The good priest smiled; for Jeanette was a good deal below the height of the Medicean Venus, and she is no giantess.
“It must be Madame de Salins,” he murmured, after a moment’s consideration. “Holy father, have mercy upon us! Killed Monsieur de Salins, have they, before his poor wife’s eyes? A better young man did not exist, nor one who has done more good, both by his acts and his example.”
“Wouldn’t you know Mariette, if you saw her, Father?” I asked; and Jeanette coming in from the room where the child was at the moment, led the good Father away to see her. When he came back, he said no more for some time, but sat thinking, with his head bent forward, and his eyes half closed. Then he called Jeanette, and somewhat to my surprise, gave very strict orders for concealing the fact of the little girl’s residence in our house. My little room was to be assigned to her; a large, wide, rather cheerful, long uninhabited room, up stairs, was to receive a table, and a few chairs from somewhere else, and to be made a sort of play-room for her, and I and Jeanette were to do the very best we could to make the little prisoner happy, while her existence was to be kept secret from every one but our three selves. At the same time he laid the strongest injunctions upon me to abstain from even hinting to any one the adventure I had met with in the wood, and never to call the child Mariette de Salins, but merely Mariette, or Mariette Brun.
And now began a new sort of existence for me. Mariette became, as it were, my property—at least I looked upon her almost as such. I had carried her in the forest. I had led her along by the hand. I had brought her there. She was my little foundling, and my feelings toward her were as strange as ever came into the breast of a boy of thirteen. There was something parental about them. I could almost have brought myself to believe that I was her father; and yet I looked upon her very much in the light of a toy, as grown-up parents will sometimes do in regard to their children. I was with Mariette the greater part of every day, playing with her, amusing her, devising all sorts of games to entertain her. She soon became very fond of me, and quite familiar; would sit by the hour with her arms round my neck, and would tell me little anecdotes of her own home. A pleasant home it seemed to have been till the last fearful events occurred, full of harmony, and peace, and domestic joy. Continually she seemed to forget the present, in pictures of brighter hours gone by, but from time to time—especially at first—a torrent of painful memories would seem to burst upon her, and the end of the little tale would be drowned in tears.
Two months passed over in this manner, and little Mariette seemed quite reconciled to her situation. With the elasticity of childish hope, she had recovered all her spirits, and no two young, happy, innocent things were ever gayer than we were. Her state of imprisonment, too, was somewhat relaxed; for, in our own town at least, a lull had come upon the political storm, which, as every one knows, came up sobbing, as it were, in fits and starts, like a south-westerly gale, till the full hurricane blew and swept every thing before it. After some hesitation, Father Bonneville permitted her to go out with me into the garden, and there to play amongst the shrubs, now, alas! destitute of flowers, for an hour or two before she went to bed. In the town she was never seen, and with a sort of prescience, which was, perhaps, not extraordinary, the good Father explained to me that it would be wiser to use, as little as possible, the way out of the town by the garden and the tower. He treated me with a degree of confidence and reliance on my intelligence and discretion, which made me very proud. The agitated and terrible state of the country, he said, and the anarchical tendencies which were visible throughout society in France, had induced a number of the most wealthy and influential people to seek a refuge in other lands. Those who had got possession of power, he continued, were naturally anxious to put a stop to this emigration, and a system of espionage, which was well-nigh intolerable, had been established to check it. The advantage we possessed of being able to go in and out of the town when we pleaded, without passing the gales, might be lost to us by the imprudent use of it; and although two or three other citizens, whose houses abutted upon towers of the old wall, had the same facilities, he knew them to be prudent and well-disposed men, who were not likely to call attention to themselves by any incautious act.
Although the door below was unlocked and locked every morning and evening, it may well be supposed that I adhered strictly to the good Father’s directions, and always when I wanted to get out of the city took the way round by the gates. This was not very often, indeed, for I had now an object of interest and entertainment at home, which I had never had before, and Mariette was all the world to me for the time. Good Father Bonneville in speaking of her to me used to call her with a quiet smile “Tu fille”—thy daughter—and pleasant was it for me to hear him so name her. Certain it is, what between one thing and another—the little vanity I had in her—the selfish feeling of property, so strong in all children—the pleasant occupation which she gave to my thoughts, and her own winning and endearing ways, (for she was full of every sort of wild, engaging grace,) together with her real sweetness of disposition, which had something more beautiful and charming in it than I can describe—certain it is, I say—I learned before a month was over to love nothing on all the earth like her. Nay more, amongst all the passions and objects and pursuits of life I can recall nothing so strong, so fervent, so deep, as that pure, calm, boyish love for little Mariette de Salins. I could dwell upon it, even now, for ever, and from my heart and soul I believed she returned that affection as warmly. Two months and a fortnight had passed by: heavier clouds than ever were beginning to gather on the political horizon: menaces of foreign invasion to put down the disorderly spirit which had manifested itself in the land, roused the indignation both of those whose passions refused correction, and those who loved the independence of their country. The very threat swept away one of the few safeguards of society which remained in France. There was a great body of the people who disliked the thought of anarchy; but a short period of anarchy seemed to them preferable to the indefinite domination of foreign soldiers in the land, and multitudes of these better men were now driven to act with or submit to the anarchists.
I could see that Father Bonneville was very much alarmed, and in much agitation and distress of mind. I twice saw him count over the money which I had brought him from Madame de Salins, and looking up in my face, he said, with a thoughtful air:
“I suppose I ought to send her away—the time is past—but I know not really what to do—where could I put her in England?—who could I send with her?—how could I let her mother know where she is to be found? This is a small sum, too, to support her for any time in England. A hundred and forty-seven louis! England is a dear country—a very dear country, as I know. Every thing is thrice the price that it is here.”
Youth always argues from its wishes. They form the goal to which, whatever turns the course may take, the race is always directed in the end. Father Bonneville’s words were very painful to me, and I ventured to strive to persuade him that it would be better to wait a little: that Mariette was well where she was: that something might have occurred to delay Madame de Salins.
The good Father shook his head, with a sigh, and he then took a little drawer out of a cabinet, and counted some forty or fifty gold pieces that were within. I could see, however, that there were, at least, three little rolls of thin white paper diapered by the milling of the coin within, and I knew by their similarity and size with the one which I had myself received, that each must contain somewhere about a hundred louis. To me this was Peru; but Father Bonneville, who knew better, sighed over it, and put it back again.