Chapter XLII (1)

For my own private choice, I don’t know whether I should have preferred to live at Larches or the Heronry. People who like aristocratic-looking houses of imposing size and respectable age would have preferred the latter. But there are others whose ambition does not soar so high—who would feel encumbered by space which they could not occupy, and by galleries and apartments to them superfluous; yet who have sometimes, when dreaming in a verandah in the tropics, a snow-hut of some northern region, or a narrow cabin at sea, figured to themselves a snug English home, not too remote for the world’s affairs, nor too public for seclusion—not so large as to be dull without visitors, nor so small as to be unfit to accommodate them—not so grand as to invite inspection, nor so unadorned as to disappoint it—standing, in fact, on the boundary which divides comfort from ostentation; and such would have preferred Larches.

Yet, ah! that air from Queen Anne’s time that breathed about the Heronry—that library, where Samuel Johnson might have devoured books in his boyhood—the trim gardens, where Pope might have sat in fine weather, polishing his mellifluous lines—the gateway and porticoes that Vanbrugh might have regarded with paternal complacency, as hooped dames and bewigged cavaliers passed underneath—all these were pleasant to the eye and mind that love the picturesque and antique.

Yet even these advantages would not weigh in the scale for a minute, when Larches was inhabited as now. Place Lady Lee and Orelia in the balance, and the Heronry kicks the beam. They would have made a hut in Tipperary, or South Africa, or any other pagan and barbarous region, more alluring than the palace of Aladdin.

However (to describe its intrinsic advantages), Larches was a onestoried house, too spacious to be called a cottage, which, however, it resembled in shape, and surrounded by a deep verandah open from the eaves to the ground. To please a caprice of Orelia’s, the slated roof had been covered with thatch—indeed, she exercised her fancy in so many alterations, both of the house and grounds, that the place was like a dissolving view, and never presented the same appearance for two consecutive seasons. The house stood on a knoll which raised it above the surrounding garden, except at the back, where the north winds were repelled by a small grove rising from a high bank. In the front rank of this grove rose three tall larches that gave the place its name. The verandah kept the sun from the apartments, but the windows, opening to the ground, admitted plenty of sober light. Looked at from without, the open verandah and the large space occupied by windows and doors gave an idea of extreme airiness; while the rich heavy curtains that lined the windows, and the glimpses of luxurious furniture behind, conveyed ample assurance of comfort.

Hither Orelia had brought her friend, and here she applied herself to soothe her sorrow. Many offices would, perhaps, have suited Orelia better than that of comforter—but her affection and warm sympathy for Lady Lee made her discharge it with right good-will.

When Hester had entered the hall, at the conclusion of their journey, Orelia came up and kissed her.

“We will forget now,” she said, “that you have ever been Lady Lee. We will revive in substance, as well as in idea, the old times when you were Hester Broome at the parsonage; and we will see if there is not yet in store for you as bright a future as ever you dreamt of in your imaginative days.”

A thin elderly person, holding a handkerchief to her face to keep off the draught, was hovering about an inner door of the lobby as they entered. This was Miss Priscilla Winter, the lady who did propriety in Orelia’s establishment, and managed the minor details thereof. She had lived with Orelia’s mother as a companion, when the young lady herself was a child, and had subsequently accompanied the latter to Larches. She was a good kind of ancient nonentity, without any very decided opinions on any subject, resembling, indeed, rather a vague idea than an absolute person. As she always had a smile ready, and agreed with everybody, Priscilla was sufficiently popular and endurable. At present she smiled a welcome on one side of her face only, because the other was swelled—a frequent symptom of the perpetual toothach which afflicted her.

“Here’s Frisky,” said Orelia, on seeing her; “dear old Frisky!—good old Frisk!” and she went up and greeted the old lady very cordially, as did Lady Lee.

Orelia called her Frisky, not because of any particular fitness in the appellation, but, having a way of her own of altering people’s names, she used to call her first Priskilla, then, when she wanted to coax her, Prisky, which suggested Frisky, and the total and glaring inappropriateness of the epithet tickled the inventor so much that it was permanently adopted by her. The old virgin preceded them into the drawing-room, where a comfortable fire was blazing, and told them dinner would be ready in a quarter of an hour.

“And how are the live stock, Frisk?”

“All well except Dick, who had a fit yesterday,” said Miss Winter, “but he seems quite cheerful again to-day.” Dick was a bullfinch.

“I’ll see him presently,” said Orelia, “but first I must visit Moloch.”

“Take care, my dear Orelia,” said Priscilla; “Francis has got him chained up—the cook says she thinks he’s going mad, for he hasn’t drank his water to-day.”

“Stuff!” said Orelia, marching out of the room.

Moloch, a great yellow bloodhound, flecked with white, chained in the yard, thundered a deep welcome as his mistress went towards him, and upset his kennel in his eagerness to jump upon her. She unstrapped his collar, and he preceded her backwards in a series of curvets to the drawing-room, yelping joyfully, and nearly upsetting Priscilla, whom Orelia found occupied in settling Lady Lee near the fire, that she might be warm before taking off her things; for the old lady was a great hand at coddling people, if permitted.

