Complete Poetical Works of Charlotte Smith

by Charlotte Smith

  CHAPTER IX.

  “No wound that warlike hand of enemy

  “Inflicts by dint of sword, so sore doth light

  “As does the poisonous sting which calumny

  “Infixeth on the name.”

  SPENCER.

  IT was late in the evening when D’Alonville reached the end of his journey. Fatigued not so much by travelling in so uneasy a vehicle, as by the solicitude of his mind, and the care of which his old and helpless companion required of him — Having seen him provided for an an inn, D’Alonville hastened to the hotel where he expected to find his friends, and delighted himself with thinking that these deeds being saved, would mitigate their vexation for the destruction of their castle; but he had the mortification to find, they had left Coblentz the next day but one after his departure from Rosenheim; and that they were gone to Vienna. Thither indeed he was cordially invited in the letter Madame de Rosenheim had left for him; but he felt himself hurt and depressed by this unexpected absence; and retired uneasy and sorrowful to his former lodgings; nor could he till after some consideration, determine whether to go to Vienna, or send thither, charged with his successful commission, his ancient companion, while he himself sought to join some of the corps of emigrant French that were again forming. The next day he met the same friend who had formerly supplied him with money, and for whose advice, from his age, and the friendship his father had borne him, D’Alonville had a great respect. This nobleman, the Marquis de Magnevillier, advised him by all means to go to Vienna; where after he had seen his friends, he might take such measures as the circumstances required; and either enlist himself under the Prince of Conde, or in despite of the late decrees against emigrants, endeavor to return into France; a part which Monsieur de Magnevilliers himself meant to take, though well aware of all the hazard that attended it. He was of Picardy, as well as D’Alonville; and persuaded himself that they might by returning, raise yet a party in favor of the unhappy monarch, whose cruel and unjust imprisonment would, he thought, estrange from the usurped tyranny of the men who had inflicted it, many who now shrunk under their power and submitted to their government. But, whoever ventured to return must do it singly and with artifice and caution, Monsieur de Magnevilliers, without pressing his friend to accompany, or even to join him, contented himself with informing him in confidence, what he informing him in confidence, what he intends himself, and thought best for him, but not till he had visited his German friends, whose regard was of too much value to be neglected. Monsieur de Magnevilliers then gave D’Alonville another small supply of money, who received it without scruple; and the next day set off for Vienna, with Rodolph, by the diligence, already crouded with French, who, dispersed and uncertain what to do, were travelling, some towards the capital of the German empire, and others towards Italy. D’Alonville felt not that consolation which arises from the contemplation of fellow sufferers in calamity; on the contrary, his heart sunk in reflecting on the sad condition to which so many brave men were reduced, and the deplorable state of the country whence they were driven, for no other crime than adherence to the king whom they had sworn to defend, and to a government which, however defective, was infinitely preferable to the tyrannical anarchy which had, under the pretence of curing those defects, brought an everlasting disgrace on the French name. Among his fellow-travellers were the aged and the helpless, who knew not where to find shelter for their weary heads; and who seemed to repent that they had not submitted their necks to the stroke of the executioner, rather than have been driven forth to linger out, in foreign countries, their few and miserable days. Women, who had been accustomed to the elegancies of life, were now accompanied by helpless children, wandering round the world without the requisites of existence; some deploring the death of their fathers, brothers, or husbands; others uncertain what was become of those most dear to them, and dreading to be assured.

  The mind of many seemed to have been so shaken by the storms that had so heavily fallen upon them, that they had no longer strength to contemplate what was yet before them, but sunk helpless and resistless under the weight of their sufferings; others with more fortitude accommodated their spirits to their fallen fortunes, and attempted to bear with calmness the evils they could not escape; while another description of persons, and principally young military men, were full of projects for the re-establishment of their affairs, and sanguine in the success of those projects. D’Alonville, who had formed no scheme for his future proceedings, listened to those of his countrymen with dissidence, but saw none which seemed to have a more reasonable foundation. than what had been proposed to him by Monsieur de Magnevilliers. He hoped, however, to receive council and consolation from the friends to whom he was going, and believed that in the old Baron de Rosenheim he should find a second father.

  He hastened immediately on his arrival to pay his compliments to the family of Rosenheim, and with all the eagerness of youth and inexperience, anticipated as he went, the cordial reception he should meet with. He found the family at home, and was introduced into a room where the Baron, his wife, his daughter, and Count D’Alberg, with three German officers and several ladies, were engaged at play. Madame de Rosenheim was the only person who arose to meet him, and expressed pleasure at his coming. Madame D’Alberg was so changed in her manner, that he felt no inclination to address her. The Baron indeed spoke to him, with the ease and politeness inseparable from the address of an old military courtier; but Count D’Alberg, who was standing near a table where others were playing, hardly bowed when Madame de Rosenheim introduced him, and surveyed him in a way which it required no great knowledge of manner and countenance, to discover to to signify approbation.

