Chapter VI: Charlemont (1)

“La vertu, dans le monde, est toujours poursuivie.”—MOLIERE.

The people swayed and hummed in the road, with strange burnished chequers cast over their very visages as they pressed against the gorgeous gates, thrown open towards each other, so as to form a double impromptu palisade across the highway, and locked as well as steadied by inward props; through the bars of each side-wicket could be seen a scarlet-clothed Swiss sentinel, his musket shouldered, as he paced to and fro, grimly though carelessly contemplating all. But scarce was there time to take in the scene ere a louder trumpet-note sounded from among the trees, and two mounted trumpeters in orange liveries were seen to rise at speed on the brow of the avenue; till, amidst sudden silence, the whole array of a brilliant _cortège_ rose up beyond them from a slope, glittering, indeed, yet pale and almost tarnished amidst the rich evening light, as it emerged through the cool forest chase. It was indeed the royal stag-hunt returning to Marly from the woods. Swiftly they came onward—the troop of chivalrous-looking gardes-du-corps, in sky-blue and gold, scarlet velvet breeches and white-plumed black hats, with ringing scabbards and glossy foam-necked horses,—the carriages and riders, the sledge with the slain stag, and the chasseurs and stag-hounds. But the procession appeared to go across in visionary swiftness between the reversed gates: there was but one glimpse of that single face, with its unfixed and solitary glance, its inscrutable air of calm, ere it had gone past, to a doubtful murmur of _Vive le Roi_, that was succeeded by a hubbub of sounds, with all the disagreeable pressure of a miscellaneous crowd, sometimes standing on the wheels, or leaning against the carriage-hood. Young Willoughby had torn off his hat with a ‘hurrah!’ which stultified all his previous British protestations.

A face was turned up from the confusion beneath, which, owing to the now neater attire of the possessor, Charles had not before observed: the village teacher had assumed coat and hat, bearing an umbrella of somewhat faded texture beneath his arm, and some workmen evidently assisted him to gain a more convenient position.

“Yes, I say, Father Pierre,” gloomily observed one of the workmen, addressing the teacher, as if in reference to some previous remark, “there are plots!”

“Ah, it is no doubt undeniable,” agreed that person, with reluctance, while he still turned an eye to the carriage, as if to apologise for being thrust up against it: “there are possibly plots. In that case it is only necessary to disconcert them, Monsieur Jacques.”

“But it is exactly to do so, Monsieur Morin,” said a quieter mechanic, “that, after earlier than usual dismissing the school, you were on the point to set off for Paris.”

“Yes, half an hour ago, on foot, to the Club Breton, at the Palais Royal,” continued a peasant beyond.

“Père Pierre had a plot also, you know,” added some one else.

“Pardon me, Monsieur Robert—a _plan_,” replied the teacher with his peculiar blandness, though his eye continued wandering sideways to the carriage: “to plot, my friend—it does not belong to the virtuous.”

“But from a philosopher,” rejoined the villager, “Monsieur Père Morin is about to become a man of action—he has a plan.”

“Delayed by this beast of a barricade, which deranges everything,” said his rougher neighbour, angrily.

“Monsieur Morin will, then, however, relate to us this plot which he counteracts,” added the keen-eyed mechanic, with emphasis—“and the plan also. We shall perhaps be able to assist him! It seems to me that M. Morin should have avoided being thrust on this side the barrier.”

“Good!” responded Jacques, “we shall assist him! It is no doubt fortunate after all.” The last riders had passed through, and the porters were coming with their keys to unlock the gates. The neighbouring chateau clock struck six with a cracked tone; and the great gates were slowly yielding, to allow time for the Swiss sentries to cross through. They came together to their usual place with a clash; the crowd poured each way between again, among the various country vehicles and market-carts, the passengers and riders, from or to the city, or the town of Versailles—for a few minutes in such sudden disorder as almost to hurl the bystanders from the carriage when it drove forward; save the young man, the teacher, who had held by it for security, and in the attempt to balance himself was urged so close as to seize the hood of the barouche, already in motion. An unaccountable repugnance shot from the young lady’s look and attitude as she started back, extricating her shawl from the accidental clutch—till her heart reproached her next moment at his thorough expression of apology mixed with alarm, for Jackson drove furiously down-hill. She was in vain calling him to stop, when she saw her brother spring up quick as thought, look round, and hurl their unintentional fellow-passenger backward on the road.

“Drive on, Jackson,” shouted Charles, triumphantly. “Serves him right—the very fellow’s face that I detested!”

Panniered market-asses, hastening pedestrians and boys, alone mingled with their speed across the bridge, past the _chemin des affronteux_, into Charlemont; the sudden howl of indignation from the groups behind them had died away.

“What on earth is the matter with you, Jackson?” called out the lad, starting up again, as they reached about the middle of the village street; “why don’t you drive on? Never mind watering your horses!”

“They’ve got a couple of farm-waggons and some hampers right across the way, sir,” replied Jackson, turning about from his box, with an undertone as much from misgiving as respect.

A shadowy mass blocked up the passage before them, looking vague in the dusk. It was opposite the door of a shabby _auberge_ or village inn, with the sign of the Fleur-de-lis. Charles stood up to call out in French, and a gendarme in coarse blue uniform advanced to the side of the carriage, civilly enough, as if to answer his inquiries.

“You have injured a respectable person, it is said, monsieur,” was the reply of the functionary, in a lowered voice—“a man of influence in the place here.”

“Wilfully, too, it seems!” added a villager, sharply, and turning to the crowd, which in a few seconds gathered about the speakers.

“Yes, yes—our schoolmaster—a philosopher—an estimable man—M. Morin!” was the general response, rising to a climax: “see him there, assisted by every one to reach the spot!”

