Berowne

“ Where are those traitorous kinsmen?’ cried Berenger.
‘Fortunately all are gone on an expedition with the Queen-mother. You will have time to think. I have heard my brother say no one ever prospered who offended the meanest follower of the house of Lorraine.’
‘I do not want prosperity, I only want my wife. I hope I shall never see Paris and its deceivers again.’
‘Ah! But is it true that you have applied to have the marriage annulled at Rome?’
‘We were both shamefully deceivers. That can be nothing.’
‘A decree of his Holiness: you a Huguenot; she an heiress. All is against you. ”

“ If you are with us, Count, success is certain, but without you we have still a good hope of success. It is for you to choose."
"Wait. You have until to-morrow," whispered the Countess.
"The new Duke is strong in Vayenne," said Felix. "How do you propose to outwit him?"
"When we have had your answer you shall know more of our schemes," de Bornais answered.
"Success comes easiest through the sudden death of enemies," said the Count. "Is there no rascal about the castle who for a reward can shoot straight when he finds himself alone with the Duke?"
"We are not murderers, Count." ”

“ Do you think I enjoy the sullen temper of de Bornais or the patronage of this priest?"
"But you love Christine."
"She must be my wife. The country demands it. She will hate me, you say; well, may there not presently lie a way of escape in that? Her power shall be nominal before we have reigned long together. A woman who hates is no wife for a Duke of Montvilliers. Do you not see the road of escape?"
She laughed.
"The nominal power will be yours, Felix."
"How little you know me," he answered.
"I know you for the tool of de Bornais and this Father Bertrand," she returned. ”

“ But the Behrens did not seem to notice that there was anything lacking in their treatment. You never saw people more delighted than they were to be back in America.
“It was worse than I remembered,” Professor Behrens told my father. “After an experience of the free, breezy, self-respecting life in America it was simply unendurable. Suffocating, simply suffocating! With the most ridiculous caste spirit. Rusted to a stand-still with cock-sure conservatism! An instant, hermetic closing up of every pore at any mention of new possibilities for human nature, or for human organizations. ”

“ Nothing was heard at Beremouth but prayer and praise--evil tongues passed by that great good house to exercise themselves elsewhere. Evil people found no fitting habitation for their wandering spirits in that home of holy peace. And all his life Mr. Brewer walked humbly, looking at Claudia, and calling her "my crown!" ”

“ KING HENRY IV.
‘One bird in the hand is not always worth two in the bush, assuredly,’ said Philip, when Berenger was calm enough to hold council on what he called this most blessed discovery; ‘but where to seek them?
‘I have no fears now,’ returned Berenger. ‘We have not been bore through so much not to be brought together at last. Soon, soon shall we have her! A minister so distinguished as Isaac Gardon is sure to be heard of either at La Rochelle, Montauban, or Nimes, their great gathering places. ”

“ Berenger could only kiss her hand in token of earnest thanks before the repast was announced, and the King came to lead her to the table spread beneath the trees. The whole party supped together, but Berenger could have only a distant view of his little wife, looking very demure and grave by the side of the Admiral.
But when the meal was ended, there was a loitering in the woodland paths, amid healthy openings or glades trimmed into discreet wildness fit for royal rusticity; the sun set in parting glory on one horizon, the moon rising in crimson majesty on the other. ”

“ Like soiled armour which, being cleaned, looks richer than when new, so, under the rubs of Fate, was Bérard’s soul to reveal its intrinsic worth. And Briande took a little house next to the Presbytery, between whose garden and hers was a wall both high and frail, and yet to them a barrier of rock which no speciousness might scale or passion overthrow. And there, on either side, they grew their flowers; and that was the sole bond between them. And, like him, she gave her virgin life to God until she died. Very young she died, Felix, and on the same day died Bérard. ”

“ The Behrens, although still heartily grateful for all the kindness that had been shown them, although still feeling a lively affection for the good-hearted qualities in American life, could not conceal their immense relief at the prospect of the change. Professor Behrens discussed the question with the open frankness of a scientist before a new phenomenon: “I had no idea, till I had to go without them, how vital to civilization are the finer shades, the polish, the stability, the decorum, which comes only with long life of a society in an old country. ”

