From the Mediterranean1 the warm, luscious2 breezes of the south sweep up to where Montpellier stands ere they pass the city and waft3 to the summits of the Cévennes the perfume of the flowers and the odours of the rich fruits which grow upon the shores of the beauteous sea. And from Montpellier itself, from the old Place de Peyrou, may be obtained a view that is unsurpassed both in its beauty and in its power of recalling to the memory the loathsome4 cruelties which, perpetrated in the days of Louis the Great King, have smirched forever that beauty. Far away, too, where rise the tips of the mountains of Ventoux on the confines of fair Provence, the Alps begin to show--those Alps over which the weary feet of escaping Protestants had been dragged as their owners sought the sanctuary5 of a more free land. Below lies a beautiful valley watered on one side by the Loire and on another by the Rh?ne, watered once also by the blood and the tears of the heartbroken dwellers6 therein. A valley teeming7 once again with the fruits of the earth, and with now all signs erased8 of the devastation9 which he, whose statue stands in that Place de Peyrou, caused to be spread around; erased from human sight, but not from human recollection.
Upon the other side lies Cette, of scant10 importance in these times as seacoast towns and harbours are reckoned, and dead and done with--lies there basking11 and smiling beneath the warm sun that shines alike in winter as in summer. Cette, the place which, in the minds of the forefathers12 of those who now dwell there, bore the blackest, most hated name of all the villages bordering the blue sea. For here the galleys13 harboured, here fathers and husbands, brothers and sons, were flung to horrors and miseries14 and the life of an earthly hell--a hell whose pangs15 knew no assuagement16 till death, most welcome, brought release.
From where Baville sat in his open window Cette could be seen; the harbour in which half a dozen of those galleys lay waiting for their victims. On a table before him were papers for the sending of other victims to the prisons of the surrounding towns; also the sentences of death allotted17 to many rebels, death in hideous18 forms. Some to be hung upon the bridges of their own town, some to be broken on the wheel, some to be burned in market places, some to have their forefingers19 struck off (a form of punishment peculiar20 to the neighbourhood and to those who had been captured in the present uprisings), and afterward21 to be hanged.
Also on tables at either side of him were orders to the colonels of local regiments23 to place themselves under direction of Julien; orders to others to provide forage24 and stabling for so many horses and accommodation for so many men; orders, too, for provisions and forage to be sent in to Montpellier and N?mes for the victualling of the forces quartered there. And to all and every one of these he had already affixed25 his signature, "Baville"--a signature which here carried as much authority as if, instead, it had been "Louis."
Yet it was not about these papers that Nicholas de Lamoignon de Baville, Comte de Launai-Courson, Seigneur de Bris, Vaugrigneuse, Chavagne, Lamothe-Chaudemier, Beuxes and other places, as well as Conseiller d'Etat, Intendant de Justice, polices et finances--to give him his full names and titles--was thinking on this bright morning, nor on them that his eyes rested. Instead, upon a far smaller thing--a thing on which one would scarcely have thought he would have wasted a moment's attention--a little plain cornelian seal which he was turning over and over in his hands and regarding carefully through a small magnifying glass.
"Strange," he muttered to himself, "strange if, after all, after years of meditation26 and inquiry27, I should thus have lit upon the clew! Strange, strange!"
He struck, as thus he mused28, upon a little bronze gong that stood by his side and ready to his hand, and a moment later the door was opened and a man of about his own age came into the room in answer to the summons; a man whose plain garb29, made of the local N?mes serge, and wig30 à trois marteaux, proclaimed almost with certainty that he was a clerk or secretary.
"Casalis," the Intendant said, he having put the seal beneath some papers ere the other entered, "there is in the library a book entitled, Devises et blasons de la Noblesse Fran?aise, is there not?"
"There is, your Excellency. Prepared a year ago by Monsieur le Comte----"
"Precisely31. Fetch it, if you please."
The man retired32, and, after being absent some few moments, came back, bearing in his hand a large, handsome volume bound in pale brown morocco, the back and sides covered with fine gold tooling and with Baville's crest33 stamped also on each side--a splendid book, if its contents corresponded with its exterior34.
"Shall I find any particular entry for your Excellency?" the man asked, pausing with the volume in his hand.
"No, leave it. I may desire to look into it presently."
Left alone, however, Baville looked into it at once, pausing at the names under "B" to regard with some complacency his own crest and arms beautifully reproduced in colours on vellum.
Then he turned over a vast number of leaves in a mass, arriving at the letter "T," and re-turning back to "R," finding thereby35 the page which was headed "De Rochebazon." And emblazoned in the middle of the vellum in red, gold, and blue was the coat of arms of that great family; above it was the crest of the house, on a rock proper a hawk36 with wings elevated--the motto "Gare."
"So," said Baville to himself, "he was of noble family, was a de Rochebazon. Had I looked at this book when the Comte de Paysac sent it to me, compared it with the seal, I should have known such was the case a year ago. Yet what use even if I had done so? What use? One can not recall--undo the past."
And Baville--even Baville, the "tiger of Languedoc," as he had been termed--sighed.
He took next the seal from the papers where he had pushed it and compared it with the Comte de Paysac's book, though even as he did so he knew there was no need for such comparison; the crest upon it was as familiar to him as his own. Then he muttered:
"It is pity Monsieur le Comte did not make his work even more complete. Some information would be useful. As to whom he married, to wit, as to whom this young man may be, who is related to the late princess. Also as to the family of the princess--I should know that. I would the count were still alive."
As thus he mused a shadow fell across the path that wound before his open window. From behind the orange tubs which formed a grove37 in front of that window there stepped out a girl who, seeing him there, smiled and said, "Bon jour, mon père." Then came on to the window and, leaning against the open frame, asked if she might come in, might bring him some flowers she had plucked to decorate his cabinet.
"Always, Urbaine," he said, "always," and he put out his hand as though to draw her to him. "Come in, come in."
Had this been a darkened room, a sombre cabinet into which no ray of sunlight ever stole, instead of being, in truth, a bright, gay apartment, the presence of the girl whom he addressed as Urbaine would have made it cheerful, have seemed to bring the needed sunlight to it; for, as she stood there, her long white dress giving fresh radiance to the room, her fair hair irradiated by the beams of light that glinted in through the dark-green leaves of the orange trees, she seemed to cast even more lustre38 around, making even the grave, serious face of the Intendant look less severe. In her hands she carried a mass of roses and ferns on which the dew sparkled, also some large white lilies.
"Come, Urbaine," he said to her, "come, sit on your accustomed seat. When you are at Versailles you will have no father's knee to sit upon," and, caressingly39, he drew her toward him, while she, sitting there, arranged the flowers into bunches.
As he mentioned Versailles she sighed and turned her eyes on him, then said:
"Why send me away, father? I do not wish to go. I desire to stay here by your side. By my mother's, too. Let me remain," and she bent40 forward and kissed his forehead.
"Nay41," he answered, "nay, Montpellier is no place for you now. You are best away from it. At present all is not well. Urbaine, these rebels are stronger than we thought. Julien has been here a month, and what has he done? Nothing, except sustain defeat. Now we must have more troops from Paris. Montrevel, they say, will come; yet ere he does so much may happen. N?mes, even Montpellier, may fall into their hands. Urbaine, I will not have you here to--to--fall into their hands also."
"Surely they will not hurt women. They say they attack none but soldiers--and--and priests; that, rough and fierce as they are, no woman has ever suffered at their hands. We of our side," and she sighed, "can scarcely say as much."
"Who has told you this, child? Perhaps your new friend, Monsieur Martin. Nay, I see by your blush it is so. Urbaine, you must not believe all he says. Remember, he is a Huguenot too."
"He has never spoken to me on such themes, or, speaking, has said nothing you could disapprove43 of. He says this uprising is wicked, unlawful; is not the way to gain their ends. Also he has told me that the murder of the Abbé Du Chaila was revolting to him; that he would have saved him had he not been powerless."
"Where is he now?" Baville asked, without making any remark on what she told him as to Martin Ashurst's sentiments. "I have not seen him for some days."
