De L'Orme. / The Works of G. P. R. James, Esq., Vol. XVI.

by G. P. R. James

The Count de Bagnols! Was it--could it be possible that he was that Count de Bagnols, said to have been assassinated by order of the Marquis de St. Brie? At first I could hardly believe it; but as I reflected, the conviction came more and more strongly upon my mind.

Every circumstance that I remembered showed it more plainly. He himself had first told me the tale of his own supposed death, and that with a circumstantial accuracy that any one but a person actually on the spot could hardly have done. He had remained for years living under an assumed name, probably because he had not the papers necessary to establish his innocence of the charge the Marquis had brought against him. I had just heard the minister allude to those very papers. From Achilles I had learned that the Count's fortune had been transmitted to Spain; and the Viceroy of Catalonia had told me that the Chevalier was not a Spaniard. I had also overheard the Marquis de St. Brie, only a few nights before, declare that he had seen in the royal army some one whom he had believed dead many years, and to whose supposed death he was evidently in some degree accessory. To no one could what he had said be so well applied as to the Count de Bagnols.

Undoubtedly, then, the Chevalier de Montenero, the man whom, perhaps, of all others, I esteemed the most on earth, but whose good opinion I had lost by a succession of inexplicable misunderstandings, was one and the same with that Count de Bagnols, the separate incidents of whose story had come to my knowledge by a thousand strange accidents, whose fate had always been to me a point of almost painful interest, and whose most important documents were still fortunately in my hands. I had now, then, the means at once of clearing myself of all suspicion in his eyes, and of conferring on him the means of equally showing his own innocence to the world. True that I could never see the happiness I knew I should give him--true that his good or bad opinion could serve me no longer upon earth; but still there was the consolation of knowing that my memory would remain pure and unsullied in his eyes; and that the benefit I had it in my power to confer would attach feelings of love to my name and regret to my loss.

Surely the wish to be remembered with affection is hardly a weakness. The warrior's or the poet's hope of immortality on earth--the laurel that binds the lyre or the sword--is perhaps the most daring, yet the emptiest of all imaginative vanities; but there is something holier and sweeter in the dream of living in the love of those that have known us--it is, indeed, prolonging attachments beyond the grave, and perhaps derives its charm from an innate feeling in the breast of man, that friends part not here for ever.

As soon, then, as paper and ink were brought me I sat down; and after writing my last farewell to my father, and a few lines expressive of my deep, my unchangeable affection to Helen Arnault, I proceeded to sketch out for the Count de Bagnols the history of my unfortunate adventure at Saragossa. I told him the promise I had entered into, never to disclose the circumstances to a Spaniard, and showed him that, as long as I had believed him to be such, my lips had been necessarily sealed. I pointed out to him the mistake which Garcias had committed; I related to him my rencontre with Jean Baptiste; and farther, as briefly as possible, I gave him the outline of everything which had occurred to me since we had last met, up to the moment that I wrote; and having told him how I had avenged him on the Marquis de St. Brie, I enclosed his papers, which I had always kept about my person. Lastly, I begged him, if I thereby rendered him any service--if I had ever held any place in his esteem--if I had by that explanation at all regained it, to see my father; and bearing him my last farewell, to entreat him for my sake to look upon Helen as his child--to remember how I had loved her, and to love her for her love to me; and now, wishing him personally all that happiness in his latter years which had been denied to his youth, I bade him an eternal adieu.

This cost me all that night and the greater part of the next morning; but by the time that my gaoler visited me my packet was prepared, and showing him some louis--the last I had about me--I promised them to him if he would deliver that letter to the Count de Bagnols, if he was still in the town, bringing me back an acknowledgment that it had been received.

In less than an hour he returned, and gave me a paper written hastily in the hand of the Chevalier. It only contained, "I have received a packet from the Count de l'Orme--BAGNOLS." I gave the gaoler his promised reward, and he left me.

CHAPTER XLIX.

Shortly after the gaoler had quitted my chamber, a priest came to visit and console me; and after a long conversation he also departed, promising to see me again next day. His arguments and reasoning were, I believe, very common-place, and delivered with no great eloquence or talent; but I was then very willing to lend myself to any one who would lead my ideas from the world I was about to quit to a better one beyond. Not that I entertained a doubt upon the subject; but I was glad, by dwelling upon the idea of a life to come--by giving it a more tangible essence and being--by lending conviction the more brilliant colours of imagination--to forget the regrets that attached me to this.

When he had left me, a sort of drowsiness fell upon me, which I received as a friend also. I had, as I have said, sat up the whole of the night before, writing, and the irritation of my two wounds, which had never been dressed since I arrived at Mezières, had greatly exhausted me. The approach of slumber, therefore, was an unexpected blessing, and without farther preparation than merely laying my head upon the table, I fell asleep. The battle of earthly hope and fear was over in my bosom; and, like two inveterate enemies that had slain each other, they left a dead, void calm, in place of their long and agitating conflict. My sleep then was not like that of a child, light and balmy--oh, no! it was more like the sleep of death--profound, still, feelingless. It wanted but the fall of the one irrevocable barrier to have been death itself.