The Young Seigneur Part 31

"No hearsay, sir!"

"To having a conviction--"

"Upon no grounds whatever!--Your Honor, I press my just application for an immediate discharge."

"I cannot see that there is yet evidence enough," l'Honorable said courteously. "There are two charges, but both of them seem founded on vague suspicions which I cannot consider sufficient to detain the prisoner."

Libergent triumphantly glanced from Spoon to the audience.

At that moment, however, the man at his side rose up:--Ross de Bleury!

"If what Monsieur says is true," he exclaimed to the Honorable, throwing out his clenched hand,--"if these letters are found upon those notes, then I understand it. I can prove that this infernal, greasy, treacherous devil,--be he friend or traitor, or whatever he chooses to be, to the Bleu party or myself,--committed that despicable larceny and has wronged that poor young man. I was on the steamboat. I saw it. I saw him do it to his friend. Talking to the purser, I saw the act, but could not believe it a reality. On the parole of all my ancestors, I would never go back on a common thief, I would keep faith inviolate with a parricide, I have a secret sympathy with every brigand, but I have no place out of _l'enfer_ itself for a traitor, _Dieu merci_."

"Swear the informant," said the Magistrate.

The picture at this instant of the frightened face of Spoon who collapsed into a seat by the Bar, of the excitement of the crowd, which had been gradually brought to a climax, the disgust of Libergent, relief of Chrysler, satisfaction of the little Bonhomme and his wife, the cynical roll of Zotique's eyes round the room, and serene, judicial face of the Honorable on the bench above, would have made the reputation of the greatest painter in Paris.

After all, Spoon was remanded for trial, and in due time, the Queen's Bench Court condemned him to the fullest penalty of the law for his murderous a.s.sault and larceny.

Francois meanwhile recovered, and was taken, pale and weak, but indescribably happy, in a carriage one morning beside Josephte to church, where the young Cure made her his faithful bride.

As for Benoit, "_il est tout en campagne_," they said. In less expressive terms, "his mind was hopelessly wandering."

To return to our current day however; in the evening Chamilly came into the drawing room with some more ma.n.u.script, which he handed to Chrysler.

"Here is the rest of the story I have been writing," said he, "take it sir and may it amuse you a little; it is the key to the rest. I am going out on the River." And he went-out of the Manoir door into the storm.

The ma.n.u.script proceeded as follows:

BOOK III.

BOOK OF ENTHUSIASMS (CONTINUED.)

CHAPTER XLII.

QUINET'S CONTRIBUTION

"O, skyward-looking, fleet-winged soul, Earth hath no name for thine ideal flower!"

--MARY MORGAN.

For a night and a day after my talk with my father; I was a fool.

Swelling names of ancestors rang proudly in my ears, and I shudder to think how easily I might have ended in a genealogist.

"Salut, Milord de Quinet."

"Bon soir, Chamilly," replied he, soberly.

"Aha, thou melancholy friend, the liver again, eh?".

We were strolling along the half illuminated Grosvenor street under the elms. The dim, substantial mansions in their grounds and trees, pleased my foreign eyes and I was glad to find the city of Alexandra able to vie with the great cities of the world, and I thought of her as near, and for, the moment, could not understand the humor of Quinet.

"You don't seem to know," said he, "at least, I thought I would tell you--that Miss Grant has gone away,"--he stopped and looked at me earnestly.--"I sympathise with you."

"Away!" I caught my breath. My spirits sank with disappointment. Alas!

Heaven seemed to ordain that my pa.s.sion for her should never become, a close communion, but only keep this light, ethereal touch upon me.

And so Quinet knew. "I do not ask you how: evidently you have known it all along?" (It was the first time I had been spoken to about my love for her, and it made me feel peculiarly.) "Mon ami, Quinet, tu es heureux ne pas aimer. Que penses tu de ma chere?"

"Go on, my friend Chamilly; be steadfast, for thou could'st not have chosen a sweeter, lovelier, holier divinity. O my friend, be steadfast and be happy. Yes, as thou hast said, I have known this."

Quinet was diverting our steps along up leading streets which tended towards the Mountain, and soon we reached the head of one, where a wall met us.

