"It is you, Achard," said the marchioness, who was the first to speak. "I have been waiting for you half an hour. Where can you have been?"

"Had your ladyship walked fifty paces farther, you would have found me under the large oak, on the edge of the forest."

"You know I never walk that way," said the marchioness, with a visible shudder.

"And you are wrong, madam; there is one in heaven who has a right to our joint prayers, and who, perhaps, is astonished to hear only those of old Achard."

"And how know you that I do not also pray?" said the marchioness, with a certain degree of feverish agitation. "Do you believe that the dead require we should be constantly kneeling on their tombs?"

"No," replied the old man, with a feeling of profound sorrow; "no, I do not believe that the dead are so exacting, madam; but I believe if any part of us lives under ground, it would thrill at the noise caused by the steps of those whom we have loved during our life."

"But," said the marchioness, in a low and hollow tone, "if that love were a guilty pa.s.sion?"

"However guilty it may have been, madam," replied the old man, also lowering his voice, "do you not believe that blood and tears have expatiated it? G.o.d was then, believe me, too severe a judge, not to have now become an indulgent father."

"Yes, G.o.d has perhaps pardoned it," murmured the marchioness, "but did the world know that which G.o.d knows, would it pardon as G.o.d has done?"

"The world!" exclaimed the old man; "the world! Yes, there is the great word which has again escaped your lips! The world! It is to it, to that phantom you have sacrificed everything, madam; your feelings as a lover, your feelings as a wife, your feelings as a mother! your own happiness, the happiness of others! The world! It is the fear of the world which has clothed you in perpetual mourning, beneath which you hope to conceal remorse! And in that you are right, for you have succeeded in deceiving it, for it has taken your remorse for virtue!"

The marchioness raised her head with some degree of agitation, and putting aside her veil that she might look upon the person who addressed her in such extraordinary language; then, after a momentary silence, not being able to discover any sinister expression in the calm features of the old man.

"You speak to me," she said to him, "with a bitterness which would lead me to believe you have some personal reason for reproaching me. Have I failed in any promise I have made? The persons who attend on you by my orders, are they wanting in that respect which I have desired them to observe? You know, if this should be the case, you have only to say a word."

"Forgive me, madam, it is in sorrow that I speak, not bitterness; it is the effect of solitude and of age. You must well know what it is to have sorrows that you cannot speak of--tears which we dare not shed, and which fall back, drop by drop, upon the heart! No, I have not to complain of any one, madam, since first, from a feeling for which I am truly grateful, without seeking to know whence it emanated, you have been pleased to see personally that my wants were all supplied, and you have not for a single day forgotten your promise, but like the old prophet, I have sometimes seen an angel come as your messenger."

"Yes," replied the marchioness, "I know that Marguerite often accompanies the servant who is charged to wait upon you; and I have seen with pleasure the attentions she has paid you, and the friendship she feels for you."

"But in my turn, I have not failed either, I trust, in the promises I made. For twenty years I have lived far from the habitations of men, I have kept away every living being from this dwelling; so much did I fear on your account, the delirium of my waking hours, or the indiscretion of my dreams."

"Undoubtedly! undoubtedly! and happily the secret has been well preserved," said the marchioness, placing her hand upon Achard's arm; "but this is a stronger incentive in my mind not to lose in a single day the fruit of twenty years, all more gloomy, more isolated, and more terrible than yours have been."

"Yes, I understand you perfectly; and you have shuddered more than once upon suddenly remembering that there is roaming about the world, a man who may one day call upon me to reveal that secret, and that I have not the right to conceal it from that man. Ah! you tremble at the bare idea, do you not? But, tranquilise yourself; that man, when but a boy, fled from the school at which we had placed him in Scotland, and for ten years past nothing has been heard of him. In short, destined to obscurity, he himself rushed forward to meet his fate. He is now lost amid the millions that crowd this populous world, and not a soul knows where to find him; this poor unit, without a name, is lost for ever. He must have lost his father's letter, have mislaid the token by which I was to recognise him; or, better still, perhaps he exists no longer."

"It is cruel of you, Achard," replied the marchioness, "to utter such words to a mother. You cannot appreciate the strange feelings and singular contradictions contained in the heart of woman. For, in fine, can I not be tranquil unless my child be dead! Consider, my old friend; this secret, of which he has been ignorant five and twenty years, has it become at the age of twenty-five, so necessary to his existence that he cannot live, unless it be revealed to him? Believe me, Achard, for himself even it would be better he should still remain ignorant of it, as he has been to this day. I feel a.s.sured that to this day he has been happy--old man, do not mar this happiness--do not inspire his mind with thoughts which may induce him to commit an evil action. No--tell him, in lieu of the dreadful tale you were desired to communicate, that his mother has gone to rejoin his father in heaven; and, would to G.o.d that it were so! but that when dying (for I must see him whatever you may say to the contrary, I will even if it be but once, press him to my heart), when dying, as I said, his mother had bequeathed him to her friend the Marchioness d'Auray, in whom he will find a second mother."

"I understand you, madam," said Achard, smiling. "It is not the first time you have pointed out this path, in which you wish to lead me astray. Only to-day, you speak more openly, and if you dared to do so, or if you knew me less, you would offer me some reward to induce me to disobey the last injunctions of him who sleeps by us."

The marchioness made a gesture as if about to interrupt him.

