The Shadow of the Sword | Page 7

for the mother, and for a space her heart was hard against the boy; but the priest, to her astonishment, sided with the revolter.
"Come, mother!" he said, nodding his big head till his great hollow cheeks trembled with his earnestness. "After all, it is ill to force a lad's inclination. The life of a priest is a hard one, see you, at the best. The priesthood is well enough, but there are better ways of serving the good God."
Rohan's heart rejoiced and the widow cried, "Better ways!--ah, no, m'sieu le cur��."
"But yes," persisted his reverence. "God's will is best of all; and better even a good ropemaker than a bad priest!" It was settled at last, and the boy returned to his home. The truth is, the priest was glad to be rid of his bargain. He saw that Rohan was not the stuff that holy men are made of, and that, sooner or later, he would be inventing a heresy or adoring a woman. He did not relinquish his charge without a sigh, for that business of the miraculous vision, if consummated by a life of exemplary piety, would have been a fine feather in the Church's cap. He soon found a more fitting attendant, however, and his former annoyances and disappointments were forgotten.
Meantime, Rohan returned to his old haunts with the rapture of a prisoned bird set free. He soon persuaded his mother that it was all arranged for the best; for would he not, instead of being taken away as a priest must be, remain with her for ever, and supply his father's place, and be a comfort to her old age? There were two sorts of lives that he detested with all his heart, and in either of these lives he would be lost to home and to her. He would never become a Priest, because he liked not the life, and because (he na?vely thought to himself) he could never marry his little cousin Marcelle! He could never become a Soldier (God and all the saints be praised for that!), because he was a widow's only son.
But it was the year 1813, the "soote spring season" of that year, and the great Emperor, after having successfully allayed the fear of invasion which had filled all France ever since his disastrous return from Moscow, was preparing a grand coup by which all his enemies were utterly to be annihilated. There were strange murmurs afloat, but nothing definite was yet known. The air was full of that awful silence which precedes thunderstorm and earthquake.
Down here at Kromlaix, however, down here in the loneliest and saddest corner of the Breton coast, the sun shone and the sea sparkled as if Moscow had never been, as if becatombs of French dead were not lying bleaching amid the Russian snows, as if martyred France had never in her secret heart shrieked out a curse upon the Avatar. The sounds of war had echoed far away, but Rohan had heeded them little. Happiness is uniformly selfish, and Rohan was happy. Life was sweet to him. It was a blessed thing to breathe, to be, to remain free; to raise his face to the sun, to mark the cliffs and caves, to watch the passing sails, or the blue smoke curling from the chimneys of the little fishing village; to listen to the plump cur��, "fatter than his cure;" to hear the strange stories of bivouac and battle-field told by the old Bonapartist burnpowder, his uncle; to hear Alain or Jannick play wild tunes on the biniou, or bagpipe; to hunt the nests of gulls and seapies; to go out on calm nights with his comrades and net the shining shoals of herring: best of all, to walk with Marcelle along the sward or shore; to kneel at her side, holding her hand, before the statue of Our Lady; to look into her eyes, and, pleasanter still, to kiss her ripe young lips. What life could be better, what life, all in all, could be sweeter than this?
And Marcelle?
His mother's sister's child, and only niece of the quaint old corporal with whom she lives, with her four great brothers, each strong as Anak. Since they were children together--and he first appalled her young heart by his reckless daring--they have been accustomed to meet in all the innocence of Nature. While her great brothers care not for her society, but haunt the cabaret or go courting when ashore, Rohan seeks the maiden, and is more gentle than any brother, though still her kin. He loves her dark eyes and her hidden black hair, and her gentle ways, and her tender admiration of himself. She has been his playmate for years--now she is, what shall we say? his companion--soon, perhaps, to be known by