servants."
"Aunt, let us not discuss the worthiness of Bossuet and his fellows, any more than the worthiness of him whom you style your master; he never will be mine. I have but one Master: He thrones in heaven."
"Do doubt; but after God, come the priests, the ministers, the Pope, the bishops, and then comes the King, to whom we owe blind submission, boundless devotion, pious respect."
"Pious respect! When at Versailles I saw that King promenading in public in one carriage with the Queen his wife and his two mistresses—the old and the new—Mademoiselle La Valiere and Madam Montespan! Is such audacity in bad morals to be respected? No! I shall not respect that infamous King who surrounds himself with high-born courtesans!"
"In truth, my dear, you are losing your reason. The violence of your language! Where can you have drawn such principles from?"
"Excuse my Breton frankness, but I could not respect a person who inspires me with aversion, disgust and contempt. What! That prince knows how his scandalous amours afflict the Queen. He is aware of the bitterness of the rivalry between La Valiere and Montespan! And yet, without pity for the laceration of the hearts of those three women, he forces them to gulp down the affront put upon them, to silently swallow their mutual jealousy and resentment, to smother their shame. He forces them to appear in public face to face; he drags them triumphantly after him as if anxious to glory openly in his double adultery! Ah, I repeat it, that ridiculous self-infatuation, that disregard of all sense of chastity, that brutal disdain for all human feelings, that insolent cynicism towards women—no, that never could inspire me with aught but aversion, contempt and disgust!"
"Oh, my niece, in their fervent adoration of their much beloved sovereign, La Valiere, Montespan and the Queen do as people do who make to God a sacrifice of their pains—they offer their torn hearts to their idol, the handsomest, the greatest King in the whole world!"
"Well, aunt, that theory becomes excessively hyperbolic. Have I not seen him, that 'great King,' an undersized man in reality, seeking to add inches to his stature with the aid of immoderately high heels and enormous wigs! Tell me, deprived of his heels, his wigs and, above all, his royal mantle, what, I pray you, is left of the 'idol'? Why, a little stuffed and groomed crow! For the rest, a good carpet dancer, a still better knight of the carrousel; always in red paint, severe, buttressed in the majesty of his trappings, never laughing out of fear to expose his villainous teeth, otherwise negligent of his appearance and never shaving but every three days, passionately fond of perfumery in order to conceal his bad breath, finally having, under the category of truly 'great' nothing to show except his appetite, to judge from his voracity, which I once witnessed at Versailles on a gala day! But raillery carries me away, and I blush, myself," added Mademoiselle Plouernel, whose features quickly assumed an expression of deep sadness. "Am I ever to forget that my mother's brother finished his days in a dungeon, the victim of the iniquity of Louis XIV!"
CHAPTER III.
THE HUGUENOT COLONEL.
The Marchioness of Tremblay had her secret reasons to suppress her own sentiments, and not to fulminate against what she termed the "enormities of her niece," who, however, on this occasion, had given stronger vent than ever before to her hostility for the "idol" who was desolating Gaul. Accordingly, Bertha's aunt contented herself with a few forced smiles, and seeking to give a different turn to the conversation that, besides being generally distasteful to her, threw doubts into her mind concerning the secret plans that she was pursuing, she observed in a mild tone:
"After all, my dear, the unwonted vehemence of your language has its excuse in this, that the contagion of the country on whose shores we suffered shipwreck has smitten you. This wicked little heretical republic, once so severely chastised by Louis XIV, has always held our great King in particular aversion. The heretical and republican pestilence must have mounted to your head; who knows," she added with an affectation of archness, "but you may come out of the country a full-fledged Huguenot."
"I should then have, at least, the consolation of knowing that I shall not be the first or only Huguenot in our family," answered Mademoiselle Plouernel, whose features the line of thought into which her aunt's words threw her seemed suddenly to overcast with pensiveness; "I would be but following the example of one of our ancestors who was not much of a partisan of royalty. Was not my father's grandfather a Huguenot? Did not Colonel Plouernel, as he was then called, take part in the religious wars of the last century under the great Coligny, one of whose bravest officers he proved himself? Did he not fight valiantly against the royal and Catholic armies?"
"Alas, it is but too true. The apostasy of that Plouernel is a blot upon our family. He was the youngest son of the family. After his eldest brother, the Count, and the latter's son, the Viscount, were both killed in the front ranks of the royal and Catholic army, at the battle of Roche-la-Belle, fighting against the rebellious heretics, the Huguenot colonel became by that catastrophe the head of our house, and came into possession of its vast domains. Unfortunately, his son shared the paternal vice of heresy, but at last his grandson, who was my father, re-entered, thanks to God, the bosom of the Catholic Church, and resumed the observance of our old traditions of love, respect and loyalty to our Kings. Let us leave the two Plouernels, the only two unworthy members of our family, buried in their double felony. We should endeavor to forget that the two ever lived."
"It goes against my grain, aunt, to contradict you, but I can assure you that Colonel Plouernel, by reason of his courage, his virtues and the nobility of his character, is perhaps the only male member of whom our family may be justly proud."
As Mademoiselle Plouernel was saying these last words she happened to cast her eyes in the direction of the net awning that sheltered from the rays of the sun the wide balcony near which she was seated. She remained silent for a moment, while her eyes, looking intently into the space that stretched before Monsieur Tilly's house, seemed to follow with so much interest someone who was passing on the street, that, half rising from her easy-chair, the Marchioness inquisitively asked her niece:
"What is it you see out there? You seem to be absorbed in deep contemplation."
"I am looking at the young mariner whom you know," answered Bertha without evincing the slightest embarrassment; "he was just passing with a grey-haired man, I doubt not his father; there is a marked resemblance between the two. Both have very sympathetic ways and faces."
"Of what mariner are you speaking, if you please? I know nobody of that class."
"Why, aunt, can you have so soon forgotten the services rendered us when we were in mortal danger—you who believe in death? Would not the brigantine on which we embarked from Calais have foundered with every living soul on board, had it not been for the heroic action of that young mariner, French like ourselves, who braved the tempest in order to come to our aid, and snatch us from the imminent danger that we ran?"
"Well! And did not Abbot Boujaron give the mariner ten louis in my name, in payment for the service that he rendered us? We are quits with him."
"It is true—and immediately upon receiving the remuneration, which went unaccompanied by a single courteous word, or a single expression that came from the heart, the young mariner turned, threw the ten louis into the cap of an invalid sailor who was begging on the wharf, and our generous rescuer said with a smile to the poor man: 'Take this, my friend, here are ten louis that Monsieur the Abbot gives you—for you to pray for the absolution of his sins; we all need being prayed for, abbots as much as anybody else.' And with a respectful salute he walked away."
"And
