Soon after his marriage, M. de Hamal was persuaded
to leave the army as the surest way of weaning him
from certain unprofitable associates and habits; a
post of attache was procured for him, and he and his
young wife went abroad. I thought she would forget
me now, but she did not. For many years, she
kept up a capricious, fitful sort of correspondence.
During the first year or two, it was only of herself
and Alfred she wrote; then, Alfred faded in the background;
herself and a certain, new comer prevailed; one Alfred
Fanshawe de Bassompierre de Hamal began to reign in
his father’s stead. There were great boastings
about this personage, extravagant amplifications upon
miracles of precocity, mixed with vehement objurgations
against the phlegmatic incredulity with which I received
them. I didn’t know “what it was
to be a mother;” “unfeeling thing that
I was, the sensibilities of the maternal heart were
Greek and Hebrew to me,” and so on. In due
course of nature this young gentleman took his degrees
in teething, measles, hooping-cough: that was
a terrible time for me—the mamma’s
letters became a perfect shout of affliction; never
woman was so put upon by calamity: never human
being stood in such need of sympathy. I was frightened
at first, and wrote back pathetically; but I soon found
out there was more cry than wool in the business, and
relapsed into my natural cruel insensibility.
As to the youthful sufferer, he weathered each storm
like a hero. Five times was that youth “in
articulo mortis,” and five times did he miraculously
revive.
In the course of years there arose ominous murmurings
against Alfred the First; M. de Bassompierre had to
be appealed to, debts had to be paid, some of them
of that dismal and dingy order called “debts
of honour;” ignoble plaints and difficulties
became frequent. Under every cloud, no matter
what its nature, Ginevra, as of old, called out lustily
for sympathy and aid. She had no notion of meeting
any distress single-handed. In some shape, from
some quarter or other, she was pretty sure to obtain
her will, and so she got on—fighting the
battle of life by proxy, and, on the whole, suffering
as little as any human being I have ever known.
CHAPTER XLI.
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE.
Must I, ere I close, render some account of that Freedom
and Renovation which I won on the fete-night?
Must I tell how I and the two stalwart companions
I brought home from the illuminated park bore the
test of intimate acquaintance?
I tried them the very next day. They had boasted
their strength loudly when they reclaimed me from
love and its bondage, but upon my demanding deeds,
not words, some evidence of better comfort, some experience
of a relieved life—Freedom excused himself,
as for the present impoverished and disabled to assist;
and Renovation never spoke; he had died in the night
suddenly.
I had nothing left for it then but to trust secretly
that conjecture might have hurried me too fast and
too far, to sustain the oppressive hour by reminders
of the distorting and discolouring magic of jealousy.
After a short and vain struggle, I found myself brought
back captive to the old rack of suspense, tied down
and strained anew.
