Chapter XII: Epilogue (1)

A month after these events--on the first of May, that festival of sunlight, flowers, and universal rejoicings--two couples, followed by many friends and brilliant attendants, went from the small house on the banks of the Seine, to the village church of Neuilly. The Prince de Maulear, made young by happiness, had Marie d'Harcourt on his arm. The Duke escorted the Marquise, and the Count and Von Apsberg followed them. The priest stood at the foot of the altar. This priest, who made four persons happy, but who looked to heaven alone for his own happiness, was Taddeo Rovero.

The three fiery Carbonari gradually felt their revolutionary ardor grow dull. The reason is, these three men were now attached to the society they had sought to destroy, by strong ties. Two were bound to it by family bonds, and the other by religion.

_Carbonarism_ was not crushed in Europe, by the disasters of the French association. It slumbered for ten years, but awoke in 1830. The tree has grown, and the world now gathers its bitter fruits.

Stenio Salvatori received in Italy the punishment due his great crimes in France. His vile heart became the sheath of the stiletto of one of the brethren of the _Venta_ of CASTEL LA MARC.

Our old acquaintance, Mlle. Celestine Crepinean, touched by divine grace, repented of having made so bad a disposition of her pure and virgin love. Like Magdalen, she threw herself at the feet of her Savior, and lived to an advanced age, greatly to the edification of the faithful as dispenser of holy water at the church of Saint THOMAS AQUINAS.

END OF THE SPY IN SOCIETY.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Concluded from page 327.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by Stringer & Townsend, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York.

[4] _Mansarde_ Gallice, from the inventor Mansard, uncle of another architect of the same name of the time of Louis XIV.

[5] It is one of the maxims of _magnetism_, that when once an entire sympathy between two minds is established equality ensues, and consequently neither can exert influence over the other.

A GHOST STORY OF NORMANDY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "HAMON AND CATAR; OR, THE TWO RACKS."

From Bentley's Miscellany.

I.

On a fine summer evening, in 1846, I left my house, which was in the neighborhood of Honfleur, Normandy, to take a stroll. It was July. All the morning and all the afternoon the sun had been busily pouring down streams of radiance like streams of boiling water, and I had kept the house, and kept it closely shut up too, till the orb of day had gone some way down towards the sea, as if, like a fire-eater, or like a locomotive, to get a _drink_ after its work.

My wife being asleep, I borrowed her parasol, for English life in France is very free and easy, and I was rather careful of my complexion. I lit a cigar, and starting, soon left the church of St. Catharine behind. My business in the town was to post a letter, which I got safely done, and then passing down the fish-market, I found myself, ere long, at the foot of the Cote de Grace--a steep hill which rises abruptly from the town, and is scaleable at one part by a sandy zigzag.

My cigar was a bad one altogether--a bad one to look at and a bad one to blow. Of government manufacture, it cost five sous, and was not worth one. Its skin was as thick as an ass's hide, and no persuasion would make _it_ draw. Like a false friend, it became quite hollow when I put the fire of trial to it; and only waxed hot and oily as it burnt on. It was a French regalia, and had nothing of French royalty about it but bad _smoke_. The tobacco had, I think, lost savor, as salt used to do, in passing through the monopolizing hands of the _Citoyen Roi_. In a word, my gorge rose at it.

I stood awhile at the foot of the zigzag, endeavoring to coax it into usefulness, for I was a family man, and had given many hostages to fortune, and dared not to be extravagant. I tried to doctor it by incisions, and by giving it draughts; but all was in vain. At last it began to unwind, and some loose ashes found their way to my eyes. I was about to throw it away in disgust, when a young Frenchman, who had passed me a moment before with a party (I knew him slightly and we had bowed), returned, and observing that my cigar seemed troublesome, asked me to try one of his.

His name was Le Brun. We had met occasionally on the pier, where in the quiet evenings I used to take refuge from the uproar of my sanctuary at home, and for awhile almost believed myself a lay bachelor lounging through France without a charming wife and eight children. He and I had succeeded well in chit-chat. The Browns, he was fond of saying, were a numerous race in England, but if he ever settled there he would be distinguished from them as THE Brown. He was vain of this play on his name, and I always laughed when he produced it. I had no hesitation, therefore, when he offered me a cigar: besides, I knew that he always smoked smuggled Cubas.

We gossiped for a few moments. At length I saw him glance at my wife's parasol, which was shielding me from the sun. He _said_ nothing, but I felt my cheek burn with a sudden sort of shame, and immediately shut it up.

"Madame will return," he said, "and Monsieur attends her."

This was not the fact. Monsieur had to return, and Madame attended him. But the observation was put in the narrative form, and if my friend gave me information which I knew to be false, I was not bound to say so. I only bowed, therefore; and he added that he was forced to join his party, and bowed too; and so we separated.

He had scarcely left me, when I thought that if I had avowed my solitary state he might have asked me to join his party, which was evidently a merry one; and I internally execrated the parasol, which had been the means of preventing this. If by any accident I should meet him again, I resolved that he should not see me with _it_, and without the lady; so I deposited it at a little lace-maker's, and soon after began to ascend the Cote de Grace, not without hopes of meeting the party as they returned, perhaps from Val-a-Reine.

