Of all the many personages which have figured in this tale, there are but few of whom it behoves us to give any farther account. The lives of some stand written on the bright and glorious page of history, never to be effaced till the waters of time have rolled long over this portion of the globe, have levelled our dwellings and our monuments with the sands, have washed away our learning and our records, and blotted out not alone the sweet domestic memories--on which each succeeding generation sets its foot, trampling with all the insolence of youth the withered flower just dead--but have also razed, from the hard tablet of glory, the few names that are really worthy of eternal consecration. When such a change has taken place,--and who shall say that it will not?--when Europe shall be called the land of forests and of barbarism, and some prying strangers alone shall come from their happier lands, and try to trace upon the desert shores the mouldering remnants of arts and sciences and nations long gone by, perhaps the name of Henry IV. of France, and those who resemble him, may be forgotten, but till then they have a glorious existence separate from the rest of men. The Duke of Mayenne, too, ambitious and intriguing, but generous and often wise, has a share of the page of history; and all those who continued to play a conspicuous part in the days of Henry Quatre, either for good or for evil, have their record in the annals of the time. This tale can alone take farther note of those whose fate it has depicted in the preceding pages, and who at this point separate themselves from the general course of history, either to fall into the calm repose of sweet domestic life, or to seek a refuge from unhappy fortunes in the tomb.
The body of Beatrice of Ferrara being removed from the cottage where Eugenie de Menancourt had dwelt so long, was borne to the chateau in which she herself had spent the last hours of her own existence; and with curses and imprecations upon his head, the tale of what his machinations had wrought was told to the dwarf Bartholo by the more faithful yet less attached servants of his late mistress.
He listened to the whole in sullen composure, and even a smile played upon his lip as he heard of the death of the Count d'Aubin; but when the last sad event was mentioned by the narrator, and he learned that Beatrice herself was dead, he struggled with the bonds that tied him, and then cast himself grovelling on the ground, which he dewed with his bitter agonising tears. He strove to tear his flesh with his teeth; and when they took him up, more to gaze upon his torture, than with any feeling of compassion--for no one loved, and no one compassionated him--he raved upon them with frantic and incoherent words, and again cast himself down in raving despair. For several days he refused all food; but at length pity touched some one, and a leech was sent for, who bled him largely, which produced a change. He no longer raved, he no longer refused food, he took what was offered him, did what was bid him; but it was with the slow and sullen stupidity of an idiot. The fire, too, had left his eye; his activity was gone; his witty sauciness at an end; and he would sit for days gazing vacantly upon the floor, without hearing what was said to him, and without addressing a word to any one. At length, the body of Beatrice of Ferrara was conveyed to Italy for the purpose of being interred amongst her princely ancestors; and then, though none knew how he escaped, it was perceived that the dwarf was gone also. It was not, indeed, extraordinary that he had disappeared without notice; for after his frenzy had terminated in idiocy, no one had paid him much attention.
How he travelled so great a distance, and how he supported himself by the way, are equally unknown; but some three months after, the wretched being was seen wandering about in the long vacant streets of Ferrara, enduring the scoff of the schoolboy and the peasant. He remained in that part of the country for several years; and those who had known him when first he had entered the household of the princes of Legnano, often gave food and money out of charity to the poor dwarf, whom they now despised and had formerly hated. At length, one morning, when the sacristan took his early round through the chapel in which the dead of that noble house slept in the cold marble which was their place of last repose, he was startled by seeing something curled up at the end of the new monument erected to the Princess Beatrice. He touched it, but it stirred not; and, familiar with the dead, he carelessly raised up the head, and beheld the lifeless features of the dwarf Bartholo.
