Chapter XLVII: The Convent of St. Ursule

Two other episodes will close my adventures in the Isle of Martinique.

I need not detail to the reader the investment of Fort Bourbon, where General Rochambeau, commander of the French West-India Islands, made a desperate resistance, at the head of twelve hundred men of a revolted regiment of the French line--the old 37th, or Marshal Turenne's corps; and how, at the point of the bayonet, we hurled Bellegarde and Pelocque, the leaders of the blacks and mulattoes, with all their dingy warriors, from the heights of La Sourrière, with the loss of all their cannon and plunder; or how we toiled day and night--officers and soldiers working side by Bide--to make a new road over the mountains, and to drag up heavy guns and mortars, till, finding the futility of further resistance, Rochambeau capitulated, delivering over the fortress, with five stand of colours, and all the cannon and arms. When Rochambeau came forth, he was clad in the new uniform of a general of the Republic--to wit, a blue coat, richly embroidered with gold; a white satin waistcoat and blue pantaloons, also laced with gold; a cocked hat and nodding tricoloured plume. The hilt and scabbard of his sabre were studded with precious stones.

From plainness, the sovereign people were hurrying into the extreme of military frippery.

With the shattered remnant of his forces, consisting of the 37th and the gunners of the marine corps, he embarked on board the fleet of Admiral Jervis for conveyance to England, as prisoner of war.

The two barriers of Fort Bourbon were delivered over with all due formality, and I had the honour first to do duty as an officer by commanding a Fusilier guard at the eastern gate on this eventful day. Then came the preparation of those lists, which, as poor Jack Rolster our adjutant said, "were to carry grief to many a heart, and perhaps poverty to many a home;" yet, our losses in killed, wounded, and missing (barely three hundred) were trifling, when we considered the value of the territory we had added to the British crown. The casualties in our ranks were rapidly replaced by volunteers from the Scottish Lowland Fencible corps which were in process of reduction at this time.

In the store-houses of Fort Bourbon, we found great quantities of rice, maize, potatoes, figs, melons, and bananas. These, with pigs, turkeys, and wood-pigeons, kept us in fresh provisions for a long time.

The casualties of a soldier's life in these wild and perilous times, brought me through many a strange adventure and mischance; but few of these have impressed me more vividly than those connected with our campaign in Martinique.

At Fort Bourbon, Captain Glendonwyn discovered in the quarters of the late Colonel de Rouvigny, a vast quantity of plunder, among which were the gold and silver altar vessels, the jewels, vestments, books, reliques, and pictures belonging to the Ursuline convent at St. Pierre. These the general ordered to be packed up, and to be delivered to the superior; and on this peaceful duty, with all the paraphernalia of St. Ursule piled in a cart, driven by two half-naked negroes, and guarded by twenty Fusiliers, I marched by the main road to St. Pierre, passing on the way all the ruined and dismantled batteries we had so lately taken from the French, and over which the young grass and weeds were already sprouting.

After a twenty-one miles' march, we re-entered St. Pierre about nightfall. All was quiet then, as our troops occupied both the town and citadel. Even the revolted blacks--our most dreadful enemies--dared not to molest a red-coat now, unless they caught him straggling and alone.

It is impossible to depict the state of danger to which the decree of the French National Assembly by abolishing all distinctions of colour in their Colonies, reduced their wretched planters in the Antilles. The murders and devastations consequent on this decree are incalculable. In San Domingo alone one hundred and thirty-five thousand furious blacks were in arms, destroying all whose colour was fairer than their own; ten thousand of these marauders were killed, and twenty-four thousand were dispersed, but not before they had destroyed five hundred and forty-seven coffee and sugar plantations, and tortured to death in cold blood two hundred and fourteen white men and women. A _white infant_, impaled on a spear, was their banner and symbol!

Martinique, St. Bartholomew, Marigalante, and Los Santos, were all similarly convulsed.

I remember the terrible devastation of a village which the blacks of Bellegarde and Pelocque had ravaged. The little church of St. Martin had been shamefully desecrated; the images had been torn from their niches, the ornaments defaced, and bibles and missals were rent to shreds. In the houses, the skeletons, still with sufficient fragments of clothing about them to indicate their sexes, lay in veritable heaps, some with their sightless sockets turned still to heaven imploring the mercy or succour which never came. In the streets and alleys lay scattered bones, as if wild animals had gnawed and strewed them about. In the fleshless hand of a woman lay a blood-stained bible, which was open at the words, "It is better to be in the house of mourning than of feasting." A leaf was turned down at the passage which was thus impressed upon my memory. But to resume.

I proceeded direct to the Ursuline convent, which stands on the bank of a little stream.

