by Eugène Sue
“Mere whims, to which we felt constrained to yield out of fear lest the brainless body decline the marriage!”
“Well, Marchioness, what you consider the whims of a brainless body — in other words, this determination of having a considerable sum of money in her possession — is, in my opinion, on the part of your niece, an action that denotes thorough reflection, and the consequences of which may, perhaps, prove most disastrous, if, as I much fear, a thought that flashed through my mind last night has actually put me on the right track. That thought obsesses and pursues me.”
“What thought is that? Come, Abbot, be more explicit. Do not speak in riddles.”
“It is my opinion that Bertha is in love — crazily smitten!”
“Bertha in love! Crazily smitten! Come, your mind is wandering!”
“Oh, Marchioness! In that, I hold, lies the mystery. You may ask who the object is of her love—”
The conversation between Madam Tremblay and the Abbot was interrupted by the blustering arrival of the Count of Plouernel.
Raoul Neroweg, Count of Plouernel, then about thirty years of age, in no manner resembled his sister. In consequence of one of the most mysterious of the laws of nature, the Germanic type of the Frankish race reappeared in him as, repeatedly across the ages, it had reappeared in all its pristine purity in several of his ancestors. This son of the Nerowegs had hair and beard of a fiery red, white skin, sea-green eyes, and an aquiline nose, hooked like an eagle’s beak. His rude and haughty nature was tempered by the gracefulness of the accomplished courtier. He was a sample of so many seigneurs of our times — greedy and prodigal, vainglorious and luxurious, without shame or heart, consumed by ambition and more still by the desire of drawing upon himself publicly the eyes of his master, and capable, in order to attain that purpose, of committing the vilest crimes. Accordingly, the Count had seen nothing but a natural expedient, and profitable to his own career, in the project of prostituting his sister to the King of England. This notwithstanding, the Count of Plouernel carried high his head with the pride of his name. Yet such is the moral aberration of the folks of the court that, in their eyes, the adulterous love of Kings, so far from soiling their sisters, their wives, or their daughters, honors, exalts, crowns, consecrates them. From that instant prostitution becomes august, infamy a sacred thing! The royal leman becomes a Madonna!
Monsieur Plouernel was horrified at Bertha’s ill will, and at her carrying her indifference to the fortune of her brother and to the service of her King to the point of refusing to give herself up to his Majesty Charles II of England. The young girl, already a conundrum by reason of the manner in which she looked upon the things of her times, was, after that latest performance, nothing but an insane woman in her brother’s eyes, and fit to be locked up for the good of his house — a step that he would at one time undoubtedly have taken, were it not for the involuntary compassion he experienced at the sight of Bertha almost dying of a languishing malady. Later, when the Duke of Chateauvieux made overtures of a double alliance between the two families to Raoul, he did not hesitate an instant to pledge his sister to the young Marquis. Accident willed it that the Marquis was a young and handsome nobleman, although a debauchee, a drunkard and a gambler, neither worse nor better than so many others of his caste; but had he been old, ugly, a cripple, rotten of body and soul, the Count’s action would not have been otherwise, nor would he have recoiled before any measures to compel his sister to submit to the marriage.
When the Count of Plouernel entered Madam Tremblay’s salon he was laboring under a violent irritation, caused by the information transmitted to him by his Mezlean bailiff in a letter that he had just received, advising him of Bertha’s intervention in behalf of the vassals of his seigniory. He was pressed to meet the enormous financial obligations required by his ostentatious living at Versailles — his equipages, his jewelry, his banquets, his splendid balls, without taking into account his reckless gambling. Seeing the courtier’s fortune consisted almost exclusively in his seigniorial domains, there was no way of increasing his revenues except by overwhelming his vassals with exorbitant imposts. The Count of Plouernel, as almost all the other members of his caste, neither felt, nor was able to feel, any pity for his vassals, whom he had the right to tax at pleasure. Were they not a conquered and disinherited race? an inferior species, standing midway between man and the brute? bent, broken and deformed by a ceaseless round of sorrows and toil? condemned by fate to labor and produce wealth for the benefit of their seigneur? The Count of Plouernel approved himself consistent with his race, his traditions and his times by exhibiting inexorable severity towards this species, which he sincerely and naïvely looked upon as an inferior race, and at all points unlike his own. Accordingly, in an angry voice, with flashing eyes, and holding out to the Marchioness the letter which he had just received, and that he crumpled with rage, he said:
“Do you know, madam, what my sister was up to during her short sojourn at Mezlean? My Mezlean bailiff informs me that he was about to execute a seizure upon several teams belonging to certain recalcitrant vassals who were evading payment of the taxes that it pleased me to impose upon them, when my sister, happening to ride by along the road, took it upon herself to forbid my bailiff to carry out his orders, or even to arrest a scamp of a poacher who deserves to hang!”