“Hester looks pale, poor dear,” said Priscilla, with a heart-rending sadness of tone and aspect—“ah, well, she’s had her trials and”—

“Now, I’ll tell you what it is, Frisk,” interrupted Orelia, looking sternly at the old lady, “I didn’t bring her here to be made dismal, and if ever I hear you saying anything of a doleful character, I’ll leave a chink of your bedroom window open at night, and give you a stiff neck.—I will, as sure as your name’s Frisky.” And this speech at once produced the desired effect; the venerable spinster caught her cue with alacrity, and the unswelled side of her face at once assumed an expression of great cheerfulness.

Dinner was presently announced. “I’m afraid the dining-room will be chilly,” mumbled Priscilla, “and this terrible face of mine—would you mind it, my dear, if I sat at dinner in my bonnet?”

“Not in the least, my tender Frisk,” quoth Orelia; “and pray bring your umbrella and pattens also.”

A few days after their arrival, they went down to the parsonage where Hester had formerly lived with her father. Orelia was curious to see what effect the memories attached to the place would have upon her ladyship. She saw her grow flushed and excited as they passed the familiar cottages, and trees, and fields along the road. She saw her excitement increase as they came in sight of the parsonage. A glimpse of it was afforded from the road, as it stood at the end of a lane, and looked down upon a lawn dotted with dwarf firs. That glimpse showed it little changed; but as they entered the swinging gate, opening on the gravel path that curved round to the front of the house, the place seemed to Hester to have dwindled. Perhaps the spacious proportions of the Heronry dwarfed the parsonage by contrast—perhaps her remembrance had flattered the scene—perhaps it had lost its interest together with its former inhabitants—for, her father having died soon after her marriage, a new clergyman now lived there, and neither he nor his wife were likely to renew much of the romantic atmosphere of the spot—at any rate, Hester’s associations vanished rapidly. The furniture was all so different: there was a new door opened in the sitting-room, which might be a convenience, but was to her an impertinence—her bedroom, the chamber of her maiden dreams (ah, sacrilege!) was now a nursery. The walls where the echoes of Hester’s voice, as she read aloud, or sung, or said her prayers, ought yet to have lingered, resounded to the squalls of the latest baby published by the prolific clergyman’s wife, and the clamour of its small seniors. A cradle had taken the place of her bookcase; and her bed, whose white curtains had once enclosed the poetic dreams and bright fancies of the virgin Hester—the very altar-piece, as it were—was occupied by a rocking-horse with its head knocked off. Scarcely worse the desecration, when the French stabled their chargers in the cathedrals of Spain.

She descended to the porch, and paused there, trying to recall her former self as she had sat in its shadow, reading, working, dreaming, fancying that the world was paradise. She wondered what could have made her fancy so; it had, indeed, been blissful ignorance, but very silly, nevertheless: her eyes were open now, and she was quite sure—yes, quite—she should never see things again surrounded by such delusive splendour. The Hester of eighteen had been quite a different person from the Hester of twenty-five. And so sad seemed to be the train of thoughts thus aroused, and bringing with it so many silent tears, that Orelia was sorry she had carried her well-intended visit to the parsonage into execution. She mentioned it in a letter to Rosa; and here, in common type, wherein it loses all the character it gained in the original, from that bold yet feminine hand, with its long upstrokes and downstrokes, and its audacious dashes, we will insert Orelia’s letter.

“Dearest Rosalinda,” (it said,) “what is there about you, do you suppose, that you should be so constantly in my thoughts as you are, to the utter exclusion, of course, of all kinds of rational contemplation? For how can any serious or important idea be expected to remain in company with that of a little laughing, redfaced thing? In vain I banish the pert image; it comes back with all the annoying and saucy pertinacity of the original, till I actually catch myself addressing it; and my first impulse, on waking of a morning, always is to pull you out of bed.

“People sometimes say of their deceased relations (especially if they have left them any money), that it would be wrong to wish them back to this scene of trial. And I grow somewhat resigned to your absence, when I think that you are probably much happier where you are. For Hester and I are very dismal, Rosey—not a bit better than we were during the last sad weeks at the Heronry. She grows paler, Rosetta—paler and thinner every day. And I don’t think ’tis owing to any failure of mine in carrying out our plan for her benefit. I have, in every possible way, closed up the avenues to sad recollections. I have avoided all allusions to her married life, as if it had been wiped out of my memory with a great wet sponge. I have nearly choked myself by arresting, on the brink of utterance, observations that might have awakened in her mind some train of thought ending in a sigh. I have endeavoured to interest her in her old occupations here, and to get her to resume the subjects of conversation and of fancy that used to delight her in the old times, when she was the most enthusiastic and bright and hopeful of friends; and I have had my labour for my pains. She wandered through my hothouses with most annoying apathy—stood on the very spot where she and I first saw one another, and which I expected would have had an electrical effect on her, with an absence of recognition that quite exasperated me; and when I wished her good night, in the very bedroom that was always allotted to her when weather-bound at my cottage, she returned the benediction without one allusion to the old days that have departed apparently for ever.

