“Well, my girl, may heaven take care of you!”
said he, kissing his daughter, “and of you too,
Jacques,” and he extended the caress to his
son-in-law. “I won’t say but what
I wish you were a decent shoe-maker, or—”
“Oh, laws, father,” said Annot, “I’m
sure I should never have had him, if he had been.”
“The more fool you, Annot; but I wish it all
the same; and that Annot had had a couple of cows
to mind, and half-a-dozen pigs to look after; but
it’s too late to think of that now; they’ll
soon have neither a cow nor a pig in La Vendee; and
they’ll want neither smiths nor shoemakers;
however, my boy, God bless you! God bless you!
ladies and gentlemen, God bless you all!” and
then the smith completed the work he had commenced,
and got as tipsy as he could have done, had his daughter
been married in Poitou.
We have told our tale of La Vendee; we have married
our hero and our heroine; and, as is usual in such
cases, we must now bid them adieu. We cannot
congratulate ourselves on leaving them in a state of
happy prosperity, as we would have wished to have
done; but we leave them with high hopes and glorious
aspirations. We cannot follow the Vendeans farther
in their gallant struggle, but we part from them, while
they still confidently expect that success which they
certainly deserved, and are determined to deserve
that glory, which has since been so fully accorded
to them.
In the foregoing pages much fiction has been blended
with history, but still the outline of historical
facts has been too closely followed to allow us now
to indulge the humanity of our readers by ascribing
to the friends we are quitting success which they
did not achieve, or a state of happiness which they
never were allowed to enjoy. It would be easy
to speak of the curly haired darlings, two of course,
who blessed the union of Henri Larochejaquelin and
Marie de Lescure; and the joy with which they restored
their aged father to the rural delights of his chateau
at Durbelliere. We might tell of the recovery
of that modern Paladine, Charles de Lescure, and of
the glorious rebuilding of the house of Clisson, of
the ecclesiastical honours of Father Jerome, and of
the happy marriage, or with more probability, the happier
celibacy of the divine Agatha. But we cannot
do so with propriety: facts, stern, untoward,
cruel facts, stare us in the face, and would make even
the novelist blush, were he, in total disregard of
well-thumbed history, to attempt so very false a fiction.
Still it is necessary that something should be said
of the subsequent adventures of those with whom we
have for a while been so intimate, some short word
spoken of the manner in which they adhered to the cause
which was so dear to them. We cannot leave them
in their temporary sojourn at Laval, as though a residence
there was the goal of their wishes, the end of their
struggle, the natural and appropriate term of their
story; but as, unfortunately, their future career
was not a happy one, we will beg the reader to advance
with us at once over many years; and then, as he looks
back upon La Vendee, through the softening vista of
time, the melancholy termination of its glorious history
will be lees painful.
