Brune

“ It was for himself and Brune. 53 Will’s present was a cameo ring, on which were engraved the Anneys and Fenwick arms. Brune had a scarf-pin, representing a lovely Hebe. It was a great day at Seat-Ambar. Aspatria could work no more; Will and Brune felt it impossible to finish the game they had begun.
There is a tide in everything: this was the spring-tide of Aspatria’s love. In its overflowing she was happy for many a day after her brothers had begun to speculate and wonder why Ringham did not come. Suddenly it struck her that the snow was gone, and the road open, and that there was no letter. ”

“ That is the way always. When we plan for ourselves, all our plans fail. Happy are they who learn early to let fate alone, and never interfere with the Powers who hold the thread of their destiny!
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It was not until she had reached this mood, a kind of content indifference, that her good genius could work for her. She then sent Brune as her messenger, and Brune took his sister to meet her on Richmond Hill. On their way thither they talked about Seat-Ambar, and Will and Alice, until Aspatria suddenly noticed that Brune was not listening to her. ”

“ All is fair in love or art or war, and there is a consolation in knowing that one's aim is [Pg 10] Jesuitical, and not merely base. Had it not been for Mrs Brune—good soul—and the gambling instinct, I might be still, like you and Grey's 'gem of purest ray serene,' flashing my facets in the desert."
From Mrs Brune's portrait he devolved on one or two others of persons distinguished in the art sphere, whose autographs, with cordial or extravagant expressions of devotion, scrambled octopus-wise over the card. ”

“ Others, who take no interest in any details such as those given by my father to Brune, can skip this letter, without reading either it or its postscript. However that may be, here it is:—
"6th Thermidor, Year X.
"MY DEAR BRUNE,—I am glad to tell you my wife gave birth yesterday morning to a fine boy, who weighs nine pounds and is eighteen inches long. So you will see that if he continues to increase in the outside world at the rate he has done inside, he bids fair to attain to a pretty fine stature.
"And another thing you should know too: I rely on you to be his godfather. ”

“ She never took her sewing into the parlour. And yet she might have done so: William and Brune had a delicacy of affection for her which would have made them blind to her occupation and densely stupid as to its design.
So, although the days were mostly alike, they were not unhappily so; and at intervals destiny sent her the surprises she loved. One morning in the beginning of February, Aspatria felt that the postman ought to come; her heart presaged him. The day was clear and warm,—so much so, that the men working in the barn had all the windows open. ”

“ And he tore the letter into twenty pieces before her eyes.
“Oh, Will, I cannot bear it!”
“Thou art a woman: bear what other women have tholed before thee.” Then he went angrily from her presence. Brune was thrumming on the window-pane. She thought he looked sorry for her; she touched his arm and said, “Brune, will you take a letter to Dalton post for me?”
“For sure I will. Go thy ways and 55 write it, and I’ll be gone before Will is back.”
It was an unfortunate letter, as letters written in a hurry always are. Absolute silence would have piqued and worried Ulfar. ”

“ Brune Anneys is a great deal more human, and a great deal more godlike, than either.”
“Do not be silly, Sarah. And do occupy yourself a little with Ulfar now.”
“When the hour comes, I will. Ulfar is evidently occupying himself at present in watching his wife. There is a decorous naughtiness and a stimulating sense of danger about seeing Aspatria, that must be a thorough enjoyment to Ulfar.”
“Men are always in fusses. Ulfar has kept my heart palpitating ever since he could walk alone.” ”

“ Then General Verdier, who held the chief command in the absence of Marshal Brune, tried to harangue the people, but his voice was drowned by the shouts of the mob who had gathered round a coffee-house where stood a bust of the emperor, which they insisted should be given up to them. Verdier, hoping to calm, what he took to be a simple street row, gave orders that the bust should be brought out, and this concession, so significant on the part of a general commanding in the emperor’s name, convinced the crowd that his cause was lost. ”

