Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel

‘After all,’ said he mockingly, ‘if it were not that I chanced to resemble some dear prince or other, they had left me to starve. I wonder who my prototype may be: what would he say if I proposed to change coats with him? Should I have more difficulty in performing the part of prince, or he that of vagabond?’

In resentful reflections like this he showed how the seeds of Gabriel’s teaching matured and ripened in his heart, darkening hope, stifling even gratitude. To impute to mere caprice, a passing whim, the benevolence of the rich was a favourite theory of Gabriel; and if, when Gerald listened first to such maxims, they made little or no impression upon him, now, in the long silent hours of his solitude, they came up to agitate and excite him. One startling illustration Gabriel had employed, that would occur again and again to the boy’s mind, in spite of himself.

‘These benefactors,’ said he, ‘are like men who help a drowning swimmer to sustain himself a little longer: they never carry him to the shore. Their mission is not rescue, it is only to prolong a struggle, to protract a fate.’

The snow lay on the Apennines, and even on the lower hills around Florence, ere Gerald was sufficiently recovered to move about his room. The great dreary house, silent and tenantless, was a dominion over which he wandered at will, sitting hours long in contemplation of frescoed walls and ceilings, richly carved architraves, and finely chiselled traceries over door and window. Had they who reared such glorious edifices left no heirs nor successors behind them? Why were such splendours left to rot and decay? Why were patches of damp and mildew suffered to injure these marvellous designs? Why were the floors littered with carved and golden fretwork? What new civilisation had usurped the place of the old one, that men preferred lowly dwellings – tasteless, vulgar, and inconvenient – to those noble abodes, elegant and spacious ‘Could it possibly be that the change in men’s minds, the growing assertion of equality, had tended to suppress whatever too boldly indicated superiority of station? Already distinctions of dress were fading away. The embroidered jabot, the rich falling ruffle, the ample peruke, and the slashed and braided coat, were less and less often seen abroad. A simpler and more uniform taste in costume began to prevail, the insignia of rank were seldom paraded in public, and even the liveries of the rich displayed less of costliness and show than in times past. Over and over had Gabriel directed the youth’s attention to these signs, saying, with his own stern significance —

‘You will see, boy, that men will not any longer wait for equality till the churchyard.’

Was the struggle, then, really approaching? – were the real armies, indeed, marshalling their forces for the fight? And if so, with which should he claim brotherhood? His birth and blood inclined him to the noble, but his want and destitution gave him common cause with the miserable.

It was a dreary day of December, a low, leaden sky, heavily charged with rain or snow, stretched over a landscape inexpressibly sad and wretched-looking. The very character of Italian husbandry is one to add greatly to the rueful aspect of a day in winter: dreary fields of maize left to rot on the tall stalks; scrubby olive-trees, in all the deformity of their leafless existence; straggling vine branches, stretching from tree to tree, or hanging carelessly about – all these damp and dripping, in a scene desolate as a desert, with no inhabitants, and no cattle to be seen.

Such was the landscape that Gerald gazed on from a window, and, weary with reading now, stood long to contemplate.

‘How little great folk care for those seasons of gloom!’ thought he. ‘Their indoor life has its thousand resources of luxury and enjoyment: their palaces stored with every appliance of comfort for them – pictures, books, music – all that can charm in converse, all that can elevate by taste about them. What do they know of the trials of those who plod heavily along through mire and rain, weary, footsore, and famishing?’ And Marietta rose to his mind, and he pictured her toiling drearily along, her dress draggled, her garments dripping. He thought he could mark how her proud look seemed to fire with indignation at an unworthy fate, and that a feverish spot on her cheek glowed passionately at the slavery she suffered. ‘And why am I not there to share with her these hardships?’ cried he aloud. ‘Is not this a coward’s part in me to sit here in indolence, and worse again, in mere dependence? I am able to travel: I can, at least, crawl along a few miles a day; strength will come by the effort to regain it. I will seek her through the wide world till I find her. In her companionship alone has my heart ever met response, and my nature been understood.’

A low, soft laugh interrupted these words. He turned, and it was the Abbé Girardon, a friend of the Marquise de Bauffremont’s, who always accompanied her, and acted as a sort of secretary in her household. There was a certain half-mocking subtlety, a sort of fine raillery in the manner of the polished Abbé which Gerald always hated; and never was he less in the humour to enjoy the society of one whom even friends called ‘malin.’

‘I believed I was alone, sir,’ said Gerald, half haughtily, as the other continued to show his whole teeth in ridicule of the youth’s speech.

‘It was chance gave me the honour of overhearing you,’ replied the Abbé, smiling. ‘I opened this door by mere accident, and without expecting to find you here.’

Gerald’s cheek grew crimson. The exceeding courtesy of the other’s manner seemed to him a studied impertinence, and he stared steadfastly at him, without knowing how to reply.

‘And yet,’ resumed the Abbé, ‘it was in search of you I came out from Florence this dreary day. I had no other object, I assure you.’

‘Too much honour, Monsieur,’ said Gerald, with a haughty bend of the head; for the raillery, as he deemed it, was becoming insupportable.

‘Not but the tidings I bear would reward me for even a rougher journey,’ said the Abbé courteously. ‘You are aware of the deep interest the Marquise de Bauffremont has ever taken in your fortunes. To her care and kindness you owe, indeed, all the attentions your long illness stood in need of. Well, her only difficulty in obtaining a career for you was her inability to learn to what rank in life to ascribe you. You believed yourself noble, and she was most willing to accept the belief. Now, a mere accident has tended to confirm this assumption.’

