Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

NICOLETTE

BARONESS ORCZY

By BARONESS ORCZY

Nicolette

Castles in the Air

The First Sir Percy

League of the Scarlet Pimpernel

Flower o’ the Lily

The Man in Grey

Lord Tony’s Wife

Leatherface

The Bronze Eagle

A Bride of the Plains

The Laughing Cavalier

“Unto Cæsar”

El Dorado

Meadowsweet

The Noble Rogue

The Heart of a Woman

Petticoat Rule

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

NICOLETTE
A TALE OF OLD PROVENCE

BY

BARONESS ORCZY

Author of “The First Sir Percy,” “Flower o’ the Lily,” “Lord Tony’s Wife,” “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” etc.

NEW

YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1922,

By George H. Doran Company

NICOLETTE. I

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

NICOLETTE

CHAPTER I
FADED SPLENDOUR

Midway between Apt and the shores of the Durance, on the southern slope of Luberon there stands an old château. It had once been the fortified stronghold of the proud seigneurs de Ventadour, who were direct descendants of the great troubadour, and claimed kinship with the Comtes de Provence, but already in the days when Bertrand de Ventadour was a boy, it had fallen into partial decay. The battlemented towers were in ruin, the roof in many places had fallen in; only the square block, containing the old living-rooms, had been kept in a moderate state of repair. As for the rest, it was a dwelling-place for owls and rooks, the walls were pitted with crevices caused by crumbling masonry, the corbellings and battlements had long since broken away, whilst many of the windows, innocent of glass, stared, like tear-dimmed eyes, way away down the mountain slope, past the terraced gradients of dwarf olives and carob trees, to the fertile, green valley below.

It is, in truth, fair, this land of Provence; but fair with the sad, subtle beauty of a dream—dream of splendour, of chivalry and daring deeds, of troubadours and noble ladies; fair with the romance of undying traditions, of Courts of Love and gallant minstrels, of King René and lovely Marguerite. Fair because it is sad and silent, like a gentle and beautiful mother whose children have gone out into the great world to seek fortunes in richer climes, whilst she has remained alone in the old nest, waiting with sorrow in her heart and arms ever outstretched in loving welcome in case they should return; tending and cherishing the faded splendours of yesterday; and burying with reverence and tears, one by one, the treasures that once had been her pride, but which the cruel hand of time had slowly turned to dust.

And thus it was with the once splendid domaine of the Comtes de Ventadour. The ancient family, once feudal seigneurs who owed alliance to none save to the Kings of Anjou, had long since fallen on evil days. The wild extravagance of five generations of gallant gentlemen had hopelessly impoverished the last of their line. One acre after another of the vineyards and lemon groves of old Provence were sold in order to pay the gambling debts of M. le Comte, or to purchase a new diamond necklace for Madame, his wife. At the time of which this chronicle is a faithful record, nothing remained of the extensive family possessions, but the château perched high up on the side of the mountain and a few acres of woodland which spread in terraced gradients down as far as the valley. Oh! those woods, with their overhanging olive trees, and feathery pines, and clumps of dull-coloured carob and silvery, sweet-scented rosemary: with their serpentine paths on the edge of which buttercups and daisies and wild violets grew in such profusion in the spring, and which in the summer the wild valerian adorned with patches of purple and crimson: with their scrub and granite boulders, their mysterious by-ways, their nooks and leafy arbours, wherein it was good to hide or lie in wait for imaginary foes. Woods that were a heaven for small tripping feet, a garden of Eden for playing hide-and-seek, a land of pirates, of captive maidens and robbers, of dark chasms and crevasses, and of unequal fights between dauntless knights and fierce dragons. Woods, too, where in the autumn the leaves of the beech and chestnut turned a daffodil yellow, and those of oak and hazel-nut a vivid red, and where bunches of crimson berries fell from the mountain ash and crowds of chattering starlings came to feed on the fruit of the dwarf olive trees. Woods where tiny lizards could be found lying so still, so still as the stone of which they seemed to form a part, until you moved just a trifle nearer, and, with a delicious tremor of fear, put out your little finger, hoping yet dreading to touch the tiny, lithe body with its tip, when lo! it would dart away; out of sight even before you could call Tan-tan to come and have a look.

Tan-tan had decided that lizards were the baby children of the dragon which he had slain on the day when Nicolette was a captive maiden, tied to the big carob tree by means of her stockings securely knotted around her wee body, and that the patch of crimson hazel-bush close by was a pool of that same dragon’s blood. Nicolette had spent a very uncomfortable half-hour that day, because Tan-tan took a very long time slaying that dragon, a huge tree stump, decayed and covered with fungi which were the scales upon the brute’s body; he had to slash at the dragon with his sword, and the dragon had great twisted branches upon him which were his arms and legs, and these had to be hacked off one by one. And all the while Nicolette had to weep and to pray for the success of her gallant deliverer in this unequal fight. And she got very tired and very hot, and the wind blew her brown curls all over her face, and they stuck into her mouth and her eyes and round her nose; and Tan-tan got fiercer and fiercer, and very red and very hot, until Nicolette got really sorry for the poor dragon, and wept real tears because his body and legs and arms had been a favourite resting-place of Micheline’s when Micheline was too tired for play. And now the dragon had no more arms and legs, and Nicolette wept, and her loose hair stuck to her eyes, and her stockings were tied so tightly around her that they began to hurt, whilst a wasp began buzzing round her fat little bare knees.

“Courage, fair maiden!” Tan-tan exclaimed from time to time, “the hour of thy deliverance is nigh!”

But not for all the world would Nicolette have allowed Tan-tan to know that she had really been crying. And presently when the dragon was duly slain and the crimson hazel-bush duly testified that he lay in a pool of blood, the victorious knight cut the bonds which held Nicolette to the carob tree, and lifting her in his arms, he carried her to his gallant steed, which was a young pine tree that the mistral had uprooted some few years ago, and which lay prone upon the ground—the most perfect charger any knight could possibly wish for.

What mattered after that, that old Margaï was cross because Nicolette’s stockings were all in holes? Tan-tan had deigned to say that Nicolette had a very good idea of play, which enigmatic utterance threw Nicolette into a veritable heaven of bliss. She did not know what it meant, but the tiny, podgy hand went seeking Tan-tan’s big, hot one and nestled there like a bird in its nest, and her large liquid eyes, still wet with tears, were turned on him with the look of perfect adoration, which was wont to bring a flush of impatience into his cheek.

“Thou art stupid, Nicolette,” he would say almost shamefacedly, when that look came into her eyes, and with a war-whoop, he would dart up the winding path, bounding over rocks and broken boughs like a young stag, or swarming up the mountain ash like a squirrel, shutting his manly ears to the sweet, insidious call of baby lips that called pathetically to him from below:

“Tan-tan!”

Then, when outside it rained, or the mistral blew across the valley, it meant delicious wanderings through the interminable halls and corridors of the old château—more distressed maidens held in durance in castellated towers, Nicolette and Micheline held captive by cruel, unseen foes: there were walls to be scaled, prisons to be stormed, hasty flights along stone passages, discovery of fresh hiding-places, and always the same intrepid knight, energetic, hot and eager to rescue the damsels in distress.

And when the distressed damsels were really too tired to go on being rescued, there would be those long and lovely halts in the great hall where past Comtes and Comtesses de Ventadour, vicomtes and demoiselles looked down with silent scorn from out the mildewed canvases and tarnished gold frames upon the decayed splendour of their ancient home. Here, Tan-tan would for the time being renounce his rôle of chivalrous knight-errant, and would stand thoughtful and absorbed before the portraits of his dead forbears. These pictures had a strange fascination for the boy. He never tired of gazing on them and repeating to his two devoted little listeners the tales which for the most part his grandmother had told him about these dead and gone ancestors.

There was Rambaud de Ventadour, the handsome Comte of the days of the Grand Monarque, who had hied him from his old château in Provence to the Court of Versailles, where he cut a gallant figure with the best of that brilliant crowd of courtiers, stars of greater and lesser magnitude that revolved around the dazzling central sun. There was Madame la Comtesse Beatrix, the proud beauty whom he took for wife. They were rich in those days, the seigneurs of Ventadour, and Jaume Deydier, who was Nicolette’s ancestor, was nothing but a lacquey in their service; he used to take care of the old château while M. le Comte and Mme. la Comtesse went out into the gay and giddy world, to Paris, Versailles or Rambouillet.

’Twas not often the old lands of Provence saw their seigneurs in those days, not until misfortune overtook them and Geoffroy, Comte de Ventadour, Tan-tan’s great-grandfather, he whose portrait hung just above the monumental hearth, returned, a somewhat sobered man, to the home of his forbears. Here he settled down with his two sons, and here Tan-tan’s father was born, and Tan-tan himself, and Micheline. But Nicolette’s father, Jaume Deydier, the descendant of the lacquey, now owned all the lands that once had belonged to the Comtes de Ventadour, and he was reputed to be the richest man in Provence, but he never set foot inside the old château.

