"The train of my vain but happy thoughts was cruelly cut short by the apparition of a woman standing before me. Her appearance declared her to be sunk to the lowest ebb of misery and degraded destitution. She was tanned by exposure to the weather; bare-headed, bare-footed,—almost without covering, and bore in her arms a poor child, almost as wan and meagre as herself. Ah, mon Dieu! how keenly at this distant time can my memory recall the agony of that terrible recognition. Oh, what a moment was that! Disguised as she was, I recognised her; but a mist overspread my vision, and I felt her fall into my open arms, although I could not for some minutes discern her.
"'My father! oh, my father!' said she. But, alas! her voice was not so sweet as of old.
"'Justine, I forgive you,' was my answer. 'Come again to my bosom: the past shall be forgotten.'
"She sunk down between my knees upon the earth, and lay motionless and still. Monsieur, I will not protract this intrusive story of my griefs. She was dead! she had expired at that moment—the kindness of my forgiveness had killed her! Unrequited love, unkindness, sorrow, shame, and misery had wrought their worst upon her,—she was destroyed! De Mesmai had taken her to Italy, and there, ruthlessly abandoning her for some new victim, she was left to find her way as she best could to Besançon, to place in my charge the infant to which she had given birth on the way. The child of De Mesmai is the Maria to whom he behaved so insolently to-night. Two days afterwards the poor polluted lily of Besançon was laid in her mother's grave; and as I strewed the fresh flowers on the green turf which covered her, I knelt down upon it and solemnly swore a vow,—a vow at once terrible and impious,—to seek revenge upon her destroyer!
"I joined one of those secret bands or societies then so numerous in France, composed of men who were desperate by their characters and fortunes, and the sworn enemies of kings and of nobility. I longed for desperate vengeance, and the hour for glutting it seemed at hand. A bloody standard was soon to wave over France, and destiny had pointed out that, like your own Stuarts, the Bourbons were a doomed race. The spirit of revolution and destruction was soon to sweep over my country, blighting and blasting it like the simoom of the African desert; and, eager as I was for vengeance on De Mesmai, I hailed the approaching tumult with joy, and entered into the wildest schemes of the most savage republicans and heaven-daring atheists. So eagerly did I attend the taverns of Besançon to hear the news from Paris, that the little innocent confided by Justine to my charge was quite neglected. My garden became a wilderness; I became sullen and morose, and forgot even to hang fresh flowers, as had been my custom daily, on the grave of Justine.
"About six months after her return, the once-dreary château was filled with sudden life and bustle. Monsieur Maurice had returned, bringing with him a number of wild and reckless fellows like himself. These were all officers of his own regiment, except one very sad dog, worse even than the rest, Monsieur Louis Chateaufleur, captain of the Gens d'armes Ecossois, or first troop of the French gendarmerie. Nothing was heard of now but feasting, drinking, and desperate gambling within the château; hunting, hawking, shooting, frolics, and outrages of every sort committed out of it. The guests of De Mesmai were some of the wildest roués about Paris—and the mess of the Duc de Choiseul's regiment had produced many of them,—and a great commotion their appearance made in Besançon and the rural district of Quinsay. All the lamps in the former were sometimes broken in a single night, and the whole city involved in darkness; while these madcaps and their servants possessed themselves of the steeples, where they rang the alarum bells backwards, and rushed through the streets, crying 'Fire! murder! robbery and invasion!' until the peaceable citizens were scared out of their seven senses.
"Nor were their brawls and outrages confined to the night alone. The wig of Monsieur le Maire was dragged off and flung in his face, when he was passing through the Rue de l'Université. Swords were drawn in the lobbies of the theatre every night, and the gens d'armes were always beaten and insulted. Monsieur Chateaufleur, of the gens d'armes Ecossois, as a crowning outrage, carried off by force to the château a young milliner or grisette of the Rue de Paradis; and the citizens of Besançon were enraged beyond what I can describe at the insolencies of these young aristocrats, who were at once struck with terror and dismay when news arrived of the revolution which had broken out in Paris, and of the bloody tumults which had ensued there. De Mesmai armed his servants, and the inhabitants of the château kept close within its walls.
