[Chapter IV]
MARIE
I was placed in the home of a lady, who was the widow of a Swiss officer who had been beheaded on the memorable tenth of August. In her country place I was screened from curious eyes. Being overcome by a languid illness, I remained indoors for eight months. My hostess dared not call in a physician, for strange children awakened suspicion, inasmuch as the lost Dauphin was being eagerly sought by spies. She fed me on milk and arranged that I should have unlimited repose and fresh air. These simple restoratives at length effected a cure. On leaving my bed, I was again overpowered by the consciousness of a dual personality. I at times felt convinced that I had always lived in that fair green villa and that my insistent past was a delusion. My guardian spoke French brokenly, and we, therefore, conversed in German, which had been my mother's native tongue. I had therefore become habituated to its use. Later in life I was obliged to employ it constantly.
During my convalescence, and while walking one morning in the fields, I was captured by the police and dragged back to prison. What prison? I know not. With equal swiftness was I snatched thither by deputies of my vigilant protectress, the gentle creole, and placed in the home of a noble family who received me with respect, almost reverence. The head of the family was the Marquis de Bray, a partisan of our House. There it was that I formed the first friendship of my life, that with the Count of Montmorin, a youth older than I and who, like myself, was in concealment, being disguised as a hunter. Montmorin's life had been miraculously saved during one of the ferocious tides that swept our country, and that life he generously consecrated to me. Subterfuges, manoeuvres, almost witch-craft did he employ for the deluding of my persecutors, and to that end valued not his own security and happiness.
Under the protection of de Bray and Montmorin, I lived tranquilly and the spectre of political ambition seemed no longer to haunt me. But my friends feared, owing to the waxing power of Napoleon, that France was no appropriate refuge for me and we removed for a season to Venice, thence to Trieste and finally to Rome, where I enjoyed the gentle protection of Pope Pius VI. My former hostess and nurse, the Swiss lady, had in the interval married a compatriot of her own, who was an expert watch-maker. It chanced that they became our neighbors and so gave me the opportunity to learn the craft of which my father was so fond. The minute and prolix labor enchanted me and, following the advice of Jean Jacques, I mastered it.
A friend of the Pontiff offered me for residence a villa near Rome. How beautiful were the lemon and fig groves! In the garden's centre was a marble pillar surmounted by a nymph which had stood there since the Roman Empire. Amid the fragrance of those flowers were passed the dearest days of my youth. Marie, daughter of Bray and fiancée of Montmorin, a gentle girl, five years my senior—a trifle it seemed to me—accompanied me often with affectionate solicitude.
Her white hands smoothed my golden curls, fastened my lace collar and rested on my shoulder, during our rambles. Montmorin, on seeing us together, would turn away and re-enter the house. My head, resting upon Marie's breast, seemed again to repose in the sweet nest from which the Revolution had torn me. Once when Marie flung a flower in my face, the image of my mother rose so vividly to my eyes, as she appeared when romping with us in the royal gardens, that my emotion overcame me and I threw myself into the arms of Montmorin's fiancée. I kissed her lips and asked: "Marie, what have they done to my mother?"—for since the terrible day when I was separated from her, I had never spoken her name, nor received intelligence of her fate. I pictured her still as a pale, worn prisoner and my duty seemed to be to deliver her. This sudden tempest of passion transformed me from boy to man. Marie wept softly in my arms.
"My mother,—where is she?" I insisted.
"She is dead," said Marie gently.