Captain Paul Part 26

When he came within sight of the castle, he turned his eyes toward Achard's house, and not being able to discover it, he thought he would go into the forest, but the forest seemed to have vanished as by enchantment. It had been sold as national property to twenty-five or thirty farmers of the neighbourhood, who had cleared off the timber, and transformed it into a large plain. The gigantic oak had disappeared, and the plough had pa.s.sed over the unknown grave of the Count de Morlaix, and the eyes of his son even, could no longer recognize the spot.

Then he returned through the park toward the castle, now become even more gloomy and desolate than when he had last seen it. In it he found only an old man, a living ruin amidst these ruins of the past; it was at first intended to have pulled down the mansion, but the reputation for holiness which the marchioness had left behind her, was regarded with such religious veneration throughout the country, that the old walls, which for four centuries had been the abode of her ancestors, remained undesecrated. Paul went through the apartments, which for three years had remained closed, and which were now open for him. He walked through the portrait gallery; it was in the same state as he had formerly seen it; no pious hand had added to the portrait either of the marquis or the marchioness. He went into the study in which he had been concealed--found a book lying in it which he had opened and placed upon the very spot on which he found it, and read the same pa.s.sages which he had read so many years before. He then pushed open the door which communicated with the contract chamber, where had pa.s.sed the chief scenes of that drama in which he was the princ.i.p.al actor. The table was still in the same place and the Venetian looking-gla.s.s over the chimney-piece was there, shattered as it had been by the ball of Emanuels pistol.

Paul advanced to the fire-place, and placing his elbow on the marble mantle-piece, questioned the servant as to the last years of the Marchioness.

The account he received shewed that she had remained austere and melancholy, as was her wont. Remaining secluded and alone at the castle, her hours were uniformly spent in three different places: her oratory, the vault in which the body of her husband had been buried, and the spot sheltered by the oak tree, at the foot of which her lover had been interred. For eight years after the evening on which Paul had taken leave of her, she had been seen to wander amid the old corridors of the castle, and in the gloomy avenues of the Park, slow and pale as a spectre; then a disease of the heart, engendered by the agonies she had suffered, declared itself, and she daily became weaker. At length, one evening, when her failing strength no longer permitted her to walk, she had ordered the servants to carry her to the foot of the oak tree, her favorite walk, that she might once more see, she said, the sun setting in the ocean. When they had reached the spot, she desired the servants to withdraw, and to come back to her in half an hour. On their return they found her lying fainting on the ground. They immediately bore her to the castle, but having recovered her senses on the way, she ordered them, instead of conducting her to her own room, which they usually did, to take her down into the family vault. There she had still strength enough to kneel upon the tomb of her husband, and made a sign that she desired to be left alone. However imprudent their doing so might be, the servants elbow on the marble withdrew, for she had accustomed them to obey her in every thing at the first intimation of her will. They, however, remained at a short distance, concealed behind the corner of a tomb, that they might be ready to render her a.s.sistance, should it be necessary. In a few minutes they saw her fall down upon the stone on which she had been praying; they rushed forward, imagining that she had again fainted. She was dead.

Paul requested the old servant to conduct him into the vault, and slowly entered it with uncovered head; and when he had reached the stone which covered the grave of his mother, he knelt down and prayed. On the monumental stone were inscribed the following words, and which may still be seen in one of the chapels of the church of the small town of Auray, to which it has since been removed. The inscription had been written by the marchioness herself, and she had desired that it should be placed upon her tomb.

"Here lies the very n.o.ble and very puissant lady Marguerite Blanche de Sable, Marchioness of Auray; born the 2nd of August 1729--died the 3rd September, 1788.

"Pray for her and for her children."

Paul raised his eyes to heaven, with an expression of infinite grat.i.tude, His mother, who during her life, had for so long a time forgotten him, had remembered him in her funeral inscription.

Six months after this visit, the National Convention decreed, in solemn sitting, that they would attend in a body the funeral procession of Paul Jones, formerly a commodore in the American navy, and whose burial was to take place in the cemetery of Pere La Chaise.

They had come to this decision, said the decree, in order to consecrate the establishment of _religious freedom throughout France_.