Captain Paul Part 25

The two young men then advanced towards each other--their swords crossed--at the third parry Lectoure's sword was twisted from his hand, and flew to a distance of twenty yards.

"Before taking sword in hand," said Paul, "I had offered an explanation, and now, sir, I trust you will be pleased to accept my apology."

"And this time I will accept it, sir," said Lectoure, in the same careless and easy manner, as if nothing particular had occurred. "Pick up my sword, d.i.c.k."

His servant ran to fetch it, handed it to his master, who very tranquilly put it into the scabbard.

"Now," continued he, "if either of you, gentlemen, have any orders for Paris, I am about to return there, and from this spot."

"Tell the king, sir," replied Paul, bowing, and in his turn sheathing his sword, "that I feel happy that the sword he gave me to be employed against the English, has remained unstained by the blood of one of my own countrymen."

And then the two young men again bowed to each other. Lectoure remounted his horse, and at about a hundred paces from the sea sh.o.r.e, got into the high road leading to Vannes, and galloped off; while his servant went to the castle to get his travelling carriage, with which Lectoure had ordered him to rejoin him speedily.

"And now, Mr. Walter," said Paul, "you must send the long-boat to the nearest creek to Auray castle, and have every thing in readiness to set sail tonight."

The lieutenant immediately set out for Port Louis, and Paul and Lusignan returned into the fisherman's hut.

During this time Emanuel and Marguerite had fulfilled the mournful duty to which they had been summoned by the chapel bell. The body of the marquis had been deposited in the emblazoned tomb of his ancestors, and Achard's in the humble cemetery outside the chapel, and then the brother and sister repaired to their mother's apartment. The marchioness delivered to Emanuel the commission which he so anxiously coveted, and gave to Marguerite her unexpected consent to her marriage with Lusignan.

She then handed to Marguerite the king's sign manual appointing Lusignan governor of Guadaloupe. And then, in order that the emotions which they experienced should not be renewed, and which were the more poignant, because they were concealed within their own b.r.e.a.s.t.s, for neither of them made any allusion to past events, the mother and the children embraced each other for the last time, each feeling the innate conviction that they should never meet again.

The remainder of the day was occupied in the necessary preparations for departure. Toward the evening the marchioness left the castle, to meet Paul at the place which he had appointed. When pa.s.sing through the court-yard she perceived a carriage, with horses already attached to it, standing on one side of it, and the young mids.h.i.+pman, Arthur, with four sailors, on the other. Her heart was oppressed by the sight of this two-fold preparation. She, however, pa.s.sed on, and went into the park, without giving way to her emotions, so much had her long-continued restraint upon natural feelings given her the power of self-command.

However, when she had reached a small clearing, from which she could see Achard's house, she paused, for her knees trembled beneath her, and she was obliged to lean for support against a tree, while she pressed her hand to her breast to restrain the violent beatings of her heart.

For there are souls which present danger, however imminent, cannot cause to quail, but which tremble at the remembrance of perils past; and the marchioness recalled to mind the agonizing fears and emotions to which she had been for twenty years a prey, and during which time she had daily visited that house, now closed never again to be opened. She, however, soon overcame this weakness, and reached the park gate.

There she again paused. Above all the trees rose the summit of a gigantic oak, whose wide spreading branches could be discerned from many places in the park. Often had the eyes of the marchioness remained riveted for hours upon its verdant dome: but never had she dared to seek repose beneath its shade. It was there, however, that she had promised to meet Paul, and there Paul was awaiting her. At length she made a last effort, and entered the forest.

From a distance she perceived a man kneeling upon the ground in the att.i.tude of prayer. She slowly approached him, and kneeling down by his side, prayed also. When the prayer was concluded, they both rose, and without uttering a word, the marchioness placed her arm around Paul's neck, and leaned her head upon his shoulder. After some moments'

silence, they heard the noise of the wheels of a carriage at a distance.

The marchioness shuddered, and made a sign to Paul to listen; it was Emanuel setting out to join his regiment. Shortly afterwards Paul pointed in a direction opposite to that in which they had heard the noise, and showed the marchioness a boat gliding rapidly and silently upon the surface of the ocean; it was Marguerite going on board the frigate.

The marchioness listened to the noise of the receding wheels as long as she could hear it, and followed with anxious eyes the movements of the boat, as long as she could distinguish it; then she turned toward Paul, and raising her eyes to heaven, for she felt that the moment was approaching, when he, whom she was leaning upon, would, in his turn, leave her, she exclaimed--

"May G.o.d bless, as I now bless, the duteous son, who was the last to leave his mother."