“That is unheard of! That is downright impudence!” cried the Marchioness.
“Wait, madam, that is not yet all — my bailiff and an usher of the fisc, who also had a process against those clowns, being aware of their malignant disposition, secured the escort of a squad of soldiers from the regiment of the Marquis, who has set up his headquarters at Vannes, since the Duke of Chaulnes apprehends some trouble in the province. Well, madam! Would you believe such an excess of audacity possible? The clowns dared to rebel against the escort of the bailiff, and tried to disarm them!”
“Why nephew! that is a very alarming piece of news. It is grave!”
“The sergeant of the escort, a resolute man, soon had the upper hand of the canaille. He seized three of the ringleaders in the mutiny, and had them pinioned tightly by his soldiers. And what do you imagine my sister did? No, you will not believe such audacity possible!”
“I suppose she begged mercy for them. Oh! I doubt not that she interceded in their behalf also—”
“Worse than that, Abbot! She demanded their immediate liberation, and threatened the sergeant with the anger of the Marquis of Chateauvieux!”
“Steps have to be taken in the matter of this poor insane girl.”
“I am all the readier for that, madam, seeing that, according to what my bailiff writes, my sister’s intervention in these matters has produced detestable effects. My vassals, finding themselves encouraged in resisting the payment of the taxes, are now loudly clamoring that the imposts are exorbitant, and will not pay them! Finally, the most lawless of them, feeling encouraged by immunity, are no longer afraid to declare that the hay-fork of a Breton does not fear the bayonet of a soldier of the King; that if the latter are well armed, the peasants are more numerous; and that the fury of their despair will render them a match for the soldiers when the hour of revolt shall have sounded! It is a call to insurrection! To a popular revolt!”
“An insurrection! A revolt!” cried the Marchioness, alarmed. “How dare the wretches talk of insurrection and revolt!”
“We are relapsing into the Jacquerie!” put in the Abbot, raising his hands heavenward. “Jacques under Louis XIV! Under the Grand Monarch! In the Seventeenth Century! It must be the end of the world! Woe is us!”
“Prompt and terrible punishment will, I still hope, my dear Abbot, bring these clowns back to their duty,” answered the Count. “But my sister has encouraged the scoundrels. Her insane generosity has chosen for its object the very worst elements of all my vassals. The poacher and the recalcitrant vassal belong to a certain Lebrenn family, that numbers among its members two mariners of the port of Vannes — a brace of active and intriguing ad
venturers, who are strongly suspected of aiming at sedition, and of even having secret understandings with the republicans of Holland! They are both men of thought and action — most dangerous fellows!”
“Marchioness,” observed the Abbot, casting a meaning look at Madam Tremblay, “what did I tell you about that family, which our venerable Society of Jesus over a century and a half ago entered in its secret register as one of the most dangerous? My information evidently was most correct and accurate. An eye will have to be kept upon those people.”
“What do you refer to?” asked the Count of Plouernel. “What information can you have had concerning these people?”
“We shall go over that more at our leisure, my dear Raoul. The details of the matter would now lead us too far away. Only be certain that you can not have a more pernicious family among your vassals than this identical Lebrenn family. We shall talk over the matter later. Suffice it now to say that they are the sort of people that must be suppressed. I may be able to render you some assistance in that direction; but I consider that the most urgent thing just now is to place your sister where it would be absolutely impossible for her to pursue the course of her eccentricities and follies.”
