Monsieur Maurice | Page 4

"and 'twere pity the prison
were duller than it need be. Choose thou a pretty face or two from
among these old pictures, my little Gretchen, and an ornament for his
mantelshelf. Young as thou art, thou hast the woman's wit in thee."
So I picked out a couple of Sèvres candlesticks; a painted Chinese
screen, all pagodas and parrots; two portraits of patched and powdered
beauties in the Watteau style; and a queer old clock surmounted by a
gilt Cupid in a chariot drawn by doves. If these failed to make him
happy, thought I, he must indeed be hard to please.
That afternoon, the things having been well dusted, and the rooms
thoroughly cleaned, we set to work to arrange the furniture, and so
quickly was this done that before we sat down to supper the place was
ready for occupation, even to the logs upon the hearth and the oil-lamp

upon the table.
All night my dreams were of the prisoner. I was seeking him in the
gloom of the upper rooms, or amid the dusky mazes of the leafless
plantations--always seeing him afar off, never overtaking him, and
trying in vain to catch a glimpse of his features. But his face was
always turned from me.
My first words on waking, were to ask if he had yet come. All day long
I was waiting, and watching, and listening for him, starting up at every
sound, and continually running to the window. Would he be young and
handsome? Or would he be old, and white-haired, and world-forgotten,
like some of those Bastille prisoners I had heard my father speak of?
Would his chains rattle when he walked about? I asked myself these
questions, and answered them as my childish imagination prompted, a
hundred times a day; and still he came not.
So another twenty-four hours went by, and my impatience was almost
beginning to wear itself out, when at last, about five o'clock in the
afternoon of the third day, it being already quite dark, there came a
sudden clanging of the gates, followed by a rattle of wheels in the
courtyard, and a hurrying to and fro of feet upon the stairs.
Then, listening with a beating heart, but seeing nothing, I knew that he
was come.
I had to sleep that night with my curiosity ungratified; for my father
had hurried away at the first sounds from without, nor came back till
long after I had been carried off to bed by my Rhenish handmaiden.

3
He was neither old nor white-haired. He was, as well as I, in my
childish way could judge, about thirty-five years of age, pale, slight,
dark-eyed, delicate-looking. His chains did not rattle as he walked, for
the simple reason that, being a prisoner on parole, he suffered no kind
of restraint, but was as free as myself of the Château and grounds. He
wore his hair long, tied behind with a narrow black ribbon, and very
slightly powdered; and he dressed always in deep mourning--black, all
black, from head to foot, even to his shoe-buckles. He was a
Frenchman, and he went by the name of Monsieur Maurice.
I cannot tell how I knew that this was only his Christian name; but so it
was, and I knew him by no other, neither did my father. I have, indeed,

evidence among our private papers to show that neither by those in
authority at Berlin, nor by the prisoner himself, was he at any time
informed either of the family name of Monsieur Maurice, or of the
nature of the offence, whether military or political, for which that
gentleman was consigned to his keeping at Brühl.
"Of one thing at least I am certain," said my father, holding out his pipe
for me to fill it. "He is a soldier."
It was just after dinner, the second day following our prisoner's arrival,
and I was sitting on my father's knee before the fire, as was our
pleasant custom of an afternoon.
"I see it in his eye," my father went on to say. "I see it in his walk. I see
it in the way he arranges his papers on the table. Everything in order.
Everything put away into the smallest possible compass. All this
bespeaketh the camp."
"I don't believe he is a soldier, for all that," said I, thoughtfully. "He is
too gentle."
"The bravest soldiers, my little Gretchen, are ofttimes the gentlest,"
replied my father. "The great French hero, Bayard, and the great
English hero, Sir Philip Sidney, about whom thou wert reading 'tother
day, were both as tender and gentle as women."
"But he neither smokes, nor swears, nor talks loud," said I, persisting in
my opinion.
My father smiled, and pinched my ear.
"Nay, little