“And oh! the joy that cometh in the morning,
Brightly victorious o’er the hours of care;
I have not watched in vain, serenely scorning
The wild and busy whisperings of despair.
Thon hast sent tidings.”
CLAUDE’S little pallet of dried grass lay in the kitchen and general keeping room of the cottage. His mother remained, as her custom was, to hear him repeat his evening verse and prayer; while in the other chamber Madeleine helped her grandmother to prepare for the hour of rest.
His prayer over, Claude unfastened the belt of his blouse, and, preparing to take it off, felt something weighty in the pocket. “Oh, mother!” he exclaimed, “here is a letter M. Mericourt gave me for you. He says it was sent to him from St. Argrève I forgot it until this moment. I am very sorry.”
Annette chided him gently: “Careless child! And it might have been a matter of life and death!” she said, as she took from his hand a thick packet carefully secured with tape, and with a lavish expenditure of sealing wax.
She glanced at the superscription, recognizing it immediately, and with little interest save that which the arrival of any letter could not fail to excite in a life so secluded and monotonous. Of all the handwritings she knew, she cared least to see that of M. Cabanis, a worthy advocate of St. Argrève, who, before she left Mazel, had urged upon her the duty of claiming, for her children’s sake, the “wife’s third” of her husband’s property, mercifully left in many of the confiscations “on account of religion” for the support of the bereaved family. Annette Meniet had strong reasons for making no such claim. She considered she had been treated with forbearance and lenity. Had the Edicts been carried out to the letter, she would have been immured for life in the gloomy tower of Constante or in some convent, and her hapless children consigned to Catholic schools; and she dreaded any movement that might attract the attention of the authorities, or provoke them to open the eyes they had been willing to close. Moreover, her conduct in making such a claim might be construed as a tacit denial of her share in her husband’s crime―the crime of sheltering her brother!―and she was ready to suffer any loss rather than stoop to such a baseness.
She broke the numerous seals, expecting to find nothing within but a long and useless expostulation from M. Cabanis. But she soon saw that his letter enclosed several others, sent doubtless to the well-known address of the lawyer, as the best means of securing their safe transmission to her. One of them stirred her curiosity, for it was written on the finest paper, secured with green silk, and sealed with what looked like a nobleman’s crest. Another bore a superscription in a well-known hand―that of René Plans. She broke its seal first, and read as follows:
“Dear Mother,―I hoped to visit you this autumn, perhaps to spend with you part of the winter; but God wills otherwise. ‘Nos Messieurs’ have concluded to send me abroad immediately, for the better prosecution of their affairs, and of my own; and they have generously supplied me with all that is necessary for the journey. Have the goodness to communicate this to my sister, and to say that I commend myself with the most sincere affection to her and to my brother-in-law. Our poor friend, whose fate inspired you with such interest, is gone where he wished to go, and is with Him whom he most desired to see. His end was noble and Christian, and we shall do better to give thanks than to weep for him. M. de Chantal is now at Toulon; you will be glad to learn this, for certain reasons. Embrace Claude for me; kiss the hands of Madame Larachette and Madeleine, and commend me to all our friends. And thus I remain, dear Madame, your obedient son and servant, R. PLANS. Given at Alais, at the inn of the ‘Crown and Scepter,’ August 19th, 1748.”
As Annette finished reading this quaint and formal but significant letter, Madeleine entered the room.
“René is gone to the seminary at Lausanne,” Annette told her. “Messieurs les Pasteurs have given him the recommendations, and the funds for his journey.” For this, as she well understood, was the true meaning of the cautiously-worded intimation, intended, if it fell into unfriendly hands, to give the impression that the heads of some mercantile house were sending the writer abroad as their clerk or agent.
Madeleine stood for a moment in silent thought, still holding the little lamp in her hand. Then, laying it on the table, she came to her mother’s side. “It is what he longed for,” she said; “he will be very glad, mother.” But Annette was now breaking the crested seal of the mysterious silk-bound letter. From an envelope, differing little from those now in use, she drew forth a number of enclosures. The first that caught her eye was a letter from a banker in Toulon to M. Singlin, banker, St. Argrève, requesting him, “on sight of these presents,” to pay the bearer a considerable sum of money. But she only spent a moment wondering what this might mean; for Madeleine picked up a fragment of paper which had fallen on the ground, and, recognizing the handwriting, uttered a cry of surprise and emotion. The brief, precious words were quickly read by the mother and both the children. Jean Meniet wrote from the “Bagne,” or convict prison of Toulouse: ―
“My dear Wife,―They will tell thee, perhaps, that I am very ill. Do not believe it. I have been ill, and nigh unto death; but God has had mercy on me, and brought me back from the gates of the grave. I recover day by day. Could I see thy face, in four-and-twenty hours I would be strong as ever. Since, however, such is not the will of God, His will be done in all things. I commend thee and my children to Him, and remain thy faithful friend, J. MENIET.”
The straggling, undecided writing, and the blotted paper, bone witness all too plainly to the writer’s bodily weakness.
Annette grew pale and faint with the sudden shock. But for the strong habit of self-control her lite had taught her, she might have swooned. She did not move or speak; while Madeleine turned eagerly to the remaining Letters for further information. Nor was she disappointed: a kindly, compassionate letter bearing a cross, and the Signature, “Catherine, fille de St. Vincent de Paul,” informed them that the “forgat M. Meniet” (as he was rather incongruously styled), having been with the other convicts employed in the labor of building the new arsenal, had unfortunately met with a serious accident. Through the awkwardness or feebleness of the fellow-prisoner to whom he was chained, a heavy stone, which both were lifting together, slipped and fell upon him, injuring him severely. He was taken at once to the prison hospital, and afforded medical and surgical aid; but fever set in, and his recovery, for some time, seemed doubtful. Of late, however, a favorable change had taken place in his condition. The writer, with another Sister of the Order, had been in attendance on him throughout, and madame might be sure he had received every care. In his delirium he had often spoken of her, of his children Madeleine and Claude, and of a dear brother, whose name could not be distinctly caught. The physician had now pronounced him out of danger, but he was still very weak.
With no more comment upon what Madeleine read than a long, deep-drawn, shuddering sigh, Annette herself took up, with trembling fingers, a letter written by the hand that had directed the envelope. Both read together the words it contained:
“Madame,―I have the honor to inform you that I have just seen M. Meniet; and to assure you that, according to the testimony of the physician, he is out of danger for the present; also that he wants for nothing, and will be afforded every indulgence which may promote his recovery. The excellent Sister of Charity, whose letter I enclose, adds her testimony to mine. It is possible she may also impart to you M. Meniet’s earnest and frequently expressed desire to embrace you once again. How this may determine you to act, I am, of course, unable to judge. But as I have good right to credit a member of your family with the heart to do and dare greatly, I shall not be much surprised to hear of you at Toulon; and I can promise you permission to visit your husband. As the journey must be a costly one, I entreat your acceptance of the enclosed; and if circumstances, of which I am unaware, should render the undertaking impossible, I beg of you to present it, in my name, to my little friend Claude. (Signed) CHANTAL.”
There was a steady light in the blue eyes of Annette, and a flush on her cheek; but she did not speak a word. She stooped for the other letters, which had fallen here and there, took all in her hand together, and rose. Madeleine asked where she was going.
“To tell his mother,” she answered, in a low quiet voice that told little of the tumult in her heart. At the door of Madame Larachette’s room she paused, and said, “Wait here, my child, and pray. I will come again. I have much to say to thee.”
“I will, mother. I will ask God to guide you,” Madeleine answered.
“He has guided. Ask him to prosper me,” Annette said, as she left the room.
She was some time absent. Claude at first was greatly excited, and asked a hundred questions about his father and M. de Chantal; but Madeleine at length induced him to go to bed, and sat down beside him. It was not long until slumber sealed the boy’s young eyes, much to the relief of his sister, who needed time to think of what had happened and might happen.
At last Annette came again. She closed the door cautiously behind her; and it was in answer to a questioning look of hers that Madeleine said, “Claude is asleep, mother.” Not even then content, she brought the lamp and held it near the face of the slumbering boy―a fair picture, with his glossy tumbled hair, and dark silken eyelashes, shading rosy cheeks. Then she sat down near Madeleine, took her hand in hers, and said, “What dost thou think I ought to do?”
“To go to my father,” was the unhesitating answer.
“I thank God, who has shown that to thee and me,” said Annette.
“But, mother, the journey, with all its toils and dangers ―it will kill you!―you, so weak already.”
“It will not kill me, dear child. Rather will it cure me. And I know that, were it ten times harder, strength would be given. Have no fears for me, Madeleine.”
“Dear mother, might we not go all together?”
“Ah, my child, answer that question for thyself. Thy grandmother’s journeying days are over; and Claude would be exposed to a thousand dangers, both on the journey and in Toulon; even were there none to menace thee.”
But what dangers would not Madeleine brave, only to see her father’s face again? Were it not that perfect love casts out envy as well as fear, she could have envied her mother with all her heart.
“Mother, mother,” she said, almost with a cry of pain, “I would not fear anything, if only I might see my father.”
“My child, I could not see him, did I not leave thee here. Thine is the harder part, Madeleine. Thou wilt have to be thy grandmother’s daughter, and Claude’s little mother.”
Madeleine knew that neither of these offices would be a sinecure. “I think I could, mother,” she mused, gravely weighing her responsibilities and her powers, “if only René had not gone away. That is such a pity. For my grandmother loves him, and Claude always obeys him. Oh, if René were but with us, all would be well!”
Very glad was Annette, for reasons of which Madeleine had no conception, that René was not with them. She loved him as a son; and yet, or rather because she did so, she looked upon the three years he must spend at Lausanne as providentially interposed between the happy, innocent present, and the perilous uncertain future—between the boy’s life and the man’s.
But no trace of these thoughts could Madeleine’s candid, childlike eyes read in her mother’s face. Apparently without connection with the words of her child, though really suggested by them, was Annette’s next remark: “You must do the best you can for the present, dear Madeleine. By-and-by some change will be advisable―nay, necessary; then God will show us the way. Were it not for the grandmother, I might, after all, try to find a home for you at Toulon.”
“At Toulon!” Madeleine’s eyes brightened, and her heart thrilled, as she heard it. To these two dwellers amidst the everlasting hills, resplendent “for glory and for beauty” in their robes of snow, the narrow streets of the dark, unlovely town seemed a promised land, a very garden of Eden—for the husband and the father was there. To her who had to go thither the desire of her heart was granted; from her who had to stay it was withheld, and instead there was given her the cross to take up daily. Which had really the better portion, who could say?
Madeleine was not, at thirteen, a mere child, like the maidens that grow up in our happy sheltered homes, with only the discipline of childish tasks and pleasures. Her childhood had come to an end that December night when Majal bade her comfort her mother. It was in fulfillment of this mission, and with all a woman’s self-forgetting love, that she found strength to say now, though her own heart was aching, “Mother, I am so glad you are going to our father.”
And yet she had more cause for gladness than she knew. We often hear of “the danger of exaggerating the importance of moments in life;” yet is it true that in many lives there are moments of surpassing significance, crises, beginnings, endings. But such moments are not isolated, independent of antecedents and consequences, like pebbles flung by an idle hand. They hold to the past and the future such relation as the sudden stroke of a timepiece holds to the silent, unceasing evolutions of its hidden mechanism.
Chantal’s letter made a decisive moment in the life of Annette Meniet. Responsive to its summons, soul touched nerve, and nerve touched flesh and blood within her, bidding them be strong, for there was work to do. Even in the sorest hour of her anguish and desolation she had not wished to die, for she knew that her captive husband and her helpless children had yet need of her. Still the current that seemed to be sweeping her onwards towards “the great and wide sea” might have proved too strong for her weak arm to stem―even though she “toiled in rowing” ―had not a sudden and powerful impulse changed the course of her barque, and steered it once more towards the busy, peopled shore.
Meanwhile, far away, something had taken place of which her heart in its preoccupation took no heed, though it was indirectly intimated in the letters she had just received. In one sense, her dream had found its fulfillment, even on earth. Henceforth “no galleys with oars” should ever again cleave the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean, or carry its freight of human agony and degradation into more distant seas. Modem science and modem humanity had at last proved too strong for the traditions of mediæval times; and the heavy plash of the long oar, the shriek that followed the comité’s lash, and the wild yell of the chamade, no more found a place amidst the “sounds of lamentation, woe, and wrong” that go up continually from earth to heaven. In the year 1748 the galleys of France were suppressed.