SUNDAY MAGAZINE. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D., EDITOR. VOL. XXV.-No. 3. MARCH, 1889. $2.50 PER ANNUM. GENEVIÈVE; Or, THE CHILDREN OF PORT ROYAL. A STORY OF OLD FRANCE. CHAPTER XXI.-A FRIENDSHIP. GENEVIÈVE flashed like a sunbeam into the sombre Mademoiselle listened to the recital with very mingled little room where mademoiselle sat writing. Kneeling feelings. She had not now to learn that the Duc de down beside her chair, she poured forth all her story Graffont's son and nephew had returned to Paris; that with simple-hearted, child-like joy. She had found again the duc and his son were reconciled, principally through 66 EDOUARD ADVANCED TO THE TABLE AND TOOK UP THE SEALED PACKET." the dear brother of her childhood; and found him again unchanged. Unchanged, that is to say, in goodness, kindness and brotherly love; although he had grown into such a grand and noble gentleman, "with manners of the most distinguished," and the air and bearing of a Prince of the Blood. Mademoiselle would receive him -would she not? And she would allow him, as often as he pleased, to visit his poor little sister, who was so honored by his notice? VOL. XXV. No. 3.-11. the good offices of the nephew, who was believed to have acted a very noble and generous part. She had also heard, not altogether with satisfaction, that Soeur Marguérite, who had been an angel of mercy in the Hôtel Dieu, had consented to resume her place in the world as Madame la Marquise de Chèvres. But she still hoped that Geneviève, who now led a very secluded life, associating chiefly with herself, might remain in ignorance of all these events; and also that Monsieur de Sercourt would not discover her present abode and position. But since it was otherwise ordained, she could not deny that the young nobleman had behaved with good feeling, tact and delicacy. Supposing that he felt himself obliged, by gratitude, honor and affection, to renew the old intimacy, and to befriend and protect the child of his benefactor, he could not have done more wisely than to assume at once the role of the elder brother, with its duties, privileges, and obligations. After some reflection, therefore, she answered the eager Geneviève with her wonted calmness of manner; beneath which, however, the young girl felt her genuine sympathy, and was satisfied. "Yes, my child," she said, "I will gladly receive Monsieur de Sercourt, for your sake. His gratitude to your parents, and his kindness to you for their sakes, do him infinite honor. But, nevertheless, we will not allow him to part us-will we, Geneviève ?" Edouard was true to his appointment the next day; and he enjoyed the privilege of a long and private interview with mademoiselle-so long, indeed, that Geneviève, who was most anxious to know the impression her adopted brother would make upon her idolized mademoiselle, thought it would never come to an end. Nor, even then, did mademoiselle relieve her suspense immediately. But as Geneviève's loving hands were binding and arranging for the night the abundant hair, which, in spite of its premature sprinkling of gray, was still so beautiful, she broke the silence at last. "I think very highly of Monsieur de Sercourt," she remarked. "You are happy, Geneviève, in having such a friend. He spoke to me about you with the utmost good sense and good feeling. I believe he is satisfied that you are well provided for, and happy in your present position, and that he will not seek to disturb you; at least not now. But if circumstances should arise to make any change advisable, he holds himself prepared to act a brother's part by you." "I do not know what I could want from him, except friendship," said Geneviève. "You will not send me away, dear mademoiselle, and certainly, while I am with you, I want nothing." "But, my child, there is another possibility which ought to be considered. You have not, as yet, definitely renounced the world. Should you at any time wish to marry, you are free to do so. At least, thera is no positive obligation laid upon you to choose the higher life; the matter must rest with your own conscience. I might regret your decision, but I could not control your action. In that event, Monsieur de Sercourt is willing to provide you with a suitable portion." "I shall never want it from him!" cried Geneviève, indignantly. "To speak of such a thing! It shows how little he knows me. As if I would leave mademoiselle for any one in the whole world! But, dear mademoiselle" she paused, apparently irresolute whether to proceed or not. "Far better than that," said Geneviève. "They might be, with God's blessing, the means of his conversion." "Conversion, thank God, he does not need," mademoiselle returned, confidently. "I have never met with a person, still living in the world, who appeared to be actuated by such sincere and unaffected piety. And it teaches us that God distributes His favors as He pleases. His submission to the will of God, and his faith in our blessed Lord, are most beautiful and edifying. He is truly an elect soul; and I should not be surprised at any time to hear of his renouncing the world and entering some religious order." "But, mademoiselle, he is a Protestant." 