"Where is she?" asked my poor lord, clutching the Abbé's arm. "Who?

asks the Abbé, stepping back a little. "Where is my child? where is my wife?" cries the

count.

6.66

Silence, Monsieur ! says the Abbé.

"Do you know in whose house you are?" and the chant from the altar, where the service was being performed, came upon us, and smote my poor lord as though a shot had struck him. We were standing, he tottering against a pillar in the nave, close by the christening font, and over my lord's head was a picture of Saint Agnes.

The agony of the poor gentleman could not but touch any one who witnessed it. "M. le Comte," says the Abbé, I feel for you. This great surprise has come upon you unprepared-I-I pray that it may be for your good."

66

"You know, then, what has happened?" asked M. de Saverne; and the Abbé was obliged to stammer a confession that he did know what had occurred. He was, in fact, the very man who had performed the rite which separated my unhappy lady from the Church of her fathers. Sir," he said, with some spirit, "this was a service which no clergyman could refuse. I would to Heaven, Monsieur, that you, too, might be brought to ask it from

6.66

The poor count, with despair in his face, asked to see the register which confirmed the news, and there we saw that on the 21st January, 1769, being the Feast of St. Agnes, the noble lady, Clarisse, Countess of Saverne, born de Viomesnil, aged twenty-two years, and Agnes, only daughter of the same Count of Saverne and Clarisse his wife, were baptized and received into the Church in the presence of two witnesses (clerics) whose names were signed.

6 The poor count knelt over the registry book with an awful grief in his face, and in a mood which I heartily pitied. He bent down, uttering what seemed an imprecation rather than a prayer, and at this moment it chanced the service at the chief altar was concluded, and Monseigneur and his suite of clergy came into the sacristy. Sir, the Count de Saverne, starting up, clutching his sword in his hand, and shaking his fist at the Cardinal, uttered a wild speech calling down imprecations upon the Church of which the prince was a chief: Where is my lamb that you have

66

taken from me?" he said, using the language of the Prophet towards the King who had despoiled him.

The Cardinal haughtily said the conversion of Madame de Saverne was of Heaven, and no act of his, adding, "Bad neighbour as you have been to me, sir, I wish you so well that I hope you may follow her."

'At this the count, losing all patience, made a violent attack upon the Church of Rome, denounced the Cardinal, and called down maledictions upon his head; said that a day should come when his abominable pride should meet with a punishment and fall; and spoke, as, in fact, the poor gentleman was able to do only too readily and volubly, against Rome and all its errors.

The Prince Louis de Rohan replied with no little dignity, as I own. He said that such words in such a place were offensive and out of all reason that it only depended on him to have M. de Saverne arrested, and punished for blasphemy and insult to the Church: but that, pitying the count's unhappy condition, the Cardinal would forget the hasty and insolent words he had uttered—as he would know how to defend Madame de Saverne and her child after the righteous step which she had taken. And he swept out of the sacristy with his suite, and passed through the door which leads into his palace, leaving my poor count still in his despair and fury.

'As he spoke with those Scripture phrases which M. de Saverne ever had at command, I remember how the Prince Cardinal tossed up his head and smiled. I wonder whether he thought of the words when his own day of disgrace came, and the fatal affair of the diamond necklace which brought him to ruin.' 1

'Not without difficulty' (M. Schnorr resumed) I induced the poor count to quit the church where his wife's apostasy had been performed. The outer gates and walls are decorated with numberless sculptures of saints of the Roman Calendar and for a minute or two the poor man stood on the threshold shouting imprecations in the sunshine, and calling down woe upon France and Rome. I hurried him

1

My informant, Protestant though he was, did not, as I remember, speak with very much asperity against the Prince Cardinal. He said that the prince lived an edifying life after his fall, succouring the poor, and doing everything in his power to defend the cause of royalty.-D. D.

away. Such language was dangerous, and could bring no good to either of us. He was almost a madman when I conducted him back to his home, where the ladies his sisters, scared with his wild looks, besought me not to leave him.

6

:

Again he went into the room which his wife and child had inhabited, and, as he looked at the relics of both which still were left there, gave way to bursts of grief which were pitiable indeed to witness. I speak of what happened near forty years ago, and remember the scene as though yesterday the passionate agony of the poor gentleman, the sobs and prayers. On a chest of drawers there was a little cap belonging to the infant. He seized it: kissed it: wept over it calling upon the mother to bring the child back and he would forgive all. He thrust the little cap into his breast opened every drawer, book, and closet, seeking for some indications of the fugitives. My opinion was, and that even of the ladies, sisters of M. le Comte, that Madame had taken refuge in a convent with the child, that the Cardinal knew where she was, poor and friendless, and that the Protestant gentleman would in vain seek for her. Perhaps when tired of that place-I for my part thought Madame la Comtesse a light-minded, wilful person, who certainly had no vocation, as the Catholics call it, for a religious lifethought she might come out after a while, and gave my patron such consolation as I could devise, upon this faint hope. He who was all forgiveness at one minute, was all wrath at the next. He would rather see his child dead than receive her as a Catholic. He would go to the King, surrounded by harlots as he was, and ask for justice. There were still Protestant gentlemen left in France, whose spirit was not altogether trodden down, and they would back him in demanding reparation for this outrage.

I had some vague suspicion, which, however, I dismissed from my mind as unworthy, that there might be a third party cognizant of Madame's flight; and this was a gentleman, once a great favourite of M. le Comte, and in whom I myself was not a little interested. Three or four days after the Comte de Saverne went away to the war, as I was meditating on a sermon which I proposed to deliver, walking at the back of my lord's house of Saverne, in the fields which skirt the wood where the Prince Cardinal's great Schloss stands, I saw this gentleman with a gun over his

shoulder, and recognized him-the Chevalier de la Motte, the very person who had saved the life of M. de Saverne in the campaign against the English.

'M. de la Motte said he was staying with the Cardinal, and trusted that the ladies of Saverne were well. He sent his respectful compliments to them in a laughing way said he had been denied the door when he came to a visit, which he thought was an unkind act towards an old comrade and at the same time expressed his sorrow at the count's departure-"for, Herr Pfarrer," said he, "you know I am a good Catholic, and in many most important conversations which I had with the Comte de Saverne, the differences between our two Churches was the subject of our talk, and I do think I should have converted him to ours." I, humble village pastor as I am, was not afraid to speak in such a cause, and we straightway had a most interesting conversation together, in which, as the gentleman showed, I had not the worst of the argument. It appeared he had been educated for the Roman Church, but afterwards entered the army. He was a most interesting man, and his name was le Chevalier de la Motte. You look as if you had known him, M. le Capitaine-will it please you to replenish your pipe, and take another glass of my beer?

I said I had effectivement known M. de la Motte; and the good old clergyman (with many compliments to me for speaking French and German so glibly) proceeded with his artless narrative. I was ever a poor horseman : and when I came to be chaplain and major-domo at the Hôtel de Saverne, in the count's absence, Madame more than once rode entirely away from me, saying that she could not afford to go at my clerical jog-trot. And being in a scarlet amazon, and a conspicuous object, you see, I thought I saw her at a distance talking to a gentleman on a schimmel horse, in a grass-green coat. When I asked her to whom she spoke, she said, "M. le Pasteur, you radotez with your grey horse and your green coat! If you are set to be a spy over me, ride faster, or bring out the old ladies to bark at your side." The fact is, the countess was for ever quarrelling with those old ladies, and they were a yelping ill-natured pair. They treated me, a pastor of the Reformed Church of the Augsburg Confession, as no better than a lackey, sir, and made me eat the bread of humiliation; whereas Madame la Comtesse, though often haughty, flighty, and passionate, could

also be so winning and gentle, that no one could resist her. Ah, sir!' said the pastor, that woman had a coaxing way with her when she chose, and when her flight came I was in such a way that the jealous old sisters-in-law said I was in love with her myself. Pfui! For a month before my lord's arrival I had been knocking at all doors to see if I could find my poor wandering lady behind them. She, her child, and Martha her maid, were gone, and we knew not whither. On that very first day of his unhappy arrival, M. le Comte discovered what his sisters, jealous and curious as they were, what I, a man of no inconsiderable acumen, had failed to note. Amongst torn papers and chiffons, in her ladyship's bureau, there was a scrap with one line in her handwriting. Ursule, Ursule, le tyran rev . . .

and no more.

666

66

Ah!" M. le Comte said, "She is gone to her fostersister in England! Quick, quick, horses!" And before two hours were passed he was on horseback, making the first stage of that long journey.'

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