Nicolette did not really mind that her ancestor had been a lacquey. At six years of age that sort of information leaves one cold; nor did she quite know what a lacquey was, as there were none in the old homestead, over on the other side of the valley, where Margaï did the scrubbing, and the washing and the baking, put Nicolette to bed, and knitted innumerable pairs of woollen stockings. But she liked to hear about her ancestor because Tan-tan liked to talk about him, and about those wonderful times when the Comtes de Ventadour had gilded coaches and rode out on gaily caparisoned horses, going hawking, or chasing, or fishing in the Durance, the while old Jaume Deydier, the lacquey, had to stay at home and clean boots.

“Whose boots, Tan-tan?” Nicolette would venture to ask, and a look of deep puzzlement would for a moment put to flight the laughter that dwelt in her hazel eyes.

“Thou art stupid, Nicolette,” Tan-tan would reply with a shrug of his shoulders. “Those of the Comte and Comtesse de Ventadour, of course.”

“All the day ... would he clean boots?” she insisted, in her halting little lisp. Then, as Tan-tan simply vouchsafed no reply to this foolish query, she added with a sigh of mixed emotions: “They must have worn boots and boots and boots!”

After which she dismissed the subject of her ancestor from her mind because Tan-tan had gone on talking about his: about the Comte Joseph-Alexis, and the Vicomtesse Yolande, the Marquis de Croze (a collateral), and Damoysella Ysabeau d’Agoult, she who married the Comte Jeanroy de Ventadour, and was Lady-in-waiting to Mme. de Maintenon, the uncrowned Queen of France, and about a score or more of others, all great and gallant gentlemen or beautiful, proud ladies. But above all he would never weary of talking about the lovely Rixende, who was known throughout the land as the Lady of the Laurels. They also called her Riande, for short, because she was always laughing, and was so gay, so gay, until the day when M. le Comte her husband brought her here to his old home in Provence, after which she never even smiled again. She hated the old château, and vowed that such an owl’s nest gave her the megrims: in truth she was pining for the gaieties of Paris and Versailles, and even the people here, round about, marvelled why M. le Comte chose to imprison so gay a bird in this grim and lonely cage, and though he himself oft visited the Court of Versailles after that, went to Paris and to Rambouillet, he never again took his fair young wife with him, and she soon fell into melancholia and died, just like a song-bird in captivity.

Tan-tan related all this with bated breath, and his great dark eyes were fixed with a kind of awed admiration on the picture which, in truth, portrayed a woman of surpassing beauty. Her hair was of vivid gold, and nestled in ringlets all around her sweet face, her eyes were as blue as the gentian that grew on the mountain-side; they looked out of the canvas with an expression of unbounded gaiety and joy of life, whilst her lips, which were full and red, were parted in a smile.

“When I marry,” Tan-tan would declare, and set his arms akimbo in an attitude of unswerving determination, “I shall choose a wife who will be the exact image of Rixende, she will be beautiful and merry, and she will have eyes that are as blue as the sky. Then I shall take her with me to Paris, where she will put all the ladies of the Court to the blush. But when she comes back with me to Ventadour, I shall love her so, and love her so that she will go on smiling and laughing, and never pine for the courtiers and the balls and the routs, no, not for the Emperor himself.”

Nicolette, sitting on the floor, and with her podgy arms encircling her knees, gazed wide-eyed on the beautiful Rixende who was to be the very image of Tan-tan’s future wife. She was not thinking about anything in particular, she just looked and looked, and wondered as one does when one is six and does not quite understand. Her great wondering eyes were just beginning to fill with tears, when a harsh voice broke in on Tan-tan’s eloquence.

“A perfect programme, by my faith! Bertrand, my child, you may come and kiss my hand, and then run to your mother and tell her that I will join her at coffee this afternoon.”

Bertrand did as he was commanded. The austere grandmother, tall and proud, and forbidding in a hooped gown, cut after the fashion of three decades ago, which she had never laid aside for the new-fangled modes of the mushroom Empire, held out her thin white hand, and the boy approached and kissed it, and she patted his cheek, and called him a true Ventadour.

“While we sit over coffee,” she said, vainly trying to subdue her harsh voice to tones of gentleness, “I will tell you about your little cousin. She is called Rixende, after your beautiful ancestress, and when she grows up, she will be just as lovely as this picture....”

She paused and raised a lorgnette to her eyes, gazed for a moment on the picture of the departed Riande, and then allowed her cold, wearied glance to wander round and down and about until they rested on the hunched-up little figure of Nicolette.

“What is that child doing here?” she asked, speaking to Micheline who stood by, mute and shy, as she always was when her grandmama was nigh.

It was Bertrand who replied:

“Nicolette came to ask us to go over to the mas and have coffee there,” he said, hesitating, blushing, looking foolish, and avoiding Nicolette’s innocent glance. “Margaï has baked a big, big brioche,” Nicolette chimed in, in her piping little voice, “and churned some butter—and—and—there’s cream—heaps and heaps of cream—and——”

“Go, Bertrand,” the old Comtesse broke in coldly, “and you too, Micheline, to your mother. I will join you all at coffee directly.”

Even Bertrand, the favourite, the enfant gâté, dared not disobey when grandmama spoke in that tone of voice. He said: “Yes, grandmama,” quite meekly, and went out without daring to look again at Nicolette, for of a surety he knew that her eyes must be full of tears, and he himself was sorely tempted to cry, because he was so fond, so very fond of Margaï’s brioches, and of her yellow butter, and lovely jars of cream, whilst in mother’s room there would only be black bread with the coffee. So he threw back his head and ran, just ran out of the room; and as Nicolette had an uncomfortable lump in her wee throat she did not call to Tan-tan to come back, but sat there on the floor like a little round ball, her head buried between her knees, her brown curls all tangled and tossed around her head. Micheline on the other hand made no attempt to disguise her tears. Grandmama could not very well be more contemptuous and distant towards her than she always was, for Micheline was plain, and slightly misshapen, she limped, and her little face always looked pinched and sickly. Grandmama despised ugliness, she herself was so very tall and stately, and had been a noted beauty in the days before the Revolution. But being ugly and of no account had its advantages, because one could cry when one’s heart was full and pride did not stand in the way of tears. So when grandmama presently sailed out of the hall, taking no more notice of Nicolette than if the child had been a bundle of rags, Micheline knelt down beside her little friend, and hugged and kissed her.

“Never mind about to-day, Nicolette,” she said, “run back and tell Margaï that we will come to-morrow. Grandmama never wants us two days running, and the brioche won’t be stale.”

But at six years of age, when a whole life-time is stretched out before one, every day of waiting seems an eternity, and Nicolette cried and cried long after Micheline had gone.

But presently a slight void inside her reminded her of Margaï’s brioche, and of the jar of cream, and the tears dried off, of themselves; she picked herself up, and ran out of the hall, along the familiar corridors where she had so often been a damsel in distress, and out of the postern gate. She ran down the mountain-side as fast as her short legs would carry her, down and down into the valley, then up again, bounding like a young kid, up the winding track to the old house which her much-despised ancestor had built on the slope above the Lèze when first he laid the foundations of the fortune which his descendants had consolidated after him. Up she ran, safe as a bird in its familiar haunts, up the gradients between the lines of olive trees now laden with fruit, the source of her father’s wealth. For while the noble Comtes de Ventadour had wasted their patrimony in luxury and in gambling, the Deydiers, father and son, had established a trade in oil, and in orange-flower water, both of which they extracted from the trees on the very land that they had bought bit by bit from their former seigneurs; and their oil was famed throughout the country, because one of the Deydiers had invented a process whereby his oil was sweeter than any other in the whole of Provence, and was sought after far and wide, and even in distant lands. But of this Nicolette knew nothing as yet: she did not even know that she loved the grey-green olive trees, and the terraced gradients down which she was just able to jump without tumbling, now that she was six and her legs had grown; she did not know that she loved the old house with its whitewashed walls, its sky-blue shutters, and multi-coloured tiled roof, and the crimson rose that climbed up the wall to the very window sill of her room, and the clumps of orange and lemon trees that smelt so sweet in the spring when they were laden with blossom, and the dark ficus trees, and feathery mimosa, and vine-covered arbours. She did not know that she loved them because her baby-heart had not yet begun to speak. All that she knew was that Tan-tan was beautiful, and the most wonderful boy that ever, ever was. There was nothing that Tan-tan could not do. He could jump on one leg far longer than any other boy in the country-side. He could throw the bar and the disc much farther even than Ameyric who was reckoned the finest thrower at the fêtes of Apt. He could play bows, and shoot with arrows, and to see him wrestle with some of the boys of the neighbourhood was enough to make one scream with excitement.

Nicolette also knew that Tan-tan could make her cry whenever he was cross or impatient with her, but that it was nice, oh! ever so nice!—when he condescended to play with her, and carried her about in his arms, and when, at times, when she had been crying just in play, he comforted her with a kiss.

