Chapter I: “monsieur Mon Cousin”

“ROXANE. Il faut que je revoie en vous le . . . presque frère,
Avec qui je jouais, dans le parc—près du lac !
CYRANO. Oui, vous veniez tous les étés à Bergerac ! . . .
ROXANE. C’était le temps des jeux. . . .
CYRANO. Des murons aigrelets. . . .
ROXANE. Le temps où vous faisiez tout ce que je voulais ! . . .”
—ROSTAND, _Cyrano de Bergerac_. Act II. Sc. vi.

On a certain bleak March afternoon of the year 1774 a solemn, long-legged boy of ten or eleven sat curled up in a window-seat of his father’s château of Chantemerle in Poitevin Vendée, and pressed his nose wistfully against the cold panes. The rain, on the wings of a fitful wind, hurled itself in blurring gusts against the glass, and even hissed now and then on the glowing logs of the great hearth. But the owner of the motionless black head, with its neat ribbon and queue, was not watching for a chance of going out, nor even wishing that the rain would cease; he was awaiting, between doubt and desire, the greatest change of his short young life.

Gilbert-Octavien-Félix-Anne de Chantemerle, Comte de Château-Foix, was an only child, and he had never left the house of his birth, nor had he seen many persons from the outside world come into it—and never one of his own age. To the society of his elders he was well accustomed, owing to it the greater part of his serious demeanour. He had been educated at first chiefly by his father, the student, the follower of the newer lights, and latterly also by the Curé of the parish, who held with the _philosophe_ Marquis a friendship of a very old and tried intimacy. Gilbert was, perhaps, equally fond of both his instructors. When he played—which was seldom—he played alone; but he was not unhappy, and he had no idea that he was lonely. Diligent at his lessons, obedient though not docile to authority, he had one kingdom of which he was absolute master—that of his dreams and his books. He desired no other.

But now everything was changed. He would work and play alone no longer. It was a thought half sad, half delightful, but most of all perplexing, for what would he be like, this mysterious kinsman and playmate? Even Gilbert’s father knew very little about him. The motherless only child of the Marquis’ favourite cousin, confided by the latter on his death-bed to the care of M. de Château-Foix, the boy was not altogether acceptable to the Marquise. But she had to yield to her husband in the matter. Château-Foix did not wish the young Vicomte de Saint-Ermay to be brought up in Paris, where his mother’s relatives were on the way to secure over him an influence which the Marquis did not consider desirable. Like a wise woman, Madame de Château-Foix made in the end something of a virtue of this necessity, and she was really prepared to give the small stranger a warm welcome.

The preparation of that welcome indeed, in the more material sense, had but this moment engaged her when she came down the staircase to await the travellers in the hall. The Marquis had been to Paris to fetch his small relative and was to bring him in the diligence as far as Pouzauges, where his own coach would meet him.

Madame de Château-Foix was a very handsome woman, to whom the term “beautiful” had never been applied. For her years, which were short of forty, she had, possibly, a too majestic port. Wearing her powdered hair in the very high and narrow style of the prevailing fashion, and, for the provinces, somewhat elaborately dressed, she came down the staircase gently chafing her hands.

“How chilly it is!” she said, as she reached the bottom. “Are you not catching cold there, Gilbert?”

“No, thank you, mamma; I am quite warm,” replied the boy, without turning his head.

His mother rustled softly along the hall to the fireplace. She was restless; the arrival of this little boy meant so much—so much, perhaps, of change; more, she was sure, than her husband seemed to realise.

“Come here, Gilbert,” she said suddenly.

The boy slipped obediently off the window-seat. He was not a good-looking nor even a particularly attractive child, but he was tall for his age, and well grown.

The Marquise put her hands on his shoulders and surveyed him for a moment; then she kissed him. “You quite understand, do you not, Gilbert, about your cousin? He is to be a new brother for you, and you are always to treat him as if he were your own younger brother, and make him feel that this is his home. But . . . remember, my dear boy,” her voice trembled a little, “remember that your father and mother love you none the less dearly because—because your cousin Louis is coming to live here; and remember, too, that he has no father nor mother of his own.”

