Читать книгу The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon - Александр Дюма, Alexandre Dumas - Страница 23

HECTOR HAD NOW BEEN speaking for two hours. Claire was weeping so profusely that he wasn’t sure he should continue. He paused. The tears pearling in his eyes showed what he was thinking.

“Oh, please go on! Go on!” she said.

“It would be according me a great favor,” he said, “for I have not yet said anything about myself.”

Claire reached out her hand to him. “How you have suffered,” she murmured.

“Wait,” he said, “and you will see that you are just the person to make me forget it all.”

“I didn’t know Valensolles, Jahiat, and Ribier very well, only by sight. But through their association with my brother, who had joined them in death, they were my friends. I gave them all a proper burial. Then I returned to Besançon. I put our family affairs in order and began to wait. What was I waiting for? I didn’t know what, only that it was something on which my fate would depend. I didn’t think it necessary that I go looking for it, but I felt compelled to be ready whenever it should come.

“One morning, the Chevalier de Mahalin was announced. I did not recognize the name, and yet in my heart a painful chord began to vibrate as if it bore for me a strange familiarity. The man behind the name was young, twenty-five or twenty-six, perfectly attired, and irreproachably polite.

“‘Monsieur le Comte,’ he said, ‘you know that the Company of Jehu, so painfully smitten by the loss of its four leaders, and especially your brother, is beginning to reform. Its leader is the famous Laurent, though beneath that ordinary name hides one of the most aristocratic family names of the South. Our captain is reserving an important place in his army for you, and he has sent me to ask if you would like, by joining us, to keep the promise given by your brother.’

“‘Monsieur le Chevalier,’ I answered, ‘I would be lying if I told you that I have much enthusiasm for the life of a wandering cavalier, but as I did promise my brother, and as my brother promised me to your cause, I am ready.’

“‘Shall I tell you, then, where we are meeting?’ asked the Chevalier de Mahalin. ‘Or are you coming now with me?’

“‘I am coming now with you, monsieur.’

“I had a trusty servant named Saint-Bris. He had served my brother too, and I installed him in our house and left him master of it all, making him really more my steward than my servant. That done, I gathered up my weapons, climbed on my horse, and rode off.

“We were to meet Laurent somewhere between Vizille and Grenoble. In two days’ time, we were there.

“Laurent, our chief, was truly worthy of his reputation. He was like one of those men to whose baptism fairies are invited, and each one blesses him with a virtuous quality, but there’s always one fairy who’s been overlooked and he arrives to burthen the infant with the one defect that counterbalances all of his virtues. Laurent had been endowed with that beauty typical of the South and typically masculine: brilliant eyes, lustrous dark hair, and a thick dark beard, his fiercely handsome face tempered by a charming blend of kindness, strength, and affability. Left on his own when he was scarcely beyond his tumultuous youth, he lacked a solid formal education, but he was worldly-wise, and he possessed a nobleman’s grace and politesse, as well as a charismatic quality that naturally attracted people to his fold. But he was also unusually violent and quick-tempered. As much as his gentleman’s education normally kept him within acceptable boundaries, he would still frequently, suddenly, explode; and an angry Laurent, the imperfect Laurent, appeared to be no longer of humankind. And the rumor would spread, wherever he happened to be: ‘Laurent is angry; men will die.’

“Justice was as concerned about Laurent’s band as it had been about Saint-Hermine’s group. Large forces were deployed. Laurent and seventy-one of his men were captured and sent to Yssingeaux in the Haute-Loire to answer for their actions before a special court convened expressly for their trial.

“But Bonaparte was still in Egypt then. Power resided in weak hands, and the little town of Yssingeaux treated Laurent and his band more like a garrison than like prisoners. The prosecution was timid, the witnesses were ineffectual, the defense was bold. It was led by Laurent himself, who took responsibility for everything. His seventy-one companions were acquitted; he was sentenced to death.

“Laurent returned to the prison as nonchalantly as he had left. By then, the supreme beauty with which Nature had endowed him, the corporal recommendation, as Montaigne has called it, had already produced its effect. Every woman in Yssingeaux felt sorry for him, and for more than a few of them, pity had transferred itself into a much more tender feeling. Such was the case of the jailer’s daughter, although Laurent was not aware of it.