But that was all long, long, so very long ago. Tan-tan now was a big boy, and he never slew dragons any more; and when Nicolette through force of habit called him Tan-tan, there was always somebody to reprove her; either the old Comtesse of whom she stood in mortal awe, or Pérone who was grandmama’s maid, and seemed to hold Nicolette in especial aversion, or the reverend Father Siméon-Luce who came daily from Manosque to the château in order to give lessons to Bertrand in all sorts of wonderful subjects. And so Nicolette had to say Bertrand like everybody else, only when she was quite alone with him, would she still say Tan-tan, and slide her small hand into his, and look up at him with wonder and admiration expressed in her luminous eyes. She took to coming less and less to the château; somehow she preferred to think of Tan-tan quietly, alone in her cheerful little room, from the windows of which she could see the top of the big carob tree to which he used to tie her, when she was a captive maiden and he would be slaying dragons for her sake. Bertrand was not really Tan-tan when he was at the château, and Father Siméon-Luce or grandmama were nigh and talked of subjects which Nicolette did not understand. The happy moments were when he and Micheline would come over to the mas, and Margaï would bake a lovely brioche, and they would all sit round the polished table and drink cups of delicious coffee with whipped cream on the top, and Bertrand’s eyes would glow, and he would exclaim: “Ah! it is good to be here! I wish I could stay here always.” An exclamation which threw Nicolette into a veritable ecstasy of happiness, until Jaume Deydier, her father, who was usually so kind and gentle with them all, would retort in a voice that was harsh and almost cruel:

“You had better express that wish before my lady, your grandmother, my lad, and see how she will receive it.”

But there were other happy moments, too. Though Bertrand no longer slew dragons, he went fishing in the Lèze on his half-holidays, and Nicolette was allowed to accompany him, and to carry his basket, or hold his rod, or pick up the fish when they wriggled and flopped about upon the stones. Micheline seldom came upon these occasions because the way was rough, and it made her tired to walk quite so far, and at the château no one knew that Nicolette was with Bertrand when he fished. Father Siméon-Luce was away on parish work over at Manosque, and grandmama never walked where it was rough, so Bertrand would call at the mas for Nicolette, and together the two children would wander up the bank of the turbulent little mountain stream, till they came to a pool way beyond Jourdans where fish was abundant, and where a group of boulders, grass-covered and shaded by feathery pines and grim carobs, made a palace fit for a fairy-king to dwell in. Here they would pretend that they were Paul and Virginie cast out on a desert island, dependent on their own exertions for their very existence. Bertrand had to fish, else they would have nothing to eat on the morrow.

All the good things which Margaï’s loving hands had packed for them in the morning, were really either the result of mysterious foraging expeditions which Bertrand had undertaken at peril of his life, or of marvellous ingenuity on the part of Nicolette. Thus the luscious brioches were in reality crusts of bread which she had succeeded in baking in the sun, the milk she had really taken from a wild goat captured and held in duress amongst the mountain fastnesses of the island, the eggs Bertrand had collected in invisible crags where sea-fowls had their nests. Oh! it was a lovely game of “Let’s pretend!” which lasted until the shadows of evening crept over the crest of Luberon, and Bertrand would cast aside his rod, remembering that the hour was getting late, and grandmama would be waiting for him. Then they would return hand in hand, their shoes slung over their shoulders, their feet paddling in the cold, rippling stream. Way away to the west the setting sun would light a gorgeous fire in the sky behind Luberon, a golden fire that presently turned red, and against which the crests and crags stood out clear-cut and sharp, just as if the world ended there, and there was nothing behind the mountain-tops.

In very truth for Nicolette the world did end here; her world! the world which held the mas that was her home, and to which she would have liked to have taken Tan-tan, and never let him go again.

CHAPTER II
LE LIVRE DE RAISON

Grandmama sat very stiff and erect at the head of the table; and Bertrand sat next to her with the big, metal-clasped book still open before him, and a huge key placed upon the book. Micheline was making vain endeavours to swallow her tears, and mother sat as usual in her high-backed chair, her head resting against the cushions; she looked even paler, more tired than was her wont, her eyes were more swollen and red, as if she, too, had been crying.

As Bertrand was going away on the morrow, going to St. Cyr, where he would learn to become an officer of the King, grandmama had opened the great brass-bound chest that stood in a corner of the living-room, and taken out the “Book of Reason,” a book which contained the family chronicles of the de Ventadours from time immemorial, copies of their baptism and marriage certificates, their wills, and many other deeds and archives which had a bearing upon the family history. Such a book—called “Livre de Raison”—exists in every ancient family of Provence; it is kept in a chest of which the head of the house has the key, and whenever occasion demands the book is taken out of its resting-place, and the eldest son reads out loud, to the assembled members of the family, extracts from it, as his father commands him to do.

Just for a time, when Bertrand’s father brought a young wife home to the old château, his old mother—over-reluctantly no doubt—resigned her position as head of the house, but since his death, which occurred when Bertrand was a mere baby, and Micheline not yet born, grandmama had resumed the reins of authority which she had wielded to her own complete satisfaction ever since she had been widowed. Of a truth, her weak, backboneless daughter-in-law, with her persistent ill-health and constant repinings and tears, was not fit to conduct family affairs that were in such a hopeless tangle as those of the de Ventadours. The young Comtesse had yielded without a struggle to her mother-in-law’s masterful assumption of authority; and since that hour it was grandmama who had ruled the household, superintended the education of her grandchildren, regulated their future, ordered the few servants about, and kept the keys of the dower-chests. It was she also who put the traditional “Book of Reason” to what uses she thought best. Mother acquiesced in everything, never attempted to argue; it would have been useless, for grandmama would brook neither argument nor contradiction, and mother was too ill, too apathetic to attempt a conflict in which of a surety she would have been defeated.

And so when grandmama decided that as soon as Bertrand had attained his seventeenth year he should go to St. Cyr, mother had acquiesced without a murmur, even though she felt that the boy was too young, too inexperienced to be thus launched into the world where his isolated upbringing in far-off old Provence would handicap him in face of his more sophisticated companions. Only once did she suggest meekly, in her weak and tired voice, that the life at St. Cyr offered many temptations to a boy hitherto unaccustomed to freedom, and to the society of strangers.

“The cadets have so many days’ leave,” she said, “Bertrand will be in Paris a great deal.”

“Bah!” grandmama had retorted with a shrug of her shoulders, “Sybille de Mont-Pahon is no fool, else she were not my sister. She will look after Bertrand well enough if only for the sake of Rixende.”

After which feeble effort mother said nothing more, and in her gentle, unobtrusive way set to, to get Bertrand’s things in order. Of course she was bound to admit that it was a mightily good thing for the boy to go to St. Cyr, where he would receive an education suited to his rank, as well as learn those airs and graces which since the restoration of King Louis had once more become the hall-mark that proclaimed a gentleman. It would also be a mightily good thing for him to spend a year or two in the house of his great-aunt, Mme. de Mont-Pahon, a lady of immense wealth, whose niece Rixende would in truth be a suitable wife for Bertrand in the years to come. But he was still so young, so very young even for his age, and to put thoughts of a mercenary marriage, or even of a love-match into the boy’s head seemed to the mother almost a sin.

But grandmama thought otherwise.

“It is never too soon,” she declared, “to make a boy understand something of his future destiny, and of the responsibilities which he will have to shoulder. Sybille de Mont-Pahon desires the marriage as much as I do: she speaks of it again in her last letter to me: Rixende’s father, our younger sister’s child, was one of those abominable traitors to his King who chose to lick the boots of that Corsican upstart who had dared to call himself Emperor of the French. Heaven being just, the renegade has fallen into dire penury and Sybille has cared for his daughter as if she were her own, but the stain upon her name can be wiped out only by an alliance with a family such as ours. Bertrand’s path lies clear before him: win Sybille’s regard and the affection of Rixende, and the Mont-Pahon millions will help to regild the tarnished escutcheon of the Ventadours, and drag us all out of this slough of penury and degradation in which some of our kindred have already gone under.”

Thus the day drew nigh when Bertrand would have to go. Everything was ready for his departure and his box was packed, and Jasmin, the man of all work, had already taken it across to Jaume Deydier’s; for at six o’clock on the morrow Deydier’s barouche would be on the road down below, and it would take Bertrand as far as Pertuis, where he would pick up the diligence to Avignon and thence to Paris.

What wonder that mother wept! Bertrand had never been away from home, and Paris was such a long, such a very long way off! Bertrand who had never slept elsewhere than in his own little bed, in the room next to Micheline’s, would have to sleep in strange inns, or on the cushions of the diligence. The journey would take a week, and he would have so very little money to spend on small comforts and a good meal now and then. It was indeed awful to be so poor, that Micheline’s christening cup had to be sold to provide Bertrand with pocket money on the way. Oh, pray God! pray God that the boy found favour in the eyes of his rich relative, and that Rixende should grow up to love him as he deserved to be loved!

But grandmama did not weep. She was fond of Bertrand in her way, fonder of him than she was, or had been, of any one else in the world, but in an entirely unemotional way. She was ambitious for him, chiefly because in him and through him she foresaw the re-establishment of the family fortunes.

Ever since he had come to the age of understanding, she had talked to him about his name, his family, his ancestors, the traditions and glories of the past which were recorded in the Book of Reason. And on this last afternoon which Bertrand would spend at home for many a long year, she got the book out of the chest, and made him read extracts from it, from the story of Guilhem de Ventadour who went to the Crusades with King Louis, down to Bertrand’s great-great-grandfather who was one of the pall-bearers at the funeral of the Grand Monarque.