The figure of Morin by that time became obvious, in fact, near the door of the tavern, supported by workmen and peasants, while the blood trickled down his cheek, and he limped on one foot, seeming more confused than hurt. The concern of the ladies was extreme; young Willoughby alone remained obstinately cool as the excitement increased; he assumed the chief part with great self-possession, and distinctly imputed the fault to the aggrieved individual, expressing quite as plainly, though in rather indifferent French, his doubts as to the seriousness of the injury.

The landlord of the auberge, a beetle-browed man in a striped cowl and white apron, with an air between a cook and a butcher, had hovered behind, looking on with apparent attempts at moderation among the bystanders. “Yet monsieur will scarcely refuse to apologise to M. Morin?” inquired he, thrusting his sinister visage nearer.

“If you only hand me your purse, mother,” was Charles’s answer, to Lady Willoughby’s anxiety, “you’ll soon see what’s wanted!”

“Monsieur!” exclaimed he, drawing back from the boy’s offer with an offended look, “you insult me!”

In the indignant noise which ensued, apologies would have been unavailing; but at the appearance of another gendarme pushing up, Charles Willoughby seated himself, turned his shoulder on the rabble, and contented himself with explaining matters to the official beside him, into whose palm he had easily enough slipped the rejected coin. It produced no apparent increase of deference in the man’s stiff civility; but he exchanged a few prompt words with his comrade, who took out a stump of pencil and a scrap of paper, put the end of the first into his mouth, and rested the latter on the carriage-wheel, looking up imperturbably for further particulars. An authoritative word or two from the other, as he raised his voice, and glanced from the throng to the obstacles in the street, on the other side of which market-drivers from Paris were grumbling, served to restore a degree of order. “Yes, Martin, it will be sufficient,” he loudly observed to his companion, “to take notice of the passports. Attention, then, Martin!”

“Monsieur will exhibit the passports,” said the sergeant in the same tone, as he turned again to the carriage. Charles Willoughby looked blank, though he mechanically felt for them in his pocket, and inquired at Jackson, at Mrs Mason, at all the party, looking below the cushions and beneath the seats. It was to no purpose; he had to admit that they were not forthcoming; a gentleman of the party, who would no doubt directly appear, had happened to have them in his pocket. The gendarmes stood up, and looked to each other significantly; the one put up his paper and pencil, with a shrug of his shoulders; the other addressed himself with a rigid air of regret to the carriage.

“It will be necessary to descend, mesdames et monsieur,” he said firmly, “until the affair can be adjusted. No, monsieur,” he rejoined in a lower voice to Charles, who was hinting at a further douceur, “impossible—a bribe!—and in the circumstances. But the thing is doubtless a mere bagatelle, which M. le Maire will very soon arrange at his chateau.”

“Yes! yes! Live justice!” screamed the gathered village, male and female, boys, girls, and children, down to the very crowing of the infant in arms, the excitement of poodles on the thresholds, the rousing up of fowls going early to roost above the doorways inside the dingy cottages.

“But, M. le Gendarme,” interposed the injured Morin himself, calmly, “I entertain no resentment against monsieur.”

“Only a complaint, M. Morin,” said the sergeant, with dignity. “It must be attended to. Besides that, the passports, which concern the State, are wanting. It is far more important.” The mob shrieked applause; even showing symptoms of disapprobation against their outraged teacher, who was silenced.

“Well, then, gendarme,” said young Willoughby, still contemptuous except to the lawful authorities beside him, “what do you mean by our getting down? Can you not take us at once to your mayor? This is not his chateau, I suppose?”

“Impossible, monsieur,” was the unruffled answer, “as M. le Comte has this afternoon gone to his hotel in Paris, and the commissary of the commune resides at some distance. It is by favour, I assure you, monsieur, that you are not conducted there, or to the guard-house of the district—which, of course, was impossible in the case of mesdames your companions.” The affable sergeant of police bowed towards the ladies. “At the auberge here, however, of the Fleur-de-lis, they will enjoy very superior accommodation with M. Grostète, who is the landlord. He is even an artist; the _ménage_, too, of madame the hostess is admirable.”

With regard to the prolongation of the dilemma, the village mob found an evident luxury in it, appearing to balance oddly enough between the wildest rage and looks of murmured interest; as if, the more struck they were with the youth’s blunt, spirited manner, the mother’s obvious distress, and the young lady’s pale, startled air, through her veil and out of her simple straw-hat, with her governess’s ill-maintained fastidiousness, the more unwilling the whole audience grew to lose hold of these, but would fain have been wrought up to extract something more tragic by way of sequel. The young man who had been the occasion of all, first relieved the party from their difficulty: Morin had fixed his light-blue eyes on the ground, and raised them thoughtfully as he moved forward to the chief gendarme.

“But fortunately, M. le Sergent,” said he, in a thin, distinct voice, “it seems to me that I am capable of readjusting this affair here.”

“And how?” inquired the police-officer, over his shoulder, as he drew himself up with an air of additional authority.

“M. le Maire has this evening gone to Paris?” continued the teacher, with composure.

“Yes, I witnessed his departure, since I had the honour to receive M. le Comte’s instructions,” answered the functionary, in more immovable certainty than before.

“I was aware of it,” said Morin, mildly, “because this morning, through the intendant of his estate, M. le Comte condescended to inform me of it.”

“Ah, you were informed of it, M. Morin!” said the gendarme, with a slight air of surprise, putting his thumb to his chin, and looking somewhat cautious. “Well?”

