The song eternal of the broken shore?
JULIETTE: A NORMAN STORY.
I.
Marriage is in one respect not unlike greatness: some are born to it, some achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. And the last-named some are apt to find it as unprofitable an acquisition as to Napoleon the Little it proved to be the nephew of his uncle.
Now, M. de Boisrobert was a born bachelor, and, left to himself, a bachelor he would have died. But who shall gainsay fate? Upon him gayly baccalaureating Fate fixed her eagle eye and made up her mind that he should marry. Not without reason has Fate been made a female. When a person of that charming but inflexible sex makes up her mind that any bachelor of her acquaintance shall marry, we know what happens. Married M. de Boisrobert accordingly was, with what direful consequences to the poor gentleman the reader shall see.
Up to his forty-fifth year Messire Guillaume Georges de Boisrobert, Sieur de Boisrobert and Saintange, had lived the happy life of a country gentleman upon his estates in Normandy, near Evreux, satisfied with himself and with the world. Indeed, he had every reason to be satisfied, possessing as he did a fine château, a princely income, an honorable name, an easy conscience, and the respect of all who knew him. From the summit of his towers, look which way he would (and his sight was keen, as so good a sportsman’s should be), he could scarce fix the boundary of his domains. Farms, meadow-land, and woodland, his broad acres stretched for many a mile along the blue waters of the Eure; upon his pastures fed sheep and cattle by the hundred; in his stables neighed scores of gallant steeds. Yet, strange to say, with all his wealth, envy had no word for him, nor was he even decried more than it was fitting a rich and handsome bachelor should be. Certain maiden ladies of uncertain age, to whose charms he had, perhaps, been ungallantly cold, sometimes, indeed, made light among themselves of his pretensions to noble birth. That, truly, was the simple gentleman’s weakness, and he loved to style himself after the stately fashion written above.
“He De Boisrobert, forsooth!” Mlle. Reiné might say over her tatting (or is it tattling the ladies call it?). “He was never aught but plain” (“plain indeed!” Mlle. Gudule would giggle, pointing the mot with her crochet-needle. Ah! thou thoughtest otherwise, fair Gudule, of his beauty when the embroidered slippers, and watch-pockets, and what-nots worked by thy own fair fingers—or thy maid’s—deluged the château and made largesse for its kitchen!)—“plain Guillaume Robert till his father, the notary, got an army contract and left him money enough to buy the wood in which his dismal old château is buried—the stingy old hunks!”
Now, this was not entirely true; and these fair Ariadnes were, to say the least, uncharitable. But it must be remembered, for the credit of the sex, that these events took place very long ago—so long ago, indeed, as the time of that great and glorious monarch, Louis XIV.—“le doyen des Rois,” as he called himself—whose majesty was like the sun (which orb, indeed, depicted in the act of illuminating the world, he modestly took for his device), and whose grandeur was indisputably shown in the fact that he could eat more for dinner than any man in his kingdom.[[110]] In point of fact, no small number of his loving subjects, owing to their sovereign’s majestic and princely appetite, had rarely anything to eat at all. But to return to our sheep.
M. de Boisrobert was not stingy. On the contrary, his open-handed, and even profuse, hospitality endeared him to all the men about him, who had, no doubt, their own private reasons for liking him, as some of the women had theirs for looking upon him with a different feeling. The manner of his living was almost lordly; and when he was at home, it was nothing but junketing and merriment from month’s end to month’s end. An enthusiastic sportsman himself, his stables and his kennels contained the best that money could buy; while his huntsmen, his gamekeepers, and his beaters were a small army in themselves. Being so rich and so generous, he was naturally looked upon with great respect, and even liking, through all the country round; and many a man who had little reverence for aught besides would doff his hat most humbly to the well-furnished larder of that excellent M. de Boisrobert.
It must be said, however, that in his case—what is unhappily not always true—this respect was rightly his, for better reasons. Amiable, simple, and sincere, a scrupulous observer of his word, his charity was greater than his hospitality, and his piety was as unbounded as his wealth. Every morning he was first at Mass in the little village church of Boisrobert, whose excellent curé was his favorite and, it may be said, his only intimate associate. His best friends, indeed, he counted among that admirable class, whose sterling and unobtrusive virtues he thoroughly appreciated. It was strange that so worthy a penchant was destined to lead him into the great danger of his life. Of the great folks our friend was a little shy; and as for the small farmers and hobereaux, or “squireens” (to borrow from the familiar speech of Ireland a word which alone fitly translates it), who made the bulk of the neighboring landed proprietors, their tastes and habits were little congenial to his own. So good Father Bernard and he were much together; and a pleasant sight it was to see the two friends placidly angling, side by side, for the fish which somehow a French angler seems quite as well satisfied never to catch; or, in the bright summer evenings, playing bowls with all the zest of school-boys on the village green. No more welcome guest than Father Bernard entered the gates of the Château de Boisrobert; and when the November nights grew chilly, and the logs were piled high and glowing in the wide Norman hearth (its owner always quoted Horace at such times, and old Mère Chicon, the housekeeper, knew as well as any one that dissolve frigus was the Latin for “stir up the fire and fetch a bottle of Burgundy,” and had had, indeed, many bouts thereanent with the village schoolmaster, in which that worthy was not always triumphant), our hero liked nothing better than to engage his friend in a contest at chess, or trictrac, or piquet, or, over a jug of Norman cider or the aforesaid Burgundy, to discuss the movements of the court, with which he professed to be in constant communication.