“Well, Rosetta, I persevered, nevertheless—yes, I did—I struck my great _coup_—I took her down to the parsonage, where she was born and bred. Long after her father’s death it stood untenanted; but a new family now live there. I watched the effect of each familiar object that we passed on the road; her breath now and then came a little quicker, and, at the first distant glimpse of the house, her colour rose, and she smiled more naturally than she has done any time these three months. ‘Now,’ said I to myself, ‘the old Hester is going to peep out of this melancholy mask;’ so I said, by way of assisting the metamorphosis, ‘Do you remember anything about that stone, Hester?’ pointing to a great white one by the side of the road. Now, by this stone hangs a tale, Rosamunda. You must know (if I never told you) that Hester and I had once a little quarrel; and as it’s so long ago, I don’t mind saying ’twas all my fault. Well, we did not meet for two or three days, for Hester was hurt, and I was sullen; but then, by a simultaneous impulse, we started to meet and be reconciled. Hester was near this stone when she caught sight of me, and, forgetting all cause of offence, ran towards me. In her haste (’twould take a deal to make her run now, Rosey) she tript on the grass at the side of the road, and fell with her head against the corner of the stone. There she lay for a moment, stunned, and I, who had just reached the spot, sat down on the stone, and, taking her head on my lap, vowed, after she had opened her eyes, and assured me she was but little hurt, that I would never again offend her.

“She remembered it well, she said, as I stopt and pointed to the spot; then, pressing my hand, ‘Though I am not so demonstrative now as then, you must not think my friendship colder, dear Orelia,’ she said. This looked all very promising, and I walked on in great spirits, awaiting the further effect of the coming scenes.

“The clergyman’s wife had called on us, so our visit had an excuse. The porch looked just as it used—we entered; but there, in the identical spot where Mr Broome used to sit and talk to us, when a pause in his disorder let him brighten up for an hour or two, with the benignity of a Socrates—his pale face glowing, his dim eye kindling, and his failing voice hardly able to keep pace with his eloquent flow of thought—there sat his successor—fat, contented, vulgar. The first words he spoke, in tones that seemed to struggle through layers of beef and cabbage and Yorkshire pudding, dissipated the romance that lingered for me and Hester about the scene. And his wife! I don’t deny that the woman may have good qualities, Rosa; but I never can forgive her that cap of hers—nor her furniture—nor her younger sister, with her vulgar affectation of well-bred ease—nor her mode of addressing her husband—she called him by the initial letter of his horrible surname.

“In vain I struggled with these prosaic influences—in vain I tried to recall the old memories of the place—they had absolutely deserted me. I did not look at Hester, for I should only have looked disappointment. I did not speak to her, for I had nothing to say. But I looked at the clergyman and his wife and sister-in-law—daggers, Rosetta—and I was glad, when we departed, to see them reduced to a state of terrified and silent civility.

“So this part of the project signally failed. Hitherto we had lived altogether by ourselves, for I did not wish to annoy her with the task of making a parcel of new acquaintances, not likely to be particularly interesting either to her or to me. But now I thought visitors might rouse her from her melancholy, and I let them come.”

The time when Lady Lee and Orelia were most disposed to be communicative to each other was the last hour before they went to bed. Both, after flickering fitfully between dinner and tea, musing, looking into the fire, sighing, &c., would brighten up into temporary effulgence, before undergoing the extinction of sleep.

“You are cheerful to-night, Orelia,” said Lady Lee, one night after some guests had departed. “I am happy to see it, my dear. Come closer,” said her ladyship, passing her arm round her friend’s waist, and drawing her on to the sofa beside her. “I want to whisper to you. May I venture to hope” (this in Orelia’s ear, from which she had brushed back the volume of black hair that hid it) “that you have forgotten that little romance of yours?”

Orelia silently turned, and sat facing her with her black eyes, without answering.

“You never confided in me in that matter,” said her ladyship, still whispering, though there was nobody but those two in the room, and the servants had gone to bed. “I shouldn’t speak of it now, only that I observe some symptoms occasionally which make me still doubt the direction of your thoughts. Can I help to guide them back to tranquillity?”

“No, Hester,” said Orelia; “I don’t want any aid. I’ve come to a resolution of my own accord.”

“Tell it me,” said Lady Lee.

“How can I tell you all?” said Orelia. “You didn’t know him. To you he was merely what he appeared to the world—to me he was himself—the manliest, the cleverest, the most independent, the—ah, you smile; but, had you met him in his true position, you would have thought of him as I do.”

Lady Lee squeezed the hand of the somewhat indignant enthusiast. “Who so apt as I to believe,” she said, “that when Orelia Payne admires, the object is an elevated one? Well, dearest?”

“Well,” said Orelia, “I dreamt at the Heronry a sort of dream—that he would regain his position in the world, and be all you or any of my friends could wish. He left me apparently with some such expectation; but now I see it was fallacious.”

“But a man could scarcely make a very great stride in the world in a couple of months,” observed Lady Lee.

“’Twill take years, perhaps,” said Orelia, “even if he ever succeeds; and consider the chances against him. And, except as successful, I shall never see him—he is prouder than a fallen angel.” Here she paused, and pondered a little. “But,” she resumed, “I have resolved to think no more on that subject. Yes, resolved!” (stamping with her foot, while her colour heightened, and a tear came into her eye). “It can do no good—it will be vain, weak, idle—it will be wasting life in unreality; therefore it shall end”—(another little stamp).

Lady Lee looked at her with a kind of serious half smile. “So earnest, Orelia!—then the cause cannot be slight.”

“It is not,” said Orelia petulantly. “I am ashamed to think how much it has engrossed my thoughts. And yet—everything considered—so much merit in so unfitting a position! Had he been placed where he deserves, I should perhaps have withheld my admiration; but indignation at the way in which fortune and the world have treated him lent it double force. Now, Hester, I have been franker than you—for we both had our secrets; had we not?”

It was Lady Lee’s turn to redden and be silent.

“Hester,” went on Orelia, “what do you think of the men who sometimes come here? Is there one of them fit to be named with either of those to whom we gave—I mean to whom we would have given—our hearts? Think for a moment of the best of them—and then place their images, side by side, with those I speak of. Don’t they dwindle?—don’t they show like wax-work beside sculpture, with their fleeting hues of character, their feeble melting outlines, their stupid conventionalities?”

“You are severe, my dear,” said Lady Lee, without, however, heeding much her own reply—for Orelia had confused her.

“O, it scatters my patience!” said her impetuous friend. “I think less of myself when one of them has hinted admiration. Yesterday, that worthy noodle, Mr Straitlace—he who thinks it good to be wise, but not to be merry, and whose expressive eyebrows proclaim all pursuits to be vanity except his own—had the astonishing effrontery to give my hand a kind of meaning squeeze, at taking leave, muttering something about ‘his pleasure at recognising a congenial spirit.’ What have I done, Hester, to deserve that?—the owl!”

“I don’t see the congeniality, certainly,” said Lady Lee, smiling, “more than between an owl and a—peacock, or any other majestic bird.”

“Then there’s that baronet Sir Dudley (you seem to have an attraction for baronets, Hester)—that well-dressed Mephistopheles, with crow’s feet about his eyes and his heart at five and twenty, who has just cleverness enough to find out the faulty side of everything—he had the impudence, after looking at you as if he were judging a horse, to pronounce that ‘you had some good points,’ which from him is equivalent, I suppose, to high praise.”

“I hope he specified the points that struck him,” said Lady Lee, smiling.

“He hadn’t time,” returned Orelia. “I felt downright savage at the idea of such a snail as that crawling on your petals. I asked him who had told him of your merits? for that we all knew him to be slow at finding them in anything.”

“And what did he say?”

“He turned to his next neighbour and merely said, ‘Shut up, by Jove!’ Why, compared with these people, Major Tindal grows respectable; for though he has but one side to his character, ’tis a manly and decided one.”

“Poor, misguided Major Tindal,” said Lady Lee; “to think that he should have taken the trouble to come all the way here” (the Major hadn’t been able to forbear singeing his wings again), “just to do hopeless homage to a girl who talks of him in that way.”

“Certainly he had better have stayed at Doddington,” said Orelia. “But, now, Hester, tell me—could you admire, or ever be induced to love, any of our present acquaintances, after having seen others so much worthier?”

“I will go farther than that,” said Lady Lee, resuming her habitual tone of melancholy, which she had relinquished for one of assumed gaiety, merely to cover the confusion that Orelia’s home-thrust had caused her; “I will say that we never could have admired or loved them in any case.”

“And yet they are not below the average of those we shall meet in our pilgrimage,” said this severe censor; “and that brings me to a subject I have for some time thought of. You and I can never link our lives to people of that sort.”

“Never,” said Lady Lee, fervently.

“Neither will we spend them in vain regrets,” said Orelia. “In men that would be unmanly, and in us ’twould equally be unwomanly. We will drive out thought—we will leave it no avenue to enter—we will place a quickset round our hearts. Some do this by openly relinquishing the world, and taking vows; our resolutions shall be none the weaker because we only take our vows privately, and to one another.”

Lady Lee looked at her friend inquiringly.

“Why should we have done with life because we have been disappointed in one of its objects?” said Orelia. “Why should we languish or let ourselves rust because those we prefer are withheld from us? _We_ could not be content to go lingering and dreaming all our lives.”

“Not content, certainly,” said Lady Lee. “But what are we to do?”

“Make business for ourselves in the world,” said Orelia. “Be of use—turn our energies to account. How many women younger than we quit a life of ease without our provocation, and devote themselves to one of active usefulness! We might be the founders of an unprofessed sisterhood. What do you say, Hester? When shall we begin?”

“When?” said Lady Lee. “My dear, such a thing requires thought.”

“Say a week,” said Orelia.

“A week!” cried Lady Lee—“a year you mean. Nuns have a noviciate.”

“And a contemptible thing it is,” said Orelia, “that hovering between two worlds, as it were—that lingering on the bridge, shilly shally. No, Hester; we won’t show any such want of confidence in ourselves—we will begin after a week’s trial. We must commence by closing up all paths to thoughts that might unsteady us—lay aside at once poetry, romance, music, except anthems and oratorios. We will prescribe for ourselves a simple dress and a uniform and disciplined life. Come, are you not anxious to begin?”

“I _do_ almost catch a gleam of your enthusiasm,” said Hester. “To relinquish my present life will be no privation” (with a sigh). “But we must mature the idea before acting on it. We must not begin lightly.”

“Lightly!” said Orelia. “I’ve been thinking of it these four days. And, for our plan—feeding the poor—educating the ignorant—comforting the sick—there is a field! So much for our duty towards our neighbour—for ourselves, we will improve and occupy our minds with study, and I was going to say meditation; but I’m not so sure whether our meditations would be always on profitable subjects, at least not just yet. When nuns turn out not so good as they might be, who knows what share meditation may have had in it? We’ll act now, Hester, and put off meditation till we grow older.”

