One in a Thousand; or, The Days of Henri Quatre

by G. P. R. James

The tears again seemed to relieve her; and at length she wiped them from her eyes, and looked out vacantly upon the gay and sunny landscape that lay stretched in bright confusion from the height on which the chateau stood, to some distant hills, that, rising again on the opposite side of a deep valley, towered up, now covered with green woods, now massed in the grey distance.

However resolutely the soul may hold itself within the citadel of the heart besieged by grief, the garrison of that sad fortress will be affected by the sight of things that pass beyond its limits. Sweet sounds, though we listen to them not, will tend to soothe; and pleasant objects, though the eye appears void of all remark, will tranquillize and calm. There were lovelier scenes to be found on earth, than that which lay beneath her sight, and Beatrice had seen many fairer far: but over it the sun, now slanting down towards his rest, was casting soft broad shadows; and now and then a slow passing cloud came, like the faint and pleasing shade of melancholy that sometimes steals upon our happiest moments, and touched the bright things below with a blue ethereal hue as it flitted on above them. Nothing was seen to move in the sky or on the earth, but that slow cloud and its soft shadow; but, on a bough before the window, a gay-hearted bird carolled volubly to the evening sun, mingling, however, now and then, with its blither notes, a tone or two in a sad minor key, which made its song harmonise both with the scene and with the heart of her who listened. I am wrong; the heart of Beatrice did not harmonise with it,--her bosom was full of griefs too deep, too lasting, to assimilate with the glad voice of nature; but still the melancholy tones so far chastened the cheerful song of the bird, that she could hear it and not think it harsh, and the shadows of that cloud were just sufficient to make her feel the brightness not blighting. She sat and gazed; and though neither her eye nor her ear marked anything with precision, she fell into a dreamy fit of musing, and that musing was softer and less bitter than it had been.

True, she thought of the course of her love, and of that love's blight. She knew that for her joys of life, the dreams, the hopes, the imaginings--all the green things of a happy heart, in short--were withered, and blasted, and shrivelled up, like the leaves of a bough broken off by the lightning. To be calm and passionless, sad and solitary, were the brightest aspirations which her once ardent bosom could harbour now; but still to think over such a state, was peace, to the bitter paroxysm that went before. Did she ever think that hope might revive in regard to him she had loved? Never! For though her love was not over--ah, no! and she would have given her fortune and her life to have blessed him; yet so lost was all her esteem and all her confidence, that could she have thought her heart would ever betray her into one weak fancy in regard to him, she would have torn it out to trample it beneath her feet. She loved him still, she knew, she felt she loved him; for her heart was as a pile of incense which that passion had lighted, and the fire could only be extinguished by the end of her own being; but still the dream, the bright and golden dream, of happiness was over; and not even love--that ardent and undying love, which was now an indivisible part of her being and her soul--could have bribed her, by the brightest promises of hope, to see that man again, or hear his lips pronounce one other word. No! bitterly, but fully, was she convinced at last of his unworthiness; and though she still loved the erring and earthly being whom her own imagination had purified and adorned, the dream of hope was at an end--the voice of the syren was mute: and yet a consolation gradually stole upon her heart, soothed the anguish and disappointment, and did away the indignation and disdain. On it, too, she framed the scheme of her future life, as she paused and thought of the coming years. That consolation was the conviction, the certainty, the indubitable assurance, that she was beloved; that he who had insulted and injured her--who had repaid her tenderness with ingratitude, and her confidence by baseness--still loved her deeply, passionately, and alone. What then was her resolution? Not to watch him farther, even through the eyes of others--not to seek for tidings of his actions, or to dream that he would amend; but on the contrary, to fly him far and for ever; to shut her ears against every rumour from the land in which he lived, and dead as he was to her, to consider him no more amongst the living; but still, as the balm and the comfort of the long after-years, to remember that she had been beloved--that, impure and dark as was the flame that had been lighted upon the altar of his heart, still it had been kindled, and had burned for her. This was to be the theme of memory--the occupation of her long, lonely hours--the matter for the immortal working of thought--the balsam for her wounded heart--the light of her long night of maiden widowhood,--that she had been loved by him she loved!

As she thus thought, and as she thus determined, the bitterness of her grief diminished. Dark and melancholy, indeed, was the fate that she pictured for herself, but yet it was relief, for it offered her tranquillity at least; and she had learned, amidst the strife of hope, and fear, and passion, to value God's best blessing--peace. Her meditations had been long, and had not exactly followed the even course in which they have been here detailed; for tears were not wanting to chequer them, nor many an angry and a bitter thought to struggle hard against the not unsound philosophy with which she sought to preserve, for future years, all, out of the bright harvest of her hopes now blighted, that had escaped the storm. But the tears grew less frequent, and the bitter pangs of disappointment waxed fainter, as the minutes flew; and at length, when she had determined how to shape her course through the rest of life's long and dangerous voyage, she raised her eyes once more to the heaven above and the landscape below; and the objects which met her gaze were more marked and noted now, than they had been not long before.

The change upon the scene, however, was but slight--the same bird was still tuning its unwearied throat in the tree hard by--the same unmoving stillness dwelt over the whole view--and not a living object was to be seen upon the solitary road that wound away through a thinly peopled part of the much-depopulated realm of France. But the shadows had grown longer, and the little stream which had lately glistened in the sunshine, now rested scarcely visible in the brown shade of the hills; and those changes, slight as they were, to a quick and imaginative mind like that of Beatrice, might well speak of time's rapid pace, and man's slow resolves. Stretching forth her hand to a small silver bell, she rung is sharply; and when the girl Annette appeared, bade her call Bartholo instantly.

It was not long before the dwarf obeyed the summons; and though he entered with that air of deference and respect, which was habitual to him in the presence of Beatrice, yet there was a gleam of satisfaction in his eye which he could not quell; and which, had she been in her usual keen and observing state of mind, would not have escaped the glance of his mistress. But Beatrice scarcely saw him as he stood before her; but sat with her eyes bent upon the ground, and her busy thoughts straying sorrowfully over the past.

"You sent for me, Madam," said the dwarf at length; "and I come joyfully, because I have not been thus honoured of late so often as I used formerly to be, when Bartholo's scheme, or Bartholo's advice was well nigh his lady's oracle."

"I have somewhat distrusted thee, Bartholo!" said Beatrice, gravely. "Many of my plans have failed in thy hands----"

"But by no fault of mine, lady!" cried the dwarf, eagerly. "What have I done to be distrusted? How have I deserved to lose your confidence? What secret have I betrayed? How have I acted to frustrate anything that you proposed?"

"Those, Bartholo," replied the lady, "those who suffer themselves to be discovered in their art, by open acts or heedless words, are politicians of a different stuff from that of which thou art made. But there are such things as looks, and smiles, and frowns, and curlings of the upper lip, which, to the eye of Beatrice of Ferrara, are often as legible as a book fairly printed in the language of her native land. I have somewhat doubted thee; but I may have been deceived--and God send it may be so! for I would not willingly believe that any one whom I have nourished with my bread, and have rewarded not only with dull gold, but also with inestimable favour and affection, would deceive or betray me; far less could I wish to think, that one who has known me from infancy, and on whom my parents, as well as myself, have rained benefits, would wrong my confidence."