Ger. Out! fool; you have no judgment.
Ros. Well, fool or not, there’s one upon the road who holds faith with me, or I’m a heretic. Your charms will shine bright enough, lady, to dazzle a soldier’s eye.
Ger. Ah! no, Rosabelle—you would deceive your mistress. Florian returns not as he left us; his travelled eyes have gazed on beauties of the polished court—and now he will despise the wild untutored Geraldine.
Ros. Will he? Let him beware he shows not his contempt before me. What! my own beautiful and high-born mistress; the greatest heiress in all Alsace; to be despised by a foundling, picked up in a forest, and reared upon her uncle’s charity?
Ger. Hush!—the mystery of my Florian’s birth is his misfortune, but cannot be his reproach. Our countrymen may dispute his title to command, but our enemies have confessed his power to conquer; and trust me, girl, the brave man’s laurel blooms with as fresh an honour in the poor peasant’s cap as when it circles princely brows; nay, Justice deems it of a nobler growth, for Flattery often twines the laurel round a coronet, but Truth alone bestows it on the unknown head.
Ros. I confess the Chevalier is a proper gallant for any woman. Ay, and so is the Chevalier’s man. I warrant me, that knave, L’Eclair, when he returns, will follow me about, wheedling and whining, to recollect certain promises. Well, well, let but the soldiers return with whole hearts from the war, and your ladyship and myself know how to reward fidelity. In sooth, the chateau has been but a doleful residence in their absence; the count never suffered his dwelling to be a merry one; but of late his strange humours have so increased, that the household might as well have lodged in purgatory.
Ger. Hold! I must not hear my uncle’s name pronounced with levity. An angel at his birth, mingled the divine spirit with less than human frailty; but fiends have since defaced the noble work with more than human trials. That fatal night, when the fierce Huguenots fired his castle, and buried both his wife and infant in the blazing ruin; that night of horrors has to his shocked and shrinking fancy still been ever present; there still it broods—settled, perpetual and alone! Ah! Rosabelle! the petulancies of misfortune claim our pity, not resentment. My dear uncle is a recluse, but not a misanthrope; he rejects the society of mankind, yet is he solicitous for their happiness; and while his own heart breaks in silence under a weight of undivided sorrows, does he not seek incessantly to alleviate the burthen of his complaining brethren?
Ros. I know the count has an excellent heart; but surely his temper has its flaws.
Ger. And shall we deem the sun that cheers the season less gracious in its course, because a cloud at intervals may hide or chill its beams? (A bell rings). Hark! ’tis the bell of his chamber. Perhaps he will admit me now; for four days past I have applied at the door in vain. Ah me!—these constant growing maladies sometimes make me tremble for his life. Girl! if from the turret-top at distance you espy the hastening travellers, turn, swift as thought, and call me to partake your watch! Exit.
Ros. If they arrive before sun-set, I’m sure I shall know L’Eclair a mile off by the saucy toss of his head: before that rogue went on the campaign, he certainly extorted some awkward kind of promises from me. As a woman of honour, I’m afraid it must be kept; I don’t want a husband—oh! no, positively—to be sure, winter is coming on, my chamber faces the north, and when the nights are long, and dark, and cold, when the wind blusters, and the hail patters at the casement, then a solitary woman is apt to have strange fancies, and sometimes to wish that—well, well, my promise must be kept at all events.