The Collection of Antiquities

Six months afterwards, Camusot received the appointment of assistant judge at Paris, and later he became an examining magistrate.  Goodman Blondet was made a councillor to the Royal-Court; he held the post just long enough to secure a retiring pension, and then went back to live in his pretty little house.  Joseph Blondet sat in his father’s seat at the court till the end of his days; there was not the faintest chance of promotion for him, but he became Mlle. Blandereau’s husband; and she, no doubt, is leading to-day, in the little flower-covered brick house, as dull a life as any carp in a marble basin.  Michu and Camusot also received the Cross of the Legion of Honor, while Blondet became an Officer.  As for M. Sauvager, deputy public prosecutor, he was sent to Corsica, to du Croisier’s great relief; he had decidedly no mind to bestow his niece upon that functionary.

Du Croisier himself, urged by President du Ronceret, appealed from the finding of the Tribunal to the Court-Royal, and lost his cause.  The Liberals throughout the department held that little d’Esgrignon was guilty; while the Royalists, on the other hand, told frightful stories of plots woven by “that abominable du Croisier” to compass his revenge.  A duel was fought indeed; the hazard of arms favored du Croisier, the young Count was dangerously wounded, and his antagonist maintained his words.  This affair embittered the strife between the two parties; the Liberals brought it forward on all occasions.  Meanwhile du Croisier never could carry his election, and saw no hope of marrying his niece to the Count, especially after the duel.

A month after the decision of the Tribunal was confirmed in the Court-Royal, Chesnel died, exhausted by the dreadful strain, which had weakened and shaken him mentally and physically.  He died in the hour of victory, like some old faithful hound that has brought the boar to bay, and gets his death on the tusks.  He died as happily as might be, seeing that he left the great House all but ruined, and the heir in penury, bored to death by an idle life, and without a hope of establishing himself.  That bitter thought and his own exhaustion, no doubt, hastened the old man’s end.  One great comfort came to him as he lay amid the wreck of so many hopes, sinking under the burden of so many cares—­the old Marquis, at his sister’s entreaty, gave him back all the old friendship.  The great lord came to the little house in the Rue du Bercail, and sat by his old servant’s bedside, all unaware how much that servant had done and sacrificed for him.  Chesnel sat upright, and repeated Simeon’s cry.—­The Marquis allowed them to bury Chesnel in the castle chapel; they laid him crosswise at the foot of the tomb which was waiting for the Marquis himself, the last, in a sense, of the d’Esgrignons.

And so died one of the last representatives of that great and beautiful thing, Service; giving to that often discredited word its original meaning, the relation between feudal lord and servitor.  That relation, only to be found in some out-of-the-way province, or among a few old servants of the King, did honor alike to a noblesse that could call forth such affection, and to a bourgeoisie that could conceive it.  Such noble and magnificent devotion is no longer possible among us.  Noble houses have no servitors left; even as France has no longer a King, nor an hereditary peerage, nor lands that are bound irrevocably to an historic house, that the glorious names of the nation may be perpetuated.  Chesnel was not merely one of the obscure great men of private life; he was something more—­he was a great fact.  In his sustained self-devotion is there not something indefinably solemn and sublime, something that rises above the one beneficent deed, or the heroic height which is reached by a moment’s supreme effort?  Chesnel’s virtues belong essentially to the classes which stand between the poverty of the people on the one hand, and the greatness of the aristocracy on the other; for these can combine homely burgher virtues with the heroic ideals of the noble, enlightening both by a solid education.

Victurnien was not well looked upon at Court; there was no more chance of a great match for him, nor a place.  His Majesty steadily refused to raise the d’Esgrignons to the peerage, the one royal favor which could rescue Victurnien from his wretched position.  It was impossible that he should marry a bourgeoise heiress in his father’s lifetime, so he was bound to live on shabbily under the paternal roof with memories of his two years of splendor in Paris, and the lost love of a great lady to bear him company.  He grew moody and depressed, vegetating at home with a careworn aunt and a half heart-broken father, who attributed his son’s condition to a wasting malady.  Chesnel was no longer there.

The Marquis died in 1830.  The great d’Esgrignon, with a following of all the less infirm noblesse from the Collection of Antiquities, went to wait upon Charles X. at Nonancourt; he paid his respects to his sovereign, and swelled the meagre train of the fallen king.  It was an act of courage which seems simple enough to-day, but, in that time of enthusiastic revolt, it was heroism.

“The Gaul has conquered!” These were the Marquis’ last words.

By that time du Croisier’s victory was complete.  The new Marquis d’Esgrignon accepted Mlle. Duval as his wife a week after his old father’s death.  His bride brought him three millions of francs for du Croisier and his wife settled the reversion of their fortunes upon her in the marriage-contract.  Du Croisier took occasion to say during the ceremony that the d’Esgrignon family was the most honorable of all the ancient houses in France.

Some day the present Marquis d’Esgrignon will have an income of more than a hundred thousand crowns.  You may see him in Paris, for he comes to town every winter and leads a jolly bachelor life, while he treats his wife with something more than the indifference of the grand seigneur of olden times; he takes no thought whatever for her.

“As for Mlle. d’Esgrignon,” said Emile Blondet, to whom all the detail of the story is due, “if she is no longer like the divinely fair woman whom I saw by glimpses in my childhood, she is decidedly, at the age of sixty-seven, the most pathetic and interesting figure in the Collection of Antiquities.  She queens it among them still.  I saw her when I made my last journey to my native place in search of the necessary papers for my marriage.  When my father knew who it was that I had married, he was struck dumb with amazement; he had not a word to say until I told him that I was a prefect.

“‘You were born to it,’ he said, with a smile.

“As I took a walk around the town, I met Mlle. Armande.  She looked taller than ever.  I looked at her, and thought of Marius among the ruins of Carthage.  Had she not outlived her creed, and the beliefs that had been destroyed?  She is a sad and silent woman, with nothing of her old beauty left except the eyes, that shine with an unearthly light.  I watched her on her way to mass, with her book in her hand, and could not help thinking that she prayed to God to take her out of the world.”

LES JARDIES, July 1837.