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 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES
 
 " Old footsteps trod tlie upper floors. 
 Old faces looked hi through tlu doors. 
 Old voices called me from without. " 
 
 TEN>rysoN.
 
 CITOYENNPJ 
 
 JACOUELINE 
 
 ^ WiamdLXi's 5Lot in tJ)c ffitrcat £fxmdj Erfaolution 
 
 By SARAH TYTLER 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 >^v^^3?r^ 
 
 ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER 
 148, STRAND, LONDON 
 
 1865
 
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 en 
 
 3 
 
 CO 
 
 
 
 laobert 
 
 WITH LOVE THAT CANNOT DIE 
 HERE AND YONDER 
 
 

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 4 
 
 « 
 
 PACE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE TOUR DE FAYE^A CARD PARTY, AND A RESTLESS 
 
 CITOYENNE I 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 LA SARTE'S FETE — MOTHER AND SON ... 25 
 
 CPIAPTER HI. 
 
 A FRENCH LOTHARIO — THE CURE's WARNING — A 
 
 SPIED LETTER 74 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE LAST OF THE EMIGRANTS — PETRONILLE DE CROI 
 
 — BABETTE'S USELESS PILGRIMAGE . . .122 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE CHANGE OF BRIDES — JACQUELINE AT BAY — 
 
 TAKES SANCTUARY 1 78
 
 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 J
 
 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE TOUR DE FAYE — A CARD PARTY AND A RESTLESS 
 
 CITOYENNE. 
 
 jHE early summer of 1792 was ripen- 
 ing the wheat-ears and darkening 
 the vine leaves about the hamlet of 
 Faye-aux-Jonquilles. The season was 
 too far advanced, however, for showing the ap- 
 propriateness of its sweet-smelling name, or for 
 proving that it had contributed in its day to the 
 four thousand crowns' worth of jonquilles spent 
 on the progress of the Great Monarch to 
 Chantilly, which is pleasantly chronicled by that 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 B
 
 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 jonquille among French women — Madame de 
 Sevigne. 
 
 But Faye was lucky in more than its name of 
 Faye-among-the-Jonquilles. It had plump wheat- 
 ears instead of the shrivelled heads of rye which re- 
 placed, at a later date, the jonquilles that enamelled 
 and perfumed the steps of the sublime Louis. Its 
 present proprietors had suffered less than some 
 from the road-making, the charge on salt, and the 
 general taxes of the French people, which took 
 somewhat from the scent of the jonquilles and the 
 sublimity of the Louis. 
 
 Faye was in the interior of France, sixty miles 
 from Paris. It was nothing to speak of in size. A 
 score of thatched cottages, some of them of dry mud, 
 but none of them more than moderately miserable ; 
 an old inn ; and a little church, not yet closed, 
 with square tower and red roof The three con- 
 stituents of a hamlet were fairly represented in 
 it — the green-stained fountain in the centre, 
 where men and women lounged and gossipped, 
 and washed their onions and radishes, and shred 
 their cabbages, in the evenings ; the posting-
 
 FAYE-AUX-JONQUILLES. 
 
 house — to wit, the bulged-out old inn ; the 
 prison, traditionally held to be the dungeons of the 
 little castle on the rising ground at the end of 
 the village. A rough road, bordered by walnut 
 trees, wound and clomb to the Tour de Faye, 
 giving one the impression that the village rose on 
 tip-toe to curtsey to the feudal lord and master, in 
 spite of the prohibition of titles of rank by a 
 National Assembly, and the flight of great flocks 
 of nobles. 
 
 The Tour was a true antique, not setting its 
 claim on massiveness or splendour. It had the 
 hoary picturesque grace of a grey lichen, set 
 between the green of the earth and the blue, 
 or daffodil, or pea-bloom of the sky. The walls 
 were very thick, and pierced with narrow windows. 
 They looked as if they might have stood sieges 
 from the Normans and the English, the League 
 and the Fronde ; and as if they might yet stand 
 another siege from a new Jacquerie. There were 
 two tourelles, connected by the nucleus of a main 
 tower, crowned by an unequal, high-peaked roof, 
 with a handful of girouettes, or weathercocks,
 
 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 thrown into the bargain. A morsel of bocage — 
 what remained of the chase and the fields of 
 the Faye domain — stretched out in the back- 
 ground. On one side a terrace, ^vith a flight 
 of shallow steps, led down into the garden, the 
 stateliness and precision of whose clipped cypresses 
 and yews contrasted broadly with the wild luxu- 
 riance of its thickets of lovely red and white 
 roses. The two tourelles were, so far as regarded 
 their internal economy, perfectly self-contained, 
 and had been named, centuries before the Revo- 
 lution, the tourelle of Monsieur, and the tourelle 
 of Madame. Monsieur's tourelle held the char- 
 ter room. Monsieur's cabinet, and Monsieur's 
 bedroom. Madame's tourelle held a morning 
 room, Madame's boudoir, and Mademoiselle's bed- 
 room. The salle and the guest-chambers were in 
 the connecting link of the main tower, over the 
 arched doonvay. There was a sunk flat, with a 
 vaulted kitchen and red-rusted cellars, reputed to 
 have been dungeons. Hie ser\ants' closets were 
 niched in anywhere and ever)"vvhere, and were 
 not counted in the plan. No doubt, the arrange-
 
 THE TOUR DE FAYE. 
 
 ments were all according to native ideas of order 
 and propriety, though certainly they "knew not 
 the comfortable." 
 
 Citizen Faye had not swum ^vith the great tide 
 of aristocratic emigration. He had family reasons. 
 He was a philosopher himself, to begin with, — that 
 was when he did not exactly expect the sans- 
 culottes to proceed from theory to practice. He 
 was living on sufferance, shorn of his plumes, and 
 pinched in his diet, with the prospect of becoming 
 still more a beggar, and of dining at the table 
 without the tablecloth, should he ever venture to 
 Paris. 
 
 The simple inhabitants of Faye had not yet 
 imagined anything so fashionable and distinguished 
 as a scaffold in its own person rising up, and be- 
 coming the leading spectacle, in their tame provin- 
 cial experience. They were far back, these peasant 
 proprietors. They were not even big enough 
 for a National Guard of their own. They had to 
 go to the next town to see the Altar of Liberty, 
 and to swear to the Social Contract. Their single 
 glory was, that Jonquille, the son of the innkeeper
 
 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 La Sarte, was the deputy for their department of 
 Mousse. But in the face of this fact, so great was 
 the force of habit, that when Monsieur de Faye, in 
 his redingote and ruffles, strolled down in the 
 midst of the children, of the goats and the hens, 
 and stood still to speak to this or that goodman, 
 then Citizen Joiner or Citizen Blacksmith would 
 pluck the cap from his head, even to the tune 
 of the far-away yet swelling cry, " Liberty, 
 Equality, Fraternity!" shouted by the orators up 
 in Paris. 
 
 Monsieur (still Monsieur ^vithin the Tour walls) 
 went every evening between five and six to kiss 
 Madame's hand, ask her how she did, and play 
 cards with her and his daughter — their only 
 child — till supper was served at eight. The 
 family were thus playing cards one evening in 
 June, 1792. 
 
 Madame's room was warm, and heavily perfumed. 
 There was a glowing wood fire on the hearth-dogs, 
 and the open window in the embrasure only tem- 
 pered the heat. Before the window, on a stand, 
 were pots with late violets and lilies of the valley,
 
 madame's boudoir. 
 
 and, in small tubs, two forced orange trees in full 
 blossom. Above the orange trees were cages of 
 canaries, both full fledged and newly hatched, which 
 kept up a continual warbling and twittering. There 
 were strips of Persian carpet on the clear poHshed 
 floor ; mirrors in filagree frames ; a harpsichord ; 
 family portraits of women with powdered hair, and 
 men in lace cravats and half armour. There were 
 soft, deep easy chairs, and a low, broad sofa, besides 
 chairs of gilt ebony, with cushions in tambour 
 work. There was pro\asion for Madame's devo- 
 tion in a draped recess, furnished with an ivory 
 crucifix, and thin books of hours, bearing for- 
 bidden shields on their covers ; and for her handi- 
 work, in a mouton or heap of gold lace, the 
 threads of which she unpicked with all the grace, 
 skill, and dignified industry of a parfileuse, or 
 unpicker of gold thread, which had been the only 
 employment for grand dames in Madame's youth, 
 and which they put to profit by selling its bullion 
 fruit in the regular market. There was a rich, 
 though tarnished, trailing ruby velvet curtain veiling 
 the door. But the great feature in the room was
 
 CrrOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 an immense four-post bed, seven feet every way, 
 with gauze and silk curtains, and a white satin 
 {|uilt, embroidered with huge stately convolvuluses 
 and carnations, Madame was still partial to recep- 
 tions in that bed, on which occasions she wore a 
 white jacket and white gloves, and had the card 
 table so placed that she could join in the game 
 without difficulty or awkwardness. 
 
 Altogether, if ever there was a noble, sensuous, 
 (juaint setting to a party of card-players, it was the 
 boudoir of Madame. And it may please those who 
 love to be tickled with the keen flavour of danger 
 in the wind, to reflect, as they look on all such 
 family groups lingering in France in the year of 
 grace 1792, that the sword of Damocles hung over 
 them, suspended by the single hair. Not only over 
 Monsieur and his superannuated major-domo, who 
 were the men of the party, but over Madame, 
 over Mademoiselle — ay, over the ver>' old 
 waiting woman, Agathe, and the young waiting 
 woman, Babette, if they dared to shelter master or 
 mistress. 
 
 Monsieur was stout and grizzled — those foes
 
 MONSIEUR AND MADAME DE FAYE. 9 
 
 to romantic illusion, — yet nobody could have 
 mistaken him, nobody could have forgotten him. 
 There was a grand air, not only in his Bourbon 
 long nose and double chin, in the carriage of his 
 head and the wave of his hand, but in the very 
 curl of his lip and the droop of the heavy eyelids 
 over his hollow eyes. He was never in dishabille 
 either of mind or body ; he must have put on 
 and off his damask suit as Louis did his wig — 
 curled and powdered to the last puff — in bed 
 and with the curtains drawn. He never fretted 
 or fumed at Madame ; to her he was always 
 courtly, bland, and agreeable. Possibly he had 
 his errors and deficiencies, like the amiable 
 and delightful Frenchman of whom most people 
 have heard, who would have been perfect except 
 for the flaw of occasionally poisoning a friend. 
 But the sentence was true, applied to Monsieur, 
 that " men never grew old till the Revolution. 
 Before then they had no wearisome infiniiities. 
 When they had gout, they walked as though they 
 had it not, and without making faces ; they hid 
 suffering by a good education."
 
 ro CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 Madame had possessed birth and beauty, and, 
 what is more valued than either in France, wit, 
 when all these had more than their full prestige. 
 Both in body and mind she was now made up too 
 elaborately, yet not unsuccessfully. The brilliant 
 rouge, and the perruque with the hair piled high 
 above the forehead, and the plume of feathers above 
 the hair, agreed with the silver and blue brocade 
 and the hoop — the fashion of Madame's prosperit)', 
 and the fashion of her adversity. She sat with 
 her fan on one ann, and a diamond snuff-bo.x 
 within easy reach of her disengaged hand. She 
 was full of airs, but they were delightfully subtle, 
 and dashed with natural humour; and she was 
 frank and candid in the midst of her affectation. 
 She told stories of the Porcheron balls, where she 
 had gone for a frolic, and danced with her 
 lacquey ; and of Madame Dudevant's bureau, 
 when Madame's biting wit was only second to 
 that of Voltaire. If Monsieur was not present, 
 she would describe how she had met him first 
 the evening before their nuptials, and how she, 
 a girl of fifteen fresh from her convent, had been
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE FAYE. II 
 
 frightened by his plume, his sword-knot (Monsieur 
 was a mousquetaire), and his curious glances ; 
 not understanding then that there was nothing to 
 fear. Monsieur and she, bom and brought up as 
 they had been, could not do other than behave 
 becomingly to each other, Madame would say, 
 with a loftiness that was at the same time inex- 
 pressibly easy. 
 
 Those figures were of old France. Made- 
 moiselle, on her stool opposite them, was of 
 young France. The French have it that a 
 woman cannot be two things at once, and so 
 not a prude at twenty. But Jacqueline de Faye 
 was a great many things at sixteen ; she was a 
 philosopher, a fine lady, half a nun, and a whole 
 passionate, sentimental girl. However, her edu- 
 cation had been exceptional, and charged with 
 transition, like the times. She had been reared 
 at home instead of in the traditional convent; 
 she had been played with by her father in fanci- 
 ful philanthropic and metaphysical discussions; 
 she had been talked to by her mother; she had 
 been confirmed by the cure; she had read on
 
 12 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 her own account " Paul and Virginia " and 
 " Melanie," and longed to live according to 
 nature in the Mauritius ; to have tamarinds and 
 pines for cherries and walnuts, the Fan Palm 
 River for the Faye stream, and the Shaddock 
 Grove Church for the village church near the 
 willows. She could have even found it in her 
 heart to wish that her little lion dog were 
 transformed into Fidele, and Agathe and Paul 
 into such faithful negroes as Dominique and 
 Mary. And oh I above all, should she ever find 
 a slim, dark, dutiful, devoted Paul? Was there 
 anybody in the world like Paul? Was there 
 a chevalier, and was his name Achille? If 
 she could only go to the Mauritius and tr)^ life 
 according to nature there ! But she was an 
 honest little girl, and she was afraid that even 
 though Monsieur, and Madame, and Rabette, 
 and above all Achille, accompanied her, she would 
 miss the Paris Mercury^ and the fresh news, and 
 ribands. 
 
 The Revolution was making strange work with 
 women, when Manon Phlippon. among the etch-
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE FAYE. I3 
 
 ing tools and copper-plates of the engraver's 
 dark little shop in Paris, and Charlotte Corday, 
 beneath the elms in the cloisters of the abbey 
 at Caen, were renouncing their Prayer-books for 
 Plutarch's Lives. Wlien Germaine Neckar, with 
 her harsh, bizarre features and great black eyes, 
 like blazing torches, was improvising and address- 
 ing on politics and literature the startled blase 
 men and women in the wealthy banker's saloons 
 of the tottering capital. When Theroigne Merin- 
 court, the courtesan, in the red riding-habit and 
 hat and feather, was decreed a sabre for having 
 led the mob at the taking of the Bastille, and 
 for being the first on the bastion. 
 
 And Jacqueline was of young France down to 
 her looks and costume. Her beauty was not her 
 mother's beauty; her distinction was not her 
 father's stateliness. Her forehead was more full 
 than broad. Her nose was straight and somewhat 
 short, but so also was her upper lip. Her mouth 
 pouted, and smiled as only pouting mouths can 
 smile. Her bright colour was all in her mouth 
 although her round face was very fresh, soft, and
 
 14 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 healthful. There was a dreamy expression on her 
 forehead, and a sweet, vague wistfulness in her 
 mouth when it remained at rest, notwithstanding 
 her eyes being the clear hazel eyes, — part hazel, 
 part grey, — which seem to strike fire with disdain 
 or anger. And, by the way, the French do very 
 well to admire this lovely moorland colour in 
 eyes, but they do very ill to call it green. 
 She wore her own hair, thrown back and falling 
 in long light-brown curls on her shoulders, 
 according to the last mode. She had no hoop. 
 Her gown — a heavy brocade like Madame's, 
 but coffee-coloured in place of sky-blue, girls 
 never appearing in full dress save in the attire 
 of novices, — had still a train, which was drawn 
 through both pocket-holes, showing her worked 
 petticoat and pretty feet, on which the buckles 
 twinkled. A fine white muslin neckerchief was 
 crossed over her bosom, and there was a breast- 
 knot just under her dainty chin. She was as 
 exquisitely picturesque as a shepherdess of 
 Durfe's, done to Madame Pompadour's orders 
 in a tableau on a piece of Sevres china. But
 
 BABETTE. 15 
 
 there was a busy brain throbbing and straining 
 itself under the rippled hair over head ; a warm, 
 pitiful heart, heaving and swelling to meet the 
 brave breastknot. 
 
 Behind the three principal figures were the 
 major-domo, Paul — rheumatic, vinegar-faced, and 
 spindle-legged, a martinet in a short-waisted and 
 short-tailed coat, and knee-breeches of grey 
 cloth, to be as little like livery as possible, 
 but retaining the short sword at his side ; and 
 Agathe, Madame's woman — red-haired, morose, 
 in a stuff gown and little cap, so formal and 
 sombre that she might have belonged to an 
 order of nuns when nuns were in favour ; and 
 Babette. The first two were mere cool shadows, 
 relieving the brilliant figures in the foreground. 
 But Babette, who vindicated the rights of 
 the people, and was only three years older 
 than her young mistress, was more than a 
 shadow. 
 
 Babette was strong and thickset. She was 
 brown as a berry ; had a wide mouth, a flat 
 nose, a forehead not above a quarter of an
 
 l6 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 inch in height ; and she was continually diminish- 
 ing that quarter of an inch by drawing it up into 
 three clear-cut wrinkles when she made a face of 
 astonishment or protest. These wrinkles would 
 be ploughed furrows in her brow before she 
 was thirty. But she had the longest cur\ing eye- 
 lashes, shading eyes as black as sloes, and rest- 
 ing on ripe cheeks ; the whitest teeth ; the most 
 symmetrical pillar of a throat. In her golden 
 brown petticoat, her crimson apron with a bib, 
 her lace cap without ribands, but with lappets 
 hanging down on each shoulder, yet not conceal- 
 ing her gold earrings, she was delightful to 
 look upon ; and it was refreshing to be ac- 
 quainted with her. She was intensely practical in 
 her views, but at the same time she had imagina- 
 tion, she had raillery, she had lively affections. 
 Standing behind little Mademoiselle, and combing 
 vigorously the white silken mane of Mademoiselle's 
 little lion dog Nerina — too wise to resist the 
 rousing process in her hands, — she was herself, 
 and could not be anybody else, or be 
 melted into the being of another, without the
 
 A CARD PARTY. 17 
 
 Tour de Faye losing a ray of broad, strong, open- 
 air sunshine. 
 
 The players lost and won, and continued the 
 struggle, as players are wont to do in the game of 
 life. Monsieur and Madame were pleasantly in- 
 terested. Jacqueline, the representative of young 
 France, was a little rude, naturally ; cared less 
 for loto than she should have cared ; but was 
 restrained from expressing her feelings by the 
 great deference which French children paid to 
 their parents. She no more dreamt of yawning 
 than an English child of flinging the cards 
 in her father's or mother's face. In an interval 
 between the deals, Paul handed round frothed 
 chocolate and mareschino on a silver tray with 
 amjorial bearings — three falcons and two savages 
 — not yet confiscated, or buried in the garden. 
 Mademoiselle profited by the diversion, but soon 
 the interminable round of abstracts, ambros, terns, 
 and quaterns, recommenced. 
 
 Then a nightingale out in the bocage began 
 suddenly to trill its plaintive ditty. The sound was 
 very foreign to the scene. And just because of 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 l8 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 that, Mademoiselle's young heart responded by 
 listening spellbound, by wondering, growing pen- 
 sive, wayward, and wild. Her occupation became 
 more and more distasteful to her, her attention 
 strayed, the heat of the room flushed her fair 
 cheek, the perfume caused her youthful head to 
 ache. Like Sterne's starling, she could have 
 cried, " I can't get out, I can't get out ;" but she 
 was dutiful, noble, and, 7ioblesse oblige^ she made 
 no sign. 
 
 " I remember playing thus at cards once, when 
 Saxe came in a crac from one of his campaigns," 
 observed Madame. " He was barbarous that man, 
 though he was a hero. He wanted us to give 
 over playing, that he might write a despatch ; but 
 the Abbe Dubois told him, ' Monsieur the Mar- 
 shal, the French are not used to stir on account of 
 the enemy. There is enough of room in the world 
 both for our game and your campaign.' And the 
 Abb^ had the best of it, though Saxe swore great 
 raw oaths, as he ate raw cabbage, like a Gennan. 
 The Abb^ never failed at the repartee. When the 
 Jacobins seized him the other day, and shouted
 
 madame's canaries. 
 
 19 
 
 ' To the lamp-post ! ' he answered, ' Very well, my 
 friends ; but will you see the better for me ? ' 
 Even the Republicans had the taste to let him 
 off for the speech ; but unfortunately he was as- 
 sassinated in the next square before he had time to 
 speak. His hour had struck ; it did not signify," 
 Madame ended, composedly. 
 
 A moment afterwards, Madame showed herself 
 ruffled, and gave an elegant wave of her cards 
 towards the cages with the birds, from which a 
 little croaking cry made itself heard. " Agathe, I 
 wish you would look to Eglantine. There is some- 
 thing vexing him. I am sure of it. For these 
 two days, he has not been himself He makes his 
 breast like a drum. Either his seed is too old, or 
 his pebble of sugar is too hard. He gives me 
 trouble. And then there is Rosette. She will 
 neglect her little ones. Ah ! I have nothing left 
 to care for now but my birds, because I made 
 up my mind, when Nerina's mother died, that I 
 ought not to have her place refilled. I could 
 live and die easier without another darling of a 
 dog."
 
 20 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 " I hope your birds repay you the trouble they 
 cost," remarked Monsieur, without the least tone 
 of offence. On the contrary, he proceeded to 
 inquire, with polite interest, " Do they thrive, 
 Madame ? " 
 
 " Well, it seems when one has only a single 
 thing, that thing must do its best to plague its 
 proprietor. My child, if you make faces in that 
 way I shall faint ; I cannot stand mows." 
 
 The last apostrophe was addressed to Jacque- 
 line, who was involuntarily biting her lips. 
 
 " My little one," said her father, " a demoiselle's 
 life is too short, and her face too important, to 
 admit of mows." 
 
 " Sacristie, Monsieur!" broke in Babette, with- 
 out ceremony. " Don't you see, Mademoiselle has 
 the cramps? Young joints are not like old ones, 
 nor young blood neither. Mademoiselle is like 
 Eglantine, she is pining for a breath of fresh air, 
 and a turn of a walk, since there are no plays 
 and balls for her. It is she who will faint, if you 
 confine her longer here." 
 
 The freedom of speech allowed to servants in
 
 A RESTLESS CITOYENNE. 21 
 
 French households, from MoHere's time down- 
 wards, was a safety-valve which, under the old 
 regime, prevented the domestic life of the country 
 from losing altogether the trifle called human 
 nature. 
 
 " Thanks," Madame even acknowledged gra- 
 ciously. " But no, Babette, assuredly my daughter 
 is not so vulgar." 
 
 To faint at mows, and to be faint for fresh air. 
 were two very different things. 
 
 " For me," added Madame, " I never cared for 
 that dish, nature. Taken by itself, it is as a salad 
 without roast before it, or Neufchatel cheese after 
 it." 
 
 " Pardon, Madame," interposed Monsieur, ele- 
 vating his eyebrows ; " I thought the ladies liked 
 everything for a change." 
 
 " That depends on whether the change is worth 
 the pains," explained Madame, candidly. " Let 
 us go on, Jacqueline." 
 
 But Monsieur and Madame were good-natured 
 and indulgent when there was no question of 
 interest or honour. At the close of the next
 
 22 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 game there fell from both of them, alternately, 
 "Say, then, is it so, my child?" "Then go 
 away : for us, we will play picquet till supper." 
 " But how barbarous you are ! What tastes I To 
 go out when the sun is going to bed, except to 
 pay visits before the comedy, and in the country 1 
 Fy ! there will be the milking of cows, and the 
 dew, and the snails. I always hated sensibility. 
 I always said it would ruin France." 
 
 Jacqueline accepted the accusation of being 
 barbarous without demur, and made her curtsey. 
 Madame uttered a little scream, and called her 
 back to make it over and over again, till Jacque- 
 line's knees ached with weariness, while her ears 
 tingled with a running fire of criticism from 
 Madame, and mockery from Monsieur : how 
 like a shot partridge the child was ; how she 
 was even as Madame Neckar, who was bad on 
 the . legs, could not sit down, and slept stand- 
 ing ; how she should walk through a minuet 
 with a sheep for a partner, to cure her of looking 
 as if she were going to bleat ; what the old Duke 
 de Rochefoucault had once said of poor Madame
 
 THE nightingale's TUNE. 23 
 
 de Longiieville's dancing — that it was for the air, 
 not the gross earth : — till Jacqueline's cheeks, 
 albeit used to such a fire, were red as her lips, when 
 Madame wound up by informing her she needed 
 rouge to prevent the world seeing that she blushed 
 like a peasant. And Monsieur called out finally, 
 " Good evening, Mademoiselle. My bear, do not 
 hug me. No, my doll, do not lose your balance, 
 or your nose may be shattered; though it is not 
 much in the way; — who knows? If not, we will 
 read the Heiiriade together, to-morrow, you and 
 I. Parbleu ! there are some paragraphs about 
 the season of St. Bartelemi's day I have reason 
 to get by heart." 
 
 Jacqueline got out of the door ; executed some- 
 thing like an entrechat in the vestibule, little 
 philosopher though she was ; skipped down the 
 tourelle stair, leaving Babette to bring her the 
 curled bunch of feathers which served her for a 
 hat, and, together with the long gloves, consti- 
 tuted her walking dress. At last she set out, 
 attended by Babette, to learn what tune the 
 nightingale was singing to her, and what mes-
 
 24 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 sage the evening star was bringing for her. Loto 
 and Court gossip were all very well at a time ; 
 but, like Paris mud, their smell was sharp to 
 young nostrils, and there was something more 
 in heaven and earth for a girl of sixteen to 
 dream of
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LA SARTE's fete — MOTHER AND SON. 
 
 [ACQUELINE took a turn along the 
 terrace with her hands folded before 
 her, her eyes raised to the sky. 
 Babette walked by her side. The 
 nightingale's song caused her to yearn after she 
 knew not what ; to feel as if she could die of 
 the harmony which stirred the dumb, slumbering 
 depths of her soul. 
 
 Babette counted the strokes of the Tour clock 
 as it struck six, glanced down at a roll in her lap, 
 and speculated when Mademoiselle would tire of 
 the promenade, and leave her to follow her own 
 devices. 
 
 But there was more to be heard than the night- 
 ingale : the landrails from the fields beyond the
 
 26 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE, 
 
 bocage, and the frogs from the fishponds, rattled 
 and croaked a homely domestic duet, breaking in 
 on the mysterious solo which spoke of love and 
 death and everlasting constancy. Jacqueline liked 
 the duet too, though it woke her from a vision, 
 for she was kindly as well as tender ; and in 
 place of growing ecstatic or maudlin, her mood 
 changed like lightning. She turned briskly to 
 the other girl, in order to prattle and play with 
 her. 
 
 "What have you there, Babette? Why did 
 you wish to get away by yourself, my rabbit ? 
 Where are you going, and will you take me with 
 you ? " 
 
 Babette stood still and looked at Mademoiselle. 
 She saw there was no use trying to deceive her 
 mistress when she turned up her little nose in 
 that fashion, and when her eyes sparkled, shone, 
 and pierced every obstacle opposed to them. 
 And Babette, besides, was quite of opinion that 
 there was no use trying to deceive when nobody 
 would believe her. She therefore set herself to 
 answer the easiest question.
 
 BABETTE AND HER MISTRESS. 2^ 
 
 " Is it this bagatelle in my lap you mean, 
 Mademoiselle ? It is a small piece of fine 
 linen that I span. My faith ! how my arms 
 ached ! " And she rubbed her rough, dimpled 
 elbows. " The citizen Robinet wove it into a 
 charming little web. What trouble I had to 
 hide it from Agathe ! She would have sworn 
 that I, an honest girl, of honest people, took it 
 out of the linen press; she who says as many 
 prayers as La Sarte, and prowls and picks for 
 ever in Madame's wardrobe. She has not her 
 red hair for nothing. ' Distrust the red ' is a safe 
 proverb." 
 
 Jacquehne was not to be wiled from the gratifi- 
 cation of her lawful curiosity. 
 
 " But what have you to do with little webs of 
 linen, Babette ? Is it possible that you are going 
 to be married without telling me?" 
 
 " Hein ! no ! " denied Babette, reducing her low 
 forehead to two-and-a-half tight cords, and accom- 
 panying the feat with a mow that would have 
 sent Madame into positive fits. " I am neither 
 rogue nor fool, me. Besides, you have promised to
 
 28 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 give me my wedding gown, and to dance in the 
 round at my marriage fete, Mademoiselle. But 
 these are not times to marr}'. The linen is for 
 La Sarte. She likes nothing so well as linen, 
 though she has so much of it ; it is the way of 
 the world. This is her fete-day, and all Faye ^vill 
 be there. What say you, Mademoiselle, if I run 
 down for an hour, and bring you the news ? Life 
 is become too sad. We have no fetes now, save to 
 Madame Liberty ; and, my fine, I prefer La Sarte 
 to Madame Liberty. I understand La Sarte better 
 than the other lady ; and I believe she can do me 
 more good, or evil." 
 
 " Life is too sad," confirmed Jacqueline, pout- 
 ing. " No more royal hunts in royal forests ; no 
 more beautiful plays to be acted ^^^th dukes and 
 duchesses. And the real stage is republican, repre- 
 senting such anarchy as ' Robert the Robber.' It 
 is all too rude. Neither youth nor age is courted 
 now. Men have grown above little cares ; and 
 negligence is the rule, except among dear, noble 
 old gentlemen like Monsieur my papa. But there 
 has been cause ; there have been worse things, my
 
 mademoiselle's politics. 29 
 
 good Babette," Jacqueline corrected herself all at 
 once, looking so exceedingly grave that she went 
 over the boundary Hne, and became childishly 
 innocent in her awe-struck solemnity. " Do you 
 know that men have eaten bread made of heather, 
 and other poor men have lain eight-and-twenty 
 years in prison ^vithout being brought to trial ? 
 Eight-and-twenty years ! a lifetime. It is quite 
 time, — oh ! mon Dieu, it is more than time, that 
 such wrongs were redressed." 
 
 " I do not know," answered Babette, a little 
 stolidly ; " I never ate bread made of heather, nor 
 anybody in Faye of my acquaintance — only the 
 officer of the king came very often, and salt was 
 dear, and now every one cries ' Peste ! ' on the 
 paper money, which will be the death of us with 
 arithmetic, if we don't get coin soon. As for lying 
 in prison eight-and-twenty years, I would not 
 have lain eight-and-twenty days, or hours, unless 
 my gaoler had been a were-wolf Why did men 
 suffer it, Mademoiselle?" 
 
 *' If the good God suffered it, it might be neces- 
 sary that men should suffer it too," replied Jacque-
 
 30 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 line, in a puzzled voice, but ^^^th an accent of 
 resignation. The girl was too reverent and too 
 large-hearted to forsake the Divine Figure bending 
 and toiling under the cross in the midst of the 
 rabble rout, on the Dolorous Way, for the human 
 shapes of Socrates and Plato, discoursing abstract- 
 edly in the dignity and retirement of the porch, 
 and even drinking the cup of hemlock juice 
 before a select audience. 
 
 A new idea struck Jacqueline : " I will go 
 with you, Babette. La Sarte is a good old 
 woman, and years and virtues ought to be 
 honoured. We are near neighbours, door to 
 door^ and Michel is trusted by my father. I also 
 will be at the fete to-night ; " and Jacqueline 
 nodded emphatically. 
 
 " Not at all," negatived Babette, with the greatest 
 promptitude and decision ; " the inn is no place for 
 little Mademoiselle." 
 