Now, there was something in Orelia’s proposal that was not unpleasing to Lady Lee. To banish thought which she found so wearisome—to occupy time that hung so heavy—to labour with an object and obtain a result—these were what she had long desired in a dreamy sort of way, and, now that the more energetic Orelia had struck out the path, she was ardent to follow it. Thus the mind would be provided for; and, for the heart, why shouldn’t she and Orelia, her chosen friend, be all in all to each other? which last idea was, perhaps, even more brilliant than the other.

Accordingly the noviciate commenced forthwith. They had, in Hester’s maiden days, studied together French and Italian; they now began a spirited attack upon the German language. Mathematics was desirable, as it required attention, exercised the mind, and did not excite the imagination, and they plodded away at Euclid and algebra with a perseverance praiseworthy in an ambitious freshman, but, in them, lamentable to behold. The piano remained unopened, the harp untouched, except on Sunday, when they performed a piece out of Handel. Lady Lee’s copy of _Corinne_ was put in the fire by Orelia, who had never particularly admired the work; and, indeed, a great part of their library underwent such a weeding as Don Quixote’s suffered at the hands of the barber and curate. Both were dressed in mourning before for Julius, so no great change was needed in their attire. To crown all, they discovered, in a couple of days, some babies in the smallpox and croup, three distressed families with the fathers out of work, and a pair of rheumatic old women, so that their charitable resolutions were not likely to fail for want of objects.

It is very well known that heroines of respectability ought to be naturally benevolent. They ought, moreover, to have a happy knack of winning the hearts of all who experience their bounty. I would with pleasure bestow on my heroines all the good attributes that belong to them, but I have already said they were far from faultless, and, to say the truth, the line they had chosen was not their forte. Lady Lee’s fastidious taste was speedily revolted by misery, whose pathos was impaired by selfishness or coarseness; and Orelia, after a visit to one of the rheumatic patients, left a sovereign for the sufferer, and vowed she would never go near that horrid old grumbler again. In fact, this was one of the points in which they were both of them inferior to Rosa. Their benevolence sprang from a sense of duty, and was artificial in expression, like the conversation of one who has learnt a foreign tongue grammatically; while Rosa’s was natural, and fluent in the happiest idioms of goodness.

However, they persevered, and, though they were striving against nature, their conduct was quite natural. Women are never so enthusiastic about their duties as when they have just been disappointed in love. Your pretty Puritans are sure to have had an attachment blighted, and Devotion is called in, like a Beguine, to dress the wounds made by that rascal Cupid.

But yet, reader, if Hester and Orelia should really persist in their project, what a glimpse of the possible is here opened! Let imagination hold up the curtain for a moment.

Methinks I see Orelia, aged say about thirty-five; severe of aspect, and with what novelists call “the traces of former beauty,” though the arch of the nose has strengthened to Roman firmness, the mouth is quite stern in its decision, and the fire of the eyes has some fierceness in its sparkle. Irreproachable, but not amicable—unsparing to the indiscretion of others, and having none of her own—rigid in the performance of duties, as well as in exacting them—I see her, in fact, become that formidable being, an exemplary woman, and I should like to see anybody make love to her now.

Lady Lee, too, now getting on for forty, has changed from what we knew her. She is not called, like Orelia, an exemplary woman, but is stigmatised by the equally opprobrious epithet, a superior person. Her eyes, dimmed with long perusing of good wearisome books through a veil of tears, are still beautiful in their melancholy, but the rest of her charms have withered. She does not discharge her duties with the unfailing spirit of the more energetic Orelia, but requires a new weary effort for the performance of each; and when the old obstinate question recurs of what her business in the world may be, she silences it by a contemplation of the indurated virtues of her friend, which she nerves herself to imitate. There are no more confidences or confessions of weakness between herself and Orelia, but a friendship such as might have subsisted between the Mother of the Gracchi and Mrs Fry. They are punctual in ——, but, as Sterne says, when the idea of his captive becomes too painful, “I cannot sustain the picture that my fancy has drawn.” Fane—Onslow—to the rescue!

THE MARQUIS DE LAROCHEJAQUELEIN.[25]

FRANCE IN 1853.

The name of Larochejaquelein is not an obscure one. It was once familiar to the world. It was known and venerated wherever stainless honour, fidelity proof against all temptations and suffering, chivalrous valour, and patient courage amid dangers that do not try the nerves less that they want the excitement which sustains the soldier on the battle-field, were held in reverence. The two brothers who covered that name with glory of the purest kind were noble specimens of the old chivalry of France, when chivalry had well-nigh passed away; and the chronicler of their romantic gallantry and their heroic death was the gentle female who bore their name, and who bore it high, and who shared in their sufferings, their triumphs, and their defeats. We know of few compositions more interesting than the narrative of the Marchioness de Larochejaquelein, who, we are happy to find, still survives, her form bowed by age, but her heart as true as when, in early youth and beauty, she traversed on foot the ravines of the Bocage, or forded the canals of the Marais, and witnessed the sanguinary wars waged by the insurgents of La Vendée during the wildest period of the French Republic. It is curious that the most attractive records of the great revolutions which convulsed the two kingdoms of England and France, at periods so distant from each other, should respectively be the production of a female pen. The memoirs of Mrs Hutchinson and the narrative of Madame de Larochejaquelein are companions fit to be placed side by side with each other; and though the character of the two works is different, the interest they excite is identical. They both possess all the fascination of romance, but they are valuable in a degree which few romances can pretend to. It has been remarked, that until their publication the world was strangely in error on many of the important events to which they relate, and that they have been singularly useful in diminishing a great deal of the prejudice, and in dissipating the ignorance which had existed, particularly with reference to some of the principal actors in these terrible scenes. The character of the English heroine is shadowed forth in her history; it is more unbending, more masculine, more stern, perhaps, and commands admiration which the mind cannot refuse. But the heart is led away by the tenderness of the Frenchwoman; and her pathetic touches, while they add to the interest of her story, impart to it the impress of truth.

