Part 89 (1/2)
”If by usefulness and activity you mean manual labor, I certainly have neither felled a tree, nor ploughed a field, nor hammered a horse-shoe.
I have lived by thought alone.”
”Then I fear you have lived a very idle life,” said Hortense, smiling.
”Are you married?”
”Married!” I echoed, indignantly. ”How can you ask the question?”
”You are not a magistrate?”
”Certainly not.”
”In short, then, you are perfectly useless. You play no part, domestic or public. You serve neither the state nor the community. You are a mere cypher--a make-weight in the social scale--an article of no value to any one except the owner.”
”Not even the latter, mademoiselle,” I replied, bitterly. ”It is long since I have ceased to value my own life.”
She smiled again, but her eyes this time were full of tears.
”Nay,” said she, softly, ”am I not the owner?”
Great joys at first affect us like great griefs. We are stunned by them, and know not how deep they are till the night comes with its solemn stillness, and we are alone with our own hearts. Then comes the season of thankfulness, and wonder and joy. Then our souls rise up within us, and chant a hymn of praise; and the great vault of Heaven is as the roof of a mighty cathedral studded with mosaics of golden stars, and the night winds join in with the ba.s.s of their mighty organ-pipes; and the poplars rustle, like the leaves of the hymn-books in the hands of the congregation.
So it was with me that evening when I went forth into the quiet fields where the summer moon was s.h.i.+ning, and knew that Hortense was mine at last--mine now and for ever. Overjoyed and restless, I wandered about for hours. I could not go home. I felt I must breathe the open air of the hills, and tread the dewy gra.s.s, and sing my hymn of praise and thanksgiving after my own fas.h.i.+on. At length, as the dawning light came widening up the east, I turned my steps homewards, and before the sun had risen above the farthest pine-ridge, I was sleeping the sweetest sleep that had been mine for years.
The conjuror's grave was green with gra.s.s and purple with wild thyme when Hortense knelt beside it, and there consummated the weary pilgrimage of half a life. The sapling willow had spread its arms above him in a pleasant canopy, leaning farther and reaching higher, year by year,
”And lo! the twig to which they laid his head had now become a tree!”
Hortense found nothing of her father but this grave. Papers and t.i.tle-deeds there were none.
I well remembered the anxious search made thirteen years ago, when not even a card was found to indicate the whereabouts of his friends or family. Not to lose the vestige of a chance, we pushed inquiry farther; but in vain. Our rector, now a very old man, remembered nothing of the wandering lecturer. Mine host and hostess of the Red Lion were both dead. The Red Lion itself had disappeared, and become a thing of tradition. All was lost and forgotten; and of all her hereditary wealth, station, and honors, Hortense de Sainte Aulaire retained nothing but her father's sword and her ancestral name.
--Not even the latter for many weeks, O discerning reader! for before the golden harvest was gathered in, we two were wedded.
CHAPTER LVI.
BRINGETH THIS TRUE STORY TO AN END.
Ye who have traced the pilgrim to the scene Which is his last, if in your memories dwell A thought that once was his, if on ye swell A single recollection, not in vain He wore his sandal shoon and scallop-sh.e.l.l.
BYRON.
Having related the story of my life as it happened, incident by incident, and brought it down to that point at which stories are wont to end, I find that I have little to add respecting others. My narrative from first to last has been purely personal. The one love of my life was Hortense--the one friend of my life, Oscar Dalrymple. The catalogue of my acquaintances would scarcely number so many names as I have fingers on one hand. The two first are still mine; the latter, having been brought forward only in so far as they re-acted upon my feelings or modified my experiences, have become, for the most part, mere memories, and so vanish, ghost-like, from the page. Franz Muller is studying in Rome, having carried off a prize at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, which ent.i.tles him to three years at the Villa Medici, that Ultima Thule of the French art-student's ambition. I hear that he is as full of whim and jest as ever, and the very life of the Cafe Greco. May I some day hear his pleasant laugh again! Dr. Cheron, I believe, is still practising in Paris; and Monsieur de Simoncourt, I have no doubt, continues to exercise the profession of Chevalier d'Industrie, with such failures and successes as are incidental to that career.
As for my early _amourettes_, they have disappeared from my path as utterly as though they had never crossed it. Of Madame de Marignan, I have neither heard, nor desired to hear, more. Even Josephine's pretty face is fast fading from my memory. It is ever thus with the transient pa.s.sions of _our premiere jeunesse._ We believe in them for the moment, and waste laughter and tears, chaplets and sackcloth, upon them.
Presently the delusion pa.s.ses; the earnest heart within us is awakened; and we know that till now we have been mere actors in ”a masquerade of dreams.” The chaplets were woven of artificial flowers. The funeral was a mock funeral--the banquet a stage feast of painted fruits and empty goblets! Alas! we cannot undo that foolish past. We may only hope to blot it out with after records of high, and wise, and tender things.
Thus it is that the young man's heart is like the precious palimpsest of old. He first of all defiles it with idle anacreontics in praise of love and wine; but, erasing these by-and-by with his own pious hand, he writes it over afresh with chronicles of a pure and holy pa.s.sion, and dedicates it to the fair saint of all his orisons.