Between each wind of the zigzag path was a flight of wooden steps, by which the adventurous might ascend directly from the bottom of the hill. At the head of some of these flights of steps were rustic seats; they were generally on the outer edge of the path, but a few were placed far back, so that the hill immediately below was unseen.

I always climbed the Cote by the steps, as I used ever and anon to lie down on the green carpet which nature has spread over each of the short ascents. On the present occasion I had not mounted far before a pleasant piece of this turf-flooring near the top of one of the little hills seduced me from my toils. I sat down, took Shelley's "Revolt of Islam" from my pocket, finished my cigar, and in consequence of reading half a dozen stanzas from the poem--fell asleep.

I woke suddenly, and as soon as I had my faculties about me, noticed that people were speaking, and in loud tones, close above me. Otherwise, all was still around. There was no wind among the little trees; a bee buzzed past me now and then, and insects hummed, but further off down the hill, and these voices sounded harsh and dissonant in the quiet air. I listened, at first mechanically. The conversation was carried on in French.

"It is time to end this," said a stern, disagreeable voice; "and I will not wait any longer, M. Raymond."

"But M. Gray," answered another and more pleasant voice, "you will think of my situation--my family. I have done all I could."

"I have thought too much of your family," replied Gray; "but I must also think of myself. Esther--your daughter--she does not speak with me, for example, as you said she should."

"Monsieur!" exclaimed the other.

"This Le Brun--she is all ears and eyes for him. She----"

"M. Gray!" said Raymond. His voice had been deprecating before--it was firm now. "You are so harsh to me; how can you expect kindness from her?"

"Why, sir, you promised to use your influence with her----"

"Promised, M. Gray!" Raymond burst in. "You did not think I should sell my daughter for a debt of the table? I do not think, monsieur, you expected me to _sell_ my Esther, for example." And there was an emphasis on these last words which only a Frenchman could give.

"I did not say you promised that," replied the other; "but I am seeking for the money you owe me. I love your daughter; you know it; she does not smile, and I must wait. But my creditors will not wait. I owe money, and come to you for what you owe me."

The voice that said this was cold and stern. Suddenly, as I listened to it, it seemed familiar to me; but where I had heard it I could not remember. Raymond replied:

"And suppose I had not played with you and lost? What would you have done?"

"But my friends in England are so dilatory," was the evasive answer. "Still--if Mademoiselle Esther----"

"Sacre!" cried Raymond, starting to his feet, and stamping on the path. Gray seemed to rise too. "You press me too far. What do I know of you, monsieur? You live here some few months--you play high--you--you----"

"Ah, well, monsieur," said Gray, icily, as he paused.

"My daughter, too," cried Raymond; "you use my debt to you as a means----." He stopped again in his sudden passion.

"Pardon me, monsieur," said Gray, sternly, "this is only a debt of honor;" and he laid a stress on the word which drove it home. "In England we cannot enforce a debt of honor."

"What do you do there when it is not paid?"

"First post the guilty man, and then shoot him," was the answer.

I felt inclined to start from my concealment and say that this was false. I recollected, however, just in time, that it was true.

"But this is folly," pursued Gray, "and we should not quarrel. I am not going to shoot Esther's father, for example."

The effect of this cordial and peaceful declaration was instantaneous. Glad apparently to drop his creditor in his friend at any price, Raymond answered kindly, and even proposed to give Gray a small sum on account of his debt, which he accepted. They then began to ascend the zigzag, and ere long their voices died away in the distance.

I had remained lying-to where I was all this while, and felt glad when they left the neighborhood. I never overheard a conversation with pleasure since I read how the Rev. Dr. Follett declared that his bamboo, and not his cloth, should protect him from Mr. Eavesdrop. Once, indeed, I had thought of retiring, but put it off so long that I thought I might just as well stay out the interview.

I knew Mr. Raymond by name. He was a banker, and reputed rich. He was also thought religious--for a Frenchman, even pious. He crossed himself at all the twopenny representations of the Divine agony. He never galloped past a crucifix, or calvaire, or burial-place. And yet he now showed himself a gambler, and apparently on the way to sell his daughter's hand to a man he did not know, for a gambling debt. The discovery made me feel sick. And yet I thought how many of my own parisioners, who wave their heads at the sacred name in the creed, and appear to men to worship, are as false as this man; packing away their religion like their best hat till next Sunday, when it seems as good to the next pew as ever.

But I felt more than an abstract discomfort at my discoveries. Le Brun's name had been mixed up with Esther Raymond's by this Gray. Now his Cuba cigar had bound me indissolubly to The Brown, and as long as he asked nothing but what cost nothing, I was his faithful well-wisher and friend. This was the time to show my friendship; and accordingly I sprang from my couch, put Shelley into my pocket, and resumed my ascent of the Cote.

I had gained the top, and, after looking across the water to Harfleur, which showed well in the soft light of the westering sun, was about to walk on, when I saw a party on the rude bench which is set on the seaward side of the top of the Cote--Le Brun with them. I looked back across the Seine, and watched the lights and shades shift on the hills of the opposite shore, collecting my thoughts the while. Ere they were collected, however, he joined me.

