Arnault himself we never saw or heard of again; and it seemed evident that he had fled his country, in fear of the proceedings which the Count instituted against him. The last news we received of him was from Helen herself, who had seen him watching under the porch of the convent of the Minims, as she set out for Pau, on the morning when I was obliged to make my escape from the Hôtel de Soissons.
Her father, fearful of the consequences if the Count de Soissons should march upon the capital, had requested the Maréchal de Chatillon, then about to visit Paris on the business of the army, to send his daughter back to Bearn, under as strong an escort as he night before put the Maréchal upon his guard; and the party who accompanied Helen to the house of the old Countess de Marignan, her relation at Pau, rendered all danger out of the question.
Little more remains to be said, for I was at length happy--and happiness is silent. Helen shortly after was made my own, by the irrevocable ties which, to those who truly love, are doubly dear from their durability. In her arms, I have found far more of delight and peace than even the dreams of my own imagination had portrayed; or Hope, that constant flatterer, had promised in her sweetest song. Twenty years have now elapsed; and though Time, the slow destroyer of man's joys as well as of his works, may, and probably will, day by day rob me of some power or of some enjoyment, for those twenty years I have known almost unmixed happiness. This glorious past I may truly call my own, and fate itself cannot snatch it from my grasp.
Still, however, though Memory has there its certain treasure, hope runs on before; and I look forward to my future years with tranquillity. Thank Heaven, I have learned as much content as is necessary to enjoyment and is compatible with activity; and that spirit of adventure, which was once my torment, has now fallen asleep, never I hope to wake again.
To you, my son, I give this history of your mother and myself; and as I see, in some degree, the same spirit rising up in you, that caused so much misery to your father, let me, before I lay down the pen, point out the moral of my tale. If you remark the various events of this story, as they hang one upon another, you will perceive, that had I not suffered the love of adventure to lead me to the very brink of vice, in the circumstances that occurred to me at Saragossa, I should not only have escaped the pain immediately consequent, but the Count de Bagnols would have confided to me the secret of his own rank and Helen's birth. No motive for concealment would have existed between us; my parents would have known all and approved all--I should never have had to reproach myself with the murder of him I thought her brother--I should never have been obliged to fly from my home--I should never have been a houseless wanderer over the face of the earth, accompanied by misery and remorse.
Yet understand me: I blame not enterprise, I blame not enthusiasm; it is the spring of all that is good, great, and admirable in existence: but the art of happiness is to guide enthusiasm firmly on the path of virtue; the art of success, to guide it on the path of probability.
FOOTNOTES.
[Footnote 1]: A small town, with a picturesque castle crowning a high rock, at the entrance of one of the Pyrenean valleys, about ten leagues distant from Pau.
[Footnote 2]: A favourite dish in the small inns of Bearn to this day.
[Footnote 3]: Although no such lakes are now in existence, we find, in consulting authorities contemporary with the writer of these memoirs, that the valley of Gavarnie, from the village to the Marboré, was in that day completely filled with a chain of small lakes, the basins of which are still evident.