"Listen to me, madam," hastily said the old man, stretching forth his hand, "and let my words be considered by you as holy and irrevocable. As faithful as I have been to the promise which I made to the Marchioness d'Auray, so faithful will I be to that I made to the Count de Morlaix, on the day when his son, or your son, shall present himself before me with the token of recognition, and shall demand to know the secret. I shall reveal it to him, madam. As to the papers which attest it, you are aware that they are to be delivered to him only after the death of the Marquis d'Auray. The secret is here," said the old man, placing his hand upon his heart; "no human power could have extracted it before the time; no human power, that time having arrived, can prevent me from revealing it. The papers are there in that closet, the key of which I always have about me, and it is only by robbery or by a.s.sa.s.sination that I can be deprived of them."

"But," said the marchioness, half rising and supporting herself on the arm of her chair, "you might die before my husband, old man; for although he is more dangerously ill than you are, you are older than he is, and then what would become of those papers?"

"The priest who shall attend my last moments will receive them under the seal of confession."

"Ah! it is that!" cried the marchioness, rising, "and thus this chain of fears will be prolonged until my death! and the last link of it will be to all eternity rivetted to my tomb. There is in this world a man, the only one perhaps, who is as immoveable as a rock; and G.o.d has placed him in my path, not only as a remorse,' but as a vengeance also. My secret is in your hands, old man,--tis well!--do with it as you will!--you are the master, and I am your slave--farewell!"

So saying, the marchioness left the cottage, and returned towards the chateau.

CHAPTER VIII.--THE SECRET.

More than ten years have pa.s.sed since I beheld him, The n.o.ble boy; now time annuls my oath And cancels all his wrongs.

I took a solemn oath to veil the secret, Conceal thy rights, while lived her lord, And thus allow'd thy youth to quit my roof.

Bulwer.--The Sea Captain.

"Yes," said the old man, gazing after the marchioness as she withdrew, "yes, I know you have a heart of adamant, madam, insensible to every sort of fear, with the exception of that which G.o.d has placed within your breast to supply the place of remorse. But that suffices; and it is dearly buying that reputation you have obtained for virtue, to pay the price of such eternal terrors. It is true that the virtue of the Marchioness d'Auray is so firmly established, that if truth herself were to rise from the earth or to descend from heaven to arraign her, she would be treated as a calumniator. But G.o.d orders all things according to His will, and what He does ordain, His wisdom has long before matured."

"Rightly reasoned," cried a youthful and sonorous voice, replying to the religious axiom which the resignation of the old man had led him to utter. "Upon my word, good father, you speak like Ecclesiastes." Achard turned round and perceived Paul, who had arrived just as the marchioness left him, but who was so absorbed by the scene we have just described, that she had not observed the young captain. The latter, seeing the old man alone, approached him, and not hearing the last words he had uttered, had spoken with his usual good humor. Achard, who was surprised by his unexpected appearance, looked at him as if he wished him to repeat that which he had said.

"I say," resumed Paul, "that there is more grandeur in resignation that humbly bows itself, than in philosophy that doubts. That is a maxim of our quakers, which, for my eternal welfare, I wish I had less often on my tongue, and more frequently in my heart."

"I beg your pardon, sir," said the old man on seeing our adventurer, who was fixedly gazing at him, while standing with one foot on the threshold of his door. "May I know who you are?"

"For the moment," replied Paul, giving, as usual, free course to his poetical and heedless gaiety, "I am a child of the republic of Plato, having all human kind for brothers, the world for a country, and possessing upon this earth only the station I have worked out for myself."

"And what are you in search of?" continued the old man, smiling in spite of himself at the air of jovial good-nature which was spread over the features of the young man.

"I am seeking," replied Paul, "at three leagues distance from Lorient, at five hundred paces from resembles this one, and in which I am to find an old man, whom it is very likely is yourself."

"And what is the name of this old man?"

"Louis Achard."

"That is my name."

"Then may the blessing of heaven descend on your white hairs," said Paul, in a voice which at once changing its tone, a.s.sumed that of deep feeling and respect; "for here is a letter which I believe was written by my father, in which he says that you are an honest man."

"Does not that letter enclose something?" cried d'Auray, and advancing a step nearer to the young captain.

"It does," replied the latter, opening the letter and taking out of it one half of a Venetian sequin, which had been broken in two; "it seems to be part of a gold coin, of which I have one half, and you ought to be in possession of the other."

Achard mechanically held out his hand, while gazing with intense interest at the young man.

"Yes, yes," said the old man, and eyes gradually became more and more suffused with tears: "yes, this is the true token, and more than that, the extraordinary resemblance," and opening his arms, he cried, "child!--oh! my G.o.d! my G.o.d!"

"What is it?" cried Paul, extending his arms to support the old man, who was quite overcome by his emotions.

"Oh! can you not comprehend?" replied the latter, "can you not comprehend that you are the living portrait of your father, and that I loved your father--loved him so much that I would have shed my blood, have given my life to serve him, as I would now for you, young man, were you to demand it."

"Embrace me, then, my old friend," said Paul, throwing his arms around the old man, "for the chain of feeling, believe me, is not broken, which extended from the tomb of the father to the cradle of the son. Whatever my father may have been, if in order to resemble him it be only necessary to have a conscience without reproach, undaunted courage, and a memory which never forgets a benefit conferred, although it may sometimes forget an injury; if this be so, then am I, as you have said, my father's living portrait, and more so in soul than in form."

"Yes, he possessed all these," replied the old man, with solemnity, and clasping Paul to his breast, looking at him with affectionate though tearful tenderness--"Yes, he had the same commanding voice, the same flashing eyes, the same n.o.bleness of heart. But why was it that I have not seen you sooner, young man? I have, during my life, pa.s.sed many gloomy hours, which your presence would have brightened."

"Why--because this letter told me to seek you out only when I should have attained the age of twenty-five, and because it is not long since I attained that age, not more than an hour ago."