"Ah! but madame is no longer with monsieur?" he said.

"No; she's at home now," I answered, thinking how I should best break ground, and almost inclined to leave him to his own courses now that it was time to act. Why should I meddle in these foreigners' affairs? What were they to me? I felt thus for a moment; Le Brun produced his cigar-case, and I did not feel so for another.

"I hope you liked my cigar; it is not French," he said. "Will you try another?"

"If you will try one of mine," I answered, ashamed to take without giving, and forgetting that my property consisted of none but the despised French article. The young gentleman took one of the great clown-like regalias with a slight shudder, and I saw him wince as he inhaled a mouthful of its rank produce, and, ere long, quietly drop the thing when he thought I was not looking, and substitute one of his own.

The flavor of his Cuba opened my heart to him, and ere long I broached the subject with which I had no earthly business.

"You know a certain M. Gray?" I asked. He started.

"Yes," he said; "that is him talking to mademoiselle. Shall I introduce you?"

"Not at present--no, I thank you," I answered. He looked up at me.

"Do you know him?" he asked. My eye had been bent on him for the last few seconds.

"I think I do," I said; "I am not sure."

"He came here with the Dowlasses; he is the son of an English milord, who allows him a thousand pounds a year."

"Why did he leave England, then?" I inquired.

"He was too gay, I believe."

"And left his debts unpaid, I suppose." He looked up at me again.

"If you do know him, or anything about him," he exclaimed, "pray tell me; I am particularly anxious about him."

"I know you must be, and so ought mademoiselle to be," I said. He blushed like a girl and was going to speak, but I continued: "If he is the man I think, never play at cards with him, M. le Brun; and, between us, separate his hat from those pink ribbons further than they are now."

His curiosity, his anxiety, was thoroughly aroused; but, as he began to speak, a lady's voice called him. It was Esther's.

"Will you join us?" he said. In another moment I was being introduced to the party.

I was at first surprised to find Gray and his dupe smoking and chatting as gayly as any of the party. I am a good wonderer, but always reason my surprises away. I soon did so now, reflecting that all men use their faces as masks, by which they lie without speaking falsehood. And, though I detest hypocrisy myself, I remembered that I often smiled when I could grind my teeth with rage--that is, if they were not false ones.

Le Brun had been summoned to rejoin the circle because a curious topic had been started. M. Raymond was proprietor of an estate near St. Sauveur, the house of which was reported to be haunted, and Esther had dared Gray to spend a night there.

"But I don't believe in ghosts," he recommenced, after the introduction. "It would only be to waste a night."

"Oh, there _is_ a goblin though," replied the beautiful girl--"a male Amina; always walking into an occupied chamber, so that you're sure to see him. He does not, however, stop to be caught napping in the morning, like La Sonnambula."

"I'll tell you what I'll do," answered Gray. "You've called M. le Brun"--and he looked somewhat fiercely at my friend--"if he'll spend a night there, I will. I'm engaged to-night, and to-morrow night, so that he can go first. But I can't believe in your ghost, mademoiselle."

"Not if I acknowledge to have seen him myself?" she asked. There was a general movement among the listeners. "Well, I will accept for M. le Brun; he shall go to-night or to-morrow, and you the night after--eh, M. Frederic?"

Le Brun murmured something about obedience to her wishes; what, I did not hear. He evidently, however, did not like the scheme, and Gray saw it; but, in the general interest for Esther's tale, no one else did.

I do not give it here, for divers reasons. When she had done, it was found to be time to return. I would have left the party, but Raymond having seperated Le Brun from Esther, he joined himself to me, and I was unable to do so.

"What will Grace say?" thought I. "I hope she won't wait tea for me." I should have been somewhat crusty if, on an ordinary occasion, I had returned from a stroll and found that she and the rest had _not_ waited. Le Brun asked me--as M. Raymond had already done--to stay all the evening with the party. That, however, I felt to be impossible, and said so.

"Well, for the present, then," he said. "What can you tell me of M. Gray?" he added.

"I expect my brother here to-morrow," I said, "when I will compare notes with him. Till then I should be cautious, as I may injure an innocent man. But do you be cautious too. How about this challenge? Shall you sleep in the haunted house? It is romantic nonsense--this of a spirit, you know. Mademoiselle has seen a clothes-horse, or a--a part of her dress in moonlight. I don't believe in ghosts myself at all."

"Don't you?" said he, somewhat sadly. "I--the truth is, mon cher, I am afraid I do."

"You must go on now, though," I said, maliciously.

"Oh, yes--of course--go on," he answered; "but, monsieur----" he hesitated.

"What is it, my dear friend?" I said.

"I thought to ask a favor of you," he replied. "Will you accompany me to this house, monsieur? I feel I ask much--but will you?"

"Much, my very dear sir!" I exclaimed, in the fullness of my heart--"not at all too much. I shall be happy to be of any use to you, and will sit and smoke those cigars of yours, and let the ghosts go to old ----." I stopped suddenly.

