Gerald Fitzgerald: The Chevalier Part 31

'But remember, too, you must have other thoughts here than for yourself.'

'I will leave France; I will seek my fortune elsewhere; I cannot live in a network of intrigue; I have no head for plots, no heart for subtleties. Leave me, therefore, Count, to my fate.'

In broken, unconnected sentences the youth declined all aid or counsel.

There are moments of such misery that all the offices of friendship bring less comfort to the heart than a stern self-reliance. A rugged sense of independence supplies at such times both energy and determination. Mayhap it is in moments like these more of real character is formed than even years accomplish in the slower accidents of fortune.

'This journalist, at least, shall render me satisfaction for his words,' thought he to himself. 'I cannot meet the whole array of these slanderers, but upon this one I will fix.'

'By what mischance, Gerald, have you made Monsieur your enemy?' asked the Count.

'Monsieur my enemy!' repeated Gerald, in utter amazement.

'Yes. The rumour goes that when the commission returned their report to the King, his Majesty was mercifully inclined, and might have felt disposed to inflict a mere reprimand, or some slight arrest, when Monsieur's persuasions prevailed on him to take a severer course.'

'I cannot bring myself to credit this!' cried Fitzgerald.

'It is generally believed, nay, it is doubted by none, and all are speculating how you came to incur this dislike.'

'It is hard to say,' muttered Gerald bitterly.

'This is for you, Fitzgerald,' said a sergeant of the Corps, entering the room hastily. 'You are to appear on the parade to-morrow, and hear it read at the head of your company,' and with these words he threw an open paper on the table and withdrew.

'Open shame and insult--this is too much,' said Gerald. 'You must appeal, Gerald; I insist upon it,' cried Dillon.

'No, sir. I have done with princes and royal guards. I could not put on their livery again with the sense of loyalty that once stirred my heart.

Leave me, I pray, an hour or two to collect my thoughts and grow calm again. Good-bye for a short while.

CHAPTER VI. A WANDERER

After many vicissitudes and hazards, Fitzgerald succeeded in making his escape from France, and reaching Coblentz, where a small knot of devoted Royalists lived, sharing their little resources in common, and generously contributing every aid in their power to their poorer brethren. This life, if one of painful and unceasing anxiety, was yet singularly devoid of incident. To watch the terrible course of that torrent that now devastated their native country; to see how in that resistless deluge all was submerged--throne, villa, home, and family; to sit motionless on the sh.o.r.e, as it were, and survey the shipwreck, was their sad fate.

According to the various temperaments they possessed did men bear this season of probation. To some it was like a dreary nightmare, a long half sleep of suffering and oppression, leaving them devoid of all energy, or all will for exertion. Others felt stimulated to be up and doing, to write and plot, and intrigue with their fellow-exiles in Italy and the north of Germany. The very transmission of the sad tidings which came from Paris became an accustomed task; while some few, half resigned to a ruin whose widespread limits seemed to menace the whole of Europe, began to weave plans for emigrating to a new world beyond the seas.

Gerald halted, and deliberated to which of these two latter he would attach himself. If the idea of a new colony and a new existence, where each should stamp his fate with his own impress, had its attractions, there was also much that fascinated in the heroism that bound men to a losing cause, and held them faithful and true where so many fell off in defection. Perhaps it was the personal character of the men who professed these opinions ultimately decided his choice; for D'Allonville, Caumartin, and Lessieux, who then lived at Coblentz, gave to these sentiments all the glowing ardour of a high and n.o.ble chivalry.

Nor was it without a certain charm for a young mind to see himself, as it were, a partic.i.p.ator and agent in the cause of great events. By zeal to encounter any difficulty, readiness to go anywhere, or dare any peril, Fitzgerald had won the esteem and confidence of men high in the exiled Prince's favour. They grew to talk with him and confide in him, showing him private letters from exalted personages, and even at times to take his counsel in affairs which required prompt action. Young, active, able to endure fatigue without inconvenience, he offered himself for every charge where such qualities might be available; and thus he traversed Europe, from Hamburg to Italy, from the Rhine to the Vistula, bearing despatches, or as often himself charged with some special communication too delicate to commit to writing, and wherein his tact was intrusted with the details.

At last it was deemed essential to have a number of agents in France itself--men capable of watching and recording the changes of public opinion, who might note the rising discontents of the popular mind, and observe where they had their source. It was a rooted faith in the Royalist party that sooner or later the nation would react against the terrible doctrines of the anarchists, and welcome back to France the men whose very names and t.i.tles were part of her glory: the mistake was in supposing that the time for this reaction was at hand, and in believing that every pa.s.sing shadow was its herald.

Gerald's personal courage, his adroitness in the use of disguise, his unfailing resources in every difficulty, pointed him out as one well adapted for this employ; and he was constantly intrusted with secret missions to this or that part of France, occasions on which he as invariably distinguished himself by his capacity. The very isolation in which he stood, without family or connections, favoured him, removing him from the sphere of those jealousies which oftentimes marred and defeated the wisest plans of the Royalists. He was not a Rohan nor a Courcelles--a Grammont nor a Tavanne--whose family influence was one day or other to be dreaded. Let him win what fame he might, gain what credit, attract what notice, he carried with him no train of followers to profit by his success and bar up the avenues of promotion; for so was it--strange and scarce credible though it seems--men were already quarrelling over the spoils ere the victory was won; ere, indeed, the battle was engaged, or the enemy encountered.