“And M. le Comte will not only be in Paris to-night,” said the schoolmaster, “but to-morrow also, since he has affairs of more importance to transact. Therefore it would be necessary to convey Monsieur the young Englishman to the commissary at Marly.”

“Peste! I did not know that though!” ejaculated the gendarme, letting fall his hand. “But you are right. It is only to the commissary at Marly, then, that we can resort.” And grim indifference returned to the faces of the gendarmes, as they shrugged their shoulders.

“But it was exactly to see M. le Comte that I was about to proceed, when disabled,” continued Pierre Morin, modestly, while he indicated his misfortune by a slight movement of the leg. The gendarmes stared at each other half incredulously.

“Eh? Père Pierre?” interrupted two or three voices; and the rough workman shouldered in, turning a dully suspicious glance from his begrimed visage to Morin’s, and adding, “It was to the Cloobbe Breton—the Palais Royal, I thought?”

“To disconcert a plot?” exclaimed several others.

“By a plan?” was the vivacious chorus of many together.

The young schoolmaster bowed. “Certainly, M. Jacques,” he said, with an unruffled smile, to the workmen, “since, thanks to the designs of some relatives, it is to the club that M. le Comte would have gone to-night as an auditor. He is still young—his ideas, though philosophical, are timid—it happens that he would have heard our boldest and least elegant orators, who watch with such a noble jealousy the division which is prolonged in the States-General by the privileged orders. I have studied the character of M. le Comte—he would have been deterred—his eloquence as our deputy to the Third Estate would not only have disgraced us at Charlemont here, but have given force to the opinions of others who would ruin all. There was, in short, a diabolical snare spread for him.”

An indignant murmur ran through the crowd, as they glanced to each other in alarm. The gendarmes rather appeared puzzled.

“_Ah dâme!_” broke out the superior of the two; “but how is it that _you_ are acquainted with all this, M. le Maitre-d’école?”

“It is simple, M. le Sergent,” replied Morin, calmly. “The message I received to-day, through M. le Comte’s intendant, informed me, that as a correspondent of the Club, as an advocate for the right-to-absorb of the Third Estate, I was about to be dismissed from my school—unless, indeed, on the assurance, before M. le Comte’s departure, of confining my views to the elementary instruction for which I was placed there.” It was with difficulty he could proceed, for the violent uproar of surprise and resentment. “I was silent,” he at length continued: “at your usual wish I read aloud the journal of yesterday. I received the fresh message left for me, that till nine, M. le Comte would be at his hotel in Paris, for the convenience of his intendant’s communications from the chateau here, before visiting, for the first time, this club. It was the proof of a determination still postponed by M. le Comte. I remained unmoved, while mingling with the concourse to the gates yonder—without taking advantage of the last messenger to Paris—but resolved the more, as I perceived the nature, the causes of this proceeding. Had I publicly explained my intention, M. le Comte might have been unjustly accused by you—my motives in personally reaching Paris might have been misinterpreted. I was even aware that to intelligence—to integrity—to virtue—the whole world is about to become a school!”

At the modest attitude, the unconscious air, touched only by a slight twinge of suffering from his foot, with which their teacher announced his private sacrifice to principles, the whole audience were struck mute; their admiration seemed to struggle silently with dismay. “For me, on the contrary,” he pursued, recovering himself by the help of his faded pocket-handkerchief, “had I gained Paris by eight, resorting straight to the Palais Royal before the admission of strangers to the club, I should have obtained the right of the tribune,—permitted after nine to speak, I would have publicly expressed the sentiments most congenial to me, which resemble his own,—without seeming to address myself to him, without his expecting it, I astonish him by my boldness, my disregard of private considerations. I expose, next, the motives of those who entangle him,—I paint the future which dawns on us so slowly,—I should at once have convinced him, my friends—and have retained my school, my position—the relation to my fellow-villagers, which I value—the power to consult their wishes, their necessities!”

“It is the _plan_! Excellent! Yes, _the_ plan of Père Morin!” ejaculated a dozen hearers in delight.

Monsieur Morin’s countenance had worked with animation, his gestures had grown quicker in accompaniment; and the hushed crowd burst into a scream of approbation, broken only into separate yells as the nearest bystanders looked from his face to his disabled foot, from his foot to the deepened blue of the sky, and thence to the offending carriage.

“Yes, it is too late, my friends,” admitted he, composing himself. “As it is, however, by myself accompanying Monsieur the young Englishman, before nine, to the hotel of M. le Maire, I should equally gain the object, without having presumed to request an interview, which would have been denied me. I relieve Monsieur and his friends from a _contretemps_, while observing the law. I detain M. le Comte, at a critical moment, from a danger to his views—in the act of myself confirming them! It is not yet eight—we have still an hour, useless on foot, when lame—that is, if perhaps Monsieur would not object to one’s occupying a seat beside his coachman?”

“It is reasonable!” exclaimed fifty voices. “M. Morin is right—yes! yes! Sa-cr-r-ré! do they object?”

The young Frenchman looked quietly and calmly, though with an air of dignity, to Charles Willoughby, who for a moment scarcely comprehended his meaning, or the drift of the whole discussion. Brightening up next instant, however, his eye gave a quick response. “Ah, of course!” he said, springing to assist the teacher up; “certainly, Monsieur Morin—with all my heart; here, let me give you a hand!” The perplexed gendarmes looked to each other inactively, the innkeeper and his wife alone gloomed on their door-steps; while, as the injured schoolmaster was helped by the very offender himself to mount the dickey beside Jackson, the villagers grew absolutely ecstatic in their applause; the foremost agitators in the crowd were the first to begin dragging the obstacles aside. “Monsieur Jacksong, my friend,” called out young Willoughby, in his most scrupulous French, somewhat to the surprise, doubtless, of that grim worthy, while a sudden gleam of enjoyment twinkled once more in the youth’s eye, “you will favour me by using the utmost exertions to arrive in time for Monsieur Morin!” He deliberately opened the carriage-door again, took down the steps, and leisurely stepped in, two or three officious pairs of hands contending which should set all to rights behind him. He took off his cap as he stood, and bowed with profound gravity to the crowd. “That’s to say, Jackson,” added he in English, “all right—drive on like mad!”

And as Jackson whipped his tedious beasts like a man devoid of all mercy, the creaking barouche rattled off; accompanied by half the crowd, by noisy curs, frightened poultry, and confused shadows from the trees and houses, till they jolted across the other bridge, and rolled out clear into the broad light of evening. All at once, after some silent meditation, Charles tapped the shoulder near him, and the Frenchman turned his face with a slight start.

“I say, Mossure Moreng,” observed Charles, with more than his customary force of pronunciation, “I am sorry you got hurt, though.”

“The apology of Monsieur is accepted,” was the cold answer, as the young man quietly turned away again towards the smoke of Paris before them.

“Oh, it is not an apology,” said Charles, leaning over, “but I own we are much obliged to you. Such a set of rascally canaille, to be sure! ’Twas ingenious enough, that story of yours—so far as I understood it! But where are we to take you to keep it up? Into town? Or perhaps you would prefer being dropped at the first comfortable inn!”

“I do not comprehend you, Monsieur,” replied the teacher of Charlemont, in evident surprise; “it is to the hotel of M. le Count de Charlemont that we shall go—in Paris.”

“And where is that?” asked the youth, drumming with his small cane on his toe.

“In the Faubourg St Germain, Monsieur—near the Quai Voltaire,” said Morin.

“Why, I should say it was two or three miles out of our way, then,” rejoined Charles, discontentedly. “Well—what after that? Do we finish there—eh?”

“I am unaware of the result, naturally, Monsieur,” answered the schoolmaster. “In the case of Monsieur, it will probably be an inconsiderable fine, which the clerk of M. le Maire will no doubt regulate according to law. But for the coincidence, it would have been impossible to extricate Monsieur from that affair there—it was important that I should reach Paris: there is no favour to one or the other—only a compromise.”

“By George!” uttered the boy, staring, “you do not mean to say that long rigmarole account of yours was _true_?”

The Frenchman betrayed equal amazement. “Is it, then, possible, Monsieur,” said he, “that you doubt it—that you imagine these things not to exist precisely—not to bear themselves as I have stated!” Charles surveyed him coolly. “Think you, Monsieur,” continued the other, with some vehemence, “that one could at all events deceive one’s neighbours, who are aware of every circumstance—who will to-morrow demand of me the result! The police—who confide in my position, my character! No, Monsieur—it is _truth_ that has happened to involve, as to extricate you—truth, by which France is at this moment so animated—by which we here are at the instant surrounded, controlled!”

Young Willoughby whistled slightly as he eyed him. “Oh?” was the careless rejoinder. “But for my part, I feel no inclination to trouble your worthy mayor. The whole thing is a humbug. What if I merely refuse to go, Mister Morran—indeed, if I have you set down beside the first fiacre, with your fare paid to the driver?”

“You do not comprehend this France here, Monsieur,” said the village teacher, blandly, as he let a voluntary gaze of his colourless eye rest on Charles. “She burns to support the law—to assist it. At a moment they are summoned to its aid—they are roused to complete it the more perfectly—they exaggerate. Besides, even in your house, by to-morrow, you would be traced. The offence would have become enhanced. It is owing to the sublime passion for the philosophical—the consistent, Monsieur!”

The boy eyed Morin with a useless frown; he had turned away. Looking about, and thinking, with a singular sense of antipathy, for which he could scarce find sufficient grounds, Charles sat mute; he began to feel as if, much though he despised this Morin, he would never be got rid of till some serious issue came of it in the end. But they reached the barrier, not yet closed—passed through, recognised and unquestioned; for to enter Paris seemed always easier than to get out of it; and rattled along the chaussée through close streets of a dingy faubourg. Much as it was out of their way, yet, to be finally rid of Monsieur Morin and his case, no course seemed secure but to drive straight to the authority he indicated. At the Rue de St Roche, accordingly, in the aristocratic suburb they at length drew up before a high old house in the row of stately mansions, where lacqueys lounged about the balustraded door-steps and huge _portes-cochère_, and the upper casements began to glow with light. “It is the Hotel St Mirel,” said the village teacher, as he began with difficulty to get down. He waited quietly for the young gentleman to follow him, and they went up the steps together.

The carriage had not stood waiting many minutes before Charles Willoughby reappeared alone. His face was bright with satisfaction.

“What an absurd affair, after all,” said he, contemptuously: “it cost about ten minutes and as many shillings. An old clerk at a table in an antechamber took down the statements on each side. Of course I allowed the facts; and it seems there’s an exact understood price tacked to every sort of assault in France, from a push to a kick, according to the quality of the parties; and if the fellow had pushed me, it would have cost _him_ about double. There were two or three gentlemen talking in an inner room, who all came out together in riding-boots and coats—though which was which, one could hardly see against the large windows this time of night. I only fancy it was the Count that bowed to me, rather a young man, I should say—and looked at Morin rather sharply, giving a slight sort of nod; then he said something to the clerk, who told me I was fined half a louis-d’or, besides the five francs for his own fee, which he pocketed very graciously, getting up and putting off his spectacles. I only waited another minute to see if I could catch out that Morin somewhere, as soon as the Count called him aside in a hurry to the inner room; but I must say everything seemed to agree well enough with the fellow’s harangue at the village—his schoolmastership was evidently in danger—till all at once the Count came out again to tell the other gentlemen he could not go somewhere with them that evening. I believe the one was some celebrated actor at the theatre—which was he the footman couldn’t tell—and the other a _dook_, as John of course expressed it!”

“Why, that footman was _English_, then!” said Rose, gravely.

“Of course. As lazy a selfish dog, with his plump looks and his languid impertinence, as you’d see in all May Fair—old Jackson there’s a Roman by comparison—but somehow it refreshed one. I couldn’t help giving him my last half-crown, he fawned so about my hat and cane, as if to do something—and as for the coin, he examined it like a portrait. After that Morin, you know, anything’s pleasant that one’s accustomed to! We’re well quit of him. Happily, by the by, they forgot about the passports, and don’t even know my name. Being lame—if it’s not a sham—why, I fancy the fellow could scarce do otherwise than stay at the Count’s, down stairs with John!”

Charles’s mother gently reproved him for the violence he had used, and his sister said he was very hardhearted. But the carriage turned the corner near the Rue Debilly; and as they drew up at their own gate, Mr Thorpe, bareheaded, followed by Sir Godfrey, came eagerly out. They had been getting very anxious indeed. The tutor had missed the Baronet, whom business had detained a little later than his expectation, so that he had left the city by a different barrier, then had turned, fancying the carriage already past; while Mr Thorpe had ridden nearly all the way home alone, then back, till he met Sir Godfrey.

CHAP. VII.—THE DILIGENCE OF SIR GODFREY.

“_Norfolk._ ‘——We may outrun,
By violent swiftness, that which we run at,
And lose by over-running——’

_Buckingham._ ‘——by intelligence,
And proofs as clear as founts in July, when
We see each grain of gravel, I do know——’”
SHAKESPEARE.

The Baronet had no sooner written his necessary correspondence that forenoon, and conveyed it, almost as necessarily, with his own hands to the post-office at the British Embassy, than he had turned bridle again toward the Quais, to ride in the direction of the Cité, where it seemed that, after all, the intended legatee of his brother had only exchanged one obscure place of abode for another—48 Rue Chrétienne, au cinquième, in fact, for au septième, num^o. 80, Rue de la Vierge. He found himself ere long plunged into the centre of that strange heart of a no less strange quarter. He had no sooner found the number he was in search of, than a couple of little sharp-eyed, old-faced _gamins_, engaged in some game of chance in a doorway, were ready to hold his horse, with a jealousy of each other which was a guarantee for their joint fidelity.

It was an insecure-looking old pile, which might yet have seemed a sort of city in itself; compressed back, as it appeared, and almost held up between others less elevated, though of greater prominence and somewhat more respectable appearance, to the vast height of at least seven storeys: the general outer door stood fixedly open, and the cord which held it so, conducting by staple and pulley along the low entrance-passage, as through the arch of a cellar, turned in on one side to a dark little den, half lighted by a cooking-lamp and partly from a back-yard covered with rank grass and all sorts of rubbish, with an old wooden pump in the midst, to which the passage itself led through. Here an old woman, the portress, sat in a crazy leathern arm-chair that had been gilded once; she was busy trying to boil something by the lamp, and talking in a cross voice to herself, her cat, or some one else not visible to Sir Godfrey; her old features were sour enough, probably from the rheumatism which controlled her motions; but at his appearance and inquiries she became sufficiently alert and communicative, curtseying at every sentence, and trying to nod her head obsequiously, with the utmost eagerness to do anything in the matter of Suzanne Deroux, whom she knew so well, and who was so deserving—who, indeed, was never from home, except to go to mass on saints’ days at Notre Dame. There was the low fawning cunning and curiosity of old age, joined to the practised manner of some quondam servant, in the portress’s desire that he should be saved the flight of stairs, down which, where it wound up from opposite her lodge, came but the dull glimmer of daylight in some high window: her little girl, however, whom she had screamed for over and over again, between fits of coughing and fresh suggestions to the visitor, at last appeared with her pitcher from the pump, to be angrily despatched up-stairs as a guide to Madame Peltier. _That_ was the appellation expected by the daughter and the son-in-law—the portress informed him—for they were proud, and respected their mother to an extreme—though, properly, it seemed Madame had no right to that title, not having been married—and, doubtless, the marriage even of her daughter must at best have been _à la Jacques_, since nowadays it was so with all workmen—who had nothing, of course, to inherit or to leave. As for this worthy Suzanne, though she seemed to affect to be religious, her frugality, so unavoidable—her simplicity, which was almost hopeless, did not entitle her—nothing but her misfortunes could entitle her—to such respect.

The portress’s little niece had already preceded him to the floor in view, ere Sir Godfrey reached it, almost breathless, counting the storeys. The whole structure, from base to summit, appeared not merely to teem with apartments, but, as it ascended, to rise and open skyward into visible life: one pleasant buzz of French vivacity, indeed, had seemed to circulate above till the girl appeared; and her voice could now be heard in eager dialogue behind an adjoining door with the young woman who a minute before had been speaking over the balusters. He knocked, half open although it stood, and was at once answered by the latter. Suzanne Deroux was the name of her mother, she said—who was within. There was something hard and cold, almost sullen, about the young woman’s face, though it was well-formed: her cheek seemed worn, her eyes dry and lustreless; nor did she make any inviting or inquiring remark, merely making way for and following the stranger as he slowly entered.

It was a bare garret, with the red-tiled floor of such ordinary Parisian abodes, a low yellow-washed ceiling, much narrower than the floor, as on one side the wall slanted with the roof; yet everything was neat, clean, and decently arranged. But the glance took it in at once, without leaving so much as a shadow; neither hearth nor semblance of a closet broke its completeness, to the recess of the upright dormer-window, which seemed a redeeming feature in so bald an apartment, where it rose large and shining out of the slope, beyond the older woman’s seat. That was an arm-chair, indeed, high-backed and easy: her feet were on a patch of carpet; a pot of mignonette was in flower on the window-sill; a small coarsely-coloured print of some portrait was stuck with a pin to the opposite wall of the recess; as if the household bloomed a little only in that direction, toward the sunlight, which came flooding with the air through the wide-open window-place. Seated on the floor, beside a deal box in a corner, under the slant of the wall, was a stout young workman with a boot-last, engaged on the second of an elegant pair of riding-boots; while a half-naked infant had been laid on the floor, among the parings of the vegetables which seemed meant for some afternoon meal—and was taken up by the portress’s little niece, to be hushed and shaken, with an air of matronly attention.

At sight of the English baronet’s conspicuous figure, stooping to enter, and scarce venturing to stand erect within, the bootmaker had looked up with an absolute scowl of astonishment; showing a strongly-marked haggard visage, rendered the more singularly unprepossessing, despite something of the vivid southern tint and classic decisiveness, by a head close-cropped, in all its native soot-blackness, and a chin left roughly tufted below, although the lean tanned cheek had not yet lost altogether its air of youth. Sir Godfrey’s first feeling had been one of pity, mingled with sudden pleasure in the commission he had to perform; their perfect want of manners, their very poverty, the absence of any other apartment to withdraw into, joined to the motionless silence of the elderly woman in her arm-chair, who neither seemed to hear nor see him, all increased it to a kind of embarrassment. In the highest drawing-rooms in Europe, nay, in any peasant’s cottage of his own country, Sir Godfrey would have felt immeasurably more at ease than he then stood, hat in hand, in the attic of these Parisian work-people. He had hardly begun to address the person before him, too, as Madame, ere the child’s fretfulness in the arms of its little nurse became a vociferous squall, to which the elder woman turned her head slowly, with an air of distress, her features working, her body moving and rocking in her chair, as she made a humming, hushing sound to the infant. Its mother snatched it next moment from the girl’s arms, with an angry exclamation. “Why do you remain here under such pretences?” said she, sharply; and the look of early cunning had betrayed itself on the girl’s face by her attempt to seem absorbed in the child, with the hanging of the head that succeeded. “Favour me, little Pochon, by leaving us alone,” continued the young woman, following her as she slunk out: “Widow Pochon is too good, inform her!” And she slammed to the fragile door, then returned near the visitor, with her infant quietly held to the breast: she was not much more than twenty, and had well-shaped features, that, with a happier expression, might have been attractive; but in this slatternly attire and attitude, her careless presence was doubly disagreeable to Sir Godfrey.

He stepped nearer the sitting woman, who, like a recent invalid, seemed still not so much to attend as to be enjoying the open air, the scent from the flower-pot, and the streak of warm sunshine that gleamed on the window-frame and glowed across her clean dress, on the old bright kerchief that was pinned across her breast, and the high white coif of some country fashion which she wore close to her face; yet in her face there was a healthy tint, a little shrivelled, as on a well-kept apple: so that it appeared to be more from ignorance, or the awkwardness of surprise, perhaps as much from his own foreign accent, or some _patois_ to which she might have been accustomed, that, when Sir Godfrey went on distinctly to explain his errand, the woman Deroux looked sometimes vacantly at him, sometimes away out altogether to the open sky, again irresolutely towards her daughter and son-in-law, spreading her hands in the feeble way of still more aged persons, and smoothing her knees with them by turns, more and more restlessly as his voice grew distincter in its emphasis. To the statement of her former patron’s recent death, of the omission or oversight which had interrupted her allowance from him, and of the nature and amount of the present bequest, increased as it would justly be by the addition of some recompense for the intervening years—Suzanne Deroux returned vague murmurs, which might be taken for assent, till her large mild face was at length fixed towards Sir Godfrey’s, with a light of greater comprehension than before in her dim eyes; and he noticed, for the first time, that one side of her cheek and forehead was marked by the white smooth seam of an old scar—how large it was impossible to see, for her cap; but frightful it must have been once—taking, as it did, the eyebrow away, and seeming to have blanched the eye itself, where its shining mark still crept out and curled round, amidst the furrows and wrinkles of otherwise healthy old age. She said something in reply, but confusedly, and with evident agitation, while her shaking face seemed fascinated to his—and with such a mixture of _patois_, as it seemed, whether of idiom, pronunciation, or language—that Sir Godfrey could merely infer it to denote recollection of his brother, with sorrow for his death, and gratitude at the remembrance he had shown. The young man had at length put by his work, risen up, and approached to listen, as he leant his elbows on the broken deal-table.

“She is weak in mind, the poor woman—my mother,” said the daughter, abruptly, though still engaged in administering nourishment to her infant; “it is useless to transact anything with her, Monsieur.”

“No, it is merely her memory that is bad, Jeannette,” interposed the son-in-law, who seemed scarcely his wife’s age; and there was something deferential in his look towards the elder woman, with a comparative kindliness of tone, as he turned to address herself, putting his hand on her arm-chair and his head near hers, and using the respectful _vous_—“and she does not hear strangers very well—do you, _belle-mère_?”

The elder woman smiled faintly in return, her head still slightly trembling, though the familiar voice seemed to call up a degree of intelligence and composure on her face, somewhat like a child’s when it is commended: “no—no—not very well, my son!” she said; then drawing herself up and spreading her gown with her hands, sat full of silent importance.