“Yes, mamma,” said the boy, making no allusion to the thousand queries and surmises with which his own mind was filled. His mother kissed him again, and, released, he went slowly back to his post. But hardly had he got there before he called out with real boyish excitement: “Here they come! here they come! They’re in the straight bit of the avenue—and Jean-Baptiste is so wet. I can see the rain running off his hat in a stream!”

A moment or two later the domestics were opening the heavy doors to admit, from a background of torrential rain, a tall man leading by the hand a small figure wrapped about in a cloak. Muffled as this was, it extricated a hand on the threshold, and punctiliously plucked off its hat, revealing a curly, golden-brown head. The Marquise swept to meet the two.

“Here we are,” said her husband cheerfully, uttering the instinctive banality of most arrivals. He kissed Madame de Château-Foix’ fingers, and then her cheek. “And here is the celebrated traveller,” he added, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder and bringing him forward. “Louis, here is your aunt, who is very glad to see you.”

A little to the Marquise’s discomfiture—for she was prepared to clasp him in her arms—the small newcomer made her a profound bow. As he raised himself from his salute she saw, with a pang at her heart, that he was without exception the most beautiful boy on whom she had ever set eyes. He had to the life the head of Greuze’s “Espièglerie”—a face of beauty and mischief—and as Madame de Château-Foix met the gaze of the sparkling grey eyes with their dark lashes, and saw the curves of the youthful mouth, she realised that the Fates had assigned to her lot that difficult if attractive task, a high-spirited child. But, as with most of her sex, the charm of childish beauty was too strong either for maternal jealousy or for premonition of future struggles, and she went down on her knees, and, clasping the boy to her breast, kissed him warmly.

Gilbert had stood in the background, a silent spectator, but as his mother rose he came forward of his own accord, and half shyly, half composedly held out his hand, and said: “Welcome, Cousin Louis.”

When the child had been taken upstairs, and Gilbert had vanished in the same direction, the Marquis looked enquiringly at his wife.

“He is a beautiful boy,” said she slowly.

“And a very bright one,” returned M. de Château-Foix. “I assure you, he has proved an excellent travelling companion.”

“And as a companion for Gilbert?” queried the Marquise.

“He should do him all the good in the world,” responded her husband promptly. “Gilbert wants rousing; you know my views about him, Félicité. Louis is—let me see—just about two years younger than he. I don’t know what sort of an education he has had—probably a somewhat fragmentary one, since his father died, at least—but if it is at all possible for them to have lessons together, the stimulus may be of great gain to Gilbert. We must see what M. des Graves says.”

The Marquise gave a little sigh. “It will all be so different,” she said regretfully.

“Of course it will, my love,” said the Marquis cheerfully. “I hope it will also be better. It is not good for children to play alone.” And, taking his leave of his wife, he went to change his travelling clothes, while Madame de Château-Foix slowly made her way to the apartment of the new arrival. She found him, perfectly undisturbed by the grave and speculating gaze of Gilbert, chatting confidentially to the old nurse who was brushing out his curls.

* * * * * *

Between ten and eleven the next morning Madame de Château-Foix espied from the window the cassocked form of M. des Graves coming up the avenue, and she also saw her husband go to meet him, as he often did. From the time of their marriage the Marquis had been wont to speak with pride of a long-trusted friend, who was at once a priest and a man of the great world. His name, she knew, promised to be an illustrious one, and it was whispered that the Papal Court had more than once offered him preferment. But she had never met him until the influence which she had always vaguely felt became a reality. When Gilbert was a boy of six or seven this courtier-priest—for such she had always pictured him—accepted, to her amazement, the living of Chantemerle. For what reason Sébastien des Graves had been content to take upon himself the duties of an obscure village curé she could not guess, and her husband, whom she naturally suspected of knowing, preserved an impenetrable silence on the point.

The Marquise suddenly unfastened the window and stepped out on to the flight of steps which led down to the garden. The two men saw her, and, leaving the gravel, made their way over the wet grass. A clear sky had followed on yesterday’s rain, and the birds were singing.

“Good-morning, Father,” she said as they began to ascend the steps. “Your new pupil is already in the library with Gilbert awaiting you.”