"I do not know," the girl said; "neither have I seen him. Yet he spoke42 of going to Alais to see his friend the pastor44."
"Urbaine," Baville said, "you must speak to him before you set out for Paris. He may listen to words from you which he will not hear from me. You must warn him to leave Languedoc, to return to the north."
"To leave Languedoc! Return to the north!" she repeated. And it seemed to the sharp eyes of the Intendant as though her colour changed again.
"Ay, child, he is in deadly peril45 here. Can you not understand?"
"No," Urbaine replied, "no. What has he done?"
"Actively46, he has done nothing. Yet he is a doomed47 man, because of his religion. My dear one, ere long the king will be roused to awful fury by this rebellion; there will not be a réformé left in France. And those who are passive will suffer the same as those who take up arms--in the Midi--here--at least. Even I shall not be able to shield him. Nay, more, how can I shield one and destroy all the rest?"
"Can there be no peace?"
"None! Peace! How can there be peace when none will make it? These Protestant rebels are the aggressors this time. Ask for no peace. It is war, a war which means extermination48. A month ago I should have said extermination of them alone; now God knows who, which side, is to be exterminated49. Louis is weakened by these attacks from without, from every side; all over Europe there is a coalition50 against France. And half her enemies are of the Reformed faith, as they term it. It is said that the old religion is to be destroyed, abolished. Yet Louis, France, will not fail without one effort; dying, we shall drag to destruction numberless foes51. Urbaine, if we do not suppress these Camisards we have an internal foe52 to deal with as well. Do you think one Protestant will be spared?"
"I may not see him again ere I set out for Versailles," the girl whispered, terrified at his words.
"Then he must take his chance. At best he is but a quixotic fool."
"Let me remain here; if there is danger let me share it."
"Never!" Baville said. "The nobility are threatened, the 'Intendant' above all. Your place must be in safety. Oh, that your mother would go too! Yet," he added reflectively, "her place is by my side."
"And mine is not? Do you say that?" And she touched his face caressingly with her hand.
"Your place is where I can best shield you from the least threat of danger, my loved one; where danger can never come near you." And beneath his breath he added the word "again."
Speaking thus to the girl upon his knee, a girl scarce better than a child, seeing she was now but seventeen years old, Baville--of whom the greatest of French diarists has said that il en étoit la terreur er l'horreur de Languedoc--was at his best. For if he loved any creature more than another on this earth--more than Madame l'Intendante, more even than his own son--that creature was Urbaine.
She was not in truth his daughter, was of no blood relationship to him, yet he cared for her dearly and fondly and the love was returned. As the history of this girl was known to many in the province, so it shall be told here.
Early in his Intendancy, when Baville (already known as an esprit fort by the ministers round Louis) had been appointed to this distant Government, with, to console him, an absolute authority, he had returned one winter night from a raid that he had been making on a village in the Cévennes which, to use his own words, "reeked54 of Calvinism" and was full of persons who refused to comply with the new orders that were brought into force by the Revocation55 of the Edict of Nantes. He was then but newly married to a sister of Gourville, the colonel of a local regiment22 of dragoons, and his wife's welcome to him was somewhat cooled by the announcement which he made to her that an intimate friend of his had perished in the raid, leaving behind a motherless child of whom he proposed to constitute himself the guardian56.
Apprised57 of the fact that Ducaire was the name of the intimate friend, Madame l'Intendante shrugged58 her shoulders and contented59 herself with saying that it was the first time she had ever heard of him.
Later, after reflection, she laughed a little, quoted some words of M. de Voiture as to les secrets de la comédie which were no secrets either to actors or audience, and, in the course of the next two or three days, uttered pointed53 remarks to the effect that if politics failed at any future time, doubtless M. l'Intendant might earn a pleasant livelihood60 as a weaver61 of romances and of plots for plays.
"En vérité" she said, with her little laugh, "Jean de la Fontaine is old, also Racine; profitez vous de l'occasion, mon ami. Profitez vous."
Then, because they were alone in Madame's boudoir, Baville rose and stood before his wife and, speaking seriously, bade her cease her badinage62 forever.
