“Because then I could have married you,” I explained. At which she laughed as merrily as though I had got off the funniest joke in the world, and called me an “enfant terrible”—a dreadful child.
This episode abode in my mind for a long time to come, and furnished me food for much sorrowful reflection. It brought forcibly home to me the awful truth, which I had never thought of before, that youth and beauty cannot last. That this young girl—so strong, so gay, so full of life, with such bright red lips and brilliant golden hair—that she could have changed into a feeble gray old lady, like my grandmother! It was a sad and appalling possibility.
My grandmother stood nearly as much in awe of my Uncle Peter as I did. He allowed himself to browbeat and bully her in a manner that made my blood boil. “Oh!” I would think in my soul, “just wait till I am a man as big as he is. Won't I teach him a lesson, though?” She and I talked together for the most part in French. This was for two reasons: first, because it was good practice for me; and secondly, because it was pleasant for her—French being her native tongue. Well, my Uncle Peter hated the very sound of French—why I could not guess, but I suspected it was solely for the sake of being disagreeable—and if ever a word of that language escaped my grandmother's lips in his presence, he would glare at her from beneath his shaggy brows, and snarl out, “Can't you speak English to the boy?” She never dared to interfere in my behalf when he was about to whip me—though I knew her heart ached to do so—but would sit alone in her room during the operation, and wait to comfort me after it was over. His rattan cane raised great red welts upon my skin, which smarted and were sore for hours. These she would rub with a salve that cooled and helped to heal them; and then, putting her arm about my neck, she would bid me not to mind it, and not to feel unhappy any more, and would give me peppermint candies and cookies, and tell me long, interesting stories, or read aloud to me, or show me the pictures in her big family Bible. “Paul and Virginia” and “The Arabian Nights” were the books I liked best to be read to from; and my favorite picture was one of Daniel iii the lion's den. Ah, my dear, dear grandmother! As I look back upon those days now, there is no bitterness in my memory of Uncle Peter's whippings; but my memory of your tender goodness in consoling me is infinitely sweet.
No; if my Uncle Peter was perhaps a trifle too severe with me, my grandmother erred in the opposite direction, and did much to spoil me. I never got a single angry word from her in all the years we lived together; yet I am sure I must have tried her patience very frequently and very sorely. Every forenoon, from eight till twelve o'clock, she gave me my lessons: geography, history, grammar, arithmetic and music. I was neither a very apt nor a very industrious pupil in any of these branches; but I was especially dull and especially lazy in my pursuit of the last. My grandmother would sit with me at the piano for an hour, and try and try to make me play my exercise aright; and though I always played it wrong, she never lost her temper, and never scolded. I deserved worse than a scolding; I deserved a good sound box on the ear; for I had shirked my practising, and that was why I blundered so. But the most my grandmother ever said or did by way of reproof, was to shake her head sadly at me, and murmur, “Ah, Gregory, Gregory, I fear that you lack ambition.” So very possibly, after all, my Uncle Peter's sternness was really good for me as a disagreeable but salutary tonic.
My Uncle Florimond was my grandmother's only brother, unmarried, five years older than herself, who lived in France. His full name was even more imposing than hers had been; and to write it I shall have to use up nearly all the letters of the alphabet: Florimond Charles Marie Auguste Alexandre de la Bourbonnaye. As if this were not enough, he joined to it the title of marquis, which had descended to him from his father; just think—Florimond Charles Marie Auguste Alexandre, Marquis de la Bourbonnaye.
Though my grandmother had not once seen her brother Florimond since her marriage—when she was a blushing miss of nineteen, and he a dashing young fellow of four-and-twenty—I think she cared more for him than for anybody else alive, excepting perhaps myself. And though I had never seen him at all, I am sure that he was to me, without exception, the most important personage in the whole wide world. He owed this distinguished place in my regard to several causes. He owed it partly, no doubt, to the glamour attaching to his name and title. To my youthful imagination Florimond Charles Marie Auguste Alexandre de la Bourbonnaye made a strong appeal. Surely, any one who went through life bearing a name like that must be a very great and extrordinary man; and the fact that he was my uncle—my own grandmother's brother—stirred my bosom with pride, and thrilled it with satisfaction. Then, besides, he was a marquis; and a marquis, I supposed, of course, must be the embodiment of everything that was fine and admirable in human nature—good, strong, rich, brave, brilliant, beautiful—just one peg lower in the scale of glory than a king. Yes, on account of his name and title alone, I believe, I should have placed my Uncle Florimond upon a lofty pedestal in the innermost shrine of my fancy, as a hero to drape with all the dazzling qualities I could conceive of, to wonder about, and to worship. But indeed, in this case, I should most likely have done very much the same thing, even if he had had no other title than plain Mister, and if his name had been homely John or James. For my grandmother, who never tired of talking to me of him, had succeeded in communicating to my heart something of her own fondness for him, as well as imbuing my mind with an eager interest in everything that concerned him, and in firing it with a glowing ideal of his personality. She had taught me that he was in point of fact, all that I had pictured him in my surmises.
When, in 1820, Aurore de la Bourbonnaye became Mrs. Brace, and bade good-by to her home and family, her brother Florimond had held a commission as lieutenant in the King's Guard. A portrait of him in his lieutenant's uniform hung over the fireplace in our parlor, directly opposite the portrait of his sister that I have already spoken of. You never saw a handsomer young soldier: tall, muscular, perfectly shaped, with close-cropped chestnut hair, frank brown eyes, and regular clean-cut features, as refined and sensitive as a woman's, yet full of manly dignity and courage. In one hand he held his military hat, plumed with a long black ostrich feather; his other hand rested upon the hilt of his sword.
His uniform was all ablaze with brass buttons and gold lace; and a beautiful red silk sash swept over his shoulder diagonally downward to his hip, where it was knotted, and whence its tasseled ends fell half-way to his knee. Yes, indeed; he was a handsome, dashing, gallant-looking officer; and you may guess how my grandmother flattered me when she declared, as she often did, “Gregory, you are his living image.” Then she would continue in her quaint old-fashioned French:—“Ah! that thou mayest resemble him in spirit, in character, also. He is of the most noble, of the most generous, of the most gentle. An action base, a thought unworthy, a sentiment dishonorable—it is to him impossible. He is the courage, the courtesy, the chivalry, itself. Regard, then, his face. Is it not radiant of his soul? Is it not eloquent of kindness, of fearlessness, of truth? He is the model, the paragon even, of a gentleman, of a Christian. Say, then, my Gregory, is it that thou lovest him a little also, thou? Is it that thou art going to imitate him a little in thy life, and to strive to become a man as noble, as lovable, as he?”
To which I would respond earnestly in the same language, “O, yes! I love him, I admire him, with all my heart—after thee, my grandmother, better than anybody. And if I could become a man like him, I should be happier than I can say. Anyway, I shall try. He will be my pattern. But tell me, shall I never see him? Will he never come to Norwich? I would give—oh! I would give a thousand dollars—to see him, to embrace him, to speak with him.”
“Alas, no, I fear he will never come to Norwich. He is married to his France, his Paris. But certainly, when thou art grown up, thou shalt see him. Thou wilt go to Europe, and present thyself before him.”