Chapter 2
A gently ascending road, more than two miles in length, shaded by a quadruple row of venerable elms, led from the village to the Chateau de Sairmeuse.
Nothing could be more beautiful than this avenue, a fit approach to a palace; and the stranger who beheld it could understand the naively vain proverb of the country: "He does not know the real beauty of France, who has never seen Sairmeuse nor the Oiselle."
The Oiselle is the little river which one crosses by means of a wooden bridge on leaving the village, and whose clear and rapid waters give a delicious freshness to the valley.
At every step, as one ascends, the view changes. It is as if an enchanting panorama were being slowly unrolled before one.
On the right you can see the saw-mills of Fereol. On the left, like an ocean of verdure, the forest of Dolomien trembles in the breeze. Those imposing ruins on the other side of the river are all that remain of the feudal manor of the house of Breulh. That red brick mansion, with granite trimmings, half concealed by a bend in the river, belongs to the Baron d'Escorval.
And, if the day is clear, one can easily distinguish the spires of Montaignac in the distance.
This was the path traversed by M. Lacheneur after Chupin had delivered his message. But what did he care for the beauties of the landscape!
Upon the church porch he had received his death-wound; and now, with a tottering and dragging step, he dragged himself along like one of those poor soldiers, mortally wounded upon the field of battle, who go back, seeking a ditch or quiet spot where they can lie down and die.
He seemed to have lost all thought of his surroundings--all consciousness of previous events. He pursued his way, lost in his reflections, guided only by force of habit.
Two or three times his daughter, Marie-Anne, who was walking by his side, addressed him; but an "Ah! let me alone!" uttered in a harsh tone, was the only response she could draw from him.
Evidently he had received a terrible blow; and undoubtedly, as often happens under such circumstances, the unfortunate man was reviewing all the different phases of his life.
At twenty Lacheneur was only a poor ploughboy in the service of the Sairmeuse family.
His ambition was modest then. When stretched beneath a tree at the hour of noonday rest, his dreams were as simple as those of an infant.
"If I could but amass a hundred pistoles," he thought, "I would ask Father Barrois for the hand of his daughter Martha; and he would not refuse me." A hundred pistoles! A thousand francs!--an enormous sum for him who, in two years of toil and privation had only laid by eleven louis, which he had placed carefully in a tiny box and hidden in the depths of his straw mattress.
Still he did not despair. He had read in Martha's eyes that she would wait.
And Mlle. Armande de Sairmeuse, a rich old maid, was his god-mother; and he thought, if he attacked her adroitly, that he might, perhaps, interest her in his love-affair.
Then the terrible storm of the revolution burst over France.
With the fall of the first thunder-bolts, the Duke of Sairmeuse left France with the Count d'Artois. They took refuge in foreign lands as a passer-by seeks shelter in a doorway from a summer shower, saying to himself: "This will not last long."
The storm did last, however; and the following year Mlle. Armande, who had remained at Sairmeuse, died.
The chateau was then closed, the president of the district took possession of the keys in the name of the government, and the servants were scattered.
Lacheneur took up his residence in Montaignac.
Young, daring, and personally attractive, blessed with an energetic face, and an intelligence far above his station, it was not long before he became well known in the political clubs.
For three months Lacheneur was the tyrant of Montaignac.
But this metier of public speaker is by no means lucrative, so the surprise throughout the district was immense, when it was ascertained that the former ploughboy had purchased the chateau, and almost all the land belonging to his old master.
It is true that the nation had sold this princely domain for scarcely a twentieth part of its real value. The appraisement was sixty-nine thousand francs. It was giving the property away.
And yet, it was necessary to have this amount, and Lacheneur possessed it, since he had poured it in a flood of beautiful louis d'or into the hands of the receiver of the district.
From that moment his popularity waned. The patriots who had applauded the ploughboy, cursed the capitalist. He discreetly left them to recover from their rage as best they could, and returned to Sairmeuse. There everyone bowed low before Citoyen Lacheneur.
Unlike most people, he did not forget his past hopes at the moment when they might be realized.
He married Martha Barrois, and, leaving the country to work out its own salvation without his assistance, he gave his time and attention to agriculture.
Any close observer, in those days, would have felt certain that the man was bewildered by the sudden change in his situation.
His manner was so troubled and anxious that one, to see him, would have supposed him a servant in constant fear of being detected in some indiscretion.
