The Count de Morseiul felt that painful tightening of the heart which every man, thus suddenly stopped in the full career of liberty, and destined to be conveyed to long and uncertain imprisonment, to be shut out from all the happy sounds and sights of earth, to be debarred all the sweet intercourses of friendship and affection, has felt and must feel. At the same time all the various points of anxiety and difficulty in his situation rushed through his mind with such rapidity as to turn him dizzy with the whirling numbers of such painful thoughts. Clémence de Marly, whose hand was to have been his that very night, the good old pastor, his friends, his servants, all might, for aught he knew, be kept in utter ignorance of his fate for many days. The hands, too, of the unscrupulous and feelingless instruments of despotic power, would be in every cabinet of his house and his château, invading all the little storehouses of past affections, perhaps scattering to the winds all the fond memorials of the loved and dead. The dark lock of his mother's hair, which he had preserved from boyhood--the few fragments of her handwriting, and some verses that she had composed shortly before her death--all his father's letters to him, from the time that he first sent him forth, a gallant boy girt with the sword of a high race, to win renown, through all that period when the son, growing up in glory, shone back upon his father's name the light that he had thence received, and paid amply all the cares which had been bestowed upon him, by the joy of his great deeds, up to that sad moment, when, with a trembling hand, the dying parent announced to his son the commencement and progress of the fatal malady that carried him to the grave.--All these were to be opened, examined, perhaps dispersed by the cold, if not by the scornful; and all the sanctities of private affection violated.
Such and a thousand other such feelings, rapid, innumerable, and, in some instances, contradictory to and opposing each other, rushed through his bosom in a moment at the announcement of the officer's errand. The whole facts of his situation, in short, with every minute particular, were conjured up before his eyes, as in a picture, by those few words; and the first effort of deliberate thought was made while De Cantal went on to say, "As I have said, Monsieur de Morseiul, it is my wish to save you any unnecessary pain, and therefore I have ordered the carriage, which is to convey you to the Bastille, to wait at the further end of the first street. A couple of musketeers and myself will accompany you inside; so that there will be no unnecessary parade about the matter: and I doubt not that you will be liberated shortly."
"I trust it may be so, Sir," replied the Count; "and am obliged to you for your kindness. I have violated no law, divine or human; and though, of course, I have many sins to atone towards my God, yet I have none towards my King. I am quite ready to accompany you, but I suppose that I shall not be permitted to return to my own house, even to seek those things which may be necessary for my comfort in the Bastille."
"Quite impossible, Sir," replied the officer. "It would be as much as my head is worth to permit you to set foot in your own dwelling."
The thoughts of the young Count, as may well be supposed, were turned, at that moment, particularly to Clémence de Marly; and he was most anxious, on every account, to make his servants acquainted with the fact of his having been arrested, in the hope that Riquet would have the good sense to convey the tidings to the Hôtel de Rouvré. To have explained this, in any degree, to the officer who had him in charge, would have been to frustrate the whole design; and therefore he replied,
"Far be it from me, Sir, to wish you to do any thing but your duty: but you see, as I have been accustomed, throughout my life, to somewhat perhaps too much luxury, I should be very desirous of procuring some changes of apparel. That, I am aware, may be permitted to me unless I am to be in the strictest and most severe kind of imprisonment which the Bastille admits of. You know by the orders you have received whether such is to be the case or not, and of course I do not wish you to deviate from your orders. Am I to be kept au secret?"
"Oh dear no, not at all," replied the officer. "The order merely implies your safe custody; and, probably, unless some private commands are given farther, you will have what is called the great liberties of the Bastille: but still that would not, by any means, justify me in permitting you to go to your own house."
"No," replied the Count; "but it renders it perfectly possible--if you are, as I believe, disposed to treat a person in my unfortunate situation with kindness and liberality--for you to send down one of your own attendants to my valet, Jerome Riquet, with my orders to send me up, in the course of the day, such clothes as may be necessary for a week. Let the message be verbal, so as to guard against any dangerous communication; and let the clothes be addressed to the care of the governor of the prison, in order that they may be inspected before they are given to me."
"Oh, to that, of course, there can be no objection," replied the young officer. "We will do it immediately. But we must lose no time, Monsieur de Morseiul, for the order is countersigned by Monsieur de Louvois, and you know he likes prompt obedience."
The Count accompanied him at a rapid pace, deriving no slight consolation under the unhappy circumstances in which he was placed, at the idea of Clémence being fully informed of the cause of his not appearing at the time he had promised. At the spot which Monsieur de Cantal had mentioned, was found a plain carriage, with a coachman and lackey in grey, and two musketeers of the guard seated quietly in the inside. While the Count was entering the vehicle, the officer called the lackey to his side and said, "Run down as fast as possible to the house of the Count de Morseiul, and inquire for his valet. What did you say his name is, Monsieur de Morseiul?"