The reading of these extracts from the Book of Reason took on, on this occasion, the aspect of a solemn rite. Bertrand, who loved his family history, read on with enthusiasm and fervour, his eyes glowing with pride, his young voice rolling out the sentences, when the book told of some marvellous deed of valour perpetrated by one of his forbears, or of the riches and splendours which were theirs in those days, wherever they went. Nor did he tire or wish to leave off until grandmama suddenly and peremptorily bade him close the book. He had come to the page where his grandfather had taken up the family chronicles, and he had nought but tales of disappointments, of extravagance and of ever-growing poverty to record.

“There, it’s getting late,” grandmama said decisively, “put down the book, Bertrand, and you may lock it up in the chest, and then give me back the key.”

But Bertrand lingered on, the book still open before him, the heavy key of the chest laid upon its open pages. He was so longing to read about his grandfather, and about his uncle Raymond, around whose name and personality there hung some kind of mystery. He thought that since he was going away on the morrow, the privileges of an enfant gâté might be accorded him to-night, and his eagerly expressed wish fulfilled. But the words had scarcely risen to his lips before grandmama said peremptorily: “Go, Bertrand, do as I tell you.”

And when grandmama spoke in that tone it was useless to attempt to disobey. Swallowing his mortification, Bertrand closed the book and, without another word, he picked up the big key and took the book and locked it up in the chest that stood in the furthest corner of the room. He felt cross and disappointed, conscious of a slight put upon him as the eldest son of the house and the only male representative of the Ventadours. He was by right the head of the family, and it was not just that he should be governed by women. Ah! when he came back from St. Cyr...!

But here his meditations were interrupted by the sound of his name spoken by his mother.

“Bertrand ought to go,” she was saying in her gentle and hesitating way, “and say good-bye to Nicolette and to Jaume Deydier and thank him for lending his barouche to-morrow.”

“I do not see the necessity,” grandmama replied. “He saw Deydier last Sunday, and methought he would have preferred to spend the rest of his time with his own sister.”

“Micheline might go with him,” mother urged, “as far as the mas. She would enjoy half an hour’s play with Nicolette.”

“In very truth,” grandmama broke in with marked irritation, “I do not understand, my good Marcelle, how you can encourage Micheline to associate with that Deydier child. I vow her manners get worse every day, and no wonder; the brat is shockingly brought up by that old fool Margaï, and Jaume Deydier himself has never been more than a peasant.”

“Nicolette is only a child,” mother had replied with a weary sigh, “and Micheline will have no one of her own age to speak to, when Bertrand has gone.”

“As to that, my dear,” grandmama retorted icily, “you have brought this early separation on yourself. Bertrand might have remained at home another couple of years, studying with Father Siméon-Luce, but frankly this intimacy with the Deydiers frightened me, and hastened my decision to send him to St. Cyr.”

“It was a cruel decision, madame,” the Comtesse Marcelle rejoined with unwonted energy, “Bertrand is young and——”

“He is seventeen,” the old Comtesse interposed in her hard, trenchant voice, “an impressionable age. And we do not want a repetition of the adventure which sent Raymond de Ventadour——”

“Hush, madame, in Heaven’s name!” her daughter-in-law broke in hastily, and glanced with quick apprehension in the direction where Bertrand stood gazing with the eager curiosity of his age, wide-eyed and excited, upon the old Comtesse, scenting a mystery of life and adventure which was being withheld from him.

Grandmama beckoned to him, and made him kneel on the little cushion at her feet. He had grown into a tall and handsome lad of late, with the graceful, slim stature of his race, and that wistful expression in the eyes which is noticeable in most of the portraits of the de Ventadours, and which gave to his young face an almost tragic look.

Grandmama with delicate, masterful hand, pushed back the fair unruly hair from the lad’s forehead and gazed searchingly into his face. He returned her glance fearlessly, even lovingly, for he was fond, in a cool kind of way, of his stately grandmother, who was so austere and so stern to everybody and unbent only for him.

“I wonder,” she said, and her eyes, which time had not yet dimmed, appeared to search the boy’s very soul.

“What at, grandmama?” he asked.

“If I can trust you, Bertrand.”

“Trust me?” the boy exclaimed, indignant at the doubt. “I am Comte de Ventadour,” he went on proudly. “I would sooner die than commit a dishonourable action....”

Whereat grandmama laughed;—an unpleasant, grating laugh it was, which acted like an icy douche upon the boy’s enthusiasm. She turned her gaze on her daughter-in-law, whose pale face took on a curious ashen hue, whilst her trembling lips murmured half incoherently:

“Madame—for pity’s sake——”

“Ah bah!” the old lady rejoined with a shrug of the shoulders, “the boy will have to know sooner or later that his father——”

“Madame——!” the younger woman pleaded once more, but this time there was just a thought of menace, and less of humility in her tone.

“There, there!” grandmama rejoined dryly, “calm your fears, my good Marcelle, I won’t say anything to-day. Bertrand goes to-morrow. We shall not see him for two years: let him by all means go under the belief that no de Ventadour has ever committed a dishonourable action.”

Throughout this short passage of arms between his mother and grandmother, Bertrand had remained on his knees, his great dark eyes, with that wistful look of impending tragedy in them, wandering excitedly from one familiar face to the other. This was not the first time that his keen ears had caught a hint of some dark mystery that clung around the memory of the father whom he had never known. Like most children, however, he would sooner have died than ask a direct question, but this he knew, that whenever his father’s name was mentioned, his mother wept, and grandmama’s glance became more stern, more forbidding than its wont. And, now on the eve of his departure for St. Cyr, he felt that mystery encompass him, poisoning the joy he had in going away from the gloomy old château, from old women and girls and senile servitors, out into the great gay world of Paris, where the romance and adventures of which he had dreamt ever since he could remember anything, would at last fall to his lot, with all the good things of this life. He felt that he was old enough now to know what it was that made his mother so perpetually sad, that she had become old before her time, sick and weary, an absolute nonentity in family affairs over which grandmama ruled with a masterful hand. But now he was too proud to ask. They treated him as a child—very well! he was going away, and when he returned he would show them who would henceforth be the master of his family’s destiny. But for the moment all that he ventured on was a renewed protest:

“You can trust me in everything, grandmama,” he said. “I am not a child.”

Grandmama was still gazing into his face, gazing as if she would read all the secrets of his young unsophisticated soul: he returned her gaze with a glance as searching as her own. For a moment they were in perfect communion these two, the old woman with one foot in the grave, and the boy on the threshold of life. They understood one another, and each read in the other’s face, the same pride, the same ambition, and the same challenge to an adverse fate. For a moment, too, it seemed as if the grandmother would speak, tell the boy something at least of the tragedies which had darkened the last few pages of the family chronicles; and Bertrand, quite unconsciously, put so much compelling force into his gaze that the old woman was on the point of yielding. But once more the mother’s piteous voice pleaded for silence:

“Madame!” she exclaimed.

Her voice broke the spell; grandmama rose abruptly to her feet, which caused Bertrand to tumble backwards off the cushion. By the time he had picked himself up again, grandmama had gone.

Bertrand felt low and dispirited, above all cross with his mother for interfering. He went out of the room without kissing her. At first he thought of following grandmama into her room and forcing her to tell him all that he wanted to know, but pride held him back. He would not be a suppliant: he would not beg, there where in a very short time he would command. There could be nothing dishonourable in the history of the de Ventadours. They were too proud, too noble, for dishonour even to touch their name. Instinctively Bertrand had wandered down to the great hall where hung the portraits of those Ventadours who had been so rich and so great in the past. Bertrand was now going out into the world in order to rebuild those fortunes which an unjust fate had wrested from him. He gazed on the portrait of lovely Rixende. She, too, had been rich and brought a splendid dowry to her lord when she married him. He had proved ungrateful and she had died of sorrow. Bertrand marvelled if in truth his cousin Rixende was like her namesake. Anyway she was rich, and he would love her to his dying day if she consented to be his wife.

Already he loved her because he had been told that she had hair glossy and golden like the Rixende of the picture, and great mysterious eyes as blue as the gentian; and that her lips smiled like those of Rixende had done, whereupon he marvelled if they would be good to kiss. After which, by an unexplainable train of thought, he fell to thinking of Nicolette. She had sent him a message by Micheline yesterday that she would wait for him all the afternoon, on their island beside the pool. It was now past four o’clock. The shades of evening were fast gathering in, in the valley below, and even up here on the heights the ciliated shadows of carob and olive were beginning to lengthen. It would take an hour to run as far as the pool; and then it would be almost time to come home again, for of late Jaume Deydier had insisted that Nicolette must be home before dark. It was foolish of Nicolette to be waiting for him so far away. Why could she not be sensible and come across to the château to say good-bye? The boy was fighting within himself, fighting a battle wherein tenderness and vanity were on the one side, and a false sense of pride and manliness on the other. In the end it was perhaps vanity that won the fight. All day he had been treated as a child that was being packed up and sent to school: all day he had been talked to, and admonished, and preached at, first by grandmama, and then by Father Siméon-Luce; he had been wept over by mother and by Micheline: now Nicolette neither admonished nor wept. He would not allow her to do the former and she was too sensible to attempt the latter. She would probably stand quite still and listen while he told her of his plans for the future, and all the fine things he would do when he was of age, and rich, and had married his cousin Rixende.