"And what," thought I, "will Grace say to _that_?" A sort of dampness rushed out upon my skin; I had forgotten her. My sentence remained unfinished, and I looked eagerly about me, as if to question the adjoining shrubs as to what on earth I was to do. My dear Grace was the light of my eyes, and the joy of my heart, I'm sure; the best wife, the most amiable of the sex, but yet she had a kind of will of her own, which was apt to get grafted, as it were, upon mine. She never opposed me positively in any thing, but somehow, if she did not like it, it was rarely done. I had just promised what I might not be able to perform; and yet I did not like to confess to this foreigner that my wife led me. "A plague upon his Cubas and him too," I thought. Still, what was to be done?

"If you cannot sleep there to-night," he said, noticing my uneasiness, "I will claim the night's grace----"

"Grace!" I exclaimed; my wife before me in the word.

"Yes, she said to-night or to-morrow."

"Oh, to-night?--impossible!" I cried. "I have a very--an engagement to-night. I can not possibly make it to-night. Besides," I exclaimed, grasping at an idea like a drowner at a rope, or any thing saving, "mademoiselle may not give leave to share your danger with any one."

"I asked her," he said--I had noticed them exchange whispers--"and she will----"

"Bother!" I muttered; but instantly continued, with a smile, "if it is to be so I will be at your service to-morrow. Meanwhile, let me slip away now--that engagement, you know."

We were at the foot of the Cote de Grace by this time. He brought the party to a stand-still, and, after some difficulty, I was allowed to desert, Le Brun asking me to join him next day to dinner, to which I agreed. After I left the joyous set I walked away fiercely, like a man with a purpose, till they were out of sight; but, as I neared that sanctuary of the heart where the tea would be waiting for me, the fierceness of my pace abated, and, with hands in pockets and head depressed, I slackened my speed more and more, till at last, when I reached my garden-gate, I came to a stand-still.

Unhappily I am tall, and my children are all wonderfully quick. I had not stood at the gate three seconds before I was surrounded by my urchins, whooping, and getting among my legs, and hanging to my tails, and playing the wildest pranks off on me.

But suddenly I saw my wife leave the house and come down the garden without her bonnet to welcome me. Oh, how I wished that, just for once, she had been a shrew; I could have brazened out the matter then. But she smiled so sweetly at me!

"Well," she exclaimed, heartily, putting her hands in mine, "you have had a splendid afternoon for your walk! Have you enjoyed it?"

"Oh, yes," I said, "except for one thing."

"What's that?" she asked; "no accident I hope. You've never, surely, been among the orchards again; I'm sure the grass swarms with adders and snakes." And she looked so anxiously and tenderly up into my face that I was forced to stoop and----. But this is weakness. "What was it? I saw you took out that divine Shelley."

"Yes," I answered, jumping at any subject foreign to the one at my heart, "he _is_ divine. I'll never deny it again; the very god of sleep."

"For shame!" she cried; "and I saw you took something else, too. But where is it?--the parasol, I mean?" I had forgotten it! I think I must have started and changed color, for she immediately proceeded: "Never mind, it's too late to go into the fields for it now. It will be quite destroyed, though, by the dew to-night--there's always so much in this weather. But, never mind--and yet how could you forget it?"

"Oh, it's all right," I replied, somewhat pettishly; "we'll get it in the morning. I left it in a shop at the foot of the Cote de Grace."

"Well, then, what was the drawback to your walk?"

"Oh! never mind it just now," I exclaimed. "Dear Grace, do let me have some tea; I'll tell you by-and-by." And I bustled among the children towards the house, she following in some surprise.

As soon as tea was over I dispatched the children into the garden and solemnly commenced my tale. Commenced? I plunged into it heels over head, as a timid bather plunges into the pool when he is the cynosure of the eyes of all swimmers in it, and by appearing on the brink in Nature's undress _uniform_, feels himself pledged to enter the liquid. Like him, too, when once in, I did not find the water so cold as I feared, after all. I had made my promise so strong by constantly referring to it, that Grace never even proposed my giving it up. My brother would arrive by to-morrow's boat, and so that the house would have a guardian she would not object--for once. I inwardly vowed not to put it in her power to refuse or grant such a favor again.

II.

So on the morrow, at the appointed time, I was comfortably seated at M. le Brun's mahogany; and while, "for this occasion only," I played my old _role_ of bachelor, I loosed the hymeneal reins, and actually told some ancient Cider-cellar stories--in French, too,--which produced explosion after explosion of laughter, though whether this was caused by the tales or the telling I cannot of course guess.

By-and-by evening came, and it was time to start. Le Brun and I hastened, therefore, to finish the bottles then in circulation; and, as soon as that was done, rose to walk to the haunted property. And now the skeptical blockheads who doubt every thing would say that what follows was the consequence of our libations. Let them say what they like, I only put it to _you_, if it is likely that a thorough-going Church and State rector would be influenced by a few bottles of _vin ordinaire_ and a mere _thought_ of cognac after all.

