by Eugène Sue
“Towards the end of the last century,” Mademoiselle Plouernel proceeded as in a revery, “during the siege of La Rochelle, Colonel Plouernel became strongly attached by bonds of friendship to one of the descendants of that Gallic family, an armorer by occupation, and one of the bravest soldiers of Admiral Coligny. The armorer being, at the close of the religious war, ardently desirous of returning to Brittany and establishing himself there, in the ancient cradle of his family, which, according to the chronicles of his kin, owned their fields not far from Karnak, and Colonel Plouernel, on his part, wishing to do a kindness to his friend, the armorer of La Rochelle, our ancestor offered the brave Huguenot a long lease of the farm of Karnak, which he owned and which he transmitted to his descendants together with the domain of Mezlean. But, according to the feudal custom, ‘use’ and ‘habitance’ change after a certain number of years into ‘vassalage,’ and so it has come about that the descendants of the armorer, they never having left the domain of Mezlean, are to-day vassals of my brother. My mother obtained the certainty of this fact by ordering the bailiff of Plouernel to communicate with the bailiff of Mezlean and inquire whether a family named Lebrenn, that is the family’s name, lived on the farm of Karnak. The bailiff answered that in the year 1573 a man of that name had taken the farm in lease and that the farm was still cultivated by the descendants of the same family. I doubt not that, owing to the proximity of the port of Vannes, the elder brother of the present farmer of Karnak took to the sea, a calling that carries with it enfranchisement from vassalage. Struck by the circumstances mentioned in the manuscript of Colonel Plouernel, my mother arranged an excursion to Mezlean in order to make the acquaintance of a family in so many ways interesting to know. We were to make the journey only shortly before the fatal illness that separated me from my mother — until the day when I shall live again at her side in the world that she now inhabits,” added Bertha with a sigh, and she relapsed into pensive silence.
“But, in short, what conclusion did that Huguenot colonel, and do you, draw from the, I must admit, extraordinary facts registered in that manuscript? I find myself unable to follow your reasoning.”
“The conclusion is simple and touching, it serves as the moral to the manuscript left by Colonel Plouernel; he closes it with these words to his son: ‘My child, the death of my dear brother has made me master of the immense domains of our house in Auvergne, in Beauvoisis and in Brittany; thousands of vassals inhabit those domains. But never forget this — our vast acres and large wealth as well as our nobility have for their origin an iniquitous and bloody conquest; these lands that to-day are ours and over which we lord it, once belonged to the Gauls who, from being free, were dispossessed, subjugated and reduced to a frightful condition of slavery by the Franks, our ancestors. Our present vassals are the descendants of that disinherited race which has been successively the slaves, serfs and vassals of our ancestors. Show yourself, accordingly, charitable, compassionate, equitable, fraternal, benevolent, obedient to the humane law of the Christian faith. Alas! however generous your conduct may be towards them, never could it expiate the wrongs to which our conquering race has subjected the Gallic generations for now more than ten centuries. To the end that you may know and entertain a just horror for so much iniquity and all the sufferings that it entailed, I shall subjoin to these pages several fragments of the history of a family of Gallic origin, the family of Lebrenn of Karnak—’”
“Niece!” cried the Marchioness indignantly, “I can no longer listen to such enormities!”
The Marchioness of Tremblay was interrupted in the flow of her indignation by the entrance of Abbot Boujaron, her confessor, intimate friend, and, in short, her paramour.
CHAPTER IV.
THE LOST LETTER.
ABBOT BOUJARON’S WORRIED looks, the disorder into which his wig, his neckerchief and his cloak were thrown, threw the Marchioness of Tremblay into such alarm that, wholly forgetting the subject of her conversation with Mademoiselle Plouernel, she cried: “My God, Abbot, what has happened? You are all upset; you seem to be in great excitement; you look as if you had just come out of a scuffle.”
“I have good reason to be uneasy, dear Marchioness. I have mislaid the letter that we wrote this morning to your nephew — the confidential letter that you know of.”
“What!” replied the Marchioness visibly terrified. “Was not the letter put carefully folded in the pocket of your coat? I put it there myself. It can not have been mislaid.”