The Count d'Aubin lay with his ancestors; and the noble estates of which he had been once the improvident possessor passed to his next male heir, the Marquis of St. Real. To St. Real it was pointed out by skilful and honest lawyers that, as the creditors who had claims upon the late Count could not easily prove their right, his estates might be rendered clear by a very simple process of law. But St. Real preferred a simpler process still; and from the funds accruing from large and well-managed lands discharged the debts, and freed the inheritance. The claims which were the most difficult to arrange were those of the heirs and successors of one Albert of Wolfstrom, who having been executed, under a judicial sentence regularly pronounced by a competent tribunal, for various transactions which did not even permit the harlot compassion of public excitement to attend his end, it was more than doubtful whether any of the demands which were made upon St. Real in his name were really to be sustained. There were some through which the young Marquis at once struck his indignant pen, and others which, though equally illegal, he paid at once; but in the end, as so often happens, the debts which had seemed overwhelming to him whose bad management had incurred them, were easily liquidated by a more provident though not a less liberal lord; and the estates of Aubin made a splendid addition to those of the Marquis of St. Real.
The young lord himself saw Eugenie de Menancourt reinstated in her ancestral halls, and wandered with her for a few days through the scenes they had both loved in childhood--scenes where the memories of the past, both dark and bright, blended into a solemn, but a sweet and soothing light, which, shining mellow and calm upon the happy present, gradually brightened into hope as the eye turned towards the future. It was like the twilight of the summer sky in a far northern land, where the night and the day mingle together in the west; and the soft and shaded, yet radiant, sunset continues till the dawning of the morning appears on the opposite horizon, so that the beams of the past and the future day meet in the zenith of the present.
It might be said that the experience which Eugenie de Menancourt and Huon St. Real already had of the past was sufficient to have justified their immediate marriage. But Eugenie had her scruples, and St. Real had a confidence derived from higher sources than either the usual happy fortunes of his house, or the promising turn which the war had taken. An old female relation was sought to bear the young heiress company for the next six months. To her Eugenie's education had been principally confided during her youth; her instructions had greatly tended to render her what she was, and St. Real thought that the society of no one could be better for her he loved till the day of their marriage at length arrived. In the meantime, he rejoined the king's army, and took part in the various events of the war which ultimately placed Henry IV. in possession of the capital of his kingdom, and put an end to the troublous times by which his reign began; but it will be remembered by all persons well versed in that portion of the history of France, that the part of the country in which the estates of Eugenie de Menancourt were situated never fell again into the hands of the League. Various detached towns in Normandy and Maine that faction did indeed continue to hold for some time, but the progress of the king after the battle of Ivry was uninterrupted, though gradual, till peace crowned his efforts; and his people learned to love, nay, almost to adore, the monarch against whom many of them had drawn their swords.
At length, six months after the death of Beatrice of Ferrara, Eugenie de Menancourt gave her hand to him whom she was not now ashamed to own she had loved from her earliest youth. Henry signed the marriage contract; and when the young Marquis, having seen him firmly seated on the throne of his ancestors, took leave of the monarch and his court, resolved to spend the rest of his life, as his fathers had done before him, in the calm tranquillity of his paternal domains, Henry placed round his neck the order of the St. Esprit, saying, that as he well knew he should but seldom see his face again, he was resolved to give him something whereby to remember the days he had passed with Henry Quatre.
Do we need to inquire how St. Real and Eugenie passed their after life? It sometimes happens, indeed, that two people who have loved well and truly in the first burst of youthful passion, crossed, disappointed, and soured, persevere against all opposition through long years of withering anxiety, till they meet together at length, with tempers irritated, and hearts no longer the same; and find nothing but misery in that union, from which they had anticipated nothing but happiness. Not so, however, St. Real and Eugenie de Menancourt. They had long loved without knowing it; and had chiefly had to struggle with the opposition of their own principles to their own wishes. They had been thwarted, but not disappointed; they had been grieved, but not irritated. Their sorrows had served like the black leaf on which the diamond is set, to increase, not tarnish, the lustre of the happiness they now enjoyed. But happiness will not bear description. It is the calm stream that neither foams nor murmurs; and theirs continued flowing on like a mighty river, which, troubled and obstructed at its source, soon overbears all obstacles, and then, having once reached the calm level of the open country, flows on increasing in volume, though it loses in brightness, till the full completed stream falls into the bosom of the eternal ocean.