“Oh! Abbot, do you not know there is an obstacle, a serious one in the way?”
“I know full well that your projects of a double marriage compel you to humor the brainless creature — but, one thing or the other: Bertha is either willing, or she is not willing, to lead the plan to a successful issue. Now, then, it is my opinion that she is not willing. Her determination is made.”
“You are in error, Abbot,” said the Count of Plouernel. “Bertha does not object to the marriage.”
“But she demands time — to reflect! Not so, my dear Raoul? Well, then, all her delays have but one object in view: Bertha seeks to gain time in order to deliver herself without restraint to her follies, perhaps to — it is this that, above all, frightens me for the honor of your house — the bare thought frightens and terrifies me—”
“What is the cause of your fear? Come, explain yourself!”
“My dear Raoul, our poor Abbot thinks Bertha is in love.”
“Good God!” broke in the Count, stupefied. “Do you think so, madam? Bertha in love! Impossible!”
“Everything leads to the belief that her love is an unworthy love, since Bertha surrounds it with profound mystery,” the Abbot proceeded to explain. “Neither the Marchioness, nor yourself, nor I — I admit it — have until now been able to suspect, or even remotely guess who the object can be of this evidently monstrous passion. That such a passion does exist I make no doubt. All signs point in that direction.”
“Thinking the matter over, and recalling certain circumstances that now rise vividly to my mind, I share the Abbot’s opinion,” added the Marchioness. “Bertha must have availed herself of the freedom that we allowed her to abandon herself to some disgraceful choice. One of these days she will flee with her lover, and the honor of our house will be tarnished forever! A scandal, dishonor, shame to our family!”
“The devil take it!” cried the Count of Plouernel. “If my sister should ever carry her disregard of all duty to the point of refusing a marriage that secures such great advantages to me, I swear to God! if the cause of her refusal be some disgraceful love, I shall immediately go and throw myself at the feet of the King, and request him to have the wretch locked up in the Prison of the Repentant Women where she will be treated with the utmost rigor.”
“Mademoiselle Plouernel consigned to the Prison of the Repentant Women! Oh, my dear boy, you can not mean that!” said Abbot Boujaron with devout unction. “No; no; that is out of the question! But what is sensible and proper is that your sister take the veil, and that the share of the inheritance due her according to the custom of Brittany, be assigned to the community that may receive the great sinner, to aid it in exercising its charitable works. Besides, believe me, my dear boy,” added the Abbot, smiling, “it is not necessary that our sinner be confined in the Prison of the Repentant Women in order to be treated with the uttermost rigor, and be severely chastised in the flesh and in her pride — for the salvation of her soul.”
The Count of Plouernel lent but an inattentive ear to the prelate’s words, and resumed in a towering rage:
“My sister in love with some vulgar fellow! My marriage, upon which I raised so many hopes, thwarted by the ill-will of the wretched creature! Malediction! Let her tremble before my anger!”
“My dear boy,” said the Abbot to the exasperated Count, “there is a way of putting an end to these perplexities. Demand to-day, instantly, from Bertha a categoric answer — yes, or no — on her marriage with the Marquis.”
“Zounds! Abbot — I know beforehand she will say neither yes nor no.”
“That may be. But after you shall have urged her a last time, entreated, implored her in the name of your most cherished interests to decide this very day, would not her persistence in further delays prove to you that she is determined not to marry the Marquis, and that it is certain she is sacrificing him to some unworthy love?”
“In that event — malediction! a curse upon her! A dungeon cell will overcome her resistance.”
“My dear boy, we must not curse anybody,” remarked the Abbot piously; “but it is necessary that, without flinching, you perform the duties that devolve upon you, the head of your illustrious house. It is urgent that to-morrow, yes, not later than to-morrow, you prevent your sister by prompt and rigorous measures from dishonoring your name and herself. You have plenty of cells and dungeons.”