“Two hours after midnight, Laurent’s cell door opened as it had for Pierre de Médicis, and the girl from Yssingeaux, like the girl in Ferrare, spoke these sweet words: ‘Non temo nulla, bentivoglio!’ (‘Have no fear, I love you!’) His angel savior had seen him only through the prison bars, but his magnetic seductive powers had touched her heart and ruled her senses. A few words were exchanged; so were rings. And Laurent walked free.

“A horse was waiting in a neighboring village, she’d told him, and there she would meet him. Dawn broke. As he fled through the shadows, Laurent caught a glimpse of the executioner and his helpers setting up the deadly machine. For he was supposed to be executed at ten that morning, the execution having been rushed to take place only one day after the sentencing so as to coincide with market day, when everyone from the neighboring villages would be in Yssingeaux. Of course, when the sun’s first rays struck the guillotine in the square, and when the identity of the illustrious prisoner who’d climb the steps to the platform became known, no one was giving any more thought to the market.

“Waiting in the nearby village, Laurent worried not for himself but for the woman who had saved him. Laurent became impatient. Several times he rode out toward Yssingeaux, each time riding closer to the town, to try to get information, but without success. Finally, caught up in the heat of the moment, he lost his head: He assumed that his savior had herself been captured and that she, as his accomplice, would in his place be climbing the scaffold to the guillotine. So he rides into town, his horse spurred to a gallop, and as he passes by, people shout in astonishment when they realize that the man they were expecting to see guillotined is riding free on horseback. He rides past the gendarmes who’d been posted to escort him from his cell; he reaches the square where the scaffold awaits him, and espying the woman he’s looking for, he pushes his way to her, reaches down, pulls her up behind him, and gallops off to the cheers of the whole town. All those who had come to applaud his head as it fell were now applauding his flight, his escape, his salvation.

“That is what our leader was like, the leader who followed my brother. Such was the man under whose tutelage I learned to fight.

“For three months I lived daily under the strain of our battles and at night I slept wrapped up in my coat, my hand on my gun, pistols in my belt. Then the rumor of a truce began to spread. I came to Paris, promising to return to my companions at the first call. I came because I had seen you once—please excuse my frankness—and I needed, I yearned, to see you again.

“I did of course see you again, but if by chance your eyes happened to fall on me, you surely remember my face betrayed my deep sadness, my unconcern, and I might even say my apparent distaste for all of life’s pleasures. For how indeed, given the precarious position in which I found myself—obeying not my own conscience but another fatal, absolute, imperious power that exposed me to the possibility of being wounded if not killed in a stagecoach attack, or, even worse, being captured—how could I dare say to a lovely, sweet girl, the flower of the world in which she blossoms and the laws of which she accepts, how could I dare say to her: ‘I love you. Are you willing to accept a husband who has placed himself outside the law, for whom the greatest happiness possible is to be shot dead in cold blood?’

“No, I could not declare my love. I had to be content just to be able to see you, to be intoxicated by the sight of you, to be where you were likely to be, and all the while pray that God would accomplish a miracle, that the rumored truce would become real peace, though I hardly dared to hope.

“Finally, about four or five days ago, the newspapers announced that Cadoudal had come to Paris, that he had met with the First Consul. The same evening the same newspapers reported that the Breton general had given his word to no longer attempt any action against France, if the First Consul, for his part, would take no further action against Brittany or against him.

“The next day”—Hector pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket—“the next day I received this circular letter written in Cadoudal’s own hand:

“‘Because a protracted war seems to be a misfortune for France and ruin for my region, I free you from your oath of loyalty to me. I shall never call you back unless the French government should fail to keep the promise it gave to me and that I accepted in your name.

“‘If there should happen to be some treason hidden beneath a hypocritical peace, I would not hesitate to call once more on your fidelity, and your fidelity, I am sure, would respond.’

“You can imagine my joy when I received this leave. Once again I would be in control of my own person; no longer was I promised by the word of my father and my two brothers to a monarchy that I knew only through my family’s devotion and through the misfortunes that devotion had brought down upon our house. I was twenty-three years old; I had an annual income of one hundred thousand francs. I was in love, and supposing that I was also loved, the gates of paradise that had long been guarded by the angel of death were now opening up before me. Oh, Claire! Claire! That is why I was so happy when you saw me at Madame de Permon’s ball. I could finally ask you to meet me like this. Finally I could tell you that I loved you.”

Claire lowered her eyes and made no answer, which in itself was almost an answer.

