The Little Old Portrait

“You may be sure Madame Germain did not need twice asking to do so. ‘Poor boy, poor boy, the most desolate of all,’ she said to herself; ‘for he has not even a happy past to look back to.’

“How thankful they all were to sit down to a comfortable supper in the cottage – and, even more, to rest their poor tired limbs in Madame Germain’s nice clean beds, where the sheets, though not of the finest, were sweet with country bleaching, and scented with lavender! That night Germain said nothing to distress the poor children, but the next day direful news had to be told. Edmée was indeed homeless, for the Château of Valmont no longer existed, except in crumbling ruins. It had been burnt down during Pierre’s absence. Poor old Ludovic happily for himself perhaps, had not lived to see this. He had died a few days after Pierre’s departure for Paris. No special ill-will to the family had been the reason of this destruction, but one of the wild mobs which in these dreadful times laid waste so much of the country had found their way to the peaceful village, and joined by some of the malcontents who would not believe that the recent exactions of money had not been the Countess’s doing, had set fire to the home of the innocent lady and her child.

”‘After all she was a Sarinet,’ was muttered as a sort of excuse for the shameful deed. But when the villagers recovered from the shock and horror, they had united to drive the doers of it from among them, and were now, father Germain had good reason to think, ready to defend the orphaned Edmée to the utmost.

“So after much consultation, the Germains determined to remain at Valmont, though they had at first hesitated whether it would be safe for their charges to do so. It would, however, as was soon seen, have been difficult, almost impossible, to move Edmond. His strength, once he felt himself in safety, rapidly failed; he took to his bed, where he lay in peaceful weakness for some months, suffering little, thankful and grateful, and clinging with touching affection to Pierre’s kind mother, till at last, when the first spring blossoms began to peep out again, he gently died. And though the change in him had endeared him to them all, they felt it was better thus. Life would have been a hard struggle to the poor boy, and he was devoid of the strength required to face his completely altered circumstances, for even had there been no Revolution the Sarinet family was completely ruined.

“Before his death Edmée’s kind protectors had began to breathe rather more freely with regard to her safety. The state of things in Paris was growing worse and worse; the ‘Reign of terror,’ so called, was beginning. But less attention was now given to the upper classes – if, indeed, any of them still remained in the country! The fury of the various Republican parties, every one fighting for the mastery, was now turning against each other – in the end to be the ruin of all; and the motives and causes of the first revolt were forgotten in the general chaos of selfishness, and wild ambition.

“So the months passed on, till they grew into years, and still Edmée was living like a simple country maiden with her kind friends. They did all in their power to prevent her feeling the change in her position. The good curé gave her daily lessons, such as her mother would have wished her to have, and the Germains managed to turn an outhouse which had been used for storing apples and such things into a pretty little sitting-room for her, where they collected the very few pieces of furniture that had been saved from the château, several of which are now in the room where I am writing – the best room at Belle Prairie Farm. And Edmée gradually recovered some of her old brightness; she felt that she was where her mother would have wished her to be, and she was by nature of a wise and unworldly spirit. Even the destruction of her old home she learned to view in a way that was very different from the feelings of most of her class.

”‘We ourselves – we Valmonts – may not have sinned as others,’ she said one day to the curé, when he had been explaining to her some of the causes of this dreadful Revolution which had so changed the face of the country, ‘but our class was guilty. And we have suffered for their sins. Is it not so, dear Monsieur?’

“And the old man’s own eyes filled with tears, as he looked at her earnest ones upraised to his.

”‘It is even so, my child.’

”‘Then I pray God to accept the sacrifice!’ said the child. ‘But, Monsieur le Curé, I do not wish to be an aristocrat any more. I will belong to my own people.’

“And to this, through all the years that followed, she remained firm. Even when distant relations, hearing of her escape, wrote from England, begging her to join them there, with good hope of before long returning to their own home in France, promising, poor as she now was, to adopt her as their own child, Edmée wrote decidedly, though gratefully, refusing. She had made her choice. Some years later, thanks to the efforts of all the most esteemed among the inhabitants of Valmont, a small portion of her forefathers’ possessions, which had been divided and sold, like scores of other properties, was restored to Edmée, and as the owner of the Belle Prairie Farm, she was able to do something in return for the kind friends who had sheltered her in her desolation. The whole family removed there, and you can fancy that it was a happy day for Edmée when she received her kind foster-parents under her own roof.

