Nicolas Isabeau Cherubini

“ But at the time this was written, Isabeau was probably twelve or thirteen years old; and could hardly have done any great good or harm. During her whole career, beginning at the day when, at fourteen years old, she became Queen of France, there does not seem to have been any great difference in her way of going on; by which we may gather that she was one of the sort of women one meets every now and then who are always surrounded with a turmoil of quarrels, discredit, and difficulties caused by themselves, into which everybody who goes near them is sure to be drawn. ”

“ Her neglect of them a little later on, however, seems to contradict this; but154 then Isabeau was a person so inconsistent and selfish that neither her affection nor her dislike could ever be reckoned upon; and her extravagance and folly was the cause of the penury to which the royal children were at one time reduced. Her quarrels with her sons in later years were long after they had passed childhood; with those of her daughters who lived to grow up she does not seem to have disagreed. ”

“ What must have been the agony of the good man when he beheld his own plight and that of his innocent, forsaken little ones? It makes one shudder at the thought. But it had a different effect on the cruel, infamous Isabeau; for no sooner did she hear that her husband's reason was restored than she began to tremble for her own safety, as well she might. She therefore hurried away to Milan, and ordered her brother Louis, who was as bad as she, to bring the children to her.
He obeyed, and not only carried off the five royal children but also those of the Duke of Burgundy. ”

“ As an instance of Cherubini's curt wit, the following little conversation is cited:—
One day a friend handed a score to Cherubini, saying it was by Mehul. After looking it over he exclaimed:—
"It is not Mehul's; it is too bad to be his."
"Then will you believe me if I tell you it is mine?" said the visitor, and Cherubini replied:—
"No! It is too good to be yours." ”

“ Thus do I escape the 'monotonous feet.' Had I only Isabeau I should have attained the height of human happiness—to have dined, to smoke, to ride on cushions [Pg 116] under the starlight, to have six dollars, and not to know where one is going—a plethora of gifts. So I can spare Isabeau for the nonce. Doubtless she would not particularly care for the delights of locomotion. ”

“ But as a young lady should never give her heart anywhere till she is asked, and in France not before her husband has politely expressed his wish to be loved as he leads her to her carriage from the altar, Isabeau took especial good care that nobody should find out the indiscretion her feelings had committed, and having not only a mind of considerable power, but also great confidence and some pride in her own strength, she felt little fear but that she should be able both to conceal and conquer a passion so every way unauthorised. ”

“ Jacques snapped his fingers derisively. “It is as Isabeau says: she has heard too much of the state of the 111 realm, and of the wonderful Maid who is to restore it. The country is full of the talk. It could not mean her. She is but a peasant girl, and when hath a villein’s daughter ever ridden a horse, or couched a lance? Let her keep to her station. Don’t let such wild talk addle your wits, too, Durand. Now tell me everything that occurred at Vaucouleurs. The village rings with the affair. I want the whole truth.”
Lassois did as requested, and told all of the happening. ”

“ She played the fine lady, but her parasol, which she hung to her girdle, was decorated with a big grease spot. She took Lena's arm, while the two ladies followed. Isabeau appeared to be in the best humor and said, glancing back, to Margot and Johanna: "We must have a goal. It is quite dreadful to see only woods and then more woods. ”

“ He was not the youth that ordinarily Isabeau would have chosen for her child, but Jeanne had never encouraged attentions from the village lads, who now fought shy of her because of her extreme piety. Desperate diseases require desperate remedies. Jacques and Isabeau judged that marriage even with Colin was better than the fancies that filled their daughter’s mind. Beside, where another might be easily repulsed Colin could be induced to continue his wooing. ”

“ Isagani's gaze lighted up when he spoke of that obscure spot, a flush of pride overspread his cheeks, his voice trembled, his poetic imagination glowed, his words poured forth burning, charged with enthusiasm, as if he were talking of love to his love, and he could not but exclaim:
"Oh, in the solitude of my mountains I feel free, free as the air, as the light that shoots unbridled through space! A thousand cities, a thousand palaces, would I give for that spot in the Philippines, where, far from men, I could feel myself to have genuine liberty. ”