“ We escaped even now during the funeral of the Chevalier.’
‘By favour of which we are making our way to Parthenay unsuspected, though, by my faith, we gather so like a snowball, that we could be a match for a few hundreds of Guisards. Who is with you, M. de Ribaumont?’
‘Let me present to your Majesty my English brother, Philip Thistlewood,’ said Berenger, drawing the lad forward, making due obeisance, though entirely ignorant who was the plainly-dressed, travel-soiled stranger, so evidently a born lord of men.
‘An Englishman is ever welcome,’ was his gracious reception. ”

“ De Bornais and Father Bertrand looked at each other as the door closed.
"We plot against a man to serve a cur," said de Bornais.
"It is Mademoiselle we serve," said the priest.
"Truly we serve her badly to help the Count to marry her," was the answer.
"But afterward." And the priest laid his hand on his shoulder. "The fight has been a long one, de Bornais, but the end is in sight. The labor of years is soon to be paid for. It will be a glorious triumph."
"Father Bertrand, all is yet to win, remember," was the answer. "Whatever his faults, whatever his ambition, this Roger Herrick is a man. ”

“ Berenger, I knew the sorcerer spake sooth when that little moonbeam child of yours brought me the flowers from the rampart. I had speech with her last night. She has all the fair loveliness that belongs of right to your mother’s grandchild, but her eye, blue as it is, has the Ribaumont spirit; the turn of the head and the smile are what I loved long ago in yonder lady, and, above all, she is her own sweet self. Berenger, give me your daughter Berangere, and I ask no portion with her but the silver bullet. Keep the pearls for your son’s heirloom ”

“ There were the clear tones of a young maiden expostulating in indignant distress, and the bantering, indolent determination of a male annoyer.
‘Hark!’ exclaimed Berenger; ‘this must be seen to.’
‘Have a care,’ returned Mericour; ‘I have heard that a man needs look twice are meddling.’
Scarcely hearing, Berenger strode on as he had done at the last village wake, when he had rescued Cis of the Down from the impertinence of a Dorchester scrivener. ”

“ I grant her Jamie"—falling back in the eagerness of the discussion on what had been his name for Berwick as a child—"we all know he's a charmer! But how about that poor stiff loon, Oliver Boringdon? would you say that there she has not been to blame?"
But the answering murmur was very decided, "I am sure it is the first time she has sowed destruction, as you call it."
"Well then, she has been lacking the opportunities God gives most women! If she has not sowed, it has not been for lack of the seed: she has a very persuasive manner—very persuasive indeed! ”

“ Rebell, so Boringdon, with something like agony, acknowledged to himself, fulfilled all the conditions of Berwick's ideal; and a nobler, more unselfish feeling than mere personal instinct stirred him to revolt, while he was [pg 248] also swayed by an anger born of keen jealousy, dignified by him with a hundred names, of which the most comfortable to his self-esteem and conscience was care for Mrs. Rebell's reputation. ”

“ Nothing, short of her marriage to someone else, will make me give her up." He repeated, and as he did so Boringdon fixed his eyes on his friend with a peculiar, and what Berwick felt to be a terrible, look: "Nothing—you understand me, Berwick—nothing but her marriage to another man." ”

“ But alas! that mood had quickly changed; and the interview with Boringdon had reawakened the violent primeval instinct which had slumbered,—only slumbered,—during the illness of Barbara. The knowledge that another man loved her, with an ordinary, natural love by no means free from that element of physical attraction which Berwick himself had been striving, not unsuccessfully, to control in his own heart, had had a curious effect upon him. ”

“ Not that Berenger beheld much of this: he was absolutely dazzled with the brilliant assembly into which he was admitted. There moved the most beautiful women in France, in every lovely-coloured tint that dress could assume: their bosoms, arms, and hair sparkling with jewels; their gossamer ruffs surrounding their necks like fairy wings; their light laugh mingling with the music, as they sat, stood, or walked in graceful attitudes conversing with one another or with the cavaliers, whose brilliant velvet and jewels fifty mixed with their bright array. ”

