Grotesque as were these words, they were spoken in a tone so full of emotion and so touching that the duke and his wife could not refuse the offer of the chevalier: "Well then, I accept."
"Hurrah!" cried Croustillac, in the voice of a stentor, and he accompanied this Muscovite exclamation by throwing into the air his old fur cap.
"Yes, I accept with all my heart, my old friend," said Monmouth, "and – why conceal it from you? – this unexpected succor which you offer us so generously, saves, perhaps, my life – saves, perhaps, my wife and children from misery, for this sum sets us afloat again, and we can brave two years as bad as those which have been the cause of our first embarrassment. Fatigue, chagrin, fear for the future, have made me ill; now, tranquil as to the fate of my dear ones, assured of a friend like you – I am sure that my health will return to me."
"Zounds! my lord, how did it happen that, with the enormous amount of jewels that you had, you are reduced?"
"Angela will tell you that, my friend; emotion at once so keen and so sweet as I feel has fatigued me."
"After having left you on board of the Unicorn," said Angela "we set sail for Brazil; we sojourned there some time, but from prudence, we resolved to depart for India on board a Portuguese vessel. We had lived three years in this little-known country, very happy and very tranquil, when I fell seriously ill. One of the best physicians in Bombay declared that the climate of India would become fatal to me; my native air alone could save me. You know how James loves me; it was impossible for me to alter his resolution; he chose at all hazards to return to Europe, to France, in spite of the dangers that threatened him. We started from the Cape in a Dutch ship, making sail for the Texel. We possessed a very considerable sum coming from the sale of our jewels. Our voyage was very fortunate as far as the coast of France, but there a terrible tempest assailed us. After losing her masts, and being beaten about by the waves for three days, our ship went ashore on the coast a quarter of a league from here; by a miracle of Heaven, James and I alone escaped an almost certain death. Several of the passengers were, like us, cast on the beach during this horrible night – all perished. I repeat to you, my friend, that a miracle from Heaven was necessary to save us, James and me – to save me especially, ill as I was. The tenants whom we replaced on this farm found us almost dying on the shore; they brought us here. The ship was swallowed up with all our riches; James, occupied solely with me, had forgotten all; we no longer possessed anything; I was an orphan with no fortune; James could not apply to any one without being recognized.
"What remained to us in Martinique had, without doubt, been confiscated – and then, how could we claim this property? For all resource there remained to us a ring which I wore on my finger at the time of the ship-wreck; we intrusted it to the tenants of this farm, who had received us, to sell the diamond at Abbeville; they got for it about four thousand livres – that was all our store. My health was so affected that we were obliged to stop here; this measure, besides reconciled both prudence and economy; the farmers were good, full of cares for us.
"Little by little my health became re-established. Almost without resources we thought of the future with terror; however, we were young, misfortune had redoubled our love; the simple, obscure, peaceable life of our hosts impressed us; they were old, without children; we proposed to them to take the half of their farm, and to make our apprenticeship under their direction, avowing to them that we had no other resources than the four thousand livres that we would share with them. Touched with our position, these good people wished at first to dissuade us from this project, representing to us how hard and laborious this life was. I insisted; I felt myself full of courage and strength; James had lived a hard life too long not to accustom himself to that of the fields. We accomplished our design; I was tranquil about James. Who would seek the Duke of Monmouth in an obscure farm in Picardy? At the end of two years we had finished our apprenticeship, thanks to the lessons and teaching of our good forerunners; their little fortune, augmented by our four thousand livres, was sufficient. They made an agreement with the treasurer of the abbey that we should succeed them and we take the entire farm."
"Ah, madame, what resignation! what energy!" cried the chevalier.
"Ah, if you knew, my friend," said Monmouth, "with what admirable serenity of soul, with what gentle gayety Angela endured his rough life – she, accustomed to a life of luxury! – if you knew how she always knew how to be gracious, elegant, and charming, all the while superintending the affairs of the household with admirable activity! – if you knew in fine, what strength I drew from this brave and devoted heart; from this gentle regard always fixed upon me with an admirable expression of happiness and content precarious as was our position! Ah, who will ever recompense this beautiful conduct?"
