"And you shall bless him," cried Lucette, warmly, kissing his hand; "and I will tell him that you made his father and myself happy."
Perhaps, in all his career of splendid misery, that was one of the happiest hours that Richelieu had ever experienced.
The Prince de Soubise, as is well known, did not return to France and make his full submission to his king till Edward and Lucette had been married some time. To Edward, whom he met at the court not long after the final fall of Marie de Medici, he was polite and even friendly; but, whether it was that he was naturally of a more haughty disposition than his brother the Duc de Rohan, or that he was never placed under the same pressure of circumstances, he refused to acknowledge, by any authentic act, the legality of the marriage between his young cousin and the son of one of his earliest friends. It made no difference to them, however, nor troubled their peace in the least; and in the end, after witnessing their mutual felicity for many years, both he and his brother the duke, by their own wretched experience, were forced to acknowledge that a marriage of affection has more chance for happiness than a marriage of convenience. Still, however, with the same peculiar obduracy which had characterized his resistance to the crown in the hopeless war of the Protestants against Louis XIII., he refused to sign, on several occasions, the papers which were necessary to enable Lucette to enter fully into possession of her father's estates, saying that he would not recognise her marriage with the second son of a simple English gentleman. But his consent was passed over by certain forms of the Parliament; and as for Madame de Chevreuse, with her usual gay lightness, she signed her approbation of the marriage without a word of opposition,—when she found that opposition would be vain. She was even inclined to be exceedingly kind and intimate with the young pair; but Edward gave no encouragement to her advances, and she satisfied herself by declaring that, like many of his countrymen, he was a handsome man, but somewhat brutal.
In regard to Edward's claim to the estate of Buckley, there was no opposition; and he kept quiet possession during the whole of his life of that fine part of his inheritance. The estates of Langley were suffered to go greatly to decay for several years, the rents accumulating in the hands of the agent without ever being called for or paid over to any one.
How this property reverted to Edward himself, and how the objections of the Prince de Soubise to the marriage of his young cousin with Edward Langdale were at last done away,—what was the ultimate fate of Sir Richard Langdale,—and how an old proverb was verified,—would be too long of telling in the pages which yet remain.
Perhaps, if God spares the life, the health, and the senses of the author of this work, these particulars may all be related in another. At all events, the history of Lord Montagu's Page is completed; for it would be folly to pursue that history in the calm, continued, uninterrupted happiness of his married life. Every one has been unsuccessful in painting happiness with the pen. Dante failed in his Paradiso, Milton in his Paradise Regained; and the writer of these pages is not sufficiently presumptuous to suppose that he could succeed in representing a state as near as this world permits to that which they attempted to picture in vain.
THE END.
STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON & CO.
PHILADELPHIA.
FOOTNOTES: