What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?
NOT many days afterward, a young officer of dragoons rode leisurely from St. Argrève to Mazel. The morning was fine; the sun lit up the gay uniform and brilliant accoutrements which as yet, to their owner’s sorrow, were free from the honorable stains of real warfare. As he was unattended, save by a well-dressed orderly, who wore no weapon but a sword, his present errand could scarcely be one of military duty.
It was the lot of Emile de la Sablère, Marquis de Chantal, captain of dragoons, to serve the king in the province of Languedoc. Being brave as a “preux chevalier,” he would far rather have done loyal service at the seat of the war, which was then raging fiercely in the Low Countries and in Germany. But the force of circumstances and the strong cords of interest drew him to the South, and held him there, in the neighborhood of his wealthy and powerful grandfather, M. L’Intendant Lenain, Baron d’Asfeid. While, therefore, his brethren in arms won the laurels of military glory at Fontenoy, young Chantal was chained to a round of petty duties, which he despised because they were without danger and without glory. He longed ardently for the threatened invasion of Provence by the Allies, while in the meantime he took part in whatever pleasures and dissipations Montpellier afforded; not with enjoyment, for they gave him none, but to escape what he considered the worse evils of solitude and reflection.
He found, however, some consolation in the friendship and society of distant family connections, whose ancient château overlooked the Rhone, not far from the fragrant orchards of St. Peray. As he was returning, some months ago, from a brief visit to their home, René Plans had enjoyed the honor of being his guide for a few stages. Upon that occasion he had outstayed his time, and risked the displeasure of his commanding officer. But the Intendant interested himself in the fortunes of his grandson, and he knew that their relatives at St. Peray had at their disposal the hand of a wealthy orphan ward. He therefore not only made Chantal’s peace with his colonel, but contrived that the young captain should now be sent upon an errand which would give him an opportunity of revisiting his friends. It was this errand which had brought him from Montpellier to St. Argrhve. He found it distasteful, even hateful; and postponed its execution as long as he dared. And it was for a purpose altogether different from that with which he had been charged that he was now riding to Mazel. He was the bearer of two letters, for the safe delivery of which he had pledged his honor; though neither to the Intendant nor yet to his colonel.
As he rides along in the sunshine, we can observe him at our leisure. The face, mi the whole, is a good one, with fine, well-marked features; the forehead broad, but low, and shaded by the indispensable though ungraceful peruke. The lips are weak and restless; the eyes more keen than thoughtful, indicating a mind rather quick to apprehend than able to originate. One moment he looks his real age, two or three and twenty; the next, much older. His life has been changeful, and its varying experiences have left their traces upon cheek and brow. In his fourteenth year he began to drain the cup of pleasure in Parisian salons and theaters, and other places less easy to name. As he grew older, intrigues, adventures, duels, were the spices that added zest to the draft. But at last the dregs were reached; their taste seemed bitter, and he willingly flung the cup away. Nobly born and poor, ambition awoke within him; and it became his design to reestablish the decayed fortunes of his house. It was as a step to the accomplishment of this design that he sought, and obtained, the forgiveness of M. Lenain, whom he had offended in former years. Nor were the prayers and tears of a widowed mother, to whom, to his honor, he was warmly attached, without their influence in bringing about his determination to propitiate his powerful grandfather.
Moreover, M. de Chantal belonged, heart and soul, to the young France of his day and generation; a restless, feverish, dissatisfied generation, seething with new ideas and crude half-formed purposes. These were springing up everywhere ―a rank, luxurious growth―amidst the worn-out mockeries of an artificial age, amidst splendor that veiled corruption, under the “iron hand” of despotism, sheathed in the “velvet glove” of luxury. In impatient disgust with the actual world that surrounded them, the young were turning to the fair fields and pastures of what they called pure, unsophisticated nature; where, however, no true land of promise, no Eden without the serpent was to be found; since those whose fancy constructed the Paradise brought thither the vices of the gilded halls of Versailles. Others, the far larger number, were pressing forward, with their brilliant leader Voltaire, into the seat of the scorner, and seeking to learn eternal truth at the lips of “the spirit that denies forever.”
Emile de Chantal had, as yet, denied nothing; though he had indulged in much vague, aimless doubt. His was not the seat of the scorner; but rather the couch of the dreamer. Like his gentle, gifted brother-in-arms, the Chevalier Florian, he sought relief from the painful contemplation of an age of iron and clay in fancied return to the age of gold, when war and wealth and crime (and above all things, priestcraft) as yet were not; and shepherds and shepherdesses told their innocent loves in verdant fields and beside purling brooks. Already the “silver flowers” ―prizes of the “floral games” of Toulouse―had rewarded his essays in pastoral poetry. Yet all this, in fact, was utterly unreal. It scarcely rose even to the dignity of romance; it was but sentiment. His shepherds and shepherdesses were chevaliers and marquises of the court of Louis XV., with a thin disguise of antique raiment, crooks, and hair au naturel, covering, but not concealing, their paint and patches.
But within the last few weeks a true poem, of God’s own making―a genuine, heroic tragedy―had wrought itself out under the eyes of Emile de Chantal. Coming in suddenly amongst the elaborate unrealities of his life, it had impressed him strongly. It was as if―while he sat amidst the lights, the music, and the tinsel glories of the theater―some hand had drawn aside a curtain that veiled the solemn, starry sky.
All his capacity for generous enthusiasm was awakened by what he saw and heard. But his impressions, though quick and keen, were not always lasting. While they lasted, he made no secret of them; on the contrary, he longed to utter, to share them. He was never so happy as when either receiving or producing a sensation. This was not from vanity; but from an imaginative and emotional nature. More than aught else, his mother and his honor alone excepted, M. de Chantal loved what he called “serremens du cœur.”
It was certainly an anachronism on the part of the Intendant (though perpetrated with an amiable intention) to send this fanciful, emotional child of the eighteenth century to St. Argrève, charged with the duty of razing to the ground the house of an honest man, for an offense the executioner of justice would himself have gladly committed, had the opportunity been afforded him. In a few days, at farthest, the harsh commission must be fulfilled; yet this morning he rides to Mazel, not as a minister of the law, but as a private gentleman, whose kindness of heart has led him to undertake a charge of which he wishes honorably to acquit himself.