"My friend," said Angela tenderly, "has not God blessed our laborious and peaceful life? Has He not sent us two little angels to change our duties into pleasures? What shall I say to you?" resumed Angela, addressing the chevalier; "for the almost sixteen years that this uniform life has lasted, of which each day has brought its bread, as the good folks say, never a chagrin had come to trouble it, when, in the past year, a bad harvest hampered us very much. We were obliged to discharge two of our farm hands for economy's sake. James redoubled his efforts and his work, his strength gave out; he took to his bed; our small resources were exhausted. A bad year, you see, for poor farmers," said Angela, smiling softly, "is terrible. In short, without you, I do not know how we could have escaped the fate which threatened us, for the Abbot of St. Quentin is inflexible toward tenants in arrears, and yet it was our pride to pay him always a term in advance. One hundred crowns – as much as that – and a hundred crowns, chevalier, are not easily gotten together."
"A hundred crowns? That does not pay for the embroidery on a baldric," said James with a melancholy smile. "Ah, how many times, in experiencing what misfortune is, have I regretted the good I might have done."
"Listen, my lord," said Croustillac gravely, "I am no devotee. Just now I came near shaking a monk out of his robes; I committed irregularities during my campaign in Moravia, but I am sure there is One above Who does not lose sight of honest people. Now, it is impossible that after nineteen years of work and resignation, now when you grow old, with two beautiful children, you should dream of remaining at the mercy of an avaricious monk or a year of frost. In listening to you, an idea has come to me. If I was the boaster of old, I should say that it was an idea from above; but I wholly believe that it is a fortunate idea. What has become of Father Griffen?"
"We do not know; we did not return to Martinique."
"He belongs to the order of Preaching Friars; he must be at the end of the world," said Monmouth.
"I, who have had no news of France for eighteen years, I know no more than you, my lord, but this is why I concern myself. I left to him the price of the Unicorn; he is a good and honest priest; if he still lives, there must remain to him some of it, for he would have been prudent and careful in his almsgiving. My advice would be to seek to know where the Reverend Father is, for if the good God has willed that he should have kept some good morsel from the Unicorn, own, my lord, that this would not be bad eating at this moment; if not for you, at least, for these two beautiful children, for my heart bleeds to see them with their wooden shoes and their woolen hose, although they may keep their feet warmer than boots of leather and gilded spurs, or shoes of satin with silken hose, should they be red, these hose! red like those I wore in 1690," added the chevalier, with a sigh. Then he resumed: "Ah, well! my lord, what say you to my Griffen idea?"
"I say, my friend, that it is an idle hope. Father Griffen is without doubt dead; he will doubtless have left your fortune to some religious community."
"To the Abbey of St. Quentin, perhaps," said Angela.
"Zounds! it wants but that! I would instantly set fire to the monastery!"
"Ah – fie! fie! chevalier!" said Angela.
"It is also because I am raging at having done what I did with your two hundred thousand crowns; but could I then imagine that I should find again, as a farmer, the son of a king who handled his diamonds by the shovelful? Ah, it is no use to philosophize here; but to find Father Griffen again if he is still living!"
"And how to find him again?" said Monmouth.
"By seeking him, my lord. I who have no reason for concealing myself, to-morrow I will take up this quest, hobbling around. Nothing is more simple; in truth, I am stupid not to have thought of it sooner. I will direct myself at once to the Superior of Foreign Missions, thus we shall know what we have to look to. The Superior will at least inform me if the good Father is alive or not; and even, on this account, I will to-morrow make a visit to your neighbor, the abbot of St. Quentin. He will tell me what to do about it – how to get this information. I will carry him your hundred crowns; that will be a good way to contrive the interview."
The three friends passed the day together. We leave the reader to imagine the stories, the reminiscences, gay, touching, or sad, which were recalled.