It was about nine o'clock when we arrived within sight of St. Sauveur. It was a lovely night. Beyond the little village in the distance loomed the hills, rising from the Eure, over which the moon was shining brilliantly. Presently my companion turned sharply off from the main road, and we began to ascend a narrow stony lane, so thickly fringed with bushes that the light was excluded; but ere long we came upon a cross-path nearly as narrow, but lighted by the rays of the bright moon; this we followed, till, in a few minutes, we arrived before a gate, which we pushed open, and advanced into a field.

Le Brun paused to light a fresh cigar from the smoking ruins of the last, and, as I walked on, I suddenly became reflective. "Your life, my dear and reverend sir," I ejaculated, "has just been like this evening's walk. Your school and college life were all bright and silvery as the highway flooded by the glorious beams, and so forth. Then came the stony lane of curateship, and then you gained a cross-lane, stony still, but lighted by the smiles of Grace, and the prospect of a reversion, which your father got you cheap, because the occupant was young. And then this youthful rector joined the Church of Rome, leaving the gate open for you; and so you stepped into your twelve hundred a year, of which you only need to sacrifice seventy for a hack to do the work. So that after a somewhat pleasant life you can enjoy yourself in foreign parts, and----"

"Halloa!" cried a voice behind.

I started. In a moment I remembered that I was upon haunted ground, and motioned to fly. I am no coward, but I hate a surprise, and thought that perhaps the hero of this enchanted ground was close beside me. Le Brun's voice, however, dissipated those fears. I had strolled from the right path in my dream, and he wished me to re-rejoin him. I did so, and we pursued our walk.

We soon arrived before the house. It was approachable at the rear by a road which led to St. Sauveur, after winding about the country some two or three miles more than necessary, as French roads are apt to do: but the main entrance was from the fields, as we had come. It was a shabby place, and looked in the staring moonlight as seedy as a bookseller's hack would look in the glare of an Almack's ball. The windows were mostly broken, and the portico, like its Greek model, was in ruins. Rude evergreens grew downward from the rails which had fixed them, when young, in the way they were to go, and were sprawling about the nominal garden, which was likewise overrun by weeds and plots of grass, and fallen shrubs and flowers. The moon never looked on a poorer spot, and yet there was an air about the tattered old house which seemed to indicate that it had been good-looking once; as we may see, despite the plaster-work among the wrinkles of some of our dowagers, that they were not altogether hideous, as they now are, in the days of the "Greatest Gentleman" in Europe.

We entered. It was too late and too dark in-doors to survey the mansion; so, as Le Brun had been directed to the habitable room, we struck a light, and ascended directly to it. It was handsomely furnished, and a basket containing that refreshment which we had looked forward to stood on the table. The windows were whole; still I thought it well to close the shutters, as I hate Midsummer nights' draughts as much as I love the "Midsummer Night's Dream." This done, I sank on a sofa; Le Brun drew some wine; we fell to at an early supper, and fared well.

When we had finished we lighted cigars, and our conversation grew frivolous. Le Brun was in the midst of a description of Esther, when I heard a groan, and said so. He pooh-poohed me, and, half annoyed at the interruption, proceeded. He had not got on very far before the groan was repeated. I started up.

"Pooh!--wind!" said my companion, retaining his seat and emitting his smoke.

"If so, it must be wind on the stomach, or wind in the lungs," I said. "Hark!"

I heard a faint noise. We both listened intently for some minutes, I standing. It was not repeated, however; so, growing tired, I said that I must have been mistaken, and sat down. Le Brun agreed with me, and resumed his description. I followed with a tale; he was reminded by it of another; and so we continued, till our repeated potations, much speaking, and the late hour, made both of us prosy, and then we fell, as with one accord, asleep.

I must have slept for a considerable time, as, when I woke, I found that the lamp had burned very low, and looked the worse for having been kept up so late. I woke with a start, caused, as I imagined, by hearing the room-door suddenly opened. That was a sound which, as a father of a large family, I had got to know very well, especially about the smaller hours. I looked towards the door, but my eyes were dim with sleep, and it was not till Le Brun's boot was projected against my shin that I became sufficiently awake to see if my idea was correct or no. It was.

Not only was the door open but a person was evidently standing on the threshold. In the sickly light his face was not visible; nothing, in fact, but an outline of him. I rose, and with as much steadiness of voice as I could command, requested the visitor to come in. He made a deep bow, set his hat modestly upon the floor, came across the room, and stood as if awaiting further orders.

I had, however, none to give him. I had not sufficient impudence to bid him sit down and help himself to wine, or what he liked; but I kicked Le Brun, in payment for his attack on me, and motioned to him to do the honors. He met the advance of my foot, however, in an unexpected way.

"Diable!" he cried, "Est-ce que----"

He stopped as if a gag had been thrust between his jaws; for our visitor, doubtless applying the epithet to himself, suddenly turned his back on us, walked to the door, picked up his hat, and, though I cried after him, as the Master of Ravenswood cried after his dead Lucia's ghost, to stop, paid no more heed than that virgin does to Mario, but retired quickly, his boots screaming as he trod upon them like veritable souls in pain. We made no motion to follow, but remained as if glued to our places, looking on each other from our semi-sleepy eyes in a somewhat foolish manner.

"He'll come back," said Le Brun. "Hush!"

The boots had stopped at the bottom of the stairs; we heard no sound.

