart palpitated, the sky 
 looked full of stars. " Marguerite ! " I said, stretching out 
 my arms. I heard a little cry, then my name murmured in a 
 whisper, then nothing — and I felt lier lips on mine. I thought 
 my soul was leaving me ! 
 
 I have given Helen halt my fortune ; Marguerite is my 
 wife. I close these pages for ever. I have nothing to confide 
 to them now. It may be said of men, as it has been said of 
 nations, " The happiest arc tlrosc that have no history ! " 
 
 THF, F.riT). 
 
ssiieS!^^sit