The castle of St. Renan, like the dwellings of many of the nobles of Bretagne and Gascony, was a superb old pile of solid masonry towering above the huge cliffs which guard the whole of that iron coast with its gigantic masses of rude masonry. So close did it stand to the verge of these precipitous crags on its seaward face, that whenever the wind from the westward blew angrily and in earnest, the spray of the tremendous billows which rolled in from the wide Atlantic, and burst in thunder at the foot of those stern ramparts, was dashed so high by the collision that it would often fall in salt, bitter rain, upon the esplanade above, and dim the diamond-paned casements with its cold mists.
For leagues on either side, as the spectator stood upon the terrace above and gazed out on the expanse of the everlasting ocean, nothing was to be seen but the salient angles or deep recesses formed by the dark, gray cliffs, unrelieved by any spot of verdure, or even by that line of silver sand at their base, which often intervenes between the rocks of an iron coast and the sea. Here, however, there was no such intermediate step visible; the black face of the rocks sunk sheer and abrupt into the water, which, by its dark-green hue, indicated to the practised eye, that it was deep and scarcely fathomable to the very shore.
In places, indeed, where huge caverns opening in front to the vast ocean, which had probably hollowed them out of the earth-fast rock in the course of succeeding ages, yawned in the mimicry of Gothic arches, the entering tide would rush, as it were, into the bowels of the land, roaring and groaning in those strange subterranean dungeons like some strong prisoner,250 Typhon, Enceladus, or Ephialtes, in his immortal agony. One of these singular vaults opened right in the base of the rock on the summit of which stood the castle of St. Renan, and into this the billows rushed with rapidity so tumultuous and terrible that the fishers of that stormy coast avowed that a vortex was created in the bay by their influx or return seaward, which could be perceived sensibly at a league’s distance; and that to be caught in it, unless the wind blew strong and steadily off land, was sure destruction. However that might be, it is certain that this great subterranean tunnel extended far beneath the rocks into the interior of the land, for at the distance of nearly two miles from the castle, directly eastward, in the bottom of a dark, wooded glen, which runs for many miles nearly parallel to the coast, there is a deep, rocky well, or natural cavity, of a form nearly circular, which, when the tide is up, is filled to overflowing with bitter sea-water, on which the bubbles and foam-flakes show the obstacles against which it must have striven in its landward journey. At low water, on the contrary, “the Devil’s Drinking-Cup,” for so it is named by the superstitious peasantry of the neighborhood, presents nothing to the eye but a deep, black abyss, which the countryfolks, of course, assert to be bottomless. But, in truth, its depth is immense, as can easily be perceived, if you cast a stone into it, by the length of time during which it may be heard thundering from side to side, until the reverberated roar of its descent appears to die away, not because it has ceased, but because the sound is too distant to be conveyed to human ears.
On this side of the castle everything differs as much as it is possible to conceive from the view to the seaward, which is grim and desolate as any ocean scenery the world over. Few sails are ever seen on those dangerous coasts; all vessels bound to the mouth of the Garonne, or southward to the shores of Spain, giving as wide a berth as possible to its frightful reefs251 and inaccessible crags, which to all their other terrors add that, from the extraordinary prevalence of the west wind on that part of the ocean, of being, during at least three parts of the year, a lee shore.
Inland, however, instead of the bleak and barren surface of the ever-stormy sea, indented into long rolling ridges and dark tempestuous hollows, all was varied and smiling, and gratifying to every sense given by nature for his good to man. Immediately from the brink of the cliffs the land sloped downward southwardly and to the eastward, so that it was bathed during all the day, except a few late evening hours, in the fullest radiance of the sunbeams. Over this immense sloping descent the eye could range from the castle battlements for miles and miles, until the rich green champaign was lost in the blue haze of distance. And it was green and gay over the whole of that vast expanse, here with the dense and unpruned foliage of immemorial forests, well stocked with every species of game, from the gaunt wolf and the tusky boar, to the fleet roebuck and the timid hare; here with the trim and smiling verdure of rich orchards, in which nestled around their old, gray shrines the humble hamlets of the happy peasantry; and everywhere with the long intersecting curves, and sinuous irregular lines of the old hawthorn hedges, thick set with pollard trees and hedgerow timber, which make the whole country, when viewed from a height, resemble a continuous tract of intermingled glades and coppices, and which have procured for an adjoining district the well-known, and in after-days far celebrated name of the Bocage.
