Complete Poetical Works of Charlotte Smith

by Charlotte Smith

  The old ecclesiastic had soon recovered his presence of mind; and D’Alonville seated by him, presently satisfied his fears. He even ventured to reveal to him who he was, and with what motive he had quitted England to seek his friends, amidst all the perils, with which they were surrounded he added, that in thus seeking a person who had so many reasons to wish to be concealed, he had indulged no impulse of officious curiosity; but being convinced, from the conduct of the persons in the house, for some days past, that there was a priest concealed in it, he had thus broken in upon him, in the hopes of obtaining some information where he might find the loyalists who were in the town, and particularly the Abbé de St. Remi, and the Marquis de Touranges, whom he had hitherto sought in vain.

  The Prieur sighed deeply, “Excellent young man!” said he, “how much your zeal affects me — may it be rewarded! and may you, at the propitious hour when Providence shall restore to our devoted country her honour among the nations; may you be acknowledged in virtue and in good fortune the genuine heir of you illustrious father!” “Did you know my father?” cried D’Alonville. “I knew him well,” replied the Prieur; “and I knew too his eldest son — I was his tutor when he was at Paris to finish his education — and I have seen him since.”

  “I cannot ask any questions about him,” said D’Alonville, “being but too certain that I should only hear what would give me pain. But the Abbé de St. Remi — do you believe he has been, or is in this little town?”

  “I know he was here,” answered the Prieur, “though I conversed with him only once. About fourteen days ago some persons obnoxious to, or suspected by the ruffians, who call themselves our rulers, were imprisoned, and one of them was murdered — the rest ventured not to meet again in the same places. I was under the necessity of flying from my concealment, where I sometimes conversed with them; and since I have seen nobody — so fearful am I of committing my hospitable friends of this house, who risk so much for my sake.” The Prieur then dismissed Denise: “Go, my child,” said he, “go to your repose, you leave me here with a friend — speak to nobody of what you have heard, as you value your hopes of Heaven.” The poor girl, who began to look on D’Alonville as sent from thence (so forcible an impression as the sudden transition from fear to confidence made upon her), promised to be secret and faithful, and went down more devoted to aristocracy than ever; for though devotion had made her extremely attached to the good old priest, their was something much more fascinating in the loyalty and piety of the handsome young soldier.

  When Denise was gone, D’Alonville entered more fully into his hopes and expectation; he repeated what he had deeply engraved on his memory, the purport of the last letter he had received from St. Remi (for the letter itself he had thought it prudent to destroy); and which spoke of the rendezvous that was held at the Chateau of Vaudrecour; to which he declared his intention of going the following night. The Prieur approved of his resolution, and gave him, as well as he could, the necessary directions how to find it: but he did not seem very sanguine in his hopes that the royalists still held there their nocturnal rendezvous; he rather feared that since the last alarm they might be dispersed, and that such of them as remained, no longer ventured to assemble, even in that remote and abandoned spot.

  D’Alonville, however, had better hopes; he knew the calm and persevering courage of St. Remi, and had more apprehensions of De Touranges’s rashness, than to suppose that he would easily abandon an enterprise from excessive caution.

  D’Alonville left the good Prieur to his repose, after receiving from him many blessings, and retired to bed in the hope that he had thus fortunately found a line of connexion with those he came to seek. He thought also, that La Barre would probably give him farther information; but whether from his natural timidity, or from the party fearing he might be suspected, he did not appear to have been entrusted with their designs, and had contented himself with the share he took in the general danger, by protecting one of the persecuted priests.

  With such information, however, as he had collected, D’Alonville began his journey at noon the next day, and found, for some distance, his way by the marks which the Prieur had given him. At the distance of three quarters of a league from the town, he entered on a tract of that kind of country which are called landes in France, and which, when they do occur, are more dreary and desolate even than the heaths of England, where the labourer builds his little cottage on the edge of the waste, for the advantage of its turf, and its summer fees; or the proprietor of the manor clumps it with Scotish Scottish firs, or hardy forest tress, to break the lurid hue of its surface; or collects the scattered springs, and enlightens it with sheets of water.

  On the wide and wild waste that D’Alonville traversed, not a human being appeared; not an animal that gave intimation of the habitation of man; and, except that the few stunted trees which were thickly dispersed about it were cut for fewel, there was nothing that distinguished this mournful solitude from the rude desarts of an uninhabited country.