“I was on my way to the house of the person whom, as we decided, I was to call upon in order to obtain some further information from him and add it to the letter, on which account it was left unsealed, when, crossing a large square, I was overtaken and soon found myself surrounded by a big crowd clamoring for the death of the De Witt brothers and the French.”
“What De Witt brothers?” asked the Marchioness. “Are they the two intractable republicans whom Monsieur Estrade spoke to us about when he returned from his embassy to this country?”
“They are both of them men cast in the mold of Plutarch, to judge by what Monsieur Tilly, our host, was telling us of them yesterday,” observed Mademoiselle Plouernel, emerging from the revery in which she was steeped since the arrival of the Abbot; “I could not tire of hearing him speak of the domestic virtues of the two brothers, whom he considers to be the greatest living citizens of Holland, and men of distinguished probity.”
“My dear daughter,” answered the Abbot, “our host belongs to the same political party as those De Witts; as such he has his reasons to give them a high place — in your estimation.”
“But the letter,” put in the Marchioness with increasing anxiety, “how comes it to be mislaid, perhaps lost?”
“Swallowed up, as I found myself, by that loudly vociferating mob that was rushing towards the prison where one of the two De Witt brothers is confined; pushed, hustled, shoved about, and almost suffocated by that plebeian flood, the current of which was carrying me away despite all that I could do, I made frantic efforts to extricate myself from the surging crowd; in my struggle my frock was unfastened, and I suppose the letter dropped out as I was being whirled about — unless I inadvertently pulled it out myself when I took my handkerchief to wipe the perspiration that streamed down my forehead, after I had finally succeeded in getting clear of the bawling, threatening and swearing mob.”
“I am distracted at the loss of that letter. It may fall into the hands of and be read by some indiscreet fellow — you understand me, Abbot? — that would be most disagreeable and compromising.”
“I understand you but too well, Marchioness! Only too well! I therefore went twice over the road that I traveled, but all in vain; I could not find the letter! Most unfortunately it was unsealed. The most scrupulous man would have been justified to cast his eyes over it — and thus inform himself upon its contents.”
“Truly, aunt,” put in Mademoiselle Plouernel, “I fail to understand the deep anxiety that the loss of a letter, that seems to have been written to my brother in order to inform him of the delay in our arrival in England, can cause you and Monsieur the Abbot. The matter is a trifle; it can have no serious results; cease to fret about it.”
“There are things, my niece, the wide bearings of which you can not understand,” answered the Marchioness of Tremblay sententiously; “it is enough that you know that the loss of this letter is most regrettable.”
At this moment the Marchioness’s lackey entered the room after announcing himself with a rap at the door, and said to his mistress:
“Madam, there is a man who asks to see Monsieur the Abbot without delay on an important matter.”
“Who is he?”
“He is a Frenchman, madam.”
“Does he seem to be noble?”
“Yes, madam, he carries a sword.”
“Marchioness,” said the Abbot excitedly as if struck by a sudden thought, “it may be this individual found the letter, and is bringing it back to me. God be praised! our alarm
will be at end! Oh, I hope it may be so!”
“But how could the stranger know your address?”
“Did I not write to Raoul that we were stopping with Monsieur Tilly?”
“In that case, Abbot,” replied the Marchioness with an accent of extreme apprehension, “the stranger must have read the letter! We would have a stranger informed upon our plans! We must have light upon this, and quickly.”
And addressing the lackey:
“Introduce the stranger immediately, and then withdraw.”
“The more I think upon it,” said Mademoiselle Plouernel to herself, astonished and pensive, “all the more unexplainable does my aunt’s and the Abbot’s uneasiness seem to me.”
The personage whom the lackey introduced into the salon was a man of about forty-five years of age; he was simply dressed, without lace or embroidery; for all sign of rank he wore on his shoulders a scarlet knot of the color of the feather in his grey felt hat, and the ribbon of his sword that hung from a leather baldric. The tawny complexion of the stranger, his quick, penetrating eye, black as his moustache, seemed to indicate a southern extraction. Of middle size, robust and sinewy, resolute in his port and endowed with a physiognomy in which intelligence and wit vied with boldness, everything about him revealed a man of energy and decision, but so completely master of himself that nothing, except what he had no interest in concealing, would be allowed to rise to the surface. The new personage presented himself in the salon with complete ease, bowed respectfully to the Marchioness and her niece, and looked from the one to the other in silence with so marked, so fixed a gaze, that the Marchioness of Tremblay felt embarrassed and said to her niece:
“Come, Bertha, let us withdraw to my chamber, and leave Monsieur the Abbot with monsieur.”