Immediately around the castle, on the edge as it were of this beautiful and almost boundless slope, there lay a large and well-kept garden in the old French style, laid out in a succession of terraces, bordered by balustrades of marble, adorned at frequent intervals by urns and statues, and rendered accessible252 each from the next below by flights of ornamented steps of regular and easy elevation; pleached bowery walks, and high clipped hedges of holly, yew, and hornbeam, were the usual decorations of such a garden, and here they abounded to an extent that would have gladdened the heart of an admirer of the tastes and habits of the olden time. In addition to these, however, there were a profusion of flowers of the choicest kinds known or cultivated in those days—roses and lilies without number, and honeysuckles, and the sweet-scented clematis, climbing in bountiful luxuriance over the numberless seats and bowers which everywhere tempted to repose.
Below this beautiful garden a wide expanse of smooth, green turf, dotted here and there with majestic trees, and at rarer intervals diversified with tall groves and verdant coppices, covered the whole descent of the first hill to the dim wooded dell which has been mentioned as containing the singular cavity known throughout the country as the “Devil’s Drinking-Cup.” This dell, which was the limit of count de St. Renan’s demesnes in that direction, was divided from the park by a ragged paling many feet in height, and of considerable strength, framed of rough timber from the woods, the space within being appropriated to a singular and choice breed of deer, imported from the East by one of the former counts, who, being of an adventurous and roving disposition, had sojourned for some time in the French settlements of Hindostan. Beyond this dell again, which was defended on the outer side by a strong and lofty wall of brick, all overrun with luxuriant ivy, the ground rose in a small rounded knoll, or hillock of small extent, richly wooded, and crowned by the gray turrets and steep flagged roof of the old chateau d’Argenson.
This building, however, was as much inferior in size and stateliness to the grand feudal fortalice of St. Renan, as the little round-topped hill on which it stood, so slightly elevated253 above the face of the surrounding country as to detract nothing, at least in appearance, from its general slope to the southeastward, was lower than the great rock-bound ridge from which it overlooked the territories, all of which had in distant times obeyed the rules of its almost princely dwellers.
The sun of a lovely evening in the latter part of July had already sunk so far down in the west that only one half of its great golden disk was visible above the well-defined, dark outline of the seaward-crags, which, relieved by the glowing radiance of the whole western sky, stood out massive and solid like a huge purple wall, and seemed so close at hand that the spectator could almost persuade himself that he had but to stretch out his arm, in order to touch the great barrier, which was in truth several miles distant.
Over the crest, and through the gaps of this continuous line of highland, the long level rays streamed down in the slope in one vast flood of golden glory, which was checkered only by the interminable length of shadows which were projected from every single tree, or scattered clump, from every petty elevation of the soil, down the soft glimmering declivity.
Three years had elapsed since the frightful fate of the unhappy lord of Kerguelen, and the various incidents, which in some sort took their origin from the nature of his crime and its consequence, affecting in the highest degree the happiness of the families of St. Renan and D’Argenson.
Three years had elapsed—three years! That is a little space in the annals of the world, in the life of nations, nay, in the narrow records of humanity. Three years of careless happiness, three years of indolent and tranquil ease, unmarked by any great event, pass over our heads unnoted, and, save in the gray hairs which they scatter, leave no memorial of their transit, more than the sunshine of a happy summer day. They are, they are gone, they are forgotten.