"This way," he said, striking aside into a field which formed part of the Park. "Adieu, civilization of street lights!" and he pressed up into a dark grove where I stumbled after, and next, under the twilight of a sky full of stars, could descry dim outlines of the surroundings of our path and even of the Mountain, silent above us like a huge black ghost.

We toiled up the steep stair, guiding ourselves by feeling, and in a few minutes Were at Prospect Point, that jutting bit of turf on the precipice's edge where the trees draw back and allow in daytime a wide view of the city and surrounding country, and we both stood breathless there in the dimness, in front of a sight bewilderingly grand enough to of itself take one's breath away.

Above were the radiant constellations. Below, between a belt of weird horizon and the dark abyss at our feet, the city shone, its dense blackness mapped out in stars as brilliant and myriad-seeming as those overhead,--a Night above, a Night below! Once before had I looked from that crag upon Montreal, in a memorable sunset hour, and remembered my impression of its beauty. Below, the scarped rock fell: the tops of trees which grew up the steep face lost themselves, lower, in a ma.s.s of grove that flourished far out, and besieged the town in swollen battalions and columns of foliage. Half overwhelmed by this friendly a.s.sault, the City sat in her robes of grey and red, proud mistress of half-a continent, n.o.ble in situation as in destiny. A hundred spires and domes pointed up, from streets full of quaint names of saints and deeds of heroes. The pinnacled towers of Notre Dame rose impressively in the distance. Past ran the glorious St. Lawrence, with its lovely islands of St. Helen's and the Nuns'.

Now, however, it seemed no longer a place upon earth at all. It was a living spirit. Quiet as the sky itself, its bright eyes looked far upward, and it was communing, in the lowliness of Nature, with the constellations.

"This is Life!" cried Quinet, who had hitherto been excited with suppressed feeling. "The vast winds come in to us from Ether. Night hides all that is common, and sprinkles the dark-blue vault with gold-dust; the planets gleam far and pure amidst it, and s.p.a.ce sings his awful solo."

"All is one mighty Being. There he moves, the Great Creature, his crystal boundlessness encompa.s.sing his countless shapes. He faces us from every point. His G.o.d-soul looks through to us. He rises at our feet. He surrounds us in ourselves; speaks and lives in us. Is he not resplendent, wondrous?"

"We are out of the world of vain phantoms, Chamilly! We are above the chatter of a wretched spot, a narrow life. Down there, nothing is not ridiculed that is not some phase of a provinciality. The dances in certain houses, the faces of some conceited club, long-spun names, business or gossip, or to drive a double carriage, are the gaslight boundaries of existence! Pah! it is a courtyard, bounded by four square walls, a path or two to walk in, and the eyes of busybodies to order our doings and sneer us out of our souls. How they deny us that the centre of the systems is immeasurably off there in Pleiades! What fools we are.

We follow trifles we value at the valuation of idiots; we cherish mean ideas; we believe contracted doctrines; we do things we are ashamed of; dropping at last like the animals, with alarm that we die."

"Look, off into the heart of It! the heart of It! beyond there!" he exclaimed, stretching his arm. "Forget our courtyard! Nay, returning there, let us remember that this infinite ocean is above it--a boundless sea beneath and around, an unknown universe within. Take in this scene and feel the rich thrills of its majesty stir you. You are of it; you came out of it; it is your mother, father, lover; it will never let you die; that heart of it to which your utmost straining cannot pierce, was once and will again be known to you. Its beauty caresses your soul from another world, and it is Love Divine which moves those stars.[J] Your own sweet pa.s.sion, Chamilly, is the child of that divine Love, and in it you mount towards the heavens, and yearn as by inspiration, for a mysterious ideal existence? The poets and romancers lightly say of it "a divine power:" they think they say a metaphor--a lie; but I tell you it is true! May it a.s.sist you to live the life of the universe."

[Footnote J: Dante--Divina Commedia.]

"Each man," he cried, "who pursues his highest is a prophet! Ever there is an inward compulsion in our race to press on, and we hear the heroes of the front as they fall, crying 'Forward, forward, forward, forward, forward!'"

While he spoke, for he said much besides, many of the lights were disappearing, we seemed to be being left alone, and the church-towers of the city chorussed the hour of ten.

CHAPTER XLIII.