CHAPTER III.
THE HUGUENOT COLONEL.
The Marchioness of Tremblay had her secret reasons to suppress her ownsentiments, and not to fulminate against what she termed the "enormitiesof her niece," who, however, on this occasion, had given stronger ventthan ever before to her hostility for the "idol" who was desolatingGaul. Accordingly, Bertha's aunt contented herself with a few forcedsmiles, and seeking to give a different turn to the conversation that,besides being generally distasteful to her, threw doubts into her mindconcerning the secret plans that she was pursuing, she observed in amild tone:
"After all, my dear, the unwonted vehemence of your language has itsexcuse in this, that the contagion of the country on whose shores wesuffered shipwreck has smitten you. This wicked little hereticalrepublic, once so severely chastised by Louis XIV, has always held ourgreat King in particular aversion. The heretical and republicanpestilence must have mounted to your head; who knows," she added with anaffectation of archness, "but you may come out of the country afull-fledged Huguenot."
"I should then have, at least, the consolation of knowing that I shallnot be the first or only Huguenot in our family," answered MademoisellePlouernel, whose features the line of thought into which her aunt'swords threw her seemed suddenly to overcast with pensiveness; "I wouldbe but following the example of one of our ancestors who was not much ofa partisan of royalty. Was not my father's grandfather a Huguenot? Didnot Colonel Plouernel, as he was then called, take part in the religiouswars of the last century under the great Coligny, one of whose bravestofficers he proved himself? Did he not fight valiantly against the royaland Catholic armies?"
"Alas, it is but too true. The apostasy of that Plouernel is a blot uponour family. He was the youngest son of the family. After his eldestbrother, the Count, and the latter's son, the Viscount, were both killedin the front ranks of the royal and Catholic army, at the battle ofRoche-la-Belle, fighting against the rebellious heretics, the Huguenotcolonel became by that catastrophe the head of our house, and came intopossession of its vast domains. Unfortunately, his son shared thepaternal vice of heresy, but at last his grandson, who was my father,re-entered, thanks to God, the bosom of the Catholic Church, and resumedthe observance of our old traditions of love, respect and loyalty to ourKings. Let us leave the two Plouernels, the only two unworthy members ofour family, buried in their double felony. We should endeavor to forgetthat the two ever lived."
"It goes against my grain, aunt, to contradict you, but I can assure youthat Colonel Plouernel, by reason of his courage, his virtues and thenobility of his character, is perhaps the only male member of whom ourfamily may be justly proud."
As Mademoiselle Plouernel was saying these last words she happened tocast her eyes in the direction of the net awning that sheltered from therays of the sun the wide balcony near which she was seated. She remainedsilent for a moment, while her eyes, looking intently into the spacethat stretched before Monsieur Tilly's house, seemed to follow with somuch interest someone who was passing on the street, that, half risingfrom her easy-chair, the Marchioness inquisitively asked her niece:
"What is it you see out there? You seem to be absorbed in deepcontemplation."
"I am looking at the young mariner whom you know," answered Berthawithout evincing the slightest embarrassment; "he was just passing witha grey-haired man, I doubt not his father; there is a marked resemblancebetween the two. Both have very sympathetic ways and faces."
"Of what mariner are you speaking, if you please? I know nobody of thatclass."
"Why, aunt, can you have so soon forgotten the services rendered us whenwe were in mortal danger--you who believe in death? Would not thebrigantine on which we embarked from Calais have foundered with everyliving soul on board, had it not been for the heroic action of thatyoung mariner, French like ourselves, who braved the tempest in order tocome to our aid, and snatch us from the imminent danger that we ran?"
"Well! And did not Abbot Boujaron give the mariner ten louis in my name,in payment for the service that he rendered us? We are quits with him."
"It is true--and immediately upon receiving the remuneration, which wentunaccompanied by a single courteous word, or a single expression thatcame from the heart, the young mariner turned, threw the ten louis intothe cap of an invalid sailor who was begging on the wharf, and ourgenerous rescuer said with a smile to the poor man: 'Take this, myfriend, here are ten louis that Monsieur the Abbot gives you--for you topray for the absolution of his sins; we all need being prayed for,abbots as much as anybody else.' And with a respectful salute he walkedaway."
"And that was what I call a piece of extreme impertinence!" interjectedthe Marchioness, interrupting her niece. "The idea of giving the tenlouis to the beggar to pray for the absolution of the Abbot's sins! Wasnot that to insinuate that the holy man had a heavily loaded conscience?I was not aware of the fellow's effrontery and ingratitude; I was stilltoo sea-sick and under the effect of the fright we went through. Well,then, to return to the salt water rat, the fellow's disdain for theremuneration offered him, cancels even more completely whatever debt wemay have owed him."
"That is not my opinion, aunt. Accordingly I requested our host,Monsieur Tilly, to be kind enough to ascertain the name and address ofour brave countryman, who can only be a temporary resident of Delft--tojudge by what has been reported to me."
"And for what purpose did you make the _kind_ inquiry, dear niece?"