"If he does, don't name Sathanas, for Heaven's sake," I said. "He doesn't like it. It may recall unpleasant things--seem personal, in fact----"

"Hush!" he exclaimed.

We listened. The screaming boots were remounting the stairs. The visitor had got over the personality, and was coming back. "What should be done? I am no coward; I've said so before; but I seriously thought of running to, shutting, fastening, and setting chairs against the door. But I did not move. The footsteps approached, and then began to recede again. This suspense of the interest--or, rather, dragging out of it--was most tormenting. What if he should go on walking all night? But the steps were ere long heard once more coming near the room, and once more the visitor stood at the door. But he did not enter now. He looked steadfastly towards us; beckoned slowly; then, turning, began to leave us again. I drew a long, well-satisfied breath as he disappeared and leaned back on the sofa.

"I trust he's gone for good now," I said.

"He beckoned. We must follow," said Le Brun.

"Follow! Pooh, pooh!" I exclaimed. "Let us sit still and be glad."

"Not I," was his brave response. "Be he man, or be he----"

"Hush!" I cried. "He may hear. He doesn't like the word----"

"I do not understand the impulse," said Le Brun; "but we must follow."

"I do not _feel_ the impulse," I rejoined. "Still, if you do, and obey it, I will not desert you."

"Come," he answered. And with quick steps we chased the vocal boots down the corridor, and ere long saw the wearer of them, having descended the stairs, cross the hall, and wait at the door of the house.

The moon was still shining brightly, and its rays came through the broken windows on the ground-floor, and fell on the figure of the mysterious one. He was of middle height, and of broad and muscular build. He seemed more like an English farmer than a French ghost. His garments were seedy, and his hat was old; but his boots were like the boots of Thaddeus of Warsaw, the son of Miss Porter, who was so mortally offended when asked the name of the maker of his Bluchers, and they gleamed like boots of polished steel. All, however, did not seem right about the stranger. His head appeared awry, and his arms out of their places. But perhaps these blemishes were attributable to the moonlight, and not to the man; for he showed that he could turn his head and look at us, and use his arms to open the door. We followed him out into the air.

He led us through the field we had already traversed, but in a rather different direction. The night was chilly, and the long grass damp, and I began to grow weary of the adventure. Suddenly, however, our conductor stopped before what appeared to be a ruined cow-shed. He looked at it earnestly for a few moments, then at us, who kept a respectful distance; then, making an abrupt motion of his arm towards it, too rapid for us to understand, he seemed to me to spring into the air. Whether he did so or not, I cannot declare; but I know that when I rubbed my eyes, and looked round about for him, he was nowhere to be seen. We examined the spot, but he had left no traces. Boots, and hat, and all his trappery had gone with him. He had come like a dream, and vanished like a morning dream.

We stood for a few moments uncertain what to do, and then it occurred to me that the room we had left was warm and comfortable, and this field cold and dreary; so I proposed to return, especially as, the stranger having vanished, there did not appear to be any business in hand. Le Brun agreed, and we did so, and, after talking awhile over our adventure, went to sleep over our talk; and I did not wake again till morning was staring into the chamber, as Le Brun threw open the shutters.

The conversation that took place is as well to be imagined as transcribed. Enough to say that I determined to have no share in Le Brun's narrative, but left him to heighten it for himself. I parted with him at my house, where I found Grace looking out for me; and he promised to return in the course of the morning to pay his respects to her.

To my surprise, however, when he came, he asked me for five minutes' conversation, and we went together into the field belonging to my house, which sloped down to the Seine. His countenance was _both_ joyous and anxious, and I saw that he had something heavier on his mind than last night's frolic.

"I have spoken to you of M. Gray," he said, "and of Mademoiselle Raymond. I have learnt this morning that M. Gray has her father in his power."

"You learnt that from her?" I asked.

He blushed and did not answer.

I went on. I had compared notes with my brother about this Gray, and found my suspicions correct. I therefore told Le Brun what I had overheard on the zigzag, and he in reply told me that Raymond had accepted a bill for the amount of the debt to Gray.

"That's serious," I said. "But before we say more, monsieur, are you engaged to Mademoiselle Esther?"

He replied in the affirmative.

"Can you live--excuse the question--with her without dowry?"

He replied in the affirmative again.

"Then," I said, "though it may sound oddly from one of my cloth, you must either elope with her----"

"But then M. Raymond?--But his family?"

"He must suffer for his folly; not you. And you are only going to marry one daughter, not all of them. The other alternative is--you must pay Raymond's acceptance, as he cannot."

"It would be ruin. I cannot, either," he replied.

"Then you must lose Esther."

"I will not. No. And yet if I was to shoot Gray----"

"Shoot?" I interrupted, with the virtuous horror of a man who has never been tempted to fight a duel--"and would you then outrage the laws of divine and human?"

"No; it wouldn't do to shoot him," he pursued. "But oh, monsieur, can you not suggest something to help me--to help us?"

A thought suddenly came into my head. "Gray is pledged to spend to-night in the haunted house, is he not?" I asked.

He answered that it was so.