“Not with apprehension, I trust,” returned the priest, smiling. His clearly-cut features were of the type generally associated with the statesman-ecclesiastic. The lines about his mouth, stern almost to harshness, seemed to denote the churchman of high place; it was only the depth of kindness in the eyes which betokened the parish priest to whom no one ever looked in vain. Of middle height and powerful build, he betrayed his forty-two years only by a slight sprinkling of white on his hair.

The Marquis de Château-Foix laughed. “I don't think, Sébastien, that you will find Louis unduly timorous.”

The preceptor found him, on the other hand, endowed by nature with a very healthy aversion to Latin grammar. However, he was quick, and quite reasonably docile, and M. des Graves announced, to the Marquis’ satisfaction, that, at the price of a little extra attention, the two boys could do the same lessons.

A week, a fortnight passed away in great harmony. Gilbert gave his new playmate a much-valued puppy, and lent him his pony. Madame de Château-Foix began to relax her slightly jealous maternal attitude and to feel that all was for the best, since the two got on so well together.

Announcement of a disagreement, however, was formally made to her one morning. “If it please Madame la Marquise, Monsieur le Comte and Monsieur le Vicomte are fighting in the Italian garden. We cannot find Monsieur le Marquis, and Monsieur le Curé has not come up yet.”

Annoyed and a little apprehensive, Madame de Château-Foix went down to separate the combatants, but found the conflict virtually over. Gilbert, looking very hot and untidy, but not particularly elated or vindictive, was standing, in shirt and breeches, watching his cousin, who, sitting on the curved stone bench amid the empty flower-beds, was holding an ensanguined handkerchief to his face. Stains of the same hue were discernible all down the front of his shirt.

The Marquise was seriously alarmed. “Gilbert! what have you done?” she exclaimed.

“It’s only his nose,” replied her son callously. “It makes a mess, but it doesn’t mean anything, you know.”

“I am ashamed of you,” said Madame de Château-Foix severely, “bitterly ashamed. How can you ill-treat a boy smaller and younger than yourself in this disgusting fashion?”

“He hasn’t been ill-treating me,” expostulated Louis through his handkerchief. “I have hit him too, haven’t I, Gilbert? Look at his eye!”

The Marquise did look, but her inexperience received more enlightenment a day or two later, when her son was going about with an eye round which many shades strove for the mastery, and when Louis’ shapely little nose also retained a decidedly swollen appearance. The Marquis laughed when he saw these signs, and pooh-poohed his wife’s remonstrances.

And indeed the two boys, considering their great dissimilarity of character, were unusually good friends. The small Vicomte, as his relatives soon discovered, was endued with a temper which was rarely ruffled. He never sulked, as Gilbert sometimes did, nor, in spite of his high spirits, did he often fly into a rage—partly, perhaps, because he seemed to get what he wanted with so little trouble. For in a quite unassertive and natural way he tyrannised over Gilbert, who, finding himself in the position of a host, continued to bestow on him delightedly many of his choicest treasures. It was the same with the menials, who adored Monsieur le Vicomte with a worship which their sense of what was due to Monsieur le Comte obliged them to keep within bounds.

Conscious of the bondage into which the household was gradually falling, and having approached her husband with small satisfaction, the Marquise one day confided to M. des Graves her fear that Louis was getting spoilt.

The Curé asked her for a definition of a spoilt child.

“I mean a child to whom every one gives way,” she answered. “Now Louis is so attractive that one gives him all he wants—and surely that is not good for him, Father?”

“Does he seem to you any the worse for it, Madame?” asked the Curé, with a little smile.

Madame de Château-Foix was constrained to confess that he did not, but added that she could not suppose that he would remain indefinitely unharmed.

The priest took a turn about the long library, where his pupils’ lesson-books were still scattered on the table. “I have a theory about Louis, Madame,” he said, looking at her in his rather masterful fashion. “Time may show me that I am wrong, but I believe the boy to be one of those rare—those very rare—natures, for whom it is good to be happy.”

The Marquise was shocked. “Good for children to have what they want!” she exclaimed, bringing the particular down to the general.

“And for grown-up people too, Madame,” returned the priest with hardihood. “Sometimes. But such people are rare.”