“She has always been weak in mind,” coldly repeated her daughter, paying no attention to them, “since the accident by which she was so injured. I am acquainted with the circumstances, Monsieur, although at that time but a child, and fortunately not present with my mother in the house where it occurred.”

“You allude to the fire, above nineteen years ago, in the house where the family of her employer, my late brother, had their apartments?” Sir Godfrey asked, turning to her. She made a simple assent. “Then your mother, Suzanne Deroux, was a servant living within the establishment?” he continued.

“Yes, she was the nurse—the wetnurse (_nourrice-à-lait_)” was the unembarrassed answer—“for the infant which perished along with its mother and the other persons. She had remained a considerable time, since it was sickly. My mother had been a peasant, you see, Monsieur.”

She proceeded further of her own accord, with an evident view to the point of business.

“My mother was certainly entitled to this pension, notwithstanding her indifference to it—her refusal, I believe,” said the young woman, looking for a moment at the elder, who had listlessly turned again to the sunlight. “Her wound, which was shocking, confined her for weeks to the hospital—her lover, my father, who up to that time had still admired her, and who was in the family of a nobleman, returned, indifferent to her fate, with his master to the provinces, where his friendship for her had arisen. As for her own infant, my brother, whom at the risk of her own life she had remained to save—its arm was indelibly scorched, almost destroyed by the flames which pursued her. She ultimately relinquished it with apparent unconcern, to the man who had rescued them by a ladder at the window—an Englishman, a servant who had arrived with Monsieur Vilby, and whose eccentricity made him desire to adopt it. She has neither heard of, nor seen her son, my brother, since. She has never seemed even to wish it, Monsieur. Certainly my mother is weak in mind.”

In most of this account the thread was easily traceable; the baronet recalled to mind some vague connection of his brother’s late huntsman, Griffiths, or “Welsh Will,” as he was called, with the fatal incidents—he had heard his son Francis talk years before of a boy about Stoke, whom the huntsman’s vixen wife persecuted and kept out of doors. He had been sent to some business, so far as Sir Godfrey remembered, through Mr Hesketh. The baronet stated as much to the people before him.

“Thou’rt wrong, though, Jeannette,” said the son-in-law again, with the same side-tone, irrespective of their visitor’s presence, rather through a dull incapability to acknowledge it than from intention; “she grieves for him. When thou’dst say, remember, during the sharp winter, thou wert glad thy brother’s mouth was not here, did she not groan—and when the fine time came again, while thou wert so apt to taunt us about her son being grown English, she swung herself and wept! You feel it, you wish your son back here, _Marraine_ (godmother), do you not?”

The elder woman turned from the light to him with a start and a stare; perhaps it was the bright sunshine that made her face seem faded beside it, especially where the scar-mark ran; she looked, to the stranger’s eye, almost ghastly, as she replied, in a less cracked and tremulous voice than before—“Holy Virgin, yes! You will send—you will take care of—ah!” And as she stopped, perplexed and troubled, the moisture sprang from her dull-blue eyes into tears; she passed one hand about the disfigured place; she seemed nearer clearness of speech on the subject than hitherto, as if that had been a master-spring to her scattered memories.

“My good woman,” said the baronet soothingly, as he stepped nearer, into the recess where her easy-chair stood—“My good Madame Deroux—if you wish your son to return to you, it shall be managed, of course! You will see him, I hope, grown up and prosperous, as well as able to assist you! It would, no doubt, have been a burden before!—She or you could scarcely recognise him now, however,” he added aside to the daughter, in an undertone.

“It is easy enough, Monsieur,” was the careless answer, without any responsive depression of voice, “since the arm would not lose such a mark, more than my mother’s visage—added to the loss of the little finger. I was too young to remember it, you see—but the washerwoman who kept us both, and who used privately to bring the child at intervals to my mother, leaving it for the night—she had again seen it after its recovery, and lodged along with us afterwards till her death.”

Suzanne Deroux had felt hastily for something beneath the bosom of her dress, and at length drew it forth; a thin gold cross with black beads, which she kissed with fervour, then began eagerly to whisper and mutter some scraps of prayer, that might have been Latin or _patois_, or both; at each bead that fell from her fingers her face seemed growing calmer.

“She is quite well in other respects, Monsieur,” continued the daughter, turning impatiently from her; “she still eats like a peasant, she sleeps soundly, she prefers bright colours for her dress to go to mass and confession. As for that, she is so superstitious, that when we were about to starve, she would not permit her little cross there to be pledged, nor the dress in which she must frequent Notre Dame—it was not she who suffered, you see, but we—who endeavoured to conceal it from her that we endured so much!”

A look of mild reproach was cast by Suzanne towards her daughter, while her lips still moved.

“Well, well, Jeannette, going to these affairs pleases her,” said the young boot-closer, with the cub-like leaning to his mother-in-law which appeared through his uncouth exterior.

“It is the priests who frighten her,” went on his partner, her back towards him, in perfect indifference to his remarks; “her confessor, who makes her tremble at the supposition of crimes”—

“Of which she is innocent!” observed the son-in-law behind, in the same disregarded way—“_sacré nom!_ Jeannette is wrong about my mother-in-law,” he added, looking awkwardly for a moment at Sir Godfrey. “If you would not call her Madame Deroux—it confuses her ideas—it is Madame Peltier she likes strangers to call her—do you not, Marraine?”

An air of childish pleasure spread over the old woman’s features, and she nodded graciously, and smiled.