"The same wild spirit of uproar and anarchy that prevailed at Paris seemed also to pervade the provinces, which appeared suddenly in a state of insurrection, the people of France seeming to consider their allegiance to Louis XVI. at an end. The spirit of dissatisfaction had spread to the troops. Those in garrison at Besançon laid down their arms, and abandoned the citadel to the bourgeois; who, on becoming thus suddenly armed, assumed the cockade de la liberté, and wearing this republican badge, committed the most frightful outrages. No dwelling, sacred or profane, escaped sack and pillage; no age, or rank, or sex did we spare, executing indiscriminately, by the musquet and sabre, all who opposed us. Burning for vengeance against the family of De Mesmai, I had associated myself with and become a leader among the republicans. We ruined the city of Besançon, giving its public buildings, its schools, and university to the flames. Alas, monsieur! deeply at this hour do I repent me of the part I bore in these desperate outrages. We compelled the proud nobles to acknowledge that they had lost their privileges, and we burned to the ground their office of records in the city. We sacked and utterly levelled the rich abbey of the Citeaux,—that place made so famous by the animadversions of Voltaire. The young and beautiful Princess de Baufremont, and the Baroness d'Andelion, who dwelt there, owed their escape from our fury to the interposition of Heaven and the chivalric gallantry of Louis Chateaufleur, who with two of the Gens d'armes Ecossois cut his way through us, sword in hand, and carried the noble demoiselles off on horseback. Flushed with success, excitement, ferocity, and the wines found in the vaults of the rich old abbey, we became absolutely frantic, and some, imbruing their hands in each other's blood, slew their comrades; while others daubed themselves with gore or black paint, to make themselves more hideous. Eager for more plunder and devastation, we cried out to, or rather commanded, our leader, the ungrateful Pierre Raoul, to lead us against the stately old château of Quinsay, that its aristocratic guests might be given up to our vengeance. With the dawn De Mesmai was roused from his bed by the beating of drums, the braying of horns, discharge of fire-arms, the yells, the howls, the shrieks of the frenzied rabble, mingled with shouts of 'Vive la nation! Vive la liberte! Perish the name of God and the king! Freedom to France! Long live Monsieur Belzebub!' and a hundred other mad and impious cries. The gay lord of Quinsay, and his comrades of Choiseul's horse, beheld, to their no small terror, the gardens, the orchards and parks in possession of a desperate mob, armed with bayonets, musquets, pikes, scythes, and every weapon they could lay their hands on—iron rails and fences where nothing else could be procured. All were full of wine and frenzy: many were only half dressed, blackened with smoke and dust, and besmeared with blood, presenting a frightful troop of hideous faces, distorted by the worst and wildest of human passions.
"You may imagine the surprise of Pierre Raoul and his worthies, when, at the gate of the château, we were met by Monsieur Maurice and his gay companions, bowing and smiling, gracefully waving their hats, while they greeted us with cries of 'Long live the nation! Long live the sovereign people! Vive le diable!' We were astonished, and greeted them with the most tremendous yells, while a hundred black and dirty hands wrung theirs in burlesque friendship. The whole band were formally invited to a repast, served up in the hall of the château, from which De Mesmai had hurriedly torn down all the banners and armorial bearings of his house, substituting in their place an immense tri-coloured cockade, that was fastened to the back of the chair of state, in which the insolent Pierre Raoul installed his ungainly figure. Many now strode about, daring and unrestrained intruders into the very hall where they had often stood as humble dependants, trembling and abashed in the presence of De Mesmai, who had been, in the neighbourhood of Besançon, a much greater man than Louis XVI. was at Paris or Versailles. At the hastily prepared feast with which he entertained us, we ate and drank of every thing, gorging ourselves like savages as we were. The richest and most expensive wines in the cellars of the château were flowing at our orders like water. Pipes and puncheons were brought up by dozens and madly staved, until the floor swam with crimson, purple, and yellow liquor, to the imminent danger of those who lay upon it in a state of exhaustion or intoxication. 'Wine! wine!' was the cry, and the contents of well-sealed flasks of Lachrymae Christi and Côtéroti were poured down our plebeian throats like the commonest beverage. We ordered all sorts of things, beating and insulting the unoffending servants of the château until they fled from us; and the noise and uproar in the hall, crowded as it was to suffocation with armed and intoxicated madmen, became stunning and appalling.
"A hundred times I had resolved, by a single thrust of my pike, to sacrifice De Mesmai to the shade of Justine; but the hourly massacres I saw committed by my barbarous comrades had glutted my longings for vengeance, and when I remembered that De Mesmai was the father of Justine's little girl, my fierce resolution relented. As often as I raised my hand to stab him to the heart, my soul died within me,—and he escaped. Very great however was our surprise at the condescension of this once proud noble, and the gay chevaliers his companions; and while doing the honours of the table, we subjected them to a thousand mortifications and gross insults. We tore the lace and facings from their uniform; transferred their epaulets from their shoulders to those of Pierre Raoul and our leaders; tossed wine in their faces, and fully tried their patience to the utmost limits of mortal endurance; but dire and unheard-of was the vengeance they were meditating!