“Now,” Hector went on, “everything I have just told you, all these histories hidden away out in the provinces, is completely unknown in Paris. I could have kept it hidden from you, but I chose not to. I wanted to tell you my whole life’s story, to explain by what destiny I was led finally to make my confession to you—knowing that you might suppose my actions to be a mistake or even a crime—so that I might receive absolution from your own lips.”

“Oh, Hector dear!” cried Claire, carried away by the quiet passion that had been governing her for nearly a year. “Oh, yes, I forgive you! I absolve you,” and forgetting that she was under her mother’s watchful eyes, she added, “I love you!” And threw her arms around his neck.

“Claire!” cried Madame de Sourdis, her voice showing more surprise than anger.

“Mother!” answered Claire, blushing and about to faint.

“Claire!” said Hector, taking her hand. “Don’t forget that everything I have told you is for you alone. It must be a secret between us, and since I love only you, I have no need for forgiveness from anyone but you. Do not forget. And especially, remember that I shall be truly alive only when I receive your mother’s answer to the request I have made. Claire, you have told me that you love me. I am placing our happiness in your love’s hands.”

Without another word Hector left. But his heart, athrill with the freedom and joy of a prisoner whose death sentence has just been commuted, was not silent.

Madame de Sourdis was waiting impatiently for her daughter. Claire’s spontaneity, when she threw herself into the arms of the young Comte de Sainte-Hermine, had seemed out of character. She wanted an explanation.

The explanation was clear and rapid. When the girl reached her mother, she simply dropped to her knees and pronounced these three words: “I love him!”

Our characters are molded by nature to prepare us for the times we need them to survive. It was thanks to such natural strength that Charlotte Corday and Madame Roland were able to say, one to Marat and the other to Robespierre: “I hate you.” Likewise, Claire could say to Hector: “I love you.”

Madame de Sourdis helped Claire up from her knees, had her sit down next to her, and then questioned her, but these are the only words the mother got out of her daughter: “My dear mother, Hector told me a family secret that he believes he must hide from everyone except the girl he wants to make his wife. I am that girl. He solicits the favor of coming to ask your permission for a marriage we desire more than anything. He is free, he has an annual income of one hundred thousand francs, and we love each other. Think about it, Mother dear. But a refusal on your part would be a calamity for both of us!”

Having spoken firmly but respectfully, Claire then bowed to her mother and started to walk away.

“And if I say yes?” said Madame de Sourdis.

“Oh, Mother,” cried Claire, throwing herself into her arms, “how good you are and how I love you!”

“And now that I have reassured your heart,” Madame de Soudis said, “sit down and let us speak reasonably.”

Madame de Sourdis seated herself on a sofa. Claire sat in front of her, on a cushion, and took her mother’s hands. “I’m all ears, Mother,” said Claire with a smile.

“In times like ours,” said Madame de Sourdis, “it is absolutely necessary to belong to some party. I believe that Hector de Sainte-Hermine numbers himself among the Royalists. Yesterday, when I was chatting with your godfather Dr. Cabanis, a great man of science who also has good sense, he congratulated me on the friendship Madame Bonaparte has for me. He believes strongly that you should likewise become as close as possible to her daughter Hortense. In his opinion, that is where your future lies.

“As you know, Cabanis is the First Consul’s personal doctor, and he is convinced the First Consul, in his genius, will not be content to stay where he is situated now. A man does not risk something like the 18th Brumaire just to sit in a consul’s armchair; he does it rather to rule from a throne. So those who attach themselves to Bonaparte’s star before the veil of the future is rent will be carried along with him in the whirlwind of his destiny; along with him they will rise.

“The First Consul, we know, loves to bring great families, rich families, over to his side. In that regard, Sainte-Hermine leaves nothing to be desired. He has an income of one hundred thousand francs; his family goes back to the Crusades. His entire family, too, has died for the Royalist cause, so truly, he owes nothing more to their campaign. He is of an age that has allowed him to remain thus far outside of political events. Whereas his father and two brothers all gave their lives for old France, he has not yet pledged anything to any party. It is up to him, then, by accepting a position with the First Consul, to live for new France.

“Please note that I am not making this step on his part a condition for your marriage. I would be more than pleased to see Hector join the side of the First Consul. If he refuses, however, it is because his conscience tells him that he must, and only God can judge the human conscience. Whichever path he chooses, he will be my daughter’s husband nonetheless, and no less will he be my beloved son-in-law.”

“When might I write to him, Mother?” Claire asked.

“Whenever you like, my child,” answered her mother.