“See how she loves the child, too, Jeannette!” said he, as the infant stretched its shapeless arms and legs from the maternal bosom, where it had at length ceased to feed, towards the grandmother’s bright kerchief and white coif, that basked in outer sunshine. She put out her hands to receive it, and, with an aspect of complete satisfaction, began dandling the child towards the window, chirping to it like a bird, or buzzing like a bee; while the slatternly Jeannette applied a careless touch to the disorder of her dress.

“Peltier is the name of Jeannette’s father, it seems,” resumed the bootmaker more confidentially than before, coming nearer the visitor; “though for that—I and Jeannette do not mind such ceremony—do we, Jeannette? We are fond of each other, you see.” The disdainful glance which he received from his female companion was sufficiently sharp-tempered to make the fondness on her side doubtful.

“Do you not see that you infest Monsieur with your absurd remarks!” said she, angrily, when the pin had been taken from her mouth, on which her attire greatly depended; “and he must naturally wish to escape from a habitation so unworthy of him—favour me by being silent, or going out.” The bootmaker retreated towards his original place again, while his abler partner, with an intelligence and quickness of apprehension, as well as a collectedness, which might have done credit to a higher station, proceeded to take up the thread of their visitor’s business with them.

There was one precaution which she requested him to afford them—a signed paper in his handwriting, to account for their possession of the money, and state the ground of its being given, in case of any accident meanwhile from the police. And while the bootmaker was absent in search of ink-bottle and pen from some neighbour, Sir Godfrey turned, for the first time, from beside the elder woman’s chair in its recess, toward the attic casement which appeared as fascinating to her as to her charge.

“My mother is still a peasant, Monsieur,” remarked the younger woman, apologetically; “she is never weary of admiring Paris!—Paris, with which she has so little to do—of which she knows nothing—which has kept us so long miserable!”

A strange thrill of very novel feeling ran through Sir Godfrey as he pressed nearer, and looked. He almost shrank back with an emotion of awe, the sight was so unexpected, in such extreme contrast to that mean abode, from beside the unmeaning vacancy of the elder woman’s pleasure, the infant’s crowing sounds and motions, the repugnance he felt for the others, and his own engrossing thoughts: otherwise, on Willoughby’s single-minded, straightforward, unimpassioned character, with a very dormant fancy and but tardy movement of association, it might have struck with slight impress. Immense and startling from that height, indeed, was the prospect; nor the less so, that here and there some huge pile of neighbouring chimneys, some tower-top, or a wreath of lazy smoke, broke it up close at hand with a vividness of light and shade, or a distinctness of detail, that was thrust on the eye. Here a sunny perspective of roof, garretwindow, and chimney, ruddy at the top against blue air, with basking cats, and blooming pots, and garments hung to dry, that fluttered cheerfully, where the population of the upper world of Paris, the boulevards of its canaille and its unknown, showed their faces in the sun,—there a vast surging sea of slates, tossed hither and thither into tower, steeple, and shadowy dome, pierced by dusky gulfs and glooms—while midway ran out a dull thread of the Seine into a bridge, and broke forth beyond in dazzling splendour, where the reflection of the houses blended with the substance, so that all there seemed shattered and dripping in silver and gem-like radiance—with visionary structures lifted farther off among unsubstantial bowers, up to the sun’s viewless glory where he stood high in a blaze of light, as if clothed with a great mantle of indistinctness, and contemplated the vast city. Far beneath him floated the Hospital’s golden dome: the softened roar and clamour of Paris rose clear to the open attic casement, with sharper noises from close below it; one saw straight through an uninterrupted space, down upon streets and openings, quays, square, and garden-terrace, in a distinct bird’s-eye view, alive with the motion of minute citizens; scarce could it have been thought that the regal whiteness of the rich Louvre was so near, and the tilted pavilion-roofs of the great, gaunt, high-chimneyed Tuileries. The various stages and storeys of inhabitants descended beyond sight, as to abysses that were bottomless. The air felt clearer than elsewhere, and the sky seemed nearer in its blue purity. It was all such a spectacle as might have absorbed the faculties of a prophet; indeed the thought could not but have struck a mind used to interpret its own consciousness, of how slightly human distinctions might weigh, and in what trivial account they would result, could magnificence so beyond the furniture of palaces be familiar, or often accessible. With the English baronet, it was rather the sudden perception of what vast concerns were going on the while, under necessity to be sustained, round about the particular affairs of his own business or experience: added to which came emphatically enough that strange sense, sometimes resembling the superstitious, of time gigantically pressing on to destiny—when with a hurtling, heaving sound before it, and a crash that made all the chimneys vibrate, the hard walls clang, the roofs rattle, and the windows tingle and ring, the clock of Notre Dame, hard by, sent out its first stroke of the hour. The elder woman let the child sink in her lap, gravely crossing herself at every stroke; here and there, outside, a face could be seen turned to it involuntarily. The bootmaker, setting down the writing-materials he had procured after a somewhat long absence, appeared to hear with a savage grin and gleam of satisfaction, whether still caused by the money or by later news; he nodded his head to each long, artillery-like stroke, rolling and reverberating away among the piles of the Cité and St Louis, and made a whistling noise of pleasure as he looked, till it was done.

“And now, my good woman,” said Sir Godfrey, when he had written the required paper, with an order for the money, “let me bid you farewell.” He took Suzanne’s shrivelled hand, and she made a motion to rise up, with decorous gravity. There was a confused murmur of gratitude, as if appealing to her daughter for fuller explanation; but he saw her eyes moisten again, silently, when he said he would cause the means to be taken for at least enabling her son to communicate with and assist her. Suzanne Deroux shook her head, she seemed almost to groan; while the same wavering feebleness of mind again turned her to the window and the child. It appeared doubtful whether she really had a distinct notion who Sir Godfrey was, or what relation he bore to her former master.