 " But yes," maintained Jacqueline, only spurred 
 by the opposition. " I have gone to the village 
 fetes before. The dames and demoiselles of the 
 chateaux used to go to all the harvest and vintage
 
 AN ALTERCATION. 3I 
 
 feasts, and to crown the best and prettiest girl. 
 More than that, we are all citizens now; and we 
 ought to love one another. It is a glorious name 
 that of citizen^'' added the girl, enthusiastically. 
 " I desire no other." 
 
 "Farce !" interjected Babette, incredulously, and 
 without apology for her bluntness; " so long as you 
 read and write, and are wise and gentle ; and so long 
 as Solange, for example, spreads manure, plucks 
 geese, does not know her right hand from her left, 
 and beats the gar^on Louis with a rope, I would 
 not give the crack of my finger-joints for citizen- 
 ship, beyond being fellow-creatures — and I suppose 
 we were that before this hour of the revolutionary 
 clock. Still you cannot go near La Sarte, Made- 
 moiselle. It is not lucky to go to anybody's fete 
 empty-handed." 
 
 " And I suppose it is too late to make my 
 purchases from you, my miser? But here I am 
 already provided ; " and Jacqueline drew from her 
 pocket a little chain of brown hair. " I worked 
 it, and it seems there is nobody who wants it," she 
 said, quickly, with a flash of the brown-grey eyes
 
 32 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 and a little spasm of the nether lip. " It is a chain 
 to give away, and I give it to I.a Sarte." 
 
 " Holy Virgin ! What will La Sarte do with a 
 hair chain?" persisted Babette, scornfully. " Better 
 a new halter for one of her cows." 
 
 " Keep it among her treasures. Tie her rosary 
 to it. Twist it round her first grandchild's neck, 
 with a little relic at the end to preserve him from 
 
 harm. It is to me equal But I go, Babette," 
 
 Jacqueline assured her servant, with the roguish air 
 of a good but very natural little child, who has just 
 escaped from strict restraint, and vindicates its 
 lawful freedom. 
 
 " Very well, Mademoiselle," acquiesced Babette, 
 a little sulkily ; " it is true the world is going sense 
 above, sense below, that is all. When the de- 
 moiselles were wont to come from the chateaux to 
 the fetes, they were fresh from their convents, and 
 under the wings of the madames their mothers, as 
 shy and proud as yon tiresome bird, whose neck 
 I would ring if I could get at him." 
 
 " Babette ! " 
 
 " Ah ! well, what business has he to scream
 
 babette's obstinacy. 33 
 
 there, and decoy people out for nothing ? Those 
 demoiselles danced in their own field with their 
 own partners — lieutenants of the king, command- 
 ants, princes. There were three fields, — one for the 
 noblesse, another for the bourgeoisie, and a third 
 for the peasants. Now they are all mixed pele- 
 mele. And see what will come of it ! Men are so 
 mad to-day, they will throw their sabots over the 
 moon, let alone the mill, — though one woman is as 
 good as another, and better too, to some tastes." 
 
 " What is that you say, Babette ? I do not 
 understand you ; " and Jacqueline turned round 
 with a mystified air. 
 
 " You need not ask,"— Babette refused doggedly 
 to explain herself, — " for I will not tell you ; and 
 — there, you may fling your tongue to the dogs, 
 Mademoiselle, for you will never guess, never." 
 Babette crossed her arms over her roll of linen, 
 crossed her feet too, and with admirable power of 
 balance, contriving to poise herself on the points 
 of her square shoes, shook herself from side to 
 side in the most approved style of obstinacy. 
 After this pantomime of a sulker, she started 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 afresh with Mademoiselle, through the deserted 
 gate, into the hamlet. 
 
 The auberge was the next house in Faye to 
 the Tour. The cure's house — a whitewashed, 
 red-tiled offshoot of the little church, where the 
 willows drooped over the bridge and the brook of 
 the Mousse — was nothing to it ; and all the other 
 houses were mere maisonnettes. The auberge was 
 at least half as old as the Tour, and quite as large 
 — in a different fashion. It had never con- 
 descended to any sign of its character and 
 capacity, save the line ' Here are lodged man 
 and horse' in faded paint along its front, and 
 the ever wide-open entrance into the court- 
 yard behind. It was known far and near as the 
 Auberge of Faye, and there was no other. The 
 two-storied building was a simple framework of 
 wood, formed in squares, and filled up with mud 
 and plaster — a composition toned by age and 
 mellowed by weather-stains to an umber, or an 
 olive brown. The upper story bulged out, as if 
 seeking space for the overflowing interior, and 
 was propped up by blackened crossbeams. The
 
 THE AUBERGE. 35 
 
 windows were latticed and oriel. The high- 
 pitched gables were so numerous, and suggestive 
 of so many donnitories, that instead of belonging 
 to the renaissance of Francis I. — as these wooden 
 houses are said to do, — the auberge might have 
 been a forgotten hunting-seat of Dagobert, which 
 had furnished all his knights with separate 
 accommodation, besides supplying stalls for the 
 hunter king's horses and kennels for his hounds. 
 Doubtless in the palmy days of Faye, when the 
 Tour was so crammed with gracious company 
 that it could hold no more, there had been plumed 
 beavers, gold-laced green coats, sleeves with great 
 knots of riband, appearing and disappearing behind 
 these diamond-paned windows. Now, the sole 
 guests at the auberge were a sous-lieutenant, who 
 had been a shoemaker or a greengrocer in Paris, 
 hurrying with his ragged detachment of brave, wild 
 men to join the French lines, before the Prussian 
 and Austrian forces could reach Lille ; a gipsy 
 company from Alsace, looking out for fairs, and 
 bringing dwarfs and giants in their train ; a stray 
 member of the gens-d'armes, tying his horse for
 
 J 
 
 6 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE, 
 
 an hour to the iron ling in the stone at the 
 entrance — quite long enough time to excite 
 general consternation ; and a countryman or two. 
 The gipsy company's caravan and the country- 
 man's waggon had taken the place of the old 
 family coach A\ith its six or eight horses. And 
 instead of the turkey stuffed with chestnuts, and 
 the Chambertin, all the provisions asked for were 
 soup with plums, eggs with tripe, Gruyere cheese, 
 brown bread, piquette, and cider. 
 
 But the prosperity of the household had not 
 departed ; it had only changed its source and 
 expression. The old inn had ceased to be a 
 posting-house save in name, but had become very 
 much of a great farmhouse. This, indeed, better 
 suited the requirements of Michel Sart, the inn- 
 keeper's elder son, who had bought several lots of 
 the land Government had to sell, and was also 
 steward to Citizen Faye. Work-horses and oxen 
 now occupied the stables ; calves and colts were 
 turned into the herb-garden ; sheep, goats, and 
 pigs trotted into the sheds and ate out of the 
 mangers and troughs where grooms had washed
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 37 
 
 panels gilt over with gods and goddesses, and 
 polished silver harness and silver bells. A wooden 
 gallery ran along the back of the auberge half-way 
 up its height, and opened by successive doors 
 into successive gables, cutting them oif and render- 
 ing them private property. Over this gallery, 
 where formerly long rows of snoAv-white napery 
 and clothes had hung to dry, and where smart 
 soubrettes had leant down to inspect the court- 
 yard, or exchange lively greetings with the new- 
 comers, there now were spread sheaves of hemp 
 and flax. Only La Sarte herself, and an elderly 
 countryAvoman under her, or a staid, heavy fanii- 
 servant, clumping about in her wooden shoes, 
 moved here and there, and minded the proper 
 business. Beyond the wooden house itself was 
 the draw-well, in the corner under the cleft elm, 
 with white sand strewn round its mouth, and a 
 rope and bucket dangling. This, and the kennel 
 of the great, gaunt house-dog, Marlbrook, and the 
 swallows' nests in the entrance, were the only 
 things which remained unaltered. Nothing, how- 
 ever, had fallen into decay.
 
 38 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 On La Sarte's fete-day every door stood hos- 
 pitably open ; and Marlbrook, complimented with 
 a bone, signalized the holiday by refraining from 
 growling at the numerous company. The audience 
 room was the great chamber of the house, — a 
 long, low apartment, into v/hich every guest, of 
 whatever pretension, had always been sho^\Tl. 
 The King himself, with his diamond star and 
 his riband of St. Louis, would have been shown 
 there ; and for that matter, he was not better 
 lodged in the Tuileries during this summer of 
 fierce mobs ; and his fare Avould be harder still 
 in the Temple. There was a cavernous fireplace, 
 with an equally colossal stove, on which were a 
 mass of bas-rehefs in unpolished iron, being 
 records of strange miracles — St. Roque suspend- 
 ing in mid air his falling mason, St. Hubert 
 transforming his persecutors into stags, and a 
 still more potent saint transforming the devil 
 himself into a grotesque, sprawling flea. Almost 
 as lavishly exuberant and wildly imaginative work 
 was on the great black oak chests which stood 
 opposite Michel's bureau, and where La Sarte
 
 THE AUDIENCE ROOM. 39 
 
 kept her flour and spice, and household Hnen. 
 Other works of art — curious old images in wood, 
 whose subjects extended from " the Tree of Love" 
 to " the Seven Deadly Sins " — were displayed on 
 shelves put up for the purpose ; and the corner 
 cupboards were filled with vessels in fayen^e, of 
 the Tours porcelain,, coarse but gay. In a recess 
 was La Sarte's version of Madame the Baronne's 
 bed at the Tour, hung with faded tapestry, and 
 chiefly remarkable for its height; so that if La 
 Sarte or any ordinary woman had ever occupied 
 it, she must have mounted to it by means of a 
 ladder. And she would then have found herself 
 in nervous closeness to the ceiling, and been 
 forcibly reminded of La Fontaine's pert critic, with 
 his reflection on the stalks of pumpkins and the 
 branches of acorn-bearing oak trees, as well as 
 the opportune nap and startling accident which 
 cured him. For La Sarte's ceiling was not bare ; 
 on the contrary, it was garnished and garlanded 
 with all sorts of weapons of offence, from which 
 the tapestry sky of the bed would have afforded 
 Httle protection. La Sarte's bed recess was also
 
 40 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 her oratory ; at the head of which stood her cup 
 with holy water, and the wooden effigy, in minia- 
 ture, of her patron saint. 
 
 Here, where the steam of many a traveller's 
 banquet had gone up into the pure, sunny air, the 
 evidences of good cheer were not wanting. Rich 
 juicy-looking brown hams depended from the 
 ceiling ; strings of Normandy pippins, onions, and 
 pilchards were festooned on the walls ; a sack 
 with walnuts, and another with chestnuts, stood 
 conveniently near the billets of wood for the 
 stove. Neither had La Sarte failed in providing 
 for the present refreshment of the thronged circle, 
 in the centre of which she sat. The buffet was 
 set out with hot savoury dishes of eels in sailor 
 guise, pigeons with cabbages, partridges with 
 onions ; and these were constantly replaced from 
 exhaustless stores about the stove. Then there 
 were rich balls of paste, Neufchatel cheese, vine 
 leaves of cherries, Medoc of a fair vintage, and 
 a flask of brandy for the little drams. 
 
 Each individual as he entered, was invited, 
 after offering his congratulations, to retire to the
 
 THE FETE. 4I 
 
 buffet and help himself. All Faye was there 
 — man, woman, and child ; but the men rather 
 preponderated. The gallant Frenchmen did not 
 fail in their homage, especially when, . added to 
 the claims of politeness, was the important con- 
 sideration that the aubergiste's elder son, Michel, 
 was steward at Faye, and the younger, Jonquille 
 — who not half a dozen years before had been 
 a flighty fiddler — was now a popular deputy at 
 Paris, a still greater man than Michel, and with 
 vast powers of influence and protection in the 
 eyes of his simple fellow-villagers. Moreover, in 
 those days of unsettled rule and apprehended 
 disaster. La Sarte's abundant supper was not to 
 be despised. 
 
 The company consisted of peasants, \vith the 
 exception of Michel Sart, who had risen to the 
 rank of the bourgeois. The men were in holi- 
 day costume — grey jackets, long yellow or white 
 vests, knee breeches, blue and white stockings. 
 The women had the cap without ribands, and 
 the warm-toned petticoat .and apron, of Babette. 
 Many of them were young, and exhibited delicate
 
 42 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 lace of their own weaving in their caps and 
 stomachers, gold crosses, and silver edging to the 
 seams of their corsages. This was not merely for 
 their own satisfaction and that of the world at 
 large, but to gratify the grey eyes of Michel Sart, 
 who was a bachelor — a superb party, who had 
 grown up over their heads, and, had it not been 
 for the Revolution, would have been called by 
 every one Maitre Michel, but who gave himself 
 no airs, and was perfectly simple and frank to 
 his old friends. But, as though to include the 
 extreme limits of youth and age in the tribute 
 to La Sarte, both the men and women of the 
 past and the future were around her. There 
 were octogenarians, leaning on sticks bearing 
 Turks', wolves', or boars' heads, who remembered 
 the Te Dciuns for the victories of the Conde. 
 There were little old women, with merry faces, 
 wrinkled as no gutta percha \W11 wrinkle, who 
 might have been fairy godmothers to foir prin- 
 cesses, — asleep for a hundred years, — and who 
 were ready to lead the cotillons to La Sarte's 
 honour, standing in the same dance with their
 
 LA SARTE. 43 
 
 grandchildren, and acquitting themselves with all 
 the vivacity, if not all the agility, of their teens. 
 And there were little marmots of children, wear- 
 ing high-crowned caps without borders, long- 
 waisted gowns, or vests, and carrying big bou- 
 quets of honeysuckle, roses, jasmine, and myrtle, 
 to commemorate the day. They looked more 
 old-fashioned than their grandsires and gran- 
 dams. 
 
 La Sarte was seated in the centre of the crowd, 
 her son Michel standing behind her, like a sove- 
 reign supported by the Cro^vn Prince who is also 
 Prime Minister, She was on a fauteuil, with the 
 gifts of her friends piled about her, at her feet, 
 and on each side : — wool, flax, chickens, a coal- 
 black kitten, eggs, butter, coarse coloured engrav- 
 ings (oftenest of the Virgin and Child), specially 
 blessed rosaries, silk neckerchiefs and handker- 
 chiefs, even chemises, petticoats, and nightcaps. 
 No end to the proofs of La Sarte's mingled 
 supremacy and favour. But the most valuable of 
 all was out of sight. The pretty little white 
 cow, Blanchette, of the rare and valuable breed
 
 44 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 La Sarte prized, had cost Michel a secret journey 
 of many leagues, and nearly as many Louis-d'ors, 
 before she stood that day in the neighbouring 
 field, her front legs padlocked together, and a bell 
 round her neck. 
 
 La Sarte remained on her throne, and took the 
 homage quietly, though graciously. She was a 
 remarkable person ; and so was her son Michel, 
 standing there in the golden glow of the declin- 
 ing sun. Yet mother and son were totally unlike. 
 She had one of those thin, sharp, clear-cut faces 
 which match well with an olive skin. Her eves, 
 like velvet in their blackness, were benevolent 
 in their open good will ; but her mouth was firm 
 to rigidity. The face was that of an upright 
 woman. It was merciful, with wells of tender- 
 ness deep down in her nature, but not demon- 
 strative or sympathetic. It was a face austere in 
 its righteousness. Such faces are not infrequent 
 in the country of Calvin, Pascal, and More 
 Angelique. La Sarte displayed a scrupulously 
 neat dress, but not finer in cjuality or difterent in 
 cut from those which marked the peasant origin
 
 MICHEL SART. 45 
 
 of the women around her. Her gown was of dark 
 puq^le woollen stuff; her neckerchief of blue 
 linen, very pure in the dye and orderly in the 
 folds ; and on her head, like many of the older 
 women present, she had a snoAvy cambric cap 
 without borders, after the fashion of the children, 
 and which, with her brown-black hair removed 
 from her forehead, and concealed unier the plain 
 band, exposed her profile, at once strong and fine 
 in its outlines. 
 
 Michel Sart was a large, somewhat heavy man 
 for his tvventy-six years, with a marked leonine cast 
 of face, and a quantity of tawny hair tied behind 
 in a queue, from a manly, straightfonvard sense 
 of his rise in rank ; a sense equally evident in 
 his riding-coat of olive cloth, fine linen, English 
 long boots, and cocked hat, when he walked 
 abroad. He was an earnest-faced man, with a 
 towering figure, the size and weight of which be- 
 came him, as his mother's clear profile and brown 
 hue became her. At Faye, Michel was not a 
 hero, like his younger brother ; he was that rarer 
 thing, a man who has risen in life without exciting
 
 4^ CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 a tumult of envy and abuse. Perhaps the reason 
 was that his acquaintances considered him a little 
 of a boor, and, in spite of his success, called him 
 sometimes " poor Michel," since he made no fine 
 speeches, but was shy, and frefjuently awkward 
 and brusque. La Sarte, far from being ignorant 
 and apathetic, like the generality of French 
 peasants, hald taken care that both her sons 
 should receive a good education ; and Michel 
 was even a greater scholar than Jonquille, and was 
 an associate and friend of the cure"s. Yet what 
 did that signify when Michel was no orator, 
 but ^vithdrew from notice, and was in constant 
 danger of saying a spade was a spade, with as 
 little tact and discrimination as the greatest block- 
 head ? Still Faye had profound confidence in 
 Michel Sart's judgment and fortune ; and justly. 
 Scores, fifties, hundreds of such men as he left 
 the country villages among the five hundred 
 thousand peasants' sons which Napoleon's wars 
 cost France, to return with, it might be, strange 
 vices acquired in their campaigns, but witli the 
 accent and the step of command — self-concen-
 
 MICHEL SART. 47 
 
 trated, steadfast, and stem — colonels' and gene- 
 rals' epaulettes on their shoulders, marshals' batons 
 in their hands. 
 
 Michel Sart was old, in his class and condition, 
 to have no wife. But there seemed an appropri- 
 ateness in this, for it was like Michel to be patient 
 and contented with his old mother, who had not 
 chosen a partner for him ; to be self-denying and 
 wise, in letting others be mated, ' while he stood 
 aside, looked on, and waited, till the proper hour 
 and the proper woman came. 
 
 La Sarte had named her elder son Michel, 
 because he was bom on the day of St. Michel 
 and all Angels, and had prayed that he might 
 be a strong angel to his house and his friends ; 
 just as she had vowed Jonquille from his youth 
 to the Virgin, and caused him to wear her colours 
 of blue and white throughout his childhood, 
 that he might be under the protection of the 
 blessed among women for the rest of his life. 
 Who knows how far the names and the prayers 
 from good and honest hearts fulfilled their de- 
 sign ? ^
 
 48 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 Such was the scene, such the company, at La 
 Sarte's fete. If the card party at the Tour was 
 Hke a group by Greuze or Watteau, the assembly 
 in the auberge might have given a subject to a 
 French Teniers. 
 
 To the full circle, the Citoyenne Jacqueline and 
 Babette, from the Tour, appeared unexpectedly at 
 the open door, when the topics of the day — the 
 chances of the conscription, the convulsions of 
 the struggle between the Aristocrats and the 
 Republicans, the march of the foreign armies 
 — were under lively discussion. 
 
 " If the rogues of Austrians come to Faye," 
 cried spirited old Mother Petit, " I \\'ill fight them 
 with my distaff and my nails — Go ! " 
 
 " Eh ! well, if I were only a young girl 
 again ! " ejaculated a contemporary ^vith poignant 
 regret. 
 
 " If you please, Grandmother Hue ? " queried 
 a man, 
 
 " I would dissemble to catch their hearts, my 
 son, till scores of them drowned themselves and 
 tbfir fine uniforms in the Mousse — as many a
 
 MOTHER JULLIEN. 49 
 
 a fine fellow at Faye threatened to do for a 
 taste of my lips, my child, before your mother 
 was bom." 
 
 " But, grandmother, women employ other arms 
 now." 
 
 " The more fools they, cadet." 
 
 The quaver of the old women's boasting was 
 interrupted by the shrill exultation of another 
 generation. Pacific, taciturn, obese Father Jullien's 
 wife, who was mortally jealous of her husband's fat, 
 being herself lean, gadding, and long-tongued, was 
 describing with much emphasis and relish how 
 Monsieur the President of the Court at La Maille 
 had walked through the whole town at the head of 
 a procession, leading by the hand the President 
 of the Gossips of the Market, as if she were the 
 Austrian woman herself, in order to show that he 
 was a good citizen, win public approbation, and 
 save his property from further ravages. Now why 
 should not Monsieur the Citizen at the Tour be 
 forced to lower his villanous head, and do the 
 Faye gossips the honour to walk with one of 
 them through Faye? 
 
 VOL. 1. E
 
 50 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 "Where would be the honour, Mother JulHen?" 
 inquired La Sarte, looking into Mother Jullien's 
 heated, grimacing face with her calm, soft, velvet 
 eyes, — the most republican eyes in the room, if 
 republicanism be freedom, not licence. "WTiich 
 of the two would be the honoured person? 
 Where would be the gain, my heart?" 
 
 " There would be this gain. La Sarte," growled 
 Sylvain the butcher, who never addressed anybody 
 except by their bare name : " we who crawled 
 behind yesterday would march before to-day. 
 Bah ! better than the escort of the late Mon- 
 sieur,— let him drive my cart, and let me loll in 
 his coach." Sylvain had not dressed for the gala, 
 but had his soiled, purple-stained apron rolled 
 round his waist. He was a coarse caricature, in 
 his shock head of hair, his saturnine face seamed 
 and scarred, and his Rabelais humour, of Gabriel 
 Mirabeau, who laid the axe at the root of his own 
 order, and whom Maria Theresa's daughter met, 
 under the silent stars and the whispering night 
 breezes, too late to save the monarchy. 
 
 " You would not find it an easy seat, Sylvain,"
 
 CITIZEN PEPIN. 51 
 
 objected Michel. " Besides, the Citizen uses no 
 coach now ; at least we have no horses up yonder 
 at the Tour." 
 
 " Hundred devils ! The better for the lack of 
 them," shouted and gesticulated irritable little 
 Pepin, who kept the single shop in the hamlet, 
 but had learned to despise the support from the 
 Tour. " We have had horses too long," — uncon- 
 sciously identifying himself with the dogs of 
 nobility. "We shall walk on foot at last, and 
 suffer that our neighbours ride. Down with the 
 tyrants ! though you have the misfortune to serve 
 one of them, Maitre Michel. Rascals ! cowards ! 
 crush them ! annihilate them ! " throwing him- 
 self into an attitude of fierce attack, stamping 
 his diminutive foot, and flourishing his shrunk 
 arm. 
 
 On the instant of the utterance of these words, 
 the late Demoiselle de Faye and Babette crossed 
 the threshold. 
 
 " What is it that you will annihilate, Citizen 
 Pepin ? " inquired the little Mademoiselle, pleas- 
 antly ; " the vipers, the owls ? " 
 
 ""^^^ « «u«&
 
 52 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 Everybody started, and recoiled as if he or she 
 had been one of so many conspirators. The old 
 slavish subservience rushed back on the malcon- 
 tents. Citizen Pepin wheeled round as on a pivot, 
 placed his hand on the confused \vrath of his little 
 heart, and bowed, with his heels together, to the 
 very ground. Mother Jullien cringed, and made 
 as if she would kiss Jacqueline's high-heeled shoe. 
 And while the peasant girls were as fascinated as 
 ever by Mademoiselle's gloves and curled feathers, 
 the old women compared her sweet looks to this or 
 that Dame or Demoiselle de Faye long forgotten 
 in the present world. Only Sylvain the butcher 
 maintained his brutal bearing, and stared at Jac- 
 queline till she winced. 
 
 La Sarte and Michel rose, stepped forward, 
 and received the new comers with no more out- 
 ward show than the frank good will and quiet 
 cordiality with which they had received their 
 other guests. Nevertheless, a vigilant watcher 
 might have remarked that Michel Sart, who 
 was wont to be as immoveable as a rock, 
 flushed scarlet for a moment, while his broad
 
 MADEMOISELLE AT THE FETE. 53 
 
 hand on the back of his mother's chair shook 
 like a leaf. 
 
 The Citoyenne JacqueHne, who gloried in the 
 name of Citoyenne, came in among the rest 
 of the citizens and citoyennes, as poor, gene- 
 rous, yet vindictive Marie Antoinette strayed 
 in her youth among the cottagers at Trianon. 
 Waving her little white hands, bidding the com- 
 pany be seated, and rest tranquil, Jacqueline 
 looked round her affably and encouragingly, be- 
 having, without the least idea of what she was 
 doing, like a young princess among her vas- 
 sals. 
 
 The guests at La Sarte's fete being French 
 peasants, sometimes stupid, but always adroit in 
 their stupidity, soon accommodated themselves 
 to circumstances, shook off their agitation, and 
 became interested and critical spectators of the 
 Citoyenne Jacqueline's performances. 
 
 Jacqueline wished La Sarte many pretty single- 
 hearted good wishes, and presented to her, with 
 infinite grace, the little chain, woven of the brown 
 hair, with the sun shining on it. It was a light
 
 54 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 trifle among the off'erings there, and yet it was 
 part of the girl's individuahty, being the work 
 of those hands unused to work, but made, to 
 judge from their dainty size and shape, for kiss- 
 ing, card-playing, touching the harpsichord, un- 
 picking gold thread, and — well, thank Heaven ! 
 for praying as much as the most work-hardened 
 hands present. 
 
 La Sarte was not overpowered, but she was 
 touched. " Thank you, my little lady. How kind 
 you are I What fine hair ! I hope you have not 
 robbed yourself," looking at the long thick curls 
 half way down Jacqueline's back. " I should not 
 like that ; but there seems no fear of it. Touch it. 
 my Michel ; feel how fine it is." 
 
 Michel's face flushed again, and he made a 
 backward movement, and spoke at first as if he 
 were about to commit one of his grufl", bashful 
 blunders. " Pardon. Judge you if I can feel it 
 with my hand, my old woman ?" holding out a great 
 hand, not browner than any hunter's, but certainly 
 tanned like leather. The next moment he proved 
 that extremes meet : " My hand is too hard. I
 
 MICHEL A COURTIER. 55 
 
 can only feel it thus ;" and the massive, tawny 
 lion's head stooped low over his mother's shoulder 
 till the lips touched the chain. 
 
 " Maitre Michel is a courtier after all ! Go to ; 
 see now the world is turning back again. This 
 is not salutation and fraternity ; this is homage !" 
 was expressed in condemning pantomime by the 
 audience. 
 
 Even Babette gave her head a toss, as if 
 she disapproved of the act of gallantry to her 
 mistress's token. Indeed it was a fact that the 
 gayer and more condescending Jacqueline made 
 herself, the tarter and tarter her follower Ba- 
 bette — formerly the life of every village fete — 
 became, until it appeared as if she might have 
 been taking lessons from Madame's woman, her 
 rival and natural enemy, Agathe. There were 
 only La Sarte, Michel, Sylvain the butcher (with 
 his half scowl, half leer), and Jacqueline herself, 
 who took Michel's act as a matter of course. At 
 the same time Jacqueline opened her eyes with a 
 still more meditative speculation in them than 
 before.
 
 56 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 " I shall tie my cross to it," decided La Sarte 
 — "my poor Jonquille's cross, which he forgot 
 when he went to Paris," she added in an un- 
 dertone ; " and then I will remember you in my 
 prayers." 
 
 " Do so, my mother," said Jacqueline, gratefully 
 and humbly ; " and I will remember you, and 
 Michel, and Jonquille ; — only Michel, who is the 
 friend of the cure, has more need to remember a 
 naughty girl like me ;" and she darted a quick look 
 at Michel, who bent his head in acknowledgment 
 of her words, but said nothing. 
 
 Sylvain the butcher articulated hoarsely, " Yes, 
 there ! " gave an ugly grin, and then sighed 
 in so profound a manner that the whole com- 
 pany looked at him, — an attention which caused 
 him immediately to laugh loudly and make a 
 profane speech. La Sarte, in her turn, spoke 
 to Sylvain a word of grieved, but honest and 
 long-suflfering reproof, and the evening's enter- 
 tainment went on. 
 
 Jacqueline ate a bit of a galette and a few 
 cherries, put a glass to her lips to the health of
 
 "THE GARDEN OF MY AUNT." 57 
 
 La Sarte particularly and the company gene- 
 rally, and then sat down amongst the other citi- 
 zens, — in the place of honour, it must be told, 
 next La Sarte, fully prepared to join in the 
 diversions. 
 
 There were pipes and a player ready for rondes, 
 to please both old and young; but the amuse- 
 ments began with games, and the first — again 
 after an old custom, better left in disuse at this 
 time — was led by Mademoiselle. 
 
 She initiated the circle in " the Garden of my 
 Aunt," saying in her bell-like voice, while her 
 manner, in its utter unconsciousness, was the 
 most perfect manner in the world, " I have 
 just come from my aunt's garden. What a 
 beautiful garden, my aunt's garden ! In my 
 aunt's garden there are four corners," nodding 
 eagerly to each member of the party who 
 played, as he or she repeated her phrases in 
 thick patois : — 
 
 " In the first corner 
 
 Is found a jasmine." 
 "I love you without end."
 
 58 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 (" Say that, Jeanneton.") Then directing a second 
 player to follow with the second verse, — 
 
 " In the second comer 
 Is found a rose," 
 "I would like much to embrace you, 
 But I dare not." 
 
 (" Charming ! Philippe.") Still advancing with 
 the game, — 
 
 "In the third corner 
 
 Is found a beautiful pink." 
 " Tell me your secret" 
 
 Then, in the character of mistress of the cere- 
 monies, Jacqueline addressed the entire room, — 
 " Come, let each say to each his little secret, quite 
 low ;" and she inclined her head with an unhesi- 
 tating charm, to receive the whisper of the registrar 
 Michel. After everybody had copied her sovereign 
 example, Jacqueline held aloft and flourished, like 
 a cobweb in the sunshine, the flimsy snare in the 
 eyes of the players. She recited in glee and 
 triumph the fourth and concluding verse, —
 
 THE BETRAYED WHISPERERS. 59 
 
 ' ' In the fourth corner 
 
 I found a handsome poppy." 
 
 " What you have said quite low 
 Repeat quite loud." 
 
 And every ignorant whisperer felt like a be- 
 trayed, guilty man or woman as he or she had 
 to proclaim audibly — abashed by the silliness of 
 the sentence — the private communication to the 
 next neighbour. 
 
 By rights the gallantly-frivolous French game 
 induces gallant, fantastically-appropriate whispers. 
 One would be a butterfly or a little bird on 
 the jasmine or the pink ; another would shed 
 the rose leaves at a beloved friend's feet. But the 
 heavy peasants of Faye knew nothing of those fine 
 speeches which the working men and women of 
 Paris could have exchanged glibly at the most 
 horrible junctures. Their whispers were of such 
 gross, tangible human affairs as " What dost 
 thou think of that for a fine breast-knot. Mar- 
 got ? " " Wilt thou be at the mass on Sunday, 
 Etienne ? " " Hast thou seen my brown mare, 
 Claude?" "What number wilt thou choose for
 
 6o CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 the drawing?" — varied by such home thrusts 
 as "What hast thou done to big Jean, my fine 
 girl ? " and Babette's sarcastic address to Citizen 
 Pepin, " Will the red cap give thee a beard, 
 my master 1 " alluding to that important ad- 
 dition to a man's attractions, the few hairs on 
 the sallow, pointed chin, which the small shop- 
 keeper would have cherished dotingly, and whose 
 absence he was understood to regret bitterly. 
 
 Sylvain had constructed his whisper into a 
 shallow, hideous riddle : " What lady will soon 
 be alone in France, and wear the brightest crim- 
 son ?" 
 
