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

by G. P. R. James

My mother's character is soon told. It was all excellence; or if there was, indeed, in its composition, one drop of that evil from which human nature is probably never entirely free, it consisted in a touch of family pride--and yet, while I write it, my heart reproaches me, and says that it was not so. However, the reader shall judge by the sequel; but if she had this fault, it was her only one, and all the rest was virtue and gentleness. Restricted as were her means of charity, still every one that came within the sphere of her influence experienced her kindness, or partook of her bounty. Nor was her charity alone the charity that gives; it was the charity that feels, that excuses, that forgives.

A willing aid in all that was amiable and benevolent was to be found in good Father Francis of Allurdi, the chaplain of the château. In his young days they said he had been a soldier; and on some slight, received from a world for which he was too good, he threw away the corslet and took the gown, not with the feeling of a misanthrope, but of a philanthropist. For many years he remained as cure at the little village of Allurdi, in the Val d'Ossau; but his sight and his strength both failing him, and the cure being an arduous one, he resigned it to a younger man, (who, he thought, might better perform the duties of the station,) and brought as gentle a heart and as pure a spirit as ever rested in a mortal frame, to dwell with the two others I have described in the Château de l'Orme.

It may be asked, if he too had his foible? Believe me, dear reader, whoever thou art, that every one on this earth has some; nor was he without one: and, strange as it may appear, his was superstition--I say, strange as it may appear, for he was a man of a strong and vigorous mind, calm, reflective, rational, without any of that hurried and perturbed indistinctness of judgment which suffers imagination to usurp the place of reason. But still he was superstitious to a great degree, affording a striking instance of that union of opposite qualities, which every one who takes the trouble of examining his own bosom will find more or less exemplified in himself. His superstition, however, grew in a mild and benevolent soil, and was, indeed, but as one of those tender climbing plants which hang upon the ruined tower or the shattered oak, and clothe them with a verdure not their own: thus he fondly adhered to the imaginative tenets of ancient days fast falling into decay. He peopled the air with spirits, and in his fancy gave them visible shapes, and in some degree even corporeal qualities. However, on an ardent and youthful mind like mine, such picturesque superstitions were most likely to have effect; and so far, indeed, did they influence me, that though reason in after-life exerted her power to sweep them all away, imagination often rebelled, and clung fondly to the delusion still.

Such as I have described them were the denizens of the Château de l'Orme at the time of my birth, which was unmarked by any other peculiarity than that of my mother having been married, and yet childless, for more than eight years. The joy which the unexpected birth of an heir produced, may easily be imagined, though little indeed was the inheritance which I came to claim. All with one consent gave themselves up to hope and to gladness; and more substantial signs of rejoicing were displayed in the hall than the château had known for many a day.

My father declared that I should infallibly retrieve the fortunes of my house. Father Francis, with tears in his eyes, exclaimed that it was evidently a blessing from Heaven; and even my mother discovered that, though futurity was still misty and indistinct, there was now a landmark to guide on hope across the wide ocean of the years to come.

CHAPTER II.

I know not by what letters patent the privilege is held, but it seems clearly established, that the parents of an only child have full right and liberty to spoil him to whatsoever extent they may please; and though, my grandfathers on both sides of the house being dead long before my birth, I wanted the usual chief aiders and abettors of over-indulgence, yet, in consideration of my being an unexpected gift, my father thought himself entitled to expend more unrestrictive fondness upon me than if my birth had taken place at an earlier period of his marriage.

My education was in consequence somewhat desultory. The persuasions of Father Francis, indeed, often won me for a time to study, and the wishes of my mother, whose word was ever law to her son, made me perhaps attend to the instructions of the good old priest more than my natural volatility would have otherwise admitted. At times, too, the mad spirit of laughing and jesting at everything, which possessed me from my earliest youth, would suddenly and unaccountably be changed into the most profound pensiveness, and reading would become a delight and a relief. I thus acquired a certain knowledge of Latin and of Greek, the first principles of mathematics, and a great many of those absurd and antiquated theories which were taught in that day under the name of philosophy. But from Father Francis, also, I learned what should always form one principal branch of a child's education--a very tolerable knowledge of my native language, which I need not say is, in general, spoken in Bearn in the most corrupt and barbarous manner.

Thus, very irregularly, proceeded the course of my mental instruction; my corporeal education my father took upon himself, and as his laziness was of the mind rather than the body, he taught me thoroughly, from my very infancy, all those exercises which, according to his conception, were necessary to make a perfect cavalier. I could ride, I could shoot, I could fence, I could wrestle, before I was twelve years old; and of course the very nature of these lessons tended to harden and confirm a frame originally strong, and a constitution little susceptible of disease.

The buoyancy of youth, the springy vigour of my muscles, and a good deal of imaginative feeling, gave me a sort of indescribable passion for adventure from my childhood, which required even the stimulus of danger to satisfy. Had I lived in the olden time, I had certainly been a knight errant. Everything that was wild, and strange, and even fearful, was to me delight; and it needed many a hard morsel from the rough hand of the world to quell such a spirit's appetite for excitement.