Strange True Stories of Louisiana Part 13

"And mine near my husband," said I, throwing my arms around Abner's neck.

My father, like my husband, had refused positively to leave the king, and it was decided that mamma should go alone. She began by visiting the shops, and bought stuffs, ribbons, and laces. It was I who helped her pack her trunks, which she sent in advance to Morainville. She did not dare go to get her diamonds, which were locked up in the Bank of France; that would excite suspicion, and she had to content herself with such jewelry as she had at her residence. She left in a coach with my father, saying as she embraced me that her absence would be brief, for it would be easy enough to crush the vile mob. She went down to Morainville, and there, thanks to the devotion of Guillaume Carpentier and of his sons, she was carried to England in a contrabandist vessel. As she was accustomed to luxury, she put into her trunks the plate of the chateau and also several valuable pictures. My father had given her sixty thousand francs and charged her to be economical.

Soon I found myself in the midst of terrible scenes that I have not the courage, my dear girls, to recount. The memory of them makes me even to-day tremble and turn pale. I will only tell you that one evening a furious populace entered our palace. I saw my husband dragged far from me by those wretches, and just as two of the monsters were about to seize me Bastien took me into his arms, and holding me tightly against his bosom leaped from a window and took to flight with all his speed.

Happy for us that it was night and that the monsters were busy pillaging the house. They did not pursue us at all, and my faithful Bastien took me to the home of his cousin Claudine Leroy. She was a worker in lace, whom, with my consent, he was to have married within the next fortnight. I had lost consciousness, but Claudine and Bastien cared for me so well that they brought me back to life, and I came to myself to learn that my father and my husband had been arrested and conveyed to the Conciergerie.

My despair was great, as you may well think. Claudine arranged a bed for me in a closet [cloisette] adjoining her chamber, and there I remained hidden, dying of fear and grief, as you may well suppose.

At the end of four days I heard some one come into Claudine's room, and then a deep male voice. My heart ceased to beat and I was about to faint away, when I recognized the voice of my faithful Joseph. I opened the door and threw myself upon his breast, crying over and over:

"O Joseph! dear Joseph!"

He pressed me to his bosom, giving me every sort of endearing name, and at length revealed to me the plan he had formed, to take me at once to Morainville under the name of Claudine Leroy. He went out with Claudine to obtain a pa.s.sport. Thanks to G.o.d and good angels Claudine was small like me, had black hair and eyes like mine, and there was no trouble in arranging the pa.s.sport. We took the diligence, and as I was clothed in peasant dress, a suit of Claudine's, I easily pa.s.sed for her.

Joseph had the diligence stop beside the park gate, of which he had brought the key. He wished to avoid the village. We entered therefore by the park, and soon I was installed in the cottage of my adopted parents, and Joseph and his brothers said to every one that Claudine Leroy, appalled by the horrors being committed in Paris, had come for refuge to Morainville.

Then Joseph went back to Paris to try to save my father and my husband.

Bastien had already got himself engaged as an a.s.sistant in the prison. But alas! all their efforts could effect nothing, and the only consolation that Joseph brought back to Morainville was that he had seen its lords on the fatal cart and had received my father's last smile. These frightful tidings failed to kill me; I lay a month between life and death, and Joseph, not to expose me to the recognition of the Morainville physician, went and brought one from Rouen. The good care of mother Catharine was the best medicine for me, and I was cured to weep over my fate and my cruel losses.

It was at this juncture that for the first time I suspected that Joseph loved me. His eyes followed me with a most touching expression; he paled and blushed when I spoke to him, and I divined the love which the poor fellow could not conceal. It gave me pain to see how he loved me, and increased my wish to join my mother in England. I knew she had need of me, and I had need of her.

Meanwhile a letter came to the address of father Guillaume. It was a contrabandist vessel that brought it and of the first evening other to the address recognized the writing set me to sobbing all, my heart I began (_Torn off and gone_.) demanded of my father of saying that country well 56 added that Abner and I must come also, and that it was nonsense to wish to remain faithful to a lost cause. She begged my father to go and draw her diamonds from the bank and to send them to her with at least a hundred thousand francs. Oh! how I wept after seeing letter! Mother Catharine to console me but then to make. Then and said to me, Will to make you (_Torn off and gone_.) England, Madame Oh! yes, Joseph would be so well pleased poor fellow the money of family. I

From the way in which, the cabin was built, one could see any one coming who had business there. But one day--G.o.d knows how it happened--a child of the village all at once entered the chamber where I was and knew me.

"Madame Alix!" he cried, took to his heels and went down the terrace pell-mell [quatre a quatre] to give the alarm. Ten minutes later Matthieu came at a full run and covered with sweat, to tell us that all the village was in commotion and that those people to whom I had always been so good were about to come and arrest me, to deliver me to the executioners. I ran to Joseph, beside myself with affright.

"Save me, Joseph! save me!"

"I will use all my efforts for that, Mme. la Viscomtesse." At that moment Jerome appeared. He came to say that a representative of the people was at hand and that I was lost beyond a doubt.

"Not yet," responded Joseph. "I have foreseen this and have prepared everything to save you, Mme. la Viscomtesse, if you will but let me make myself well understood."

"Oh, all, all! Do _thou_ understand, Joseph, I will do everything thou desirest."

"Then," he said, regarding me fixedly and halting at each word--"then it is necessary that you consent to take Joseph Carpentier for your spouse."