Saying these words, she threw her arms around his neck, pressed him convulsively to her heart, and kissed him; then gazing at him intently, she seemed to be scanning every outline of his face, and then, again, rapturously embraced him.

"Yes," she cried, "in every feature he is the living resemblance of my poor lost Morlaix," then for some moments she seemed to be absorbed in thought; at last after a seemingly violent struggle, she continued, "Paul, you have refused to accept any portion of that fortune to which you are legally ent.i.tled, although you know the wealth of the Auray family is unbounded--and that the fortune which I inherit in my own right, from the family of Sable, is very large." Paul shook his head.

"Well, then, there is one thing that you must receive from your mother, as her parting gift. It is twenty years since I have dared to look upon it, and yet I have clung to its possession--it is your father's portrait, presented to me when I was authorized to receive it--when, by the a.s.sent of both our families, he was to have become my husband--take it, my dear son, for although it tears my heart to part with it, yet I feel that I shall be more tranquil when it is in your possession--to no one but yourself would I have given it. You will sometimes look upon it, and you will think of your mother, who must now remain for ever isolated from the world. But it is better that it should be so--henceforward all my moments shall be spent in making my peace with Heaven."

While saying these words, she had drawn from her pocket a case, which she put into Paul's hands, and which he had eagerly opened, and gazed with intense interest at the features of his father. The miniature was richly set in diamonds of great value.

Then summoning all her fort.i.tude, the marchioness for the last time kissed her son, who was kneeling before her, and tearing herself from his arms, she returned alone to the castle.

The next morning the inhabitants of Port Louis vainly sought the frigate they had seen only the evening before, and which for fifteen days had remained at anchor in the outer roads of Lorient. As on the former occasion, she had disappeared without their being able to comprehend the cause of her arrival, or the motive of her so sudden departure.

EPILOGUE.

Last scene of all That ends this strange, eventful history.

Five years had elapsed since the occurrence of the events we have related. The independence of the United States had been recognized; New York, the last strong-hold of the English, had been evacuated. The roar of cannon,-which had resounded in the Indian seas, as well as in the Gulf of Mexico, had ceased to thunder. Was.h.i.+ngton, in the solemn meeting of Congress of the 28th December, 1783, had resigned his commission as general-in-chief, and had retired to Mount Vernon, his parental estate, without any other recompence than that of being allowed to receive and send letters free of charge; and the tranquillity which America had begun to enjoy, had extended to the French colonies in the West Indies; for the mother country having espoused the American cause, they had been several times exposed to the hostile attempts of Great Britain. Among these islands, Guadaloupe had been more particularly threatened, in consequence of its military and commercial importance; but, thanks to the vigilance of its new governor, the attempts of the enemy to land there had always failed, and France had not to mourn over any serious discomfiture in this important position, so that at the commencement of the year 1784, the island, without being altogether denuded of warlike appearance, which was maintained in it more from custom than from necessity, the inhabitants generally had applied themselves anew to the cultivation of the numerous products which form its riches.

If our readers will be pleased by a last effort of their complaisance, to accompany us to the other side of the Atlantic, and land with us at the port of Ba.s.seterre, we will conduct them amidst fountains which jet on every side, through the street which leads to the promenade, called Champ d'Arbaud; then, after having availed ourselves of the cool shade of the tamarind trees, planted on each side of it, till we have proceeded about two-thirds of its length, we will turn upon the left up a small beaten road, which conducts to the gate of a garden, the upper part of which commands a view of the whole town.

When we have arrived there, we will allow them for a few moments to inhale the evening breeze, so refres.h.i.+ngly sweet after the mid-day heat of the month of May, and they can cast a glance with us over the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics.

With our backs turned to the woody and volcanic mountains, which divide the western part of the island, and amid which arise, crowned with their plumes of smoke and sparks, the two calcined pinnacles of the sulphur mountain, we have at our feet, sheltered by the hills, which have been named Bellevue, Mont-Desir, Beau Soliel, Esperance and Saint Charles, the city gracefully descending towards the sea, the waves of which sparkling with the last rays of the setting sun, laves its white walls.

