“That's a brilliant lamp before us. But see there,” cried the abbé, as he flung open the shutter, and pointed to the bright moon that shone pale and beautiful in the clear sky—“see there! Is there not something grander far in the glorious radiance of the orb that has thrown its lustre on the world for ages? Is it not a glorious thought to revel in the times long past, and think of those, our fathers, who lived beneath the same bright beams, and drank in the same golden waters? Men are too prone to measure themselves with one of yesterday; they find it hard to wonder at the statue of him whom they have themselves placed on the pedestal. Feudalism, too, seems a very part of our nature.”
“These are thoughts I've never known, nor would I now wish to learn them,” said I; “and as for me, a hero needs no ancestry to make him glorious in my eyes.”
“All true,” said the abbé, sipping his glass, and smiling kindly on me. “A young heart should feel as yours does; and time was when such feelings had made the fortune of their owner. But even now the world is changed about us. The gendarmes have the mission that once belonged to the steel-clad cuirassiers; and, in return, the hussar is little better than a mouchard.”
The blood mounted to my face and temples, and throbbed in every vein and artery of my forehead, as I heard this contemptuous epithet applied to the corps I belonged to,—a sarcasm that told not less poignantly on me, that I felt how applicable it was to my present position. He saw how deeply mortified the word had made me; and, putting his hand in mine, with a voice of winning softness he added:—
“One who would be a friend must risk a little now and then; as he who passes over a plank before his neighbor will sometimes spring to try its soundness, even at the hazard of a fall. Don't mistake me, Lieutenant; you have a higher mission than this. France is on the eve of a mighty change; let us hope it may be a happy one. And now it 's getting late,—far later, indeed, than is my wont to be abroad,—and so I 'll wish you good-night. I 'll find a bed in the village; and since I have made you out here, we must meet often.”
There was something—I could not define what exactly—that alarmed me in the conversation of the abbé; and lonely and solitary as I was, it was with a sense of relief I saw him take his departure.
The pupil of a school where the Consul's name was never mentioned without enthusiasm and admiration, I found it strange that any one should venture to form any other estimate of him than I was used to hear; and yet in all he said I could but faintly trace out anything to take amiss. That men of his cloth should feel warmly towards the exiled family was natural enough. They could have but few sympathies with the soldier's calling, and of course felt themselves in a very different position now from what they once had occupied. The restoration of Catholicism was, I well knew, rather a political and social than a religious movement; and Bonaparte never had the slightest intention of replacing the Church in its former position of ascendency, but rather of using it as a state engine and giving a stability to the new order of things, which could only be done on the foundation of prejudices and convictions old as the nation itself.
In this way the rising generation looked on the priests; and in this way had I been taught to regard the whole class of religionists. It was, then, nothing wonderful if ambitious men among them, of whom D'Ervan might be one, felt somewhat indignant at the post assigned them, and did not espouse with warmth the cause of one who merely condescended to make them the tool of his intentions. “Yes, yes,” said I to myself, “I have defined my friend the abbé; and though not a very dangerous character after all, it 's just as well I should be on my guard. His being in possession of the password, and his venturing to write his name in the police report, are evidences that he enjoys the favor of the Préfet de Police. Well, well, I'm sure I am heartily tired of such reflections. Would that the campaign were once begun! The roll of a platoon and the deep thunder of an artillery fire would soon drown the small whispering of such miserable plottings from one's head.”
About a week passed over after this visit, in which, at first, I was rather better pleased that the abbé, did not come again; but as my solitude began to press more heavily on me, I felt a kind of regret at not seeing him. His lively tone in conversation, though spiced with that morqueur spirit which Frenchmen nearly all assume, amused me greatly; and little versed as I was in the world or in its ways, I saw that he knew it thoroughly.
Such were my thoughts as I returned home one evening along the broad alley of the park, when I heard a foot coming rapidly up behind me.