  In every part of France there were formerly great numbers of those animals which in England are called game; for the preservation of which those forest laws were made, which, though not enforced, remain as records of our subjection; and from whence have sprung the subsequent game laws, the continual source of oppression and dispute. These animals appeared to be extirpated in France; and not only the wild boar, deer, and fox, of whose depredations the farmers so justly complained, were destroyed, but every bird or beast, that had formerly been appropriated to the pleasures of the great. This, and other symptoms of general devastation (which D’Alonville was not, among so many more serious misfortunes, yet philosopher enough to see without regret), became yet more evident, when in following the way that had been pointed out to him, he at length reached what he believed to be the extensive woods which surrounded on all sides the castle of Vaudrecour. Here he found the boundaries broken down, the young trees almost entirely demolished, and a great deal of fine timber mangled, and even burnt, as not plan seemed to have been observed in the destruction, where the sole purpose was to destroy. — A dead silence reined. Even the woodlark, the robin, or the thrush, which at this season are usually heard among the woods, chaunting faint preludes to the more general music of advancing spring, were scared away, and no sound was among the trees but the chill north east, giving to the sky, and to every object around, the cold and comfortless look of middle winter. Sometimes D’Alonville found a slight path, but oftener wandered without any direction; till he at last got into one of those avenues which are cut for the purposes of hunting. It was almost overgrown with brush wood and rank grass; but he knew that in following it he should get into other wood walks, some of which would lead to the castle, where he wished to be before evening, though he had no intention of reaching it sooner. It appeared through a vista wider than the others he had traversed; the destruction of the trees had just there been less than at the extremity of the woods, and a great number of pines and fires darkly shaded the skirts of the lawn on which this great pile of building was situated. It seemed, at the distance from which D’Alonville saw it, to be quite deserted. he did not chuse, while it was yet early in the afternoon, to approach nearer; but sat down on a fallen tree, and surveyed the gloomy scene around him in a disposition of mind well suited to their dreariness. He recollected his first arrival at Rosenheim — the sad event that passed there was as present to his memory as it was the hour after it had happened — and his recollection ran over every circumstance that had befallen him since. A few hours would determine whether he should find his friends in the prospect of shewing themselves together in arms; or, missing them, endeavour to rejoin Ellesmere on the frontiers. Which ever way his fate determined, happiness and Angelina seemed to be equally remote. He thought it improbable that he should ever return to England. All that he had seen or heard since his landing in France had concurred to depress the hopes which he had indulged, of the arrival of that hour, when he should be in a situation to claim, in circumstances
less mortifying, the hand of the woman he loved.

  CHAPTER VI.

  “Huge,

  “Grey mouldering ruins swell, and wide o’ercast

  “The solitary landscape, hills and woods

  “And boundless wilds.”

  DYER.

  THE ancient and immense pile of building called the castle of Vaudrecour, had once been a strong fortress, built originally to guard the south-eastern boundary of the province of Britanny, while it yet belonged to its native princes; but Louis the Eleventh, in his frequent at attempts to possess himself of that great fief, had taken this chateau, and it became nominally part of his dominions. Buried among woods, and a wild tract of mountainous country, it suited the gloomy disposition of that sullen and ferocious tyrant; and he here had acted many of those tragedies which rendered him the terror of his own abject and insulted people; while he lay in wait to gain farther advantages over the duke of Bretagne; and depopulated the borders by suffering, and even promoting, among his vassals, innumerable atrocities against the inhabitants. It was fortified by all the skill of that age, aided by sever devices dictated by his own terrors; and many vestiges of these precautions remained, giving to the exterior of the building an appearance more menacing and horrid than such fabricks usually wear, even when they are more entire than Vaudrecour now was: for much of it had fallen to decay though many parts yet retained their gothic horrors unimpaired. A small river had once filled the triple moat that had surrounded it, and yet ran round the whole castle, stealing away almost unperceived among reeds and bushes, till it was lost in the woods; but in wet seasons its original passage being choaked by masses of the fallen ruins, the stream spread itself over the flatter ground, and made an almost impassable morass on that side from whence D’Alonville surveyed it.

  Charles the Eighth, who had little reason to be delighted with any place which had been the theatre of his father’s domestic caprices and cruelties, gave the castle, and its domain, to Louis d’Amboise; and it descended from that family to the family of De Touranges in the reign of Louis the Thirteenth. Some of its various lords had occasionally resided at it; for the domain around it was extensive, and the power of its possessor so great, as to be gratifying to that spirit of tyranny which high birth and great possessions are too apt to encourage. The present Marquis De Touranges had but seldom seen it, having been there only twice with large parties of his friends, for the purpose of passing the festival of St. Hubert , in a country abounding with game; but his feudal rights (and in Britanny les droits du Seigneur were particularly absurd and oppressive), had unfortunately been insisted upon with too much rigour by the persons who were entrusted with the management of his affairs in this province, which had raised the resentment of the peasantry around him, though he was himself no otherwise to blame than in not preventing that abuse, which is almost always the consequence when power is delegated to the mercenary and ignorant.

  The distance, however, at which this castle was from any considerable town, its gloomy obscurity, situated as it was among woody hills, and a vague notion that it was yet possible to render it a place of security if he could assemble in it a number of his friends, were the considerations that induced the present Marquis de Touranges to resort thither, and to make it the secret rendezvous of his party.