“Fortunately!” ejaculated Madame de Château-Foix indignantly, and did not pursue the conversation, but retired to reflect on the ridiculous ideas possessed by the two members of her court of appeal—the doctrinaire and the celibate. She must take her own stand, and Louis should not be spoilt. But spoilt he was, for all that.

* * * * * *

And thus the days went on to late summer, when a third person, as yet mute, or practically so, appeared upon the stage. Like most landowners in Vendée, the Marquis de Château-Foix possessed a home farm close to the Château, much frequented by his son and nephew—for as such Louis, though strictly his cousin, was always considered. One afternoon, when the corn was being threshed in the great courtyard of this building, Gilbert, with his hands in his pockets, and something the air of the future owner, was standing very seriously watching the operation. The flails rose and fell rhythmically, the farm hands carried off the chaff in cloths and piled it in a great heap, occasional chickens made assaults upon the grain, and the golden afternoon air enshrined everything. Gilbert looked up at a shout. Another laden ox-cart was coming in under the archway, and it was Louis, in the enjoyment of a seat more precarious than comfortable on one of the oxen, who had hailed him.

“Ah, get down now, Monsieur Louis!” said Beaudrier, the Marquis’ farmer, as the teamster put his long goad in front of the beasts’ noses and brought their leisurely progress to a stop. “You’ll be killing yourself one of these days, and the bullocks aren’t accustomed to it, neither!”

“I can’t,” retorted the boy, laughing. “O Beaudrier, if you knew how slippery their backs are! But I suppose you have not ridden one for a long time.”

“Take Monsieur le Vicomte down,” said Beaudrier, himself the father of fourteen children, with a smile to the teamster. But Louis slipped off and ran up to Gilbert.

“Who is it that is coming this evening?” he asked. “My uncle has gone off to Pouzauges to meet somebody, and ever so many bedrooms are being got ready.”

“I expect,” said Gilbert, considering, “that it is Madame d’Aucourt. It is about the time that she generally comes.”

“Does she always come?” enquired his cousin. “Who is she? Will she stay long?”

“She is a friend of mamma’s,” Gilbert informed him. “Yes, she comes every year, and she stays about two months. Last time she brought a baby.”

“A what!” exclaimed Louis. The young hen that he had just captured uttered protests against the tightness of his interested grip.

“A baby—a child.”

“Why?”

“Why?” repeated his senior scornfully. “How stupid you are, Louis! Because it belongs to her, I suppose, and she likes to have it with her. I shouldn’t. It only cries.”

Louis released his chicken. “Do all babies cry?”

“I don’t know. Yes; the one Madame Beaudrier has just now does.”

“Then that’s why people don’t like having babies,” said Louis, with the air of having solved a long-standing problem. “I have so often wondered why M. de Larny—my uncle in Paris, you know—was so very angry when Mademoiselle Claire, his sister, had one. He talked about it a lot, and said it was a disgrace, and sent it away, I think.”

“That is nonsense,” said Gilbert loftily, “because only married people have babies.”

“It’s not nonsense,” retorted Louis earnestly. “It’s quite true. Mademoiselle de Larny cried, and my aunt too. I remember it quite well.” Indeed the reminiscences with which the Vicomte, occasionally and quite innocently, regaled the family dinner-table had sometimes to be checked in mid-career. That tendency afforded the Marquise deep cause for thankfulness at her husband’s act in removing him from his Parisian surroundings.

“You can’t remember what’s impossible,” said Gilbert with decision. “You made a mistake—or else you’re inventing. You were only a little boy then.”

“I was not a little boy!” retorted Louis, flushing. “It was only last year. I shall ask my aunt.” He went off whistling, tried to induce one of the men to lend him a flail, and then returned to his cousin to announce confidentially that he intended to teach the baby to ride a bullock.

It was fortunate for the Comtesse d’Aucourt that her daughter was as yet too young really to run any risk of undergoing this instruction. Louis found to his annoyance that a child of two years old is scarcely steady enough on its legs to be a reliable playmate, and is, moreover, never to be met without a nurse in attendance. Yet for a time Mademoiselle Lucienne was as interesting as a new kitten, and he smiled on her even when she plunged tenacious hands into his curls. Since, after all, she cried very little, he was once more reduced to speculation as to the grounds on which the possession of so pleasing a toy could ever be deprecated. Having no fear of strangers he applied to Madame d’Aucourt for enlightenment, but she referred him to the Marquise, and Madame de Château-Foix put him off with that annoying evasion that he would “know when he was older.” Louis then tried to pin down his aunt to a statement of the epoch when he should be considered to have attained the desired longevity—next year, when he would be nine?—the year after, then? He failed in his attempt, but not until the Marquise had been driven nearly desperate in her efforts to elude him.

