URBAINE.

From the Mediterranean the warm, luscious breezes of the south sweep up to where Montpellier stands ere they pass the city and waft to the summits of the Cévennes the perfume of the flowers and the odours of the rich fruits which grow upon the shores of the beauteous sea. And from Montpellier itself, from the old Place de Peyrou, may be obtained a view that is unsurpassed both in its beauty and in its power of recalling to the memory the loathsome cruelties which, perpetrated in the days of Louis the Great King, have smirched forever that beauty. Far away, too, where rise the tips of the mountains of Ventoux on the confines of fair Provence, the Alps begin to show--those Alps over which the weary feet of escaping Protestants had been dragged as their owners sought the sanctuary of a more free land. Below lies a beautiful valley watered on one side by the Loire and on another by the Rh?ne, watered once also by the blood and the tears of the heartbroken dwellers therein. A valley teeming once again with the fruits of the earth, and with now all signs erased of the devastation which he, whose statue stands in that Place de Peyrou, caused to be spread around; erased from human sight, but not from human recollection.

Upon the other side lies Cette, of scant importance in these times as seacoast towns and harbours are reckoned, and dead and done with--lies there basking and smiling beneath the warm sun that shines alike in winter as in summer. Cette, the place which, in the minds of the forefathers of those who now dwell there, bore the blackest, most hated name of all the villages bordering the blue sea. For here the galleys harboured, here fathers and husbands, brothers and sons, were flung to horrors and miseries and the life of an earthly hell--a hell whose pangs knew no assuagement till death, most welcome, brought release.

From where Baville sat in his open window Cette could be seen; the harbour in which half a dozen of those galleys lay waiting for their victims. On a table before him were papers for the sending of other victims to the prisons of the surrounding towns; also the sentences of death allotted to many rebels, death in hideous forms. Some to be hung upon the bridges of their own town, some to be broken on the wheel, some to be burned in market places, some to have their forefingers struck off (a form of punishment peculiar to the neighbourhood and to those who had been captured in the present uprisings), and afterward to be hanged.

Also on tables at either side of him were orders to the colonels of local regiments to place themselves under direction of Julien; orders to others to provide forage and stabling for so many horses and accommodation for so many men; orders, too, for provisions and forage to be sent in to Montpellier and N?mes for the victualling of the forces quartered there. And to all and every one of these he had already affixed his signature, "Baville"--a signature which here carried as much authority as if, instead, it had been "Louis."

Yet it was not about these papers that Nicholas de Lamoignon de Baville, Comte de Launai-Courson, Seigneur de Bris, Vaugrigneuse, Chavagne, Lamothe-Chaudemier, Beuxes and other places, as well as Conseiller d'Etat, Intendant de Justice, polices et finances--to give him his full names and titles--was thinking on this bright morning, nor on them that his eyes rested. Instead, upon a far smaller thing--a thing on which one would scarcely have thought he would have wasted a moment's attention--a little plain cornelian seal which he was turning over and over in his hands and regarding carefully through a small magnifying glass.

"Strange," he muttered to himself, "strange if, after all, after years of meditation and inquiry, I should thus have lit upon the clew! Strange, strange!"

He struck, as thus he mused, upon a little bronze gong that stood by his side and ready to his hand, and a moment later the door was opened and a man of about his own age came into the room in answer to the summons; a man whose plain garb, made of the local N?mes serge, and wig à trois marteaux, proclaimed almost with certainty that he was a clerk or secretary.

"Casalis," the Intendant said, he having put the seal beneath some papers ere the other entered, "there is in the library a book entitled, Devises et blasons de la Noblesse Fran?aise, is there not?"

"There is, your Excellency. Prepared a year ago by Monsieur le Comte----"

"Precisely. Fetch it, if you please."

The man retired, and, after being absent some few moments, came back, bearing in his hand a large, handsome volume bound in pale brown morocco, the back and sides covered with fine gold tooling and with Baville's crest stamped also on each side--a splendid book, if its contents corresponded with its exterior.

"Shall I find any particular entry for your Excellency?" the man asked, pausing with the volume in his hand.

"No, leave it. I may desire to look into it presently."

Left alone, however, Baville looked into it at once, pausing at the names under "B" to regard with some complacency his own crest and arms beautifully reproduced in colours on vellum.

Then he turned over a vast number of leaves in a mass, arriving at the letter "T," and re-turning back to "R," finding thereby the page which was headed "De Rochebazon." And emblazoned in the middle of the vellum in red, gold, and blue was the coat of arms of that great family; above it was the crest of the house, on a rock proper a hawk with wings elevated--the motto "Gare."

"So," said Baville to himself, "he was of noble family, was a de Rochebazon. Had I looked at this book when the Comte de Paysac sent it to me, compared it with the seal, I should have known such was the case a year ago. Yet what use even if I had done so? What use? One can not recall--undo the past."

And Baville--even Baville, the "tiger of Languedoc," as he had been termed--sighed.

He took next the seal from the papers where he had pushed it and compared it with the Comte de Paysac's book, though even as he did so he knew there was no need for such comparison; the crest upon it was as familiar to him as his own. Then he muttered:

"It is pity Monsieur le Comte did not make his work even more complete. Some information would be useful. As to whom he married, to wit, as to whom this young man may be, who is related to the late princess. Also as to the family of the princess--I should know that. I would the count were still alive."

As thus he mused a shadow fell across the path that wound before his open window. From behind the orange tubs which formed a grove in front of that window there stepped out a girl who, seeing him there, smiled and said, "Bon jour, mon père." Then came on to the window and, leaning against the open frame, asked if she might come in, might bring him some flowers she had plucked to decorate his cabinet.

"Always, Urbaine," he said, "always," and he put out his hand as though to draw her to him. "Come in, come in."

Had this been a darkened room, a sombre cabinet into which no ray of sunlight ever stole, instead of being, in truth, a bright, gay apartment, the presence of the girl whom he addressed as Urbaine would have made it cheerful, have seemed to bring the needed sunlight to it; for, as she stood there, her long white dress giving fresh radiance to the room, her fair hair irradiated by the beams of light that glinted in through the dark-green leaves of the orange trees, she seemed to cast even more lustre around, making even the grave, serious face of the Intendant look less severe. In her hands she carried a mass of roses and ferns on which the dew sparkled, also some large white lilies.

"Come, Urbaine," he said to her, "come, sit on your accustomed seat. When you are at Versailles you will have no father's knee to sit upon," and, caressingly, he drew her toward him, while she, sitting there, arranged the flowers into ............