The horizon, formed by the ocean, lying like a vast and limpid mirror, and to the right and left, the most beautiful and richest plantation of the island; large square fields of coffee trees, transplanted originally from Arabia, with their knotty and flexible branches, covered with dark green glossy leaves, of an oblong and pointed form, and bearing cl.u.s.ters of flowers as white as snow; long rows of cotton plants, covering with a rich carpet of verdure, the dry and stony soil, on which they thrive best, and among which we see, like so many colossal ants, negroes occupied in reducing to two or three, the thousand shoots which sprout out from each stalk. And then again, but in more level and well sheltered spots, in which the soil is richer and more argillaceous, we see plantations of cocoa trees, first introduced into the West Indies by the Jew, Benjamin Dacosta, with their lofty trunks and porous branches, covered with fawn colored bark, from which large oblong leaves are pending, among which we see fresh shoots of a soft rose color, which contrast strongly with the long, curved and yellow fruit, which bends the branches with its weight. And further off, whole fields of the plant, discovered at Tabaco, first brought to France by the Amba.s.sador of Francis II., who presented it to Catherine de Medicis, from which circ.u.mstance it derived its name of _Herbe-a-la-reine_.* This did not, however, prevent it from being, like every popular thing, in the first instance, excommunicated and proscribed, in Europe and Asia, by the two powers who then divided the world, proscribed by the Grand Duke of Muscovy, Michael Fedorowich, by the Turkish Sultan Amurath IV., by the Emperor of Persia, and excommunicated by Pope Urban VIII. Here and there, we see springing up to a height of forty or fifty feet above all the shrubs and plants, by which it is surrounded, the banana tree of Paradise, of which, according to tradition, the oval leaves, seven or eight feet in length, served to form the first garment of the first created woman. And finally, elevated above all the rest, and standing forth pre-eminent, whether hacked by the azure of the Heavens, or by the dark green tea, the cocoa-nut and the palm-tree, those two giants of the Western Archipelago graceful and prodigal, as is everything that is powerful. Figure to yourselves, then these beautiful hills, intersected by seventy rivers, eased in beds, ninety feet in depth; these mountains illuminated during the day by a tropical sun, at night, by the volcano of the sulphur mountain; that vegetation, which never is arrested, the new leaves of which succeed the leaves which fall; this soil so salubrious, and air so pure, that notwithstanding the insensate experiments that man, the real enemy of himself, has made by transporting serpents from Martinique, and Saint Lucie, it was found that they could neither live nor reproduce there, and then judge after the sufferings they had endured in Europe, of the happiness which Antole de Lusignan and Marguerite d'Auray must have enjoyed there.

* Queen's Gra.s.s.

To a life agitated by the pa.s.sions, to that struggle of natural rights against legal power, to that succession of scenes in which all earthly pains, from childbirth even to death, had played their part, had succeeded a life of pure delights, each day of which had pa.s.sed on calmly and tranquilly; the only clouds that darkened it, arose from that vague uneasiness for distant friends, which as if borne upon the air, and which contracts the heart like a painful presentiment. However, from time to time, whether by newspapers, or by vessels, touching at the island, Anatole and Marguerite had obtained some intelligence of the generous being who had so powerfully served them as a protector; they had heard of his victories; that after he had left them, he had been appointed to the command of a small squadron, and had destroyed the English establishments on the coast of Acadia, which had gained for him the t.i.tle of commodore; that, in an engagement with the _Serapis_ and the _Countess of Scarborough_, after a combat yard-arm to yard-arm, which lasted four hours, he had obliged the two frigates to strike to him, and that finally, as a reward for the services he had rendered to the cause of American Independence, he had received the public thanks of Congress, who had voted him a gold medal, and had selected him to command the frigate _America_, to which that name had been given as being the finest in the service, and the command of which had been conferred on him as the bravest of its officers; but this splendid s.h.i.+p had been presented by Congress to the King of France, to replace the _Magnifique_, which had been lost at Boston. Paul Jones, after conducting this frigate to Havre, had joined the fleet of the Count de Vaudreuil, who had projected an attack upon Jamaica. This last intelligence had overjoyed the hearts of Lusignan and Marguerite, for this enterprize would bring Paul into their lat.i.tude, and they hoped at last they should soon see their brother and their friend; but peace, as we have before said, had intervened, and from that time, they had heard no more of the adventurous seaman.

In the evening of the day on which we have transported our readers from the wild sh.o.r.es of Brittany to the fertile coast of Guadaloupe, the young family were a.s.sembled in the very garden which we have entered, and which commands a view of the immense panorama we have described; the foreground of which is formed by the city, at its feet the ocean, studded with islands in the distance.

Marguerite had promptly habituated herself to the soft listlessness of Creole life; and her mind now tranquil and full of happiness, she gave herself up to the _dolce far niente_, which renders the sensual existence of the colonies a half sleep, the incidents of which appear as dreams.

She was lying with her daughter in a Peruvian hammock, netted with the silken fibres of the aloe, and ornamented with the most brilliant colored plumes of the rarest tropical birds; her son was swinging her with a soft and regular motion, and Lusignan was holding one of her hands between both his. She was still pale, but delicate and graceful as a wild lily. Her looks were vacantly wandering over the immense extent of ocean lying before her, and she felt her soul and senses enraptured by all the bliss which heaven can promise, and all the enjoyments which this earth can offer. At that moment, and as if everything concurred to complete the magic spectacle which every evening she came there to contemplate, and which every succeeding evening she found still more marvellously beautiful, there suddenly appeared, doubling the cape _Trois Pointes_, and looking like an ocean king, a large vessel, gliding along the surface of the sea without more apparent effort than a swan playing upon the tranquil bosom of a lake. Marguerite was the first to perceive it, and without speaking, for every action is a fatigue under that burning clime, she made a sign with her head to Lusignan, who directed his looks to the spot she had indicated, and then, like her, silently followed with his eyes the rapid and graceful movements of the vessel. By degrees as she approached, and as the elegant and delicate proportions of her masts amidst the ma.s.s of sails which they sustained, could be discerned, which, in the first instance, had seemed a cloud floating upon the horizon--they began to discover in one corner of her flag the stars of America, equal in number to the States they represent.

One same idea shot instantly through their minds, and they exchanged a glance, radiant with hope that they were, perhaps, about to receive some news of Paul. Lusignan immediately ordered a negro to bring a telescope: but before he had returned, a hope still more delightful pervaded both their hearts. It appeared to Lusignan and Marguerite that they recognized an old friend in the frigate that was approaching. To persons, however, unaccustomed, it is so difficult to distinguish, at a great distance, signs which speak at once to the eye of an experienced seaman, that they did not yet dare to have faith in this hope, and which, indeed, was more an instinctive presentiment than positive reality. At last the negro brought the so much longed for telescope.

Lusignan uttered a cry of joy, and then handed it to Marguerite: he had recognized the sculpture of Guillaume Costou, upon the prow of the vessel, and it was really the _Indienne_ which was advancing towards Ba.s.seterre.

Lusignan raised Marguerite from the hammock and placed her on her feet, for their first impulse was to hasten to the harbour; but then they reflected that Paul had left the _Indienne_ nearly five years, at the time that his promotion ent.i.tled him to the command of a larger vessel, and that she might now be under the orders of another captain, and they paused with palpitating hearts and trembling limbs. During this time, their son Hector had taken up the telescope, and placing it to his eye, looked through it, and soon after exclaimed,--"Father, see there,--upon the deck stands an officer, dressed in a black coat, embroidered with gold, just like the one in the picture of my dear friend, Paul!"

Lusignan hastily s.n.a.t.c.hed the gla.s.s from his son's hands, looked through it for a few moments, then again pa.s.sed it to Marguerite, who, after directing it toward the vessel, let it fall, and then they threw themselves into each other's arms; they had recognized their friend, who, as he was about to visit them, had put on the dress which we have before said he had generally worn. At this instant the frigate pa.s.sed the fort, which it saluted with three guns, and the fort returned the salute with an equal number.

From the moment that Lusignan and Marguerite had acquired the cert.i.tude that their friend and brother was actually on board the _Indienne_, they had hastened down the mountain, followed by young Hector, towards the port, leaving their little Blanche in the hammock. The captain had also recognized them, so that at the moment they left the garden he had ordered a boat to be lowered, and, thanks to the united strength of ten vigorous oarsmen, he had rapidly glided over the distance between the anchorage ground and the port, and had sprung upon the jetty at the instant that his friends arrived there. Such sensations as then filled their b.r.e.a.s.t.s cannot be expressed in words; tears are their only interpreter. And thus their joy more closely resembled grief, for they all wept, even to the child, who wept because he saw them weep.

After giving some orders relating to the vessel, the young commodore, with his delighted friends, slowly ascended the hill down which they had rushed so rapidly to meet him. Paul told them that the expedition of Admiral Vaudreuil having failed, he had returned to Philadelphia, and peace having been signed, as we have before mentioned, with England, the Congress, as a token of grat.i.tude, had presented him with the first s.h.i.+p he had commanded as captain.

