had brought her from the convent was at the mouth of the subterranean; there, the Loire was open. If you ask, why I did not prefer throwing myself before the pursuers, and dying like a soldier, my reason was, that I should have been numbered merely among those who had fallen obscurely in the various skirmishes of the country; and besides, that if I escaped, I should have one chance more of preserving the province.
"But, at the moment when I thought myself most secure, I was in reality in the greatest peril. The Loire had long since broken into the work, which had probably never seen a mason since the wars of the League. I had made no calculation for this, and I had descended but a few steps, when I found my feet in water. I went on, however, till it reached my sword-belt. I then thought it time to pause; but just then, I heard a shout at the top of the passage—on the other hand I felt that the tide was rushing in, and to stay where I was would be impossible. The perplexity of that quarter of an hour would satisfy me for my whole life. I pretend to no philosophy, and have never desired to die before my time. But it was absolutely not so much the dread of finishing my career, as of the manner in which it must be finished there, which made the desperate anxiety of a struggle which I would not undergo again for the throne of the Mogul. Still, even with the roar of the water on one side, and of the rabble on the other, I had some presentiment that I should yet live to hang some of my pursuers. At all events I determined not to give my body to be torn to pieces by savages, and my name to be branded as a runaway and a poltron."
A strong suffusion overspread the veteran's face as he pronounced the words; he was evidently overcome by the possibility of the stigma.
"I have never spoken of this night before," said he, "and I allude to it even now, merely to tell this English gentleman and his friends how groundless would be the conception that the soldiers and nobles of an unfortunate country made their escape, before they had both suffered and done a good deal. My condition was probably not more trying than that of thousands less accustomed to meet difficulties than the officers of France: and I can assure him, that no country is more capable of a bold endurance of evils, or a chivalric attachment to a cause."
I gave my full belief to a proposition in which I had already full faith, and of which the brave and intelligent old man before me was so stately an example.
"But I must not detain you," said he, "any longer with an adventure which had not the common merit of a Boulevard spectacle; for it ended in neither the blowing up of a castle, nor, as you may perceive, the fall of the principal performer. As the tide rushed up through the works, I, of course receded, until at length I was caught sight of by the rabble. They poured down, and were now within a hundred yards of me, while I could not move. At that moment a strong light flashed along the cavern from the river, and I discovered for the first time that it too was not above a hundred yards from me. I had been a good swimmer in early life: I plunged in, soon reached the stream, and found that the light came from one of the boats that fish the Loire at night, and which had accidentally moored in front of my den. I got on board; the fisherman carried me to the other side; I made my way across the country, reached one of my garrisons, found the troops, fortunately, indignant at the treatment which the king's colours had received; marched at the head of two thousand men by daybreak, and by noon was in the Grande Place of Nantz; proceeded to try a dozen of the ringleaders of the riot, who had not been merely rebels, but robbers and murderers; and amid the acclamations of the honest citizens, gave them over to the fate which villains in every country deserve, and which is the only remedy for rebellion in any. But my example was not followed; its style did not please the ministers whom our king had been compelled to choose by the voice of the Palais Royal; and as his majesty would not consent to bring me to the scaffold for doing my duty, he compromised the matter, by an order to travel for a year, and a passport for England."
"Toutes les belles dames sont, plus ou moins, coquettes," says that gayest of all old gentlemen, the Prince de Ligne, who loved every body, amused every body, and laughed at every body. It is not for me to dispute the authority of one who contrived to charm, at once, the imperial severity of Maria Theresa and the imperial pride of Catharine; to baffle the keen investigation of the keenest of mankind, the eccentric Kaunitz; and rival the profusion of the most magnifique and oriental of all prime ministers, Potemkin.
Mariamne was a "belle dame," and a remarkably pretty one. She was therefore intitled to all the privileges of prettiness; and, it must be acknowledged, that she enjoyed them to a very animated extent. In the curious memoirs of French private life, from Plessis Les Tours down to St Evremond and Marmontel—and certainly—more amusing and dexterous dissections of human nature, at least as it is in France, never existed—our cooler countrymen often wonder at the strange attachments, subsisting for half a century between the old, who were nothing but simple fireside friends after all; and even between the old and the young. The story of Ninon and her Abbé—the unfortunate relationship, and the unfortunate catastrophe excepted—was the story of hundreds or thousands in every city of France fifty years ago. It arises from the vividness of the national mind, the quick susceptibility to being pleased, and the natural return which the heart makes in gratitude. If it sometimes led to error—it was the more to be regretted. But I do not touch on such views.
As the Jew's daughter had been rendered by her late adventure all but the affianced bride of Lafontaine, she immediately assumed all the rights of a bride, treated her slave as slaves are treated every where, received his friends at her villa with animation, and opened her heart to them all, from the old general downwards, even to me. I never had seen a creature so joyous, with all her soul so speaking on her lips, and all her happiness so sparkling in her eyes. She was the most restless, too, of human beings; but it was the restlessness of a glow of enjoyment, of a bird in the first sunshine, of a butterfly in the first glitter of its wings. She was now continually forming some party, some ingenious surprise of pleasure, some little sportive excursion, some half theatric scene, to keep all our hearts and eyes as much alive as her own. Lafontaine obviously did not like all this; and some keen encounters of their wits took place, on the pleasure which, as he averred, "she took in all society but his own."
"If the charge be true," said she one day, "why am I in fault? It is so natural to try to be happy."
"But, to be happy without me, Mariamne."
"Ah, what an impossibility!" laughed the little foreigner.
"But, to receive the attentions even of the general, old enough to have married your grandmother."
"Well, does it not show his taste, even in your own opinion, to follow your example, and admire what you tell me you worship?"
"You are changed; you are a girouette, Mariamne."
"Well, nothing in the world is so melancholy as one who lets all the world pass by it, without a thought, a feeling, or a wish. One might as well be one of the pictures in the Louvre, pretty and charming, and gazed at by all the passers-by, without a glance for any of them, in return. I have no kind of envy for being a mummy, covered with cloth of gold, and standing in a niche of cedar, yet with all its sensations vanished some thousand years ago."
"Was this the language you held to me when first we met, Mariamne?"
"Was this the language you held to me, when first we met, Charles? But I shall lose my spirits if I talk to you. What a sweet evening! What a delicious breeze! Bon soir!" And forth she went, tripping it among the beds of flowers like a sylph, followed by Lafontaine, moody and miserable, yet unable to resist the spell. Of those scenes I saw a hundred, regularly ending in the same conclusion; the lady always, as ladies ought, gaining the day, and the gentleman vexed, yet vanquished. But evil days were at hand; many a trial more severe than the pretty arguments of lovers awaited them; and Lafontaine was to prove himself a hero in more senses than one, before they met again.
It happened, that I was somewhat a favourite with Mariamne. Yet