That very evening, Claire sent him a message, and the next day before noon, as soon as he could appropriately appear, Hector was knocking again at the front door.

This time he was taken directly to see Madame de Sourdis, who welcomed him with open arms, like a mother. They were still holding each other tightly when Claire opened the door, and seeing them, she cried, “Oh, Mother. How happy I am!” Madame de Sourdis again opened her arms, so that she could embrace both of her children.

The marriage was agreed upon. All that was left to discuss with the young Comte was the matter of his joining the First Consul’s administration.

Hector, with Madame de Sourdis on his left and Claire on his right, was seated on the sofa with his future mother-in-law’s hand in his on one side and his fiancée’s on the other. Claire took it upon herself to explain to Hector the high opinion that Dr. Cabanis held of Bonaparte and to present Madame de Sourdis’s hope regarding Hector’s future. Hector kept his eyes fixed attentively on Claire as she tried to repeat word for word her mother’s reasoning on the matter.

When she had finished, Hector bowed to Madame de Sourdis, and looking even more intently at Claire than he had while she was speaking, he said, “Claire, based on what I told you yesterday, and I am not sorry to have gone on at such length, put yourself in my place and answer your mother. Your answer will be my answer.”

The girl thought for a moment and then threw herself into her mother’s arms. “Oh, Mother!” she cried, shaking her head. “He cannot. His brother’s blood flows between them.”

Madame de Sourdis bowed her head. It was clear that she felt great disappointment. She had dreamed of a high rank in the army for her son-in-law; and for her daughter, a high position at the court.

“Madame,” said Hector, “please don’t think that I am among those people who praise the old regime to the detriment of the current one, or that I am blind to the First Consul’s great qualities. I saw him the other day for the first time at Madame de Permon’s ball, and rather than feeling repulsed, I was attracted to him. I admire his campaign of ’96 and ’97 as a masterpiece of modern strategy and an exemplar of his military genius. I am less enthusiastic, I’ll admit, about his Egyptian campaign, which could have no happy outcome and was no more than a mask to cover his immense thirst for fame: Bonaparte fought and won where Marius and Pompey had also fought and won. By that, he hoped to awaken and amend ancient echoes that for centuries had repeated no names but those of Alexander and Caesar. How tempting. But it was an expensive fantasy that cost our country so much money and so many men! As for the most recent campaign, at Marengo, that was a campaign only for personal glory, undertaken to give a firm footing to the legitimacy of the 18th Brumaire and to force foreign governments to recognize the new French government. But, as everyone knows, Bonaparte was not a military genius. He was lucky, like a gambler who is about to lose and then draws two trump cards. And what trump cards they were! Kellermann and Desaix! The 18th Brumaire was no more than a conspiracy whose lucky success in the end barely justifies its author’s means. What if it had failed? What if his attempt to overthrow the established government had been ruled a rebellion, a crime of treason? Then in the Bonaparte family at least three heads would have rolled. Chance served him well when he returned from Alexandria, fortune was on his side at Marengo, and his boldness saved him in Saint-Cloud. But a temperate man, a man not blinded by passion, would never mistake three lightning flashes, however bright they might be, for the dawn of a great day. If I were completely free of my background, if my family had not stood firmly in the Royalist camp, I would have no objection to linking my own fortune to Bonaparte’s, although I consider him an illustrious adventurer who once fought a war for France and two other times for himself. Now, to prove to you that I am not prejudiced against him, I promise that the first time he does something great for France I shall come over to his side. For to my great astonishment, and although I owe my most recent loss to him, I do admire him in spite of his faults and in spite of myself. That is the kind of influence that those of a superior nature exert upon those lesser beings around them, and I feel that influence.”

“I understand,” said Madame de Sourdis. “But will you at least permit one thing?”

“It is not for me to permit,” said Hector, “but rather for you to order.”

“Will you allow me to ask the First Consul and Madame Bonaparte for their assent to Claire’s marriage? Connected as I am to Madame Bonaparte, I can hardly do otherwise. It is simply a step that etiquette demands.”

“Yes, but on the condition that if they refuse, we will proceed anyway.”

“If they refuse, you will carry off my darling Claire and I shall come to forgive you wherever you have taken her. But rest assured, they will not refuse me.”

And with that assurance, permission was granted to Madame de Sourdis to seek the blessing of the First Consul and Madame Bonaparte on the marriage of Claire de Sourdis to Monsieur le Comte Hector de Sainte-Hermine.