The nobleman who has just published a defence of his own political career during the eventful changes which France has again witnessed, is the son of that lady by a second marriage. His lineage is an ancient and honourable one. Sprung from the old house of Vergier de Larochejaquelein, he counts among his ancestors a Crusader whose arms form one of the many ornaments of the rich gallery of Versailles; two warriors who fell on the hard-fought field of Pavia, when “all was lost except honour;” a brother in arms and tent-companion of Henry IV., who was left “with his back to the field and his feet to the foe” on the plains of Arques; a _mestre-de-camp_, who met his death while in the act of boarding a pirate off St Domingo. His uncle was the general-in-chief in the Vendean army, and it was this gallant gentleman, on whose history Froissart would have loved to linger, who spoke this last address to his army, which is still remembered by the peasants of the Morbihan—“If I advance, follow me; if I retreat, slay me; if I fall, avenge me!” Another of this heroic family was a dashing officer of carabineers under the Empire; and on the battle-field of the Moskowa he maintained the old valour of the house of Larochejaquelein. Count Louis, the father of the present Marquis, refused to serve under Napoleon. When the flight from Elba roused Europe again from its brief tranquillity, the peasant soldiers of La Vendée gathered once more round the white banner of their chief. The insurrection was, however, soon put down, and Larochejaquelein, while in the act of leading on his men against the Imperial troops, fell with a bullet in his heart. This is an ancestry of which any man may be proud.

The present Marquis is the son of the Royalist chief of the Hundred Days, who had married the widow of his old companion in arms, the Marquis de Lescure. He was born in 1804, and at the early age of eleven was created a peer of France, under what is called the Second Restoration. He entered the military service in 1821, joined the army under the Duke d’Angoulême in 1823, and made the campaign of Spain. He was captain in the horse grenadiers of the Royal Guard in 1828, and, inheriting the military ardour which characterised his family, petitioned the king to be allowed to serve in the Greek war of independence, but was refused. He was permitted, however, to join the Russian army as a simple volunteer in the campaign of the Balkan against the Turks, “having nothing better to do,” as he himself said on one occasion in the Chamber of Deputies. Though a peer of France, he had not taken his seat in the Upper House when the revolution of 1830 broke out; and refusing to accept place, favour, or honours at the hands of the revolutionary government of July, he resigned his functions as peer of France. Endowed with remarkable activity of mind, he devoted himself for some time, and with much energy, to industrial pursuits, and gave up politics till 1842, when he was named a member of the Chamber of Deputies by the electoral college of Ploermel, in the Morbihan. During his parliamentary career he did not remain idle. He took a prominent part in most of the stormy discussions of the time: the various projects of replies to the addresses from the throne, the conscription reform law, prison reform, railroad bills, electoral reform, liberty of instruction, all found in him a ready, fluent, and vigorous, if not an eloquent debater. On all occasions he spoke out his mind frankly and boldly; and though on many occasions in opposition to his own party, as well as to the government, it is said that he never had a personal enemy in the Chamber. His conduct, when the paltry attempt was made by the servile adherents of the new régime to affix infamy on the Royalists who paid their homage to the descendant of their former master, on the occasion of the Count de Chambord’s visit to London in 1842, is beyond all praise. He rejected, with scornful indignation, the stigma attempted to be fixed on him by the Orleanists, who did not feel the sentiment of honour, and were incapable of appreciating it in others. He at once resigned his seat as deputy, and appealed from the outrage offered him by the Philippists to the judgment of the electors. The electors answered the appeal, and Ploermel sent him back to the Chamber, where he persevered in the same independent course. When the base arts of corruption employed by the government of July were to be dragged to the light of day, Larochejaquelein was never silent. “A corrupting and degrading selfishness pervades all parts of society,” he said, in the discussion of the budget in 1845. “I have, in common with the rest of the nation, given up all illusions about the constitutional forms of the state, and I have no longer any faith in their independence. On all sides, in all places, I behold the triumph of the base over the generous, of evil over good; and each day that passes by brings us nearer to a tremendous crisis—the future is indeed dark and threatening!” These prophetic words were destined to be soon realised—sooner, perhaps, than the speaker himself imagined.