  It has been generally said, that no set of young men on earth were so presuming, or so apparently satisfied with themselves, as young French officers; and this has been repeated by their own writers, and echoed by ours, till we, who judge only from what we read (and that frequently in books of mere entertainment, where all the characters are overcharged) have taken it for granted, that every young military man in France, is, (or, perhaps it should be said, was) a coxcomb. That a very great number were so; that their manners were more frivolous, and their appearance more effeminent, than the most frivolous and most effeminate among us, cannot be denied; but as under these blemishes and follies, personal bravery, and a punctilious sense of honor, is acknowledged to have existed, the candour of other nations would not be too much extended, if credit were given them for many other virtues, which, however, appearances were against them, they certainly possessed in as great a degree, at least, as the military among any people. D’Alonville was undoubtedly an exception to the prejudice that indiscriminately condemns them all, for he was so far from being vain or presumptuous, that his dissident sensibility had frequently been the ridicule of his young companions; and much more so of his elder brother, who was of a daring and ambitious spirit, and had at an early period thrown of that parental authority, which in France was more and longer respected than in England; and having a considerable fortune independent of the Viscount de Fayolles, his father, he had long thought and acted for himself. He had decidedly taken the republican party, quitted his name, abjured his rank, and adhered to the men who, not contented with limiting the power of the king, and humiliating the nobility, had now imprisoned the monarch, and massacred the few nobles who remained around him. It was this conduct in his eldest son that had driven to despair the Viscount de Fayolles; it was this conduct in his brother that had cruelly wounded the sensible heart of D’Alonville, and depressed his spirits more than the misfortune of his exile; of that if ever he had indulged any degree of warmest hours of youth, affluence, and prosperity, it was not now that any symptoms of it remained. Count D’Alberg, to whom he had been described as assuming and avantageuse, surveyed him as if he was convinced of his being so; and hardly shewed him those external marks of civility which one gentleman owes to another. No man was more easily repulsed than D’Alonville; and so much was he hurt by the manner in wh
ich he was received, particularly by Madame D’Alberg, that he determined to take his leave; to write the information he had to give, and to bid adieu for ever to friends from whom he had certainly expected a continuation of the kindness they had shewn him, before he had done any thing to deserve it.

  He, therefore, after remaining a few moments in the room, (where Madame de Rosenheim went on with her play as soon as she had spoken to him) approached the table where she sat, and told her in a low voice, that as he saw this was not a proper moment to trouble her with an account of his commission, he would do himself the honor of writing to her the event, and would deliver to the care of her people the pacquet of papers which were below and which he found it was not now a fit time to restore to her. The Baroness, however, accustomed to command herself, changed countenance, and betrayed emotions that seemed to D’Alonville perfectly unaccountable. Then recovering herself, she gave her cards to gentleman who was near her chair, and saying with a forced smile, that she had business with her young friend the Chevalier D’Alonville, she left the room. — D’Alonville bowing to the party who remained in it, followed her.

  Madame de Rosenheim passed into a lower apartment where preparations were making for supper; she sat down, and desired D’Alonville to take a chair by her. He silently obeyed.

  “My amiable friend,” said she, “thinks, I fear, that our reception of him is not such as he deserves. I am not at liberty to account for it; I dare tell him no more than that the Baron does not know the service he so generously undertook; and Count D’Alberg, unhappy from the circumstances of the late retreat, which he thinks disgraceful to the armies of the emperor, his master, — Some disagreeable events too that have befallen himself — The situation of public affairs — In fact, my dear Sir, the best men are liable to have their tempers ruffled by the perverse accidents of life; and though there is not in the world a husband more fondly attached to his wife than Count D’Alberg —

  Madame de Rosenheim hesitated like one, who, sensible that an apology is necessary, seeks for that least likely to hurt the feelings of him to whom it must be made. D’Alonville interrupted her. —

  “My dear Madam,” said he, “I beg of you not to distress yourself and me, by accounting for what certainly needs no apology. I am a stranger to Count D’Alberg, and have no claim whatever upon his friendship, or on that of the Baron de Rosenheim. The obligations I owe to you, Madam, are such as no time can efface from my remembrance? but does it therefore follow, that I am to tax the kindness of all our house? Surely no! I ought not perhaps to have intruded upon you at all; but charged as I was with a commission which, though you did not give it me, I felt myself powerfully impelled to fulfil, I was unwilling to trust any thing to chance. If you will now permit me,” added he, rising and going into a sort of hall next the room where they were, “to put into your possession these papers, and to wish you and your family every felicity, I will trouble you no more.” The vexation and distress of Madame de Rosenheim visibly encreased, when D’Alonville put on a chair near her, the deeds about which she had shewn so much anxiety. “Is it possible,” said she, “you can have succeeded? What hazard you must have been in! And what a reception you have met with in return. I am, indeed, obliged to you more than I can find words to express! I shall not be easy till I know in what way I can be greatful grateful! The patriots then are not in possession of Rosenheim?”

