CHAPTER III.

THE TRAVELLERS..

THE poor gentleman was in such haste that the old proverb was realized in his case, and his journey was anything but speedy. At Nanci he fell ill of a fever, which had nearly carried him off, and in which he unceasingly raved about his child, and called upon his faithless wife to return her. Almost before he was convalescent, he was on his way again, to Boulogne, where he saw that English coast on which he rightly conjectured his fugitive wife was sheltered.

And here, from my boyish remembrance, which, respecting these early days, remains extraordinarily clear, I can take up the story, in which I was myself a very young actor, playing in the strange, fantastic, often terrible, drama which ensued a not insignificant part. As I survey it now, the curtain is down, and the play long over; as I think of its surprises, disguises, mysteries, escapes, and dangers, I am amazed myself, and sometimes inclined to be almost as great a fatalist as M. de la Motte, who vowed that a superior Power ruled our actions for us, and declared that he could no more prevent his destiny from accomplishing itself, than he could prevent his hair from growing. What a destiny it was! What a fatal tragedy was now about to begin!

One evening in our Midsummer holidays, in the year 1769, I remember being seated in my little chair at home, with a tempest of rain beating down the street. We had customers on most evenings, but there happened to be none on this night; and I remember I was puzzling over a bit of Latin grammar, to which mother used to keep me stoutly when I came home from school.

It is fifty years since.* I have forgotten who knows how many events of my life, which are not much worth the remembering; but I have as clearly before my eyes now a little scene which occurred on this momentous night, as though it had been acted within this hour. As we are sitting at our various employments, we hear steps coming up the

* The narrative seems to have been written about the year 1820.

street, which was empty, and silent but for the noise of the wind and rain. We hear steps-several steps-along the pavement, and they stop at our door.

"Madame Duval ! It is Gregson!" cries a voice from without.

"Ah, bon Dieu!" says mother, starting up and turning quite white.

And then I heard the cry of an infant. Dear heart! How well I remember that little cry!

As the door opens, a great gust of wind sets our two candles flickering, and I see enter

A gentleman giving his arm to a lady who is veiled in cloaks and wraps, an attendant carrying a crying child, and Gregson the boatman after them.

My mother gives a great hoarse shriek, and crying out, "Clarisse! Clarisse!" rushes up to the lady, and hugs and embraces her passionately. The child cries and wails. The nurse strives to soothe the infant. The gentleman takes off his hat and wrings the wet from it, and looks at me. then I felt a strange shock and terror. I have felt the same shock once or twice in my life: and once, notably, the person so affecting me has been my enemy, and has come to a dismal end.

It was

"We have had a very rough voyage," says the gentleman (in French) to my grandfather. "We have been fourteen hours at sea. Madame has suffered greatly, and is much

exhausted."

"Thy rooms are ready," says mother, fondly. "My poor Biche, thou shalt sleep in comfort to-night, and need fear nothing, nothing!"

A few days before I had seen mother and her servant mightily busy in preparing the rooms on the first floor, and decorating them. When I asked whom she was expecting, she boxed my ears, and bade me be quiet; but these were evidently the expected visitors; and, of course, from the names which mother used, I knew that the lady was the Countess of Saverne.

"And this is thy son, Ursule?" says the lady. "He is a great boy! My little wretch is always crying."

"Oh, the little darling," says mother, seizing the child,

which fell to crying louder than ever, "scared by the nodding plume and bristling crest " of Madame Duval, who wore a great cap in those days, and indeed looked as fierce as any Hector.

When the pale lady spoke so harshly about the child, I remember myself feeling a sort of surprise and displeasure. Indeed, I have loved children all my life, and am a fool about them (as witness my treatment of my own rascal), and no one can say that I was ever a tyrant at school, or ever fought there except to hold my own.

My mother produced what food was in the house, and welcomed her guests to her humble table. What trivial things remain impressed on the memory! I remember laughing in my boyish way because the lady said, “Ah! c'est ça du thé ? je n'en ai jamais goûté. Mais c'est très mauvais, n'est-ce pas, M. le Chevalier? I suppose they had not learned to drink tea in Alsace yet. Mother stopped my laughing with her usual appeal to my ears. I was daily receiving that sort of correction from the good soul. Grandfather said, If Madame the Countess would like a little tass of real Nantes brandy after her voyage, he could supply her; but she would have none of that either, and retired soon to her chamber, which had been prepared for her with my mother's best sheets and diapers, and in which was a bed for her maid Martha, who had retired to it with the little crying child. For M. le Chevalier de la Motte an apartment was taken at Mr. Billis's the baker's, down the street :-a friend who gave me many a plum-cake in my childhood, and whose wigs grandfather dressed, if you must know the truth.

