Among the Roqueforts, who claim to have sprung from the Merovingians, they have, even to our days, the names of Clodimir, Chilpérie, or Bathilde. Since the time of the Crusades, the youngest son of the Du Maistres is always an Amaury. The Canluries of Gonneville owe their names of Arosca and Essomerie to the discoveries of the celebrated navigator, their ancestor, who brought from southern lands, in 1503, the Prince Essomerie, son of the King Arosca, whom he adopted and married later, in Normandy, to one of his relations. There is a family in Brittany who never part with the names of Audren, Salomon, Grallow, or Conau. The Corréas, originally from Portugal, pride themselves on seeing on their genealogical tree those of Caramuru and of Paraguassus, which signify the Man of Fire and Great River.
Chivalry, the Crusades, some semi-fabulous legend, some marvellous chronicle, the grand adventures of a Tancred or a Bohemond, the exploits of a Tannegry, finally, the great alliances, explain and justify in certain families the privileged use of first names too rare, or too commonplace, fantastic, romantic, strange, or old, to be suitable except for them.
Now, it was thus that, in virtue of an old custom, the grand-daughter of the Marquis de La Tour-d'Adam had received that of Eve at the baptismal fonts of St. Sulpice.
In passing the Gorge d'Enfer, not far from the famous valley of Roncevaux, you have perhaps remarked the ruins, still majestic, of a tower which leans above a frightful precipice. The shepherds of the country maintain that it was built by the fathers of the human race; were I the most profound of archaeologists I should be very careful not to contradict them. Who can prove that the Pyrenees did not rise on the limits of Eden? In the fourteenth century was not all Europe convinced that the terrestrial paradise, engulfed in the Atlantic, rises partly above the water in the form of Saint Brandan's Isle, the promised land of the saints, where Enoch and Elias await the last day?
In the same manner that the erudite La Tour d'Auvergne, as simple as he was brave, has demonstrated in his "Origines Gauloises" that Adam and Eve spoke Bas-Breton, in the same manner the Basque tongue furnishes unexceptionable proofs of the antiquity [{367}] of the times of Adam which the waters of the deluge respected.
Be this as it may, antediluvian or not, Punic or Roman, Gothic, Saracen, or Spanish, the old tower was the cradle of an illustrious family--illustrious on both sides of the Pyrenees. From time immemorial the first-born was given the name of Adam or of Eve.
At the beginning of this simple history we have not the leisure to recount how a royal Moorish prisoner, who, it is said, was called Adam, escaped from the tower, carrying with him the heiress of the castle. Nor can we stop from the wars in Palestine one of the warlike ancestors of our Parisian heroine, a proud Crusader, who brought to his domains an Oriental Eve, the beloved daughter of we know not what Saladin.
These different traditions, which were not the only ones, made the customs of their ancestors very dear to the family of La Tour-d'Adam; but the young and merry companions of the grand-daughter of the last marquis did not care to inquire into the cause of her unusual name. They kept themselves in bounds in finding it tolerably ridiculous that she should be called just like the ancestors of the human species.
"Really, I do not know who could have served as god-mother to our beautiful friend," said Clarisse Dufresnois, biting her lips. "In my days I would not consent to give so dangerous a name. When one hears it one seems to have a too decided fancy for forbidden fruit."
"Oh! Clarisse, that is mean," murmured Leonore.