Bertha of Plouernel was preparing to follow her aunt when, after having again contemplated the young maid, the stranger bowed once more to the Marchioness, and said:
“If Madam the Marchioness will allow, the interview that I desire to hold with her and with monsieur, Abbot Boujaron, will take place in the presence of Mademoiselle Plouernel. It is proper, it is even necessary that this should be.”
“You know us, monsieur?” said the Marchioness, not a little astonished. “You know our names?”
“I have the honor, madam; and my little knowledge extends further than that,” answered the stranger with a singular smile, again casting a penetrating glance at Mademoiselle Plouernel, as if he sought to judge her mind by the expression on her face. On his face, in turn, the evidence of a heightening interest in the girl could be detected. But as these manifestations passed unperceived by Bertha, she felt hurt by the persistence of the stranger’s gaze, she blushed, and taking a step towards the door of her aunt’s chamber said to the Marchioness:
“Excuse me, aunt, if I go and leave you with the gentlemen.”
“Mademoiselle,” said the stranger warmly, as he divined the maid’s thoughts, “I conjure you, do not impute the obstinacy of my gaze to a disregard of the respect due you, and with which I am profoundly penetrated; I sought to read and I did read on your features the uprightness and nobility of your heart; I doubly congratulate myself on being able to render you a service, a great service.”
“Me, monsieur?” answered Mademoiselle Plouernel in great astonishment, yet struck by the accent of unquestionable sincerity in the stranger’s words. “What service can you render to me, me whom you do not know, and whom you now see for the first time? Be kind enough to explain yourself more clearly.”
“Monsieur,” said the Marchioness haughtily to the stranger, as he was about to answer Bertha, “you introduced yourself into this house under pretext of soliciting an interview, which Monsieur Abbot Boujaron has condescended to grant you. That notwithstanding, you have hitherto addressed mademoiselle only — a violation of propriety towards me and Monsieur the Abbot.”
“Moreover, monsieur,” added the Abbot, “we are wholly in the dark as to who you are. Your language is as strange as your visit.”
“I am your obedient servant, Monsieur Abbot,” answered the stranger, bowing with sardonic courtesy, “and I shall, if you please, answer Mademoiselle Plouernel, who has done me the honor of asking me what the service is that I am happy enough to be able to render her. The service is summed up in this simple advice: Mademoiselle, go not to England; refuse to undertake the voyage.”
A tremor ran over Bertha’s frame; for an instant she remained dumb with stupefaction, while, scarlet with confusion and apprehension, both her aunt and the Abbot exchanged significant looks that betrayed their embarrassment. Struck speechless for an instant, Mademoiselle Plouernel turned to the stranger and asked:
“And why, monsieur, do you warn me against the journey to England?”
“For two reasons, mademoiselle, two important reasons—”
“Monsieur,” the Abbot interrupted the stranger with, in an icy tone, “I wish to call your attention, first, to the fact that you have committed a breach of confidence; secondly, that you have not understood a word of the letter that you found and that you took the freedom of reading — an indiscretion that a man of good breeding would have carefully guarded against.”
“And I, in turn, will call your attention, Monsieur Abbot,” retorted the stranger, “first, to the fact that to read an unsealed letter, found on the pavement of a public thoroughfare, is no breach of confidence; secondly, that, without priding myself on being gifted with extraordinary intellectual power, yet am I intelligent enough to understand the value of words. For that reason I have advised mademoiselle not to go to England, and resolutely to refuse to undertake the journey.”
“Monsieur,” broke in Bertha with profound feeling, as she yielded to a sudden and painful sense of danger that flashed through her mind. “I ask it as a favor of you, explain yourself clearly. Be good enough to give me your reasons for the advice.”