“ Warned of this singularity, and even somewhat intimidated by it, Isabey presented himself at the diplomatist’s. His real or simulated embarrassment increased the partial good humour of the baron, who, fixing his large, blue-goggled eyes on him, replied, ‘Have a good look at me, and then you’ll be bound to admit that nature has given me too ugly a face ever to spend a penny on it for its reproduction. Nature would in reality have the laugh of me if she could convict me of such foolish vanity. ”

“ Lyddon had profound confidence in Richard’s judgment of men and was willing to believe that Isabey was all he was represented to be. It was plain that Isabey was as distinctively French in blood and training as Richard Tremaine was Anglo-Saxon. Isabey was a young man of fortune and, like Richard, contemplated entering public life. His letters, which Richard read aloud with [36] pride, were full of sound sense, acute observation of men and things, and illuminated with French wit. ”

“ Both his gait and demeanour were marked by much nobleness. It is, above all, from the handsome design of Isabey, representing the plenipotentiaries at the Congress, that one may gain a more or less exact idea of all those outward advantages of which he himself was by no means insensible. At the first glance, one felt delighted at seeing one of those men to whom nature had vouchsafed her most seductive gifts, and whom nature, as a rule, seems to take a delight in calling only to the frivolous successes of a society life. ”

“ Isabey had seen that same flash of joy in her eyes the night he had arrived wounded at Harrowby. Now it smote him to the heart. He knew—what Angela did not know—that when a woman changes color, smiles, trembles, and casts down her eyes at the coming of a certain man, it has a tragic meaning. She half-rose from the old bench and put her slender hand into Isabey’s, a custom which, from Isabey’s French education, always seemed strange and exciting to him. ”

“ He knew that it would be impossible for Isobel and her father to stand the hardship of fast and continued travel. At the most they would not make more than twenty miles in a day, and even with his scrub team he could make thirty, and would probably overtake them at the end of the next day. And then it occurred to him, with a pleasurable thrill, that to find Isobel again on the trail, as he had first seen her, would be a hundred times better than finding her at Lac Bain. He would accompany her and the colonel to Churchill. ”

“ Isabey smiled. After all, in many ways she was only a poetic and fanciful child. Her imagination, stimulated by the reading of many books, was vigorous, but she had in her the spirit of daring and adventure, and her eyes and cheeks quickly kindled into flame at the mere mention of action. He wondered what was to be the path her delicate feet were to tread through life. If only he might walk beside her forever!
The snow was all gone from the garden and the lane, but lingered in patches in the woods, and in the old graveyard in the field there were still white drifts upon the graves. ”

“ All she could do whenever she thought of Isabey was to call up a passionate loyalty to Neville Tremaine and to make herself the most solemn of promises that never should any woman exceed her in the kindness, tenderness, devotion, consideration that she would give Neville Tremaine, not having the greater gift to bestow upon him.
Isabey in a camp of five thousand men found plenty for a man to do who had not full use of his right arm and leg. ”

“ The fear grew in him that somewhere in the wilderness they were suffering as others were suffering. So obsessed did he become with the thought that he had a terrible dream one night, and in that dream baby Isobel’s face appeared to him, a deathlike mask, white and cold and thinned by starvation. The vision decided him. He would go to Fort Churchill, and if McTabb had not been driven in he would go to his cabin, over on the Little Beaver, and learn what had become of Isobel and the little girl. ”

“ Her instinctive dignity and good sense made her secret safe from all except Isabey, but he with the prescience of love saw it. He foresaw with calm courage that the time would come when she would learn to love Neville Tremaine—when children would be laid in her arms, and when this dream of her youth would seem only the shadow of a dream. But Isabey felt that it would be among the unforgotten things which sleep but never die in women’s hearts. ”