“I swear to God!” cried the Count of Plouernel, “if Bertha refuses to decide to accept the marriage — I shall be pitiless. Yes, and to-morrow we shall take the steps that may be necessary to safeguard our honor.”
The Count was interrupted in the flow of his threats by the entrance of a lackey who said to Madam Tremblay:
“Monsieur the Marquis of Chateauvieux has presented himself at the door, and requests to be admitted before madam. May I introduce him, madam?”
“Beg Monsieur the Marquis to enter,” answered the Marchioness of Tremblay. “The dear colonel! How happy we are that he comes to pay us a visit!”
And immediately after the lackey withdrew she added hurriedly:
“Raoul, not a word to the Marquis about what we have been saying, before we have heard from Bertha.”
As the Marchioness addressed these words to the Count of Plouernel, who answered her with an affirmative nod, the Marquis of Chateauvieux appeared at the door of the salon, and saluted the company with the graceful ease of a courtier. Nevertheless, the colonel seemed troubled in mind; he held a letter in his hand.
“Madam,” he said, addressing the Marchioness, “I have news for you that grieves me doubly.”
“What about, my dear Marquis?”
“This despatch that I have just received by a courier from Monsieur the Duke of Chaulnes, Governor of Brittany, orders me to join him immediately with the two battalions of my regiment which I am to collect on the way thither. A sedition, believed to have been fomented by the parliament, has broken out in Rennes. The King’s authority is assailed; the citizens are up in arms; the whole populace is in rebellion. The Duke of Chaulnes does not feel safe.”
“Great God!” cried Madam Tremblay, no less alarmed than the Abbot. “What you are telling us, Marquis, is a most grave event.”
“All the graver,” interjected the Count of Plouernel thoughtfully, “seeing this sedition seems to coincide with the recent rebellion of my own vassals of Mezlean. Would you believe it, Marquis, that canaille had the audacity of resisting your soldiers; the woolen caps tried to disarm your men!”
“I have been informed of that occurrence by a letter from one of my subaltern officers, who was compelled on that occasion to release his prisoners upon orders from Mademoiselle Plouernel. As a consequence, I have had to recall that detachment, it being impolitic to leave my soldiers in a region where they had to submit to an outrage le
ft unpunished. They will arrive here this evening. The honor of the regiment is compromised until the guilty parties are punished.”
“Believe me, my dear Marquis, I feel grieved at my sister’s rash interference on the occasion.”
“Without stopping to consider the consequences of her act, Mademoiselle Plouernel yielded to a generous impulse for which I would not dare to blame her. But since I did myself the honor of pronouncing her name,” added the Marquis of Chateauvieux, “allow me, my dear Count, and you Madam the Marchioness, to address a request to you. I must leave the Castle of Plouernel within two hours; however insignificant may be the revolt of the ill-intentioned people of Rennes, whom I expect to chastise severely, civil war has its risks. The bullet from an old musket fired by a bourgeois not infrequently hits its mark as unerringly as that of our own soldiers. I do not know what fate awaits me in the conflict that is about to take place. Before taking leave of you, my dear Count, I entertain the liveliest desire not to be left in doubt concerning the favorable or unfavorable success of a double marriage that is the highest aspiration of myself and my father.”
“Dear Marquis,” answered the Count of Plouernel with emphasis, “my aunt, the Abbot and myself were just considering the urgency of obtaining this very day a final answer from my sister, which I doubt not will be in accord with the desires of our two families. The untoward events that hasten your departure render the necessity for her answer all the more urgent. If she is what she should be, and what I doubt not she is, our chaplain will betroth you to-day to my sister in the chapel of the castle. It will be your induction into the family. I had so decided.”
“And after you shall have chastised the insolent bourgeois of Rennes, a thing that will be easy to do and will be done promptly, thanks to you and your soldiers, my dear Marquis,” put in Madam Tremblay, feeling more at ease, “you will return to us. Monsieur the Duke your father and Mademoiselle Chateauvieux as agreed before our departure from Versailles, will come to Plouernel, where the festivities of the double marriage will be held with so much splendor and magnificence that they will be the admiration of all Brittany.”