Upon hearing this, Lusignan and Marguerite experienced the most lively joy, for they hoped that their brother had come with the intention of taking up his abode with them; but the character of the young seaman was too adventurous, and stood too much in need of excitement, to sink quietly down into the monotonous and unvaried dulness of a life on sh.o.r.e. He informed his friends that he had but eight days to remain with them, after which he should seek in another quarter of the globe, to follow the profession he had adopted.

These eight days pa.s.sed by as rapidly as a dream, and notwithstanding the reiterated entreaties of both Lusignan and Marguerite, Paul would not consent to delay his departure even for twenty-four hours. He was still the same ardent determined being, considering the execution of a resolution he had once formed as a positive duty, and more austere with regard to himself than toward others.

The hour of separation had arrived. Marguerite and Lusignan wished to accompany the young commodore on board his s.h.i.+p; but Paul wished not to prolong the grief of this leave-taking. When they reached the jetty he embraced them for the last time, then jumped into his boat, which was rowed away as swiftly as an arrow. Marguerite and Lusignan followed him with their eyes until his boat had disappeared on the leeward side of the frigate, and they sorrowfully reascended the hill to watch the s.h.i.+p's departure, from the same terrace from which they had before discerned its arrival.

At the moment they reached it, they observed that activity and bustle on board the frigate which always precede the departure of a vessel. The sailors had surrounded the capstan, and were employed in getting up the anchor, and thanks to the pureness of the atmosphere, the sonorous and lively cries of the seamen reached the ears of Lusignan and Marguerite; the anchor was soon apeak, and they saw it rising slowly under the s.h.i.+p's bows; then the sails dropped successively from the yards, from the royals to the courses, and the s.h.i.+p, seemingly endowed with an instinctive and animated feeling, gracefully turned her prow toward the harbour's mouth, and beginning to move, cut through the waves with an easy motion, as if merely gliding upon their surface. Then, as if the frigate might be abandoned to her own will, they saw the young commodore spring upon the stern rails, and devote all his attention to the land he was thus leaving. Lusignan took out his handkerchief and made a signal, to which Paul replied. And then, when they could no longer perceive each other with the naked eye, they had recourse to their telescopes, and, thanks to this ingenious invention, they r.e.t.a.r.ded the separation for another hour. They all felt a presentiment that this separation would be eternal.

The vessel gradually diminished upon the horizon, and darkness was about to cover the heavens, when Lusignan ordered a quant.i.ty of wood to be brought upon the terrace, to form a beacon fire, which was instantly ignited, in order that Paul, whose vessel was nearly enshrouded in the darkness, might continue to fix his eyes upon that spot until he had doubled Cape Trois Pointes. Lusignan and Marguerite had for an hour lost sight of the s.h.i.+p, while Paul, thanks to their large brilliant fire, might still perceive them, when a bright flame, like to a flash of lightning, appeared on the horizon, and in a few seconds the report of a gun, similar to the prolonged sound of distant thunder, reached their ears, and all again was silent. Lusignan and Marguerite had received Paul's last farewell.

And now, although the domestic drama which we had undertook to relate, has, in fact, terminated here, some of our readers may, perhaps, have felt sufficient interest in the young adventurer, of whom we have made the hero of this story, to follow him in the second part of his career; to these then, after thanking them for the kind attention they have been pleased to grant to us, we are about to recount truly and plainly, facts which a most minute research have enabled us to lay before them.

At the period we have reached, that is to say, in the month of May, 1784, the whole of Europe had fallen into that state of torpor, which unthinking men imagined to be tranquillity, but which minds more profound, regarded as the dull and momentary calm that precedes the tempest. America, by obtaining her independence, had prepared France for her revolution. Kings and people, mistrustful of each other, were upon their guard. Peter III., who had become odious to the Russians, in consequence of his ign.o.ble character, the narrowness of his political views, and above all, for his excessive leaning to Prussian manners, and Prussian discipline, had been deposed without opposition, and strangled without a struggle. Catherine had thus found herself, at the age of thirty-two, mistress of an empire which extended over one-seventh part of the globe; her first care was to compel the neighbouring powers to accept her as a mediatrix in their quarrel, and thus become do-pendent upon her. Thus, had she obliged the people of Courland to drive from them their new Duke, Charles of Saxony, and to recall Biren; she had sent her amba.s.sadors and her armies to Warsaw, there to have crowned by the name of Stanislaus Augustus, her former lover, Poniatowski; she had formed an alliance with England; she had a.s.sociated to her policy the Courts of Vienna and Berlin; and notwithstanding all these great projects of foreign policy, she had not neglected the internal government of her own country, and in the interval of her amours, so fickle and so various, she still found time to reward industry, to encourage agriculture, to reform the laws, to raise a navy, to send Pallas into provinces the productions of which were till then unknown--Blumager into the northern Archipelago, and Bel-lings into the Indian ocean; in fine, jealous of the literary reputation of her brother, the King of Prussia, she wrote with the same hand that had ordered the erection of a new city, signed the order for the execution of young Ivan, and the dismemberment of Poland, _The Refutation of the Journey into Siberia_, by the Abbe Chappe, a romance of the Czarowich Chlose, several plays, among which was a translation into French of Oleg, a drama, written by the Russian poet, Dersehawin, so that Voltaire proclaimed her the Semiraris of the North, and the King of Prussia, in his letters, cla.s.sed her between Solon and Lycurgus.