Nicolette was sensible, she would soothe his ruffled self-esteem and restore to him some of that confidence in himself of which he would stand in sore need during the long and lonely voyage that lay before him.

Hardly conscious of his own purpose, Bertrand sauntered down the mountain-side. It was still hot on this late September afternoon, and the boy instinctively sought, as he descended, the cool shadows that lay across the terraced gradients. A pungent scent of rosemary and eucalyptus was in the air, and from the undergrowth around came the muffled sound of mysterious, little pattering feet, or call of tiny beasts to their mates. Bertrand’s head ached, and his hands felt as if they were on fire. A curious restlessness and dissatisfaction made him feel out of tune with these woods which he loved more than he knew, with the blood-red berries of the mountain ash that littered the ground, and the low bushes of hazel-nut which autumn had painted a vivid crimson. Now he was down in the valley and up again on the spur behind which tossed and twirled the clear mountain stream.

The rough walk was doing him good: his body felt hot but his hands were cooler and his temples ceased to throb. When he reached the water’s edge, he sat down on a boulder and took off his boots and his stockings and slung them over his shoulder, and walked up the bed of the stream until the waters widened into that broad, silent pool which washed the shores of his fairy island. Already from afar he had spied Nicolette; she was watching for him on the grassy slope, clinging with one hand to the big carob that overhung the pool. She had on a short kirtle of faded blue linen, and a white apron and shift, the things she always wore when she was Virginie and he was Paul on their fairy island. She had obviously been paddling, for she had taken off her shoes and stockings, and her feet and legs shone like rose-tinted metal in the cool shade of the trees. Her head was bare and a soft breeze stirred the loose brown curls about her head, but Bertrand could not see her face, for her head was bent as if she were gazing intently into the pool. Way up beyond the valley, the sinking sun had tinged the mountain peaks with gold, and had already lit the big, big fire in the sky behind Luberon, but here on the island everything was cool and grey and peaceful, with only the murmur of the stream over the pebbles to break the great solemn silence of the woods.

When Bertrand jumped upon the big boulder, the one from which he was always wont to fish, Nicolette looked up and smiled. But she did not say anything, not at first, and Bertrand stood by a little shamefaced and quite unaccountably bashful.

“The fish have been shy all the afternoon,” were the first words that Nicolette said.

“Did you try and fish?” Bertrand asked.

Nicolette pointed to a rod and empty basket which lay on the grass close by.

“I borrowed those from Ameyric over at La Bastide,” she said. “I wanted to try my hand at it.” She paused. Then she swallowed; swallowed hard and resolutely as if there had been a very big lump in her throat. Then she said quite simply:

“I shall have to do something on long afternoons when I come here——”

“But you are going away too,” the boy rejoined, quite angry with himself because his voice was husky.

“Not till after the New Year. Then I am going to Avignon.”

“Avignon?”

“To school at the Ladies of the Visitation,” she explained, and added quaintly: “I am very ignorant, you know, Tan-tan.”

He frowned and she thought that he was cross because she had called him Tan-tan.

“By the time you come back,” she said meekly, “I shall be quite used to calling you M. le Comte.”

“Don’t be stupid, Nicolette,” was all that Bertrand could think of saying.

They were both silent after that, and as Nicolette turned to climb up the gradient, Bertrand followed her, half reluctantly. He knew she was going to the hut of Paul et Virginie: the place they were wont to call their island home. It was just an old, a very old olive tree, with a huge, hollow trunk, in which they, as children, could easily find shelter, and in the spring the ground around it was gay with buttercups and daisies; and bunches of vivid blue gentian and lavender and broom nestled against the great grey boulders. Here Bertrand and Nicolette had been in the habit of sitting when they pretended to be Paul et Virginie cast off on a desert island, and here they would eat the food which “Paul” had found at peril of his life, and which “Virginie” had cooked with such marvellous ingenuity. They had been so happy there, so often. The wood-pigeons would come and pick up the crumbs after they had finished eating, and now and then, when they sat very, very still, a hare would dart out from behind a great big boulder, and peep out at them with large frightened eyes, his long ears sharply silhouetted against the sun-kissed earth, and at the slightest motion from them, or wilful clapping of their hands, it would dart away again, leaving Bertrand morose and fretful because, though he was a big man, he was not yet allowed to have a gun.

“When I am a man,” was the burden of his sighing, and Nicolette would have much ado to bring the smile back into his eyes.

They had been so happy—so often. The flowers were their friends, the wild pansy with its quizzical wee face, the daisy with the secrets, which its petals plucked off one by one, revealed, the lavender which had to be carried home in huge bunches for Margaï to put in muslin bags. All but the gentian. Nicolette never liked the gentian, though its petals were of such a lovely, heavenly blue. But whenever Bertrand spied one he would pluck it, and stick it into his buttonhole: “The eyes of my Rixende,” he would say, “will be bluer than this.” Fortunately there was not much gentian growing on the island of Paul et Virginie.

They had been so happy here—so often, away from grandmama’s stern gaze and Father Siméon-Luce’s admonitions, when they had just pretended and pretended: pretended that the Lèze was the great open sea, on which never a ship came in sight to take them away from their beloved island, out into the great world which they had never known.

But to-day to Bertrand, who was going away on the morrow into that same great and unknown world, the game of pretence appeared futile and childish. He was a man now, and could no longer play. Somehow he felt cross with Nicolette for having put on her “Virginie” dress, and he pretended that his feet were cold, and proceeded to put on his stockings and his boots.

“The big ship has come in sight, Bertrand,” the girl said. “We will never see our island again.”

“That is nonsense, Nicolette,” Bertrand rejoined, seemingly deeply occupied in the putting on of his boots. “We will often come here, very often, when the trout are plentiful and I am home for the holidays.”

She shook her head.

“Margaï,” she said, “overheard Pérone talking to Jasmin the other day, and Pérone said that Mme. la Comtesse did not wish you to come home for at least two years.”

“Well! in two years’ time....” he argued, with a shrug of his shoulders.

She offered him some lovely buttered brioche, and said it was fish she had dried by a new process on slabs of heated stone, and she also had some milk, which she said she had found inside a coconut.

“The coconut trees are plentiful on the island,” she said, “and the milk from the nuts is as sweet as if it were sugared.” But Bertrand would not eat, he said he had already had coffee and cakes in grandmama’s room, and Nicolette abstractedly started crumbling up the brioche, hoping that the wood-pigeons would soon come for their meal. She was trying to recapture the spirit of a past that was no more: the elusive spirit of that happy world in which she had dwelt alone with Tan-tan. But strive how she might, she felt that the outer gates of that world were being closed against her for ever. Suddenly she realised that it was getting dark, and that she felt a little cold. She squatted on the ground and put on her shoes and stockings.

“We shall have to hurry,” she said, “father does not like me to be out long after dark.”

Then she jumped to her feet and started climbing quickly up the stone-built terraces, darting at break-neck speed round and about the olive trees, and deliberately turning her back on the pool, and the fairy island which she knew now that she would never, never see again. Bertrand had some difficulty in following her. Though he felt rather cross, he also felt vaguely remorseful. Somehow he wished now that he had not come at all.

“Nicolette,” he called, “why, you have not said good-bye!”

And this he said because Nicolette had in truth scurried just like a young hare, way off to the right, and was now running and leaping down the gradients till she reached the fence of the mas which was her home. Here she leaned against the gate. Bertrand, running after her as fast as he could, could scarce distinguish her in the fast gathering gloom. He could only vaguely see the gleam of her white shift and apron. She was leaning against the gate, and a pale gleam of twilight outlined her arm and hand and the silhouette of her curly head.

“Nicolette,” he called again, “don’t go in, I must kiss you good-bye.”

As usual she was obedient to his command, and waited, panting a little after this madcap run through the woods, till he was near her.

He took her hand and kissed her on the temple.

“Good-bye, Nicolette,” he said cheerily, “don’t forget me.”

“Good-bye, Bertrand,” she murmured under her breath.

Then she turned quickly: and was through the gate and out of sight before he could say another word. Ah well! girls were strange beings. So unreliable. A man never knew, when she smiled, if she was going to frown the very next minute.

As to that, Bertrand was glad that Nicolette had not cried, or made a scene. He was a man now, and really hated the sentimental episodes to which his dear mother and even Micheline indulged in so generously. Poor little Nicolette, no doubt her life would be rather dull after this, as Micheline was not really strong enough for the violent exercise in which Nicolette revelled with all the ardour of her warm blood and healthy young body. But no doubt she would like the convent at Avignon, and the society of rich, elegant girls, for of a truth, as grandmama always said, her manners had of late become rather rough, under the tutelage of old Margaï—a mere servant—and of her father, who was no more than a peasant. The way she ran away from him, Bertrand, just now, without saying a proper “good-bye,” argued a great want of knowledge on her part of the amenities of social life. And when he said to her: “Good-bye, Nicolette, do not forget me!” she should have answered....