He did not open the chateau, but installed himself and his young wife in the cottage formerly occupied by the head game-keeper, near the entrance of the park.
But, little by little, with the habit of possession, came assurance.
The Consulate had succeeded the Directory, the Empire succeeded the Consulate, Citoyen Lacheneur became M. Lacheneur.
Appointed mayor two years later, he left the cottage and took possession of the chateau. The former ploughboy slumbered in the bed of the Ducs de Sairmeuse; he ate from the massive plate, graven with their coat-of-arms; he received his visitors in the magnificent salon in which the Ducs de Sairmeuse had received their friends in years gone by.
To those who had known him in former days, M. Lacheneur had become unrecognizable. He had adapted himself to his lofty station. Blushing at his own ignorance; he had found the courage--wonderful in one of his age--to acquire the education which he lacked.
Then, all his undertakings were successful to such a degree that his good fortune had become proverbial. That he took any part in an enterprise, sufficed to make it turn out well.
His wife had given him two lovely children, a son and a daughter.
His property, managed with a shrewdness and sagacity which the former owners had not possessed, yielded him an income of at least sixty thousand francs.
How many, under similar circumstances, would have lost their heads! But he, M. Lacheneur, had been wise enough to retain his sang-froid.
In spite of the princely luxury that surrounded him, his own habits were simple and frugal. He had never had an attendant for his own person. His large income he consecrated almost entirely to the improvement of his estate or to the purchase of more land. And yet, he was not avaricious. In all that concerned his wife or children, he did not count the cost. His son, Jean, had been educated in Paris; he wished him to be fitted for any position. Unwilling to consent to a separation from his daughter, he had procured a governess to take charge of her education.
Sometimes his friends accused him of an inordinate ambition for his children; but he always shook his head sadly, as he replied:
"If I can only insure them a modest and comfortable future! But what folly it is to count upon the future. Thirty years ago, who could have foreseen that the Sairmeuse family would be deprived of their estates?"
With such opinions he should have been a good master; he was, but no one thought the better of him on that account. His former comrades could not forgive him for his sudden elevation.
They seldom spoke of him without wishing his ruin in ambiguous words.
Alas! the evil days came. Toward the close of the year 1812, he lost his wife, the disasters of the year 1813 swept away a large portion of his personal fortune, which had been invested in a manufacturing enterprise.
Compromised by the first Restoration, he was obliged to conceal himself for a time; and to cap the climax, the conduct of his son, who was still in Paris, caused him serious disquietude.
Only the evening before, he had thought himself the most unfortunate of men.
But here was another misfortune menacing him; a misfortune so terrible that all the others were forgotten.
From the day on which he had purchased Sairmeuse to this fatal Sunday in August, 1815, was an interval of twenty years.
Twenty years! And it seemed to him only yesterday that, blushing and trembling, he had laid those piles of louis d'or upon the desk of the receiver of the district.
Had he dreamed it?
He had not dreamed it. His entire life, with its struggles and its miseries, its hopes and its fears, its unexpected joys and its blighted hopes, all passed before him.
Lost in these memories, he had quite forgotten the present situation, when a commonplace incident, more powerful than the voice of his daughter, brought him back to the terrible reality. The gate leading to the Chateau de Sairmeuse, to his chateau, was found to be locked.
He shook it with a sort of rage; and, being unable to break the fastening, he found some relief in breaking the bell.
On hearing the noise, the gardener came running to the scene of action.
"Why is this gate closed?" demanded M. Lacheneur, with unwonted violence of manner. "By what right do you barricade my house when I, the master, am without?"
The gardener tried to make some excuse.
"Hold your tongue!" interrupted M. Lacheneur. "I dismiss you; you are no longer in my service."
He passed on, leaving the gardener petrified with astonishment, crossed the court-yard--a court-yard worthy of the mansion, bordered with velvet turf, with flowers, and with dense shrubbery.
In the vestibule, inlaid with marble, three of his tenants sat awaiting him, for it was on Sunday that he always received the workmen who desired to confer with him.
They rose at his approach, and removed their hats deferentially. But he did not give them time to utter a word.
"Who permitted you to enter here?" he said, savagely, "and what do you desire? They sent you to play the spy on me, did they? Leave, I tell you!"
The three farmers were even more bewildered and dismayed than the gardener had been, and their remarks must have been interesting.
But M. Lacheneur could not hear them. He had opened the door of the grand salon, and dashed in, followed by his frightened daughter.
Never had Marie-Anne seen her father in such a mood; and she trembled, her heart torn by the most frightful presentiments.
She had heard it said that oftentimes, under the influence of some dire calamity, unfortunate men have suddenly lost their reason entirely; and she was wondering if her father had become insane.
It would seem, indeed, that such was the case. His eyes flashed, convulsive shudders shook his whole body, a white foam gathered on his lips.
He made the circuit of the room as a wild beast makes the circuit of his cage, uttering harsh imprecations and making frenzied gestures.
His actions were strange, incomprehensible. Sometimes he seemed to be trying the thickness of the carpet with the toe of his boot; sometimes he threw himself upon a sofa or a chair, as if to test its softness.
Occasionally, he paused abruptly before some one of the valuable pictures that covered the walls, or before a bronze. One might have supposed that he was taking an inventory, and appraising all the magnificent and costly articles which decorated this apartment, the most sumptuous in the chateau.
"And I must renounce all this!" he exclaimed, at last. These words explained everything.
"No, never!" he resumed, in a transport of rage; "never! never! I cannot! I will not!"
Now Marie-Anne understood it all. But what was passing in her father's mind? She wished to know; and, leaving the low chair in which she had been seated, she went to her father's side.
"Are you ill, father?" she asked, in her sweet voice; "what is the matter? What do you fear? Why do you not confide in me?-- Am I not your daughter? Do you no longer love me?"
At the sound of this dear voice, M. Lacheneur trembled like a sleeper suddenly aroused from the terrors of a nightmare, and he cast an indescribable glance upon his daughter.
"Did you not hear what Chupin said to me?" he replied, slowly. "The Duc de Sairmeuse is at Montaignac; he will soon be here; and we are dwelling in the chateau of his fathers, and his domain has become ours!"
The vexed question regarding the national lands, which agitated France for thirty years, Marie understood, for she had heard it discussed a thousand times.
"Ah, well, dear father," said she, "what does that matter, even if we do hold the property? You have bought it and paid for it, have you not? So it is rightfully and lawfully ours."
M. Lacheneur hesitated a moment before replying.
But his secret suffocated him. He was in one of those crises in which a man, however strong he may be, totters and seeks some support, however fragile.
"You would be right, my daughter," he murmured, with drooping head, "if the money that I gave in exchange for Sairmeuse had really belonged to me."
At this strange avowal the young girl turned pale and recoiled a step.
"What?" she faltered; "this gold was not yours, my father? To whom did it belong? From whence did it come?"
The unhappy man had gone too far to retract.
"I will tell you all, my daughter," he replied, "and you shall judge. You shall decide. When the Sairmeuse family fled from France, I had only my hands to depend upon, and as it was almost impossible to obtain work, I wondered if starvation were not near at hand.
"Such was my condition when someone came after me one evening to tell me that Mademoiselle Armande de Sairmeuse, my godmother, was dying, and wished to speak with me. I ran to the chateau.
"The messenger had told the truth. Mademoiselle Armande was sick unto death. I felt this on seeing her upon her bed, whiter than wax.
"Ah! if I were to live a hundred years, never should I forget her face as it looked at that moment. It was expressive of a strength of will and an energy that would hold death at bay until the task upon which she had determined was performed.
"When I entered the room I saw a look of relief appear upon her countenance. "'How long you were in coming!' she murmured faintly.
"I was about to make some excuse, when she motioned me to pause, and ordered the women who surrounded her to leave the room.
"As soon as we were alone:
"'You are an honest boy,', said she, 'and I am about to give you a proof of my confidence. People believe me to be poor, but they are mistaken. While my relatives were gayly ruining themselves, I was saving the five hundred louis which the duke, my brother, gave me each year.'
"She motioned me to come nearer, and to kneel beside her bed.
"I obeyed, and Mademoiselle Armande leaned toward me, almost glued her lips to my ear, and added:
"'I possess eighty thousand francs.'
"I felt a sudden giddiness, but my godmother did not notice it.
"'This amount,' she continued, 'is not a quarter part of the former income from our family estates. But now, who knows but it will, one day, be the only resource of the Sairmeuse?
I am going to place it in your char