"My little Justine had now become a woman, and a very beautiful one,—more especially so for the daughter of a peasant. She was the belle of the rural district, and the people named her the lily of Besançon. Ah, monsieur! although the child of a low-born man, a vassal, she was surprisingly beautiful; too much so to be happy, as my friend Pierre Raoul told me more than once. Her figure was not the less handsome or graceful because, instead of satin or brocade, she wore our homely brown stuffs; and her long black curls, flowing in freedom, seemed a thousand times more beautiful than the locks of high-born ladies, powdered and pasted into puffs and bows by the hands of a fashionable barber.
"Monsieur, I perceive that you almost comprehend my story, ere it is told. My daughter was charming, and our lord was a libertine. In that sentence are the causes of all my woe. I was kept in a constant state of anxiety lest the debauchee, our young lord, or some accomplished rascal of his acquaintance, might rob me of my treasure, for such she was to me; and what I had dreaded came to pass at last. I had observed that the manners of Justine were changed. She shunned the villagers, and often went out alone; she seldom laughed, and never sang as she used to do; but was ever moody and melancholy, and often I found her weeping in solitary places.
"Never shall I forget the evening when the dreadful truth broke upon me, with all its maddening anguish; when I was told that my daughter was lost,—that the bloom of the lily was blighted! I was no longer François Rosat,—no longer the same man apparently; a cloud of horror seemed to have enveloped me, for although but a poor peasant of Besançon, I held my honour as dear to me as Louis XVI. could have held his. One evening I returned to my cottage, bearing with me a basket of choice flowers for the decoration of Justine, who had been elected queen of a fête which was to be given by the villagers and tenantry of Quinsay on the morrow. I returned to my home, monsieur,—a house which was to be no longer a home for me. Justine was not awaiting me, as usual, under the porch, where I had trained up the honey-suckle and woodbine,—nor was she in our sitting-room; but she could not be far off, I imagined, as her guitar and work-basket lay on the table. I know not how it was, but I noted these little matters anxiously, and I felt my heart beat quicker, as if in dread of coming evil.
"'Justine!' said I, laying down my basket, 'come hither. You never saw such flowers as these for freshness and beauty, and I have been employed the whole day in culling them for you. Here are anemonies, crimson and lilac, and blue and white pinks, carnations, gillyflower, auriculas with eyes of scarlet edged with green, violets as large as lilies, and tulips and roses such as were never before seen in Besançon. Justine! come here, girl. Why, where are you?' But no Justine answered my call. Her little room, the room in which her mother died, was deserted, and my heart swelled in my breast with an inward presentiment of evil, as I went forth to seek her by the river side. Here I met the steward of Quinsay, Pierre Raoul, a surly fellow, whose addresses she had rejected. He informed me, with what I thought a grin of triumph and malice, that my daughter, with Monsieur Maurice, had just swept through Besançon in a travelling-carriage, and were off for Paris as fast as four horses could take them. As he spoke the earth swam around me, and I saw his lips moving, although I heard not his conclusion; there was a hissing sensation in my ears,—the cords of my heart felt as if riven asunder, and I sunk on the turf at the feet of Pierre.
"When I returned to consciousness, he was bathing my brow and hands in the cool water of the river; but he soon left me, and oh! monsieur, what a sense of loneliness and desolation came upon me. That my daughter should desert me thus heartlessly,—that the little creature I had cherished in my bosom should turn upon me and sting me thus! I raved like a madman, and tore the hair from my head and the grass from the earth in handfuls. When this fit passed away, all was silence and stillness around me: the moon was shining brightly in the sky, and silvered the boughs of the trees my own hands had trained, and the petals and buds of the flowers that it had been my delight to attend; but they were unheeded now, and I turned to where appeared, in the strong light and shadow, the old château de Quinsay, with its battlemented towers and elevated turrets. I prayed deeply for my erring Justine, and implored Heaven and the spirit of her mother to sustain me under so heavy a dispensation. I would rather have seen the child of Suzette laid dead by her side, than the dishonoured mistress of Maurice de Mesmai. But my prayers were impious, as I mingled them with the bitterest maledictions upon her accomplished seducer. At the château the servants, some with pity, some with the malice felt by little minds, corroborated the blasting information given me by Pierre Raoul, and that very night I set out for Paris in pursuit of my lost sheep. I set out on foot on my sorrowful pilgrimage, almost heart-broken, and without a sous to defray my expenses by the way. How I reached the capital—a distance of two hundred and thirty-five miles from Besançon—I know not. But He who fed the children of Israel in the desert surely assisted me by the way. How great was my misery, when begging as a miserable mendicant, exposed to the insults of the gens d'armes, I wandered about that wide wilderness of Paris, with the vague and eager hope of recovering Justine! Once—yes, once—I got a sight of her; only a single glance, but one I shall never forget. In a dashing carriage, the panels of which flashed in the sun with gilding and armorial bearings, she was seated by the side of De Mesmai, tricked out in all the gaudy and wanton finery that wealth and pride could bestow upon her. But she looked paler, less happy than she was wont to be, and the roses had faded from her cheek, and the lustre from her once sunny eye. They swept past me on the Boulevards, where I was seeking alms as was my wont, and Justine, mon Dieu! my own fallen but kind-hearted daughter, threw a demi-franc into my tattered hat, without looking upon my face. I attempted to cry out; but what I would have said expired on my lips. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and when I recovered they were gone! I never beheld them again.