 Jacqueline had declared, quite naively and 
 earnestly, " My secret is, 'There is a drop of 
 dew like a pearl falls right down from heaven 
 every night on the hedge-roses, and the mosses 
 on the thatched roofs.' I would I could catch 
 such a drop of dew," she continued, wistfully ; 
 " but the roses of the Tour are so surrounded 
 with thickets, and its stone roof is so thick." 
 
 La Sarte, with tlie quick intuition of her 
 younger son, the genius in the double-entendre,
 
 LA sarte's secret. 6i 
 
 and ^^ith her own long look forward over all 
 the heads, explained, " For me, I said, ' If it is 
 necessary that I be a flower, I hope I may be 
 a sweet-smelling sprig of lavender or rosemary, to 
 scent all the rooms in the auberge, and in Faye, 
 if it were possible, a long time after I shall be 
 transplanted into God's garden.' That would be 
 better worth than to be a crown of immortelle 
 or a cross there." 
 
 As for Maitre Michel, he was more literal and 
 prosaic than any of them. He had taken the op- 
 portunity of impressing on his old lord's daughter, 
 " You will not walk alone with Babette after sun- 
 set, my Mademoiselle ; I shall accompany you to 
 the Tour." 
 
 " Mademoiselle, indeed !" muttered Mother Jul- 
 lien through her teeth, and sniffed the air with 
 her knife-like nose, " I thought the titles were 
 swept away with the flood!" In spite of this, how- 
 ever, she was ready to throw herself in Jacqueline's 
 way as she passed to the door, and tried to catch 
 her eye as she whined and fawned her good night ; 
 for there were still stores dispensed in the village
 
 62 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 from the Tour kitchen, impoverished as it was. 
 And who knew but some fine day the titles might 
 be restored, and the Sieurs be as awfiil as ever? 
 It were best to be square with everything. And 
 indeed, it was all left for her to do, for that ton 
 of flesh, Father Jullien, would not stir, except to 
 take in more meat and drink into his greasy 
 carcase. 
 
 Jacqueline, in her double role of citoyenne and 
 princess, — always unaware that she was playing a 
 part, or doing anything unusual on the clay floor 
 of the village inn, — curtseyed with the low, soft, 
 inclusive curtsey of the exploded regime, smiled 
 blandly, and accepted Maitre Michel's escort as 
 simply in the way of his duty. 
 
 Babette walked behind her young lady and the 
 registrar, — not snifting, spiteful, and Janus-faced, 
 like Mother Jullien, for Babette was a greater 
 creature altogether, and scorned and hated the 
 other's meanness and malice, — but cold and stiff" 
 with mortification and rage, and making no cere- 
 mony in her mental record of her feelings. 
 
 The nightingale was still singing its passion in
 
 Michel's convoy. 63 
 
 the bocage, and the evening star was shining 
 out over the terrace. Madame and Monsieur 
 had not left off their cards in the hot, heavily- 
 perfumed boudoir; or their strongly spiced State 
 and Court scandal ; or their elegant follies and 
 cynicisms. Their young daughter was walking the 
 hundred yards with the retainer, by whose side 
 she needed no chaperon, flushed with the honest, 
 ingenuous, warm-hearted pleasure of conferring 
 pleasure ; and with a secret, undefined fluttering 
 wonder at her servant's devotion. 
 
 Maitre Michel, strong, staid, simple, and un- 
 polished, was as chivalrous to her as if he had 
 been a squire of the middle ages, attending on 
 one of the early Demoiselles de Faye. He was 
 just as if there was no turbulent Convention in 
 Paris, of which his brother was a deputy of 
 note ; no Jacobin and Cordelier clubs ruling the 
 great kingdom of France, and fiercely snatching 
 the plumed hats from the nobles' heads, — nay, 
 threatening to cut off the heads themselves as 
 the mower's scythe crops the tiny clover heads 
 in the meadow grass. Maitre Michel reverenced
 
 64 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 the ground Jacqueline trod on, noted down ever)' 
 look and word of hers, treasured them up, and 
 brought them out of his long, deep memory 
 every time he could give her a moment's plea- 
 sure. She did not know how she had found it 
 out, but she was as sure that Maitre Michel was 
 her most faithful servant, as that the future head 
 of the house of Faye, Achille Rene, Chevalier 
 de Faye, her splendid young cousin, had been 
 drawn presumptively from the ranks of bachelor- 
 hood (to which all chevaliers as well as abbes were 
 wont to be reduced) and was decreed to be her 
 betrothed bridegroom. She knew, too, that the 
 consciousness of Michel Sart's lavish, unselfish ser- 
 vice — though she could not render any further 
 explanation of it than that Michel was old- 
 fashioned and loyal, a watch-dog and a lion to 
 the house of Faye — soothed her and gratified her, 
 although she had only a dim half-appreciation of 
 its worth, and was puzzled to sound its depth. 
 At the same time Achille de Faye's fitful atten- 
 tions, his long absences, his flying visits, and the 
 l^erilous uncertainty of their connection in those
 
 THE WALK TO THE TOUR. 65 
 
 times, filled her with strange chagrin, which she 
 dared not show. Jacqueline was therefore under 
 a happy influence as she walked up the sandy 
 street to the conciergerie of the Tour. She kept 
 prattling to her big guardian, and teUing him 
 confidentially, " They are dear, good country 
 people, Maitre Michel, — honest people. I am 
 very glad I came among them. I love them 
 all. Ah ! well ! " correcting herself, — " except 
 that Sylvain the butcher, who makes my skin 
 feel like a hen's skin. He is as — as one of the 
 satyrs I have read of in the classics. I think," — 
 she pressed nearer her stout servant, — " I think 
 he smells of blood." 
 
 " I don't know. Mademoiselle, that Sylvain is 
 cruel for a butcher," Michel checked her gently. 
 " I beheve he would spare a beast to suit a 
 fancy; though I have heard say he chose his 
 trade after he was a man, to learn how killing 
 felt for an occupation." 
 
 " Mother Jullien is not sincere. I know she is 
 angry against me because I was Demoiselle before 
 I was Citoyenne. That was not my fault. Yet 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 without doubt these two poor people have had 
 their trials, of which I comprehend nothing, — I, 
 who am a little fool of idleness and luxury. But 
 let us return to our sheep : your mother is a 
 good angel, Maitre Michel." 
 
 " She is a good old woman. Mademoiselle," 
 answered Michel, temperately ; " there is not a 
 better old woman in France." 
 
 " That is a true truth, Maitre Michel," Jacque- 
 line assured him sententiously ; " but do not call 
 me Mademoiselle, when it is no longer the 
 usage, — when we are going back to simple, grand, 
 primitive times — fresh, beautiful times. I — I obey 
 the laws. I wish the poor people who have been 
 oppressed to be free and happy. I am content, 
 proud, to be called Citoyenne Jacqueline ; though 
 many demoiselles, who are no better taught, 
 detest and despise the temi." And Jacqueline, 
 modestly sensible of her superiority, threw back 
 her curls with a stately motion. 
 
 " Very well, Citoyenne Jacqueline," Michel Sart 
 humoured her, with a little half-formed, pensive 
 smile about his kind mouth, the lines of which
 
 DEMOISELLE OR CITOYENNE? 67 
 
 made him look old and tried in the vigour of 
 his prime ; " and you will no longer call me Maitre 
 Michel." 
 
 " That is quite another thing," objected Jacque- 
 line, thoughtlessly. And the moment the words 
 passed her lips, she had a perception, bred of the 
 complete code of politeness in which she was 
 reared, that she had been insolent. She would far 
 sooner have insulted an equal ; she would almost 
 as soon have struck Babette. A French noble 
 must have far forgotten herself, when she taunted a 
 man of the people, though ever so lightly, with his 
 inferiority of degree. She flushed scarlet all over 
 her throat and forehead, and hurried to efface the 
 affront by the softest, most caressing words and 
 images she could summon on the emergency. 
 
 " You love your mother, Michel Sart." She 
 said the name deliberately. " She has a good son." 
 
 "Thank you, Mademoiselle, — Citoyenne," Mi- 
 chel corrected himself, accepting the propitiation 
 quietly. " There is no merit in being a good son 
 to a good mother, who loved me first, though not 
 best."
 
 68 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 "What do you say?" questioned Jacqueline, 
 inquisitively, recovering from her shame and con- 
 trition. 
 
 " My brother Jonquille is La Sarte's favourite 
 son," declared Michel. 
 
 " No," negatived the girl incredulously, in sur- 
 prise at the decided statement. "Jonquille is a 
 little more famous than when he came up to 
 the Tour, to play his violin before my music 
 master. Behold the scene : — Monsieur Cars is 
 wicked, and sneezes as he takes snuff; Jonquille 
 breaks his violin in a rage, — you remember, Maitre 
 Michel ? you pick up the fragments, and say 
 politely, ' No, I thank you,' for your brother, 
 when Monsieur has remorse, fear — I do not 
 know what — and pretends to be generous, and 
 offers Jonquille one of his squeaking, cracked old 
 violins. But La Sarte is not a mere villager — she 
 will not worship her younger son because he is a 
 deputy. Faith of Faye ! she has no need. There 
 are vile deputies, as there are noble — noble in 
 heart I mean, not alone in name. The five wise 
 and the five foolish virgins, is it not so ? I pray
 
 THE WISE AND THE FOOLISH. 69 
 
 there may not be more than five foohsh, as Mon- 
 sieur my father no longer doubts But Jon- 
 
 quille is not fooHsh ; only he is not so wise as you, 
 Maitre Michel, with all his cleverness. Let La 
 Sarte see to it," Jacqueline maintained, a little 
 indignantly. 
 
 " Pardon, Mademoiselle." Both of them, in 
 spite of private opinion and private enthusiasm, 
 tacitly returned to the old names. " How noble 
 tongues go ! My mother prefers Jonquille, not 
 because he is a deputy, but because he best merits 
 and repays her love." 
 
 " Do you mean it ? " 
 
 " Yes," he asserted in his cool manliness. 
 " Why should I not mean it, when it is the 
 truth ? and why should I say it if I did not believe 
 it?" 
 
 " Why, truly? And you would die for your 
 mother, Maitre Michel ? " 
 
 " I hope so, if God bade me," he replied, gravely. 
 " He would give me the strength, and it would be 
 my privilege as well as my duty." 
 
 " I believe it, I believe it ! " cried Jacqueline,
 
 70 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 with a full heart. " I believe you would even die 
 for us at the Tour," — in a more breathless voice, 
 and with a still more de^vy moisture in the brown- 
 grey eyes, — " for me, good Michel." 
 
 " Ah ! that would be my happiness, my glor}%" 
 broke from the sober Michel, with a ring in his 
 calm voice, and a flash from his reasonable eyes. 
 And then silence descended upon the speakers — 
 only broken by the rich, sweet yearning plaint of 
 the nightingale up in the bocage. 
 
 Babette stalked behind the couple fuming and 
 fretting inwardly : " Very good, Maitre Michel. 
 You advance, my brave boy ! you used to be so 
 modest, you could not embrace a girl after she had 
 danced the bourree with you, — save like a little boy 
 full of bashfulness, holding the tips of her fingers, 
 and just coming nose against nose ; — that was all. 
 Now you kiss Mademoiselle's chain, and you walk 
 by her side to the Tour ; and I and my little web of 
 linen are worth nothing. Bah ! I have found you 
 out — it was not the false shame, but the pride. 
 You are as proud as Lucifer, my good man ; and 
 you prefer to look up to a star, and die or run mad
 
 babette's soliloquy. 71 
 
 with the longing, to mating with an honest girl 
 your equal. Ouf ! what asses and mules are these 
 great, wise, good fellows ! Don't you see, then, 
 that she has no more thought of you, save as her 
 humble servant the registrar, than of a horse or a 
 dog ? Little coquette, trifler, actress that she is ! 
 — a baby who does not know enough of harm to 
 intend harm, so that I cannot punish her. She 
 walks mth you, dolt, because a registrar is not a 
 man. Do you think, dupe, she would walk thus 
 with the Chevalier her lover, her future husband ; 
 or that Madame would permit it, or ever have her 
 lynx eye off the child ? For me, I do not know 
 whether I could cry like a watering-pot or scratch 
 somebody's eyes out But Mademoiselle, though she 
 is conceited, vain, meddlesome, will have enough of 
 troubles of her own, — poor little angel, our Lady 
 aid her ! She is as vain as a peacock ; and she 
 has the rage of a fiery, aristocratic sparrowhawk. 
 What does she want with a tame, common thrush 
 in addition to the other sparrowhawk ? But then 
 she is noble to the core. If any one suffers she
 
 72 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 flies to the rescue, though she should suffer instead. 
 She is brave, daring. Clever though she be, 
 she would no more suspect you of deceiving 
 and abusing her, though you did it under her 
 nose, than of your proposing to strangle her — the 
 darling ! No, Maitre Michel, it is you who are 
 to be blamed ; you are a great, ^vise, brave, rich, 
 kind, humble, proud monster. Go ! you are not 
 worth a virtuous, sensible girl's regard, if it were 
 not that you would ruin yourself among these 
 aristocrats ^\^thout her." 
 
 After the last extraordinary jumble of epithets, 
 Babette surreptitiously shook her fist. It was a 
 powerful fist for a woman, — one that could have 
 caught up a fellow like Citizen Pepin (suspected of 
 having a sneaking kindness for the waiting woman) 
 by the high collar, and half shaken the breath from 
 his attenuated body. There was modest reticence 
 and a sort of extravagant womanly honour in 
 Babette's unrequited devotion to a giant of a 
 registrar — a man of the physical calibre of Maitre 
 Michel.
 
 THE COMPANY SEPARATES. 73 
 
 The gate was gained ; a bow and a - curtsey, a 
 snappish nod and a cordially-indifferent good even- 
 ing, exchanged ; and the ill-assorted company 
 separated.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A FRENCH LOTHARIO — THE CURE's WARNING — A SPIED 
 
 LETTER. 
 
 FEW weeks later in the summer the 
 village of Faye was dark in its ver- 
 dure ; the walnuts were as big as 
 blackbirds' eggs ; the bunches of 
 grapes had lost their faint blue and green, and 
 were deepening into plum colour, or blanching 
 into straw colour, on the cottage trellises. The 
 Tour de Faye was looking more like a lichen 
 than ever, gaunt and grey with golden patches. 
 
 Down the hamlet street walked Jacqueline de 
 Faye, in her "mules k talons" — freely translated, 
 Cinderella slippers — with heels which touched the 
 earth lightly. Her train of brocade gently swayed
 
 THE CHEVALIER DE FAYE. 75 
 
 behind her, not dragging on the chaussee, but 
 drawn up in an artistic bunch, Hke the tail of 
 a symmetrical little bird ; a long-waisted, close- 
 fitting corsage covered her beautifully shaped 
 bust ; clouds of lace hung from her round 
 arms ; while a soft, transparent lace mob-cap 
 rested on her flowing hair, and came across by 
 the ears. 
 
 Leading Jacqueline by the hand was her kins- 
 man and elected bridegroom, the young noble, 
 the Chevalier de Faye, — himself a sight gallant 
 and brave, though his fine feathers had been 
 cHpped. Instead of the old velvet and taffetas, 
 he now wore no finer stuff than cloth, like 
 Maitre Michel. Like Maitre Michel, too, his 
 coat took the form of a redingote, loose as 
 a sack, with long tails, huge collar, and epau- 
 lettes turned back the breadth of the chest. 
 He had a plain cravat tied in a big bow; boots 
 a la hussard ; his cocked hat on his head instead 
 of under his arm ; and his disengaged hand in his 
 coat pocket, a la Englishman or American. The
 
 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 change was significant. The advancing Revo- 
 lution had only spared the Chevalier one high- 
 bred distinction besides his birth and bearing, 
 and that was his long dark hair, which, though 
 free from powder, was perfumed, and partly tied 
 in a queue, partly arranged in side locks, so as 
 to fall curling at the ends to the shoulders, in 
 what were then called Dogs' Ears, which were 
 so esteemed that they were only cut off, or 
 plaited and turned aside, when the. dandy head 
 was laid at rest on the block. The face within 
 the frame of hair was languid and a little super- 
 cilious in expression ; the mouth was turned down 
 at the corners; the well-moulded and slightly 
 projecting chin was turned up to approach the 
 nose, which was broadish and inclined to flat- 
 ness ; the eyes were long and liquid, but not fully 
 opened ; and the complexion was a good bronze. 
 To most people it was a noble, comely counte- 
 nance enough, but pleasure-loving and sensual, 
 though not without intellect ; fond of change, 
 though contented ; and quite capable of a
 
 HERCULES AND OMPHALE. 77 
 
 sneer. Notwithstanding his being stripped of 
 his old splendour, the ChevaHer was a wonder- 
 ful young fop, who — supposing he survived the 
 times — might one day rise up a hero. 
 
 It would have been comparatively easy for a 
 woman to resist the Chevaher in his old velvet 
 and gold, when he, like the rest of the nobles, 
 had no higher ambition than to embroider at 
 women's frames in women's saloons, — lower 
 Herculeses, since their Omphales had not im- 
 posed upon them the effeminate tasks, — or to 
 stroll in the gardens of the Tuileries or the 
 galleries of Versailles, pulling the strings which 
 set the imbecile cardboard toys — the pantins — 
 in wriggling motion. The only manliness that 
 was ever heard of in them was their baptism 
 of fire in the wars; their brutal adventures in 
 the little houses near Paris ; their gambling 
 away of soul and body at the receptions of 
 marchionesses and duchesses ; their bloody duels 
 at Longchamps. 
 
 But now, in the gathering gloom of adversity.
 
 78 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 it was not so easy for some natures to resist the 
 young men heretofore nobles. 
 
 Madame de Pompadour's favourite phrase, 
 " After us, the Dekige," was in the act of fulfil- 
 ment. The early waves had broken over the 
 high heads, but they were dauntless and dignified 
 as ever ; while the hard, selfish hearts were learn- 
 ing strange lessons of sympathy and feeling in 
 the midst of vanity and destruction. Boys of 
 one or two-and-twenty w^re, in a few months, 
 growing resolute, devoted men in that hotbed of 
 Paris, where a moral volcano had rent and 
 scattered all the old elements. 
 
 The first wave of Madame de Pompadour's 
 deluge — the wave of Jean Jacques' sentimental 
 brotherhood ; the farce of beggars standing as god- 
 fathers to children of men of letters, who wrote in 
 ruffles, vnth genealogical trees hanging over their 
 heads ; the furor for Benjamin Franklin — had rolled 
 by unnoticed. 
 
 The second wave — noblemen constituting them- 
 selves tradesmen, in order that they might sit
 
 THE DELUGE. 79 
 
 in the Third Estate ; rising and thundering 
 against their own order, and turning and biting 
 their own flesh and blood ; detachments of 
 soldiers from every branch of the service, drink- 
 ing and huzzaing with the mob ; trees of liberty ; 
 Phrygian red caps ; oaths to the Constitution ; 
 beautiful women of degree making appoint- 
 ments among the ruins of the Bastille ; nuns 
 driven abroad all over the country, blinking at 
 the hot, broad sunshine ; women of the market 
 insulting Marie Antoinette, while the aquiline 
 nose and the Austrian lip came out, as under 
 a livid light and against a dark background, 
 more prominently than before ; — the waters of 
 that fomiidable wave too had broken and dis- 
 persed, doing little more than foam up mire and 
 dirt. 
 
 But more terrible waves were at hand, — waves 
 which brought shoals of gleaming pikes, blood 
 pattering from them like rain; the guillotine, 
 a ghastly phantom before and after and for all 
 time in the Square du Carrousel, — the Square
 
 8o CITOYENNE JACQUELINE, 
 
 of Louis Quinze, the Square of the Revolu- 
 tion, the Square of Peace (what will be the 
 next title ?) ; ever)Awhere a crowd of unclean, 
 fierce, impious, shrieking demons, as if the mad 
 blasphemy of " Long live hell ! " had been heard 
 in high Heaven, and the Pit had yawned open, 
 and let loose its damned crew on accursed France. 
 Within forty days of Louis XV.'s death, Jean of 
 Beauvais had preached a Lent sermon to the 
 Court on the text, " Yet forty days, and Nineveh 
 shall be overthrown!" And Nineveh was falling. 
 Jacqueline and her kinsman walked down 
 the hamlet street on the very eve of the day 
 when dull, gentle, proud Louis, after having 
 subscribed the " Rights of Man," stood three 
 miserable hours with his wife and children, 
 besieged and bullied in his palace by the scum 
 of the faubourgs ; put on the red cap where the 
 crown had been ; and tore it from his head when 
 the ordeal was over, screaming, " Madame, did you 
 come from Vienna to behold me thus degraded ? " 
 None save the Queen, — " the stranger," — 
 hoped for the intervention of strangers, which
 
 THE YOUNG ARISTOCRAT. 8l 
 
 would arouse in Paris the din of a hundred 
 thousand forges. She looked at the moon, and 
 said, "When, in a month, this moon will appear 
 again, I shall be free and happy." Already 
 men like the Chevalier could not walk abroad 
 safely in the streets of the capital and the larger 
 towns, but were forced to daub their clothes, 
 soil their hands and faces, pull coarse shaggy 
 jackets over their coats, and echo the senti- 
 ments of the Ca ira and the Marseillaise at 
 every gathering and stoppage, at the comers of 
 the streets, and before the bakers' shops, or else 
 become victims to the long pent up and now 
 wildly bursting storm of a people's vengeance. 
 Thinking of this, and looking at the young, hand- 
 some, smiling man who would smile when he 
 could not pray in the tumbril, it was difficult for 
 any one not to yearn over the sunshiny face, — 
 not to think how short a time had elapsed since 
 the curled head was leant in childish confidence 
 and security against a mother's knee, and was 
 nestled in her bosom, — not to feel how inex- 
 perienced he was (whatever follies he had known) 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE, 
 
 in the great mysteries of life and death, — not to 
 fancy that he who could be firm in death would 
 be faithful in life and love. 
 
 What did it matter that these workings of the 
 mind were but filmy threads spinning themselves 
 from the young nobleman's rank, beauty, and dan- 
 ger ; and that just as certainly as the old Monsieur 
 de Faye, in his speculativeness, and mild con- 
 tempt for women, showed a nature leavened ^vith 
 the eccentric, half-sweet sourness of Montaigne ; 
 so the young Monsieur — worldly, sensual, callous 
 — had a heart and soul leavened with the bitter 
 yeast of Rochefoucauld, although, at the same 
 time, he loved France, glory, fair women, galloping 
 horses, waving feathers, like the son of the people, 
 Joachim Murat? 
 
 Jacqueline was not a sorceress. She did not 
 see more of the young noble who led her along 
 the village street, than his pleasant, picturesque 
 exterior, and the imminency of his peril. Before 
 his arrival, she had often plucked at the tie of 
 betrothal which bound them together, was galled 
 by it, and felt tempted to rebel against it, in her
 
 WOMEN LESS HEROIC, 83 
 
 new, half-chivalrous idea of independence, and 
 of disinterested, divine passion. But now her 
 rebellion was quelled. It would be base to 
 break the bond and desert her kinsman in his 
 misfortunes. By the side of Achille, Jacque- 
 line yielded to natural fascination. She kept 
 glancing up at her lover, shyly but willingly, 
 drinking in at every look long draughts of girlish 
 worship. 
 
 Women in France had become less heroic on 
 their own account since the days of the Pr^- 
 cieuses, even though they were now amateur 
 repubhcans. They no longer kept portraits of 
 Gustavus Adolphus and the Conde hanging in 
 their chambers ; no longer vowed to them alle- 
 giance, or declared they would belong to none 
 less renowned. They no longer needed costly 
 garlands of Julia, with vignettes and madrigals 
 by the greatest artists and poets of a bom- 
 bastic generation, or the gracious intercession 
 of potent princesses, to bring them down from 
 the clouds to the suits of honest and gal- 
 lant men. They no longer called themselves
 
 84 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE, 
 
 Sapphos, or their poor small-pox-seamed, war- 
 worn Pelissons, any fine name that struck their 
 errant fancies. The greater gain to the men, 
 if the women were altogether losers by the 
 change. 
 
 Whether Babette was right or wrong in think- 
 ing that Madame would never relax the bonds of 
 etiquette, or so far forget the proprieties as to send 
 Jacqueline to walk with her promised bridegroom, 
 here were the two together without premeditation. 
 The Chevalier had arrived the preceding evening 
 without warning (there being small space for 
 warning in those days), had breakfasted alone with 
 Monsieur, and afterwards, by chance, encountered 
 Jacqueline doing an errand with Babette in the 
 village. The lover and his mistress had flown 
 to each other like fire and tow ; and Babette 
 looked as proud of the accident as if she had 
 been its author, ^ — as proud as if she were a 
 mother hen clucking noisily to a favourite chicken 
 over a new-found grain of corn. Babette, in her 
 lace cap, golden-brown gown, crimson apron, and 
 clattering sabots, bridled for her mistress, and
 
 BABETTE PLEASED AND PROUD. 85 
 
 bounced for herself, in turn. She did the next 
 thing to calHng the whole world to witness the 
 spectacle. She turned up the whites of her 
 eyes ; annihilated her forehead ; protruded her 
 chin in a peak ; sv/ung her substantial but supple 
 body from side to side ; and challenged her 
 acquaintances to remark the pair — not only 
 by the multitude of her becks and wreathed 
 smiles, but by actually hailing them on the 
 steps, in the doorways, at the fountain ; using 
 her shrill voice in such significant congratu- 
 lations as "What a fine day, Balfe !" "What 
 delights in full air, Madeleine ! Ah, I love to 
 see the happy people. The grapes will ripen 
 as they have not done since we invented the 
 Nation." 
 
 A very different Babette was she from the sullen 
 woman who tramped along, secretly croaking a 
 protest and a denunciation against little Mademoi- 
 selle and Maitre Michel, as they walked from the 
 auberge to the Tour on the evening of La 
 Sarte's fete. 
 
 The peasants of Faye, notwithstanding their
 
 86 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 smitten attachment to that rather troublesome 
 invention of young France, the Nation, could not 
 deny themselves so pretty a glimpse of high life, 
 blooming still in its wTeck ; and they were almost 
 drawn back for a moment into the old, blind 
 adoration of the nobles. Little Citizen Pepin 
 leaped to the door of his shop at the sound of 
 Babette's tongue; and though he started back 
 somewhat when he saw by whom she was accom- 
 panied, he yet removed his casquette -ttith the 
 slow, reluctant movement of a man uncovering 
 under the influence of a spell, and stood, grinning 
 and gaping, and peering out, with a sheepish, 
 incensed admiration, at the young aristocrats. 
 But when the cavalcade was out of sight, he soon 
 recovered himself, to rave and storm at the ser- 
 pent's and the wolfs brood. Others than Citizen 
 Pepin — not creatures of Babette — were moved 
 to the centre of their impressionable, impulsive 
 French natures; while the old men and women 
 shaded their eyes, crossed themselves, and were 
 so happy that they cried. It was so like the 
 fine old times when they were young and poor.
 
 THE LAST DISPLAY OF THE QUALITY. 87 
 
 — Sacristie ! they were very poor and oppressed, 
 but there were grand lords and ladies walking 
 over them, who were beautiful as angels, and 
 filled one's eyes and roused one's brain better 
 than snuff. 
 
 There was a universality in the charm, for did 
 not high and low rush both to the Tuileries and 
 to Kensington Gardens to see Madame Recamier, 
 when she walked on the common grass, in the 
 common sunshine? And then there was only 
 one rara avis; but here there were two, — both 
 varieties of the bird. 
 
 Maitre Michel saw this last glorious display of 
 the quality; went and worked hke a horse for 
 
 
 
 the rest of the day, — ^measuring, summing up, 
 papng wages, repairing dilapidations with his 
 O'WTi hands on Monsieur's domain; and returned 
 at nightfall to the auberge, tired like a dog, as 
 he well might be. He sat drooping in the 
 gallery at the back of the house, where he 
 could see, as through a telescope, under the 
 arched doon\-ay and over a thatch roof, one 
 girouette of the Tour and a comer of the
 
 88 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 terrace ; and where he could Hsten to the night- 
 ingale, which sang again of love and death in the 
 bocage. His mother came out and looked at 
 him with her serene velvet eyes. " You work 
 too much, my little son," she said to the great 
 man. " It is necessary that you rest, though 
 you are strong as a lion. I wish you had a 
 young wife to say to you, by her looks, ' Rest, 
 be gay, Michel.'" 
 
 "My old wife," replied Michel, with an effort 
 at pleasantry, and with the fond reverence which 
 Frenchmen above all men in the world preserve 
 for their mothers, and which good Catholics in 
 other quarters of Christendom bestow on the 
 Madonna, " I am content ; I want no young 
 wife." 
 
 Michel little thought how soon a young wife 
 would sit by his side in that gallery. 
 
 To return to the lovers. A shadow fell across 
 their path in the noonday street. It was that of 
 Sylvain the butcher, with his dingy repulsive apron, 
 tucked sash-fashion about his middle, as usual, 
 and this time with the weapon of his craft —
 
 SYLVAIN AND ACHILLE. 89 
 
 a huge, ugly cleaver — poised on his brawny 
 arm. He was tickled, perhaps tormented (for a 
 miserable as well as horrible man was Sylvain), 
 but he was not won, by the proximity of the De- 
 moiselle and the Chevalier. He came forward and 
 made an uncouthly grotesque bow, and flourished 
 his axe. 
 
 " Bon jour. Our masters, still our masters, as 
 I see. What news from Paris? How flourishes 
 my brother in trade. Monsieur Paris, and his fine 
 family ? Is he still required to do his work in a 
 gold-laced coat, white silk stockings, and pumps ? 
 Plenty of work too, eh?" And he felt the edge 
 of his cleaver. 
 
 " Back, canaille ! " cried Achille, with an out- 
 break of fiery scorn! " No insolence from 
 such a knave as thou. At least I am master 
 in Faye yet awhile ; on the pave of a hamlet 
 there is not a thousand animals against one 
 
 man." 
 
 Sylvain did not give way, but he sufl'ered the 
 couple to pass him, grinning with a cool superi- 
 ority that made the blood boil.
 
 90 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 " I know the villain," asserted the Chevalier, 
 preventing Jacqueline's explanation. " I have 
 seen him before, and I do not know why, but he 
 forces me to detest him, far below the notice of a 
 gentleman as he is ; " and he knitted his arched 
 brows in vexation and spite. " He makes me hot 
 and cold, like a bad omen. I tell you this, my 
 beautiful : if I have a star of destiny and that man 
 has another, my star grows livid and wan when his 
 crosses it, — I am sure of that." He ended with 
 the strain of superstitious fatalism which always 
 attends on an infidel age. 
 
 But there were fitter topics of conversation 
 between plighted youth and maid than bad 
 omens, or even stars of destiny.- The Chevalier 
 Achille led Jacqueline — followed by Babette at a 
 respectful distance — back to the Tour by the 
 ravine of plum, acacia, and beech trees, which led 
 from the end of the village into the mall. There, 
 under the clear blue sky, in the chequered shade, 
 the verdure, and the seclusion, the two, with 
 their satellite, strayed or sat upon the mossy 
 bank. The violets were all gone, but the tall, pur-
 
 lovers' talk. 91 
 
 pie foxgloves, the slender, pale harebells (which 
 the French call the nuns of the fields), the 
 little scarlet strawberries, and the truffles be- 
 neath the beech trees, had taken their place. 
 Still, the Chevaher and Mademoiselle were the 
 brightest flowers. The two talked as became their 
 years and prospects, while Babette drew forth a 
 convenient piece of knitting from her pocket, 
 clicked her needles industriously, and nodded her 
 head so often and with such fervour, that the 
 milky pillar of her throat seemed no more than 
 sufficient to support it. 
 
 The Chevalier told Mademoiselle that he could 
 not join the princes and the army of the Rhine, 
 because he could not fight against Frenchmen, 
 sans-culottes though they might be, or fraternize 
 with aliens to invade his native country ; no, not 
 even on the pretext of restoring the monarchy and 
 the haute noblesse. Jacqueline listened intently, 
 and thought these sentiments very generous. If 
 she did not liken her young Achille to the 
 great Achilles (the French of the epoch were 
 well up in the classics), nor think that the army
 
 92 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 of the frontiers, like the host of Greece, would 
 be lost without his single redoubtable arm, she at 
 least believed in his patriotism and self-sacrifice, 
 and, woman-hke, pressed nearer to him, rendering 
 simple neutrality more difficult. However, Achille 
 had hopes and intentions which, by lying in close 
 obscurity at Faye, he might be able to fulfil. 
 Trusting that the worst blast of the revolutionar)'' 
 storm had blown over, and knowing emigration, 
 too long deferred, to be now doubly hard to 
 accomplish, he hinted at another and a more 
 satisfactory end to the troubles — the end which 
 had been contemplated before the troubles began. 
 This was the fulfilment of his engagement to 
 Jacqueline, and his living quietly with the family 
 at Faye (his own father and mother being dead) 
 until the kingdom should be restored to peace, 
 right rule, and just supremacy. 
 
 "Why .should I go away again, my altogether 
 beautiful ? I always thought there was much 
 at Faye, but since I came this time, T think 
 there is everything. If you could only suffer me 
 always, Jacqueline, I would be your most humble
 
 PROMPT FORGIVENESS. 93 
 
 servant ; I am grown humble, I ask no more, my 
 friend." 
 
 The Chevalier only thus hinted his desire, because 
 to express it plainly — nay, even to insinuate it to 
 Jacqueline in the first place, as he had just done — 
 was so glaring a departure from French precedent, 
 that her fresh cheeks were dyed a shy modest rose, 
 and her moorland-hued eyes completely veiled. 
 Notwithstanding, the girl forgave the offence the 
 moment it was committed ; and the young man, 
 cool enough and skilful enough to note every 
 step of his progress, had no reason to be dis- 
 satisfied with his success. Then he relieved his 
 young bride's blushes and perturbation by gliding 
 easily from personal to general topics, and enter- 
 taining her with a more enlarged circle of principles 
 and actions. Not those of the political clubs and 
 tribunes, which struck him as out of her way, poor 
 little girl ! Nor did he speak of the Assemblies, 
 which no person of distinction above the bour- 
 geoisie dared to frequent, unless under the pro- 
 tection of a powerful Jacobin name. For now tlie 
 carriage of Fouquier Tinville, public prosecutor,
 
 94 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 was the only carriage which presumed to roll freely 
 through the crowded, narrow streets where the 
 reckless driving of the coachmen of the nobles 
 had once been a scandal and a by-word, and 
 where listening ears detected beforehand the 
 echo of wheels whose hollow rumble would be 
 the sign of the ghastly banquet of Ate and Hecate. 
 No ; Achille descanted on the theatres and the 
 operas, the only amusements left to the French 
 since they had, as Babette said, invented the 
 Nation. He described Gluck's " Iphige'nie," and 
 " Charles the Ninth," and the debuts of Talma and 
 Mademoiselle Mars, to a girl who had never been 
 in any but provincial theatres, or seen other than 
 strolling stars, and who knew a great deal less of 
 dramatic representation than the old demoiselles of 
 St. Cyr. And when he saw the effect he produced, 
 his excitable French fluency rose to eloquence. 
 He had some taste for poetry, this fine young 
 Monsieur, so he proceeded to spout as well as to 
 describe, with second-hand grace and talent, and 
 that gift of imitation which is alike the strength 
 and the snare of the Gallic races. He was the
 
 babette's admiration. 95 
 
 Cid, he was Heracleus, he was Titus ; until Babette 
 dropped her knitting needles, and threw up her 
 hands in admiration of Monsieur the Chevalier's 
 declamation. Of course she knew no more of 
 Comeille and his brother poets than of so many- 
 dancing dervishes, and with her rampant common 
 sense would have mercilessly travestied their 
 heroics, had she understood them; but she ad- 
 mired the sound of the words a thousand times 
 more for not understanding their spirit. As 
 for Jacqueline, she listened like a dear little 
 country girl, with an unclaimed fund of reverence, 
 admiration, and love, ready to honour all draughts. 
 From thinking Achille's opinions chivalrous and 
 manly she hurried on, with the swiftness of light- 
 ning, to set him down as great, even divine ; to 
 bow before him like an eastern princess, sun 
 herself in his light, shrink in his shadow, tremble 
 or rejoice at his glance. But she was not so 
 dazzled or weak-minded either, under this mighty 
 power which had taken hold of her, that her 
 faculties could not play. On the contrary, with 
 the strong awakening influence of sympathy, and
 
 <)6 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 as iron sharpens iron, Jacqueline's nature began 
 to blossom over and perfume the air, and to 
 answer to her cousin's courtship by yielding to 
 him its best — and that was very choice — in return 
 for his gallant but formal, hackneyed efforts. 
 Like a royal, imprudent merchant, Jacqueline 
 bartered good gold with Achille de Faye for 
 what was no more than highly polished pinch- 
 beck. 
 
 Jacqueline was large-hearted, pure, tender, win- 
 ning, as she began in her gentle agitation to 
 speak of her hopes and fears, — not for herself and 
 her family alone, but for her countr)^ and her 
 kind ; to breathe her dim aspirations, which to 
 this man were a thousand times dimmer; to 
 chatter of her pets, and amuse him with her 
 rusticities. He was not like her, he could not 
 abide sacred homeliness ; but — one symptom of 
 the corruption of the age — he was enamoured of 
 artificial simplicity. 
 
 She gave the Chevalier, in return for his quota- 
 tions, a quaintly hyperbolical song, Babette beat- 
 ing time with her foot against the trunk of a tree.
 
 Jacqueline's song. 97 
 
 and humming the refrain heartily. And while 
 Jacqueline sang, her sweet voice quivered a little 
 from nervousness at Monsieur's great connois- 
 seurship, and from confusion at the looks which 
 now loved more and more to rest upon her, and 
 became more and more fixed and ardent after 
 their first languid glances : — 
 
 " If the king had given me 
 Paris his great city, 
 And it had been necessary for me to quit 
 The love of my dear, 
 I would say to King Henry, 
 
 Take back again your Paris, 
 I love better my dear, O gue ! 
 I love better my dear." 
 
 Shyly withdrawing from her lover's compli- 
 ments and allusions, the name of Henry recalled 
 to her the lament for the son of Henr}^ which the 
 journal of the Feuillants, the Acts of the Apostles^ 
 had just dared to publish in Paris ; — which, 
 with its mournfully cadenced fall, continually 
 
 repeated, — 
 
 "Louis the son of Henry 
 Is a prisoner in Paris." 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 The all-loyal, half-republican girl could only 
 sing of Monsieur Capet under her breath, even 
 in the Ravine of the Plum-trees at Faye, with 
 a face grown grave and timid, as it turned 
 a look of love to Achille, the future head of 
 the family, with his tenfold accountability and 
 danger. 
 
 Babette hummed no refrain to this doleful ditty, 
 but shook her head in decided reprobation : " For 
 me, I will not waste my breath on the melancholy. 
 And what good would it do the King in Paris if I 
 were to lose my head here at Faye? My head 
 would be very little to him, but it is some- 
 thing — and a good deal, too — to me. Miseri- 
 corde ! these aristocrats, the very best of them, are 
 fools." 
 
 The Chevalier being an aristocrat naturally 
 judged othenvise. Listening to the abiding senti- 
 ments of royalty and honour, the religion of his 
 class, — piety and the doctrine of the divine right 
 of kings and rulers being in many minds, at many 
 eras, inseparable, — and remembering the gracious 
 words of sympathy and hope which the girl
 
 MONSIEUR HUBERT. 99 
 
 H 
 
 had already spoken for the mistaken people, 
 driven mad by suffering and wrong, no wonder 
 he warmed in his wooing, and said to himself, 
 while he looked down into the kind, frank, 
 high-bred face, raised up in a trustful glow to 
 meet his, " She is an angel ! Achille, you are 
 very lucky." 
 
 On second thoughts, the pair, dallying and pro- 
 longing their intercourse, returned as they came, 
 and crossed the bridge among the willows by the 
 Mousse, where the little church, with its red-tiled 
 square tower and its cure's house, nestled. 
 
 There, leaning over the gate of the churchyard, 
 contemplating the graves and crosses, — one of them 
 \vreathed with white ribands as well as crowned 
 with immortelles, — stood Monsieur Hubert, the 
 cure, a brown, spare, but powerfully-knit man of 
 sixty, in a narrow collar, large three-cornered hat, 
 and long rusty black coat and sash. Jacqueline 
 immediately crossed over to him, and bent her 
 head, while he raised his hands with a slight 
 gesture of benediction before he greeted her and 
 her kinsman. • The Chevalier returned the greeting
 
 lOO CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 gracefully though indifferently. Babette curtseyed, 
 and then flew off to seize the opportunity of a 
 gossip with a true commere at the village well, 
 their tongues running as fast as the water, and 
 their whole bodies aiding in the endless variety 
 of appropriate gesture. 
 
 Monsieur Hubert was not of the most striking 
 type of French priests. He was neither jovial, 
 like Rohan, the princely cardinal ; nor was he 
 unworldly, hke Fene'lon, the saintly archbishop. 
 But there are many men born soldiers ; and such 
 was the cure of Faye, though he was bred a priest. 
 He had a passion for duty and discipline, a 
 genius for command and obedience, while his 
 whole soul loathed dastards and renegades. He 
 was more feared than loved, though at boltom 
 he was a great Christian, and laboured unremit- 
 tingly in his calling. He was well-born, though 
 with a slender patrimony ; and in his youth he 
 had won distinction in the Academy, which ought 
 to have recommended him to the quality and the 
 bels espriis^ when plane geometry and algebra 
 were manias with vain women ; but he had never
 
 MADAME AND THE CURE. lOI 
 
 risen above the humblest rank in the Church. 
 In his age he had forsaken his charts and pro- 
 blems, to devote himself to the Georgics and 
 Bucolics, and the ordinary humanity of his parish- 
 ioners ; a change which should have pleased the 
 farmers and peasants in his charge. But Monsieur 
 Hubert had not a wide enough nature, though at 
 the same time he was, paradoxically, too wide in 
 his temperament for popularity. He was out of 
 the common in his very peculiarities ; for while 
 multitudes of Frenchmen were republicans in 
 theory and absolutists in practice, — writing twenty 
 volumes of philanthropy, like Mirabeau the elder, 
 and living the lives of cruel tyrants, — the cure was 
 an aristocrat in principle and a republican in 
 deed. He associated with the people, worked for 
 them, quarrelled with them, dogmatized and 
 stormed over them, relieved them, and bore 
 long with them. 
 
 Madame at the Tour made a wry face at 
 Monsieur Hubert ; said he was not of her sort ; 
 complained that she could not be converted 
 under him, but had to rely on private repent 
 
 ;
 
 I02 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 ance, which was not according to rule. Agathe, 
 Madame's woman, was still more against the 
 cure. She threw out dark intimations of Jansen- 
 ism, and of every saint's turning his or her back 
 on Faye, since the cure dealt sharply with her at 
 confession. Neither was the cure of Monsieur's 
 sort: though Monsieur's misanthropy was much 
 more tolerant. He only said that the priest cut 
 him like an east wind. As for the need of energ)- 
 in the ecclesiastic, Monsieur could make nothing 
 of that ; there seemed to him no more use for it 
 than for the east wind. Then the cure was 
 allowing himself to degenerate ; but that was his 
 affair, not Monsieur's. 
 
 It was some compensation to Monsieur Hubert 
 that those who were fond of him had unquali- 
 fied faith in him. And among them were Made- 
 moiselle and the Sarts. He, however strict and 
 wise, had never lost patience with the child 
 Jacqueline in her catechism ; and while he taught 
 her to respect himself, he had given her a rare 
 glimpse into the genuine goodness of his heart 
 by rewarding her with introductions to his pets.
 
 A VERITABLE ARISTOCRAT. IO3 
 
 For the cure had pets, and a variety of them, — turtle 
 doves, a Persian cat, an eel in his well, — and was 
 as scrupulous and thoughtful in attending to 
 them as he was assiduous in preaching and teach- 
 ing, in bleeding and physicking the people. With 
 regard to the last department of his office : he had 
 more than the usual parish priest's or philosophical 
 Monsieur's acquaintance with surgery and medi- 
 cine ; and he gave advice, drugs, and kitchen stuff 
 to all who needed them, until he pinched him- 
 self in his own temperate requirements. Ay, and 
 he looked fierce, and was not grateful, when his 
 parishioners and patients spoke of rewards, or 
 offered him presents at Christmas and Easter. 
 And thus the shallow-minded and purely sensitive 
 among them learned to regard him as the obliged 
 person, and themselves as rather ill-used than 
 otherwise by his cares and sacrifices. In truth, 
 the cure was the veritable aristocrat. He relished 
 conferring favours, but he could not stomach 
 receiving them. And he was forced to take the 
 consequence of what was a proud, ungenial flaw in 
 his gallant character.
 
 I04 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 Monsieur Hubert had not taken the oaths under 
 the change of government, and his connection with 
 his flock was now about to be formally dissolved. 
 A priest who had sworn to the new constitution was 
 to supersede him in the small dignities and emolu- 
 ments of the parish ; and he was about to set 
 out to join a brother in blood and in orders, 
 whom he had got permission from the bishop 
 of his diocese to visit at Namur. 
 
 JacqueHne thought to take leave of her spi- 
 ritual father when she crossed the bridge ; and it 
 was by way of dulling the pain of parting that 
 she recurred to an infinitely sadder, as well as 
 more irremediable calamity, and said, looking over 
 into the churchyard at the cross with the white 
 ribands, " Ah, my father ! I see the poor Benigne's 
 companions have not yet forgotten her. Dead 
 at twenty, helas ! what a frightful affliction to her 
 friends ! What are all other misfortunes compared 
 to this cruel death ? " 
 
 " Do you think so, Mademoiselle ? " asked the 
 cure, abruptly, facing quite round on Jacqueline 
 and the Chevalier, and casting a keen glance at
 
 AN UNCOMMON SERMON. IO5 
 
 them from under the white eyebrows which con- 
 trasted broadly, but not discordantly, with his hale, 
 sunburned face. 
 
 " Without doubt," asserted Jacqueline, wondering 
 at his implied objection. "Although I am a 
 Christian and believe in paradise, and although 
 I pray the good God to reconcile me to His 
 will, I think death is terrible to the young and 
 the happy." And Jacqueline, in her own youth 
 and light-heartedness, and the subduing glory of 
 the last few hours, shivered as she looked at 
 the virginal ribands, — the peaceful, cherished, con- 
 secrated grave. 
 
 " I have seen things more horrible," averred 
 the cure, still looking intently at the two with 
 his brown set face, and speaking with a repressed 
 fer\^our which he did not always show on the 
 tribune. " Pardon, and listen to a sermon, my 
 Mademoiselle, not in character, and not often 
 preached in the ears of such a young girl as you. 
 My sermon shall consist of warnings. I have 
 known a poor lost creature decoyed and dragged 
 to sin and shame The priests employ hard
 
 Io6 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 names, Monsieur," he interrupted himself to re- 
 ply to the undisguised annoyance of Achille de 
 Faye at so unusual a discourse addressed to a 
 young, unmarried, noble woman ; " betrayed, I 
 say it, by her adopted mother and her pretended 
 benefactor. You may have heard of her as the 
 beautiful, broken - hearted Circassian, Mademoi- 
 selle Aisse. I have seen, again, a gifted, diligent, 
 learned woman, though she was brown and lean 
 as a weasel, mad to be a beauty, and prodigal 
 in Pompons. She could translate the Prhicipia 
 of Newton ; but she could not conquer her petty 
 ambition, or restrain her frivolous extravagance, 
 or keep the straight line in morals which an 
 ignorant, brutal peasant's wife can preser\'e, 
 Allons ! she was the Venus-Newton of the great 
 Frederic, the Divine Emilia of Arouet Voltaire. 
 I have been received, too, plain as I am now, 
 in the bureau of Madame Dudevant, whose ^\^t 
 was nearest to that of the philosopher of Femey 
 — the sneering, snarling man whose body was 
 like a lath, his nose and chin shaking hands, 
 and whose head we worship because it is so
 
 MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH. lOJ 
 
 like an inspired monkey's. If monkeys could 
 reason, their reasoning would be as fine and 
 cutting as his. En revanche, in that bureau 
 (they said the most unique in Paris), where 
 the conversation was perfectly heartless, and the 
 gross corruption universal, the presiding genius 
 of the place — whom her God had afflicted with 
 blindness, — who had been daughter, wife, and 
 mother, exclaimed to another woman, less de- 
 naturalized, ' Ah ! you are very happy. I never 
 could love anything.' In fine, I have been at the 
 Court when the Pompadour reigned in the costume 
 of a Diana, or of a nun ; when ladies of quality 
 were her waiting-women, and a Knight of St. Louis 
 (pardon. Monsieur !) her steward. And she forced 
 us into a war with Prussia, and cost us millions of 
 treasure and seas of blood, till cruel death, as you call 
 it, came, and her dishonoured corj^se was hustled 
 out at a back door of the palace, the King, her 
 master and her lover, looking after her, and, shrug- 
 ging his shoulders, observing to her old parasites, 
 ' The Marquise has rainy weather for her last 
 journey.' Now, are not these things more terrible
 
 I08 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 than death, my child?" he finished, dropping his 
 voice, and passing in a bound from irony to deep, 
 rueful pathos, all the more impressive that it was 
 unexpected, and only to be found in the man on 
 rare occasions. 
 
 " Oh ! yes," sighed Jacqueline, shocked and 
 grieved; "but why do you tell them to me?" 
 
 "Why, indeed, Monsieur the Cure'?" remon- 
 strated Achille, warmly. " I grant vice and death 
 are ever}^vhere ; but say, then, was it necessar)^ 
 to affront Mademoiselle Jacqueline ^^^th these 
 miserable recitals?" 
 
 " I have never believed ignorance to be inno- 
 cence," said the cure, dryly ; " nor found the 
 daughters of the noblesse, taken out of their 
 convents, more virtuous women than the daughters 
 of the peasants, brought up with their brothers 
 and their brothers' companions in the fields. It 
 depends on how you treat the truth. You remind 
 me. Monsieur, of an old picture — I think by 
 Orcagna — in the Campo Santo of Pisa. A gay 
 hunting party have come at a turn of the road 
 on the corpses of three princes, when an impatient
 
 AN ANTICIPATED PARTING. IO9 
 
 man looks aside and holds his nose, while a 
 patient woman leans her head on her hand and 
 contemplates the spectacle. The moral is quite 
 simple. There are some who only distinguish the 
 stench in vice and death, but there are others 
 who meet them with a divine pity, an eternal life. 
 It is because I know Mademoiselle to be good 
 and true that I have thus spoken," said Monsieur 
 Hubert, with a gravity which was far removed 
 from compliment, "and because it may be the 
 last occasion — you comprehend ? — on which I can 
 address to my pupil a word of counsel before the 
 snares of the world are around her, and she has 
 departed beyond my power into quite other hands. 
 I quit Faye in eight days." 
 
 " So soon, my father? " said Jacqueline, hanging 
 her head, notwithstanding her previous knowledge 
 of the event, and wondering, with a pang of in- 
 tuition, whether she would ever again have such 
 another friend, who would be like a rock on which 
 she could lean, and who would ask nothing from 
 her in return but the ennobling remembrance of 
 her highest interest. Soon Jacqueline forgot all
 
 no CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 this, but now she was saying, and meaning it, 
 " You have been too good to me. Oh ! I will do 
 all I can to show that I have profited by your 
 lessons." 
 
 Even the Chevalier, who saw clearly that the 
 cure distrusted him, was at once too magnanimous 
 and too careless to resent the injury. "What was 
 it to him that a railing, refoniiing old priest, the 
 representative of an institution as near the wall 
 as his own, undervalued and was disposed to 
 suspect him ? So he took off his hat and bowed 
 punctiliously : " I thank you in the name of 
 Mademoiselle my cousin for your sermon. Permit 
 me, on my own account, to assure you " — and the 
 young man looked with a triumphant, fearless, 
 not unfriendly expression at the priest, before 
 he looked lovingly at Jacqueline, — *' Permit 
 me to assure you that I am soriy that your ab- 
 sence will prevent me from engaging your 
 services in a personal matter, — a matter entirely 
 between ourselves, you comprehend, Monsieur the 
 Cure, — yet not at all without the consent of Mon- 
 sieur and Madame."
 
 NOT VERY BAD FOR A NOBLE. Ill 
 
 " Thank you, Monsieur. Ah ! Well, I could 
 not have done it without both pleasure and pain," 
 said Monsieur Hubert, plainly, accepting the pro- 
 pitiation with a sa?ig froid and a reserve all his 
 own. 
 
 Monsieur Hubert continued leaning over the 
 churchyard gate, and looking after the lovers till 
 they were halfway up the village street. " He is 
 not very bad, that boy, for a noble," he mused ; 
 " and they will be purified should they ever come 
 out of the furnace. After all, they have some 
 faith, while the middle class is fast losing itself 
 in the sans-culottes, and sinking to their level, 
 — adopting domestic virtue of an unconsciously 
 Christianized pagan kind, together with the cold 
 reasoning of deism, the selfish calculation of 
 money-making, and the outrageous excesses of a 
 rank, wild libertinism and atheism. There is no 
 soundness and no germ of a higher growth to save 
 them. Though he is not very bad for his lot, that 
 young chevalier, I fear for my girl Jacqueline. I 
 could have more rest in my mind for her — my best 
 friend, after Michel Sart, old fool that I am — if
 
 112 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 she lay here beside the poor consumptive Be'nigne, 
 than going there, healthy and radiant, thrilling in 
 ewer/ nerve, with the handsome aristocrat, who 
 may weary of her and be false to her in a month, 
 if La Force and the Luxembourg spare him so 
 long, and he be not guillotined and she be not 
 an inconsolable widow within the time." 
 
 " Man proposes, but God disposes." Within a 
 few days the Chevalier left the Tour, not alone, but 
 accompanied by no less a person than Monsieur. 
 He was going on business to the next province, 
 with the intention of returning to Faye along with 
 its master, to proceed briskly in the prepara- 
 tions for his establishment in his future home. 
 But instead of this. Monsieur returned without the 
 Chevalier, very cynical and very gentle, as he was 
 wont to be when things went particularly wrong 
 with him. Then followed, not the Chevalier, but 
 a note from the Chevalier to Jacqueline. She was 
 much fluttered by a liberty and an advance to 
 intimacy so uncommon. The note was short and 
 constrained, and more flighty than expressive of 
 ardent aff"ection and devotion; but the circum-
 
 THE chevalier's EPISTLE. I13 
 
 Stances which called it forth excused the indis- 
 cretion even to Madame. 
 
 " My much-honoured and well-beloved cousin," 
 it ran, " I am forced to write to you to beg you to 
 let me know whether Monsieur your father has 
 returned in safety. I fear to address himself, lest 
 the letter should miscarry in his absence ; and to 
 write to Madame might attract more attention than 
 to write thus to you. I have bad news, my 
 beautiful. The entire proscription of the priests, 
 and the ruin of him who has been resisting it, is 
 too sure. Our rents are gone to the last farthing. 
 The powers won't even leave the quasi nobles their 
 pigeon-houses to take refuge in. Oh, Jacqueline, 
 if you hear tidings you did not expect, remember 
 I can no longer help myself, while I remain 
 always, your faithful friend, Achille Rene de 
 Faye." 
 
 After the excitement and glory of receiving the 
 letter — during which its contents were of no con- 
 sequence, — Jacqueline was a little puzzled and 
 pained by these lines. Nevertheless it was her 
 first letter from Achille, and she thought it a very 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 interesting letter, in its half moumfulness, half 
 recklessness ; and was very much obliged to her 
 parents for their permission to answer it. 
 
 Jacqueline was in her own room in Madame's 
 tourelle — a novice's room, fresh and simple, all 
 draped with spotless white dimity. Her presence 
 was further indicated by her birds, her litde lion 
 dog Nerina on its cushion, and her books : a 
 translation of Clarissa Harlowe, and still more 
 doubtful works, such as the Noiivellc Heloise 
 of Jean Jacques, close to the Imitation of 
 Thomas ^ Kempis — books, indeed, which cannot 
 be mentioned without an explanation that their 
 presence was another testimony that " to the pure 
 all things are pure," and that such proximities 
 existed unchallenged and uncondemned in the 
 most virtuous houses, and under the eyes of the 
 most innocent girls of France. Standards as well 
 as generations change. When Marie Antoinette 
 had to make application to the Convention for a 
 book to instruct and amuse her little son, her 
 selection was Gil Bias. 
 
 There was Jacqueline, seated at her pupitre,
 
 A FIRST LOVE-LETTER. II5 
 
 prepared to answer her letter, — her lace sleeves 
 tucked up from her fair arms, her light brown curls 
 shed back from her open forehead. Madame de 
 Sevigne might write quires of paper from Brittany 
 to her daughter in Provence eveiy week of the 
 year ; and of course writing was to her but 
 another and only less delightful mode of speaking. 
 But ladies who had much ado to live, to whom 
 mere life became a stirring excitement, grew chary 
 of their letters in Jacqueline's day. And this was 
 Jacqueline's first love-letter. 
 
 Strange to tell, the words were slow of coming, 
 and Jacqueline tapped her white forehead with her 
 pen very importunately, and sat with her curv^ed 
 red lips apart for a -long time without result. If 
 girls will fall in love with their own fancies in the 
 shape of handsome gallant young men, with whom 
 they have nothing else in common but youth and 
 station, — with whom they can have nothing like 
 communion, and of whose sneers, when they are 
 not with them and dazzled by their fascination, 
 they have a very lively apprehension ; — then, of 
 course, letter-writing, even to the clearest-minded
 
 Il6 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 and the most single-hearted, will be a perplexing, 
 laborious task. 
 
 " My much-honoured cousin," Jacqueline began, 
 in the same high and kingly strain as Achille, but 
 thinking it more maidenly to leave out the other 
 clause of "well-beloved," even to her promised 
 husband. " I am ver)- glad to inform you that 
 Monsieur arrived at home three days ago, in good 
 health, and not too much fatigued by his little 
 journey. I am very sorry for your bad news. 
 Monsieur." Pausing, at a loss what next to say, 
 Jacqueline raised her head, and saw reflected in 
 the diamond-shaped mirror opposite her, the broad, 
 warm, shrewd face of Babette, her solid throat 
 elongated and stuck out like the neck of a goose ; 
 her wide, expressive mouth screwed into the small 
 dimensions of a button-hole. Babette had learned 
 to read and write along with Mademoiselle at the 
 Tour ; and here she was, making use of a part of 
 her accomplishments, without her mistress's leave, 
 over her mistress's shoulder. The result may be 
 guessed. 
 
 JacqueUne was indignant ; but the group was
 
 BABETTE S DEFENCE. II7 
 
 comical, and there was no harm done. On the 
 contrary, the interruption freed JacqueHne from 
 the horns of a dilemma. She did not turn round, 
 but wrote in a legible hand, " I would say more, 
 but my maid Babette is standing behind my chair, 
 reading what I write." A loud thump was heard 
 almost simultaneously with the penning of the 
 sentence. It was Babette leaping back as far as 
 the wall of the room would let her; the same 
 moment she cried, in a tone of insulted innocence, 
 " Me, Mademoiselle ! I assure you I have not read 
 a word ! " 
 
 " Oh, Babette, how droll you are !" protested 
 Jacqueline, holding her slight sides, and shaking 
 with a peal of girlish laughter. " You will make me 
 split with laughing. If you had not read the accu- 
 sation, how could you have known that I blamed 
 you? Oh, you are caught, caught, my good 
 Babette !" 
 
 "Yes — there, Mademoiselle!" Babette threw 
 down her cards instantly, turning from a rose to a 
 peony, but submitting to fate, and not losing sight 
 of her philosophy. " How can a poor girl like
 
 Il8 CITOYFNNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 me practise the reading and ^vriting your family 
 were so good as to give me unless in stolen mouth- 
 fuls? and how am I to gain knowledge othenvise 
 I should like to know ? But I would never betray 
 you, my little Mademoiselle," concluded Babette, 
 at once altering her tone, and speaking with an 
 imploring vehemence quite different from the be- 
 ginning of her confession. "Never, never !" And 
 great Babette set herself to sob and cry like a con- 
 victed, but falsely judged baby. 
 
 " My life ! No, my girl. Wliy do you make so 
 much work about it? You are not a Judas." 
 Jacqueline hastened to pet and comfort the girl 
 her senior, patting her on the shoulder, and caress- 
 ing her. " It is not for me to listen at doors 
 or read letters over people's shoulders. I was not 
 brought up to that ; but I suppose it runs in the 
 blood of femmes-de-chambre. Though, if 1 were 
 you, Babette, I would be more than a femme- 
 de-chambre : I would be a tme and noble woman, 
 like La Sarte, on whom cver)-body can rely. As 
 for betrayal, I would as soon suspect myself of 
 treachery," and Jacqueline threw her amis again
 
 SOMETHING MORE TENDER. II9 
 
 round the neck of her old playfellow and lifelong 
 companion, who hung her head, wiped her black 
 eyes with her bright-coloured apron, and wTithed in 
 the kind grasp. " I had no more to say to the 
 Chevalier, Ba-ba, that is the truth; and this end, 
 which is also the truth, is as good as another, and 
 saves the anguish of composition. You, Barbe, 
 wait till I sign my name, and see my letter an 
 accomplished fact." 
 
 " If I were you, I would put something more 
 tender. Mademoiselle," suggested Babette, with a 
 little diffidence because of her late transgression. 
 " Suppose the poor Chevalier is to wear it in 
 his bosom till you see him again, and waste it 
 away with a hundred thousand kisses. Sainte 
 Genevieve ! I would give him something better 
 worth Avearing and kissing." 
 
 " Fy, fy ! to bid me write words of love to a 
 man who is not yet my husband. I wonder what 
 Madame would say? Wait till we are married, 
 and then we shall see — we shall see how I will 
 love the poor, brave boy. He is so brave and so 
 handsome and distinguished, Babette, like — I do
 
 I20 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 not know what," broke off Jacqueline in simple 
 ecstasy. 
 
 " I know, Mademoiselle," chimed in Babette 
 eagerly, with a smack of her lips ; " he tastes 
 like well-sugared galette and sparkling gooseberry 
 water. Is it not so?" — sending Jacqueline into 
 another fit of giddy laughter. 
 
 Very soon she was to laugh no more ; and 
 already she was calmed down by one of those 
 intuitions which come most frequently to children 
 and childlike men and women. For speaking 
 pensively, almost mournfully, she said : '' As to 
 wearing and kissing my letter, my dear, tliat is 
 no longer the mode ; and Monsieur Achille is 
 very much k la mode. He loves me in his own 
 way when he is by me, I believe ; and you see 
 by this letter he remembers me a little when he 
 is away from me. But what would you? He is 
 a man of the world, and a nobleman ; and though 
 his beard is not full grown yet, he is so much 
 wiser, more clever, grander than I. Do you think 
 I did not notice that? Still I shall be Dame de 
 Faye," put in the girl, drawing herself up with
 
 WHO LOVES MOST? 1«I 
 
 pretty, assumed, hereditary dignity. " However, he 
 is a chevaHer so proud that I predict it will rather 
 be me who Avill wear and kiss his letters. And 
 what will you again, my Babette?" she finished, 
 wath a revulsion of feeling, throwing off her pretty 
 air of stateliness, and looking beautiful and 
 womanly in a faint glimmer and glory of self- 
 sacrifice. " Should not the woman love the most, 
 since we are not on a desert island to be every- 
 thing to each other?" 
 