“I have now come to a point at which I earnestly wish my mother would herself take up the pen. Not that there remain many facts or events to relate, but the crowning one – that of her marriage to my dear father – I could wish her to describe. At present – so shortly after his death – she says she could hardly bear to recall the details of those happy days, in which she gradually learnt to love her faithful Pierrot, with the trusting affection of a woman for the man she would choose for her husband. But in the future, I have good hopes she may be persuaded to do so, and also to relate how Pierre, frightened at first at his own audacity, could scarcely believe it possible that his beautiful Edmée, his ‘little lady,’ could think herself honoured by his deep and fervent love. I cannot altogether sympathise in this great humility on the part of my dear father; but then I have known him, and the rare beauty of his character; then, too, I am quite as proud of my Germain ancestry as of the long lines of Valmont and Sarinet. And nothing gratifies my mother so much as when I say so.

“In the meantime I may give a few particulars that may be of interest to those who will read these pages. Pierre and Edmée never saw poor Marguerite Ribou again; but years after they had news of her death – she died peacefully – from the kind priest in Paris, who had never lost sight of her, and who restored to Edmée the jewels and money the poor girl had so honestly kept for her. And thanks to him – for neither my father or mother ever entered Paris again – the little portrait, which had been the means of Pierre’s finding Edmée and her mother, was recovered from the old dealer in antiquities, and placed, with the other relics of her child-life, in the best parlour at Belle Prairie Farm, where I trust it may be admired and loved by many generations of the descendants of Pierre and Edmée Germain. And now – ”

Madame Marceau stopped suddenly, and looked up.

“What is it, mother dear? Go on, please – that is if you are not tired,” said several voices.

“No, dears, I am not tired. I have not read as much to-day as the two last times.” (For though I have not interrupted the course of the story to say so, it will be readily understood that the reading of the old manuscript had occupied several holiday or Sunday evenings). “But,” she went on, “I have stopped simply because there is no more to read! Those two words, ‘and now,’ are the last of the manuscript.”

“Oh dear!” – “What a pity!” – “Did our great-grandmother never write any more to it, as our grandmother hoped she would?” exclaimed the children.

“No, my dears. She often intended to do so, but she did not live many years after her husband’s death. She lived to see my mother happily married to my good father and then she died. I think the world seemed a strange place to her without her Pierre. She spoke of the manuscript not long before her death. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘no words of mine could have done justice to his goodness. Teach your children to honour the memory of their grandfather, and to know that a long line of ancestry is not the only thing to be proud of.’”

“But mother,” said Pierre Marceau, half-timidly, “if one’s ancestors have been good people?”

“Ah yes, my boy. In such case be not so much proud of them as grateful to the good God for having come of such a stock, be they noblemen or farmers, high in the world’s esteem, or working with their hands for their daily bread,” said Farmer Marceau, as he rose from the arm-chair where he had been sitting to listen to his wife’s reading.

“And the Valmonts were good,” whispered Pierre to his sister Edmée; “so we may be a little proud of them, you see, after all.”

But when he went to say good-night to Madame Marceau, he added gently, “You are right, dear little mother. I am very glad that you called me Pierre, after my good great-grandfather, Pierre Germain – ”

My readers may be sure that from the time of the reading of the manuscript, the little old portrait was dusted with even greater care than before, and that on holidays and fête days it was decorated with wreaths of the loveliest flowers to be found in all the country-side. And there, I hope, in the best room of the old farmhouse, it will smile down for many and many, a day on the dwellers therein, reminding them that riches and greatness are not the best or most enduring possessions, that sorrows come alike to all, that trust in God and reverence for His laws are the only sure pilots through this life – that faithful, unselfish love is the most beautiful thing on earth, and, may we not say, in Heaven also?