"She was young and pretty, and he old and ugly, but rich; well, what followed?"
"Why, she, poor thing, did not want to marry him at all; for though he was rich, he had a very ill name in the country, and she was afraid of him; but her father urged her, and the old man himself spoke her fair, and between them they overpowered her fears and scruples, and so she was married."
"Poor thing!" said Lucille, unconsciously.
"Well, madame, he married, and brought her home to his desolate old house, and there, they say, he treated her harshly; and, indeed he might there safely use her as he pleased, for there was not another house for a great way round to be seen: and nobody but his own creatures and dependents, who, they said, were just as bad as himself, could hear her cries, or witness his barbarities."
Lucille sat up in the bed, and listened with increased interest.
"Poor thing! it was there, in the midst of sufferings and cruelties, that she gave birth to a child, who is now Monsieur Le Prun, the great fermier-general; but her health, and indeed her heart, was broken; and, some rumor having reached her relations, that she was sick and unhappy, a cousin of hers, who, they said, was in love with her in their early days, brought the village physician with him to see her, though it was full three leagues and a half away."
"The cousin loved her; poor fellow, he was true," said Lucille, with a blush of interest.
"Ay, so they say; but Monsieur Le Prun, who was a jealous curmudgeon, would not admit him; but he did allow the physician to see her (himself standing by), because he was always glad to have the use of any body's skill for nothing—which, more than any love he bore his poor wife, was the reason of his letting him prescribe for her. Well, of course, she could not send any message to her friends, nor tell how she was treated, for old Le Prun was at her bedside; but the physician saw that she was ill, and he said to the old miser—'Your wife can't walk, and she must have air; let her drive every day in your coach.' 'I have no such thing,' said old Le Prun. 'But you are rich,' said the physician, 'you can afford to buy one; and it is your duty to do so for your wife, who will die else.' 'Let her die, then, for me—the devil may send her a coach to ride in, as they say he sent me my money; but I'll not waste my gold on any such follies.' So the physician went away, disappointed and disgusted, and her poor cousin was not able to effect any good on her behalf; but it seems the words of Monsieur Le Prun did not fall quite to the ground—they were heard in the quarter to where they were directed. That evening closed in clouds, and before twelve o'clock at night, they say, there came on such another thunder-storm as never was heard in the neighborhood, before or since. Nothing but thunder, roaring and crashing, peal upon peal, till the old house shook and trembled to its very base; and the blue lightning glared at every window, and split along the pavement in streams of livid fire; and all this time the rain was beating straight down in an incessant and furious deluge."
"And so, I suppose, the devil came in the midst of the tempest, and took him away bodily in a flash of lightning?"
"No, no, my pretty bird, not so fast. There was an old negro servant of his, a fellow just as wicked as himself, who was sitting in the kitchen, cursing the rain that was battering in huge drops down the chimney, and putting out the wood at which he was warming his shins, when, in the midst of the dreadful hubbub of the tempest, what should he hear but the rush of a great equipage, and wheels and horses clattering over the pavement, amidst the shouts of men and the sound of horns. Up jumped the black, and, listening, he heard a loud voice shouting through the storm, as if to summon some one to the door. Though they say he was a courageous old sinner, his heart failed him, for such sounds had not visited the old house within the memory of man in the day time, much less in the dead of night; and, instead of going to the door, he hurried away to the chamber where old Le Prun was cowering, screwed up in the middle of a great old fauteuil, and more frightened at the tempest than he would have cared to confess. So he told him of the sounds he had just heard, and he and his master mounted together to a small room in a gable over the hall-door, and from the casement of this they commanded a view of the paved court in front. It was so dark, however, that they could see nothing; and the thunder still echoing in loud explosions, and the rain battering at the windows, prevented their distinctly hearing the words which the voice was shouting outside. 'Shall we open the casement and ask him what they want?' said the old negro. 'Let it alone,' said his old master, shoving his arm back again, with a curse. At the same moment a vivid flash of lightning, or rather several in almost continuous succession, shed for some seconds a blue, pulsating illumination over the scene, and then they saw before their eyes a coach, with a team of horses and outriders, in the style of a royal equipage, drawn up before the hall door; and all the postillions and outriders were sitting motionless, with their whips pointing to the house, as if they were signing to the inhabitants to come out: and some one was looking from the window, and cried, in a tone like the shriek of the wind—'The coach that Monsieur Le Prun ordered this morning.' In the quivering blue light the whole thing looked like a smoky shadow, and was swallowed in darkness in a moment. Then came the bellowing thunder-burst, and a wild scream of winds rushed whooping, and sighing, and hissing through the tree-tops, and died away in the unknown distance. The two old sinners, master and man, crept away from the window, and stumbled their way back again to the chamber which Monsieur Le Prun had occupied before, and which, being in the rear of the house, and most remote from the sight that had scared them, was preferred by them to any other. In the morning a coach, of first-rate workmanship in all respects, was standing in front of the hall door, just where they had seen it on the night before, but no sign of horse, rider, or owner. For several days it remained in the same position, no one caring to touch it; but at the end of that time, having grown accustomed to its presence, and gradually less and less in awe of it, they lodged it in the coach-house; and so, after a considerable time, the old usurer's instincts prevailed, and he resolved to make trial of the vehicle, with a view to sell it in Paris. At first the horses snorted, and reared, and shyed, when they were attempted to be harnessed to it, but in a little while they too became reconciled to it, and Monsieur Le Prun made an experimental trip in it himself. Whatever passed upon that occasion, it certainly determined him against parting with it. And, it was said, whenever he was thenceforward in doubt about any purchase, or meditating any important financial coup, he invariably took a solitary drive in this preternaturally-acquired vehicle; and, in the course of that drive, his doubts, whatever they may have been, were invariably resolved, and some lucky purchase or successful operation upon 'Change was sure to follow. It was said that upon these occasions Monsieur Le Prun was always heard to converse with some companion in the coach; and the driver once avowed that, having been delayed by an accident on the road, as the darkness came on, he distinctly saw two shadowy outriders spurring duly in their van, and never lost sight of them until, with hair standing on end, and bathed in a cold sweat, he drew up in the court before his master's house."