'Who are you? What do you want?' he said to me in a loud voice, taking hold of me by my arms.
'I am the Chevalier Bernard de la Roche Bernard, and I come from Brittany.'...
'I know, I know,' said he; and he threw himself into my arms, made me take a seat by his side, spoke to me warmly about my father and all my family, whom he knew so well that I was persuaded I was talking with the master of the chateau.
'You are Monsieur de C——?' I asked him.
He got up, looked at me wildly, and replied, 'I was he, I am he no longer, I am nothing;' and seeing my astonishment, he exclaimed, 'Not a word more, young man, don't question me!'
'I must, Monsieur; I have been the involuntary witness of your chagrin and your grief, and if my attachment and my friendship may to some degree alleviate'——
'You are right, you are right,' said he; 'you cannot change my fate, but at the least you may receive my last wishes and my last injunctions ... it is the only favor I ask of you.'
He shut the door, and again took his seat by my side; I was touched, and tremblingly expected what he was going to say: he spoke with a grave and solemn manner. His physiognomy had an expression I had never seen before on any face. His forehead, which I attentively examined, seemed marked by fatality; his face was pale; his black eyes sparkled, and occasionally his features, although changed by pain, would contract in an ironical and infernal smile. 'What I am going to tell you,' said he, 'will surprise you.' You will doubt me ... you will not believe me ... even. I doubt it sometimes ... at the least, I would like to doubt it; but I have got the proofs of it; and there is in everything around us, in our very organization, a great many other mysteries which we are obliged to undergo, without being able to understand.' He remained silent for a moment, as if to collect his ideas, brushed his forehead with his hand, and then proceeded:
'I was born in this chateau. I had two elder brothers, to whom the honors and the estates of our house were to descend. I could hope nothing above the cassock of an abbé, and yet dreams of ambition and of glory fermented in my head, and quickened the beatings of my heart. Discontented with my obscurity, eager for fame, I thought of nothing but the means of acquiring it, and this idea made me insensible to all the pleasures and all the joys of life. The present was nothing to me; I existed only in the future; and that future lay before me robed in the most sombre colors. I was nearly thirty years old, and had done nothing. Then literary reputations arose from every side in Paris, and their brilliancy was reflected even to our distant province. 'Ah!' I often said to myself, 'if I could at the least command a name in the world of letters! that at least would be fame, and fame is happiness.' The confidant of my sorrow was an old servant, an aged negro, who had lived in the chateau for years before I was born; he was the oldest person about the house, for no one remembered when he came to live there; and some of the country people said that he knew the Marshal Fabert, and had been present at his death'—
My host saw me express the greatest surprise; he interrupted his narrative to ask me what was the matter.