254 Even three years of gloom and sorrow, of that deep anguish which at the time the sufferer believes to be indelible and everlasting, lag on their weary, desolate course, and when they too are over-passed, and he looks back upon their transit, which seemed so painfully protracted, and, lo! all is changed, and their flight also is now but as an ended minute.
And yet, what strange and sudden changes altering the affairs of men, changing the hearts of mortals, yea, revolutionizing their whole intellects, and overturning their very natures—more than the devastating earthquake or the destroying lava transforms the face of the everlasting earth—have not been wrought, and again well nigh forgotten within that little period.
Three years had passed, I say, over the head of Raoul de Douarnenez—the three most marked and memorable years in the life of every young man—and from the ingenuous and promising stripling, he had now become in every respect a man, and a bold and enterprising man, moreover, who had seen much and struggled much, and suffered somewhat—without which there is no gain of his wisdom here below—in his transit, even thus far, over the billows and among the reefs and quicksands of the world.
His father had kept his promise to that loved son in all things, nor had the sieur d’Argenson failed of his plighted faith. The autumn of that year, the spring of which saw Kerguelen die in unutterable agony, saw Raoul de Douarnenez the contracted and affianced husband of the lovely and beloved Melanie.
All that was wanted now to render them actually man and wife, to create between them that bond which, alone of mortal ties, man can not sunder, was the ministration of the church’s holiest rite, and that, in wise consideration of their tender years, was postponed until the termination of the third summer.
During the interval it was decided that Raoul, as was the custom of the world in those days, especially among the nobility,255 and most especially among the nobility of France, should bear arms in active service, and see something of the world abroad, before settling down into the easier duties of domestic life. The family of St. Renan, since the days of that ancestor who has been already mentioned as having sojourned in Pondicherry, had never ceased to maintain some relations with the East Indian possessions of France, and a relation of the house in no very remote degree was at this time military governor of the French East Indies, which were then, previous to the unexampled growth of the British empire in the East, important, flourishing, and full of future promise.
Thither, then, it was determined that Raoul should go in search of adventures, if not of fortune, in the spring following the signature of his marriage contract with the young demoiselle d’Argenson. And, consequently, after a winter passed in quiet domestic happiness on the noble estates, whereon the gentry of Brittany were wont to reside in almost patriarchal state—a winter, every day of which the young lovers spent in company, and at every eve of which they separated more in love than they were at meeting in the morning—Raoul set sail in a fine frigate, carrying several companies of the line, invested with the rank of ensign, and proud to bear the colors of his king, for the shores of the still half-fabulous oriental world.
Three years had passed, and the boy had returned a man, the ensign had returned a colonel, so rapid was the promotion of the nobility of the sword in the French army, under the ancient regime; and—greatest change of all, ay, and saddest—the viscount of Douarnenez had returned count de St. Renan. An infectious fever, ere he had been one year absent from the land of his birth, and had cut off his noble father in the very pride and maturity of his intellectual manhood; nor had his mother lingered long behind him whom she had ever loved so256 fondly. A low, slow fever, caught from that beloved patient whom she had so affectionately nurtured, was as fatal to her, though not so suddenly, as it had proved to her good lord; and when their son returned to France full of honors achieved, and gay anticipations for the future, he found himself an orphan, the lord in lonely and unwilling state of the superb demesnes which had so long called his family their owners.
There never in the world was a kinder heart than that which beat in the breast of the young soldier, and never was a family more strictly bound together by all the kindly influences which breed love and confidence, and domestic happiness among all the members of it, than that of St. Renan. There had been nothing austere or rigid in the bringing up of the gallant boy; the father, who had at one hour been the tutor and the monitor, was at the next the comrade and the playmate, and at all times the true and trusted friend, while the mother had been ever the idolized and adored protectress, and the confidante of all the innocent schemes and artless joys of boyhood.