On the morrow Croustillac, who had already made friends with young James, started for the abbey. The amount of the rent, in bright louis d'or, was an excellent passport to the presence of the treasurer.
"Father," said Croustillac, "I have a very important letter to place in the hands of a good priest of the order of Preaching Brothers; I do not know if he is alive or dead; if he is in Europe, or at the end of the world; to whom should I address myself for information on this subject?"
"To one of our canons, my son, who has had much to do with missions, and who, after long and painful apostolic labors, came six months since to repose in a canonicate of our abbey."
"And when can I see this venerable canon, Father?"
"This very morning. In descending to the court of the cloister, ask a lay brother to conduct you to Father Griffen."
Croustillac gave so tremendous a blow of his staff on the floor, shouting three times his Muscovite exclamation, "hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" that the reverend treasurer was startled by it, and rang the bell precipitately, thinking he had to do with a madman.
A friar entered.
"Pardon, good Father," said Croustillac; "these savage cries, and this no less savage blow of the stick, paint to you the state of my soul, my astonishment, my joy! It is Father Griffen, himself, that I seek."
"Then conduct this gentleman to Father Griffen," said the treasurer.
We will not attempt to depict this new recognition, so important in the results the Gascon expected from it. We will only say that the good priest, charged with the trust of Croustillac, and fearing lest the chevalier should one day come to regret his disinterestedness, but wishing, however, to execute till then his charitable intentions, and not to deprive the unfortunate of this rich alms, had each year distributed to the poor the revenue of the capital, which he reserved for a pious foundation if the Gascon should not reappear.
The sale of the Unicorn, prudently managed, had brought about seven hundred thousand livres. The Father, finding by chance an advantageous sale of property in the environs of Abbeville, not far from the abbey of St. Quentin, had profited by it. He had thus become proprietor of a very fine estate called Chateauvieux.
On his return from his long voyages, six months before the time of which we speak, Father Griffen had asked by preference, a canonicate in Picardy, in order to be more within reach of the property which he managed, always ignorant whether the Gascon was dead or alive, but inclining rather to the former supposition, after a silence of eighteen years.
Father Griffen, very old, very infirm, quitted the abbey only to visit the estate of Chateauvieux. During the six months he lodged at St. Quentin, he had never gone to the side of the farm of which James of Monmouth was the farmer. The reunion of Father Griffen, the duke and his wife, was as touching as that of the adventurer.
After much discussion it was decided that one-half of the estate belonged to James; the other half to Croustillac, in whose name it remained.
The Gascon immediately made his will in favor of the two children of Monmouth on condition that the son should take the name of Jacques de Chateauvieux.
In order to explain this sudden change of fortune to the eyes of the people of the abbey and the environs, it was agreed that Croustillac should pass as an uncle from America, who had come incognito to test his nephew and his wife, poor cultivators of the soil.
James gave up his farm to the tenant who had been destined to replace him, and departed with his wife, his children and his uncle Croustillac for Chateauvieux.
The three friends lived long and happily in their domain, and their children and grandchildren lived there after them. The chevalier never left Monmouth and his wife. Once a year Father Griffen came to pass some weeks at Chateauvieux.
One single day yearly cast a gloom over this peaceful and happy life; this was the anniversary of the 15th of July, 1685, the anniversary of the sacrifice of the courageous Sidney.
Never did the son of James of Monmouth know that his father descended from a royal race. The secret was always kept by James, by his wife, by Croustillac, and by Father Griffen.
Age had so changed the duke; so many years, beside, had passed over the event of Martinique, that he was no longer disquieted by it. Only sometimes, the children and grandchildren of James of Monmouth opened astonished eyes when their good and old friend, the Chevalier de Croustillac, addressing himself to the Duchess of Monmouth with an air of understanding, said to her, while striving to hide a tear of emotion, the following apparently truly cabalistic words:
Blue Beard, Whirlwind, Rend-your-Soul, Youmäale, Devil's Cliff.