"I believe the man to be an arrant coward," I went on. "To be sure, he shot a dear friend of mine in a duel, and behaved, as the world says, like a brave man before his witnesses. But he's a coward for all that, and we'll test it. I don't believe in our friend the Goblin Farmer; I don't believe we saw any body, or any spirit last night at all. Well, never mind beliefs; don't interrupt me. I think our eyes were made the fools of other senses, and that there's no such thing. Gray has to spend the night there--we'll go again to-night, that is, if my wife will let me, and perhaps get my brother to help us--eh? Suppose we give him a lesson." And I laughed.

He laughed too; and after a few more observations, he accompanied me into my drawing-room. Grace and James, with his wife Emma, were sitting talking there.

I have said that I am a lazy rector. During my curatehood, however, I had learned to preach sufficiently well for the parish where I worked. To be sure my congregation was neither large or wakeful, except in winter, when the church was like a Wenham ice depot, and people could not sleep. But I was brief, and no faults were ever found in my time with brevity. My experience in exposition and appeal now stood me in good stead.

I introduced Le Brun, and then plunged into matters. I gave a brief account of Esther and her father. I eulogized Le Brun. After that I spoke of Gray, and reminded James of the life and times--the death, too, of John Finnis, whom he saved from being plucked alive in St. James's, only that he might be shot in Hampstead. These dispatched, I opened my plans, which were listened to with great interest; the only alteration proposed was that James should go to find the authorities (if there were any, which he doubted), and give notice of Gray's character to them; after which he was to return to my house, and stay there till Le Brun and I came back from our nocturnal expedition, as Grace and Emma feared to be left alone. Poor Emma, indeed, declared that this was the most romantic thing she had ever heard of, except one which happened in the village where she was born; but as neither James or I liked to hear her speak of her origin, we cut her narrative short.

The cresset moon was up in heaven--at least, Emma said it was--when we started. It seemed to me nearly full; but she was poetical. I told her that if it was a cresset, it was tilting up, and ought, therefore, to be pouring out oil, and not light, on the earth. We started, I repeat, and a short time after, in the language of a favorite novelist, two travellers might have been seen slowly wending on their way, bundle in hand, towards the haunted house.

In another hour or so, when the wind had sunk into repose, and the birds had ceased their songs, and all things save the ever-watching stars were sleeping (as that favorite historian might go on, if he were telling this tale and not I), a tall and ecclesiastical form crept slowly from a place of concealment near the house, approached it, and gently knocked at the door. It was opened, and he entered cautiously. A few whispered sentences passed with some friend within, which being over, he proceeded, though with some hesitation, to mount the stairs and pace along the corridor.

My boots (for I was the ecclesiastic) creaked and crackled like mad boots. Onward I went, like the Ghost in Hamlet, only with very vocal buskins. I reached Gray's room and opened the door. A strange sight met my eyes through the green glass goggles which I wore over them.

Gray was pacing up and down, in evident fear. A quantity of half-burnt cigars, some bottles of wine, glasses, the lamp, and, above all, two pistols were on the table. As I opened the door, and the light fell on me, I feared that I should be discovered. But the gambler was afraid--and fear has no eyes. I advanced into the room, and solemnly waved to him to follow. He must have caught up a pistol ere he did so. I led the way.

It was my determination to lead him a long chase, and leave him in a ditch if possible, Le Brun being near at hand to cudgel him. He had readily understood my pantomime (I studied under Jones the player when in training for orders), for I found he followed me, though at a distance.

But all my plans were disconcerted. As I reached the stair-head I heard a noise, and stopped; so did Gray. It was as of some one forcing the house door. Directly afterwards I heard the loud cries of the real goblin's boots, and the sound of Le Brun in swift pursuit.

"Take care, monsieur," he cried up the stairs to me.

"By heaven they are robbers--murderers! Help! help!" roared Gray from behind; and as the real apparition came gliding up, he fired his pistol at it. The unexpected sound of the weapon, so close to my ear, too, stunned me for a moment; but I recovered myself directly, and flung myself on him, in fear lest he had his second pistol, too, and might fire at _me_. The real goblin continued to advance, and I felt Gray tremble with terror in my arms as _it_ survived the shot.

An unwonted boldness came over me. I felt myself committed to be brave.

"Villain!" I muttered in his ear, "you would swindle my descendant out of all he has?"

"No--forgive me. I will not take a sou."

"His acceptance--where is it? Give it me." He shuddered.

"I will give it to you," he said.

I released him, and followed to the lamp-lighted chamber. The other apparition creaked after him, too, and at the door I gave it the precedence. It was well I did so. The sudden light seemed to make Gray bold, for snatching up the other pistol he levelled it at the Simon Pure, and before I could utter a word, fired. The shot must have passed clean through the breast of the Mysterious Stranger--he only bowed.

Gray was now in mortal fear.

"Give up that bill," I said in solemn, pedal tones. He drew it frantically from his pocket, and, leaping up, gave it to the mysterious one.

"Go to th----" he began, with a sort of ferocious recklessness. The next moment he was sprawling on the floor. The Goblin reached out his hand, and struck Gray, as it seemed, lightly with it. I would have raised him. I motioned to do so; but my original touched me on the shoulder, handed me the bill, and motioned to me to follow. I did not like his notes of hand--his signature by mark on Gray's face--I therefore at once obeyed. Le Brun had vanished.