The effect produced amid this voluptuous and chivalric court by the arrival of such a man, as our adventurous seaman, can readily be imagined. The reputation for courage, which had rendered him the terror of the enemies of France and America, had preceded him to the court of Russia, and in exchange for his frigate, which he presented to Catherine, he received the rank of Rear-Admiral. Then the flag of Russia, after having navigated round one-half the old world, appeared in the Grecian seas, and beneath the ruins of Lacedemon and the Parthenon, he, who had a.s.sisted in establis.h.i.+ng the independence of America, dreamt of the re-establishment of the Republics of Sparta and of Athens. The old Ottoman empire was shaken to its foundations, the defeated Turks signed a treaty of peace at Kainardji. Catherine retained Azof, Taganrog, and Kenburr, and Kenburn, compelled the Turks to grant to her the free navigation of the Black Sea, and the independence of the Crimea; she then desired to visit her new possessions. Paul, recalled to St. Petersburgh, accompanied her on this journey, the route of which had been drawn up by Potemkin. During the whole of it, all the attributes of triumph were offered to the conquering Empress and her suite; bonfires were lighted all along the road, cities were illuminated with the most fairy-like brilliancy, magnificent palaces erected, as if by magic, for one day, amid desert countries, and which the next morning disappeared; villages, rising as if beneath the wand of an enchanter, in solitudes, in which eight days before the Tartars fed their flocks; towns appearing on the horizon of which there existed but the exterior walls; in every direction, homage, and songs of welcome, and dances of the people: during the day, a numerous population crowded the road, and at night, while the Empress was sleeping, they would run to station themselves in the way she was to proceed on waking the following morning: a king and emperor rode by her side, calling themselves not her brothers, not her equals, but her courtiers; finally, a triumphal arch was erected at the last halt she was to make on her journey southward, bearing the inscription--"_This is the road to Byzantium,_" which if it did not reveal the ambition of Catherine, demonstrated at least, the policy of Potemkin. Then Russia became strengthened in her tyranny, as America had in her independence. Catherine offered to her Admiral places which would have more than satisfied the rapacity of a courtier, honors which would have overwhelmed the ambitious, estates which would have consoled a deposed king for the loss of his dominions; but it was the deck of his s.h.i.+p, it was the sea with its combats and its tempests, it was the boundless immensity of ocean for which yearned the heart of our adventurous and poetic seaman. He, therefore, left the brilliant court of Catherine, as he had left the austere Congress of America, and returned to France to seek that, which he could not find elsewhere, that is to say, a life of excitement, enemies to combat, a people to defend.

Paul arrived in Paris in the midst of our European wars and civil struggles; while, with one hand, we were seizing a foreign enemy by the throat, with the other, we were tearing our own entrails. That king, whom he had seen ten years before, beloved, honored, powerful, was then a captive, despised and strengthless. All that had been exalted was abased, and great names fell as did high-born heads.--It was the reign of equality, and the guillotine was the levelling instrument. Paul inquired after Emanuel, and was told that he was proscribed. He asked what had become of his mother, and was informed that she was dead. Then he felt an irresistible longing to revisit once again, before he himself might die, the spot on which, twelve years before, he had experienced emotions at once so sweet and terrible. He set out for Brittany, left his carriage at Vannes, and mounted on horseback, as he had done on the first day he had seen Marguerite; but he was no longer the young and enthusiastic seaman, whose desires and hopes had no horizon; he was a man bereft of all those, brilliant illusions, for he had tasted of all, whether weet or bitter, had learnt to appreciate all, both men and things; had known all, glory and oblivion. Therefore, did he not come to search a family, but to visit tombs.