Bitter, then, was the blow stricken to the very heart of the young soldier, when the first tidings which he received, on landing in his loved France, was the intelligence that those—all those, with but one exception—whom he most tenderly and truly loved, all those to whom he looked up with affectionate trust for advice and guidance, all those on whom he relied for support in his first trials of young manhood, were cold and silent in the all-absorbing tomb.
To him there was no hot, feverish ambition prompting him to grasp joyously the absolute command of his great heritage. In his heart there was none of that fierce yet sordid avarice which finds compensation for the loss of the scarce-lamented dead in the severance of the dearest natural bonds, in the possession of wealth, or the promise of power. Nor was this all, for, in truth, so well had Raoul de Douarnenez been brought257 up, and so completely had wisdom grown up with his growth, that when, at the age of nineteen years, he found himself endowed with the rank and revenues of one of the highest and wealthiest peers of France, and in all but mere name his own master—for the abbé de Chastellar, his mother’s brother, who had been appointed his guardian by his father’s will, scarcely attempted to exercise even a nominal jurisdiction over him—he felt himself more than ever at a loss, deprived as he was, when he most needed it, of his best natural counsellor; and instead of rejoicing, was more than half inclined to lament over the almost absolute self-control with which he found himself invested.
Young hearts are naturally true themselves, and prone to put trust in others; and it is rarely, except in a few dark and morose and gloomy natures, which are exceptions to the rule and standard of human nature, that man learns to be distrustful and suspicious of his kind, even after experience of fickleness and falsehood may have in some sort justified suspicions, until his head has grown gray.
And this in an eminent degree was the case with Raoul de St. Renan, for henceforth he must be called by the title which his altered state had conferred upon him.
His natural disposition was as trustful and unsuspicious as it was artless and ingenuous; and from his early youth all the lessons which had been taught him by his parents tended to preserve in him unblemished and unbroken that bright gem, which once shattered never can be restored, confidence in the truth, the probity, the goodness of mankind.
Some ruder schooling he had met in the course of his service in the eastern world—he had already learned that men, and—harder knowledge yet to gain—women also, can feign friendship, ay, and love, where neither have the least root in the heart, for purposes the vilest, ends the most sordid. He258 had learned that bosom friends can be secret foes; that false loves can betray; and yet he was not disenchanted with humanity, he had not even dreamed of doubting, because he had fallen among worldly-minded flatterers and fickle-hearted coquettes, that absolute friendship and unchangeable love may exist, even in this evil world, stainless and incorruptible among all the changes and chances of this mortal life.
If he had been deceived, he had attributed the failure of his hopes hitherto to the right cause—the fallacy of his own judgment, and the error of his own choice; and the more he had been disappointed the more firmly had he relied on what he felt certain could not change, the affection of his parents, the love of his betrothed bride.
On the very instant of his landing he found himself shipwrecked in his first hope; and on his earliest interview with his uncle, in Paris, he had the agony—the utter and appalling agony to undergo—of hearing that in the only promise which he had flattered himself was yet left to him, he was destined in all probability to undergo a deeper, deadlier disappointment.
If Melanie d’Argenson had been a lovely girl, the good abbé said, when she was budding out of childhood into youth, so utterly had she outstripped all the promise of her girlhood, that no words could describe, nor imagination suggest to itself the charms of the mature yet youthful woman. There was no other beauty named, when loveliness was the theme, throughout all France, than that of the young betrothed of Raoul de Douarnenez. And that which was so loudly and so widely bruited abroad, could not fail to reach the ever open, ever greedy ears of the vile and sensual tyrant who sat on the throne of France, at that time heaping upon his people that load of suffering and anguish which was in after-times to be avenged so bitterly and bloodily upon the innocent heads of his unhappy descendants.
259 Louis had, moreover, heard years before, nay, looked upon the nascent loveliness of Melanie d’Argenson, and, with that cold-blooded voluptuary, to look on beauty was to lust after it, to lust after it was to devote all the powers his despotism could command to win it.
Hence as the abbé de Chastellar soon made his unfortunate nephew and pupil comprehend, a settled determination had arisen on the part of the odious despot to break off the marriage of the lovely girl with the young soldier whom it was well known that she fondly loved, and to have her the wife of one who would be less tender of his honor, and less reluctant to surrender, or less difficult to be deprived of a bride, too transcendently beautiful to bless the arms of a subject, even if he were the noblest of the noble.
All this was easily arranged, the base father of Melanie was willing enough to sell his exquisite and virtuous child to the splendid infamy of becoming a king’s paramour, and the yet baser chevalier de la Rochederrien was eager to make the shameful negotiation easy, and to sanction it to the eyes of the willingly hoodwinked world, by giving his name and rank to a woman, who was to be his wife but in name, and whose charms and virtue he had precontracted to make over to another.
The infamous contract had been agreed upon by the principal actors; nay, the wages of the iniquity had been paid in advance. The sieur d’Argenson had grown into the comte of the same, with the governorship of the town of Morlaix added, by the revenues of which to support his new dignities; while the chevalier de la Rochederrien had become no less a personage than the marquis de Ploermel, with a captaincy in the musquetaires, and Heaven knows what beside of honorary title and highly-gilded sinecure, whereby to reconcile him to such depth of sordid infamy as the meanest galley-slave could have scarce undertaken as the price of exchange between his fetters260 and his oars, and the great noble’s splendor.
Such were the tidings which greeted Raoul on his return from honorable service to his king—service for which he was thus repaid; and, before he had even time to reflect on the consequences, or to comprehend the anguish thus entailed upon him, his eyes were opened instantly to comprehension of two or three occurrences which previously he had been unable to explain to himself, or even to guess at their meaning by any exercise of ingenuity. The first of these was the singular ignorance in which he had been kept of the death of his parents by the government officials in the East, and the very evident suppression of the letters which, as his uncle informed him, had been despatched to summon him with all speed homeward.
The second was the pertinacity with which he had been thrust forward, time after time, on the most desperate and deadly duty—a pertinacity so striking, that, eager as the young soldier was, and greedy of any chance of winning honor, it had not failed to strike him that he was frequently ordered on duty of a nature which, under ordinary circumstances, is performed by volunteers.
Occurrences of this kind are soon remarked in armies, and it had early become a current remark in the camp that to serve in Raoul’s company was a sure passport either to promotion or to the other world. But to such an extent was this carried, that when time after time that company had been decimated, even the bravest of the brave experienced an involuntary sinking of the heart when informed that they were transferred or even promoted into those fatal ranks.
Nor was this all, for twice it had occurred, once when he was a captain in command of a company, and again when he had a whole regiment under his orders as its colonel, that his superiors, after detaching him on duty so desperate that it might almost be regarded as a forlorn hope, had entirely neglected261 either to support or recall him, but had left him exposed to almost inevitable destruction.
In the first instance, not a man whether officer or private of his company had escaped, with the exception of himself. And he was found, when all was supposed to be over, in the last ditch of the redoubt which he had been ordered to defend to the uttermost, after it had been retaken, with his colors wrapped around his breast, still breathing a little, although so cruelly wounded that his life was long despaired of, and was only saved at last by the vigor and purity of an unblemished and unbroken constitution. On the second occasion, he had been suffered to contend alone for three entire days with but a single battalion against a whole oriental army; but then, that which had been intended to destroy him had won him deathless fame, for by a degree of skill in handling his little force, which had by no means been looked for in so young an officer, although his courage and his conduct were both well known, he had succeeded in giving a bloody repulse to the overwhelming masses of the enemy, and when at length he was supported—doubtless when support was deemed too late to avail him aught—by a few hundred native horse and a few guns, he had converted that check into a total and disastrous route.
So palpable was the case that although Raoul suspected nothing of the reasons which had led to that disgraceful affair, he had demanded an inquiry int............