CHAPTER II.
DOMESTIC SERVICE.
he dream curtains were closed in darkness, but I saw the white wings of the angels shining above me, and I heard a soft thrilling voice speaking, and saying, “Will you see more?”
“If I may,” I said as I knelt. “I deserve nothing, but grant to me the honour of recording such deeds as these, that the memory of them may touch nobler hearts and stronger pens to carry on the stimulus of such examples and arouse others to like actions.”
The curtains slowly rose, and I saw a poor cottage in France, in a wide open country, long rows of poplars along straight roads going off into the distance—it was a disturbed country—time of the Revolution. I saw a poor man like his and our Master also a carpenter—like Him. He had been fostered and educated by the care and at the cost of a kind lord. One day in those troubled years, he saw standing at the door of his cottage his lord, with three little motherless children, fugitives and outcasts. The little fair Angélique of five years, Josephine of only four, and the little Count Louis, scarcely a year old. The Count was forced to fly from the country (it was for his life), and there was no living soul but Alexandre Martin to whom he could trust his children. So much of the family distress was known to Martin that he did not wonder there was no mention of any possible repayment, and he had three children of his own, and only one, was old enough to help. But in that poor home the lord’s children must find a home of love and reverence, and all who could work worked doubly hard, day and often night, that the children might be served and treated as their faithful loyalty inspired.
I saw the table of the Chief’s children served according to their rank; they were seated at table where white bread was given them, and Alexandre waited on them as respectfully as if they had been in their own castle—alas! destroyed—while his children had the scanty brown bread of the country and they wore their poor coarse clothes to rags, whereas the young d’Aubespinés were dressed neatly. And the carpenter’s family slept on the floor that the lord’s children might enjoy the only beds the poor home could furnish.
“And all for love and nothing for reward.”
Like other great and noble actions, it was all carried out perfectly simply from the grateful loyalty of the family towards their master’s grandchildren. As time went on two noble ladies of Chartres took charge of the young girls as they grew up, and the young Count was, as he grew older, educated at a foundation endowed by his great ancestor Sully at Nogent-le-Rotrou.[1]
Years passed by, and I saw a great meeting of the Academy in Paris where the young Count and Alexandre Martin were present, and heard a voice which said—
“Martin, your task is over, you have deserved well from all good men. You have shown our age a sight only too rare—gratitude, fidelity, respect. And you, Louis d’Aubespiné, since you are present at this solemnity, may it make a deep and lasting impression on your young heart. You are entering life, as persons are now and then forced to appear on a later age, with all eyes upon you. Learn that the first of earthly blessings is to be honoured by one’s country, and pray the God who has watched over your infancy to enable you to win that blessing that depends on ourselves and that no event can rob us of. One day you will be told that illustrious blood flows in your veins, but never forget that you must trace your line as far back as Sully before you find a name worthy to stand beside that of Martin. Grow up, then, to show yourself worthy of the memory of your ancestor, the devotion of your benefactor, and the patronage of the King!”
And then the vision faded, the crowded audience disappeared and the only figure left radiant, as the curtains of my dream closed, was that of the French peasant—the Carpenter—the redresser of one of the mighty wrongs of the French Revolution.
(To be continued.)
[“OUR HERO.”]
A TALE OF THE FRANCO-ENGLISH WAR NINETY YEARS AGO.
By AGNES GIBERNE, Author of “Sun, Moon and Stars,” “The Girl at the Dower House,” etc.