“ Those would be days of agony for himself as well as for her, and yet he would be near, always near, the woman he loved. And little Isobel would be safe in Rookie’s cabin. If anything happened—
His hands gripped the edges of the sledge at the thought that leaped into his brain. It was Pelliter’s thought. If anything happened to Isobel the little girl would be his own, forever and forever. He thrust the thought from him as if it were the plague itself. Isobel would live. He would make her live, If she died—
McTabb heard the low cry that broke from his lips. ”

“ He believed that he would find McTabb at the cabin and he would find the child there. So confident had he been that Isobel would live that he had not told McTabb of the uncle who had driven her from the old home in Montreal. He was glad that he had kept this to himself, for there would not be much of a chance of Rookie having found the child’s relative. And he made up his mind that he would not give the little Isobel up. He would keep her for himself. He would return to civilization, for he would have her to live for. He would build a home for her, with a garden and dogs and birds and flowers. ”

“ No, sir, you will remain at Harrowby.”
Colonel Tremaine’s logic was unanswerable, and Isabey remained. Nevertheless, he had waked from the soft dream in which he spent the first few weeks of his return. It was now February and the land still lay in an icy grasp, but spring would soon be at hand, and Isabey felt a soldier’s impatience to be at his post. Angela’s society was not less delicious to him; rather had he become more absolutely enchained. But being a man he put fetters upon his will, his inclination, his voice, and, taking his passion by the throat, mastered it. ”

“ Tremaine and Colonel Tremaine remarked to each other upon Captain Isabey’s filial attention to his stepmother. Madame Isabey was quite willing outwardly to take Isabey’s attentions, but inwardly she hoped that it was Adrienne’s presence which drew him to Harrowby.
Not so Adrienne. Perfect man of the world as Isabey was, and careful as he might be that he should not betray the compelling interest which Angela possessed for him, he could not disguise it from the other woman. ”

“ Lyddon, know Isabey. He writes that he is already taking steps toward raising a battery of artillery, just the branch of the service which I shall join when the war breaks out. Isabey is a man born for success at whatever he undertakes as you well know by all I have told you of him.”
Ever since Richard’s college days Isabey had been a part of Richard’s life. Many plans had been made for Isabey to visit Harrowby, but so far accident had prevented any of the family from knowing him except Neville, who had readily adopted his brother’s friend as his own during their brief periods of intercourse. ”

“ He would go to Fort Churchill and testify against Bucky Smith. And then he would quit the Service. His term of enlistment expired in a month, and he would not re-enlist. “It was the Law that killed him— and you are the Law. It kills— kills— kills— and it never gives back when it makes a mistake.” Under the dark sky those words seemed never to end in his ears, and each moment they added to his hatred of the thing of which he had been a part for years. He seemed to hear Isobel’s accusing voice in the low soughing of the night wind in the spruce tops ”

“ Out on the porch in the spring morning stood Angela, Colonel Tremaine, and Lyddon. Nothing could exceed the kindness of their parting words. Colonel Tremaine urged Isabey to come to see them whenever the pressure of his military duties relaxed, and especially if he fell ill to remember that Harrowby was his home. Lyddon said with truth that Isabey’s presence during the stormy winter had brightened Harrowby. When Angela bade him farewell, Isabey thanked her with French ceremony for her kindness to him and said truly it had helped more than anything else toward his recovery. ”

“ Charteris expected him to make love to her after such a familiarity.
“I have been very busy all day,” she said. “As you have heard, perhaps, all of my house servants have decamped, and with a family of refugee children under ten years of age there is much to be done.”
“I have no house in Virginia in which to entertain [267] refugees,” murmured Isabey. ”

“ All of them, the whole Harrowby family, were the most guileless people that Isabey had ever known. The mere saying of the words which made Angela the wife of Neville Tremaine on the wharf that April night at Harrowby was confidently felt, not only by the Harrowby family, but by the whole community, to put her definitely and forever out of the reach of any other man than her husband. Such a thing as a flirtation with a married woman had never been heard of among those patriarchal people. ”