 " I do not see that the woman should love the 
 most," argued Babette, doggedly ; " but she does 
 it, fault of me ! " she admitted, impetuously. " I 
 am bound to confess it. I think it must be as a 
 punishment for her sins, because she gave Monsieur 
 Adam that miserable apple in the garden, which 
 sticks in the man's throat to this day." 
 
 Does the woman love the most? My friend 
 Babette, you may live to find out in your own 
 experience.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE LAST OF THE EMIGRANTS, PETRONILLE DE CROl — 
 BABETTE'S USELESS PILGRIMAGE. 
 
 IFE went fast in France during the 
 Revolution years. The whole course 
 was got over in a few months or even 
 days, without the slackening of bridle 
 or girth. " We live ten years in twenty-four 
 hours," said Manon Phlippon, after she was the 
 wife of the Spartan Frenchman, Roland de la 
 Plaitiere ; and the poor Filla Dolorosa — the prison 
 flower — passed from youth to age in that brief 
 space which cost her her father, mother, aunt, and 
 little brother. 
 
 Monsieur the Cure had celebrated his last mass, 
 taken leave of his sheep, and was gone. When he 
 stood and faced the flock as their shepherd for the
 
 THE cure's last MASS. 123 
 
 last time, he told them in his sonorous tones, which 
 inspired strong confidence, because they never 
 faltered, " My children, you and I are joined in 
 wedlock before the Lord, in a union vhich cannot 
 be broken. I am yours and you are mine. I do not 
 know if I will see you again ; but if the Lord send 
 better days, and if He give me life, I will come back 
 to you." And the listeners — not only those who 
 loved the valiant bro^\Ti face, but many who shrank 
 from it, some even who hated it, were assured that 
 the man who had fought against their sins and 
 stupidity these thirty years, would keep his word. 
 
 The Ca ira and the Marseillaise had come to 
 be sung in din and discordance within the royal 
 chapel of the Tuileries. " He hath put down the 
 mighty, and exalted them of low degree," was the 
 text thundered into the quaking ears of princely 
 worshippers. Another insurrection — that of the 
 9th and loth August — had broken out at Paris, 
 when the Swiss mountaineers died in vain for 
 French royalty. Louis and his family took refuge in 
 the National Assembly, and sat fourteen hours in 
 the reporters' box listening to the suspension of the
 
 124 CITOYENNE J ACQ U ELI N ?:. 
 
 royal authority, and the practical deposition of 
 the king. Yet he was able to eat the wing of a 
 chicken and drink a glass of wine, just as he had 
 called for bread and cheese when stopped at 
 Varennes ; while Marie Antoinette, her blue eyes 
 tearless, but her Saxon hair blanched white, 
 flushed darkly at his supineness, and needed no 
 refreshment to help her to clasp her sleeping 
 children to her knees. She showed herself to 
 be, as she was termed, " the best man among 
 them." The next movement of the poor helpless 
 martyr family — one of countless martyr families, 
 and only conspicuous in its reverses and its 
 misery — was to the Temple. 
 
 In the meantime the announcement that Paris 
 was given up to blood and lire, and the country 
 in hourly danger of invasion, travelled fast to 
 the provinces, calling forth rushes to town-halls, 
 harangues of heated citizens, the assembling of 
 the National Guard, the waving of flags, and 
 the stirring up of passions already brutal in 
 their fury. France was girdled by enemies — 
 Prussians, Austrians, Spaniards, Sardinians. At
 
 THE LULL BEFORE THE STORM. 125 
 
 Paris the church bells were torn do^Mi, and the 
 very leaden coffins of the dead dug up, to be 
 melted and cast afresh into munitions of war. 
 Leather-skinned bands of Marseillais, like raging 
 beasts of prey, came to Paris on the invitation 
 of Barbaroux, still better to teach the Parisians 
 their hymn. Ishmaelites of a vitiated civilization, 
 whose hand was against every man and ever}" 
 man's hand against them, who were aliens to the 
 mass of the population, — branded men of the 
 hulks and the galleys, utterly debased and fero- 
 cious, drawn by the scent of carrion and plunder, 
 — were streaming singly or in tens and scores 
 along the roads to Paris. 
 
 It was the lull before the wild roar of the 
 tempest, but had every symptom of a tremendous 
 battle of the elements. And an awe fell before- 
 hand upon the quiet, passive inhabitants of the 
 country. The remnants of the old dominant 
 class, lingering and lurking in their retreats, were 
 looked upon, in the sultry, stormy August weather, 
 as hordes of secret plotters, among the full grapes, 
 waiting for the vintage and the slaughter.
 
 126 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 The very air must have been oppressive, and 
 laden widi portents ; for even children and dumb 
 animals — girls like Jacqueline, who laughed no 
 longer, and her silky poodle Nerina, which whined 
 and begged because its mistress had ceased to 
 play with it — panted and cowered under the fatal 
 influence. 
 
 Jacqueline danced no more gavottes or entre- 
 chats as she escaped from the evening card 
 party. For card-playing, like eating and drink- 
 ing, continued ; the seniors, however chilled and 
 heavy at heart, being consummate masters and 
 mistresses of their outward behaviour. And the 
 girl had no heart to act differently from her elders, 
 her youthful laughter having died away in a qualm 
 of fright and dismay. She boasted no more of 
 being Citoyenne Jacqueline, which was destined 
 to be her distinctive name. She began to wonder 
 piteously whether it was worse to eat bread made 
 of heather and die of hunger, like the wretched 
 peasant from whose deal coffin Louis the Well- 
 beloved backed impulsively, as he hunted in 
 the forest ; or to weep day and night in the
 
 DREAMS. 127 
 
 Temple ; or to have relations dragged from her 
 and shut up in some of the numerous gorged prisons, 
 never to be heard of again in this world, though 
 their blood should cry day and night for vengeance 
 to the Lord of all worlds ; or to be herself caught, 
 shamefully entreated, and murdered. She had 
 sinned against God ; but what ill had she done to 
 the world ? Her heavenly Father had pardoned 
 her — would not her human brother, too, pardon her 
 supposed offence, whatever it might be, and spare 
 the young life, the taking of which could be of 
 no avail to the thirsty soil of France, parched 
 and gaping as it was for blood ? 
 
 But if the worst came to the worst, could not 
 Jacqueline make her death of some avail ? Might 
 she not be strengthened to offer the sacrifice which 
 was so small, but which would be accepted because 
 it was her all ? Yes, Jacqueline moped and 
 dreamt. She was haunted with that feverish, 
 morbid ghost of heroism which drove on the 
 young girls of France, and wooed them with the 
 ghastly glamour of horror to ponder over the story 
 of Jephthah's daughter among the mountains of
 
 128 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 Israel, and of Judith in the Syrian camp. Tlie 
 times were so unnatural and exceptional, that 
 they pointed to an unnatural and exceptional de- 
 liverance. French girls have a predisposition to 
 such half-subhme, spectral delusions, derived from 
 the story of the Maid of Orleans, whom Frenchmen 
 of the Greek and classic era scoffed at, but which 
 Frenchwomen devoutly believed. Already Char- 
 lotte Corday, with Comeille's blood in her blue 
 veins, and his moon-struck, one-sided noble rant 
 on her passionate scarlet lips, read of the Hebrew 
 women, on her simple white bed, or in her 
 country walks, where the breeze blew over the 
 fruit-laden orchards, and over the briny waves that 
 wash green Normandy. Woe to her! for that 
 was long after she had ceased to read of the 
 Canaanitish woman, out of whose daughter the 
 Son of Mar)- — the good Master, the God of Life 
 — cast the devil, whose serpent tongue might 
 have one day hissed into her ear that she was 
 exalted above all law, human and divine — that 
 crime was virtue and death life. 
 
 Jacqueline was delivered from this strange dan-
 
 A PRIVATE GRIEF. 129 
 
 ger by the armour of faith, which continued to 
 gird her tender spirit. Reason was too thread- 
 bare, cold, and loveless a garment for her warm, 
 reverent affections. Her God was somewhere in 
 yon blue sky; He cared for her, had suffered 
 for her, though He mysteriously permitted these 
 sufferings around her; and the words He had 
 left her were, "Vengeance is mine, saith the 
 Lord ; " " Love thine enemy ; do good to them 
 which hate you, and pray for them which despite- 
 fully use you and persecute you." 
 
 And she was but a girl, whose mind was 
 diverted from the delirium of these visions by a 
 private grief, in the midst of the general afflic- 
 tion. She had neither seen nor heard of Achille 
 de Faye since his visit and his letter; and in 
 this interval her marriage with him for the pre- 
 sent had become purely impossible. Would the 
 Chevalier's life be darkened if she were killed by 
 accident in such a massacre as had occurred in 
 some of the unhappy districts ? Or if she did 
 some dreadful act, and were killed by design, 
 would he mourn a little for her ? Or, worse 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 I30 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE, 
 
 Still — and the thought wrung tears from her — had 
 Achille forgotten her so speedily? Would he 
 seek her no more ? Had he cast her aside in 
 their common misfortunes as an incumbrance 
 and an affliction? She was so young and so 
 humble, even in her spurts of haughtiness and 
 wilfulness, and in her French girlishness, that 
 she had not woke up to the woman's pride 
 which would yet blaze out and scorch up all 
 such tears. 
 
 In this convulsed state of existence, it was a 
 relief to the inhabitants of the Tour de Faye to 
 receive a letter from a family of old friends and 
 equals, announcing a visit, and soliciting a few 
 days' lodging. The friends were Monsieur and 
 Madame de Lussac, and their widowed daughter, 
 Madame de Croi. 
 
 This family had been so fortunate as to procure, 
 through powerful influence, one of the latest 
 ])assports for emigration, and were now on their 
 way to the nearest coast town. It was not safe 
 or friendly for them to lodge in an inn. The 
 occasion was ominous ; but the tidings sounded
 
 THE LOOKED-FOR VISIT. I31 
 
 ( 
 
 like a return to the old order and the old courtesies 
 of life. 
 
 In the thought of receiving visitors and enter- 
 taining guests, the family of Faye were tempted 
 to forget the times, to forget that they them- 
 selves were in threatened straits for provisions to 
 supply their own daily table, and would be in 
 actual want were it not that Maitre Michel the 
 registrar, and his greater brother Citizen Jon- 
 quille, the deputy up in Paris, were honest and 
 true, and prevented the impending confiscation 
 of the whole Faye domain, — refraining from serv- 
 ing themselves as heirs to their old feudal lord, 
 like other registrars and deputies. And in the 
 thought the poor aristocrats of the Tour, living 
 from hand to mouth, on the favour of their 
 servants, accomplished a more splendid feat : 
 they nearly succeeded in blotting out of their 
 minds that their necks too were confiscated 
 to that colossal, deformed idol the Nation, 
 growing in its huge, misshapen bulk while men 
 slept. In truth, if the unhappy nobility of France 
 had not had the faculty of throwing off their
 
 132 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 loads, and disporting themselves now and then, 
 they would have been crushed betimes, and would 
 not have required to be guillotined, drowned, or 
 shot. 
 
 When Jacqueline learned, by the credentials of a 
 courier in advance of the glass-and-leather berline, 
 that the Chevalier — her kinsman, lover, bride- 
 groom — was actually in the train of the Lussacs, 
 travelling to greet her again, she was excited 
 beyond measure, was inconsiderately gay, and un- 
 scrupulously blest. What were the privations and 
 risks of next month, next week, to a girl of sixteen, 
 who had the restoration of her lover, cheerful com- 
 pany, grand society, and three clear days before 
 her ? 
 
 What a nmning up and down in the old Tour 
 de Faye, on the part of its sadly abridged statf 
 of domestics and their leaders ! How old Paul's 
 stift' joints creaked ; and how Agathe, with her red 
 hair and ferret eyes, groaned ostentatious Aves ; 
 and how Babette screamed and scolded, and bore 
 out the carj^ing assertion, " Women scream before 
 the culprit appears, and for a centur}- after he
 
 THE RECEPTION. 133 
 
 has vanished ! " And so with the satelHtes in the 
 lower regions — the cook and the porteress. 
 
 How witty, and not at all incommoded, Madame 
 was, in her distant audience chamber. How 
 amused Monsieur was in his philosophical way, 
 until the fracas became so deafening that he 
 had to betake himself to his tourelle, and leave 
 the combatants to conduct the engagement with- 
 out restraint from his presence. How Jacqueline 
 ran about with the selfish, fond, foolish song 
 ringing in her ears, " He is coming again. What 
 does it signify though Prague was taken once ? 
 It is he. He will be here. I shall see him. 
 What will Madame de Cro'i be like ? She is 
 beautiful and admired. Does he admire her? 
 What shall I wear to be amiable in his eyes ? " 
 Oh ! how much better it is to look down the dusty 
 chaussee, among the walnut trees, for the great 
 chariot, than to watch Sylvain the butcher hailing 
 the horrible ragged wayfarers, questioning them in 
 their rough patois, treating them to a glass of 
 cider, talking and laughing with them in loud 
 speech and laughter.
 
 134 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 About an hour past noon, to the " crack ! 
 crack ! " of postillions, the ringing of bells on 
 the horses' trappings, the rattling of wheels, the 
 barking of imprisoned dogs, and all the old pomp 
 and circumstance — the berline clattered and tum- 
 bled, under its mountain of luggage, into the 
 gate of the conciergerie, and then up to the 
 Tour. 
 
 Out of the berline leaped lightly the elegant 
 Chevalier. Then a little old man, with powdered 
 toupee, little three-cornered hat, silk stockings, 
 and old velvet coat complete, stepped slowly 
 down. Behold Monsieur the Marquis de Lussac, 
 of right noble lineage, and once owner of a 
 princely extent of territor}'. He is luckier than 
 most emigres, and has part of his large fortune 
 securely invested in foreign funds, sufficient to 
 maintain his family in affluence, and to afford a 
 fresh dot to Madame de Croi, his daughter, — a 
 childless widow, the hoards of whose late husband 
 were swallowed up in the insatiable coffers of the 
 Nation. Monsieur the Marquis felt carefully and 
 apprehensively, with his five long delicate-looking
 
 THE marquis's SEARCH. 135 
 
 talons, surrounded by fluttering cob-web cuff's, in 
 the cavernous depths of the caravan. What was 
 he poking his velvet and laced arms about for ? 
 For Madame the Marquise de Lussac ? No. For 
 Madame de Croi? Still less. For Sylphide and 
 Fidele, the barking dogs? Not at all. Neither 
 was it for his family papers, his armorial plate, nor 
 the picture of the Pierced Heart which hung in 
 his father's oratory. It was for none of these, 
 though he loved them all, and would have shed 
 his few drops of dried up blood for them, as 
 gallantly as his ancestors shed theirs under Turenne 
 and the Marshal Luxemburg. Monsieur dug out 
 his treasure safe, and looked up enraptured. It 
 was his silver cooking apparatus — his saucepans, 
 basting spoons, and cullenders ; his little chest 
 of sauces, spices, and dried herbs. Without these 
 he never journeyed a step, and with them he 
 could rival the masterpieces of the most gifted 
 and perfectly trained of cooks. Some of the 
 grand old quality were philosophers, architects, 
 astronomers, writers of pasquilles or madrigals, 
 doctors, fiddlers, and cooks — all combined. Mon-
 
 136 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 sieur de Lussac was more modest and wise. He 
 contented' himself with being one thing superla- 
 tively. He was, before even his old master, the 
 prince of cooks. 
 
 The Chevalier handed out Madame de Lussac 
 and Madame de CroT. Each was impeded by a 
 struggling, yelping lapdog, fastened with a silk 
 riband to her girdle ; and each bore on her mind 
 a weight of bandboxes of the first importance, 
 and was accompanied by a demoiselle de com- 
 pagnie, gabbling in her turn, listening to her 
 special shrill instructions, cracked or othennse. 
 
 This was no time for greetings and introductions. 
 Madame de Faye was far too well informed, and 
 had too much respect for her own claims, to think 
 of such a thing for a moment. " Let the ladies 
 be shown to their chambers. We will meet at 
 supper." After this dictum, Madame comfort- 
 ably, and with piquant amusement, inspected the 
 arrival undisguisedly from her window. 
 
 Jacqueline was inexperienced. She wanted to 
 do something, — to go up with shy but open arms 
 to everybody. She rashly ventured do\vii to her
 
 Jacqueline's inexperience. 13^ 
 
 father, standing uncovered in the great doorway, 
 beneath the stone carving of the three falcons 
 and the two savages, prepared to receive, em- 
 brace, and bow over the hands of his guests, 
 and to assure them of his thousand welcomes. 
 She hovered behind Monsieur de Faye, and saw 
 the empressement of the principal actors in the 
 scene ; and, in the distance, the villagers of Faye, 
 the children, and the goats, on the qui vive 
 for what had waxed into a rare event in their 
 annals. 
 
 Madame de Croi* spared a moment to notice 
 Jacqueline : " Is this your young cousin ? " she 
 asked of the Chevalier, who had hardly snatched 
 an opportunity to kiss his little mistress's hand.' 
 " My young friend, I shall be enchanted to make 
 your acquaintance," pronounced Madame de Croi", 
 graciously, as she at last passed across the terrace 
 on the arm of Achille. 
 
 Very innocent, kind words apparently ; but 
 they jarred on Jacqueline's quick ear, and did not 
 please her. Why should she be addressed as a 
 young friend by a woman not above two years
 
 138 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 her senior ? Why should Madame de Croi* speak 
 of her making the acquaintance which ought, 
 by right, to be a transaction between the two — 
 unless the fact of her having been married con- 
 ferred an advantage on her side, which she did not 
 hesitate to claim ? Madame de Croi" was in this 
 position ; and it was because Jacqueline had come 
 on the carpet in transition times, and was tinged 
 with republicanism, that she did not yield grace- 
 fully and like a rational creature. Jacqueline did 
 not understand it. She only knew that she did 
 not like Madame de Croi's looking at her and 
 speaking of her in a sweet way, as from high to 
 low. And she did not believe Achille liked it 
 either, because, marvellous to relate, though he 
 was the Chevalier, " genteel, always genteel," he 
 was flurried as he spoke to her and inquired for 
 Madame the Baronne her mother. 
 
 Jacqueline was not wiser than the rest of the 
 world who walk in darkness. She did not guess, 
 when she came down imprudently and ingenu- 
 ously into the stir of the alighting on the ter- 
 race that August day, that she was hunying to
 
 BLISSFUL IGNORANCE. I39 
 
 meet her fate ; she did not recognise that the 
 young lady in the travelHng roquelaire and the 
 gipsy hat was her mortal enemy; nor feel her 
 skin rise like the skin of a turkey; nor mutter 
 gibberish about stars and destiny, picked up 
 from Mesmer and Cagliostro, as did Achille de 
 Faye when he encountered Sylvain the butcher. 
 She did nothing except conceive an instantaneous, 
 violent prejudice against the person who had 
 spoiled her meeting with her kinsman. 
 
 Madame de Lussac had not leisure even to look 
 at Jacqueline ; she was so engrossed with her dog, 
 her caged birds, and her aggravated and aggra- 
 vating demoiselle de compagnie. 
 
 Jacqueline accorded her decided preference to 
 Monsieur the Marquis, who was triumphant in 
 having made an accurate inventory of his sauce- 
 pans, and in his quick apprehension of her 
 identity. " Mademoiselle your daughter, De 
 Faye ? Ah ! I knew such a narcisse could only 
 be the child of you and Madame. Mon enfant, 
 will you permit an old man whom your freshness 
 makes young again to pay you his devoirs ? "
 
 14© CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 Jacqueline was glad when the party retired for 
 rest and refreshment to what was the ceil-de-bceuf 
 of Faye, — feeling, half-sorrowfully, half-pettishly, 
 that the eagerly expected event had grievously 
 disappointed her ; and that the reception of the 
 distinguished strangers had fallen flat with the first 
 flourish of trumpets. 
 
 In consideration of the requirements of the 
 travellers, who had dined on the road, Madame 
 the Chatelaine de Faye received at four o'clock 
 that day ; and the supper, as Monsieur de Lussac 
 ascertained delicately, but without question, was 
 arranged for seven o'clock. By five the circle in 
 Madame's luxurious room was complete — that 
 punctilious, refined French circle, in which there 
 could be no tete-a-tete ; — where a leader (generally 
 a woman), or a succession of leaders, conducted 
 the conversation, and the men stood deferentially 
 behind the high-backed chairs, as at an opera, 
 treating skilfully the topics the women touched 
 lightly ; and where each introduced his or her 
 witticism in turn, as opportunity offered, so that 
 there was no monopoly, and the ball of conver-
 
 THE MARQUISE DE LUSSAC. I4I 
 
 sation was kept up with exceeding dexterity and 
 grace. A circle arbitrary and artificial ; apt to be 
 affected and insipid ; and sometimes desperately 
 roue and wicked under the surface. But the 
 conversation was wonderfiilly polished, and on 
 occasions, dazzlingly brilliant, although not without 
 an unacknowledged shade of mystery and expec- 
 tation, which, like the Rembrandt duskiness, was 
 replete \vith romance. 
 
 See there Madame the Baronne — a picture in 
 herself, and thoroughly herself, neither more nor 
 less. The robed, rouged, plumed woman, with 
 the singularly mobile, high, aristocratic features, 
 and the graceful arms and hands, told her anec- 
 dotes, announced her whims, betrayed her foibles, 
 — and manifested a combination of art and nature 
 so rare and complete, that no mortal could tell 
 where the one began and the other ended. 
 
 The Marquise was not equal to her friend ; she 
 was a washed-out, streaky copy of her. She fondly 
 embraced her dearest, best Madame de Faye, like 
 one school-girl encountering another at the end 
 of a week's parting; and she inquired with the
 
 142 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 Utmost warmth for the black and white curly 
 darling Nerina, requiring a funeral oration on 
 the darhng's departed mother Tristaine. She 
 expressed a little detached, spasmodic interest in 
 common friends, muttering a blank "Ciel!" or 
 two over this Comte and that Prince, and the 
 miserable wreck of the country from which she 
 and her family were escaping for their lives. In 
 both instances she huddled her sentences together 
 in evident panic, to which she dared not give 
 breath or speech, but was forced to bury it in 
 her o^vn bosom, where the poor woman had a 
 chance of dying of it. And then she languished 
 on her fauteuil in a state of exhaustion. Ma- 
 dame de Faye, at the climax of their friend- 
 ship, said of Madame de Lussac, with sovereign 
 contempt, that the Marquise had only possessed 
 the weakest crumb of ideas at the best, and since 
 she fell into agonies of poltrooner}% the crumb 
 had been privately soaked in a wretched pickle 
 of tears, so that there was but a half-dissolved 
 morsel of her left. 
 
 Monsieur de Lussac existed principally in con-
 
 THE MARQUIS DE LUSSAC. I43 
 
 nection with meals ; but there could not be a 
 huger mistake than to suppose him, in conse- 
 quence, a nobody. On the contrary, wherever 
 he went he became the presiding genius of 
 the kitchen, where, asking and receiving carte 
 blanche, he installed himself in the admiring con- 
 fidence of the chief of the department. He en- 
 tered so completely, heart and soul, into business — 
 threw himself so disinterestedly and generously 
 into the choicest, most recherche achievements 
 for the entertainment of the chateau or hotel in 
 which he was guest, that, like his less endowed 
 Marquise, he emerged from his field of enter- 
 prise in a collapsed condition, sat with half- 
 closed eyes or slumbered outright till the moment 
 of trial, when the fillet a la Du Barry or the 
 salade a la volaille rewarded his great qualifica- 
 tions, and covered him with glory. Then the 
 Marquis was at his culminating point, — then 
 he not only carved and sent round a dish as a 
 finished artiste would dispense it, but he ren- 
 dered it historical, aesthetical, poetical, religious : 
 " Does the dish please you, Madame ? I am
 
 144 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 ravished to hear it — a bagatelle, quite simple. The 
 kernel of the affair had its birth at a Lent supper of 
 the great Cardinal's. But let us await the soufflet, 
 — also a virginal dish, with a still more splendid 
 origin. This soufflet aux dattes was brought from 
 Egypt by no meaner personages than Saint Louis 
 and Marguerite of Provence." 
 
 A spectator, above all a convive, could easily 
 discover that the withered, bright-eyed old noble- 
 man had lived at a time when dainty eating 
 and famine were two of the* institutions of 
 France ; and when supper was one of the things 
 to live for. He was not malicious or t}Tannical ; 
 rather, like most unrivalled men of science, he 
 was good-natured and affable. That he was like- 
 wise perfectly careless of all outside his own range 
 was an unlucky, not a remarkable abuse of his 
 powers. Monsieur de Lussac would really have 
 preferred the whole universe to profit by his cote- 
 lettes and cremes. Since that was impossible, 
 he believed sincerely that men might as well perish 
 of inanition, as swallow garlic soup with a taste of 
 artichokes.
 
 THE CHEVALIER OUT OF SORTS. I45 
 
 At the present hour Monsieur the Marquis, 
 though receiving a temporary stimulus from the 
 prospect of assisting at the supper at the Tour, 
 was sunk in courteous but all-pervading sadness : 
 " I have never seen a finer year for truffles. Mush- 
 rooms will be magnificent. Yet I go away, I quit 
 France. And they tell me, in savage England 
 mushrooms are either served with their rude 
 bifteck or treated as poison. What a country ! 
 What morals ! What manners ! With us the 
 Gauls knew better." 
 
 The responsibility and the credit of sustaining 
 the conversation in a manner becoming the coun- 
 try and the age, fell, after Madame de Faye, on 
 Madame de CroT. The Chevalier was certainly 
 out of sorts, and only by fits and starts did he do 
 himself justice. He wore the white uniform of his 
 regiment, which, in the persons of the private 
 soldiers, had gone over to the Republic, or, in the 
 persons of the officers, was advancing under the 
 Austrian and Prussian standards to the heights of 
 Argonne. Perhaps the unifonii suggested chequered 
 thoughts of the past. Perhaps it was the tight white 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 coat which lent to his handsome face and figure 
 a furtive sallowness and leanness. 
 
 But Petronille de Croi atoned for all de- 
 ficiencies ; she was, beyond comparison, the most 
 striking person present, after Madame de Faye. 
 She was a handsome, beautiful, witty young 
 woman of the world, in whom only the finest judge- 
 ment could detect flaw or failure. She was not 
 overwhelmed by adversity. She had more than 
 mere education — she had that inheritance of spon- 
 taneous equanimity which belongs both to vigorous 
 and to nicely balanced minds. 
 
 Beside Petronille, Jacqueline was but a charm- 
 ing child. There is a vast amount of outward dif- 
 ference, easy of comprehension in France, between 
 the young unmarried girl and the woman, equally 
 young, who has been at the head of an establisli- 
 ment, and is mistress of herself and her actions. 
 Jacqueline, in her white gown tucked up out of 
 everybody's way, her little blue neckerchief k la 
 Marie Antoinette, and her brown hair in negli- 
 gence on her shoulders, appeared more youthful 
 than she really was. Madame de Croi, at eighteen.
 
 FASHIONS. 147 
 
 affected, justifiably as custom went, quite a dif- 
 ferent style of dress, one much nearer that of the 
 Baronne and the Marquise, but still in keeping 
 with her years, and calculated to enhance her re- 
 markable order of beauty. 
 
 Fashions had not yet taken the bound to short 
 waists, Arab turbans, and the scant drapery of the 
 Greek statues. The oriental and the classic devo- 
 tions are to be attributed to the Directory and the 
 first years of the Consulship, when even sane direc- 
 tors received "le petit caporal" with the "redingot 
 gris," in the extraordinary costume, for French- 
 men, of bare legs and Roman togas. About the 
 same time — oh ! poor volatile nation, heroically 
 theatrical the one day, meretriciously stage-struck 
 the next, — Frenchwomen glided and attitudinized 
 in the shawl dance, under what was no better than 
 the houri guidance of Emma Lady Hamilton. 
 
 Fashion was still stately and decorous, although 
 pompous; and Madame de Cro'i gave in her 
 adherence to the old mode, which modem autho- 
 rities have declared remains unsurpassed in splen- 
 dour and dignity. It consisted, in her case, of a
 
 148 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 complete suit of lilac brocade frosted with silver, 
 and included hair-powder, which bestowed on the 
 hair a tint " subdued and ashy." With regard to 
 which a competent wTiter assures us eloquently : 
 " This manner of moderating the harshness of the 
 tone of the hair lent to the face much softness 
 and to the eyes extraordinary splendour. The 
 forehead, entirely uncovered, lost itself in the pale 
 shades of the hair, and appeared broader and 
 purer. Every woman had a noble air." This 
 appearance of nobleness — a broad, regal fore- 
 head, and flashing, melting eyes — constituted the 
 distinctive beauty of Madame de Croi*; and, to 
 crown it, in place of Jacqueline's daisy freshness 
 of complexion, she had a creamy, satin skin — 
 to which she did not contribute a grain of rouge 
 or a fly of a patch, and which looked too deli- 
 cate for the rough wind to blow upon. Ven,- 
 refined and peerlessly noble looked the face of 
 Petronille de Croi'; and not supine or apathetic, 
 but lit up with the charm of her spirituelle 
 conversation. 
 
 The talk was of books, the French comedy,
 
 MADAME DE CROi'S ACQUIREMENTS. I49 
 
 the old Court; with details from the capital. 
 There was a little said of political giants and 
 demagogues, but less of that than of anything 
 else — the subject being slippery and uncertain, 
 with unhappy tendencies. In all its branches 
 Madame de Croi proved herself mistress of the 
 tree of knowledge. She had read the philoso- 
 phers, or abridgments of them, from D'Alembert 
 and Diderot to Voltaire and wSaint Simon, and had 
 her superficial but crystal-clear echo of their con- 
 clusions. She had listened to the reasoning of the 
 ecclesiastics. She had seen the pasteboard kings 
 and queens as well as the real ones ; and could 
 criticise keenly the meaning of a gesture or the 
 effect of a tone. She had known eyewitnesses 
 to the story of the Diamond Necklace — " every 
 tassel a man's fortune." 
 
 " Of course the Queen was innocent," pronounced 
 Petronille, in her light sarcastic manner ; " and 
 Rohan was imprisoned, and La Motte scourged. 
 But — what will you ? — it was all the same to the 
 Queen's reputation — there was so much likelihood 
 in the tale."
 
 150 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 Alas ! poor, susceptible, lavish Marie Antoinette 
 — it was such light verdicts, exaggerated and dark- 
 ened elsewhere with a malignant foulness that had 
 no limits, which stained past redemption her royal 
 fame — peradventure honest as any peasant's. 
 
 Petronille had received La Fayette when the 
 blue colour of the National Guard filled Paris 
 streets like one sea. " But then there were the 
 red facings," she said, " which frightened away all 
 the fishes. I believe Blondinet, as they called 
 the gallant general, before jests were exploded at 
 the Tuileries, mounted the ultramarine because 
 of his complexion." 
 