We have said that M. de Larochejaquelein was a frequent and a forcible speaker on important occasions. Without much claim to what is termed oratory, his language is fluent and full of energy; and he has scarcely uttered a few sentences, when you feel that he is a man of profound convictions—and this we hold to be a great, as it is a rare, merit in times like the present. His portly presence, open brow, and flowing hair—his quick, earnest, and impassioned gesticulation, remind you of the tribune of revolutionary days. The haughty movement of his head, and the scornful expression of his eye, when repelling some unjust accusation, give him an appearance of pride, which certainly is not characteristic of him, for in private life no one can be gentler or more unaffected. You see before you the gentleman of the old _souche_, not the marquis of the _salon_, or that trifling race which the wit of Molière has perpetuated. Had the Marquis de Larochejaquelein not been born an aristocrat, he would have been a tribune of the people. Whatever be his merits or demerits as a speaker or a politician, he possesses, at all events, the courage, the audacity of his opinions. He was devoted to the Bourbons of the elder branch (and they have not always paid his devotedness with gratitude), not for interest, but for honour, from family traditions; and were not the days of chivalry all but extinct in what was once a nation of cavaliers, and were men again to combat for dynasties in France, we are inclined to think that he would be among the first to place his lance in rest, as his ancestors did before him; and yet, if we are to judge from recent events, neither the hereditary devotedness of his family to the cause which was so often sealed with their blood, nor the sacrifices (and we are informed they are not few) which he himself has made to it, have won him the favour of the court of Frohsdorf. On the contrary, we believe that he has been exposed to all the persecution that petty malignity can set at work; and we know that attempts have, on many occasions, been made to ruin him among the primitive peasantry of La Vendée and the Morbihan. His position with reference to his own party became so intolerable, that he has considered it necessary to publish, in a small volume, a review of the state of parties in France in 1853, and which is, at the same time, a vindication of his own conduct.

The work is curious and instructive. It notices the events which have recently occurred in France; and though the causes which led to that very decided act of vigour known as the _coup-d’état_ of December 1851, have been long since known to the public, and appreciated by impartial men, a narrative bearing the impress of truth, and penned by one of the actors in the drama, cannot fail to be interesting. We do not concur in all the views of M. de Larochejaquelein, nor do we agree in all his deductions; but we readily admit the truth of his sketch of political parties in France previous to the month of December, of the intrigues of the Orleanist faction, their hypocrisy and selfishness, their utter recklessness of consequences, provided but a chance was afforded them, no matter at what cost to the country, of recovering the power for which they had shown themselves unfit, and of which they were deprived almost without an effort. In all this we agree; and we confess we are not a little pleased at finding the opinions we have already had occasion to express on these points fully borne out by one who has so intimate a knowledge of affairs. We believe that the French press has, with one or two exceptions, passed over in silence the work of M. de Larochejaquelein; and we are not much surprised at that silence. It is some time since all political intercourse has ended between him and the persons who compose the court of Frohsdorf. These persons, we fear, too truly represent the extravagant opinions and the intolerant conduct of the men who contributed by their evil counsels to the overthrow of the legitimate monarchy. They are the same of whom it has been said, and said truly, that they returned from their long exile, having learned nothing and forgotten nothing; and were the Count de Chambord to be restored to the throne of his ancestors, their policy would again lead to its overthrow. We desire to speak with respect of the present chief of the house of Bourbon. We admire the dignity of his bearing; the position he has assumed with respect to the Orleans family; the proud refusal to make any sacrifice of what he considered to be a principle, even though that sacrifice increased the number of his partisans; the firmness with which he maintains his superiority over those who despoiled him—the innocent victim of base intriguers, and a successful insurrection—of his rights. But we fear that he allows himself to be too much influenced in certain matters by a coterie composed of persons of antiquated notions, and who do not appear to have any conception of the progress made in the social and political world during the last half-century. The errors of that coterie are exposed by M. de Larochejaquelein; and that exposure will not narrow the distance which separates him from his party, or rather from the court of Frohsdorf. The unpalatable truth he tells will not easily be forgiven; and the Legitimist organs of the press have considered it more prudent to pass them over without notice or contradiction. The organs of what is called the _Fusion_ have been equally discreet, and with one or two exceptions the other journals have imitated their discretion, either because they considered his sketch not sufficiently Buonapartist to merit unqualified praise, or too much so for censure. The object of the Marquis de Larochejaquelein, who still professes to be a Legitimist in principle, is to show that he has been guilty of no inconsistency in giving in his adhesion to the imperial government, and that he has not discarded the opinions he always professed; that he has not denied the name he bears, nor renounced the political faith in which he was brought up, by accepting that régime, and taking, as a member of the Senate, the oaths of allegiance to the Emperor and the constitution. It is principally in this respect that the interest of the book consists, and we have noticed briefly and impartially the conduct of the writer, and that of a certain number of his fellow-Legitimists who have, equally with himself, comprehended the imminent danger their common country was exposed to, and availed themselves of the only means of safety left at their disposal.

The offence committed by M. de Larochejaquelein, and which the more intolerant of the Royalist party do not pardon, is not of recent date. He was a Legitimist, it is true, but he was also attached to constitutional government. He preferred a sovereign who inherited a crown from his ancestors, but he was likewise the supporter of representative institutions. But so many catastrophes—so many revolutions had passed over France—so many governments had been overthrown and institutions subverted, that all notions of right and justice, as of government, were completely lost. The actors in the first Republic denounced all monarchical forms, as not only incompatible with human rights, but actually opposed to common sense itself—in fact, something monstrous and unnatural. After convulsing all Europe, and utterly changing the country where it first broke into mad violence, that Revolution became exhausted from its very excesses; the Republic fell into contempt; but the terror inspired by it was such, that then, as in more recent days, people were glad to take shelter in any government that promised security to life and property. The great object of the Consulate, as of the Empire, was to obliterate the last traces of a system which had cost France so dear. That régime was so great and so dazzling that the loss of liberty was soon forgotten; and the yoke that pressed on the nation was the less galling because it was concealed in glory; and Frenchmen consoled themselves for not being free, because their master was a hero.