66 Oh, no, you are quite mistaken there. I know he was one by birth; but he is converted, for he is now a devout and believing Catholic." He has "Indeed, it is mademoiselle who is mistaken. never been converted at all, I am sorry to say. I am sure I wish from my heart it were otherwise." "Then you have your wish without knowing it; the matter does not admit of dispute," said mademoiselle, who, indeed, was little used to have her words disputed, except, perhaps, by her mother. "He spoke to me today as no one could speak whose soul was not in close and real communion with God." "Still, he told me yesterday that he was a Protestant, and that he hoped to remain so as long as God kept him true to himself, and to Him. Those were his very words, mademoiselle." "It is incredible !" said Mademoiselle de Roannez, and after that she said no more. But she thought a great deal; and the longer she thought, the deeper grew her perplexity and bewilderment. She felt as one might be supposed to feel who should see a manifest impossibility translated before his eyes into a fact which he could not dispute. If a student of geometry could be imagined, some day, suddenly to discover "That sides, by a curious juggle, Are sometimes less than their base; he could not be more confounded than was mademoiselle at the information that she had received from Geneviève. Touched herself by the quickening influences of the Divine Spirit, she had the mysterious but most real instinct by which the possessor of spiritual life discerns its presence in another. Without needing to reason on the subject, she knew and recognized the touch of the living hand. She had held that day with Edouard de Sercourt, in their long and confidential talk, such communion as they only can hold the central thought of whose being is the same. It happened that no controversial subjects came under debate; Protestant and Jansenist might have conversed long together without trenching upon such, provided they kept either in the high, clear air of spiritual experieuce, or on the safe, level road of practical duty, avoiding the " cen "Well, my child ?" said mademoiselle, in an encourag- tral cloud-region" of dogmatic theology, vexed by so many ing tone. "Dear mademoiselle, if you would do me a great favor, a very great one-I scarcely know if I ought to ask it. But, I think if mademoiselle would show, or allow me to show, some of the papers we are copying-that is to say, I mean the copies we have made-to Monsieur de Sercourt, it might be the means of much good." "There is no doubt that he would find them deeply interesting," mused mademoiselle, entertaining the proposition far more favorably than Geneviève had ventured to hope. storms. "Other graces may exist where the grace of Unity has, unhappily, not yet been given," said mademoiselle to herself at last; but she felt, in the depths of her heart, that this was a very inadequate solution of the problem. How could a soul, which was filled with love to God, be banished forever from His presence, and consigned to the society of demons? The thought was not merely bewildering, it was inconceivably horrible. And yet PascalPascal himself-had written to her: "We know that all virtues martyrdom, austerities, and all good works-are useless outside of the Church, and of communion with the | his greatest refreshment to turn from the heavy, scented head of the Church, who is the Pope. I shall never sepa- atmosphere of the fashionable world, where perfumes too rate from this communion, if God gives me His grace, often hid impurities, to the pure, clear air of her devout otherwise I should be lost forever." Lost forever, with the and high-toned conversation. With her he found a gendispositions, the feelings, the aspirations of a saint! Lost uine sympathy, and he was able to speak to her without forever, loving Christ, desiring above all things to serve restraint upon topics dear to every Christian heart. It is Him, and willing at need to die for Him! She did not true that, after their first interview, their conversations dispute the terrible sentence. When the voice of author- often took a controversial turn; but this was always of ity had spoken, she never disputed, she never struggled her seeking, never of his. They used to dispute for hours even. She submitted-but she suffered. about the power of the Pope, the Invocation of Saints, or the Doctrine of Purgatory; De Sercourt appealing solely to the Bible, and supporting his position by abundant quotations from its pages; mademoiselle not questioning this authority (as, indeed, she knew her Bible quite as well as he did, though she used