His appearance, therefore, at the castle of St. Renan, was hailed as that of one who had been lost and was now found, of one who had been dead, and lo! he was alive. The bancloche of the old feudal pile rang forth its blithest and most jovial notes of greeting, the banner with the old armorial bearings of St. Renan was displayed upon the keep, and a few light pieces of antique artillery, falcons and culverins and demi-cannon, which had kept their places on the battlements since the days of the leagues, sent forth their thunders far and wide over the astonished country.
So generally, however, had the belief of Raoul's death been circulated, and so absolute had been the credence given to the rumor, that when those unwonted sounds of rejoicing were heard to proceed from the long silent walls of St. Renan, men never suspected that the lost heir had returned to enjoy his own again, but fancied that some new master had established his claim to the succession, and was thus celebrating his investiture with the rights of the Counts of St. Renan.
Nor was this wonderful, for ocular proof was scarce enough to satisfy the oldest retainers of the family of the young lord's identity; and indeed ocular proof was rendered in some sort dubious by the great alteration which had taken place in the appearance of the personage in question.
Between the handsome stripling of sixteen and the grown man of twenty summers there is a greater difference than the same lapse of time will produce at any other period of human life. And this change had been rendered even greater than usual by the burning climate to which Raoul had been exposed, by the stout endurance of fatigues which had prematurely enlarged and hardened his youthful frame, and above all by the dark experience which had spread something of the thoughtful cast of age over the smooth and gracious lineaments of boyhood.
When he left home the Viscount de Douarnez was a slight, slender, graceful stripling, with a fair, delicate complexion, a profusion of light hair waving in soft curls over his shoulders, a light elastic step, and a frame, which, though it showed the promise already of strength to be attained with maturity, was conspicuous as yet for ease and agility and pliability rather than for power or robustness.
On his return, he had lost, it is true, no jot of his gracefulness or ease of demeanor, but he had shot up and expanded into a tall, broad-shouldered, round-chested, thin-flanked man, with a complexion burned to the darkest hue of which a European skin is susceptible, and which perhaps required the aid of the full soft blue eye to prove it to be European—with a glance as quick, as penetrating, and at the same time as calm and steady as that of the eagle when he gazes undazzled at the noontide splendor.
His hair had been cut short to wear beneath the casque which was still carried by cavaliers, and had grown so much darker that this alteration alone would have gone far to defy the recognition of his friends. He wore a thick dark moustache on his upper lip, and a large royal, which we should nowadays call an imperial, on his chin.
The whole aspect and expression of face, moreover, was altered, even in a greater degree than his complexion, or his person. All the quick, sparkling play and mobility of feature, the sharp flash of rapidly succeeding sentiments, and strong emotions, expressed on the ingenuous face, as soon as they were conceived within the brain—all these had disappeared completely—disappeared, never to return.
The grave composure of the thoughtful, self-possessed, experienced soldier, sufficient in himself to meet every emergency, every alternation of fortune, had succeeded the imaginative, impulsive ardor of the impetuous, gallant boy.
There was a shadow, too, a heavy shadow of something more than thought—for it was, in truth, deep, real, heartfelt melancholy, which lent an added gloom to the cold fixity of eye and lip, which had obliterated all the gay and gleeful flashes which used, from moment to moment, to light up the countenance so speaking and so frank in its disclosures.