To describe what passed in the minds of the two thus suddenly face to face to one another, is impossible. All the squalid, ugly, poverty and apparent degradation we have tried to depict, flashed like lightning over Blanche de Vouvray’s comprehension—she stood aghast, but the involuntary scream that escaped her was drowned in the violence of the exclamation that burst from M. de Candolles’ lips. With one hand drawing over him convulsively the blanket which was his only covering, and waving the other imperiously—“Depart hence, depart,” he shrieked in bitter agony, and with eyes that started with horror from their sockets.
The terror was mutual; and she who had come to console fled in dismay, and he, who would have paid with his heart’s blood a touch of her hand, drove her from him as ruthlessly as though she had been his deadliest foe!
Ferdinand de Candolles did not die then; he went raving mad, was confined at Charenton for many years, grew to be a harmless maniac, and died in the year 1848. Blanche de Vouvray is still a reigning beauty in the salons of Paris, universally respected, and only known by a very few as the heroine of this sad tale.
THE GHOST-RAISER.
My Uncle Beagley, who commenced his commercial career very early in the present century as a bagman, will tell stories. Among them, he tells his Single Ghost story so often, that I am heartily tired of it. In self-defense, therefore, I publish the tale in order that when next the good, kind old gentleman offers to bore us with it, every body may say they know it. I remember every word of it.
One fine autumn evening, about forty years ago, I was traveling on horseback from Shrewsbury to Chester. I felt tolerably tired, and was beginning to look out for some snug way-side inn, where I might pass the night, when a sudden and violent thunder-storm came on. My horse, terrified by the lightning, fairly took the bridle between his teeth, and started off with me at full gallop through lanes and cross-roads, until at length I managed to pull him up just near the door of a neat-looking country inn.
“Well,” thought I, “there was wit in your madness, old boy, since it brought us to this comfortable refuge.” And alighting, I gave him in charge to the stout farmer’s boy who acted as ostler. The inn-kitchen, which was also the guest-room, was large, clean, neat and comfortable, very like the pleasant hostelry described by Izaak Walton. There were several travelers already in the room—probably, like myself, driven there for shelter—and they were all warming themselves by the blazing fire while waiting for supper. I joined the party. Presently, being summoned by the hostess, we all sat down, twelve in number, to a smoking repast of bacon and eggs, corned beef and carrots, and stewed hare.
The conversation turned naturally on the mishaps occasioned by the storm, of which every one seemed to have had his full share. One had been thrown off his horse; another, driving in a gig, had been upset into a muddy dyke; all had got a thorough wetting, and agreed unanimously that it was dreadful weather—a regular witches’ sabbath!
“Witches and ghosts prefer for their sabbath a fine moonlight night to such weather as this!”