a different version), but claiming for the Church the sole right of interpretation, and also of adding or completing what had been left incomplete or undetermined. To this claim of the Church to be the sole authoritative teacher and guide they recurred once and again; usually concluding with a skirmish over the question which both felt to be the key of the whole position: "What is the Church ?” Still, however they might differ, It was natural that her interest in Monsieur de Sercourt should be quickened exceedingly by the discovery of his spiritual peril. Might not such a noble spirit be rescued from the impending doom, and be won for the true faith? And might not she be the instrument chosen for so good a work? Henceforward it was not only for Geneviève's sake that she welcomed and encouraged the visits of the young Huguenot. Nor, indeed, did he stand in need of much encouragement. It would have been a quite sufficient inducement, that when he visited at the Hôtel de Roannez, he usually, though by no means invariably, saw Geneviève as well as mademoiselle. But even had Geneviève been elsewhere, he would gladly, for its own sake, have cultivated the friendship of Mademoiselle de Roannez. For he found the fashionable world of Paris very uncongenial. Although not so corrupt as it afterward became although the unspeakable abominations of the Regency, and of the age of Louis XV., were as yet in their infancy—there was abundance of vice, and there was also a coarseness of thought and feeling, to us almost incredible, plainly visible beneath the varnish of an unsurpassed artificial refinement. The celebrated Hôtel Rambouillet, with its salon bleu, and its society of learned men and cultivated ladies-where, amidst abounding wit and gallantry, nothing was tolerated which was not pure and virtuous-was in its day a protest and a reform. But its day was over now, and its imitators had degenerated greatly from its tone and spirit; whilst preserving, and grossly exaggerating, the affectations which had exposed it to the pungent satire of Molière. It is true that one of the most distinguished ornaments of the famous salon bleu, the Duc de Montausier, still kept open house in Paris; and young De Sercourt gladly attended his receptions, and was proud of his friendship, all the rather because of their sympathy in religion. Montausier's Protestantism does not appear to have affected his popularity, or hindered his social successes; although it opposed an impassable barrier between him and his dearest wishes. For twelve long years he adored, with hopeless constancy, the lovely daughter of the Marquise de Rambouillet, the great lady who presided, with inimitable tact and savoirfaire, over the brilliant society which has given such celebrity to her name. All the fashionable world admired his devotion, and the delicate homage he rendered to its object; yet it did not seem to occur to any one, and least of all to the young lady herself, or to her family, that the barrier need not have been insurmountable. "Their thoughts were disentangled There grew up between them, very quickly, one of those rare and beautiful friendships only possible between a man and woman who have, and can have, no thought of any closer tie. In this case, each bad already enshrined in his or her heart an ideal wholly different from any which the friend could ever realize. None the less, rather, indeed, the more effectually, could each stretch out to the other the right hand of a cordial fellowship, such as is well expressed by the old word camaraderie. Still their friendship differed widely from that of man for man, or of woman for woman. For one thing, there was on the one side chivalry, and on the other the admiration which a woman feels, and likes to feel, for genuine manly strength. Each respected, or, rather, it might be said, each reverenced, the other. CHAPTER XXII. A RIFT IN THE FRIENDSHIP. WHEN Winter changed to Spring, and bud and leaf and flower, instinct with new, fresh life, began to obey nature's great law of growth, other things, which had already been growing in silence, came forth to the light of day. One morning De Sercourt called upon mademoiselle, who received him as she usually did, in a modest, simply furnished parlor sacred to her own and her brother's When her brother was not present, Geneviève often sat with her there; and there, upon this occasion, Edouard found her, reading to her lady. use. When, however, the first greetings were over, madeDemoiselle said to her, "Ma fille, be good enough to fetch me the thick parcel, in a parchment cover, which you will find in the third drawer of my cabinet. See, here is the key; and when that is done, you may bring some soup to poor old Jacques Nitart, and learn how he is to-day." It soon became evident that the only houses young Sercourt greatly cared to frequent were the Hôtel de Montausier and the Hôtel de Roannez. In the