‘Let me hear what you call this accident, Monsieur l’Abbé,’ broke in Gerald anxiously.

‘It was an observation made yesterday at dinner by Sir Horace Mann. In speaking of the Geraldines, and addressing Count Gherardini for confirmation, he said: “The earldom of Desmond, which is held by a branch of the family, is yet the youngest title of the house.” And the Count answered quickly: “Your Excellency is right; we date from a long time back. There ‘s an insolent proverb in our house that says, ‘Meglio un Gherardini bastardo che un Corsini ben nato.’” Madame de Bauffremont caught at the phrase, and made him repeat it. In a word, Monsieur, she was but too happy to avail herself of what aided a foregone conclusion. She wished you to be noble, and you were so.’

‘But I am noble!’ cried Gerald boldly. ‘I want no hazards like these to establish my station. Let them inquire how I am enrolled in the college.’

‘Of what college do you speak?’ asked the Abbé quickly.

‘It matters not,’ stammered out Gerald, in confusion at thus having betrayed himself into a reference to his past. ‘None have the right to question me on these things.’

‘A student enrolled with his due title,’ suggested the wily Abbé, ‘would at once stand independent of all generous interpretation.’

‘You will learn no more from me, Monsieur l’Abbé,’ said the youth disdainfully. ‘I shall not seek to prove a rank from which I ask to derive no advantage. They called me t’other day, at the tribunal, a “vagabond”: that is the only title the law of Tuscany gives me.’

The Abbé, with a tact skilled to overcome far greater difficulties, strove to allay the youth’s irritation, and smooth down the asperity which recent illness, as well as temperament, excited, and at last succeeded so far that Gerald seated himself at his side, and listened calmly to the plan which the Marquise had formed for his future life. At some length, and with a degree of address that deprived the subject of anything that could alarm the jealous susceptibility of the boy’s nature, the Abbé related that a custom prevailed in certain great houses (whose alliances with royalty favoured the privilege) of attaching to their household young cadets of noble families, who served in a capacity similar to that of courtier to the person of the king. They were ‘gentlemen of the presence,’ pages or equerries, as their age or pretensions decided; and, in fact, from the followers of such houses as the De Rohan, the Noailles, the Tavannes, and the Bauffre-mont, did royalty itself recruit its personal attendants. Monsieur de Girardon was too shrewd a reader of character not to perceive that any description of the splendours and fascinations of a life of voluptuous ease would be less captivating to such a youth than a picture of a career full of incident and adventure, and so he dwelt almost exclusively on all that such a career could offer of high ambition, the army being chiefly officered by the private influence of the great families of France.

‘You will thus,’ said he, at the close of a clever description; ‘you will thus, at the very threshold of life, enjoy what the luckiest rarely attain till later on – the choice of what road you will take. If the splendour of a court life attract you, you can be a courtier; if the ambitions of statesmanship engross your mind, you are sure of office; if you aspire to military glory, here is your shortest road to it; or if,’ said he, with a graceful melancholy, ‘you can submit yourself to be a mere guest at the banquet of life, and never a host – one whose place at the table is assigned him, not taken by right – such, in a word, as I am – why, then, the Abbé’s frock is an easy dress, and a safe passport besides.’

With a sort of unintentional carelessness, that seemed frankness itself, the Abbé glided into a little narrative of his own early life, and how, with a wide choice of a career before him, he had, half in indolence, half in self-indulgence, adopted the gown.

‘Stern thinkers call men like me mere idlers in the vineyard, drones in the great human hive: but we are not; we have our uses just as every other luxury. We are to society what the bouquet is to the desert; our influence on mankind is not the less real, that its exercise attracts little notice.’

‘And what am I to be, what to do?’ asked Gerald proudly.

‘Imagine the Marquise de Bauffremont to be Royalty, and you are a courtier; you are of her household, in attendance on her great receptions; you accompany her on visits of ceremony – your rank securing you all the deference that is accorded to birth, and admission to the first circles in Paris.’

‘Is not this service menial?’ asked he quickly.

‘It is not thus the world regards it. The Melcours, the Frontignards, the Montrouilles are to be found at this moment in these ranks.’

‘But they are recognised by these very names,’ cried Gerald; ‘but who knows me, or what title do I bear?’

‘You will be the Chevalier de Fitzgerald; the Marquise has influence enough at court to have the title confirmed. Believe me,’ added he, smiling blandly, ‘everything has been provided for – all forethought taken already.’

‘But shall I be free to abandon this – servitude’ (the word would out, though he hesitated to utter it) – ‘if I find it onerous or unpleasant? Am I under no obligation or pledge?’

‘None; you are the arbiter of your own fortune at any moment you wish.’

‘You smile, sir, and naturally enough, that one poor and friendless as I am should make such conditions; but remember, my liberty is all my wealth – so long as I have that, so long am I master of myself: free to come and go, I am not lost to self-esteem. I accept,’ and so saying, he gave his hand to the Abbé, who pressed it cordially, in ratification of the compact.

‘You will return with me to Florence, Monsieur le Chevalier,’ said the Abbé, rising, and assuming a degree of courteous respect which Gerald at once saw was to be his right for the future.