  How far this scheme had succeeded, D’Alonville had no means of discovering from the outward appearance of the building; for the only animated beings he saw near it were the rooks and daws, who were busy in building among the broken battlements and surrounding trees; or the grey owl, which skimmed along the outward wall on her evening search for food. The other sides of the building might, he thought, offer some signals less discouraging. He arose to find his way among the trees, when having gone about fifty yards, he saw between the stems of those before him, something move, which seemed to be a human creature; but of what description he could not immediately discover. He approached, however; but still this equivocal shape altered not its pace, nor seemed to heed him, though he was now near enough to discern that it was a woman. She appeared old and decrepit, and as if labouring under the weight of something she carried. D’Alonville who imagined this was a neighbouring peasant, of whom he might venture to ask some questions without any fear of betraying himself, now spoke to her; but she moved on the same pace, without noticing him — he stepped before, and stopped her. She looked up, and, within a sort of black cowl, discovered a countenance so extremely hideous, that D’Alonville started back as if he had beheld a spectre. Had he been read in Shakespeare he must have exclaimed,

  “How now, you secret, black, and midnight hag,

  “What is’t you do? —

  D’Alonville’s mode of address was less abrupt, but the withered crone seemed offended at it; and, instead of replying to his question, asked him, in a voice that made him shudder, what he would have? To this question he deliberated a moment what to answer, while the beldame added, in a mumbling hollow voice, and in the dialect of the country, “Go not to the castle.” “Not go!” exclaimed D’Alonville, who was surprised by this unexpected by this unexpected charge. “No,” replied the had, in a still more terrific voice, “it will not answer your purpose.” She moved slowly on, but D’Alonville, who was thrown entirely off his guard, again stopped her, and repeating, “Not answer my purpose?” added, “Do you know me, then?” “Know you,” answered the witch, nodding her head, “Aye, aye, I know you.” “You know, them” said D’Alonville, “for what purpose I am come?” He checked himself, recollecting that it was highly improbable such a person could know. In the mean while the old woman pursued her way: and D’Alonville looking after her, as slowly she passed among the trees, almost persuaded himself that he should see the ground open, and this frightful apparition sink into it. However, she disappeared, not supernaturally, but was lost in a part of the wood which yew and fir-trees rendered entirely dark.

  The black huntsman in the forest of Fontainbleau, whose remonstrance of “Amendez vous” is said to have shaken the fearless heart of Henry the Fourth, or the spectre which seized the bridle of Charles the Sixth in the wood of Mans, and warned him not to advance, crying, in a hoarse and threatening voice, “Arete Roi, ou vas tu?

  “ were neither of them more dreadful to those who saw, of fancied they saw them than was to D’Alonville the fearful being who hardly seemed an inhabitant of this world.

  But it was not growing late; and D’Alonville, when he lost sight of her, paused to consider what he should do. — A moment’s reflexion made him ashamed of having been more alarmed by the squalid and distorted figure of an helpless old woman, than he had ever felt himself amidst the hottest action during his short campaign; and, as if to make his peace with himself, he stepped forward, resolving to enter the castle, where he was persuaded there must be inhabitants. If they were his friends his solicitude would be at an end; if otherwise, he could easily dissimulate, as he had hitherto done, his real purpose. He crossed the morass, therefore, on some broad and rugged stones, which seemed to have been brought from the ruinous part of the building for that purpose and entered over a draw-bridge, which had long forgotten its original destination, for the chains were gone: it led him under a gateway which had formerly been secured by a portcullis on one side, and on the other by a cauldron, from whence boiling water, or lead, might have been thrown on the besiegers. The iron work however, was torn away, and the walls from whence it had been force, left in ruins, which threatened him as he passed under them; while he saw with some surprise the unguarded state in which all this remained, and feared that his friends had failed of establishing here their general assembly. The dead silence that reigned throughout, these fears. He crossed the second moat by another draw-bridge, and came into the area of the castle, of the strength and magnitude of which he had till then had no idea. The same marks of degradation appeared about this entrance, as he had remarked at the gate-way. A stone porch was closed towards the internal part of the building by a massy door, which had been covered with p
lates and spikes of iron. Some of these had been torn off lately, and the door broken by the force that had been used. The immense hall into which this led him, was so obscure from the great height, its oak-beams blackened by time, and its high and narrow windows, that it was with difficulty he could make out the objects with which he was surrounded: in some places the broken brick floor was strewn with pieces of those gigantic statues, some of which still remained entire, on a kind of cornice half was up the sides of the hall; and these, which had been thrown down and broken, seemed to have been removed for the sake of the brass and iron armour they had supported. Two or three iron helmets, an immense leathern shield, lined and studded with brass, and a long and heavy iron lance, were scattered on the floor. D’Alonville, as he looked around him, thought he had never seen a place so calculated to impress terror; and though personal fear affected him but little, he could not help being sensible of dread of another sort. He thought, from what he saw, that it was but too probable his friends had been driven from the castle, that it had been plundered by the people of the country of whatever they found useful to them, and that the old woman, who seemed to be carrying off something herself, meant no more by the warning she had given him, than to deter him from going thither, to share the spoils which yet remained, which she, perhaps supposed to be his purpose.