“One moment, my dear child,” the Abbot hastened to interpose, in order to parry off the stranger’s answer; “I am the writer of that letter; it is for me to speak intelligently upon it. I can tell monsieur that the despatch which he read is addressed to an envoy of his Majesty Louis XIV at the court of his Majesty Charles II, and that it deals with very delicate affairs of state. Now, then, I must add, that unless one be the most reckless of men, which I certainly am not, one does not conduct a correspondence upon matters of such a nature, except in cipher, or by means of enigmatic phrases, that bear a double sense, both of which seem perfectly logical on their face, but the real purport of which remains secret between the correspondents themselves, who are alone able to interpret it. It will be well for monsieur to understand that.”
“If that is the case, Monsieur Abbot, there will be nothing left to me but to admit a mistake,” replied the stranger with mock humility, “a mistake, however, that was quite excusable, and of which I request Mademoiselle Plouernel herself to be the judge,” he added, taking the letter out of his pocket, “from the terms in which this interesting missive is couched.”
“Monsieur, the reading of the letter is wholly superfluous, it being established that the letter no wise concerns mademoiselle.”
“No doubt,” replied the stranger, “mademoiselle is not touched upon in it except in an enigmatic and mysterious manner. Accordingly, when Monsieur the Abbot writes to Monsieur the Count of Plouernel:
“We have all reason to hope that your sister’s matchless beauty will produce a lively impression upon the King of England when she is presented to him, and may induce him to decide—”
“But, monsieur, that is intolerable!” cried the Marchioness, “you are outrageously abusing our patience — you compel me to request that you leave our presence!”
“Monsieur, I listen to you,” observed Mademoiselle Plouernel, “and believe me, I shall never forget the service that you will have rendered me. Be kind enough to continue the reading of the letter.”
Recognizing the futility of any further objection to the reading of the despatch, t
he Marchioness and the Abbot crossed their arms, raised their eyes to heaven and assumed the appearance of resigned innocence. Addressing himself to Bertha the stranger proceeded:
“I shall pass over the details of the incident at sea that obliged the vessel on which you, mademoiselle, had embarked, to put in at the port of Delft. I now come to the interesting portion of the letter:
“You informed us, my dear Raoul, that the influence is on the wane of Mademoiselle Kerouaille, who is now the Duchess of Portsmouth and was taken to Charles II by his sister, Madam the Duchess of Orleans, at the beginning of this year in order to urge the libertine King more effectively, by means of the charms of the beautiful Krouaill and a present of a few millions, to sign the treaty of alliance between England and France against the Republic of the United Provinces; you add that, in even measure as the influence of the Duchess of Portsmouth wanes, waxes the ascendency of my Lord Arlington, a bitter partisan of the alliance between England, Spain and the United Provinces, over the vacillating and profligate Rowley, as the familiars of Charles II call his Majesty, and that the said my Lord Arlington has for his assistant and agent a certain Nell Gwynne, a low-lived creature, an incarnate she-devil, who swears, curses, drinks and gets drunk like a trooper, but whose sprightliness, noisy hilarity and brazenness seem greatly to delight his Majesty. From all of this it may hap, as you indicate, that, aided by the nymph and the doubloons of Spain and the Republic, King Charles, after having tired of Mademoiselle Kerouaille and dissipated the present of several millions bestowed upon him by our own master under the pretext of catholicity, may go so far as to break the alliance with France and return to the alliance with Spain and the Republic of the United Provinces. Meditation upon those grave possibilities suggested the thought to you, my dear pupil, that the magnificent eyes and challenging beauty of our own Bertha might operate a salutary change in the now unfavorable disposition of old Rowley, counterbalance the influence of Nell Gwynne, and confirm King Charles in his alliance with our master. Struck by the importance of your suggestion, over which madam your aunt and I have long reflected, the expedient seemed excellent to us and also so pressing, that, without answering you, and resorting to an innocent ruse, we have persuaded your sister that you were taken so seriously ill as to induce her to proceed with us to England. We prepared the agreeable surprise for you, but the violent storm of which I gave you a sketch compelled us to put in at Delft. I am now writing to you from The Hague, in order that you may not feel uneasy at the prolonged delay in our answer.