Ah, bah! What mattered? It was all over now, thank the Lord, the good-byes and the weepings and the admonitions. The book of life lay open at last before him. To-morrow he would shake the dust of old Provence from his feet. To-morrow he would begin to read. Paris! Rixende! Wealth! The great big world. Oh, God! how weary he was of penury and of restraint!

CHAPTER III
THE HONOUR OF THE NAME

Bertrand came home for his Easter holidays after he had passed out of St. Cyr and received his commission in the King’s bodyguard: an honour which he owed as much to his name as to Madame de Mont-Pahon’s wealth and influence. He was only granted two weeks’ vacation because political conditions in Paris were in a greatly disturbed state just then, owing to the King’s arbitrary and reactionary policy, which caused almost as much seething discontent as that which precipitated the Revolution nigh on forty years ago. Louis XVIII in very truth was so unpopular at this time, and the assassination of his nephew, the Duc de Berry, two years previously, had so preyed upon his mind that he never stirred out of his château de Versailles save under a powerful escort of his trusted bodyguard.

It was therefore a matter of great importance for Bertrand’s future career that he should not be too long absent from duty, which at any moment might put him in the way of earning distinction for himself, and the personal attention of the King.

As it happened, when he did come home during the spring of that year 1822, Nicolette was detained in the convent school at Avignon because she had measles. A very prosy affair, which caused poor little Micheline many a tear.

She had been so anxious that her dear little friend should see how handsome Bertrand had grown, and how splendid he looked in his beautiful blue uniform all lavishly trimmed with gold lace, and the képi with the tuft of white feathers in front, which gave him such a martial appearance.

In truth, Micheline was so proud of her brother that she would have liked to take him round the whole neighbourhood and show him to all those who had known him as a reserved and rather puny lad. She would above all things have loved to take him across to the mas and let Jaume Deydier and Margaï see him, for then surely they would write and tell Nicolette about him. Bertrand acquiesced quite humouredly in the idea that she should thus take him on a grand tour to be inspected, and plans were formed to go over to Apt, and see M. le Curé there, and Gastinel Barnadou, the mayor of the commune, who lived at La Bastide, and whose son Ameyric was considered the handsomest lad of the country-side, and the bravest and most skilful too. All the girls were in love with him because he could run faster, jump higher, and throw the bar and the disc farther than any man between the Caulon and the Durance, but Micheline knew that as soon as Huguette or Madeleine or Rigaude set eyes on her Bertrand they would never look on any other man again. And Bertrand smiled and listened to Micheline’s plans, and promised that he would go with her to Jaume Deydier’s or to Apt, or whithersoever she chose to take him. But the Easter holidays came and went: Father Siméon-Luce came over from Manosque to celebrate Mass in the chapel of the château, then he went away again. And after Easter the weather turned cold and wet. It was raining nearly every day, and for one reason or another it was difficult to go over to the mas, and the expedition to Apt was an impossibility because there was no suitable vehicle in the coach-house of the château, and it was impossible to borrow Jaume Deydier’s barouche until one had paid him a formal visit.

And so the time went by and the day was at hand when Bertrand had to return to Versailles. Instead of going in comfort in Deydier’s barouche as far as Pertuis, he went with Jasmin in the cart, behind the old horse that had done work in and about the château for more years than Bertrand could remember. The smart officer of the King’s bodyguard sat beside the old man-of-all-work, on a wooden plank, with his feet planted on the box that contained his gorgeous uniforms, and his one thought while the old horse trotted leisurely along the rough mountain roads, was how good it would be to be back at Versailles. Visions of the brilliantly lighted salons floated tantalisingly before his gaze, of the King and the Queen, and M. le Comte d’Artois, and all the beautiful ladies of the Court, the supper and card parties, the Opera and the rides in the Bois. And amidst all these visions there was one more tantalising, more alluring than the rest: the vision of his still unknown cousin Rixende. She was coming from the fashionable convent in Paris, where she had been finishing her education, in order to spend the next summer holidays with her great-aunt, Mme. de Mont-Pahon. In his mind he could see her as the real counterpart of the picture which he had loved ever since he was a boy. Rixende of the gentian-blue eyes and fair curly locks! His Lady of the Laurels. Rixende—the heiress to the Mont-Pahons’ millions—who, with her wealth, her influence and her beauty, would help to restore the glories of the family of Ventadour, which to his mind was still the finest family in France. With her money he would restore the old feudal château in Provence, of which, despite its loneliness and dilapidated appearance, he was still inordinately proud.

Once more the halls and corridors would resound with laughter and merry-making, once more would gallant courtiers whisper words of love in fair ladies’ ears! He and lovely Rixende would restore the Courts of Love that had been the glory of old Provence in mediæval days; they would be patrons of the Arts, and attract to this fair corner of France all that was greatest among the wits, sweetest among musicians, most famous in the world of letters. Ah! they were lovely visions that accompanied Bertrand on his lonely drive through the mountain passes of his boyhood’s home. For as long as he could, he gazed behind him on the ruined towers of the old château, grimly silhouetted against the afternoon sky. Then, when a sharp turn of the road hid the old owl’s nest from view, he looked before him, where life beckoned to him full of promises and of coming joys, and where through a haze of fluffy, cream-coloured clouds, he seemed to see blue-eyed Rixende holding out to him a golden cornucopia from which fell a constant stream of roses, each holding a bag full of gold concealed in its breast.

It was owing to the war with Spain, and the many conspiracies of the Carbonari that Bertrand was unable for the next three years to obtain a sufficient extension of leave to visit his old home. He was now a full lieutenant in the King’s bodyguard, and Mme. de Mont-Pahon wrote with keen enthusiasm about his appearance and his character, both of which had earned her appreciation.

“It is the dream of my declining days,” she wrote to her sister, the old Comtesse de Ventadour, “that Bertrand and Rixende should be united. Both these children are very dear to me: kinship and affection binds me equally to both. I am old now, and sick, but my most earnest prayer to God is to see them happy ere I close my eyes in their last long sleep.”

In another letter she wrote:

“Bertrand has won my regard as well as my affection. In this last affair at Belfort, whither the King’s bodyguard was sent to quell the conspiracy of those abominable Carbonari, his bravery as well as his shrewdness were liberally commented on. I only wish he would make more headway in his courtship of Rixende. Of course the child is young, and does not understand how serious a thing life is: but Bertrand also is too serious at times, at others he seems to reserve his enthusiasm for the card-table or the pleasure of the chase. For his sake, as well as for that of Rixende, I would not like this marriage, on which I have set my heart, to be delayed too long.”

Later on she became even more urgent:

“The doctors tell me I have not long to live. Ah, well! my dear, I have had my time, let the two children whom I love have theirs. My fortune will suffice for a brilliant life for them, I make no doubt: but it must remain in its entirety. I will not have Bertrand squander it at cards or in pearl-necklaces for the ladies of the Opera. Therefore hurry on the marriage on your side, my good Margarita, and I will do my best on mine.”

The old Comtesse, with her sister’s last letter in her hand, hurried to her daughter-in-law’s room.

“You see, Marcelle,” she said resolutely, after a hurried and unsympathetic inquiry as to the younger woman’s health: “You see how it is. Everything depends on Bertrand. Sybille de Mont-Pahon means to divide her wealth between him and Rixende, but he will lose all if he does not exert himself. Oh! if I had been a man!” she exclaimed, and looked down with an obvious glance of contempt on the two invalids, mother and daughter, the two puny props of the tottering house of Ventadour.

“Bertrand can but lead an honourable life,” the mother argued wearily. “He is an honourable man, but you could not expect him at his age to toady to an old woman for the mere sake of her wealth.”

“Who talks of toadying?” the old woman exclaimed, with an irritable note in her harsh voice. “You are really stupid, Marcelle.”

Over five years had gone by since first Bertrand went away from the old home in Provence, driven as far as Pertuis in Deydier’s barouche, his pockets empty, and his heart full of longing for that great world into which he was just entering. Five years and more, and now he was more than a man; he was the head of the house of Ventadour, one of the most renowned families in France, who had helped to make history, and whose lineage could be traced back to the days of Charlemagne, even though, now—in the nineteenth century—they owned but a few mètres of barren land around an ancient and dilapidated château.

Not even grandmama disputed Bertrand’s right at this hour to make use of the Book of Reason as he thought best, and she had promised him over and over again of late, by written word, that when next he came to Ventadour, she would give him the key of the chest that contained the family archives. To a Provençal, the key to the Book of Reason is a symbol of his own status as head of the house, and to Bertrand it meant all that and more, because his pride in his family and lineage, and even in the old barrack which he called home was the dominating factor in all his actions, and because he felt that there could be nothing in his family history that was not worthy and honourable. There had been secrets kept from him while he was a child, secrets in connection with his father, and with his great-uncle, Raymond de Ventadour, but Bertrand was willing to admit that there might have been a reason for this, one that was good enough to determine the actions of grandmama, who was usually to be trusted in all affairs that concerned the honour of the family.