 She had been present at the Feast of Pikes, the 
 " I swear it !" in the Champ de Mars, and had 
 assisted in the proceedings which went on busily 
 for weeks, when barrows of earth were incessantly 
 wheeled to and from the Altar of the Country 
 and the Amphitheatre of the People, by states- 
 men, soldiers, priests, young girls of rank in zephyr 
 muslin and tricolour scarfs, amidst the " Vivats I" 
 of the delirious multitude. "A demoiselle trips 
 against a mound," recounted Petronille ; " at the
 
 A CONTRAST. 151 
 
 instant an avocat starts forward to raise her ; but 
 no, she draws back disdainfully. Her father 
 makes her a rapid sign, she extends her hand with 
 grace to a workman in a filthy carmagnole ; ' You 
 are my true brother to-day,' she says, divinely. 
 My friends, what applause ! " 
 
 After long seclusion in privation and danger, it 
 was a treat to the Faye set to listen to so accom- 
 plished a speaker. But in conversational power 
 there was as great a difference between Jacque- 
 line de Faye's and Petronille de Cro'i's minds as 
 that between their bodies. Jacqueline's intuitions 
 were from the heart ; Petronille's from the head. 
 Jacqueline's heart bled for the woes of both King 
 and beggar; and when she laughed, it was with 
 them, not at them, — a sister's laugh. Petronille's 
 head noted all mortal errors and inconsistencies, 
 and mocked at their coarseness, their smallness, 
 with an intense, unsparing, unrelenting ridicule. 
 Thus nothing could surpass the few bold, subtle 
 touches, — always within the conventional bounds 
 of her sex and rank, — by which Petronille could 
 convey unfortunate Monsieur Capet's stolidity.
 
 152 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 upright Bailly's vacillation, this worthy bourgeoise's 
 low ambition, and that pious ex-nun's prudish co- 
 quetry. Indeed, as the world goes, Petronille's 
 talent was formed for appreciation. 
 
 Such were the individual characters and opi- 
 nions, not conspicuously, but covertly met and 
 opposed to each other in Madame de Faye's 
 apartment. And just as talent is confident and 
 dominating, and genius shrinking and self-depre- 
 ciatory, so Jacqueline de Faye, on her trial in her 
 mother's room this August evening, collapsed into 
 seeming insignificance before Petronille de Croi. 
 And yet she was the same Jacqueline who had 
 been so splendid, yon June day, in the hamlet 
 and the ravine. It was her turn then ; it was the 
 tide at the full in her affairs. Now the tide was on 
 the ebb, and ebbing fast ; while Petronille flashed 
 and sparkled, and perfumed the little society with 
 her penetration, her tact, her varied graphicness, 
 for ever running into irony. Jacqueline might be 
 a narcisse as Monsieur the Marquis had said. 
 But it was a poor, tiny, spring narcisse, drooping 
 and dwindling on its stalk, in the heat ; while
 
 JEALOUSY. 153 
 
 Petronille was the summer rose, whose erect cup 
 was constantly expanding, showing daintier tints, 
 and diffusing sweeter odours. The more Petro- 
 nille shone and sang (figuratively), the more Jac- 
 queline put her finger in her mouth and hung 
 her head on one side (figuratively). 
 
 It was not black envy which was chilling and 
 blighting Jacqueline ; it was not the thought, " How 
 poor a creature I am in comparison with Petronille 
 de Croi ! How much I would give to look, to 
 speak like her ! How Monsieur and Madame, my 
 parents, would be proud of me, how Achille would 
 adore me, then ! " Perhaps she did feel all this, 
 although she had an innate conviction, in the 
 depth of her soul, that she was superior to 
 Petronille, even that the sounding-line of her 
 sympathy went fathoms deeper into human nature 
 than the steel needle of Petronille's sarcasm, and 
 that her gauge brought up gold while Petronille's 
 found nothing anywhere save dross. 
 
 It was the Gothic fever fit of jealousy that was 
 scorching Jacqueline's proud, sensitive heart, tor- 
 menting and sickening it, shrivelling it before its
 
 154 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 time, humbling it in the dust. And that large 
 young heart was still fast bound in the swaddling- 
 clothes of French girlhood, and could not rise 
 and assert the dignity of its womanhood, and defy 
 all else. It was stunned and stricken for the 
 moment ; but its hour of vengeance would come 
 — vengeance on itself, and rebellion against the 
 world. 
 
 For the wind had changed, the positions were 
 altered ; and " I am no more for Jacqueline, I am 
 for Petronille," was written unblushingly on the 
 Chevalier's forehead. He was a little sorr}^ for 
 Jacqueline; the poor litde girl certainly loved him; 
 but, pass ! that would soon go. He measured 
 Jacqueline by himself. Flow on, pleasure ! flow 
 on, caprice ! He was a little volatile, he confessed 
 it ; but his Madame de Croi pleased him, and 
 would steady him. He had been a little of a 
 rover ; but to be a lady-killer had only been 
 reckoned a feather in his cap, rendering him all 
 the more captivating. 
 
 No ; the Chevalier was not the one man in a 
 thousand who prefers what is nearer heaven to
 
 LOVE OR FRIENDSHIP? I55 
 
 what is more potent on earth — " the eternal child " 
 in Jacqueline to the worldly wisdom in Petronille. 
 But had the question been simply that of marriage, 
 and had a union been practicable between the 
 cousins, Achille would have been true to his ante- 
 cedents : he would not have hesitated to fulfil the 
 family contract, and wed his kinswoman, the future 
 Dame de Faye, though all he had of heart had 
 been enslaved in the service of Petronille de Croi. 
 He might even, with the shrewd calculation of 
 his race, have decided complacently, at the very 
 height of his passion, that Petronille would be 
 the better mistress of his soul, Jacqueline the 
 better wife of his hearth. Love in marriage was 
 exacting and troublesome, while friendship was 
 the very foundation on which to build the family 
 structure. He might have gone on to arrange 
 matters so well that he should spend his morn- 
 ings with Petronille, and his evenings with Jac- 
 queline ; just as Madame de Recamier must have 
 early receptions for Chateaubriand, because the 
 good Viscount dutifully devotes his evenings to 
 Madame de Chateaubriand.
 
 156 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 The Revolution had begun by compHcating in- 
 stead of simpHfying the relations of social life, — 
 complicating them by their very simplification. 
 This was apparent at the Tour when the party 
 assembled first. The want of a necessity for a 
 demure veil of obligation thrown over the feel- 
 ings, — the rare power of transferring homage di- 
 rectly and openly to its object, — in short, of being 
 frankly fickle (the Chevalier did not call it false), 
 was felt for a time, like the burden of wealth and 
 leisure to a man who does not know what to do 
 with them. The Chevalier was well instructed, 
 but the necessity of honesty in love-making 
 puzzled him ; he was not familiar with honesty 
 in that quarter. At the same time he was 
 versatile and high spirited ; he accommodated 
 himself to circumstances, and made use of his 
 freedom as soon as most men. The shade of 
 embarrassment and chagrin which had clung to 
 him in the opening hours was rapidly dissipated. 
 His vehement admiration of his brilliant travelling 
 companion — his devotion for her advancing with 
 giant strides — was candidly manifested, and his
 
 ECLIPSED. 157 
 
 privileged inconstancy rendered not impolitely, 
 but audaciously conspicuous. 
 
 Everything implied that this transfer of homage 
 had to do with the air of mystery which, from the 
 beginning, pervaded the group, and spiced it with 
 the genuine French flavour. Previously initiated 
 eyes exchanged glances of intelligence. Eyes till 
 recently in the dark, which did not deign to look 
 daggers, or even to testify cool disapproval at the 
 immediate consequences of what they acknow- 
 ledged to be a forfeited bond, received the illumi- 
 nation, and did not conceal that they received it, 
 as their owners trifled with etuis and took elegant 
 pinches of snuff. The peasant Babette alone 
 of the spectators darted furious glances at the 
 heartlessness and shameiessness of the deed, a 
 judgment in accordance with her different code 
 of morals. 
 
 Jacqueline was eclipsed, slighted, and cast aside 
 for a rival ; and she read the truth in cruel, crush- 
 ing letters. She was not a fool, though she was 
 something of a genius. She could use her eyes, 
 and believe their testimony ; and to a French girl
 
 158 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 of rank, however young and inexperienced, the 
 catastrophe was not altogether extraordinary. Of 
 course the dissolution of the family contract of 
 marriage was a strange accident ; but not so 
 Achille's short memory and the successful seduc- 
 tions of a rival. Jacqueline had been simple 
 enough, in her novitiate and republicanism, not 
 to weigh the advantages of Madame de Croi. But 
 whenever these advantages were brought face to 
 face with her, she recognised, with a heart grown 
 heavy as lead, that they must win the day. Achille 
 de Faye had need to be more than Frenchman to 
 resist them. And Jacqueline had become aware, 
 the moment the spell was broken, that Achille 
 was no more than a vain, volatile, brave French- 
 man in misfortune. It is in an ordinary- French- 
 man and Frenchwoman's nature to care for effect, 
 even to trifling pieces of finer)\ Rousseau con- 
 fessed to preferring a plainer woman with a prettier 
 riband, and Montaigne to priding himself on the 
 pearls and gold brocade of the objects of his grand 
 passions. And in a standard modern author, a 
 Marquise is made to defend herself for her weak-
 
 DESPAIR. 159 
 
 ness in forgetting that a comedian was not a man, 
 even after a glimpse of his ordinary sordid squalor 
 had exposed it to her, and for having her cold 
 heart aflame for him during half a lifetime, because 
 she last parted from him in the white satin trunk 
 hose and cerise knots of Don Juan in " The 
 Soothsayer of the Village." There are great na- 
 tures exceptions to this vanity, as there were 
 exceptions to the fantastic dramatic impulse which 
 gave a ghastly, theatrical air to so many scenes 
 in the Revolution ; but Jacqueline was not en- 
 titled to count on an exception. A choking re- 
 signation and despair, like the waters of death, 
 welled up and flowed over her as she crept be- 
 hind the folds of the velvet curtain and hid there. 
 Achille was lost to her just when she had learnt to 
 set her heart on him. And there was no help for it : 
 Madame de Croi dressed so well, was so handsome 
 and elegant, knew so much that Achille knew, and 
 could display so well her repertoire. Jacqueline 
 was a poor, rustic gentlewoman, awkward, igno- 
 rant, stupid, well nigh imbecile. She thought the 
 ringing tongues, the musical laughter, and the
 
 l6o CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 proud, gay faces of the pair, amidst all the dis- 
 tress of the world without, would drive her mad, 
 unless she put her fingers in her ears, and shut her 
 eyes hard, to keep the sound and the sight out. 
 Achille was lost to her; and what was left to 
 her at her sixteen years ? There were no con- 
 vents now for her to take refuge in, to turn her 
 back on the world and her face to God. She 
 would only be an incumbrance and an anxiety 
 to Monsieur and Madame. She wished she were 
 dead in her early youth. 
 
 If readers had seen Jacqueline in her lurking- 
 place as she revolved these miserable, dreary, 
 evil thoughts, they would have started at a face 
 such as they may have come upon occasionally 
 in portrait galleries, and perhaps once or twice in 
 actual life — a face to impress them at the time, 
 and still more to haunt them aftenvards ; a dis- 
 traught young face, with eyes preternaturally large, 
 and waxing larger and larger under the gazer's 
 look. 
 
 There was one person, and only one, present 
 who formed a more correct estimate than her
 
 madame's impartiality. i6i 
 
 circle of the conflicting claims of Jacqueline and 
 Petronille. It was not Babette ; for although 
 she loved her young mistress dearly, and ground 
 her strong white teeth at this issue, she too re- 
 garded Madame de Croi as by far the finer 
 woman — very nearly as fine as the lady in the 
 caravan from Alsace. Was it wonderful that the 
 judge who decided in Jacqueline's favour — not 
 out of partiality, but in good faith — was Madame 
 de Faye? Monsieur the Baron might have his 
 doubts, bewildered and dazzled as men are liable 
 to be ; Madame had none. 
 
 "What does the woman fear for?" she began 
 her reflections deliberately, apostrophising Madame 
 de Lussac. " Her own paltry spark of a life ? 
 It does not merit the trouble of being blown out, 
 any more than that of her reader, Mademoiselle 
 Troche. They will soon go out of themselves, 
 poor women, if the people will only have patience. 
 She might have more to think of What ! a 
 daughter born a Lussac, by marriage a Croi, and 
 with a taint that is cousin-german to vulgarity ! 
 Nevertheless it is so. My Jacqueline is an awk- 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 l62 CITOYEXNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 ward, unformed child, who may be anything yet. 
 The worst is, she will believe in the whole world 
 and embroil herself with it, like a saint in the 
 middle ages. But in that there is not a shade 
 of vulgarity. Petronille de Croi is like a finan- 
 cier's daughter : she seeks to shine, she struggles 
 to rule. Ah ! how low that is ! She is a liar, 
 in look and act, in assuming the toumure and 
 costume of the old regime. We others governed 
 because we could not help it. We ruled without 
 effort or design. We scorned to conceal our 
 worst sins. We were grand dames to the last. 
 
 • 
 
 For you, my Chevalier, I can follow your game. 
 Petronille de Croi's dot will maintain you in 
 exile now that Jacqueline de Faye's domain is 
 destined beyond remedy to confiscation. Good. 
 Petronille's heart is also favourable to you, for 
 you will prove a better chevalier than the Marquis 
 to conduct her to England, and thus prevent 
 hazard and ennui. She may marry you. Ah ! 
 well, I forgive you, my cousin. Every man must 
 have care for himself, and tlie very chapter of 
 the Knights of Malta is dissolved. I forgive you
 
 IMPERIOUS AFFABILITY. 163 
 
 for everything but being actually light-headed 
 for this Petronille's smile and favour. Chut ! I 
 hear the creaking of the joints of the young 
 woman's mind. But men have thick heads and 
 dull brains. They cannot always tell the pewter 
 from the silver, or see that peacocks are not 
 birds of paradise. They have a shade of vul- 
 garity themselves. We are othenvise." 
 
 Madame de Faye's acute intellect and perfect 
 taste had detected the blemish in the idol, as 
 well as the double end in the attraction. She 
 reigned by sheer majesty, with an airy aimless- 
 ness, and was transparent as crystal. Madame 
 de Croi was imperious in her affability, in- 
 triguing in her fascinations, Janus-faced in her 
 good nature. She patronized and caressed 
 Jacqueline from time to time as " my young 
 friend," " my darhng," " my rosebud " — com- 
 bating skilfully Jacqueline's hasty, harsh, reckless 
 answers. She professed to investigate Jacqueline's 
 accomplishments, and craved to hear her play 
 "All along the River" on the harpsichord, and 
 sing " He is always the same ; " and to see her
 
 164 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 paintings on velvet, and her bouquets of artificial 
 flowers. She made Jacqueline prodigal offers of 
 copies of " I have seen Dorinde, she smiles on 
 me," and of whole yards of tinted velvet from her 
 boxes, as if for the sole purpose of eliciting from 
 the Chevalier — intoxicated with passion — extra- 
 vagant compliments on her universal attainments 
 and her generous temper. Finally, Madame de 
 CroT rallied Jacqueline playfully, and uttered 
 exclamations of wonder and delight at the poor 
 girl's shyness and crossness, vowing it was celes- 
 tially modest and natural ; until the victim was 
 stung to the last atom of endurance, and ever)- 
 word quivered in her heart like so many goads. 
 And when Petronille interrupted the Chevalier, 
 as he besought her, at parting for the night, to 
 deign to remember him in her dreams, by turning 
 wilfully to Jacqueline and insisting on embracing 
 her, and assuring her in her voluble, honied ac- 
 cents, " I would love better to dream of you, my 
 droll, my angel" — Jacqueline could have returned 
 the kiss with a blow. 
 
 Jacqueline's first experience of grand society
 
 babette's morning visit, 165 
 
 ended in sharp, prostrating pain, and bitter, un- 
 qualified mortification. But she was wrong when 
 she turned away from Babette that night, twisted 
 her long curls into a rope, and sobbed herself to 
 sleep, thinking that she could never know greater 
 anguish. Alas ! poor Jacqueline is not alone in 
 her dream that a girl's sentimental heart-ache can 
 match a woman's soul's misery. And before the 
 next day had well dawned she would have given 
 her world to return to this night's sorrow, rage, 
 and shame, — would have thought herself fortunate 
 could she have put away the new experience which 
 was causing her young blood to turn to gall, her 
 brain to reel, her heart to rise in fierce revolt 
 against man and God, and be again merely the 
 slighted, forsaken girl. 
 
 But Jacqueline's friends did not all play with 
 ^tuis, take snuff, and contemplate the course of 
 events with grand imperturbability. Early next 
 morning, before any one was astir at the Tour, ere 
 the white mist hanging over the landscape was dis- 
 persed by the sun, Babette, in her turkey-red gown, 
 and white cap, beneath which the black eyes
 
 l66 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 showed like jet, was abroad and hunting to the 
 auberge. She would have gone to early mass for a 
 blessing and luck, but the priest who was to re- 
 place Monsieur Hubert was not to arrive for a day 
 or two. And she did not mind a magpie on the 
 branch of a walnut tree, for she was in too earnest 
 a mood to be turned back by trifles. Even at that 
 hour, a woman was filling her pitcher at the foun- 
 tain ; while a few goats and a cow or two, under the 
 charge of a boy whistling and peeling a wand, were 
 drinking at the trough. Babette nodded shortly, 
 but neither diverged to the right nor to the left. 
 She walked with nostrils distended and arms 
 crossed, muttering, " That monster of a fine lady ! 
 That snake and tiger of a Chevalier ! Monsieur 
 and Madame would look on, and see my Made- 
 moiselle sacrificed and eaten, poor little partridge ! 
 — if it were done comme il faut. What \nll Michel 
 Sart say — he to whom she is the Will-o'-the-wisp ?" 
 Babette's voice fell lower, and her straight bro\\ s 
 gloomed and contracted, till, forming three single 
 lines, they touched her hair on the one side and 
 her eyelids on the other. " Babette has not sown
 
 babette's soliloquy. 167 
 
 all her wild oats yet, or she would not know so 
 well what Mademoiselle Jacqueline must feel to be 
 left — Bah ! Yet the little Mademoiselle would bite 
 her tongue out of her head before she complained. 
 She also is noble. Only she fled from me last 
 night, and she moaned as I undressed her, ' It 
 is my head, my good Babette ; there is such an 
 ache there ; the company has been too much for 
 me ;' just as if the ache were not in her heart, and 
 as if this fine abominable Madame de Croi and 
 that Chevalier were not her executioners. And 
 Babette too is an honest girl, with a pretty little 
 dowry saved from the earnings of her industry. 
 The monkey. Citizen Pepin, would take her 
 even without these few golden louis, though his 
 superior, Michel Sart, has no mind for a good 
 wife that would lay down her superb hairs for a 
 carpet under his feet. Superior! Ouf! We are 
 all equals, or what good is it to women that 
 there is citizenship in France, tell me, then ? 
 Not a rag. I hate it, the citizenship," stamping 
 her foot as she walked, " I do not care who hears 
 me; I can keep my head, I. King Pharamond
 
 l68 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 and serfdom again would please me. But the play 
 is not played out yet. La Sarte is a wise woman, 
 pure and pious as a religieuse. All the saints in 
 heaven are very inconsiderate and ungrateful if 
 they do not listen to her prayers ; for I am sure 
 she does their worship credit, — infinitely more 
 credit than the kite Agathe, who is all stuck over 
 with the ugly feathers of selfishness and hypocrisy. 
 Perhaps La Sarte will give me some ad\'ice, some 
 word to say that will pierce the thick skin of 
 the pig of a Chevalier, or cause the soft cheek 
 of the proud, splendid cat, Madame, to blush. If 
 Mademoiselle would only hold herself up, and 
 look them in the face, and answer them ! She 
 can chatter of books and nature, and the universe 
 full of the same universal sufierers — men and 
 women and little children, — and then her cheeks 
 are like the roses, and her eyes like the stars, 
 and she is Michel Sart's Will-o'-the-wisp. She has 
 some chann, truly, my poor Mademoiselle ; she is 
 innocent as a dove and generous as a princess, and 
 I, her servant, adore her, and could die for her, 
 and do everything but one for her. La Sarte may
 
 AN APPEAL TO THE SAINTS. 169 
 
 know some harmless spell to wile that dragon of 
 a Chevalier back to his duty. Oh ! he will be 
 punished sublimely if he wander away after that 
 dame. She is a woman of the world. She can 
 love him sufficiently just now, above all because 
 he is another's ; but she will love herself the best, 
 and the last, and she will compel him to serve 
 her, — the service will be his, not hers. Excel- 
 lently, ravishingly, will he be paid in his own coin, 
 even though she treat him to no worse trick. La 
 Sarte may pray to some of the saints — to St. 
 Marthe, or St. Agn^s, or my St. Barbe ; they will 
 care more for a love-story, and feel more for a 
 slighted woman, than the men, like St. Audache 
 or St. Sulpice, if they are good for anything — the 
 holy saints forgive me the injury of the thought ; — 
 they will take care that the grand lady appear as 
 hideous as the foibles and vices she makes so light 
 of. They will take care that my Mademoiselle, 
 who is like the good dear saints and loves them, 
 look as beautiful as themselves, and recall the 
 base heart of the man to comprehend and value 
 her beauty, and rush back to her, and abide by
 
 I70 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 her, and wed her, as becomes the Chevalier and 
 the Demoiselle de Faye — behold !" With which 
 happy conclusion Babette arrived at the auberge. 
 
 As Babette had expected, though it was not six 
 o'clock, Maitre Michel had eaten his fricassee of 
 kidneys, his fruit and cheese, had drunk his wine, 
 and was gone about the business of the day. La 
 Sarte was washing up the breakfast dishes and the 
 solid silver spoons, in the gallery overlooking the 
 courtyard, with the sunny mist curling oft* from the 
 cheerful scene below, — at that moment astir with 
 farm animals and servants setting out to the fields 
 — La Sarte on her stage above the whole, as if her 
 natural refinement had given her the pre-eminence. 
 
 Babette received a friendly welcome, and was 
 asked to read a letter which the rural post had 
 dropped that very morning at the auberge. The 
 letter was from La Sarte's little son, her darling 
 son, who had caressed her most and vexed her 
 most, as well as made her most proud ; over whom, 
 therefore, her heart hovered perj^etually, in min- 
 gled faith and fear. It was a short, but satis- 
 factory letter, without any sign of the loth of
 
 A PARIS LETTER. 171 
 
 August, having been written ten days before. 
 Letters took long then to reach the provinces : — 
 " Mamma," the peasant-bom deputy wrote to his 
 mother, " your son is commissary of one of the 
 sections. He would like to embrace you on his 
 appointment, but he cannot, so he writes instead. 
 How are you, our good Michel, and all the people 
 of Faye? Happy as angels, I hope. Salutation 
 
 and fraternity No, these words are not for 
 
 you : friendship and love to Faye. Were my 
 namesakes the jonquilles as fragrant this spring 
 as formerly? I had dreams of their fragrance, 
 and of wearing one in my button-hole. Did you 
 remember to put one on the altar of my Lady 
 every day of the season, as once on a time you 
 put your own kicking, screaming little diable of a 
 Jonquille? I am sure you did. And do you still 
 look at the moon, mamma, at vespers, as we said 
 we would look ? I am very busy, but I do not often 
 forget. Only, corbleu ! the moon is ill to find in 
 the narrow, dark, filthy streets of Paris. Nothing 
 but lamps here, mamma ; and very villanous 
 lamps sometimes. I saw Ambrose the other day.
 
 172 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 He is still a journe}Tnan baker. But these are 
 good days for the workmen of Paris, — for none 
 better, except for the orators. Ambrose is a 
 Monsieur with silver buckles, and would cause the 
 boys of Faye to die with envy. Until we meet 
 again, mamma, writes your devoted son, Jox- 
 QUiLLE Sart." 
 
 When Babette had paid her tribute of admiration 
 to Jonquille's penmanship, his style, his promotion, 
 and, what struck her less, his loving remembrance 
 of his mother, La Sarte restored the letter to her 
 ample pocket, and, looking into her visitor's face 
 with the velvet eyes, which were altogether distinct 
 from Babette's, suggested : " But what ^^^ll you, Ba- 
 bette?" and repeated the inquiry, *'Does it go quite 
 well with you at the Tour ? " seeking a reason for 
 Babette's morning call and the unexpressed trouble 
 in the restless movements of the village belle. 
 
 Then, in a flow of the mouth, it all came out : 
 what company had come to the Tour ; how it was 
 a family affair, how Mademoiselle's business was 
 going topsy-turvy. Could not La Sarte, the wise 
 woman, recommend some prescription to restore
 
 GOOD COMES UNSOUGHT. I73 
 
 the Chevalier to his senses ? Had she no nuts of 
 King Philibert, no stones of St. Denis ? 
 
 " My bue, no : I am not a sorceress," objected 
 La Sarte, gravely ; " but whether the Chevalier be 
 brought back to his right mind or no, the good 
 God takes care of all." 
 
 Ah ! there it was. Babette sprang up, her stout 
 figure quivering with anxiety and excitement. 
 Would La Sarte pray to the saints, and promise 
 them a pilgrimage, or anything in reason, if they 
 would interfere and preserve to little Mademoiselle 
 her rights, and break the chain which that cruel 
 Madame de Cro'i was weaving; and re-establish 
 peace and happiness at the Tour? 
 
 La Sarte, standing clear-faced and resolute in 
 the morning sunshine, shook her head : " I love 
 Mademoiselle ; but because I love her, I would 
 not ask these things for her, — I would not if I were 
 you, Babette. I did not ask the stewardship for 
 Michel, or the deputyship for Jonquille. These 
 are motes, at best, in the broad, pure light of 
 heaven ; and, alas ! they are often snares and 
 pitfalls. They may be good if the Lord send
 
 174 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 them of His will ; but if we seek them with our 
 whole heart and soul, pray prayers and vow vows 
 for them, and weary Him with our importunity, 
 they turn to dust and ashes, and beget worms, 
 and toads, and vipers in our grasp. So is a 
 man's love for a woman. Does it come freely 
 from God and himself, with his parents' consent ? 
 — it is her crown and her blessing. Does it 
 come from her own stratagems and labours? — it 
 is her cross and her curse. As for peace at the 
 Tour — is there peace in France or peace on earth, 
 my girl ? Let peace too alight like a dove, or 
 like a dove depart." 
 
 " My faith, then. La Sarte," protested Babette, 
 sullenly, " w^here is the use of being so good ? " 
 
 " Hold ! ^Vllere is the use of Heaven, you 
 wicked child ? " exclaimed La Sarte, indignantly. 
 " Where is the use of blessedness, which comes by 
 the pains of the holy Son of Mary first, and by our 
 baptism into work and sorrow afterwards ? Is it 
 that you think we would ever ask Heaven, if we 
 could have earth — till we were so surfeited with 
 good things that we could not stir hand or foot,
 
 god's love and man's. 
 
 /o 
 
 or lift an eye, like so many mules ? For the 
 rest, you are young, Babette," La Sarte relented, 
 " and I love you because you are the daughter of 
 Alix, who was confirmed with me, span and 
 danced in the rondes with me, was my friend and 
 my confidante, and helped to dress me as a bride. 
 And I, — I helped to dress Alix not only for the 
 nuptials, but for the bier. Ah ! she got far before 
 me, at the last. Also I love you, my dear, because 
 you love your mistress. A faithful heart ! But 
 leave her alone, good and clever Babette ; trust 
 her to Heaven, as I say to our Michel. If 
 Heaven does not see her fit for the Chevalier, 
 or the Chevalier fit for her, in this stormy weather, 
 — why, the saints will provide her with another 
 husband, or keep her as safely without a husband, 
 my dear Babette. The good God's love can make 
 up a million times for the want of man's, as I 
 hope you will find for yourself if you have need, 
 little roguish Alix's sainted daughter. Widow Alix's 
 brave daughter. What a brave girl it is ! " finished 
 La Sarte, contemplating Babette's broad shoulders 
 in the same admiring mood with which she was
 
 176 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 in the habit of regarding her big son Michel's 
 stahvart proportions. 
 
 Thus Babette was forced to swallow a wholesome 
 draught of resignation and heavenly-mindedness, 
 which came home to her more fully than La Sarte 
 intended. No more chance of the branch of four- 
 leaved trefoil to be inserted by stealth into the 
 bouquet of jessamine in Mademoiselle Jacqueline's 
 bodice ; or the tiny image of St. Benedict to be 
 sewed surreptitiously beneath the great flap of the 
 Chevalier's under waistcoat. And Babette could 
 have managed both performances so neatly ! 
 Livery sers^ants, like liveries, were abolished ; so 
 that she would have had no fellow-ser\ant to cajole 
 and bribe. 
 
 Babette found that she could not do much for 
 her mistress's interest, or her own. But one little 
 thing she dirl. She made a de'tour on her way 
 back just to carry home a cup of water from the 
 holy spring of Faye ; and she contri^•ed to place 
 the draught before the Chevalier, — drunken, but 
 not with wine, — as he sat next Madame de Croi. 
 Babette waited on them at dinner, from which
 
 babette's reply. 177 
 
 Jacqueline had begged to be excused, on the plea 
 of attendance on her mother, who always dined in 
 her chamber. But poor Babette ! the Chevalier 
 only glanced into the glass, and pointing to the 
 reflection it contained, said with passion : " I 
 drink to your image here, Madame, though it is 
 imperfect." 
 
 "Do you hope to perfect it, Monsieur?" 
 Babette was so infuriated that, with singular 
 awkwardness for a French servant, she struck 
 against the glass in removing a dish, and spilt a 
 great part of the water on the Chevalier's breast. 
 If that unsound region could not be cured of its 
 infidelity and folly, it should at least have one 
 little bath to cool it. 
 
 " Sacre, Babette ! cannot you keep the water to 
 yourself?" cried the young man, shaking out his 
 cambric, his dog's-ears, and his very queue. 
 
 " Good ! Monsieur ! " answered Babette, stiffly 
 and sourly, like a spoiled servant, whom the 
 times still further exempted from ceremony. 
 " But I have no self-love ; and though I serve, I 
 am thankful I have not a beak and claws." 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE CHANGE OF BRIDES — JACQUELINE AT BAY — TAKES 
 
 SANCTUARY. 
 
 |HE Lussacs were to rest three days at 
 Faye. On the second day Jacquehne 
 was summoned to her father's room 
 to have an interview ^\^th him. A 
 solemn proceeding, calculated to impress her be- 
 forehand. 
 
 Monsieur's room was as unlike as possible to 
 Madame's. It was sombre and austere; its walls 
 were bare, except for heavy old bookcases and 
 books ; its chairs were covered with black leather. 
 The traces of costliness were in its surgical in- 
 struments, chemical apparatus, and specimens 
 illustrative of natural history. The last did not 
 increase the cheerfulness of the room, for the 
 traces of moths and the signs of decay were
 
 A MOMENTOUS INTERVIEW. 179 
 
 visible in the stuffed crocodile whose gaping jaws 
 guarded the door, in the hook-beaked eagle on 
 its perch by the Avindow, and in the mysterious 
 roc's egg hanging from the ceiling. 
 
 When Jacqueline entered, she found, to her 
 astonishment, the whole three gentlemen of the 
 party assembled. Monsieur sat in his chair at his 
 bureau, supported on the right hand by the Mar- 
 quis, and on the left by the Chevalier. 
 