“ In each writer you can trace the influence of our soil in a peculiar degree, and particularly in Borrow. Borrow was proud of being an East Anglian, and we are proud of him. In Lavengro, I venture to assert, we have the greatest example of prose style in our modern literature, and I rejoice to see a growing Borrow cult, a cult that is based not on an acceptance of the narrower side of Borrow—his furious ultra-Protestantism, for example—as was the popularity that he once enjoyed, but upon the fact that he was a magnificent artist in words. No artist in words but is influenced by environment. ”

“ The dwarf sprang to his feet.
"Truly, by the way one man gets in another may well [33] leave. But stay." And he put his hand on Herrick's arm. "I took you not for a spy when I saw you in the court-yard to-night, but how came you by your knowledge of the scholar of Passey?"
"As I dined to-night at the Croix Verte I heard a priest talk of him."
"A narrow, hatchet-faced priest, with never a smile, and eyes that look into you without blinking?"
"The same."
"Ah, Father Bertrand has his plot, too. When he talks, friend Roger, remember how easy it is for a man to lie. ”

“ The Abbey was still asleep, no sound came from the servants' quarters at present, nor the clink of a pail-handle from the stables. If they were waking in the village yonder, they were welcoming the new day in silence. Barbara's footfall on the stone flags of the terrace rang strangely loud in the morning air, and she went slowly, pausing to look across the woods and down into the stream. Hidden men might still be watching, or someone, whose night had been as wakeful as her own, might see her from one of the windows. ”

“ I will tell you, sir; I had been across the Berwyn to carry home a piece of weaving work to a person who employs me. It was night as I returned, and when I was about half-way down the hill, at a place which is called Allt Paddy, because the Gwyddelod are in the habit of taking up their quarters there, I came upon a gang of them, who had come there and camped and lighted their fire, whilst I was on the other side of the hill. There were nearly twenty of them, men and women, and amongst the rest was a man standing naked in a tub of water with two women stroking him down with clouts. ”

“ The town, which is very small, stands in a valley, near some wild hills called the Berwyn, like the range to the south of Llangollen. The stream, which runs through it and which falls into the Teivi at a little distance from the town, is called the Brennig, probably because it descends from the Berwyn hills. These southern Berwyns form a very extensive mountain region, extending into Brecon and Carmarthenshire, and contain within them, as I long subsequently found, some of the wildest solitudes and most romantic scenery in Wales. ”

“ What say you, mother? should not the young rye have my sister Ursula?'
'I am going to my people,' said Mrs. Herne, placing a bundle upon a donkey, which was her own peculiar property; 'I am going to Yorkshire, for I can stand this no longer. You say you like him: in that we differs; I hates the gorgio, and would like, speaking Romanly, to mix a little poison with his waters. And now go to Lundra, my children, I goes to Yorkshire. Take my blessing with ye, and a little bit of a gillie to cheer your hearts with when ye are weary. In all kinds of weather have we lived together ”

“ Letters! They were hailed like drops of water in a thirsty land. No doubt they had been long on the way, ere they had reached the hands of the Chevalier de Ribaumont, and it was quite possible that they had been read and selected; but, as Berenger said, he defied any Frenchman to imitate either Lord Walwyn’s style or Sir Marmaduke’s, and when late in the autumn the packet was delivered to him, the two captives gloated over the very outsides before they opened them.
The first intelligence that greeted them made them give a cry of amusement and surprise. ”

“ Many there delight to know you as a great apostle of the ideas which are to be our life, if Heaven intends us a great and permanent life. I count myself happy in having seen you, and in finding with you Béranger, the genuine poet, the genuine man of France. I have felt all the enchantment of the lyre of Béranger; have paid my warmest homage to the truth and wisdom adorned with such charms, such wit and pathos. It was a great pleasure to see himself. If your leisure permits, Monsieur, I will ask a few lines in reply. ”