Whether it was the influence of her presence, whether it was a partial concession of the old lady's own, or whether my own awkwardness was wearing off by time, I can not say—but gradually the stiffness of the interview began to diminish. From the scenery around us we grew to talk of the Tyrol generally, then of Switzerland, and lastly of France. The marquise came from Auvergne, and was justly proud of the lovely scenery of her birth-place.
Calmly and tranquilly as the conversation had been carried on up to this period, the mention of France seemed to break down the barrier of reserve within the old lady's mind, and she burst out in a wild flood of reminiscences of the last time she had seen her native village. "The Blues," as the revolutionary soldiers were called, had come down upon the quiet valley, carrying fire and carnage into a once peaceful district. The chateau of her family was razed to the ground; her husband was shot upon his own terrace; the whole village was put to the sword; her own escape was owing to the compassion of the gardener's wife, who dressed her like a peasant boy, and employed her in a menial station, a condition she was forced to continue so long as the troops remained in the neighborhood. "Yes," said she, drawing off her silk mittens, "these hands still witness the hardships I speak of. These are the marks of my servitude."
It was in vain the general tried at first to sympathize, and then withdraw her from the theme; in vain her niece endeavored to suggest another topic, or convey a hint that the subject might be unpleasing to me. It was the old lady's one absorbing idea, and she could not relinquish it. Whole volumes of the atrocities perpetrated by the revolutionary soldiery came to her recollection; each moment, as she talked, memory would recall this fact or the other, and so she continued rattling on with the fervor of a heated imagination, and the wild impetuosity of a half-crazed intellect. As for myself, I suffered far more from witnessing the pain others felt for me, than from any offense the topic occasioned me directly. These events were all "before my time." I was neither a Blue by birth nor adoption; a child during the period of revolution, I had only taken a man's part when the country, emerging from its term of anarchy and blood, stood at bay against the whole of Europe. These consolations were, however, not known to the others, and it was at last, in a moment of unendurable agony, that mademoiselle rose and left the room.
The general's eyes followed her as she went, and then sought mine with an expression full of deep meaning. If I read his look aright, it spoke patience and submission; and the lesson was an easier one than he thought.
"They talk of heroism," cried she, frantically—"it was massacre! And when they speak of chivalry, they mean the slaughter of women and children!" She looked round, seeing that her niece had left the room, suddenly dropped her voice to a whisper, and said, "Think of her mother's fate; dragged from her home, her widowed, desolate home, and thrown into the Temple, outraged and insulted, condemned on a mock trial, and then carried away to the guillotine! Ay, and even then, on that spot, which coming death might have sanctified, in that moment, when even fiendish vengeance can turn away, and leave its victim at liberty to utter a last prayer in peace, even then, these wretches devised an anguish greater than all death could compass. You will scarcely believe me," said she, drawing in her breath, and talking with an almost convulsive effort, "you will scarcely believe me in what I am now about to tell you, but it is the truth—the simple but horrible truth. When my sister mounted the scaffold there was no priest to administer the last rites. It was a time, indeed, when few were left; their hallowed heads had fallen in thousands before that. She waited for a few minutes, hoping that one would appear; and when the mob learned the meaning of her delay, they set up a cry of fiendish laughter, and with a blasphemy that makes one shudder to think of, they pushed forward a boy, one of those blood-stained 'gamins' of the streets, and made him gabble a mock litany! Yes, it is true: a horrible mockery of our service, in the ears and before the eyes of that dying saint."
"When? in what year? in what place was that?" cried I, in an agony of eagerness.
"I can give you both time and place, sir," said the marquise, drawing herself proudly up, for she construed my question into a doubt of her veracity. "It was in the year 1793, in the month of August; and as for the place, it was one well seasoned to blood—the Place de Grève, at Paris."
A fainting sickness came over me as I heard these words; the dreadful truth flashed across me that the victim was the Marquise D'Estelles, and the boy, on whose infamy she dwelt so strongly, no other than myself. For the moment, it was nothing to me that she had not identified me with this atrocity; I felt no consolation in the thought that I was unknown and unsuspected. The heavy weight of the indignant accusation almost crushed me. Its falsehood I knew, and yet, could I dare to disprove it? Could I hazard the consequences of an avowal, which all my subsequent pleadings could never obliterate. Even were my innocence established in one point, what a position did it reduce me to in every other.
These struggles must have manifested themselves strongly in my looks, for the marquise, with all her self-occupation, remarked how ill I seemed. "I see, sir," cried she, "that all the ravages of war have not steeled your heart against true piety; my tale has moved you strongly." I muttered something in concurrence, and she went on. "Happily for you, you were but a child when such scenes were happening! Not, indeed, that childhood was always unstained in those days of blood; but you were, as I understand, the son of a Garde du Corps, one of those loyal men who sealed their devotion with their life. Were you in Paris then?"
"Yes, madam," said I, briefly.