And after the conversation which ensued, after, also, the story which Baville told her, Madame did cease her flippancy63, and henceforth had no further qualms64 of jealousy65.
In truth, as the child grew up, she too came to love it, to pet it as much as her husband did, to--because she was an honest, tender-hearted woman who, beneath all her pride for Baville's great position, had still many feminine qualities in her breast--weep over it.
"Pauvrette!" she would sometimes whisper to little Urbaine, long ere the child had come to understanding, "pauvre petite. Neither mother nor father either. Ah, well! Ah, well! they shall never be wanting while we live--say, Baville, shall they?"
And the Intendant, the man of "horror and terror" to all around, looking down upon the babe as she slept in her little bed, would answer before God that they should never be wanting.
Both kept their word. Urbaine Ducaire grew up, petted, caressed66, beloved, the light of the Intendant's home, the flower, as he told her sometimes, of his life; a thing far, far more precious to him than the son, who, instead of being any comfort to them, was revelling67 in the impurities68 of Paris.
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1
Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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luscious
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| adj.美味的；芬芳的；肉感的，引与性欲的 | |
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waft
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| v.飘浮，飘荡；n.一股；一阵微风；飘荡 | |
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loathsome
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| adj.讨厌的，令人厌恶的 | |
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sanctuary
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| n.圣所，圣堂，寺庙；禁猎区，保护区 | |
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dwellers
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| n.居民，居住者( dweller的名词复数 ) | |
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teeming
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| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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8
erased
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| v.擦掉( erase的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；清除 | |
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devastation
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| n.毁坏；荒废；极度震惊或悲伤 | |
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scant
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| adj.不充分的，不足的；v.减缩，限制，忽略 | |
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basking
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| v.晒太阳，取暖( bask的现在分词 )；对…感到乐趣；因他人的功绩而出名；仰仗…的余泽 | |
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12
forefathers
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| n.祖先，先人；祖先，祖宗( forefather的名词复数 )；列祖列宗；前人 | |
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13
galleys
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| n.平底大船，战舰( galley的名词复数 )；（船上或航空器上的）厨房 | |
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miseries
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| n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人 | |
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pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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assuagement
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| n.缓和；减轻；缓和物 | |
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allotted
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| 分配，拨给，摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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forefingers
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| n.食指( forefinger的名词复数 ) | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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regiments
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| （军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物 | |
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forage
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| n.(牛马的)饲料，粮草；v.搜寻，翻寻 | |
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affixed
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| adj.[医]附着的，附着的v.附加( affix的过去式和过去分词 )；粘贴；加以；盖（印章） | |
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meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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garb
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| n.服装，装束 | |
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wig
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| n.假发 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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exterior
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| adj.外部的，外在的；表面的 | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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lustre
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| n.光亮，光泽；荣誉 | |
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caressingly
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| 爱抚地，亲切地 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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43
disapprove
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| v.不赞成，不同意，不批准 | |
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44
pastor
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| n.牧师，牧人 | |
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peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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46
actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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47
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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48
extermination
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| n.消灭，根绝 | |
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49
exterminated
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| v.消灭，根绝( exterminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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50
coalition
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| n.结合体，同盟，结合，联合 | |
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51
foes
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| 敌人，仇敌( foe的名词复数 ) | |
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52
foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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53
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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54
reeked
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的过去式和过去分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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55
revocation
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| n.废止，撤回 | |
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guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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57
apprised
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| v.告知，通知( apprise的过去式和过去分词 )；评价 | |
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58
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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59
contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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60
livelihood
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| n.生计，谋生之道 | |
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61
weaver
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| n.织布工；编织者 | |
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badinage
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| n.开玩笑，打趣 | |
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flippancy
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| n.轻率；浮躁；无礼的行动 | |
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64
qualms
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| n.不安；内疚 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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66
caressed
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| 爱抚或抚摸…( caress的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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revelling
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| v.作乐( revel的现在分词 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉 | |
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impurities
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| 不纯( impurity的名词复数 )； 不洁； 淫秽； 杂质 | |
参考例句： |
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