But somehow things did not occur just as Bertrand had expected. His arrival at the château was a great event, of course, and from the first he felt that he was no longer being treated as a boy, and that even his grandmother spoke to him of family affairs in tones of loving submission which went straight to his heart, and gave him that consciousness of importance for which he had been longing ever since he had left childhood’s days behind him. But close on a fortnight went by before at last, in deference to his urgent demand, she gave him the key of the chest that contained the family archives. It was a great moment for Bertrand. He would not touch the chest while anyone was in the room; his first delving into those priceless treasures should have no witness save the unseen spirit that animated him. With an indulgent shrug of her aristocratic shoulders, grandmama left him to himself, and Bertrand spent a delicious five minutes, first in turning the key in the old-fashioned lock of the chest, then lifting out the book, and turning over its time-stained pages.

He was on the lookout for records that would throw some light upon the life and adventures of his uncle Raymond de Ventadour, whose name was never mentioned by grandmama, save with a sneer. Bertrand was quite sure that if the Book of Reason had been kept as it should, he would learn something that would clear up the mystery that hung over that name. He was above all anxious to find out something definite about his own father’s death, without having recourse to the cruel task of interrogating his mother.

But though the chest contained a number of births, baptismal, marriage and death certificates, and the book a few records of the political events of the past fifty years, there was nothing there that would throw any light upon the secrets that Bertrand long to fathom. Nothing about Raymond de Ventadour, save his baptismal certificate and a brief record that he fought under General Moreau in Germany, and subsequently in Egypt. What happened to him after that, where he went, when he came back—if he came back at all—and when he died, was not chronicled in this book wherein every passing event, however futile, if it was in any way connected with the Ventadours had been recorded for the past five hundred years. In the same way there was but little said about Bertrand’s father, there was his marriage certificate to Marcelle de Cercomans, and that of his death the year of Micheline’s birth. But that was all. A few trinkets lay at the bottom of the chest, among these a seal-ring with the arms of the Ventadours engraved thereon, and their quaint device, “moun amour e moun noum.”

Bertrand loved the device; for his love and for his name, he would in very truth have sacrificed life itself. He took up the ring and slipped it on his finger; then he continued to turn over the pages of the old book, still hoping to extract from it that knowledge he so longed to possess.

Half an hour later a soft foot-tread behind him roused him from his meditations, and two loving arms were creeping round his neck:

“Are you ready, Bertrand?” Micheline asked.

“Ready for what?” he retorted.

“You said you would come over to the mas with me this afternoon.”

Bertrand frowned, and then with obvious moodiness, he picked up the family chronicle, and went to lock it up in the big dower-chest.

“You are coming, Bertrand, are you not?” Micheline insisted with a little catch in her throat.

“Not to-day, Micheline,” he replied after awhile.

“Bertrand!”

The cry came with such a note of reproach that the frown deepened on his forehead.

“Grandmama has such a violent objection to my going,” he said, somewhat shamefacedly.

“And you—at your age——” Micheline broke in more bitterly than she had ever spoken to her brother in her life; “you are going to allow, grandmama, an old woman, to dictate to you as to where you should go, and where not?”

Bertrand at this taunt aimed at his dignity had blushed to the roots of his hair, and a look of obstinacy suddenly hardened his face, making it seem quite set and old.

“There is no question,” he said coldly, “of anybody dictating to me: it is a question of etiquette and of usage. It was Jaume Deydier’s duty in the first instance to pay his respects to me.”

“It is not a question of etiquette or of usage, Bertrand,” the girl retorted hotly, “but of Nicolette our friend and playmate. I do not know what keeps Jaume Deydier from setting foot inside the château, but God knows that he owes us nothing, so why should he come? We on the other hand owe him countless kindnesses and boundless generosity, which we can never repay save by kindliness and courtesy. Why! when you were first at St. Cyr——”

“Micheline!”

The word rang out hard and trenchant, as the old Comtesse sailed into the room. Micheline at once held her tongue, cowed as she always was in the presence of her autocratic grandmother.

“What is the discussion about?” grandmama asked coldly.

“My going to the mas,” Bertrand replied.

“To pay your respects to Jaume Deydier?” she asked, with a sneer.

“To see Nicolette,” Micheline broke in boldly. “Bertrand’s oldest friend.”

“Quite a nice child,” the old Comtesse owned with ironical graciousness. “She is at liberty to come and see Bertrand when she likes.”

“She is too proud——” Micheline hazarded, then broke down suddenly in her speech, because grandmama had raised her lorgnette, and was staring at her so disconcertingly that Micheline felt tears of mortification rising to her eyes.

“So,” grandmama said with that biting sarcasm which hurt so terribly, and which she knew so well how to throw into her voice. “So Mademoiselle Deydier is proud, is she? Too proud to pay her respects to the Comtesse de Ventadour. Ah, well! let her stay at home then. It is not for a Ventadour to hold out a hand of reconciliation to one of the Deydiers.”

“Reconciliation, grandmama?” Bertrand broke in quickly. “Has there been a quarrel then?”

For a moment it seemed to Bertrand’s keenly searching eyes as if the old Comtesse’s usually magnificent composure was slightly ruffled. Certain it is that a delicate flush rose to her withered cheeks, and her retort did not come with that trenchant rapidity to which she had accustomed her family and her household. However, the hesitation—if hesitation there was—was only momentary: an instant later she had shrugged her shoulders, elevated her eyebrows with her own inimitably grandiose air, and riposted coolly:

“Quarrel? My dear Bertrand? Surely you are joking. How could there be a quarrel between us and the—er—Deydiers? The old man chooses to hold himself aloof from the château: but that is right and proper, and no doubt he knows his place. We cannot have those sort of people frequenting our house in terms of friendship—especially if your cousin Rixende should pay us a visit one of these days. Once an intimacy is set up, it is very difficult to break off again—and surely you would not wish that oil-dealer’s child to meet your future wife on terms of equality?”

“Rixende is not that yet,” Bertrand rejoined almost involuntarily, “and if she comes here——”

“She will have to come here,” grandmama said in her most decided tone. “Sybille de Mont-Pahon wishes it, and it is right and proper that Rixende should be brought here to pay her respects to me—and to your mother,” she added as with an after-thought.

“But——”

“But what,” she asked, for he seemed to hesitate.

“Rixende is so fastidious,” Bertrand said moodily. “She has been brought up in the greatest possible luxury. This old house with its faded furniture——”

“This old house with its faded furniture,” grandmama broke in icily, “has for centuries been the home of the Comtes de Ventadour, a family whose ancestors claimed kinship with kings. Surely it is good enough to shelter the daughter of a—of a—what is their name?—a Peyron-Bompar! My good Bertrand, your objections are both futile and humiliating to us all. Thank God! we have not sunk so low, that we cannot entertain a Mademoiselle—er—Peyron-Bompar and her renegade father in a manner befitting our rank.”

Grandmama had put on her grandest manner, and further argument was, of course, useless. Bertrand said nothing more, only stood by, frowning moodily. Micheline had succeeded in reaching the shelter of the window recess. From here she could still see Bertrand, could watch every play of emotion on his telltale face. She felt intensely sorry for him, and ashamed for him as well as for herself. But above all for him. He was a man, he should act as a man; whilst she was only a weak, misshapen, ugly creature with a boundless capacity for suffering, and no more courage than a cat. Even now she was conscious right through her pity for Bertrand which dominated every other feeling—of an intense sense of relief that the tattered curtain hung between her and grandmama, and concealed her from the irascible old lady’s view.

She tried to meet Bertrand’s eyes: but he purposely evaded hers. As for him, he felt vaguely ashamed he knew not exactly of what. He dared not look at Micheline, fearing to read either reproach or pity in her gaze; either of which would have galled him. For the first time, too, in his life, he felt out of tune with the ideals of the old Comtesse, whom he revered as the embodiment of all the splendours of the Ventadours. Now his pride was up in arms against her for her assumption of control. Where was his vaunted manhood? Was he—the head of the house—to be dictated to by women? Already he was lashing himself up into a state of rebellion and of fury. Planning a sudden assertion of his own authority, when his grandmother’s voice, hard and trenchant, acted like a cold douche upon his heated temper, and sobered him instantly.

“To revert to the subject of those Deydiers,” she said coldly, “my sister Mme. de Mont-Pahon has made it a point that all intimacy shall cease between you and them, before she would allow of Rixende’s engagement to you.”

“But why?” Bertrand exclaimed almost involuntarily. “In Heaven’s name, why?”

“You could ask her,” grandmama retorted quietly.

“Mme. de Mont-Pahon must understand that I seek my own friends, how and where I choose——”

“Your great-aunt would probably retort that she will then seek her heir also where and how she chooses—as well as Rixende’s future husband——”

Then as Bertrand in the excess of his shame and mortification buried his head in his hands, she went up to him, and placed her wrinkled aristocratic hand upon his shoulder.