BOOK THE THIRD

CHAPTER I. A CARDINAL'S CHAMBER

We must ask of our reader to pa.s.s over both time and s.p.a.ce, and accompany us, as night is falling, to a small chamber in the house of the Cardinal Caraffa at Rome, where his Eminence is now closeted in secret converse with a tall, sickly, but still handsome man, in a long robe of black serge, b.u.t.toned almost to his feet, and wearing on his head a low square cap, of the same coa.r.s.e material; he is the Pere Ma.s.soni, superior of the College of Jesuits.

The Cardinal had but just returned from a conclave, and had not taken time to change a dress, whose splendour formed a strong contrast with the simple attire of his guest.

'It is, happily, the last council for the season,' said his Eminence, as he seated himself in a deep easy-chair. 'His Holiness leaves for Gaeta to-morrow, the Cardinal Secretary Piombino retires to Albano during the hot weather, and I am free to confer with my esteemed friend the Pere Ma.s.soni, and discuss deeper themes than the medallions in the nave of San Giovanni di Laterano. There were to have been fourteen on either side last Tuesday; on Friday, we came down to twelve; to-day, we deemed eleven enough; in fact, Ma.s.soni, we are less speculative as to the future, and have left but four s.p.a.ces to be filled up; but enough of this,--have your letters arrived?'

'Yes, your Eminence, the Priest Carroll from Ireland has brought me several, and much information besides of events in England.'

'It is of France I want to hear,' broke in the Cardinal impatiently. 'It is of the man in the throes of death I would learn tidings, not of him lingering in the long stages of a chronic malady. Did this priest pa.s.s through Paris?'

'He did, your Eminence; he was two days there. The fever of blood still rages. 'Twas but Monday week, thirty-two n.o.bles of La Vendee were guillotined, and, worse still, eight priests, old and venerable men, cures of the several parishes. They met their death as became true sons of the holy Church, declaring with their last breath that the sacrifice would bring a blessing on the faith.'

'So it will--they are right--truth must triumph at last, Ma.s.soni,' said the Cardinal hurriedly; 'but we are pa.s.sing through a fiery ordeal; sparks of the same fire have been seen among ourselves too. Grave fears exist that all is not well at Viterbo.'

'The flame must be trodden out quickly and completely, your Eminence; deal with traitors with speed, and you can treat true men with justice.

The Abbe Guescard, whose book on private judgments you have seen, was buried this morning.'

'I had not heard that he was ill.'

'It was a sudden seizure, your Eminence, but the convulsions resisted all treatment, and death closed his sufferings about midnight. The doctrines of Diderot and Jean Jacques form but sorry homilies. They who preach them go to a heavy reckoning hereafter.'

'And meet with sudden deaths besides,' said the Cardinal, with a glance in which there was fully as much jollity as gloom.

The Jesuit Father's pale face remained calm and pa.s.sionless as before, nor did a syllable escape from him in reply. At length the Cardinal said, 'All accounts agree in one thing, the pestilence is spreading, At Aranguez, in Spain, a secret society has been discovered in correspondence with Des-moulins. At Leipsic a record for future proscription throughout Germany has been found, exactly fashioned after the true Paris model; and even in sluggish England the mutter-ings of discontent are heard, but with them we have less sympathy--or rather we might say, G.o.d speed the hand that would pull down the heretic Church!'

'Carroll tells me that Ireland is ripe, though for what, it is yet hard to p.r.o.nounce. The cry of "Liberty" in France has awakened her to the memory of all her hatred to England. Men of great ability and daring are eagerly feeding the flame; the difficulty will be to direct its ravages when once it breaks out. If the principles of France sway them, the torrent that will overwhelm the heretic will also sweep away the faith.'

'Much will depend upon the men who direct the movement.'

'No, no,' said the Jesuit, 'next to nothing. Each in his turn will be the victim of the event he seems to control. It is not the riven tree carried along by the current that directs the stream. It is to human pa.s.sions and their working we must look, to see the issue out of these troubles. Once men emerge out of the storm-tossed ocean of their excesses, they strain their eyes to catch some haven--some resting-place. Some find it in religion; some in ambition, which is the religion of this world. The crime of France has been that no such goal has ever existed. In their l.u.s.t to destroy, they have forfeited the power to rebuild. As well endeavour to reanimate the cold corpses beneath the guillotine as revive that glorious monarchy. For men like these there is no hope--no hereafter. Have no trust in them.'

'But you yourself told me,' cried the Cardinal, 'how vain it were to pledge men to the cause of the Church.'

'And truly did I say so. Men will serve no cause but that which secures them a safe recompense. In France they have that recompense--there is vengeance and there is pillage; but both will be exhausted after a time--there will be satiety for one and starvation for the other, and then woe to those who spirited them on to this pursuit. The convulsion in Ireland, if it should come, need not have this peril; there, there is a race to expel and a heresy to exterminate; in both the prospect of the future is implied. Let us aid this project.'

'Ah! it is your old project lurs there,' cried the Cardinal; 'I see a glimpse of it already; but what a dream is the restoration of that house!'

'Nor do I mean it should be more; the phantom of a Stuart in the procession is all I ask for. By that dynasty the Church is typified.

Instead of encountering the thousand enemies of a faith, we rally to us the adherents of a monarchy. If we build up this throne, he who sits on it is our viceroy; we have made, and can unmake him.'

'And how can the Cardinal York serve these plans?'

'I never intended that he should; his gown alone would exempt him, even had he--which he has not--personal qualities for such a cause.'

'Yet with him the race is extinct.'