"I wish to commission Monsieur Tilly to assure our generous rescuer ofour gratitude, and to ask him to excuse the strange conduct of Monsieurthe Abbot towards him--excuses that, I must admit, I had not the courageto offer on the spot; I felt so confused at the humiliation that he wasput to, and, besides, I felt too indignant at the conduct of the Abbotto trust myself to speak to him. Just now, as I saw him crossing thesquare--"
"You probably had a wish to call him from the window?" asked theMarchioness suffocating with repressed anger. "Truly, dear niece, youare losing your head more and more. Such a disregard for propriety onthe part of a person of your quality!"
"I never thought of calling our countryman out of the window; I was onlysorry that Monsieur Tilly did not happen to be with us at the time. Hemight have gone out after him and asked him to step in."
"My dear, what you say upon this subject is so absurd, that I evenprefer to hear your praises of Colonel Plouernel--although that topic isnot of the most edifying."
"Nothing easier than to accommodate you, aunt," answered Bertha with asmile that seemed to foreshadow numerous subjects for the suffocation ofthe Marchioness. "In a manuscript left by Colonel Plouernel under thetitle of 'Instructions to His Son' a most extraordinary fact wasrecorded. In reminding his son of the antiquity of his family, whichgoes back to the time of the conquest of Gaul by the Franks, thecolonel added the natural observation that there are no conquerorswithout conquered, and that the Franks, from whom we of the noble raceclaim to descend, despoiled and then enslaved the Gauls. He thenproceeded to say that a family of the Gallic race, a descendant of whomthe colonel became acquainted with at the siege of La Rochelle, handeddown to its own members from age to age, first, from the time of theconquest of Gaul by the Romans, and then, from the conquest of thecountry by the Franks, a series of legends that chronicled the trialsand misfortunes undergone by the several and succeeding members of thatfamily, which, strange coincidence! on the occasion of the frequentuprisings of the enslaved Gauls, more than once fought arms in hand andvictoriously against the seigneurs of our own Frankish house! Ourancestor, the colonel, approves and extols the right of conqueredpeoples to rise in insurrection.
"Towards the end of the last century," Mademoiselle Plouernel proceededas in a revery, "during the siege of La Rochelle, Colonel Plouernelbecame strongly attached by bonds of friendship to one of thedescendants of that Gallic family, an armorer by occupation, and one ofthe bravest soldiers of Admiral Coligny. The armorer being, at the closeof the religious war, ardently desirous of returning to Brittany andestablis
hing himself there, in the ancient cradle of his family, which,according to the chronicles of his kin, owned their fields not far fromKarnak, and Colonel Plouernel, on his part, wishing to do a kindness tohis friend, the armorer of La Rochelle, our ancestor offered the braveHuguenot a long lease of the farm of Karnak, which he owned and which hetransmitted to his descendants together with the domain of Mezlean. But,according to the feudal custom, 'use' and 'habitance' change after acertain number of years into 'vassalage,' and so it has come about thatthe descendants of the armorer, they never having left the domain ofMezlean, are to-day vassals of my brother. My mother obtained thecertainty of this fact by ordering the bailiff of Plouernel tocommunicate with the bailiff of Mezlean and inquire whether a familynamed 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 takenthe farm in lease and that the farm was still cultivated by thedescendants of the same family. I doubt not that, owing to the proximityof the port of Vannes, the elder brother of the present farmer of Karnaktook to the sea, a calling that carries with it enfranchisement fromvassalage. Struck by the circumstances mentioned in the manuscript ofColonel Plouernel, my mother arranged an excursion to Mezlean in orderto make the acquaintance of a family in so many ways interesting toknow. We were to make the journey only shortly before the fatal illnessthat separated me from my mother--until the day when I shall live againat her side in the world that she now inhabits," added Bertha with asigh, 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 thatmanuscript? I find myself unable to follow your reasoning."
"The conclusion is simple and touching, it serves as the moral to themanuscript left by Colonel Plouernel; he closes it with these words tohis son: 'My child, the death of my dear brother has made me master ofthe immense domains of our house in Auvergne, in Beauvoisis and inBrittany; thousands of vassals inhabit those domains. But never forgetthis--our vast acres and large wealth as well as our nobility have fortheir origin an iniquitous and bloody conquest; these lands that to-dayare ours and over which we lord it, once belonged to the Gauls who, frombeing free, were dispossessed, subjugated and reduced to a frightfulcondition of slavery by the Franks, our ancestors. Our present vassalsare the descendants of that disinherited race which has beensuccessively the slaves, serfs and vassals of our ancestors. Showyourself, 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 itexpiate the wrongs to which our conquering race has subjected the Gallicgenerations for now more than ten centuries. To the end that you mayknow and entertain a just horror for so much iniquity and all thesufferings that it entailed, I shall subjoin to these pages severalfragments of the history of a family of Gallic origin, the family ofLebrenn of Karnak--'"
"Niece!" cried the Marchioness indignantly, "I can no longer listen tosuch enormities!"
The Marchioness of Tremblay was interrupted in the flow of herindignation by the entrance of Abbot Boujaron, her confessor, intimatefriend, and, in short, her paramour.