“There, there,” she said almost gently, “don’t be childish, my dear Bertrand. Alas! when one is poor, one is always kissing the rod. All you want now is patience. Once Rixende is your wife, and my obstinate sister has left her millions to you both, and she and I have gone to join the great majority, you can please yourself in the matter of your friends.”

“It is so shameful to be poor,” Bertrand murmured bitterly.

“Yes, it is,” the old woman assented dryly. “That is the reason why I wish to drag you out of all this poverty and humiliation. But do not make the task too hard for me, Bertrand. I am old, and your mother is feeble. If I were to go you would soon drift down the road of destiny in the footsteps of your father.”

“My father?”

“Your father like you was weak and vacillating. Sunk in the slough of debt, enmeshed in a network of obligations which he had not the moral strength to meet, he blew out his brains, when broke the dawn of the inevitable day of reckoning.”

“It is false!” Bertrand cried impulsively.

He had jumped to his feet.

Clinging with one hand to the edge of the table, he faced the old Comtesse, his eyes gazing horror-struck upon that stern impassive face, on which scarce a tremor had passed while she delivered this merciless judgment on her own son.

“It is false!” the young man reiterated.

“It is true, Bertrand,” the old woman rejoined quietly. “The ring which you now wear, I myself took off his finger, after the pistol dropped from his lifeless hand.”

She was on the point of saying something more, when a long-drawn sigh, a moan, and an ominous thud, stayed the words upon her lips. Bertrand looked up at once, and the next moment darted across the room. There lay his mother, half crouching against the door frame to which she had clung when she felt herself swooning. Bertrand was down on his knees in an instant, and Micheline came as fast as she could to his side.

“Quick, Micheline, help me!” Bertrand whispered hurriedly. “She is as light as a feather. I’ll carry her to her room.”

The only one who had remained quite unmoved was the old Comtesse. When she heard the moan, and then the thud, she glanced coolly over her shoulder, and seeing her daughter-in-law, crouching helpless in the doorway, she only said dryly:

“My good Marcelle, why make a fuss? The boy was bound to know——”

But already Bertrand had lifted the poor feeble body in his arms, and was carrying his mother along the corridor to her own room. Here he deposited her on the sofa, on which in truth she spent most of her days, and here she lay now with her head against the pillows, her face so pale and drawn that Bertrand felt a great wave of love and sympathy for her surging in his heart.

“Poor little mother,” he said tenderly, and knelt by her side, chafing her cold hands, and gazing anxiously into her face. She opened her eyes, and looked at him. She seemed not to know at first what had happened.

“Bertrand!” she murmured, as if astonished to see him there.

Her astonishment in itself was an involuntary reproach, so very little of his time did Bertrand spend with his sad-eyed, ailing mother. A sharp pang of remorse went right through him as he noted, for the first time, how very aged and worn she had become since last he had been at home. Tears now were pouring down her cheeks, and he put out his arms, with a vague longing to draw her aching head to his breast, and let her rest there, while he would comfort her. She saw the gesture, and the ghost of a smile lit up her pale, wan face, and in her eyes there came a pathetic look as of a dog asking to be forgiven. With a sudden strange impulse she seized his hand, and drew it up to her lips. He snatched it away ashamed and remorseful, but she recaptured it, and began stroking it gently, tenderly: and all the while her spare, narrow shoulders shook with spasms of uncontrolled sobbing, just like a child after it has had a big, big cry. Then suddenly the smile vanished from her face, the tender look from her eyes, and an expression of horror crept into them as they fastened themselves upon his hand.

“That ring, Bertrand,” she cried hoarsely, “take it off.”

“My father’s ring?” he asked. “I want to wear it.”

“No, no, don’t wear it, my dear lamb,” his mother entreated, and moaned piteously just as if she were in pain. “Your grandmother took it off his dear, dead hand—oh, she is cruel—cruel—and without mercy ... she took it off after she——Oh, my boy! my boy! will you ever forgive?”

His one thought was just to comfort her. Awhile ago, when first his grandmother had told him, he had felt bitterly sore. His father dying a shameful death by his own hand! The shame of it was almost intolerable! And in the brief seconds that elapsed between the terrible revelation and the moment when he had to expend all his energies in looking after his mother, had held a veritable inferno of humiliation for him. As in a swift and sudden vision he saw flitting before him all sorts of little signs and indications that had puzzled him in the past, but of which he had ceased to think almost as soon as they had occurred, a look of embarrassment here, one of pity there, his grandmother’s sneers, his mother’s entreaties. He saw it all, all of a sudden. People who knew pitied him—or else they sneered. The bitterness of it had been awful. But now he forgot all that. With his mother lying there so crushed, so weak, so helpless, all that was noble and chivalrous in his nature gained the upper hand over his resentment.

“It is not for me to forgive, mother dear,” he said, “I am not my father’s judge.”

“He was so kind and good,” the poor soul went on with pathetic eagerness, “so generous. He only borrowed in order to give to others. People were always sponging on him. He never could say no—to any one—and of course we had no money to spare, to give away....”

Bertrand frowned.

“So,” he said quite quietly, “he—my father—borrowed some? He—he had debts?”

“Yes.”

“Many?”

“Alas.”

“He—he did not pay them before he——?”

Marcelle de Ventadour slowly shook her head.

“And,” Bertrand asked, “since then? since my father—died, have his debts been paid?”

“We could not pay them,” his mother replied in a tone of dull, aching hopelessness, “we had no money. Your grandmother——”

“Grandmama,” he broke in, “said though we were poor, we could yet afford to entertain our relatives as befitted our rank. How can that be if—if we are still in debt?”

“Your grandmother is quite right, my dear boy, quite right.” Marcelle de Ventadour argued with pathetic eagerness; “she knows best. We must do our utmost—we must all do our very utmost to bring about your marriage with Rixende de Peyron-Bompar. Your great-aunt has set her heart on it, she has—she has, I know, made it a condition—your grandmother knows about it—she and Mme. de Mont-Pahon have talked it over together—Mme. de Mont-Pahon will make you her legatee on condition that you marry Rixende.”

For a moment or two Bertrand said nothing. He had jumped to his feet and stood at the foot of the couch, with head bent and a deep frown on his brow.

“I wish you had not told me that, mother,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I love Rixende, and now it will seem as if——”

“As if what?”

“As if I wooed her for the sake of Mme. de Mont-Pahon’s money.”

“That is foolishness, Bertrand,” Mme. de Ventadour said, with more energy than was habitual to her. “Let us suppose that I said nothing. And your grandmother may be wrong. Mme. de Mont-Pahon may only wish for the marriage because of her affection for you and Rixende.”

“You wish it, too, mother, of course?” Bertrand said.

The mother drew a deep sigh of longing.

“Wish it, my dear?” she rejoined. “Wish it? Why, it would turn the hell of my life into a real heaven!”

“Even though,” he insisted, “even though until that marriage is accomplished, we cannot hope to pay off any of my father’s debts, even though for the next year, at least, we must go on spending more money and more money, borrow more and more, to keep me idling in Paris and to throw dust in the eyes of Mme. de Mont-Pahon.”

“We must do it, Bertrand,” she said earnestly. “Your grandmother says that we have to think of our name, not of ourselves; that it is the future that counts, and not the present.”

“But you, mother, what is your idea about it all?”

“Oh, I, my dear? I? I count for so little—what does it matter what I think?”

“It matters a lot to me.”

Marcelle de Ventadour sighed again. For a moment it seemed as if she would make of her son a confidant of all her hopes, her secret longings, her spiritless repinings; as if she would tell him of what she thought and what she planned during those hours and days that she spent on her couch, listless and idle. But the habits of a life-time cannot be shaken off in a moment, even under the stress of great emotion, and Marcelle had been too long under the domination of her mother-in-law to venture on an independent train of thought.

“My dear lamb,” she said tenderly; “I only pray for your happiness—and I feel that your grandmother knows best.”

Bertrand gave a quick, impatient little sigh.

“What we have to do,” his mother resumed more calmly after a while, “is to try and wipe away the shame that clings around your father’s memory.”

“We cannot do that unless we pay what we owe,” he retorted.

“We cannot do that, Bertrand,” she rejoined earnestly. “We have not the money. At the time of—of your father’s death the creditors took everything from us that they could: we were left with nothing—nothing but this old owl’s nest. It, too, had been heavily mortgaged, but—but a—but a kind friend paid off the mortgage, then allowed us to stay on here.”

“A kind friend,” Bertrand asked. “Who?”

“I—don’t know,” his mother replied after an imperceptible moment’s hesitation. “Your grandmother knows about it, she has always kept control of our money. We must leave it to her. She knows best.”

Then, as Bertrand relapsed into silence, she insisted more earnestly:

“You do think that your grandmother knows best, do you not, Bertrand?”

“Perhaps,” he said with an impatient sigh, and turned away.

It was then that he caught sight of Micheline—Micheline who, as was her wont, had withdrawn silently into the nearest window recess, and had sat there, patient and watchful, until such time as it pleased some one to take notice of her.

“Micheline,” Bertrand said, “have you been here all the time?”

“All the time,” she replied simply.

“It is getting late,” he remarked, and gazed out of the window to distant Luberon, behind whose highest peak the sunset had already lighted his crimson fire.