At morning and evening we used to have prayers, which grandfather spoke with much eloquence; but on this night, as he took out his great Bible, and was for having me read a chapter, my mother said, "No. This poor Clarisse is fatigued, and will go to bed." And to bed accordingly the stranger went. And as I read my little chapter, I remember how tears fell down mother's cheeks, and how she cried, "Ah, mon Dieu, mon Dieu! ayez pitié d'elle," and when I was going to sing our evening hymn, "Nun ruhen alle Wälder," she told me to hush. Madame upstairs was tired, and wanted to sleep. And she went upstairs to look after Madame, and bade me be

a little guide to the strange gentleman, and show him the way to Billis's house. Off I went, prattling by his side; I daresay I soon forgot the terror which I felt when I first saw him. You may be sure all Winchelsea knew that a French lady, and her child, and her maid, were come to stay with Madame Duval, and a French gentleman to lodge over the baker's.

I never shall forget my terror and astonishment when mother told me that this lady who came to us was a Papist. There were two gentlemen of that religion living in our town, at a handsome house called the Priory; but they had little to do with persons in my parents' humble walk of life, though of course my mother would dress Mrs. Weston's head as well as any other lady's. I forgot also to say that Mrs. Duval went out sometimes as ladies' nurse, and in that capacity had attended Mrs. Weston, who, however, lost her child. The Westons had a chapel in their house, in the old grounds of the Priory, and clergymen of their persuasion used to come over from my Lord Newburgh's of Slindon, or from Arundel, where there is another great Papist house; and one or two Roman Catholics-there were very few of them in our town— were buried in a part of the old gardens of the Priory, where a monks' burying-place had been before Harry VIII.'s time.

The new gentleman was the first Papist to whom I had ever spoken; and as I trotted about the town with him, showing him the old gates, the church, and so forth, I remember saying to him, "And have you burned any Protestants?"

"Oh, yes!" says he, giving a horrible grin, "I have roasted several, and eaten them afterwards." And I shrank back from him, and his pale grinning face; feeling once more that terror which had come over me when I first beheld him. He was a queer gentleman; he was amused by my simplicity and odd sayings. He was never tired of having me with him. He said I should be his little English master; and indeed he learned the language surprisingly quick, whereas poor Madame de Saverne never understood a word of it.

She was very ill-pale, with a red spot on either cheek, sitting for whole hours in silence, and looking round frightened, as if a prey to some terror. I have seen my mother watching her, and looking almost as scared as the countess herself,

lock her door, and herself She used to walk about the

At times, Madame could not bear the crying of the child, and would order it away from her. At other times, she would clutch it, cover it with cloaks, and into the chamber with her infant. house of a night. I had a little room near mother's, which I occupied during the holidays, and on Saturdays and Sundays, when I came over from Rye. I remember quite well waking up one night, and hearing Madame's voice at mother's door, crying out, "Ursula, Ursula! quick! horses! I must go away. He is coming; I know he is coming!" And then there were remonstrances on mother's part, and Madame's maid came out of her room, with entreaties to her mistress to return. At the cry of the child, the poor mother would rush away from whatever place she was in, and hurry to the infant. Not that she loved it. At the next moment she would cast the child down on the bed, and go to the window again, and look to the sea. For hours she sat at that window, with a curtain twisted round her, as if hiding from some one. Ah! how have I looked up at that window since, and the light twinkling there! I wonder does the house remain yet? I don't like now to think of the passionate grief I have passed through, as I looked up to yon glimmering lattice.

It was evident our poor visitor was in a deplorable condition. The apothecary used to come and shake his head, and order medicine. The medicine did little good. The sleeplessness continued. She was a prey to constant fever. She would make incoherent answers to questions put to her, laugh and weep at odd times and places; push her meals away from her, though they were the best my poor mother could supply; order my grandfather to go and sit in the kitchen, and not have the impudence to sit down before her; coax and scold my mother by turns, and take her up very sharply when she rebuked me. Poor Madame Duval was scared by her foster-sister. She, who ruled everybody, became humble before the poor crazy lady. I can see them both now, the lady in white, listless and silent as she would sit for hours taking notice of no one, and mother watching her with terrified dark eyes.

The Chevalier de la Motte had his lodgings, and came and went between his house and ours. I thought he was the