The Huguenot: A Tale of the French Protestants. Volumes I-III

by G. P. R. James

"If my stay here is to be long," said the Count, after thanking the governor for his invitation, "I should, of course, be very glad to have the attendance of a domestic. I care not much, indeed, whether it be one of my own, or whether it be one with which you can supply me for the time, but I am not used to be without some sort of attendance."

The governor smiled. "You must not be nice in the Bastille, Monsieur de Morseiul," he said; "we all do with few attendants here, but we will see what can be done for you. At present we know nothing, but that here you are. The order for your reception is of that kind which leaves every thing doubtful but the fact that, for the time, you are not to be confined very strictly; and, indeed, as the letter is somewhat informal, as every thing is that comes from the hands of Monsieur de Louvois, I must write to him again for farther information. As soon as I receive it, the whole shall be arranged as far as I can to your satisfaction. In the mean time we will give you every indulgence, as far as our own general rules will allow, though, perhaps, you will think that share of indulgence very small."

The Count expressed his thanks in commonplace terms, well knowing the character of Besmaux, and that his fair speeches only promised a degree of courtesy which his actions generally failed to fulfil.

After lingering for a moment or two, the governor left his prisoner in the abode assigned to him, and returned to his own dwelling, without locking the door of the apartment.

There are states of mind in which the necessity of calm contemplation is so strong and overpowering, that none of the ordinary motives which affect our nature have any influence upon us for the time,--states in which even vanity the most irritable, and curiosity the most active of our moral prompters in this world, slumber inactive, and leave thought and judgment paramount. Such was the case with the Count de Morseiul. Although he had certainly been interested with every thing concerning the prison, which was to be his abode for an undefined length of time; although all that took place indicative of his future destiny was, of course, not without attraction and excitement, he had grown weary of the formalities of his entrance into the Bastille, less because they were wearisome in themselves than because he longed to be alone, and to have a few minutes for calm and silent reflection.

When he did come to reflect, however, the prospect presented was dark, gloomy, and sad. He was cut off from the escape he had meditated. The only thing that could have saved him from the most imminent dangers and difficulties, the only scheme which he had been able to fall upon to secure even the probability of peace and safety upon earth, had been now frustrated. The charges likely to be brought against him, if once averred by the decision of a court of justice, were such as, he well knew, could not and would not be followed by pardon; and when he looked at the chances that existed of those charges being sanctioned, confirmed, and declared just, by any commission that might sit to try him, he found that the probabilities were altogether against him; and that if party feeling biassed the opinion of one single magistrate, his cause was utterly lost. In cases where circumstantial evidence is every thing--and therein lies the horror and danger of judging by circumstantial evidence--so light a word, so small a turn will give a completely different view to the whole circumstances of any case, will so completely prejudice the question, and bias the minds of hearers, that he was quite aware if any zealous Catholics should be engaged in the task of persecuting him to the last, he could scarcely hope to escape from such serious imputations, as would justify perhaps his permanent detention, if not his death. He had been at the meeting of the Protestants on the moor, which though not illegal at the time, had been declared to be so since. He had then addressed the people, and had exhorted them to tranquillity and to peace; but where were the witnesses to come from in order to prove that such was the case. He had gone unarmed to that meeting; but others had been there in arms and with arms concealed. He, himself, with his own hand, had struck the first blow, from which such awful consequences had sprung; but how was he to prove the provocation which he had, in the first instance, received; or the protection which he had afterwards given to the base and unworthy young man, who had escaped from death by his means, only to become a murderer the moment after. The only witnesses that he could call were persons of the party inimical to the court, who might now be found with difficulty--when emigration was taking place from every part of France,--who would only be partially believed if they could be heard, and who would place themselves in danger by bearing testimony on his behalf.

The witnesses against him would be the hired miscreants who had fired into a body of unoffending people, but who were of the religion of the judges, the unscrupulous adherents of the cause to which those judges were bound by every tie of interest and of prejudice, and who were serving under a monarch that, on one terrible occasion, had stepped in to overrule the decision of a court of justice, and to inflict severer punishment than even his own creatures had dared to assign. Death, therefore, seemed to be the only probable end of his imprisonment, death, or eternal loss of liberty! and the Count knew the court, and the character of those with whom he had to deal, too well, to derive any degree of consolation from the lenity with which he was treated at first.

Had he been now in heart and mind, as he was not very long before, when quitting the army on the signature of the truce he had returned to the home of his ancestors, the prospect would have been far less terrible to him, far less painful. His heart was then in some degree solitary, his mind was comparatively alone in the world. He had spent the whole of his active life in scenes of danger and of strife. He had confronted death so often, that the lean and horrid monster had lost his terrors and become familiar with one, who had seemed to seek his acquaintance as if in sport. His ties to the world had been few; for the existence of bright days, and happy careless moments, and splendid fortune, and the means of luxury and enjoyment at command, are not the things that bind and attach us to life. The tie, the strong, the mighty tie of deep and powerful affection to some being, or beings, like himself, had been wanting. There were many that he liked; there were many that he esteemed; there were many he protected and supported even at that time; but he knew and felt that if he were gone the next moment, they would be liked, and esteemed, and supported, and protected by others, and would feel the same, or nearly the same, towards those who succeeded as towards him, when he had passed away from the green and sunny earth and left them to the care of newer friends.

But now other ties had arisen around him--ties, the strength, the durability, the firm pressure of which he had never known before. There was now a being on the earth to whom he was attached by feelings that can only once be felt, for whom he, himself, would have been ready to sacrifice every thing else; who for him, and for his love, had shewn herself willing to cast from her all of those bright and pageant-like days of splendour, in which she had once seemed to take so much delight. The tie, the strong tie of human affection--the rending of which is the great and agonising pang of death--had twined itself round his heart, and bound every feeling and every thought. The great, the surpassing quality of sentient being, the capability of loving, and being loved, had risen up to crush and to leave void all the lesser things of life, but also to give death terrors that it knew not before; to make the grave the bitter parting place where joy ends for ever, and to poison the shaft that lays us low with venom that is felt in agony ere the dark, dreamless sleep succeeds and extinguishes all.

But was this all that rendered his situation now more terrible than it had been before? Alas, no! The sense of religion was strong, and he might confidently trust that though earthly passion ended with the grave, and the mortal fire of his love for Clémence de Marly would there become extinct--he might confidently trust that, in another world, with his love for her exalted as well as purified, rendered more intense and sublime, though less passionate and human, they should meet again, known to each other, bound together by the immortal memory of vast affection, and only distinct from other spirits, bright and happy as themselves, by the glorious consciousness of love, and the intense happiness of having loved well, loved nobly, and to the last.