The Chevalier's daughter

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

For the whole of the next day I travelled with my former maid, Zelie, and the old woman I had spoken of. They understood my disgrace well enough, and did all in their power to make me feel it, treating me with the utmost insolence and neglect, so that at the inns where we stopped, I had the most wretched lodgings imaginable, and really went hungry while my jailers, for such they were, feasted upon dainties at my uncle's expense. In this, however, they overshot the mark and brought themselves into trouble. My uncle, remarking in the morning upon my extreme paleness, asked whether I was ill.

"No, monsieur," I answered, "I am not ill, but I am hungry. I have had not a morsel since yesterday noon but some crusts of mouldy black bread, which I could not have eaten if I had been starving."

Monsieur turned angrily upon Zelie, who stammered and denied and charged me with falsehood; but my uncle knew me well enough to believe what I said, and my face spoke for itself. I was once more removed to my aunt's carriage, and fared as she did, and the rest of the way was more comfortable. Susanne had always been friendly to me.

During my imprisonment, she had more than once smuggled comforts into my cell, and when we were alone together she spoke to me with kindness and pity. My aunt's heart evidently softened to me more and more, but my uncle was implacable. To cross him once was to make him an enemy forever; I had disappointed him in every way, and he meant to make me feel the full force of his displeasure.

I had gathered from the servants that our first destination was Marseilles. As we drew near that city, we passed company after company of unhappy wretches destined for the galleys, laboring along, chained together, and driven like cattle to the slaughter. Many of them were condemned for no crime but that of having attended a preaching, or prayed in their own families—that of being Protestants, in short—and these were linked oftentimes to the most atrocious criminals, whose society must have been harder to bear than their chains. But more than once or twice man's cruelty was turned to the praise of God, and the criminal was converted by the patience and the instructions of his fellow.

As we passed one of these sad cavalcades my uncle stopped the coach to ask some questions, and I was brought face to face with one I knew right well. It was an aged preacher who had long known my father, and had often been at our home in Normandy. I had no mind to have him recognize me, and I turned away my face to hide my overflowing tears. Monsieur did not at first recognize the old preacher, but the other knew him in a moment, and called him by name.

"What, Monsieur Morin, is this you!" said my uncle. "I thought you were dead!"

"I soon shall be," answered the old man calmly. "Happily for me, I am more than seventy years old, and my prison-doors must soon be opened. Then I shall receive my reward; but you—ah, Henri, my former pupil, whom I so loved, how will it be with you? Oh, repent, while there is yet time! There is mercy even for the denier and the apostate!"

For all answer, my uncle, transported with rage, lifted his cane and struck the old man a severe blow. The very criminals cried shame upon him, and the young officer in charge hastened to the spot, and with expressions of pity offered his own handkerchief to the poor old man, whose brow was cut and bleeding.

"Well," said my uncle, turning to me, and seeing, I suppose, what I thought, "how do you like the way your former friends are treated? How would you like to share their lot?"