“ He is now so vain of his wealth and proud of his rank, that he not only disregards all former acquaintances, but denies his own brothers and sisters,—telling them frankly that the Fieldmarshal Brune can have no shoemaker for a brother, nor a sister married to a chandler; that he knows of no parents, and of no relatives, being the maker of his own fortune, and of what he is; that his children will look no further back for ancestry than their father. ”

“ My honor hangs on it. Everything I trust to you—money, honor, freedom, all. You are a brave man. I wish to say to you still this night that to-morrow evening at five o'clock I shall bring the money to your quarters.”
Brune was silent for a moment. At last he heaved a sigh and replied: “I would probably have done it without this. To-morrow at midnight your friend Kinkel will be a free man.”
I passed the larger part of the following day with Krüger, Leddihn, and Poritz, in going over the chances of our enterprise, in order to make provision for all not yet foreseen accidents. ”

“ Besides themselves there was only a young Frenchman in the carriage—a grave, handsome young man, with melancholy black eyes and a carefully waxed moustache—who sate and covertly stared at Miss Brunel all the way. Perhaps he had seen her in the theatre; but in any case, the beautiful, clear, dark artist-face of the young actress, with its large deep eyes, was quite sufficient to imbue a susceptible young Frenchman with a vague sadness. ”

“ Naturally, I didn't want to be a jarring note in harmonious Avignon, so I made myself look rather attractive for my jaunt with the chauffeur.
He was sauntering casually about the Place before the hotel, where long ago Marshal Brune was assassinated, and we walked away together as calmly as if we had been followed by a whole drove of well-trained chaperons. When one has joined the ranks of the lower classes, one might as well reap some advantages from the change!
"What we'll do," said Mr. Dane, "is to look first at all the things the Turnours are sure to look at last. ”

“ The former orthography is used in Ethelwerd’s Chronicle:—“A fierce battle was fought against the barbarians at Brunandune, whereof that fight is called great even to the present day; then the barbarian tribes were defeated and domineer no longer; they are driven beyond the ocean.” Burn, in Thornton township, is one of the several rival localities which claim to have witnessed the sanguinary conflict. In the Domesday Survey, Burn was written Brune, and it also comprises a rising ground or Dune, which seem to imply some connection with Brunandune. ”

“ When the fourteenth arch was reached, the bier was torn from the bearers’ hands, and the corpse was flung into the river. “Military honours!” shouted some one, and all who had guns fired at the dead body, which was twice struck. “Tomb of Marshal Brune” was then written on the arch, and the crowd withdrew, and passed the rest of the day in holiday-making.
Meanwhile the Rhone, refusing to be an accomplice in such a crime, bore away the corpse, which the assassins believed had been swallowed up for ever. ”

“ Morrow, his face wreathed in triumph and smiles; a brown-haired, serene-eyed girl whom Blaine remembered from his memorable interview with her at the Anita Lawton Club; and a tall, grizzled, smooth-shaven man, who held himself proudly erect, as if the weight of years had fallen from his shoulders.
“Yes, sir, I’m Brunell,” the latter announced, when the incidental salutations were over, “––Jimmy Brunell, the forger. I’ve lived straight, and tried to keep the truth from my little girl, for her own sake, but perhaps it is better as it is. ”

“ Aspatria stood in her cold, dim room; and even while shivering in her thin night-dress, with bare feet treading the polished oak floor, she hastily put out of her sight the miserable wedding-garments. A large dower-chest stood conveniently near. She opened it wide, and flung dress and wreath and slippers and cloak into it. The lid fell from her hands with a great clang, and 126 she said to herself, “I will never open it again.”
The storm still continued. She dressed in simple household fashion, and went downstairs. Brune sat by the fire. He said: “I was waiting for you, Aspatria. ”

“ In the fulness of his joy, Bruno dismissed, as he thought for ever, from his mind the cruel unworthy thoughts he had once been led to entertain of his bride. It would be difficult to describe this infant to those who never saw her; but let each one think of all the children he has been privileged to know. If among such dear ones he can recall some babe of a beauty too rare and fair to attain to maturity in this bleak world, then he may in some faint degree picture to himself the nameless charm that surrounded the little Violet as with a halo. ”