latter, especially, he attained a position of the closest intimacy. The Duc de Roannez, as men of his stamp so often do, loved force of character in others; and although his whole nature could never again be dominated, as it had been in the old days by Pascal, yet he admired Edouard, was influenced by him, and predicted that he would do great things "if he remained in the world." Still De Sercourt sought the society of mademoiselle in preference even to that of her brother. It became almost Geneviève took the key without a word. Whatever natural regrets she may have felt that she was to lose the whole of Edouard's visit, she was far from entertaining a thought so rebellious as that Nitart might afford to wait another hour for his soup. She came back presently with the packet-a very large and bulky ons, carefully sealed-and- having laid it on the table before time, his spiritual director, whom I advised him to conmademoiselle, turned quietly to leave the room. sult on the subject, enjoined it upon him to make any Edouard rose and opened the door for her, saying, as reparation in his power. At my next visit, therefore, he did so: "I hope you will put off your pensioner with a short visit to-day, my little sister. It is nearly a week since I have seen you. Au revoir !" He returned, and took the seat to which mademoiselle invited him. "I sent Geneviève away on purpose, Monsieur de Sercourt," she said. "I wish to have some conversation with you upon a very important matter, in which she is concerned." A shadow came over the face of Edouard. There were two things which he greatly dreaded, and either of them might now have come. Mademoiselle might have received an eligible offer for the hand of Geneviève, or she might have induced her to resolve upon entering the cloister. But he only said, by way of not meeting trouble half way: "I shall be honored by any communication mademoiselle may be pleased to make to me. "Do you remember having heard, in your boyhood, of the great lawsuit in which the father of Geneviève lost so much of his property ?" "I remember it well," returned Edouard, relieved by this beginning. "I have always thought he was most unfairly and unjustly dealt with. Often have I wished that the wrong might be brought home to the guilty parties." "Suppose there were a chance of doing it even now, and of recovering for Geneviève some considerable por tion of the property of which her father was unjustly deprived ?" "Do you mean by the use of influence in high quarters, of which there is at present a good deal that we might command? I think the matter requires consideration. I see grave objections." "So did I, and so do I still. Nevertheless, I have often doubted whether I were acting justly by Geneviève in making no use of certain papers which lie in my hands. As I regard you, monsieur, in the light of her guardian, I wish to acquaint you with the whole affair. I am ready to abide by your judgment as to the action that ought, or ought not, to be taken upon it. If, when you know all, you think it right to resort to legal measures, I shall not feel at liberty to prevent you, whatever my private judgment may be." "I have no fear that we shall disagree-at least, at present," answered Edouard, 'Well then, monsieur, I must tell you that about four years ago, shortly after Geneviève came to us, my ministrations amongst the poor led me to the death-bed of a clever but dissipated advocate, who had forfeited his place and his reputation by conduct of a grossly dishonorable character-with which, however, we have nothing to do. He was brought, as I trust, to sincere repentance; and amongst the many things in his past life which he bitterly regretted, he said that none caused him keener remorse than the affair of Monsieur Montères. He had been the originator of the whole plot, the instigator and the counselor of that wretched Abbé de Gars, who was put forward as claimant of the estate by the enemies of Monsieur Montères, while he was really only a puppet of which they pulled the strings. In order to ease his mind, so that he might die in peace, I told thus much of his story to Geneviève, who took it in a very sweet and Christian spirit, and gave me, as I hoped she would, a message of forgiveness for the dying man. At the same poor Monsieur Pliant put into my hands yonder packet, which he said contained documents that, properly used, would procure the reversal of the decision of the Parlia ment of Paris, before which, in the last instance, and after many appeals and counter-appeals, the suit had been carried. But he had not sufficient strength remaining to tell me either what these documents were, or in what manner they ought to be used. He could only say, that as Mademoiselle Montères was residing with me, I ought to have the papers, and murmur some broken expressions of regret for the past. Soon afterward he died, in a state, as I hope, of sincere