  D’Alonville, from the manner of the whole family on his first appearance, had taken up a notion, that from common fame, or by means of some of their vassals, the fate of their habitation was known; and that, as is often the case, in misfortune, they were sullenly resigned to their loss, yet half disposed to quarrel with the world around them. Having entertained this idea, he was surprise at the question put to him by the Baroness, and embarrassed how to answer it; but after a moment’s pause, he determined to relate, in as concise a manner as possible, the circumstances of this journey. Madame de Rosenheim heard the account of that destruction which had overwhelmed her noble habitation, with the firmness of an elevated mind. Great as the loss was, considered in a pecuniary light, the reflected how much greater it might have been, but for the assiduous gratitude of D’Alonville, in rescuing from the ruins, the deeds which, at least, secured to her family the lands of their ancestors; and looking on him, she remembered how much more he had lost; how many of his countrymen were driven from more splendid palaces to wander over the world; and having made these reflections, it appeared unworthy of her heart and understanding, to lament deeply her own loss. But D’Alonville, while he admired the calm dignity with which she listened to a detail, which would have agitated many women with vexation and rage, yet saw that something more embarrassing than how to relate this event to her family, hung upon her mind; and fancying that his stay only added to the solicitude she seemed suffer, he arose to take his leave. The Baroness, as he was repeating his wishes for the happiness of her and her household, while his voice faultered and tears were in his eyes, suddenly followed him. as he was opening the door, took his hand and said eagerly “We must not part so, Chevalier! Why am I not at liberty to explain to you! — But you do not immediately leave Vienna?” “Immediately,” said D’Alonville. “I had no other business than to deliver into your hands, Madame, the papers I have been so lucky as to recover, and to acquit myself of a little, a very little, of the great debt of gratitude I owe you; having done so, I go.”

  “Whither?” cried Madame de Rosenheim— “where can I hear of you?— “Whither, tell me, do you propose to go?” “Alas! Madame,” replied D’Alonville, mournfully, “you ask me a qustion question which it is not possible for me to answer; alone upon this earth, I know not to what part of it chance or fatality may lead me, to perish in the cause of my unfortunate king; but the vague schemes I have hitherto formed, have tended to France.”

  “You cannot surely mean it — certain destruction awaits you there,” said Madame de Rosenheim.

  “And certain misery every where — but why should I communicate it to you, Madam, or give you one thought for a being who is, believe me, indifferent what becomes of himself.”

  “Only tell me,” cried the Baroness, with a degree of eagerness as if some body was coming, who she foresaw migh might interrupt their conversation— “Only tell me where I can write to you to-morrow; you will surely pass to-morrow at least Vienna?”

  “Certainly I will, if you have any commands for me.”

  “I have; and entreat your stay and your address.”

  D’Alonville then drew from is pocket a card on which he had written his name, and that of the hotel where he lodged, to leave, should he not have found his friends of Rosenheim at home. The Baroness received it, and said in a low voice, “you will hear of me, Chevalier, to-morrow.” She then went back into the room and D’Alonville, in greater depression of spirits than he had ever felt since his father’s death, took his way to the inn.

  Those who ever felt that delicious sensation which fills the bosom, when we hope we have paid in some degree a debt of gratitude to friends we love, and when we are on a point of meeting them after such a service, and after a long absence, may also have experienced the blank and sullen gloom which follows a cold repulse, instead of the cordial reception anticipated. D’Alonville at this moment experienced it, in all its bitterness, and never till now had he though himself wholly desolate and wretched. In the dreadful hour when his father died in his arms, he seemed to have found another parent in Madame de Rosenheim, and in her daughter a sister and a friend. The delicacy with which they bestowed the favors he was compelled to accept, softened the sense of his reduced and humiliating situation; and expelled as he was from his country, deprived of his father and his fortune, he had yet found in these generous and amiable friends a connection which reconciled him to, or at least enabled him to bear, the calamities of life. But they had now withdrawn this consolation from him, and he seemed to look around him in vain for hope, no where to be found. His pride was cruelly hurt by the coldness, and t
he something like disdain which was evident in the behaviours of Count D’Alberg; and in the courtier-like civility of the old Baron, he saw nothing but the undistinguishing manners of a person who received every one alike, whom he had no immediate interest in conciliating, and who was generally polite, but who, if he never saw him again, would forget he had seen him at all; while the unaccountable change in Madame D’Alberg, who instead of teaching him to call her sister, seemed desirous to forget even their acquaintance, was infinitely more mortifying — conscious that he had done nothing to forfeit the esteem she had so lately professed for him, he could no otherwise account for her change of behaviour, than by imputing it to the motives that greatly lowered in his opinion, a woman who had before seemed the most amiable and perfect of her sex. Such were the irksome reflections which D’Alonville carried to his uneasy pillow; he was roused from it at a very early hour the following morning, by receiving a letter, which one of the men who waited in the inn, informed him, had been left by a person, who said it required no answer. These were its contents: