Devereux | Page 9

shake his
head with a notable archness whenever he heard our reverential
description of the expected guest. But, somehow or other, no sooner
had he seen the priest than all his proposed railleries deserted him. Not
a single witticism came to his assistance, and the calm, smooth face of

the ecclesiastic seemed to operate upon the fierce resolves of the
facetious knight in the same manner as the human eye is supposed to
awe into impotence the malignant intentions of the ignobler animals.
Yet nothing could be blander than the demeanour of the Abbe
Montreuil; nothing more worldly, in their urbanity, than his manner and
address. His garb was as little clerical as possible, his conversation
rather familiar than formal, and he invariably listened to every syllable
the good knight uttered with a countenance and mien of the most
attentive respect.
What then was the charm by which the singular man never failed to
obtain an ascendency, in some measure allied with fear, over all in
whose company he was thrown? This was a secret my uncle never
could solve, and which only in later life I myself was able to discover.
It was partly by the magic of an extraordinary and powerful mind,
partly by an expression of manner, if I may use such a phrase, that
seemed to sneer most, when most it affected to respect; and partly by
an air like that of a man never exactly at ease; not that he was shy, or
ungraceful, or even taciturn,--no! it was an indescribable
embarrassment, resembling that of one playing a part, familiar to him,
indeed, but somewhat distasteful. This embarrassment, however, was
sufficient to be contagious, and to confuse that dignity in others, which,
strangely enough, never forsook himself.
He was of low origin, but his address and appearance did not betray his
birth. Pride suited his mien better than familiarity; and his countenance,
rigid, thoughtful, and cold, even through smiles, in expression was
strikingly commanding. In person he was slightly above the middle
standard; and had not the texture of his frame been remarkably hard,
wiry, and muscular, the total absence of all superfluous flesh would
have given the lean gauntness of his figure an appearance of almost
spectral emaciation. In reality, his age did not exceed twenty-eight
years; but his high broad forehead was already so marked with line and
furrow, his air was so staid and quiet, his figure so destitute of the
roundness and elasticity of youth, that his appearance always impressed
the beholder with the involuntary idea of a man considerably more
advanced in life. Abstemious to habitual penance, and regular to

mechanical exactness in his frequent and severe devotions, he was as
little inwardly addicted to the pleasures and pursuits of youth, as he
was externally possessed of its freshness and its bloom.
Nor was gravity with him that unmeaning veil to imbecility which
Rochefoucauld has so happily called "the mystery of the body." The
variety and depth of his learning fully sustained the respect which his
demeanour insensibly created. To say nothing of his lore in the dead
tongues, he possessed a knowledge of the principal European languages
besides his own, namely, English, Italian, German, and Spanish, not
less accurate and little less fluent than that of a native; and he had not
only gained the key to these various coffers of intellectual wealth, but
he had also possessed himself of their treasures. He had been educated
at St. Omer: and, young as he was, he had already acquired no
inconsiderable reputation among his brethren of that illustrious and
celebrated Order of Jesus which has produced some of the worst and
some of the best men that the Christian world has ever known,--which
has, in its successful zeal for knowledge, and the circulation of mental
light, bequeathed a vast debt of gratitude to posterity; but which,
unhappily encouraging certain scholastic doctrines, that by a mind at
once subtle and vicious can be easily perverted into the sanction of the
most dangerous and systematized immorality, has already drawn upon
its professors an almost universal odium.
So highly established was the good name of Montreuil that when, three
years prior to the time of which I now speak, he had been elected to the
office he held in our family, it was scarcely deemed a less fortunate
occurrence for us to gain so learned and so pious a preceptor, than it
was for him to acquire a situation of such trust and confidence in the
household of a Marshal of France and the especial favourite of Louis
XIV.
It was pleasant enough to mark the gradual ascendency he gained over
my uncle; and the timorous dislike which the good knight entertained
for him, yet struggled to conceal. Perhaps that was the only time in