“ In Bruno, eager and impassioned, an Italian of the Italians, it awoke a constant, inextinguishable appetite for every form of experience—a fear, as of the one sin possible, of limiting, for oneself or another, that great stream flowing for thirsty souls, that wide pasture set ready for the hungry heart. Considered from the point of view of a minute observation of nature, the Infinite might figure as "the infinitely little;" no blade [240] of grass being like another, as there was no limit to the complexities of an atom of earth, cell, sphere, within sphere. ”

“ The Baron was often obliged to return to town for a day on important business, or to attend his royal master at the Prince's Château; but Alcyone never wearied when alone with nature; and these little separations lent a new delight to the hour of reunion. Jaded and tired from his hot journey, Bruno would then seat himself in the veranda and recount to his fondly-listening wife all the little adventures of the day, while her cool, soft hand laid on his burning brow, or her gentle voice, carolling forth low songs in the silent twilight, soothed and refreshed his hard-worked brain. ”

“ It was a cold wet day, in the beginning of November, when Annie Brunel got out of the Hampstead 'bus, and found herself in the muddy highway of Haverstock Hill: a wet and cheerless day, with a damp and cutting wind, and a perpetual drizzling rain, that made the black stems of the leafless trees glisten and drip; a day to make the people who passed each other in the street, vainly muffled-up against the wet and the keen cold, hate each other with a vague and gratuitous hatred. ”

“ Le Brun, always hard at work and always having great anxieties, at length found herself so broken in health, and so nervously fatigued that she longed to be alone with Nature, and in 1808 she went to Switzerland. ”

“ Thou wouldest know the spell of love. It is even now awakening within thy rugged breast; but beware! Thou hast disbelieved in immortality, and doubted the eternal power of our great Creator. We love thee! we yearn to save thy soul! We long to soften thee through human affection; that when thy poor earth is no more, thou mayst find an everlasting home, where
'Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.'
I—Alcyone, sent by my sisters—I am here to speed thine upward way."
Bruno, spell-bound, eagerly listened. ”

“ The second can not be mistaken; even the most unpracticed eye would discern at a glance that it is a Frenchwoman—piquant, lively, graceful, evidently not so much engrossed with her art as to be insensible to admiration as a woman—this is the well-known Madame Le Brun. Opposite the fair Parisian is a third portrait, a woman still in the bloom of life, but destitute of all brilliancy of coloring, with an expression grave and pensive almost to melancholy. She is seated on a stone, in the midst of a solitary landscape, a portfolio with sketches in one hand, a pencil in the other. ”

“ As Alcyone advanced towards the altar, Baron Bruno, clad in his splendid court uniform, embroidered with gold, and covered with decorations, stepped forth to meet her, and the wedding ceremony was soon completed. The priest dipped his hand in the holy water and sprinkled some over bride and groom during his final benediction; as he did so, the Countess Olga, who stood near with her royal mistress, rushed forward, exclaiming, "She is a witch! she is a witch! the holy water has scared her!" ”

“ There came long, sweet, all-alike days for Bruno and the sheep. The wheat grew yellow and heavy to breaking with sweetness and Bruno watched the harvesters. The olives ripened, and the grapes, and the figs. Then the sun set earlier, and the nights were chilly with frost, and Bruno and his father put warm cloaks made of skin over their blue smocks.
“It is near the festa of Christmas,” said Bruno one day. “I have never been to Rome. Will{54} you take me there to hear the talking box on the Corso, father? It both speaks and sings.” ”

“ Having now witnessed about as much as I desired of the lively brunnen of Nieder-Selters, I bade adieu to this well-regulated establishment, feeling certain that its portrait would, in future, re-appear before my mind, in all its vivid colours whensoever and wheresoever I might drink the refreshing, wholesome beverage obtained from its bright, sparkling source. ”

“ She has a sort of politeness which pleases peculiarly—a mixture of the ease of high rank and early habit with something that is sentimental without affectation. Madame Le Brun is painting her picture: Madame Le Brun is sixty-six, with great vivacity as well as genius, and better worth seeing than her pictures; for though they are speaking, she speaks, and speaks uncommonly well. ”