 Jacqueline paused on the threshold, and the 
 gentlemen saluted her. She recovered herself in a 
 moment, saluted them in return, and passed up the 
 room to her father with something of the grace 
 and ease which had characterized her entrance 
 into the auberge on the night of La Sarte's f&te. 
 Her woman's heart was beginning to burst its 
 swaddling-bands, to flutter, to beat — to bid her put 
 her hand on her breast and hide the wound there, 
 to hold up her head, and smile, and die hiding it 
 — now that she was among people who, although 
 they were of her own grade, did not understand 
 her, any more than did the peasant circle at Faye, 
 and might misjudge her like them.
 
 l8o CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 Monsieur took her two little hands and drew her 
 down to a stool beside him. For a second or 
 two the blood flushed over her face, and then 
 receded, leaving her white as a very narcisse, and 
 in seeming danger of swooning. In the brief 
 interval the thought struck her that the new 
 light of the last day had been an ignis fatuus, a 
 bad dream, — that Achille was about to return to 
 her, rather that he had never left her. But Achille 
 did not look at her; his head was bent, as he 
 traced patterns on the floor with the sword he still 
 wore ; and the first words Monsieur spoke dis- 
 pelled the illusion for ever. 
 
 " My daughter, you must know that the family 
 arrangement for your marriage with our cousin the 
 Chevalier is overthrown by the national misfor- 
 tunes. The Chevalier now contemplates an 
 alliance with the daughter of my friend Monsieur 
 de Lussac. I have answered for it that you have 
 no objection," said Monsieur, speaking in a 
 matter-of-foct tone, and looking at her pointedly. 
 
 " None, my father," answered Jacqueline, in per- 
 fectly audible tones, — a scarlet flush settling on her
 
 THE chevalier's APOLOGY. l8l 
 
 cheek as she looked Achille full in the face with 
 her clear, bright eyes. " My cousin, permit me to 
 wish you and your charming future wife all happi- 
 ness." 
 
 The Chevalier started and winced. Was his 
 vanity hurt at the obliging docility with which the 
 little girl who had adored him, resigned his name 
 and protection ? Or had he a misgiving that he 
 was making a greater sacrifice than he had con- 
 ceived ? He had never seen Jacqueline so beau- 
 tiful, so dignified ; she would be a noble woman 
 one day, with a more winning nobleness, if that 
 could be, than Petronille de Croi. " I told you 
 how much I mourned our miserable misfortunes, 
 my cousin Jacqueline," he stammered, half rising 
 ft-om his seat, " but I could not save myself — " He 
 stopped abruptly, and sank down again. That 
 was a dubious admission to make before his future 
 father-in-law ; but a glance at the Marquis showed 
 him he was in right honourable hands. De Lussac 
 considered the conversation quite a family affair, at 
 which circumstances forced him to be present, but 
 from which his unexceptionable breeding caused
 
 l82 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 him to hold himself as much aloof as was consistent 
 with the need of his presence. He was leaning 
 back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the roc's egg^ 
 humming a saraband, and mentally marshalling 
 the coming collation. "What could I, a poor 
 emigrant, do?" implored the Chevalier. 
 
 Jacqueline made no reply ; there could be none 
 from her to such a question. But the girl's intui- 
 tions were ripening as plants under tropical skies, 
 — were darting like lightning across the faults of 
 her education, the inexperience of her youth ; and 
 flashing the truth vividly upon her. She had always 
 recoiled from marriages of suitability ; they shocked 
 her now. She found out, with bitter quickness of 
 comprehension, " there were emigrants and emi- 
 grants," in the significant French phrase. Emi- 
 grants in rags, giving up all, and hoping all from 
 the goodness of God and the justice of their cause ; 
 and emigrants who carried their luxuries and vices 
 with them, would not relinquish them, sold them- 
 selves for them — mingled cjiiics and sybarites. 
 These last were the noblesse who in their exile 
 learned nothing and forgot nothing. But Jacque-
 
 AN INDIGNANT CRY. 183 
 
 line ignored all this new light — was done with 
 Achille and his weaknesses and sins. 
 
 " I ^v^ote that I should always remain your 
 friend, Jacqueline. Suffer that I be your friend," 
 begged Achille, no longer boldly, but humbly, 
 earnestly. 
 
 " My little one," her father explained, " the 
 Chevalier our kinsman is ready to show you his 
 friendship by a great act of regard. My old 
 friends the Lussacs are ready to show you their 
 friendship. They importune me to test their 
 fidelity and kindness ; and Madame and I consent." 
 
 "What is it, papa?" cried Jacqueline, looking 
 up intently in the noble, sardonic, but suave face, 
 and beginning to lose her colour again and to 
 pant like a hunted creature. 
 
 " They lead you away with them to safety and 
 prosperity." 
 
 . " Go away from you and Madame, my father ! 
 Leave you in destitution, perhaps in danger and 
 death !" cried Jacqueline, with a sharp, indignant cry. 
 
 " Softly ! It is because we are surrounded by 
 such terrors that we send you away, my little
 
 184 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 heart. Do you think they would be wholesome 
 for a marmot like you ? " declared Monsieur, with 
 a flickering smile. 
 
 " But you are cruel, cruel ! " 
 
 " Silence ! my little girl," her father warned 
 her. " What training will Monsieur de Lussac 
 imagine has been given at Faye ? " 
 
 " Jacqueline," pleaded Achille, rising now and 
 standing manly and resolute before her, " I vow to 
 you that I will deal with you as a very dear and 
 sacred trust — Petronille will not be dearer. I will 
 guard your happiness and honour with my life." 
 
 " I thank you. Monsieur ; I do not doubt it," 
 answered Jacqueline, with the calmness of despair ; 
 " but I see no necessity for this quitting of my 
 parents. If I must go, why do you and Madame 
 not come also, my father ? " 
 
 " Jacqueline, don't be foolish, my poor girl. It 
 is impossible. I could not get a passport. The 
 Marquis's protection would not stretch to me ; it 
 will be well if it can shelter those it is intended to 
 cover." 
 
 Jacqueline suddenly flung herself at Monsieur's
 
 monsieur's generous confidence. 185 
 
 feet, clasping his knees and bathing them with a 
 torrent of tears : " Permit me to stay and die with 
 you." 
 
 Her father raised her silently ; he had no answer 
 to her demand. 
 
 Jacqueline's sobs were checked, her tears frozen 
 at their source : " But why must I depart ? " 
 
 " Go, my daughter," said her father, sternly, 
 putting her from him with an air of displeasure, 
 yet not unmixed with patience and tenderness ; 
 " you are undutiful ; you try me ; you ask reasons," 
 was spoken reproachfully by the philosopher. 
 " This is not a place for a Demoiselle de Faye. 
 It is not meet that the future Dame de Faye 
 should become the object of vile schemes and 
 machinations. If the domain be not confiscated, 
 or if it be ever restored from confiscation, it 
 may be preserved to a noble family by your being 
 beyond reach and in shelter. Do you comprehend 
 and still hesitate, Jacqueline? The Chevalier is 
 the next heir ; he is also your nearest kinsman. 
 Need I say that I have the fullest dependence on 
 the faith and the loyalty of the Chevalier ?" ended
 
 l86 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 Monsieur, with a generous confidence which, 
 after what had passed, would have been incre- 
 dible in any but a Frenchman. 
 
 Achille responded in a low, moved voice: 
 " Your confidence will not be in vain, Monsieur 
 my cousin." 
 
 And with these words he pledged himself 
 solemnly to be a faithful guardian to his young 
 cousin, — his former plighted wife, his love of a 
 week, a day. 
 
 Without doubt, — so far as sentimentally sighing 
 his regrets to Jacqueline when Petronille would be 
 arrogant and perverse ; so far as borrowing Jacque- 
 line's money, if she ever had money to lend, and 
 gambling furiously with it, in the intention of 
 retrieving his losses at play, and repaying it a 
 thousand-fold, — so far as these went Achille would 
 keep his word. 
 
 The Marquis came to life, or returned from the 
 visionary land of pates and moyennenses, to add 
 his argument to Monsieur's determination, and 
 show his cordial concurrence in the plan. " My 
 channing }Oung lady, make a virtue of misfor-
 
 A NOTE OF EXCOURAGEMENT, 187 
 
 tune. Honour us with your society ; we will do all 
 we can to render ourselves worthy of the grace. 
 Madame the Marquise, and my daughter Petro- 
 nille, will be a mother and a sister to you. For me 
 and the Chevalier, we will be your very humble 
 servants. Monsieur your father and Madame your 
 mother will be content. Times may change in a 
 crac. The princes, and you, and me, and the 
 others, — we may be back at the Tour by Christmas, 
 bringing with us rosbif, and pudding, and port^re, 
 my beautiful, and being up to the eyes in it," 
 shrugging his shoulders with great emphasis. "But 
 have no fear," he finished, with a little note of 
 encouragement, as if he had a doubt that he might 
 have horrified Mademoiselle by too plain raillery, 
 " I shall not suffer you to starve in that rough 
 wilderness, if the exertions of one man — a cook 
 who has been crowned with some poor laurels — 
 can prevent it." 
 
 Every one who knew the Marquis was aware 
 what an amount of esprit de corps and what 
 prospects of exquisite eating and drinking on 
 the other side of the Channel lay in that speech.
 
 l88 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE, 
 
 " It is enough, my little one. We will it. Go 
 to your mother." And thus Monsieur dismissed 
 both the subject and his daughter. 
 
 Jacqueline stood before her mother like a pillar 
 of salt — so mutely protesting, so bitter at heart. 
 
 Madame received her v/ith nothing but congratu- 
 lations, and regrets, which were the next thing to 
 congratulations. " You are going, my Jacqueline, 
 where you cannot even send me the news and the 
 fashions ; but it is as well, for you would have made 
 a mess of them, giddy one. Since your marriage 
 with the Chevalier has gone off, it is quite time to 
 make another alliance for you. And who is there 
 to marry here, unless goats and snipes, bourgeois 
 farmers-general and peasant officers ? There are 
 not even * the little ends of men ' who remain to 
 be killed in Paris — not even a. convent for a girl 
 to retire to. My faith ! how the world is changed ! 
 They say it is better in England ; that Westmin- 
 ster and Kensington are not so far amiss. And 
 Madame de Croi has letters to my Lady Holland 
 and my Lady Jersey. As for the Marquise, when 
 she is no longer in terror for her sheep's head, she
 
 MADAME IN AMAZEMENT. 189 
 
 will sit in her dressing-gowns and two nightcaps 
 and be in terror for the ague, and whimper over the 
 fine climate of France, and the fine days that are 
 gone. But Madame de Croi — I solicit her pardon, 
 she will then be Madame de Faye, your near 
 kinswoman, — she will take you out and furnish 
 you with a desirable parti. The Lussacs, if they 
 do not find England agreeable, propose to cross to 
 Belgium and the countr}^ of the Rhine, where our 
 princes and people are. There you will be at 
 home, my dormouse, my woodlark." 
 
 " My mother," urged Jacqueline, with trembling 
 white lips, kneeling on the stool at her mother's 
 feet, as she had knelt at her father's, " I cannot 
 go with the Lussacs." 
 
 " Why not, my daughter?" inquired Madame, in 
 simple surprise. 
 
 " Because I was to have been the wife of 
 Achille de Faye," fell word by word from Jacque- 
 line's cold lips. 
 
 "What has that to' do with it?" inquired 
 Madame, in pure amazement. " He is to be 
 the husband of another woman. The first
 
 IQO CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 marriage agreed upon could not be; so it is 
 very correctly cancelled and forgotten." 
 
 " I cannot forget, my mother." 
 
 " Forget what, little one ? You were not his 
 wife, and no pure-minded demoiselle, no honest 
 girl of the people, cherishes a particular inclina- 
 tion and devotion for a man, until she is his 
 wife and the Church has blessed their union," 
 declared Madame, dogmatically. 
 
 " Then I have not been pure-minded. Oh I 
 forgive me, forgive me ! " 
 
 Madame drew back scandalized ; but though 
 she was affronted, she was not enraged. It was 
 very rarely that she thought it worth while to be 
 in a passion. AMien she did so, she was sublime. 
 She sat curiously inspecting her shrinking, writh- 
 ing daughter. "It was not the way in my day," 
 she said at last, haughtily. " We women thought 
 more of ourselves ; and I cannot approve of such 
 a confession ; it is indelicate, immoral, violent, 
 revolutionary. Ah ! this Revolution, what has it 
 not to answer for?" 
 
 " I have only made it to you, mamma," mur-
 
 ROMANTIC LOVE. I9I 
 
 mured Jacqueline, terribly abashed. " He does 
 not know it ; at least, I never said it to him. I 
 would die before he should know it." 
 
 " Quite right, so far as it goes ; but still I do 
 not understand. When I was young," continued 
 Madame, speaking as of something she had 
 heard with the hearing of her ears, " I read of 
 what was romantic and absurd in the romances 
 of Mademoiselle Scudery. She was ugly, that 
 Mademoiselle (though she was pure blood), ugly 
 as a child of the pavement, a gooseherd ; and her 
 lover, PeHsson, he was ugly as his spider, — no 
 wonder he made a pet of it ! Even Madame 
 de Maintenon, the last of the pedants, though 
 she charmed the great King in his dotage, was a 
 duenna, an instructress. Of their set Madame 
 de Sevigne only was graceful or beautiful. I 
 have heard that the great Mademoiselle was not 
 much ; but she was the granddaughter of Henry, 
 and that was enough. I forget what I wanted 
 to say ; it was this : Mademoiselle de Scudery 
 says of this love (as says Durfe in his Astrea, 
 and the silly old romance of Gerard de Rous-
 
 192 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 sillon tells the same story), that it will sacrifice 
 all for the good of the object, and rejoice in the 
 deed. It will destroy itself, and die singing, like 
 the swan, to promote the happiness of another. 
 Gerard loves a princess ; ah ! well, he resigns her 
 that she may become the wife of Charles Martel 
 — queen and empress — and he the lowliest of her 
 subjects. Petronille de Cro'i is not a princess, 
 she is not even a grand dame without a ruse, 
 an embarrassment; but she can maintain this 
 poor boy in exile, and he can protect her, and 
 assist her to pass the time. It is a good market. 
 And he is caught with her as St. Lambert with 
 Madame de Chatelet ; he knows no better. But 
 what would you, Jacqueline? that he should 
 starve? that he should die nameless and un- 
 known in a regiment of volunteers? for he has 
 neither money, nor power to get him a company. 
 Still I do not comprehend ; " and Madame 
 tapped her snuft'-box. 
 
 It was true Madame had given a definition of 
 love as it was recognised in France ; but either 
 the high platonism was overstrained and did not
 
 A LITTLE TOUCHED. I93 
 
 answer to the passionate human heart, or Jacque- 
 Hne's love was not the perfection of the passion, 
 but was a rank growth, having as much to do 
 with youthful imaginativeness and sensitiveness as 
 with self-denial and martyrdom. Jacqueline's sud- 
 denly blown love for her cousin Achille was very 
 real, however; and the step to which she was 
 being driven was maddening. 
 
 " I do not wish that he may not marry Petronille 
 de Croi, Madame ; I cannot prevent it, and I 
 would not if I could. I hope they may be 
 happy," asserted Jacqueline with a swelling of her 
 white throat. " But I could not dwell with them, 
 see them every day, be the second where I was to 
 have been the first — their pensioner, their pupil. 
 It would make me wicked, mad, my mother," and 
 Jacqueline shivered till her teeth chattered. 
 
 " My poor child," declared Madame, promptly 
 and firmly, " you are mad already ; that is, your 
 head is a little touched. You have fever, cold, 
 megrim. You will retire to your chamber; you 
 will have soup for the sick ; you will say your 
 prayers. To-morrow you will be better, though 
 
 VOL. L o
 
 194 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 feeble ; be in your senses, obedient, amiable, my 
 little kitten. All these fancies will be gone ; all 
 this talk is but a fancy. I see it now. At last I 
 comprehend. There will be no more of it. You 
 must command your body ; it is the forte of us, 
 the nobles. For Monsieur and I, we wiW it, my 
 daughter. We know what is good for your honour 
 and your happiness. You go, with the last rem- 
 nant of our class, to safety and society, in dull, 
 prosperous England." 
 
 Jacqueline threw up the selfish protest ; but she 
 continued to cling to her mothers knees, as she 
 had clung to her father's : " Leave you, my mother, 
 my father, never!" she cried, as she had cried to 
 Monsieur, hoping to strike an answering chord in 
 their breasts, and not seeing that their sentiments 
 of parental duty and their affection for their child 
 were her worst enemies, were what clenched her 
 fate. " What will you do without me, mamma ? 
 You will be so sad without your child." 
 
 But Madame would not own to weakness, to 
 anything so bourgeois as family attachment. "Not 
 at all, if I am satisfied on your account. It is the
 
 NATURE IS BELIED. I95 
 
 law of society and of nature. After all, Nature 
 is more accommodating than people think. She is 
 belied, that poor woman. The young go, the old 
 remain. Agathe suffices for my toilette, and I 
 shall not miss you, my lamb. You are even a 
 poor unpicker, my Jacqueline ; you could not earn 
 your bread in that way. I have known dames, 
 who staked a hundred louis on one card, very glad 
 to earn a few thousand francs a week as unpickers. 
 Besides, the threads get more entangled now, and 
 the gold looks red, as if the lace had been in battle. 
 It has been in the wars many a time ; I have 
 detected here the black smoke of the cannon, and 
 there a rent and a crimson stain. I have said 
 to myself, ' This was done at Verdun ; and that at 
 Fort-du-Quesne ; and here again a brave soul went 
 out' But to offer the poor thread for sale now, 
 when one pretends to forget all but frieze coats, 
 would be to have all our clothes dabbled crimson 
 together, and all our hairs shorn by the mob razor 
 of France." 
 
 " Let me die with you, my mother," moaned 
 Jacqueline.
 
 196 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 " Not when I command you to live for me, 
 my child," negatived Madame, ^^^th her stately 
 tone of divine right. "Go, and send Babette, 
 and I shall instruct her how to put up your 
 boxes. That the Demoiselle de Faye should 
 have no more decent trousseau, that is my grief, 
 my little one." 
 
 Jacqueline went anew with feet that did not 
 feel the parquetted floor, and brain that swam. 
 
 Madame looked after her only child and drew 
 a Httle sigh. " Poor little one, she would always 
 believe ever^'thing and ever>-body, — herself amongst 
 the rest ; and she was so inquisitive, she would not 
 be kept in the dark, as girls should be. That S}Tn- 
 pathy, — it is a dangerous commodity. I feel myself 
 deranged with listening to her delirium. But how ? 
 She must submit ; it is for us, the quality, to 
 submit. The Queen would be at Versailles now, 
 and not in the Temple, if she had submitted to 
 the exigencies of her rank. It is for me to pro- 
 vide Jacqueline with an example." Madame gave 
 another little sigh, and her glance strayed to 
 the recess where were her aids to devotion,
 
 A RENCOUNTER. igj 
 
 but where, Monsieur the Cure not being to her 
 mind, she could not be devout according to rule. 
 The next person Jacqueline met — and it was by 
 chance — was Madame de Croi, whom she en- 
 countered on the grand staircase. Jacqueline's 
 beautiful, triumphant rival stopped and hailed her 
 with enthusiasm : " My rosebud, my stepdaughter, 
 is it not ? Ah, we will not quarrel, Jacqueline ! 
 You do not think I care because you were 
 destined for Achille? My dear, these things are 
 done in the cradle ; and if I had a daughter I 
 should settle her fate then, and trust that no 
 revolution would come to unsettle it. But it will 
 be my endeavour to find you a brilliant fortune 
 — a bridegroom without reproach, such a one as 
 you merit. You do not think me too young 
 to be your chaperone ? Hold ! if Monsieur de 
 Croif had possessed a daughter, say, would she 
 not have been much older — fit to be my mother, 
 very likely ? Well, I should have been very ami- 
 able to her if she had allowed me." Petronille 
 pinched Jacqueline's cheek meaningly, and passed 
 on.
 
 198 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 Jacqueline went her way, sick at the perfumed, 
 flattering words, and not caring much whether the 
 promise would be fulfilled. Undoubtedly Pe- 
 tronille would not beat or starve her, or lock 
 her up. She would even exert herself for the pro- 
 motion of Achille's cousin, unless Achille's cousin 
 threatened to eclipse her, — an absurd supposition. 
 She might tickle her, delicately poke her, and 
 laugh at her, as she had done ever since the two 
 came together. She might try to get Jacqueline's 
 heart into her skilful hands, to dissect and gal- 
 vanize it, anatomy of all kinds being much in 
 fashion. She might, like the eruption of a flower- 
 draped volcano, burst out on her with a torrent 
 of fierce, bad words, when she was in one of her 
 furies. All at once, some fine day, after seveh 
 years' acquaintance and fondling, she might play 
 the traitor with a smile on her lips, to ser\e a 
 friend, or injure an enemy, or only punish a slight 
 off"ence. But eruptions do not happen frequently 
 even in volcanic countries ; and no clever woman 
 will betray her neighbour except as a rare indul- 
 gence. Jacqueline might therefore live long
 
 LEFT TO HERSELF. 199 
 
 and never know those traits in Petronille's cha- 
 racter. 
 
 JacqueHne thought little of that particular 
 danger. Her difficulty was how to live out the 
 next two days, which had shone so sunnily in 
 anticipation ; how to live the after life, the strange, 
 mocking, dreary farce which seemed to stretch 
 into an eternity beyond. She could scarcely 
 tell how she spent the first of the days. By 
 tacit consent she was left to herself Monsieur 
 and Madame did not dream of anything so hein- 
 ous in their daughter as obstinate resistance to 
 their sovereign will. Therefore, in their good 
 manners, in their softer relentings, they did not 
 persecute her with lectures and censures. Jacque- 
 line, with due attention to the ceremonial of 
 society, flitted about very much as on other days, 
 in the places which within two sunrises and sunsets 
 (nay, within one), were to see her face no more, for 
 many a dark, troubled, and awful week and month. 
 She was chained to her stake at meals and at the 
 evening receptions ; for it was not lawful that she 
 should absent herself from the circle of noble ladies
 
 200 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 and gentlemen, or go out of sight and hearing of 
 the sparkHng, ardent wooing of the Chevalier, and 
 the occasional courteous and gentle words he 
 remembered to speak to his old love : " We will 
 have fine weather for our journey, my beautiful 
 cousin ;" or, " Shall I write on Nerina's collar, * I 
 am Nerina, the dog of Citoyenne Jacqueline Faye, 
 of the party of Citoyen Lussac.'" Worse still, she 
 had to bear the condescending raillery and the 
 ostentatious kisses of Petronille de Croi. No 
 wonder that she was wild ; the wonder was that 
 she was not mad outright, as Madame had alleged 
 in her defence. 
 
 At other hours she wandered up and do^^^l. 
 She took counsel of all the familiar faces and 
 scenes, but all caused her to beat her breast and 
 hang her head in deeper despair. Paul screwed 
 up a more vinegar face than ever at the little 
 Mademoiselle's loss of a husband ; her departure 
 but added to his rheumatism. Agathe, who had 
 never been fond of young girls in the Tour, fell 
 into more foldings of the hands and Credos, as if 
 to insinuate that the being chassed from the Tour
 
 BABETTE'S craze. • 20I 
 
 was a judgment on Jacqueline's transgressions, 
 and on all the sins in which she had giddily 
 and presumptuously abetted the insolent Babette. 
 And Babette was the worst of the three. Actually 
 she seemed to have gone crazed. She was inces- 
 santly pulling out the drawers in Mademoiselle's 
 room, and pushing them in again; snatching up 
 robes, jupons, and hoods, and flinging them away ; 
 abasing herself, as if she could grovel and kiss 
 Jacqueline's feet; holding out her arms, and be- 
 seeching her Mademoiselle to fling herself into 
 them, rest her weary young head, and cry her poor 
 heavy eyes to sleep on her Babette's fond bosom. 
 Babette's rich brown complexion had grown in 
 these few days to a dun chalk colour, with patches 
 of purple about the cheek-bones. Her lace cap 
 was pushed to the extreme crown of her head ; the 
 crushed lappets swung round, and hung down her 
 back. Her work caused her to sweat and groan 
 almost like Agathe. 
 
 Meantime the preparations for the journey went 
 on. Already Jacqueline's great chest was half 
 filled. It was studded with brass nails, and had
 
 202 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 been at the wars with Monsieur, when he was a 
 grey musketeer. It had seen Minden, perhaps 
 Rosbach, and later service still, for it was not 
 altogether free from the mould and clay it 
 had contracted in the garden, where it had been 
 buried with the spare plate, and only dug up that 
 its contents might deck the buffet and table in 
 honour of the Lussacs ; and because it would be 
 useful to Mademoiselle. 
 
 Not a single idea of resistance to the cruel 
 command did Babette put into Jacqueline's head ; 
 not a hint did she give, in all her spasms and 
 convulsions, to dissuade her young mistress from 
 her unnatural destination. Jacqueline found no 
 refuge with Babette ; so after gazing at her with 
 piteous eyes till Babette went into hysterics, 
 she instinctively withdrew from her humble friend, 
 and acknowledged, mournfully, that she, too, had 
 failed her in her tribulation. 
 
 Up and down paced the restless feet, the 
 wet eyes looking wistfully at the tapestr}' on 
 the dingy mouldering walls. It represented 
 Agamemnon and Iphigenia. Would that her
 
 madame's portrait. 203 
 
 father had been another Agamemnon, and had 
 bound and laid her on a sacrificial altar, instead 
 of bidding her be gay, travel the world with Achille 
 de Faye and Petronille de Croi; and witness 
 all their confidences and caresses, after she had 
 seen the ceremony solemnized which would unite 
 the two — one of whom had been her hero, her 
 lover, her promised husband. French couples, 
 let the bond be never so slight or formal, have 
 always their polite confidences, their stereotyped 
 caresses. 
 
 Jacqueline questioned the pictures of those who 
 had gone before her and borne their crosses, 
 with her strained, weary eyes. They told her the 
 same tale ; they all looked at her just as did the 
 picture of her mother. The proud, spirituelle 
 woman was represented as a wood nymph in 
 spotted leopard skin and buskins ; with an ala- 
 baster bow in her hand, and a crescent on her lofty 
 unruffled brow. That picture indicated Madame 
 truly. Jacqueline could look back and remember 
 old friends of the family — Messieurs in houppe- 
 landes and cloth canons and curious wigs, whom
 
 204 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 S — ■ 
 
 Madame called " my shepherds," and who con- 
 stantly addressed her as " my quite beautiful," " my 
 all graceful," " my queen of queens." But to none 
 of these high-flown, antiquated adorers, any more 
 than to Monsieur, had Madame unlocked the 
 secret chambers of her spirit and submitted as 
 to a conqueror. Her mother's eyes, from that 
 picture, scorned Jacqueline for her want of intre- 
 pidity and magnanimity, her anguished self- 
 questioning, her frantic child's wailings. Before 
 no figure there could Jacqueline throw herself 
 and ask commiseration — except before the carv-ed 
 figure on His cross of Him who died for a world's 
 sins, and endured a world's woes. Even here the 
 girl was beaten back and found no rest ; for here, 
 beyond every place in the world, the horror of 
 great wickedness assailed her. The impulse to 
 hate Petronille ; ay, even to hate Achille, while 
 she loved him too with a fierce love, — that 
 impulse, which her scared conscience, her wo- 
 manly modesty, her whole nature standing up and 
 fighting against it to the death, told her might 
 lead her to crime and remorse, was most repug-
 
 A LYING SPIRIT. 205 
 
 nant and horrible here, as it seized her, threw her 
 down, and tore her. It was in some respects a 
 lying spirit; for had Jacqueline trodden that 
 path of most artificial yet most deadly peril, 
 none dare say that she might not have trodden 
 it safely. But her faith did not compass the 
 power and the love of Heaven ; and there rose 
 up before her, in the vivid colours in which 
 Dante painted his hell, Monsieur Hubert's sermon 
 at the churchyard gate, and his warnings of the 
 lost women, to whom might be joined tens of 
 thousands more from the mighty, the noble, and 
 the wise. 
 
 Where should she seek refuge? At intervals 
 the storm in which she was struggling became 
 so appalling, that it seemed as if, in its very 
 force, it was relenting and undoing its work. 
 It seemed as if it would stupify and deaden 
 every nerve and feeling, and make her from that 
 moment an automaton, a cold, white, careless 
 girl, who would henceforth mind nothing, regret 
 nothing, decline nothing, but eat, drink, laugh, 
 and die without any more pain or trouble. These
 
 206 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 moments were when Jacqueline was in the hall, 
 or in Madame's room, or promenading the terrace 
 and planting orange trees to celebrate the visit, 
 with the rest of the party. It was in one of 
 these moments, when there was a singing in her 
 ears which prevented her hearing in memory the 
 now hushed song of the nightingale, or in fact 
 Achille and Petronille's vows, and when her 
 heart was beating with a dull, sullen sound, as if 
 it were a hammer striking an an\-il, muffled, to 
 make melancholy music, that Jacqueline com- 
 mitted the great blunder of her young life, the 
 blunder which, like the additional straw that broke 
 the camel's back, delivered her over for the time 
 to frenzy and madness. 
 
 She was conscious of her father's watching her 
 with scrutinizing eyes. She believed, in her dis- 
 traction, that he was studying her passive grief 
 and humiliation, as she had known him practise 
 surgical operations on animals, and diseased or 
 dead men and women, — not to relieve human 
 misery, like Monsieur the Cure, but to acquaint 
 himself with the mortal frame, and to pry into
 
 A GREAT BLUNDER. 207 
 
 life's mechanism, just as he had investigated the 
 elements of matter, or interrogated philosophy 
 and religion with the idle, never-satisfied, and 
 for-ever-doubting question of Pilate, " What is 
 truth?" 
 
 This morbid, aimless curiosity was one of the 
 evil symptoms of France at the time. It neither 
 regarded reverence, charity, nor tenderness, but 
 invaded the holiest sanctuaries, and treated their 
 altars as common and unclean. It frittered away 
 the heart of man by depriving him of the old 
 heroic capability to cut the Gordian knot of 
 existence with the sword of duty, to carve 
 out for himself a man's honest work and reward, 
 and have done with this ball of earth after 
 he had played a man's part on it, leaving the 
 rest to God, if he were so happy as to believe 
 in God. 
 
 But Jacqueline was never guilty of a sadder 
 mistake than when, with the wayward, diseased 
 ingenuity of misery, she misinterpreted Mon- 
 sieur's notice of her. He was merely saying to 
 himself, " Poor little one, better that your heart
 
 208 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 should be broken, — young hearts mend again, — 
 than that you should fall into the hands of these 
 demons, be polluted, my virgin, or pour out your 
 sweet blood like water." And the infatuated child 
 thought Monsieur was taking stock of her woe, 
 making trade of it, softly pulling it about A\ith 
 pincers, employing their sacred relationship to in- 
 crease his familiarity with that strange animal 
 man, in the idiosyncrasy of his own daughter, as 
 ancient artists perfected their arts by observing 
 the agonies of slaves. 
 
 Her mind unhinged by this last ghastly miscon- 
 ception, Jacqueline, in a rash moment, shaped 
 her future destiny to its distorting light. She 
 slept as all young creatures sleep, that they 
 may rise and buckle on their loads, and become 
 perfect through suffering. But she woke so early 
 that not even her maid on the truckle bed in the 
 ante-room was stirring. Babette's preparations for 
 slumber had certainly been peculiar. She had 
 tilted the mattress so that the place for the heels 
 was higher than that for the head ; she had flung 
 out the pillows, and where they should have been
 
 THE DREADED TO-MORROW. 209 
 
 there was a crushed bandbox, with the debris of 
 working materials — whalebone, buttons, agraffes, 
 even needles and pins, with stalks and stones of 
 fruit, and crumbs of bread from her pockets, all 
 stre^vn over the uneasy couch, so that she appeared 
 rather to be doing penance than seeking repose. 
 But she was young too, and was exhausted by her 
 exertions of the preceding day. So there she lay, 
 her strong arms above her head grasping the 
 ragged edges of the bandbox, her mouth wide 
 open, and breathing stertorously. 
 