The Comtesse d’Aucourt, lady-in-waiting to the Princess Adelaide, the new King’s aunt, had been a friend of Madame de Château-Foix since convent days. If she were able to leave her post at Court she paid the Marquise a visit every year. It was by her that intimate news of Versailles came to the Château, and she had this year a budget of more interest than usual—all the particulars of the old King’s death in May. The two boys, quick to realise that she came from a world other than theirs, would demand to be told again how the beautiful Austrian Dauphine looked now that she was Queen of France, or how M. d’Aucourt, at present away as envoy at one of the smaller German courts, had escaped from the Indians when as a young man he fought in Canada with Vaudreuil and Montcalm. The Comtesse became in some sort installed as a story-teller to them, in the September evenings, round the fire, with Louis cross-legged on the floor and Gilbert leaning against his mother’s chair; or under the mulberry tree in the afternoon, when Louis would be flat on the grass at her feet, his own kicking occasionally in the air and his lips black with mulberries. The faint, rather wearied air that always clung to her, the little gestures of her beautiful hands, her clear, delicate enunciation with its undertone of fatigue, remained for years with Gilbert as a kind of embodiment of a life that seemed so far away and at times so attractive.

Then the Comtesse left, and it was winter, with fresh delights; when the execrable, lane-like roads of Vendée were impassable, and with the coming of the snow one could play, with much semblance of reality, at being besieged. Then the days began to get longer, and the birds sang again, and it would soon be summer once more, the best time of all. And the days were like the year: the morning, when one did one’s lessons, was the Spring, because, though it was pleasant, there were more agreeable things to come; and those things happened in Summer, which was the afternoon; and the evening was the Autumn, because, though warded off with stories, bed-time was approaching; and bed, which meant night, was Winter. And the morning was Spring again. . . . But who can compile the almanac of a happy childhood? Day followed day, week fled after week; where the fields had been crowned with rippling yellow they stood shorn, were brown to the ploughshare, were white with frost, were green again with young life. Then, suddenly as it seemed, it all came to an end, for Gilbert was sixteen, and it was high time for him to begin the military education usual to his age and rank.

Though a dreamy boy, he had grown up not unconscious of his own claims upon the world or of his position as one who would some day exact obedience. With powers of thought developed beyond his years, he had not so much the making of a scholar as of a student and lover of men. Under a heaviness which might almost have been mistaken for sullenness of disposition, there lurked possibilities of imagination and of power which none but M. des Graves guessed, and he kept his own counsel. But those who had eyes to see might have noticed that Gilbert received severer censure for any show of idleness in his studies than ever did Louis for a similar (and infinitely more frequent) offence. The priest was very thoughtful on the day that the marquis told him how few weeks more were left to him of his elder pupil, although he had always known of the career for which Gilbert was destined.

Gilbert, as well as M. des Graves, had long been aware that he was going to the military academy at Versailles. Of another arrangement he was still ignorant. His parents had already selected his future wife in the person of the little girl, now aged seven, with whom he had sometimes played. The match had made itself. The Marquis had always an affection for Lucienne, and the now widowed Madame d’Aucourt desired a closer union with the family of her old friend. The nine years’ difference between the ages of the prospective bride and bridegroom was approved, and Lucienne’s dowry, as an only child, was satisfactory. Gilbert received the news with equanimity; the day when he should marry seemed very far off, obscured behind the peaks of the new life upon which he was entering. For the rest, he was fond of the child.

For a little while Louis remained behind at Chantemerle to struggle with the Latin authors, to plague and charm the servants as of yore, and to look enviously at his cousin when he came home in his new uniform. Then the influence of his mother’s relatives procured him a place in the royal pages, preparatory to his entering the bodyguard, and the Château fell into a quietude which it had never known since his advent on that March afternoon seven years before. A child, however, still woke the echoes in the garden every summer. Till her tenth year Gilbert’s destined bride paid annual—sometimes even more frequent—visits with her mother, and once or twice these visits coincided with the leave of one or other of the boys of whose own childhood she had formed a part. She was now an extremely pretty child, but at this epoch the cousins were both too much absorbed in their new worlds to pay her particular attention, and her future husband took, if possible, less notice of her than did Louis. At ten her mother sent her to be educated in a convent.

A year later Gilbert finished his military studies at Versailles, and, in accordance with his father’s wish, went over for some months to England, where he had relatives, the Marquise’s dead sister having married a Suffolk squire. It was not solely the claims of kinship which had prompted this visit. The Marquis de Château-Foix was deeply imbued with the ideas then prevalent among the Liberal _noblesse_ in France. Like them he desired to better the position of his tenantry; like them he sought help in English methods of agriculture, introducing these not only at Chantemerle, but in the small, distant, and not often visited estate near Lyons from which he took his title of Château-Foix. His father’s projects had been familiar to Gilbert ever since he was old enough to understand them, and, a native of that unique province where the curse of a non-resident nobility was scarcely known, and where _seigneur_ and peasantry were on almost patriarchal terms of intimacy, of mutual respect and often of affection, the young man considered them the outcome of a very natural instinct. He had, therefore, every sympathy with the Marquis’ views; he meant, when he had made his own career, to settle down and carry on his father’s work after the latter’s death, and though this event would not, he trusted, take place till a remote period—for the Marquis was only five-and-forty—Gilbert was pleased to think that if his sojourn in England proved profitable he might even now be of use to him. With these virtuous intentions he embarked for England, and found his stay under the hospitable roof of his English uncle agreeable as well as valuable. Sir William Ashley was pleased to approve of him, saying, indeed—than which there could be no higher praise—that he was almost like an Englishman; his cousin, George Ashley, of about his own age, was at hand to pilot him round neighbouring estates or about London, his younger cousin Amelia to welcome him when he came back. Hither also came Louis for a short visit, to make violent, half-teasing love to Amelia and to embitter the hearts of youthful country gentlemen by his elegance and good looks, and—chiefly for that reason—to create a certain relief in Gilbert’s mind when he departed.

The English turnip, that supremely important root, was receiving Gilbert’s attention when the messenger brought him the news that was to change his whole career. The Marquis de Château-Foix had died in two days of a chill contracted while superintending some building operations on the estate. Voltairean and sceptic, he had given his life for his ideals, and the young man of twenty, whose feet, indeed, were at the moment heavy with the soil of a Suffolk turnip-field, but whose hand was always, in idea, on the hilt of the sword which was to make him a glorious name, was left to reign in his stead—if he chose.

Gilbert de Château-Foix did choose, and at once. It was a real and no forced choice, for, except his father's wishes, not expressed in any document, but clamant in his own heart, there was no binding reason why he should reside on his estate. Throwing up the commission—the result of studies more than satisfactory—which awaited him in Royal-Aunis, and with it his dreams of military glory, he announced his intention of devoting himself to the care of his tenantry. He was not yet twenty-one, but if he knew regrets and distastes, he shared them with no one. His comrades and his friends in Paris thought him bereft of his senses, and stigmatised him as an eccentric. The very handsome youth in the blue, scarlet, and silver of the _gardes-du-corps_ who held an amazed conference with him one afternoon in the Allée du Mail at Versailles was half incredulous, half amused.

“I had hoped, before I died,” he said, “to be pointed out as the kinsman of a marshal of France. You should consider, Gilbert, that you are wrecking the ambitions of other people as well as your own.”

The young Marquis tried to explain that he was not wrecking his ambitions, or, at least, only some of them.

“Then I suppose,” said Louis, “that you are going to be a sort of philosopher, like the late M. Voltaire, in his retreat at Ferney. My cousin, the celebrated philosopher,” he repeated softly to himself.

But though the Vicomte ended, as usual, on a jesting note, Gilbert fancied that he was sorrier, or more sympathetic, than he cared to own. Years afterwards he learned that Louis had subsequently called out a subaltern of Royal-Aunis for saying that the regiment was well delivered from such a milksop as M. de Château-Foix.