“You will find that very good wine, sir, for Monsieur l’Intendant loves a bottle of good Burgundy, and madame sent a good store here from Paris.”
“I am astonished at this place being called Coulancourt,” said our hero, “and at hearing that madame is living in Paris, and restored to her estates, for I feared she was in the power of her enemies.”
“I am so anxious to ask after her daughter, Mademoiselle Mabel,” said Dame Moret; “she was but a child, I may say, when she was here—six years old, I think—but she was as lovely, engaging a little girl as ever eyes beheld; and her little brother, Julian—alas! what a fate was his, so young, and such a noble boy!”
“Well, dame, I will tell you all about Mabel, and you shall tell me about Madame Coulancourt. How I should like to see her, and tell her how tenderly her daughter loves and remembers her.”
Lieutenant Thornton then told the attentive dame all his adventures, from the period Mabel was placed under his care till their arrival in England, and the singular abduction of the papers and jewels from the casket entrusted to him; and how Mabel was placed in a highly-respectable school, and under the care of a most kind French lady, the widow of Admiral Volney; finishing with an account of his mishap on board the Vengeance, and the cruel conduct of Captain Gaudet.
“Ah!” said the old dame, with a sigh, “he’s a sad, sad man!—as fierce and cruel as a wild beast when he drinks, and latterly he drinks very hard. He was not always so; before he became a privateer’s man he was very well; but I believe, sir, privateering makes a man very reckless and careless about shedding blood—they become very hardened.”
“It is often the case, dame; they know they seldom get quarter from their opponents, and that renders them reckless and savage. Then the love of plunder increases, they become little better than pirates.”
“You mentioned,” he continued, a moment after, “that Madame Coulancourt was residing in Paris, and that her estates were restored to her. How did she escape from her enemies?”
“By their being guillotined, monsieur; but I will tell you all the particulars.
“I was, you must know, nurse to the Count de Coulancourt, who was born in this château. He became duke on his elder brother’s death, and, alas! was beheaded in his forty-eighth year; and I am now seventy-four years of age myself. When Monsieur de Coulancourt became duke, he bestowed upon me and my husband the farm and land we now hold; but we have added to it since. Fourteen years ago I lost my poor man, but the bon Dieu was good to me; I had kind and good children, and our farm prospered. When the duke married our kind and beautiful mistress, at Lyons, he took her to Paris, with her two handsome children, and, after a time, he came here. At this period the revolution had not yet shown itself formidable; nobody looked for the dethronement of their king, much less his cruel murder. Still the land was troubled, and people were unsettled, and at times riotous, and fiercely denouncing the nobility and clergy.