I thought I had [been] misunderstood and drew back haughtily.

"My son!" cried mother Catharine.

"Oh, you see," replied Joseph, "my mother herself accuses me, and you--you, madame, have no greater confidence in me. But that is nothing; I must save you at any price. We will go from here together; we will descend to the village; we will present ourselves at the mayoralty--"

In spite of myself I made a gesture.

"Let me speak, madame," he said. "We have not a moment to lose. Yes, we will present ourselves at the mayoralty, and there I will espouse you, not as Claudine Leroy, but as Alix de Morainville. Once my wife you have nothing to fear. Having become one of the people, the people will protect you. After the ceremony, madame, I will hand you the certificate of our marriage, and you will tear it up the moment we shall have touched the soil of England. Keep it precious till then; it is your only safeguard.

Nothing prevents me from going to England to find employment, and necessarily my wife will go with me. Are you ready, madame?"

For my only response I put my hand in his; I was too deeply moved to speak. Mother Catharine threw both her arms about her son's neck and cried, "My n.o.ble child!" and we issued from the cottage guarded by Guillaume and his three other sons, armed to the teeth.

When the mayor heard the names and surnames of the wedding pair he turned to Joseph, saying:

"You are not lowering yourself, my boy."

At the door of the mayoralty we found ourselves face to face with an immense crowd. I trembled violently and pressed against Joseph. He, never losing his presence of mind [sans perdre la carte], turned, saying:

"Allow me, my friends, to present to you my wife. The Viscomtesse de Morainville no longer exists; hurrah for the Citoyenne Carpentier." And the hurrahs and cries of triumph were enough to deafen one. Those who the moment before were ready to tear me into pieces now wanted to carry me in triumph. Arrived at the house, Joseph handed me our act of marriage.

"Keep it, madame," said he; "you can destroy it on your arrival in England."

At length one day, three weeks after our marriage, Joseph came to tell me that he had secured pa.s.sage on a vessel, and that we must sail together under the name of Citoyen and Citoyenne Carpentier. I was truly sorry to leave my adopted parents and foster-brother, yet at the bottom of my heart I was rejoiced that I was going to find my mother.

But alas! when I arrived in London, at the address that she had given me, I found there only her old friend the Chevalier d'Ivoy, who told me that my mother was dead, and that what was left of her money, with her jewels and chests, was deposited in the Bank of England. I was more dead than alive; all these things paralyzed me. But my good Joseph took upon himself to do everything for me. He went and drew what had been deposited in the bank. Indeed of money there remained but twelve thousand francs; but there were plate, jewels, pictures, and many vanities in the form of gowns and every sort of attire.

Joseph rented a little house in a suburb of London, engaged an old Frenchwoman to attend me, and he, after all my husband, made himself my servant, my gardener, my factotum. He ate in the kitchen with the maid, waited upon me at table, and slept in the garret on a pallet.

"Am I not very wicked?" said I to myself every day, especially when I saw his pallor and profound sadness. They had taught me in the convent that the ties of marriage were a sacred thing and that one could not break them, no matter how they might have been made; and when my patrician pride revolted at the thought of this union with the son of my nurse my heart pleaded and pleaded hard the cause of poor J Joseph. His (_Evidently torn before Alix care, his wrote on it, as no words presence, became are wanting in the text_.) more and more necessary. I knew not how to do anything myself, but made him my all in all, avoiding myself every shadow of care or trouble. I must say, moreover, that since he had married me I had a kind of fear of him and was afraid that I should hear him speak to me of love; but he scarcely thought of it, poor fellow:

reverence closed his lips. Thus matters stood when one evening Joseph entered the room (_Opposite page of the where I was reading, same torn sheet. Alix and standing has again written upright before around the rent_.) me, his hat in his hand, said to me that he had something to tell me. His expression was so unhappy that I felt the tears mount to my eyes.

"What is it, dear Joseph?" I asked; and when he could answer nothing on account of his emotion, I rose, crying:

"More bad news? What has happened to my nurse-mother? Speak, speak, Joseph!"

"Nothing, Mme. la Viscomtesse," he replied. "My mother and Bastien, I hope, are well. It is of myself I wish to speak."

Then my heart made a sad commotion in my bosom, for I thought he was about to speak of love. But not at all. He began again, in a low voice:

"I am going to America, madame."

I sprung towards him. "You go away? You go away?" I cried. "And I, Joseph?"

"You, madame?" said he. "You have money. The Revolution will soon be over, and you can return to your country. There you will find again your friends, your t.i.tles, your fortune."

"Stop!" I cried. "What shall I be in France? You well know my chateau, my palace are pillaged and burned, my parents are dead."

"My mother and Bastien are in France," he responded.

"But thou--thou, Joseph; what can I do without thee? Why have you accustomed me to your tenderness, to your protection, and now come threatening to leave me? Hear me plainly. If you go I go with you."

He uttered a smothered cry and staggered like a drunken man.

"Alix--madame--"

"I have guessed your secret," continued I. "You seek to go because you love me--because you fear you may forget that respect which you fancy you owe me. But after all I am your wife, Joseph. I have the right to follow thee, and I am going with thee." And slowly I drew from my dressing-case the act of our marriage.

He looked, at me, oh! in such a funny way, and--extended his arms. I threw myself into them, and for half an hour it was tears and kisses and words of love. For after all I loved Joseph, not as I had loved Abner, but altogether more profoundly.