CHAPTER XI

I leave that flowery path for eye

Of childhood, where I sported many a day,

Warbling and sauntering carelessly along;

Where every face was innocent and gay,

Each vale romantic, tuneful every tongue—

Sweet, wild, and artless, all.

THE MINSTREL

At an early hour, the carriage, which was to take Emily and Madame

Cheron to Thoulouse, appeared at the door of the château, and Madame

was already in the breakfast-room, when her niece entered it. The

repast was silent and melancholy on the part of Emily; and Madame

Cheron, whose vanity was piqued on observing her dejection, reproved

her in a manner that did not contribute to remove it. It was with much

reluctance, that Emily’s request to take with her the dog, which had

been a favourite of her father, was granted. Her aunt, impatient to be

gone, ordered the carriage to draw up; and, while she passed to the

hall door, Emily gave another look into the library, and another

farewell glance over the garden, and then followed. Old Theresa stood

at the door to take leave of her young lady. “God for ever keep you,

ma’amselle!” said she, while Emily gave her hand in silence, and could

answer only with a pressure of her hand, and a forced smile.

At the gate, which led out of the grounds, several of her father’s

pensioners were assembled to bid her farewell, to whom she would have

spoken, if her aunt would have suffered the driver to stop; and, having

distributed to them almost all the money she had about her, she sunk

back in the carriage, yielding to the melancholy of her heart. Soon

after, she caught, between the steep banks of the road, another view of

the château, peeping from among the high trees, and surrounded by green

slopes and tufted groves, the Garonne winding its way beneath their

shades, sometimes lost among the vineyards, and then rising in greater

majesty in the distant pastures. The towering precipices of the

Pyrenees, that rose to the south, gave Emily a thousand interesting

recollections of her late journey; and these objects of her former

enthusiastic admiration, now excited only sorrow and regret. Having

gazed on the château and its lovely scenery, till the banks again

closed upon them, her mind became too much occupied by mournful

reflections, to permit her to attend to the conversation, which Madame

Cheron had begun on some trivial topic, so that they soon travelled in

profound silence.

Valancourt, meanwhile, was returned to Estuvière, his heart occupied

with the image of Emily; sometimes indulging in reveries of future

happiness, but more frequently shrinking with dread of the opposition

he might encounter from her family. He was the younger son of an

ancient family of Gascony; and, having lost his parents at an early

period of his life, the care of his education and of his small portion

had devolved to his brother, the Count de Duvarney, his senior by

nearly twenty years. Valancourt had been educated in all the

accomplishments of his age, and had an ardour of spirit, and a certain

grandeur of mind, that gave him particular excellence in the exercises

then thought heroic. His little fortune had been diminished by the

necessary expences of his education; but M. La Valancourt, the elder,

seemed to think that his genius and accomplishments would amply supply

the deficiency of his inheritance. They offered flattering hopes of

promotion in the military profession, in those times almost the only

one in which a gentleman could engage without incurring a stain on his

name; and La Valancourt was of course enrolled in the army. The general

genius of his mind was but little understood by his brother. That

ardour for whatever is great and good in the moral world, as well as in

the natural one, displayed itself in his infant years; and the strong

indignation, which he felt and expressed at a criminal, or a mean

action, sometimes drew upon him the displeasure of his tutor; who

reprobated it under the general term of violence of temper; and who,

when haranguing on the virtues of mildness and moderation, seemed to

forget the gentleness and compassion, which always appeared in his

pupil towards objects of misfortune.

He had now obtained leave of absence from his regiment when he made the

excursion into the Pyrenees, which was the means of introducing him to

St. Aubert; and, as this permission was nearly expired, he was the more

anxious to declare himself to Emily’s family, from whom he reasonably

apprehended opposition, since his fortune, though, with a moderate

addition from hers, it would be sufficient to support them, would not

satisfy the views, either of vanity, or ambition. Valancourt was not

without the latter, but he saw golden visions of promotion in the army;

and believed, that with Emily he could, in the mean time, be delighted

to live within the limits of his humble income. His thoughts were now

occupied in considering the means of making himself known to her

family, to whom, however, he had yet no address, for he was entirely

ignorant of Emily’s precipitate departure from La Vallée, of whom he

hoped to obtain it.

Meanwhile, the travellers pursued their journey; Emily making frequent

efforts to appear cheerful, and too often relapsing into silence and

dejection. Madame Cheron, attributing her melancholy solely to the

circumstance of her being removed to a distance from her lover, and

believing, that the sorrow, which her niece still expressed for the

loss of St. Aubert, proceeded partly from an affectation of

sensibility, endeavoured to make it appear ridiculous to her, that such

deep regret should continue to be felt so long after the period usually

allowed for grief.

At length, these unpleasant lectures were interrupted by the arrival of

the travellers at Thoulouse; and Emily, who had not been there for many

years, and had only a very faint recollection of it, was surprised at

the ostentatious style exhibited in her aunt’s house and furniture; the

more so, perhaps, because it was so totally different from the modest

elegance, to which she had been accustomed. She followed Madame Cheron

through a large hall, where several servants in rich liveries appeared,

to a kind of saloon, fitted up with more show than taste; and her aunt,

complaining of fatigue, ordered supper immediately. “I am glad to find

myself in my own house again,” said she, throwing herself on a large

settee, “and to have my own people about me. I detest travelling;

though, indeed, I ought to like it, for what I see abroad always makes

me delighted to return to my own château. What makes you so silent,

child?—What is it that disturbs you now?”

Emily suppressed a starting tear, and tried to smile away the

expression of an oppressed heart; she was thinking of _her_ home, and

felt too sensibly the arrogance and ostentatious vanity of Madame

Cheron’s conversation. “Can this be my father’s sister!” said she to

herself; and then the conviction that she was so, warming her heart

with something like kindness towards her, she felt anxious to soften

the harsh impression her mind had received of her aunt’s character, and

to show a willingness to oblige her. The effort did not entirely fail;

she listened with apparent cheerfulness, while Madame Cheron expatiated

on the splendour of her house, told of the numerous parties she

entertained, and what she should expect of Emily, whose diffidence

assumed the air of a reserve, which her aunt, believing it to be that

of pride and ignorance united, now took occasion to reprehend. She knew

nothing of the conduct of a mind, that fears to trust its own powers;

which, possessing a nice judgment, and inclining to believe, that every

other person perceives still more critically, fears to commit itself to

censure, and seeks shelter in the obscurity of silence. Emily had

frequently blushed at the fearless manners, which she had seen admired,

and the brilliant nothings, which she had heard applauded; yet this

applause, so far from encouraging her to imitate the conduct that had

won it, rather made her shrink into the reserve, that would protect her

from such absurdity.

Madame Cheron looked on her niece’s diffidence with a feeling very near

to contempt, and endeavoured to overcome it by reproof, rather than to

encourage it by gentleness.

The entrance of supper somewhat interrupted the complacent discourse of

Madame Cheron and the painful considerations, which it had forced upon

Emily. When the repast, which was rendered ostentatious by the

attendance of a great number of servants, and by a profusion of plate,

was over, Madame Cheron retired to her chamber, and a female servant

came to show Emily to hers. Having passed up a large staircase, and

through several galleries, they came to a flight of back stairs, which

led into a short passage in a remote part of the château, and there the

servant opened the door of a small chamber, which she said was

Ma’amselle Emily’s, who, once more alone, indulged the tears she had

long tried to restrain.

Those, who know, from experience, how much the heart becomes attached

even to inanimate objects, to which it has been long accustomed, how

unwillingly it resigns them; how with the sensations of an old friend

it meets them, after temporary absence, will understand the forlornness

of Emily’s feelings, of Emily shut out from the only home she had known

from her infancy, and thrown upon a scene, and among persons,

disagreeable for more qualities than their novelty. Her father’s

favourite dog, now in the chamber, thus seemed to acquire the character

and importance of a friend; and, as the animal fawned over her when she

wept, and licked her hands, “Ah, poor Manchon!” said she, “I have

nobody now to love me—but you!” and she wept the more. After some time,

her thoughts returning to her father’s injunctions, she remembered how

often he had blamed her for indulging useless sorrow; how often he had

pointed out to her the necessity of fortitude and patience, assuring

her, that the faculties of the mind strengthen by exertion, till they

finally unnerve affliction, and triumph over it. These recollections

dried her tears, gradually soothed her spirits, and inspired her with

the sweet emulation of practising precepts, which her father had so

frequently inculcated.