The stranger led me by the old route till we were again close to the tottering cow-house. Here he paused, as on the last occasion, and was, perhaps, preparing to disappear again.

"One moment, sir," I said. "Be good enough to explain yourself more plainly than you did last night. However much I may admire your acting, and it has _beaucoup de l'Esprit_ about it, family arrangements will prevent me from again assisting----"

He nodded as though he quite understood me, advanced to the side of the shed, stopped under a sort of window, and then, deliberately sitting down on the grass, began to pull off his boots. I gazed at him in amazement, and was about to address him again, when a little cloud sailed across the moon, and for a moment shaded all the place. As it passed away, and I looked to our mysterious visitant and my mysterious Original, no remains of him were to be seen--except the boots.

At this moment Le Brun joined me. I was the first (as before and as ever) to throw aside my natural fears, and I advanced to the spot. There were two highly polished Bluchers, side by side, as if they waited till the occupant of the cow-house was out of bed and shaved. I took one of them up. Something inside chinked. I reversed it, and three Napoleons fell upon the turf.

I was wondering why a French farmer-ghost should choose a Blucher to deliver Napoleons into an Englishman's hands, when Le Brun, finding nothing in the other boot, suggested that it would be well to get Gray out of the neighborhood, and perhaps the three Napoleons might be useful to him. To this I agreed at once, though I was somewhat dissatisfied with the little fellow for the small share he had taken in the risks of the evening.

I went to the room where the gambler was; he was evidently in mortal fear. I put down the Napoleons on the table, and then in those deep, pedal, and ecclesiastical notes, which have so often hymned my congregation to repose, informed him that friends of John Finnis were in the town, that he was proclaimed to the authorities, and that he had better leave the neighborhood for ever. With this I left him, joined Le Brun, and was soon on my way back to Honfleur.

"It was well I drew the shot from his pistols," said Le Brun, as we were parting. I did not then see any latent meaning in his words, nor would he ever afterwards answer any questions on the subject. I had forgotten to remove my ghostly dresses and decorations, and Grace and Emma both uttered gentle screams as I stalked into their presence. My tale was soon told, and we retired to rest.

Here the whole tale ends. As the events I recorded recede into the past, I begin almost to doubt the truth of them. But I have one living evidence--now I am glad to say not single--and Le Brun may fairly lay it to me that he has at this moment the most agreeable little lady in all Normandy for his wedded wife. I am not aware if Boots still visits the glimpses of the moon at St. Sauveur, for soon after these events I was obliged to return to my parish to put down the Popish fooleries which I found my hack had begun to introduce. If, however, he does, I only hope his reappearance will be as useful as in the above little narrative, but the Brown, the Gray--and the narrator have now done with him for ever.

CREBILLON, THE FRENCH AESCHYLUS.

From Fraser's Magazine.

About the year 1670, there lived at Dijon a certain notary, an original in his way, named Melchior Jolyot. His father was an innkeeper; but of a more ambitious nature than his sire, the son, so soon as he had succeeded in collecting a little money, purchased for himself the office of head clerk in the Chambres des Comptes of Dijon, with the title of Greffier of the same. During the following year, having long been desirous of a title of nobility, he acquired, at a very low price, a little abandoned and almost unknown fief, that of Crebillon, situated about a league and a half from the city.

His son, Prosper Jolyot, the future poet, was at that time a young man of about two-and-twenty years of age, a student at law, and then on the eve of being admitted as advocate at the French bar. From the first years of his sojourn in Paris, we find that he called himself Prosper Jolyot _de Crebillon_. About sixty years later, a worthy philosopher of Dijon, a certain Monsieur J. B. Michault, writes as follows to the President de Ruffey:--"Last Saturday (June 19th, 1762), our celebrated Crebillon was interred at St. Gervais. In his _billets de mort_ they gave him the title of _ecuyer_; but what appears to me more surprising, is the circumstance of his son adopting that of _messire_."

Crebillon had then ended by cradling himself in a sort of imaginary nobility. In 1761, we find him writing to the President de Brosse: "I have ever taken so little thought respecting my own origin, that I have neglected certain very flattering elucidations on this point. M. de Ricard, maitre des comptes at Dijon, gave my father one day two titles he had found. Of these two titles, written in very indifferent Latin, the first concerned one Jolyot, chamberlain of Raoul, Duke of Burgundy; the second, a certain Jolyot, chamberlain of Philippe le Bon. Both of these titles are lost. I can also remember having heard it said in my youth by some old inhabitants of Nuits, my father's native place, that there formerly existed in those cantons a certain very powerful and noble family, named Jolyot."

O vanity of vanities! would it be believed that, under the democratic reign of the Encyclopoedia, a man like Crebillon, ennobled by his own talents and genius, could have thus hugged himself in the possession of a vain and deceitful chimera! For truth compels us to own that, from the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, the Jolyots were never any thing more or less than honest innkeepers, who sold their wine unadulterated, as it was procured from the black or golden grapes of the Burgundy hills.