"I was starving at that moment, monsieur; food had not passed my lips for three days, and I looked wistfully, till my eyes became blinded with tears, upon the little coin I had received from Justine. A sudden thought struck me. I spat upon it, and tossed it from me as a coin of hell, as the wages of her infamy. Twelve months,—long and weary months of wretchedness and sorrow, I wandered about the streets of Paris, a woe-begone mendicant, until all hope of seeing her again was extinguished, and I returned to Besançon more heart-broken, if possible, than when I had left it. My cottage had fallen into ruin; but honest Pierre Raoul restored me again to the occupation of gardener, and repaired my old residence for me. Our lord had been absent, no one knew where, ever since he had carried off Justine, and I began to have some faint hope that he might have married her.
"These thoughts stole at length like sunshine into my desolate heart; and I thought so much of the chances and probabilities, that at last it appeared to me to be beyond a doubt that Justine was the wife of De Mesmai. I plucked up fresh courage, and attended from dawn till sunset my loaded orchards and blooming flower-beds as of old. The garden was again my delight and glory, and not even does the great Napoleon survey his troops with more delight, than I did my beds of tulips and anemonies: I had brought to perfection the art of cultivation, and where can it be practised with more success than under the climate of my own beautiful France? In the garden of the château the aloe of Africa, the pine of Scotland, the oak of England, the cypress of Candia, the laurels of Greece and Portugal, the rose-tree of Persia, the palms of India, the figs of Egypt—all blooming together, and at once.
"In my application to my old business, the manifold miseries I had endured in Paris were forgotten, or at least subdued in my remembrance. I pictured bright images of monsieur's returning, with my beautiful Justine to be mistress of his château. But these were doomed soon to end. One evening I sat on the turf-seat at my door, employed as usual building castles in the air, while I made up and dried packages of seed which were never to be sown by me. It was a beautiful summer evening, and all the fertile landscape seemed bright and joyous in the light of the setting sun. Clear as a mirror the river murmured at my feet, sweeping past the old château on its opposite bank, where, above trees a hundred years old, the slated roofs of its turrets and gilded vanes were shining in the sun. Afar off, between openings in the trees of the lawn, could be seen the fortifications of the citadel and city of Besançon, with its round towers and the tall spires of its colleges and churches reared against the cloudless sky. I desisted from my employment and took off my hat, for the sound of the evening service came floating on the wind towards me from the rich abbey of the order of Citeaux. The very air was filled with perfume, for the breeze swept over the wide orchards and gardens of the abbey and château.
"We French are enthusiastic creatures, monsieur; and I was filled with delight and ecstacy at the beauty of the evening and the scenery of my native place, where the deep blue river wound among fertile hills, vineyards, and green woods between happy little hamlets clustering round ivy clad churches and the stately châteaux of the old nobility of France,—a nobility, monsieur, in those days not less proud and haughty than those of your own northern country.
"'Yes,' said I aloud, giving utterance to my thoughts, 'the hand of fate has been in all this. Justine will certainly be the lady of Quinsay, and poor old François Rosat will get a corner in some part of that huge old château to rest in. Let me see, now: the octagon turret which overlooks the orchard will suit me exactly. It has a window to the south, which overlooks the garden. Excellent! I can watch the buds and blossoms in spring,—I will look at them the moment I leap from bed; but, alas! I must no do more. I shall then be a gentleman, and Monsieur François Rosat, father-in-law of the lord of Quinsay, must not be up with the lark, like Maitre François the gardener,—that would never do. This red night-cap I will exchange for a hat of the best beaver, tied up with a silver loop, a la Louis XVI. My coat—'