 Jacqueline had another long day to suffer, and 
 then the dreadful to-morrow. It might have been 
 thought that she would have cowered down, 
 covered her head, and shut out the light in her 
 wretchedness. On the contrary, she got up at 
 once, and proceeded to dress herself quickly, 
 not so much like a victim" distraught, as like a 
 person mastered by a tyrant resolution. She did 
 not call Babette, she scarcely looked at her as 
 she went noiselessly out. Something, she did not 
 stop to consider what, had cooled her heart to 
 her maid, notwithstanding her distress of the 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 2IO CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 preceding day. Was it that Jacqueline did not 
 believe it genuine ? that in the new suspicious- 
 ness aroused within her, she thought Babette had 
 been suborned, gagged, induced to hang back from 
 her, and let her go ? Or was misery already ren- 
 dering her callous ? 
 
 Jacqueline did not tarry even at Madame's door. 
 She quitted the tourelle and the Tour while the 
 whole house was buried in sleep, and the shadow 
 on the sun-dial was so short, that it was but a 
 IB>lack speck. She traversed the terrace, and going 
 round to the back of the Tour, let herself out by 
 a wicket gate into the bocage, close behind the 
 gentilhommiere. 
 
 In the dense dew of the August morning twig 
 and blade were dripping wet. The solitude was 
 complete, except for Jacqueline's little Hon dog 
 Nerina, which had detected the light sound of her 
 footstep, risen up from her wicker cradle, and 
 trotted after her. Half republican as Jacqueline 
 was, she had never gone out into the bocage, 
 or roamed beyond the terrace, without Babette, 
 any more than the Demoiselles de St. Cyr had
 
 NERINA. 211 
 
 walked abroad unattended. But now she was 
 neither frightened for Red Riding-hood's wolf, 
 nor for the diabolical Monsieur, of whom that 
 perfidiously cruel animal was the fit emblem, as 
 the glittering - eyed old French bonnes stoutly 
 maintained. 
 
 Nerina, unaccustomed to the silence, which was 
 not even broken by the songs of birds, and having 
 her mane draggled, and her fine curls made thin, 
 lank, and disconsolate as candle-wicks, — Nerina, 
 trained to be as particular about her curls as a 
 petit-maitre about his wig, and spoiled into pee- 
 vishness, began to howl her discomfiture and dis- 
 gust. Being a French dog she howled, where an 
 English dog would have whined. 
 
 Jacqueline lifted the pampered favourite, wiped 
 her feet mechanically, and carried her a hundred 
 yards into the wood; then, standing still, she 
 prepared to put the dog down again, but first 
 she unclasped the collar which Achille had amused 
 himself the previous evening by furnishing with an 
 inscription, — " I am Nerina, the dog of Citoyenne 
 Jacqueline Faye. I belong to the party of Citizen
 
 212 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 Lussac, bound with a visaed passport for Calva- 
 dos, thence to England." Jacqueline cast the 
 collar intemperately into a thicket of broom ; 
 then looked into Nerina's silly eyes, gave her a 
 long, light hug, as if she represented other than 
 herself, and set her softly doAvn on the moss and 
 leaves. The dog, finding herself once more ex- 
 posed to damp and dirt, howled twice or thrice 
 dismally ; then, taking into her own hands her 
 rescue from the unbecoming circumstances, she 
 turned tail and scampered home. A dog of 
 quality could not follow JacqueHne in the way 
 she was going. 
 
 Hares ran across her path, owls hooted from 
 the hollow trunks of the decayed trees, but she 
 held on along the footpath into which the wide 
 road through the Ravine of Plums had diminished. 
 She was not retarded, like Nerina, by the water 
 which the clumps of eglantine, honeysuckle, privet, 
 box, and tall walnut and chestnut trees, shook 
 down upon her in drenching showers. Soon her 
 clothes were clinging to her limbs, while her 
 streaming curls were straight as Nerina's, and
 
 THE CLEARING IN THE WOOD. 213 
 
 glistened mth countless drops, better representing 
 heavy tears than sparkling diamonds. 
 
 But she had reached her destination — a clearing 
 in the wood, where a few days before she had seen 
 Michel Sart marking some of the gigantic beeches, 
 the pride of the old De Fayes, now sentenced to 
 the woodman's axe. Here her fitful mind con- 
 jured up a great contrast : — the Chevalier walking 
 beside her jauntily, courting her triflingly, touching 
 her lightly, as a thing which belonged to him, to 
 take or to leave at pleasure ; and Michel Sart, 
 with his leonine face all moved as she entered 
 his mother's auberge ; his bashful lips pressed like 
 a devotee's to her chain ; his reverential walk with 
 her to the conciergerie, as her champion and de- 
 fendant, not dreaming of being her equal. 
 
 If there was a human being in the world who 
 could do anything for her it was Michel Sart. 
 If there was a human being who would risk every- 
 thing for her, it must still be this same Michel Sart. 
 
 She dropped down on the root of a tree in 
 the chill, shady place which the sun had not yet 
 penetrated and lighted up; where the lizards were
 
 ai4 CITOYKNNK JATO^'VllNK. 
 
 Still below the stones, aiul the dragon-flies in the 
 loops of the long grass. There she sat perched 
 like a wlnte dove ; tor. poor child ! she >\^s all in 
 white, as if dressed tor the service of the Virgin. 
 She had not half an hour to >rait. Maitre Michel's 
 bic: fiuiire came swincinc; alone, leisurelv in the 
 opposite direction. She did not give him time 
 to discover her ; she started up, flew to him, and 
 clasped her hands before him. Her moorland 
 eyes had assumed the look which such eyes are 
 said to take when excited or angry : the sparkling 
 pupils became detached, and seemed to strike like 
 balls. 
 
 *' Maitre Michel, save me ! I have come to 
 you. Be my deliverer. And if that is impossible, 
 I s;\y to you. kill me : I kno>\ you will put me 
 out of pain gently." 
 
 He stood thunderstruck. He thoui^ht the whole 
 scene was a phantasm, that his brain w^is on fire, 
 and that he was no longer qualified for any place 
 but a cell in a G(\fs-Mwst\ in consequence of 
 his insane passion for Monsieur's daughter. Even 
 after he had recovered himselt'. :md could believe
 
 A DEATH-BLOW. 
 
 his eyes, Jacqueline, draggled and dishevelled as 
 she was, was not simply Mademoiselle to him, but 
 an angel- 
 Michel Sart had heard something of Jacqueline's 
 immediate departure with the Lussacs, and putting 
 that and her betrothal to the Chevalier together, 
 he had settled (though a rumour had also reached 
 him that the family alliance was to be relinquished) 
 that the marriage in which he was so much in- 
 terested would be celebrated speedily, probably 
 as soon as the travellers had reached a secure 
 spot, — in some foreign ambassador's chapel, or by 
 an emigrant priest in a private house. And this 
 comiction was a death-blow to any selfishness in 
 his worship. 
 
 But as it happened, he had not apprehended the 
 true bearings of the case, for, notwithstanding all, 
 here was Mademoiselle come to him in the deepest 
 sorrow. 
 
 Only one thing was clear, and it was soothing 
 and thrilling beyond description to the true, long- 
 suffering heart : ^lademoiselle came to him, she 
 asked him to help her. "What is it, my Made-
 
 2l6 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 moiselle ? But compose yourself ; trust me. 
 What ails you, my young lady ? Saints I how wet 
 you are ! You will get your death of cold. Come 
 back to the Tour ; let Babette make a crackling fire 
 instantly." 
 
 " No, Michel, never ! I will never go back 
 unless you can save me. I say to you, Michel, 
 kill me with one blow, but do not send me back." 
 And then she told her story, sobbing and WTinging 
 her hands, and supporting herself on her servant's 
 arm : how Monsieur and Madame were sending 
 her away ; how she did not care whom the Cheva- 
 lier married, but she could not dwell with him and 
 Madame de Croi ; how nobody felt for her ; and 
 how even some, who ought to have cared for her, 
 philosophised, and entertained themselves with her 
 sufferings. 
 
 Michel Sart wiped his forehead as he sustained 
 her tenderly. " Have patience, my Mademoiselle. 
 Perhaps you deceive yourself It is to me incre- 
 dible. Madman ! robber ! villain ! " It was a 
 bewildering light that broke on Michel Sart in the 
 hollow of the bocage, in the cool silvery blue of
 
 " NOBODY SAVE YOU." 217 
 
 the morning — a terrible temptation that met him 
 there. And it was all the more terrible that he 
 could not tell how far the strange chances of these 
 times made it lawful for him to protect Jacqueline 
 from what appeared wicked injury and insult, or 
 how far it would be possible for him to deliver her 
 from the darkening perils of the advancing Revo- 
 lution, mthout yielding to the temptation. 
 
 " Mademoiselle Jacqueline," he said, " I would 
 die for you with all my heart ; but my dying would 
 do you no good. You would only feel the want of 
 me to watch over you and wait upon you." Maitre 
 Michel hesitated, and his voice fell. He was manly 
 and modest ; he recoiled from the notion of taking 
 advantage of her and wounding her afresh ; he did 
 not know how he could explain himself " Made- 
 moiselle, do you not remember that I am only the 
 aubergiste's son and Monsieur's registrar ?" he 
 whispered, hurriedly. 
 
 " Yes, yes, Maitre Michel ; but I have nobody 
 save you," wept Jacqueline, inconsiderately and 
 incoherently, " and I thought you would do some- 
 thing for me."
 
 2l8 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 " But do you not see there is only one way?" he 
 panted. 
 
 "What way?" cried Jacqueline, \\ith asperity. 
 " O Sainte Dame ! make him tell it me." 
 
 " I dare not tell it ; you will lose all confidence 
 in me ; you will hate and despise me," Michel 
 protested, vehemently. 
 
 " No ; a hundred times no. I said, ' Kill me, 
 but don't suffer me to go back and be carriecf away 
 by those people there.' I will rather die here, 
 when I am innocent, and everybody will be sorry 
 for me, and the good God will pardon me, because 
 I asked for death rather than that the demons 
 should reign in my heart, and I live to be vile. 
 Women have died in the Revolution already ; women 
 are lying in crowds in the prisons of Paris. Oh ! 
 these are times of lamentation. Whatever it is, I 
 will bless you, Michel Sart." 
 
 " I cannot kill you, Mademoiselle ; it would not 
 be like killing myself. I do not think anything 
 could make me kill you, unless it were to put 
 you. beyond horrible wrong and suffering," de- 
 clared Michel, with desperate determination. " The
 
 A PROPOSAL. 219 
 
 angels guard you from these, though you have 
 known that Hfe is hard ! But — see you — I could 
 marry you, — forgive me for saying it, — and Mon- 
 sieur could not send away my wife. No other 
 interference on my part is possible." 
 
 Jacqueline stared at him blankly and confusedly. 
 It was not at all what she had expected. Such a 
 step was so entirely out of her calculations that 
 the alternative had not crossed her mind. What- 
 ever irregularities were in France, mesalliances, 
 in spite of Voltaire's Nanine, were hardly known. 
 Very few had recourse to such solutions of the 
 strife between Aristocrat and Republican, even 
 when marchionesses worked as day-labourers on 
 humane farmers' fields, and countesses cooked in 
 soft-hearted bankers' kitchens. Where the ancient 
 virtues of purity, fidelity, and loyalty were often 
 looked upon as bourgeois, the conventionalities 
 still prevailed with an iron rule ; and when they 
 were broken, the iron entered into the soul of the 
 offender. 
 
 Jacqueline's wan face crimsoned, and then grew 
 paler than ever. She covered her face with her
 
 220 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 hands. " What is this that I have done?" Then, 
 with her noble forbearance and consideration for 
 the feelings of others, she blamed herself and 
 spared him, at the same time deciding her fate. 
 The consideration that it was she who had com- 
 promised Michel Sart, and impelled him to his 
 proposal, had great influence over her in this 
 decision. " Michel Sart," she said, extending her 
 hand to him, " in any other circumstances it 
 would not have been fit that you should have 
 spoken such words, or that I should have listened 
 to them ; but I forced you to say them, — I, who 
 am a miserable, humiliated, distracted girl. I am 
 not worthy of you, Michel Sart, except for the 
 rank which I have forgotten in coming here to 
 you. I pray you to think twice before you repeat 
 your words. One man has resigned me ; I will 
 not take another man, whoever he may be, by 
 surprise, and induce him to sacrifice himself, to 
 
 put me in shelter. What ! you would still have 
 
 it so ? Then, Michel Sart, take me, and hide me 
 as your vn(e ; it is an honourable title ; I will for- 
 get that I have borne any other."
 
 THE RUBICON CROSSED. 221 
 
 He did not thank her, he did not oppress her 
 with his secret joy; he would still have thought 
 it sacrilege to let her have a glimpse of it. But 
 neither did he charge her to pause and count the 
 cost, as she had bidden him : he felt the time for 
 that was past ; it was too late. Whatever Jacque- 
 line forgot, neither could ever forget these words 
 in the solitary wood. In his position of her father's 
 retainer, he could no longer continue to shield 
 his young lady. He had crossed the Rubicon : 
 he must be everything to her now, or nothing. 
 
 Michel Sart, though by nature a slow man, 
 made the necessary arrangements for executing 
 their purpose rapidly ; and he made them, on this 
 the most exciting morning in his life, with fore- 
 thought and exactness. He took Jacqueline down 
 with him through the plum ravine to the hamlet. 
 The late flowers of July were all withered, and 
 the plums plucked, while the blackberries and nuts 
 were not yet ripe. No birds sang, and no little 
 girl sang with them, — 
 
 " If Henry should offer me his Paris, 
 I would not quit my dear, O gue I"
 
 222 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 No gallant Chevalier clapped his jewelled hands, 
 and looked with kind looks at his plighted 
 bride. No Babette encored rapturously. But 
 Jacqueline scarcely glanced around to miss what 
 she had lost. When she did, it was -with lack- 
 lustre eyes. 
 
 Maitre Michel was compelled to leave Jacqueline 
 at the mouth of the ravine, as he went his way 
 through the still quiet village street to the auberge. 
 She, dreading detection, and shivering with more 
 than cold, stood watching the light blue smoke 
 from the charred-wood fires which began to curl 
 out of the holes that served for chimneys in the 
 cottage roofs, and listening to the hoarse bark of 
 a dog of the people, very different from the treble 
 yelp of Nerina. But Maitre Michel was not gone 
 many minutes, when he returned in one of those 
 seated charrettes in which country people go to 
 market, with a strong work-horse yoked between 
 the trams. 
 
 It did occur to Jacqueline : " Oh, I wish he 
 had brought La Sarte, a woman like myself, a 
 good woman. She might have told me if I avoid
 
 THE peasant's CART. 223 
 
 misery by committing an inexpiable crime. My 
 parents chase me away. Assuredly I am but anti- 
 cipating their wish in thus cutting myself off for 
 ever from them and the Tour." But she did not 
 say out what was passing in her mind ; and Michel 
 had not spoken to La Sarte, it would have troubled 
 him to tell why. 
 
 Ah ! as Jacqueline said, if he had only brought 
 La Sarte. Old eyes see so much farther ; old 
 heads, grown hoary in virtue, are in a sense like the 
 little children, so much nearer heaven. But though 
 Michel Sart had not brought his mother, he had 
 brought her great red market cloak and hood to 
 wrap and muffle Jacqueline in, and wine and bread 
 to sustain her. 
 
 But Jacqueline's veins were already throbbing 
 with fever and false strength, and there was danger 
 in delay. 
 
 " I am so sorry that I have nothing better. 
 Mademoiselle," said Maitre Michel, as he lifted 
 into the peasant's cart the girl who had only 
 ridden in an allegorically painted, velvet lined 
 aristocrat's coach.
 
 224 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 " Oh ! do not think of it," Jacqueline said sin- 
 cerely. " It is to me all the same," — and so 
 indeed it would have been, had she had to trudge 
 along the road till she fell with fatigue, or mount 
 a tumbril amidst the familiar attitudes and ex- 
 pressions of the members of her class. Only the 
 sight of the axe, or the platoon of soldiers, or the 
 rapid rushing river, would have aroused her with 
 a shock and a pang. And then she might have 
 measured the trifling vantage-places of this world 
 by the starry heights above her ; her past life 
 might have lain mapped out behind her, as it 
 shows to a drowning man ; and she might have 
 seen again with clear eyes and spoken again with 
 a fluent tongue. 
 
 To accomplish a marriage between these two 
 citizens, it was necessary that Maitre Michel, ere 
 their folly could have a chance of being dis- 
 covered, should convey Jacqueline to the next 
 town of La Maille, and stand with her before the 
 mayor, marriages being already ordained civil in- 
 stitutions. After signing the contract, it depended 
 upon the private sentiments of the couple whether
 
 GOING BEFORE THE MAYOR. 225 
 
 they would then have recourse to a priest, and add 
 the Church's authority and blessing to the bond. 
 
 The Demoiselles de Faye, Jacqueline's ances- 
 tresses, had walked in a circle of nobles, over 
 flower-strewn paths, and in sweeping brocades, to 
 the village church or the family chapel, there, 
 kneeling before gold-crowned, incense-streaming 
 altars, to take the sacramental vows from the lips 
 of bishops and archbishops. But Jacqueline was 
 jolting along a rough road in a peasant's cart, 
 shrouded in an aubergiste's cloak. She was jour- 
 neying in the secrecy of the dawn, to appear like 
 a thief before a mayor, with her father's servant for 
 her bridegroom, — and all because she could not 
 conduct herself as if she had neither conscience, 
 memory, nor heart, as became her rank. 
 
 Michel Sart did not intrude himself on his 
 mistress's attention. He was a quiet man at all 
 times, a good listener, speaking to the point what 
 he did say, and only dealing with the heart of a 
 matter. And his mind might now misgive him 
 sorely; the wonderful acquisition of his treasure 
 might well be grievously overshadowed. The 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 mocking fiend " Too late !" while it urged him 
 on, might even now taunt him horribly. " False 
 servant to Monsieur," it might cry ; " usurper 
 and invader of aristocratic rights, though the As- 
 sembly has decreed all men equal ; strong man 
 profiting by a girl's weakness." 
 
 It was Jacqueline who spoke occasionally, and 
 what she did say was as if there was nothing extra- 
 ordinary in the scene and the position of the 
 actors : merely a dry remark on the pasturage, "It 
 has need of rain, has it not, Maitre Michel ? " or 
 on the vineyards, " The National Guard must be 
 set free to gather the grapes;" or on the low hills 
 bordering the horizon, "Are these the Cotes de 
 Bruyere ? " as if she were speaking in a dream. 
 And Jacqueline had not been a dozen times so far 
 from home in her whole previous history. 
 
 The sun was shining full on the walls of the 
 old town, on its single square and its few depen- 
 dent streets, its narrow houses with projecting 
 upper stories, broad spouts, and tiled roofs in- 
 dented like finger-nails. 
 
 There was no stoppage at the gate, where
 
 LA MAILLE, 22? 
 
 Michel, who was well known, was hailed by the 
 officers : " Good day, citizen, and a good market. 
 Peste I the market is not till to-morrow ; you are 
 a day in advance, citizen !" 
 
 Inside the gate were great fortified dwellings, 
 with coats of arms above the doors, more frowning 
 and formidable than the Tour de Faye. Happily 
 Jacqueline knew nobody here, but she gazed 
 up at the great houses, her thoughts recurring 
 to home : " They will have missed me at 
 Faye. They will be searching up and down ; 
 Babette the wildest. They think I have been a 
 great sinner, and that I have plunged into the 
 Mousse at Gaspard's mill-dam. I am a great 
 sinner, and it will be all the same to them as if I 
 had drowned myself. But you could not help it, 
 Maitre Michel ; so do not think of it," Jacqueline 
 begged him, with the exquisitely fantastic courtesy 
 of her high breeding. 
 
 Michel guided the charrette to the most re- 
 tired inn ; but even it had proclaimed itself 
 an auberge of the Nation, and raised a red 
 cap for a sign. He did not ask for a private
 
 228 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 room, because that would have subjected Jacque- 
 line, without the armour of assurance or experience, 
 to the curiosity, cross-questioning, and suspicion of 
 the sharp landlady while he was absent making 
 the necessary arrangements. But he and his com- 
 panion had the best seats at the table in the porch. 
 
 There sat with them a screaming politician of 
 course, a soldier in a gi-ey coat, and a market- 
 woman, with heavy gold rings on her thick broAMi 
 fingers. The last glanced more stolidly than 
 wrathfully at Jacqueline's small white hands, — her 
 face being shaded by La Sarte's hood, — and at her 
 soiled, crumpled white go^\^l. 
 
 " And how goes the hemp and the flax this year 
 over at Faye, Maitre Michel ? Oh, you were the 
 wise man to turn fanner instead of aubergiste before 
 the roads were blocked up : not but that the 
 Nation is a fine thing," — the hostess corrected her- 
 self, diplomatically, — " and the nationalists always 
 thirsty ; but we need all strings to our bow, — you 
 comprehend, Maitre Michel ? The Citoyenne eats 
 nothing," concluded the good woman, in a little 
 tone of offence at the slight to her soup.
 
 THE AUBERGE OF LA MAILLE. 229 
 
 " The Citoyenne is indisposed," Michel put her 
 off. 
 
 " My gossip has eaten her chickens in place of 
 bringing them to market," observed the market- 
 woman jocosely, stopping, with her mouth full of 
 fried potatoes, to point to her own well-filled 
 basket. 
 
 There was a laugh, for they were all in good 
 humour^ although the politician kept vociferating, 
 mechanically, " No rents, no domains ; let brothers 
 share acre by acre. If not, to the lamp-post, or to 
 the new Madame Guillotine, with every mother's 
 child of the aristocrats." 
 
 But Jacqueline trembled and quailed through 
 her stupor. She was not yet insensible to the love 
 of life, though she had bidden Michel Sart kill her, 
 thinking that she preferred death to her frenzy of 
 abasement and poignant pain. She crept close to 
 Maitre Michel ; and, through all his gnawing care 
 and self-reproach, it was sweet as heaven on earth 
 to have her pressing close to him. But even while 
 he tasted the sweetness, Michel Sart remarked a 
 gaunt-visaged, spectacled man in the long coat of
 
 230 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 a priest, with the box of a pedlar on his back, en- 
 tering the inn. He quitted Jacqueline for a minute, 
 and interchanged one or two words with the 
 stranger. " He will do our business, Mademoi- 
 selle," he whispered, on his return, " when we are 
 done with Monsieur the Mayor. He is the suc- 
 cessor of Monsieur Hubert. I guessed it. He does 
 not care what we are, but he has asked me if there 
 are any bookstalls in the town ; and I fancy also 
 he is carrying a small library on his mule, and that 
 he is his own mule when his beast feeds, lest any 
 scholar run off with his books." Michel ran on 
 in this light fashion, for him, glad of any refuge 
 from his own thoughts. " Without doubt he will 
 be very orthodox. Look up and see how he puft's 
 under the Fathers. Will he take them into the 
 church of St. Laure, which is now standing open, 
 a home for mendicants, and where no cur^ will 
 interfere with us ? Does it please Mademoiselle ? " 
 
 " As you will," answered Jacqueline, wearily. 
 
 It was only a step from the auberge to the 
 mairie, and Jacqueline traversed it with La Sarte's 
 hood pulled down over her face, and clinging
 
 MONSIEUR THE MAYOR. 231 
 
 to Michel Sail's strong arm. The mairie was 
 just opened, and two or three clerks were saunter- 
 ing across the whitewashed room, whistling and 
 staring. Monsieur the Mayor was not so de- 
 voted a public servant that he relished being 
 disturbed at his omelette and pickled herring 
 (his mother was from Alsace) to celebrate a 
 marriage. At first he sent word that the couple 
 must wait. But when he was told they could not 
 wait, and was reminded that it was business 
 hours, he appeared unceremoniously with a napkin 
 round his neck, resolved to dispose of the affair 
 as quickly as possible, and return to his unfinished 
 meal. 
 
 " Monsieur the Mayor, I have the honour to ask 
 you to celebrate a marriage between me, Michel 
 Sart, registrar to Citizen Faye, and Citoyenne 
 Jacqueline Faye, ci-devant Demoiselle de Faye, 
 and to permit two of your clerks to be witnesses 
 to the contract," said Michel, firmly. 
 
 Monsieur the Mayor stared. He had inherited 
 more than the taste for pickled herring from his 
 Alsacian mother. He was solid and phlegmatic
 
 232 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 for a Frenchman, and this morning there was a 
 call for despatch in his duties. But Michel Sart, 
 though known at the auberge and the gate, and 
 generally in La Maille, was not known to the 
 mayor, who, though a republican, was an honest 
 man, and the father of daughters. 
 
 " I do not see the face of the Citoyenne. We 
 are not accustomed to marry cloaked and hooded 
 brides," objected he, suspiciously. 
 
 A listlessness and numbness had stolen over 
 Jacqueline's faculties in spite of her fever ; but 
 she heard enough to aid Michel when he un- 
 cloaked her. Poor little girl ! what a wretched 
 object she was in the draggled white gown, the 
 train of which had been pulled out of the pocket- 
 holes, had been rent and trodden upon, and now 
 hung like a tattered banner half a yard behind her. 
 How the clerks of the mairie shrugged their 
 shoulders and marvelled ! Still the white dress 
 was bridal-like, and the dull trouble and panic in 
 her face caused her to look years older. 
 
 " Do you consent, of your free, true will, 
 Mademoiselle ahem ! — Citoyenne ? Both con-
 
 % 
 
 I 
 
 A CIVIL RITE. 233 
 
 tracting parties must fully consent," floundered 
 the mayor, as a precaution. 
 
 "Is it I? — I consent? It was I who made 
 the marriage," said Jacqueline, candidly, regard- 
 ing the mayor with her great eyes. 
 
 " Pardi ! that is more than I bargained for. I 
 asked if you consented, not if you originated the 
 alliance; but it is all the same thing, — that is, 
 if the Citizen consents, of which I presume there 
 can be no doubt," ended the mayor, with more 
 of a sneer than a gallant compliment. 
 
 His insinuation pointed to some villany. And 
 taking the wild looks and the admission of the 
 girl, in connection with the mute testimony of 
 Michel vSart's manly, trustworthy bearing, he very 
 likely settled that it was villany to be covered and 
 atoned for, rather than to be begun by this cere- 
 mony. Still it was not the part of a magistrate to 
 refuse to perform a legal rite. 
 
 A formal question and answer, and the reading 
 of a paper, to which Michel signed his name, 
 plain " Michel Sart," in the big, bold characters, 
 not of a peasant, but of a soldier, and to which
 
 234 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 Jacqueline appended her signature in the fine, 
 aristocratic Italian hand of all the demoiselles 
 of her generation, — "Jacqueline Bertrande de 
 Faye," — and the work at the mairie was done. 
 The deed was like the letter which Jacqueline 
 had ^^Titten in her chamber to the Chevalier, 
 — an accomplished fact. The subsequent prayers 
 in the desecrated church of St. Laure were, so 
 far as the law was concerned, no more than the 
 supererogatory works of good Catholics. But 
 thither, to make assurance doubly sure, went 
 the infatuated pair before the learned priest of 
 Faye. He had neither surplice nor white stole, 
 but he recited the appointed prayers in Larin ; 
 and though there was no holy water to sprinkle 
 the intended husband and wife, and to cross the 
 ring, the ring was there, and the gold and silver 
 coins. The cure blessed the ring and the coins, and 
 passed them on his book to Michel, who presented 
 the money to Jacqueline (who let it drop out of 
 her loose grasp), and, taking her passive hand, 
 put the ring on her thumb, her forefinger, and her 
 middle finger, in the name of the blessed Trinity,
 
 THE RETURN JOURNEY. 235 
 
 leaving it on the third finger with the final Amen, 
 — a seal which no power less than that of the 
 Pope of Rome could break. 
 
 The book-worm priest cared nothing for the 
 transaction, so that his manuscripts and his brown 
 tomes were safe ; and he pronounced the benedic- 
 tion with half an eye on his beloved haversack, 
 which, for the sake of space, he had in the fonn 
 of a pedlar's pack, now leaning against a pillar. 
 
 Michel had ordered the charrette to be yoked 
 and waiting near. He led his wife to it through 
 the boys of the pavement, and the women who 
 sat at work on the doorsteps. Without delay he 
 lifted her to her former seat, mounted himself, 
 and whipped the horse homeward. It was noon, 
 and the tell-tale breeze fluttered around and floated 
 away from the two whose lot in life was now so 
 strangely changed ; and who still staggered blindly 
 and stupidly after the step they had taken, for 
 which there remained no remedy. Civil marriages 
 could indeed be broken as easily as contracted, 
 by mutual consent ; but where then would be 
 honour, integrity, virginal purity of name and
 
 236 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE.' 
 
 fame? And the Church's sacraments could only 
 be unloosed by the Church. 
 
 It was yet far from sunset when Michel Sart 
 drew up with his bride in the entrance to his 
 mother's auberge of Faye. The villagers were 
 mostly at work getting in the last hay crop. 
 There had been disturbance enough all the 
 morning at the Tour, but it had not extended, 
 beyond a few guarded inquiries, to the hamlet. 
 Therefore if any one saw a cloaked figure in the 
 charrette with Michel Sart, he was at liberty to 
 suppose it was a chance countrywoman to whom 
 he, with his usual benevolence, was giving a cast 
 in his cart. 
 
 La Sarte, however, came out into the wide 
 entrance at the rattle of the wheels. "^Vhere 
 have you been, my gaillard, without telling me ? " 
 cried the old woman, with vivacity ; " so that I 
 had your dinner prepared in vain. Heaven ! it is 
 the Demoiselle you have brought back. Made- 
 moiselle, how they will rejoice themselves at the 
 Tour ! Babette was here for a second, asking if I 
 had seen you. * No,' I said. ' No ; but she must
 
 MICHEL SART's WIFE. 237 
 
 have strayed, and lost her way.' Are you very 
 tired, my poor Mademoiselle ? " 
 
 " My old woman," interrupted Michel, laying his 
 hand with unconscious heaviness on his mother's 
 shoulder, " I never heard you a chatterer before, 
 — but you help me. Say you that I have brought 
 back Mademoiselle de Faye ? No, my mother, I 
 have brought back my wife from the mairie and 
 the church of St. Laure at La Maille." 
 
 " Michel, what have you done ? Oh ! you hurt 
 me ! " cried his mother, writhing from underneath 
 his heavy hand. Her fine cut face, which had 
 been unusually bright at seeing him again after 
 an unaccountable absence, that could yet bear 
 no unwelcome interpretation, because it was her 
 brave, big Michel who was concerned, grew hag- 
 gard as from a deadly blow, taking all in at a 
 word, a glance. There was brought home to her 
 the forfeited trust, the utterly unequal, imprudent 
 marriage, and, not least, the grievous slight, in the 
 secrecy of the act, to her, his mother. 
 
 " Forgive me, my mother," entreated Michel, 
 with a sorrowful humility and contrition in the
 
 238 CITOYENNE JACQUELINE. 
 
 midst of his success. " Consider, the deed is done 
 and cannot be undone ; and, because you are a 
 good woman and my true mother, spare her." 
 
 La Sarte made a great effort : " It is done, my 
 son ; I say no more. I leave you to God and to 
 the saints. May they have mercy on your frailty. 
 I welcome my daughter. She is my daughter, — 
 that is all now." 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 PRINTED BY J. AND W. RIDER, LONDON.
 
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