The peasants, generally speaking, do not witness the arrival of these visitors with much pleasure,—the dandies more especially, who shod in varnished leather, always over-dressed, musked, and starched, attract, so they think, too much the attention of the young girls. Fathers, mothers, and, above all, lovers, are at once on the look out. They mistrust these fine gentlemen, whom they always designate by the appellation of "gilded serpents."
My friends from other departments often remarked the looks of aversion with which the natives sometimes met them; and not comprehending the reason, have asked me for an explanation. Do you observe, I said, that little white house, half-hidden yonder in the poplars—there, on the banks of the Cure? That house, a few years ago, was the abiding-place of a happy and honest family,—a father, and his three daughters.
The father, who in his youth was in very good circumstances, was ruined by bad harvests, an epidemic disease in his cattle, and by other disasters that cause the downfall of many farmers. Nevertheless, and though his losses were great, he lived happy and even contented with his children, who, all three of irreproachable conduct and character, and excellent needlewomen, did their utmost to ameliorate his position. They made dresses for the ladies in the town, worked by the day, and sometimes, when they found their earnings during the summer months fall short of what they thought sufficient to meet the expenses of the coming winter, they hired themselves to some proprietor during the period of the vendange.
The youngest of the three,—Herminie, she might be about sixteen,—was a charming girl, a true child of Nature, fresh as a wild flower, awaking and rising every day of the year from her peaceful happy couch with the birds of heaven, always smiling and singing. Herminie was the joy, the favourite of the old man,—she was the linnet, the darling, and the life of the house. One autumnal day, (the period at which, as I have before remarked, our province abounds with strangers,) her figure attracted the attention of one of those cursed beings, with a false heart and lying lips, that the great cities send into our rural districts, carrying with them desolation and mourning. I know not in what manner it occurred, what falsehoods, what arts he used, or what traps he laid,—but he succeeded too well in his base purpose. The poor girl was deceived. Easily convinced,—she was too pure, too young to doubt; and her mother, who would have been there to watch over her, was alas! sleeping in the very churchyard in which, in the shade of the evening, she first met her seducer. Enough,—the heartless man of the world obtained the love of the poor and simple Herminie,—and his whim, his heartless selfish whim gratified,—he disappeared.
The fault, the fault of confiding woman, soon became public. Abandoned and betrayed, the poor girl sought death as a refuge in her distress, and threw herself into the river; but her father, who watched every action of his daughter, was near, and saved her. A man of unusual intelligence, and an excellent heart, his maledictions fell entirely upon the head of him who had wronged her; for his child he had only tears and consolation. Herminie became a mother; her sisters and friends were earnest and devoted in their attentions, and anticipated her every thought; but broken-hearted, she bent her head like some beautiful lily, which has at the parent root some corroding worm. Her gaiety fled, her songs ceased; pale and silent, she might be seen standing on some rock, listening to the howling of the storm, or, her little boy on her lap, seated for hours at her father's cottage door, picking some faded rose to pieces leaf by leaf, and looking vacantly on the fragments as they lay at her feet.
But at the bottom of her cup of grief was still one more bitter drop,—oh! how much more bitter than the rest! Her child, as if inheriting the melancholy of its mother, ceased to prattle, to smile; it did not thrive, it sickened; and in spite of all her care and watchings, of whole nights passed in prayers to the Virgin, to her patron Saint, and God, in spite of many an hour of repentant and sorrowing tears,—it died! Bowed to the earth by this fresh, this overwhelming misfortune, Herminie complained not, but she became more pale: she was sometimes found plunged in silent but profound grief, looking towards heaven as if seeking there the little precious being the Almighty had taken from her; as if she was anxious to follow,—to be at rest, united with her baby boy again.
The vendange returned once more; but the perfumed gentleman, the villain from the capital, came not again. Herminie was desirous of assisting in the labours of the season. "I am," said she, "strong enough;" and though her sisters endeavoured to dissuade her, she persisted in accompanying them to the vineyard, but there she found her strength was unequal to the task, a smile to one, and a kind answer to another, was all that she could give,—nevertheless it was remarked, during the course of the day that she spoke several times out loud, as if conversing with some invisible being. Evening arrived, and the waggons carried off their ripe and luscious loads, leaving the young men and girls racing up and down the pathways, and amongst the vines, endeavouring to smear each other's faces with the purple fruit.
Behind these laughing groups came Herminie, the expression of her dark blue eye floating in space, and, like the flight of the swallow, resting on nothing. Onward she slowly stepped, idly pushing before her the first faded leaves of autumn, withered by the hoar frost; and, instead of the intoxicating grape, she carried in her hand a bouquet of the arbutus and the alize, fruits without perfume, like her own heart, now without hope or love. Night came: every eye weary with toil was closed,—the chimes alone telling the hours of the night vibrated on the air. Towards morning a startling cry of horror was heard from a cottage on the banks of the Cure—Herminie was dead! that is to say, her face was paler than usual in her sleep; but she awoke no more! I shall ever remember that beautiful face, for I had never till then contemplated the countenance of one whose spirit had taken its way to that country from which no traveller returns.
A few days, and the withered rose-leaves which the poor girl had pulled at the cottage door were scattered by the wind; a few more, and the poor old father followed his favourite child; and his surviving daughters, half-crazed with grief and sorrow, left the neighbourhood. As to him who was the original cause of this domestic tragedy,—rich, happy, perhaps a deputy and making laws himself,—he lives, and is probably respected. We call ourselves a civilized people; we throw into prison a man who strikes another,—and we do not punish, we do not cast from society, we do not even reproach the base hypocrite, who, with a smile on his lips, and for the infamous gratification of his bad, ungovernable, selfish passions, becomes the murderer of a whole family. Bad and rotten are the laws which permit such infamous practices. Unworthy of trust are the legislators who dream not—who never think of preventing these impure and festering diseases of our social system. My friends, who had listened attentively to the sad tale, turned from me to inspect more closely the white cottage by the Cure, and no longer expressed any astonishment at the severe countenances of the peasants.
But how does it happen, will the reader say, that so delightful a province of France as that of Le Morvan should have remained for nineteen centuries unknown to England,—that nation of travellers who are to be found in every corner of the globe inhabitable and uninhabitable? How is it that such a pearl,—a sporting country too,—should have remained buried for so long a period as it were under the dark mantle of indifference? And is it to be credited that in a district in which are to be found simultaneously wolves and health, wild boar and simplicity, the best wines in the world, and all the theological virtues, should have remained up to this day hidden—lost in the deep shadows of its woods and the solitude of its mountains?