Beyond the Reissouse, and along its banks, lay, to the right and left of the Château des Noires-Fontaines, the village of Montagnac and Saint-Just, dominated further on by that of Ceyzeriat. Behind this latter hamlet stretched the graceful3 outlines of the hills of the Jura, above the summits of which could be distinguished4 the blue crests5 of the mountains of Bugey, which seemed to be standing6 on tiptoe in order to peer curiously7 over their younger sisters’ shoulder at what was passing in the valley of the Ain.
It was in full view of this ravishing landscape that Sir John awoke. For the first time in his life, perhaps, the morose8 and taciturn Englishman smiled at nature. He fancied himself in one of those beautiful valleys of Thessaly celebrated9 by Virgil, beside the sweet slopes of Lignon sung by Urfé, whose birthplace, in spite of what the biographers say, was falling into ruins not three miles from the Château des Noires-Fontaines. He was roused by three light raps at his door. It was Roland who came to see how he had passed the night. He found him radiant as the sun playing among the already yellow leaves of the chestnuts10 and the lindens.
“Oh! oh! Sir John,” cried Roland, “permit me to congratulate you. I expected to find you as gloomy as the poor monks11 of the Chartreuse, with their long white robes, who used to frighten me so much in my childhood; though, to tell the truth, I was never easily frightened. Instead of that I find you in the midst of this dreary12 October, as smiling as a morn of May.”
“My dear Roland,” replied Sir John, “I am an orphan13; I lost my mother at my birth and my father when I was twelve years old. At an age when children are usually sent to school, I was master of a fortune producing a million a year; but I was alone in the world, with no one whom I loved or who loved me. The tender joys of family life are completely unknown to me. From twelve to eighteen I went to Cambridge, but my taciturn and perhaps haughty14 character isolated15 me from my fellows. At eighteen I began to travel. You who scour16 the world under the shadow of your flag; that is to say, the shadow of your country, and are stirred by the thrill of battle, and the pride of glory, cannot imagine what a lamentable17 thing it is to roam through cities, provinces, nations, and kingdoms simply to visit a church here, a castle there; to rise at four in the morning at the summons of a pitiless guide, to see the sun rise from Rigi or Etna; to pass like a phantom18, already dead, through the world of living shades called men; to know not where to rest; to know no land in which to take root, no arm on which to lean, no heart in which to pour your own! Well, last night, my dear Roland, suddenly, in an instant, in a second, this void in my life was filled. I lived in you; the joys I seek were yours. The family which I never had, I saw smiling around you. As I looked at your mother I said to myself: ‘My mother was like that, I am sure.’ Looking at your sister, I said: ‘Had I a sister I could not have wished her otherwise.’ When I embraced your brother, I thought that I, too, might have had a child of that age, and thus leave something behind me in the world, whereas with the nature I know I possess, I shall die as I have lived, sad, surly with others, a burden to myself. Ah! you are happy, Roland! you have a family, you have fame, you have youth, you have that which spoils nothing in a man—you have beauty. You want no joys. You are not deprived of a single delight. I repeat it, Roland, you are a happy man, most happy!”
“Good!” said Roland. “You forget my aneurism, my lord.”
Sir John looked at Roland incredulously. Roland seemed to enjoy the most perfect health.
“Your aneurism against my million, Roland,” said Lord Tanlay, with a feeling of profound sadness, “providing that with this aneurism you give me this mother who weeps for joy on seeing you again; this sister who faints with delight at your return; this child who clings upon your neck like some fresh young fruit to a sturdy young tree; this château with its dewy shade, its river with its verdant19 flowering banks, these blue vistas20 dotted with pretty villages and white-capped belfries graceful as swans. I would welcome your aneurism, Roland, and with death in two years, in one, in six months; but six months of stirring, tender, eventful and glorious life!”
Roland laughed in his usual nervous manner.
“Ah!” said he, “so this is the tourist, the superficial traveller, the Wandering Jew of civilization, who pauses nowhere, gauges21 nothing, judges everything by the sensation it produces in him. The tourist who, without opening the doors of these abodes22 where dwell the fools we call men, says: ‘Behind these walls is happiness!’ Well, my dear friend, you see this charming river, don’t you? These flowering meadows, these pretty villages? It is the picture of peace, innocence23 and fraternity; the cycle of Saturn24, the golden age returned; it is Eden, Paradise! Well, all that is peopled by beings who have flown at each other’s throats. The jungles of Calcutta, the sedges of Bengal are inhabited by tigers and panthers not one whit1 more ferocious25 or cruel than the denizens26 of these pretty villages, these dewy lawns, and these charming shores. After lauding27 in funeral celebrations the good, the great, the immortal28 Marat, whose body, thank God! they cast into the common sewer29 like carrion30 that he was, and always had been; after performing these funeral rites31, to which each man brought an urn2 into which he shed his tears, behold32! our good Bressans, our gentle Bressans, these poultry-fatteners, suddenly decided33 that the Republicans were all murderers. So they murdered them by the tumbrelful to correct them of that vile34 defect common to savage35 and civilized36 man—the killing37 his kind. You doubt it? My dear fellow, on the road to Lons-le-Saulnier they will show you, if you are curious, the spot where not six months ago they organized a slaughter38 fit to turn the stomach of our most ferocious troopers on the battlefield. Picture to yourself a tumbrel of prisoners on their way to Lons-le-Saulnier. It was a staff-sided cart, one of those immense wagons39 in which they take cattle to market. There were some thirty men in this tumbrel, whose sole crime was foolish exaltation of thought and threatening language. They were bound and gagged; heads hanging, jolted40 by the bumping of the cart; their throats parched41 with thirst, despair and terror; unfortunate beings who did not even have, as in the times of Nero and Commodus, the fight in the arena42, the hand-to-hand struggle with death. Powerless, motionless, the lust43 of massacre44 surprised them in their fetters45, and battered46 them not only in life but in death; their bodies, when their hearts had ceased to beat, still resounded47 beneath the bludgeons which mangled48 their flesh and crushed their bones; while women looked on in calm delight, lifting high the children, who clapped their hands for joy. Old men who ought to have been preparing for a Christian49 death helped, by their goading50 cries, to render the death of these wretched beings more wretched still. And in the midst of these old men, a little septuagenarian, dainty, powdered, flicking51 his lace shirt frill if a speck52 of dust settled there, pinching his Spanish tobacco from a golden snuff-box, with a diamond monogram53, eating his “amber sugarplums” from a Sevres bonbonnière, given him by Madame du Barry, and adorned54 with the donor’s portrait—this septuagenarian—conceive the picture, my dear Sir John—dancing with his pumps upon that mattress55 of human flesh, wearying his arm, enfeebled by age, in striking repeatedly with his gold-headed cane56 those of the bodies who seemed not dead enough to him, not properly mangled in that cursed mortar57! Faugh! My friend, I have seen Montebello, I have seen Arcole, I have seen Rivoli, I have seen the Pyramids, and I believe I could see nothing more terrible. Well, my mother’s mere58 recital59, last night, after you had
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