penitence, and not destitute of the grace of God." And what use have you made of the papers ?" asked Edouard, who had listened with keen attention. "None at all," returned mademoiselle. "I looked them over myself, but I could make nothing of them. They seem to be a confused medley of legal documents, and private letters and memoranda, thrown together without any order or connection, and most of them in very crabbed, unintelligible handwriting. In order to do anything with them, I should have had to place them in the hands of some one versed in the intricacies of law. But after all, to what purpose? Why disturb the mind of Geneviève? She was happy and at peace; she had everything she needed or wished for. What good could a fortune do her, even suppose we could have secured it for her? Might it not only attach her to the world, to which, at present, she sits loosely enough? Is it not an evangelical precept to resist not evil? Has not our Lord himself said: 'If a man sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also' ?” "I do not think that is exactly the meaning of our Lord's command," said Edouard, wondering, not for the first time, at mademoiselle's curious mixture of simplicity and shrewdness. "I am, as I have said, prepared to submit my judg ment to yours," she answered, humbly. "But did it not occur to you then, and do you not think now, that there is another person whose judgment and whose wishes ought to be consulted ?" "If you mean my mother, because Geneviève was then in her service, I did not think it wise or right to name the subject to her, for reasons upon which I need not enlarge. You know, however, that she belongs to the world. My brother I did consult, and he advised my leaving the matter alone. He thought it was far better for Geneviève not to know anything of this property, which, if she got it, might prove a snare and a temptation; while, if she failed to get it, her mind would have been needlessly disturbed and distracted from the contemplation of higher things." "And so you kept the secret, you and Monsieur le Duc ?" said Edouard, with a slight air of impatience, and a sparkle in his blue eyes as he fixed them on her with the intent and wistful gaze of imperfect sight. "Not entirely. We thought it right to tell Monsieur Singlin, the esteemed Director of Port Royal, as no doubt you know already. He quite agreed with my brother, and praised his indifference to the things of the world." "And did it never occur to you, mademoiselle, or to Monsieur le Duc, your brother, that the person immediately concerned had a positive right to be informed, and to be allowed to judge and decide for herself?" asked Edouard again, with a touch of impatience in his tone of which he was himself unconscious. Should it seem, on the whole, wiser and nobler to let things rest as they are, this wise and noble forbearance will then be, as it ought to be, hers, and not ours.' "But that was just the point upon which we were all | I am certain that she will act in the matter as we advise. agreed-Monsieur Singlin, my brother and myself. We all thought it best for Geneviève not to know," said mademoiselle, mildly, though with an air of expostulation. Edouard suppressed a word or two that rose to his lips before he answered, in as mild a voice as her own: "Pardon me, mademoiselle; but it seems to me that we have to consider, not what is best for Geneviève, but what is right and just toward Geneviève." "Surely the same thing, monsieur." "I have said that I will not oppose you," said mademoiselle, with a slight touch of that air of pious resignation which she was wont to assume in speaking to her mother. "It will be best then that you should tell her." Edouard rose, and leaned against the mantel - piece, turning so as to face her directly. "Mademoiselle," he said, and speaking very earnestly, but the right must come first always. And if we excuse ourselves from doing right toward others, on the plea that something else is best for them, we make ourselves, not God, the judges of what is best." "But it is surely right that older people should judge for a child like Geneviève?" Edouard's handsome, sunburnt face flushed visibly, as he answered: "At least, Geneviève is no child now." "Then, monsieur, I conclude you think she ought to be told of this?" "I do think it, mademoiselle; but, at the same time, though in a low, quiet voice, as if he suppressed some expression of feeling-"Mademoiselle, I may not do that, since there is something else which, at the same time, I could not refrain from telling her." "I fail to understand you, monsieur." "I will explain myself. Indeed, I must do so; for it would be unfair to you to keep silence any longer." "To me, Monsieur de Sercourt ?" "Yes, to you, Mademoiselle de Roannez, to whom I have the honor to say what you said just now to me, that I look upon you as the guardian as one of the guardians of Geneviève." |