"Were poor fisher people, all carried off by the English fleet, and are now in some horrid prison."
"The English, as Comte de Boisguiller says, it is always those pestilent English, we can neither move for them by land or sea. Tres bien! my good girl, I am pleased with mademoiselle's choice, and like your modest appearance so much, that I think I shall retain you about my own person. If you please me, I shall have your ears pierced, and present you with a pair of my own earrings at the next feast of St. Malo."
"Oh, madame, how happy I shall be to attend so dear, so delightful, so handsome a lady!" said I, courtseying thrice, but feeling, nevertheless, in no way delighted by the prospect of the ear-piercing process.
"Adieu, my child," replied the countess, with a gratified smile. "Angelique will instruct you in your new duties; and, as you are from the melancholy district of the Morbihan—the land of salt marshes, and the Montagues Noires, of old feuds, solemn pilgrimages, and ruined castles, I shall expect you to entertain us with some droll legends of especially those wicked little fiends the Courils and Torrigans, who infest the roads at nightfall, and make travellers dance till they die of fatigue."
Angelique hurried me away; our interview had been most successful! Madame de Bourgneuf was now in her sixtieth year. Few women, even in blooming England, are charming at that age; but in France they are frequently horrible! She could never have been beautiful at any time, and though her hazel eyes were large and bright, her shrivelled skin had the hue of an old drumhead, that had undergone the rain and marches of three campaigns; yet, strange to say, she bore a resemblance to her beautiful niece, which made me ask tremulously in my heart, would Jacqueline ever become so plain, even if she lived to the years of old Parr?
The countess had a profusion of real and false hair, all of snowy whiteness, always dressed à la Marquise, and by her ornaments, and general style of attire, it was evident that she knew not the art of growing gracefully old; but was resolved to be young, and to keep her colours flying to the last. With all this, she was a perfect repertory of old stories of the court of France, legends of the saints, and historic memories of Brittany.
I soon found that my new attire entailed upon me many annoyances. I strove to avoid all the domestics of the chateau; but the jealousy and curiosity of the women to see and to converse with the new comer—this wonderful paysanne of the Morbihan, who was constantly with their young mistress, who could sketch in her album, and knew when to turn over the leaves of her music when she played—together with the delicate attentions paid to me by Urbain the gardener, Bertrand the porter, the valets and the coachman, became so alarming that I could scarcely quit Jacqueline's suite of apartments, or leave the chateau alone for a moment.
To all, I was a puzzle! Some said I was a clumsy Norman—a phlegmatic Fleming—a Navarrese; the men declared my bearing odd; the women, my accent to be more so; but the gardener, with his bouquets, was an admirer so devoted, that I dared never venture into the garden, or into the avenue, when he was clipping the yews, or tending his orange tubs.
Then judge of my alarm, when one day the mischievous Angelique, with her black eyebrows arched to the roots of her hair, her large eyes dilated with mock dismay, and a smile of drollery on her rosy mouth, began thus—
"Oh, Mademoiselle Basile—oh, how unfortunate you are!"