As the French religieux were all royalists and in the interest of Britain, I soon obtained an audience of the Superior in the reception-room or parlour of the convent--an apartment having a tiled floor, and broad sunshades over its windows, the open Venetian blinds of which overlooked a beautiful garden, where the classic myrtle, the Provence rose, the geranium, and the violet, with all the flowers of Europe and the Indian isles were blooming. In the twilight of the evening, and in the sombre apartment (its walls were painted with a russet-green tint which rendered the hue of everything deeper still), I remember being struck by the grace and bearing of the lady, to whom I readily introduced myself, not without a strange undefinable emotion of interest, as this was the first occasion on which I had ever stood within the walls of a convent, or made the acquaintance of a recluse, save through the medium of a circulating library. The grace of this woman's form, neither her black serge robe, nor her square white hood, which fell in sepulchral folds over her brow and under her chin, could conceal. She revealed only the lower part of her face, and, on seeing me, paused and seemed rather agitated.

"Madame," said I, "you must excuse me, if at this hour I intrude upon one, who with her companions, must have suffered so many terrors of late; but I come hither by the orders of Sir Charles Grey, the commander-in-chief of the British troops, to restore some valuable property--the plunder of your convent--which we discovered in Fort Bourbon, after its capitulation by General Rochambeau."

She now raised her head, and lifting her white hood, gazed on me sorrowfully, sweetly, and with features so pale, that in her sombre dress she seemed like one returned from the grave. Suddenly, a pang shot through my heart, and an exclamation escaped me.

"Eulalie!"

"Monsieur Oliver--I thought you would know me at last," said she, with a sad smile.

"Eulalie--here, alive, and in this strange dress!"

I held out my arms, but she shrank back.

"You see how wayward is my fate," said she.

"You are now----"

"A nun." She shook her head, and let her arms droop by her side.

"Oh, Eulalie----"

"Repining is futile--I have taken the irrevocable vows for life."

"For life! you know not the suspense--I may well call it torture--I endured, my dear friend--after discovering your abduction from Barbadoes; visions of cruelty and death were ever before me."

"I suffered much cruelty, but not death. Rouvigny relented--even _he_ could relent. He brought me here, and I embraced a new life, as an escape from that to which he had condemned me."

"But was not this irregular--without a divorce? and consent----"

"Of the Pope you would say?"

"Yes."

"It is irregular; but in the total confusion of all our ecclesiastical affairs, here and in Italy, the Bishop of Martinique, though deposed by the Republicans, permitted it, as the best mode of separating us for ever, and perhaps of protecting me."

"Are you happy?" I asked, almost reproachfully.

"Happy!" she reiterated, in a tone of voice that was exquisitely touching; "what said Louise de la Valliere, in. answer to the same question, when she became a nun: 'I am not happy; but I am _content_.'"

"Know you not that Rouvigny is dead."

"Dead!" she repeated, with clasped hands.

"He died after the skirmish at Le Morne Rouge."

"May God give peace to his spirit--I have prayed for Mm many, many times."

"You are now free."

"Free! Oh, Marie mère de Dieu!" she exclaimed, while the tears fell over her pale face; "I have this day been elected Superior of the Ursulines. Go--go, Monsieur Oliver; for Heaven's sake leave me. We must meet no more; and better had it been for us that we had never met. You have won your epaulettes; fortune favours you, and I rejoice at it. Go on thus, my friend--my dear friend, and prosper."

"Thanks, dear Eulalie."

"In the path you must pursue in life Eulalie will soon be forgotten; but never, while pulsation and human charity remain in her heart, will she forget to pray for you. Adieu, God bless you!"

She pressed her hands upon her breast. I could hear her sob; I stepped towards her; but she hastily withdrew, closed the parlour door, and I was left alone.

I never saw Eulalie again.

To know that she lived and loved me still, but was for ever separated from me--that I dared not see, or visit, or talk with her, and love her in return--filled me with perplexity, irritation, and sorrow; but there was no help for it now.

In all this deep interest no thought of marriage ever occurred to me; in short, I was still too much of a boy to think of this. The romance of loving her sufficed for me; but as some one says, "Did Petrarch ever reflect if Laura would make a good wife? Did Oswald ever think it of Corinne? Would it not weaken faith in their romantic passages if you believed it? What have such practical issues to do with that passion which sublimates the faculties, and makes the loving dreamer to live in an ideal sphere, wherein nothing but goodness and brightness can come?"

Then, as I conjured up the fair image of Eulalie, and thought of the deep mine of tenderness and love which lay buried in that living tomb at St. Pierre, I hailed with joy the order that sent us to the conquest of St. Lucia.