That brilliant meteor, after blinding the world with its splendour, and awing it by its power, fell into darkness. The ancient line was restored; and the Restoration in turn began by proclaiming the imperial rule as a usurpation; and Louis XVIII., in the charter of 1814, dated his reign, not from his return to France and the fall of Napoleon, but from the death of his nephew, the son of Louis XVI.;—as if the imperial epoch, with all its marvellous events, had never existed, and as if the account popularly, but erroneously, attributed to the famous Father Loriquet, was exact, that there had been no such government as the Republic, and that the man who was generally believed to have ruled the French nation despotically, but not ingloriously, for fourteen years, was in reality only Monsieur le Marquis de Buonaparte, lieutenant-general in the service of his most Christian Majesty.

Next came the Revolution of July, which proclaimed that Charles X. had forfeited his right to the crown, for himself and his heirs—who, however, were admitted to have done nothing to merit that forfeiture—by the manner in which he interpreted the 14th article of the charter, which, nevertheless, authorised him “to make regulations and ordinances necessary for the execution of the laws and the safety of the state.”—(_Charte Constitutionnelle de 1814._) Republican writers (_Dictionnaire Politique_, p. 216) admit that the aforesaid article left to the king “the dangerous privilege of being the sole judge of the necessity of the case;” though they refused to recognise that or any other article of a charter which had been _octroyée_, or issued by royal authority alone. The responsible advisers whom Charles X. consulted, were of opinion that his conduct in issuing the famous ordinances was legal. The Orleanist revolution denounced that act as a violation of the charter, and declared that Charles X. had broken some imaginary compact between him and his people, and had forfeited the crown. This was admitting, to all intents and purposes, the right of armed insurrection. The principle thus admitted by the new régime was often turned against itself; and the right of overthrowing the government was many times tried during the reign of Louis Philippe. Various insurrections broke forth, which were successively put down; but had any of them succeeded, Louis Philippe would long before 1848 have been accused, on equally just grounds, of a violation of the new charter, and consequent forfeiture of the crown, as his predecessor. At length _his_ turn came; and at the very moment that most people believed the throne of July to be fixed on the surest basis, the insurrection of February in a few hours overthrew that which had already triumphed over so many previous dangers. Louis Philippe rose to power on the barricades of July;—that power was laid prostrate by the same means. He, in turn, was proclaimed a usurper of the people’s rights, a violater of public liberty, and condemned to execration. It is not strange, therefore, if the minds of men became bewildered amid so many conflicting doctrines. There no longer appeared any fixed standard by which to judge of authority. Monarchy in its absolute form was decried by some; constitutional monarchy by others. Monarchy under any denomination, or under any form whatever, was denounced by many as an outrage on human reason. Some maintained that a republican rule was hateful to the immense majority of the nation, and that France only desired a fair opportunity to declare its will. Under such circumstances what was to be done? The Royalists did not conceal that they only _endured_ the Republic until an occasion offered for re-establishing their own form of government. Each party maintained that it, _and it alone_, represented the wants and wishes of the people; while the unhappy people, in whose name, and on whose behalf, all this had been done, stood by in silent dismay, and bent to the yoke which each faction that got uppermost imposed upon it. All was confusion, anarchy, chaos;—and the country, whose wellbeing was the pretext, rapidly approached the brink of ruin.

Under such circumstances, we again ask, what was to be done? The Marquis de Larochejaquelein thought that the only way of solving the problem was by an appeal to the very people in whose name every outrage was successively perpetrated; and calling upon it to declare, once for all, frankly and freely, what form of government it preferred—whether monarchy legitimate or constitutional, or a republic. From the day he took his seat in the Chamber of Deputies until the 2d December, when the National Assembly was dissolved by the _coup-d’état_, such was his constant theme. He denied the legitimacy of the Orleans monarchy of July, and refused to recognise the right of two hundred deputies, a portion of only one branch of the legislature, to exceed the terms of their mission, and to bestow sovereign power on any one. He expressed his belief that France would, if an occasion offered, return to the government of her legitimate sovereign, and he did not conceal that such was the motive for his appeal; but at all events he demanded that France should be consulted, and he pledged himself to abide by the issue. By such conduct he incurred the hatred of Legitimists and Orleanists;—of the former, because his doctrine was inconsistent with the principle of divine right; and of the latter, because the admission of such an appeal vitiated, _ab initio_, the right of the sovereign whom the two hundred deputies had, of their own sole act, given to the nation. We offer no opinion as to whether M. de Larochejaquelein would have attained his object had his plan been carried into effect, nor on the abstract fitness of such an appeal; but in so complete a dissolution of authority of every kind, and amid such a confusion of all ideas of government, it would be difficult to suggest any other experiment whereby the right of those who founded their claim on the will of the nation could be tested.