The said hotel is about the filthiest in the civilized world. What tempted, then, these strangers to tarry there?-Curiosity, and more than simple curiosity; for they brought out the elders of the place and questioned them touching the time of the Vendean attack and repulse, and respecting certain waifs, in valuables and children, left by the fugitives on that occasion. Whom could these inquiries affect, except Pierre Paul? Probably, him indeed. But the said inquiries were vague. They told nought, but of a child lost on the disastrous occasion of the rout, But as to the circumstances, the ass, the panniers, or what these might have contained, the curious knew nought, till they had been informed by the Granvillites. This, however, they accounted for by observing that the parents had perished, and they acted for merely distant relatives, who were not upon the scene of action, and were only acquainted with the mere circumstance of the loss. Wonders and adventures carry conviction with them to a large class of mankind, whilst they are invariably denied by the minority of mooters, scarce more wise. All Granville enlisted itself in the former category. The nickname of Pierre Paul was declared to be verified, and less than a veritable Marquis none would allow him to be. There was great joy at the discovery. It was considered to honour the town, and to prove its discrimination in saving a patrician jewel amongst so much plebeian rubbish. Pierre Paul might turn out a great man; and Heaven knew what he might not do for Granville !— give it packets-make it a naval or military depôt-at least, raise it to an equality with its rival, St. Maloes. There was one, however, who did not share in this joy and congratulation-this was Louise. She was struck with dismay at the splendid gleam of fortune thrown upon her humble lover, and trembled, with considerable reason, for its effect. How she regretted her caprices, her momentary pride, her coquetry. The record of her little follies rose up to upbraid her; and never was innocent put into a more cruel, or more salutary state of purgatory. The poor thing made a second vow to her saint-she had already made one for the safe return of her father's vessel, and of all whom it contained, and she now doubled the gift and enlarged the request. The Curate was the richer for this; for despite the indifference of the land in religious matters, the piety of the fishing population has never been shaken. Fortunate is their pastor-he has tithe as well as pensionnor mackerel, nor stock-fish, are known to fail in his habitation. Well, at length, to many an anxious eye, three-six-a dozen sails appeared in the horizon. It was the fishing-fleet. There shone an universal face of joy. The heights were covered with lookers-out, and the port crowded with expectants-but poor Louise was with neither. She shrunk from meeting her lover, or receiving his joyous salutation, until he was informed of his probable goodfortune, until he had time to reflect upon it, and to consider how far it marred or squared with his previous vows and intentions. Full of these thoughts, Louise bent her steps from the town, alone, along the narrow beach. She watched the nearing vessels, but beckoned not to them. Of a sudden, boats were put out; the breeze was considered too sluggish for some of the impatient mari ners, who proceeded to row to shore. This movement, too, Louise espied: nor was she herself, she thought, a stranger to the motive which inspired it. Those who had taken to the boats appeared, however, to be foiled in their aim. The tide was setting northwards, and the rowers, despite their exertions, were drifted with it, and in vain endeavoured to make the port. What was Louise's dismay, and pleasure, and confusion, to observe at length the boats abandon their destination, and put straight for shore. Somewhat overcome by this contrariety, the maiden sate down upon a rock, sheltered by it from view. In the first boat, as it pushed ashore, she could plainly perceive, not only Pierre Paul, but his rival. They leaped out, and were followed by one or two others; these bore cutlasses, and the truth instantly flashed on the girl's mind. The quarrel on her account had, instead of dying away, been aggravated. On board, the old Captain's vigilance had forbidden and prevented a rencontre; and now the first opportunity was seized by them for indulging their mutual animosity, and deciding their inveterate quarrel. "Let it be, first blood drawn ends the battle," exclaimed one of the friends. "No, no! let him who would give over, cry Grace!' and let that mean, that he gives up all pretension to Louise." "It would be honester and wiser for you both to walk boldly into town, and ask the girl herself to choose betwixt you." Pierre Paul seemed not unwilling to abide by such decision, but his antagonist preferred the arbitration of the sword. Each shook his weapon, but there was not time to cross them when the object of dispute appeared, as if by enchantment, and wearing such an air of indignant command that no fisherman, at least, touched in heart, could disobey. "Holy thunder! if here be not the Louise de Paix herself!" exclaimed the pacifically-inclined tar, who acted as friend or second. The weapons dropped, though with some reluctance from the hand of the less-favoured combatant. Pierre Paul was at the feet of Louise in an instant, and would have claimed the privilege of a long-absent lover, had not a frown of dark ill-humour from the girl dashed all his confidence. "Come, Louise, at least you must decide betwixt us, once and for ever; and let the quarrel after, be for spite, not love." My decision is quickly given, Messieurs," cried the fair arbiter; " and this it is—I will have neither of you for my bon ami. As to you, Sir, you are too blood-thirsty." This was addressed to the rival. "And Monsieur Pierre Paul, here "A Monsieur to me, Louise!" interrupted he. "Oh! Monseigneur then, if you please-you are too"Too what?" exclaimed the impatient youth. But the word was lost, for Louise was in a flood of tears. "There has been some one maligning me in my absence," cried Pierre Paul, savage with anger, as he pressed Louise with a volley of questions. But she had recovered herself, and relapsed into sullen pride; not contradicting his suspicion that some one had taken away his character in his absence. At length, after a scene that would have proved most amusing to any witness that happened to be in the જે His speed soon secret, Pierre Paul sprung off for the town of Granville, followed more leisurely by his mistress and the rest of the party. Let us accompany the hero of our brief tale. enabled him to reach the town, which he no sooner entered, than he was recognized and saluted with the shrill children's cry of"Ha! here's the Marquis come back from the cod-fishing. a truer Marquis than ever.' He's With difficulty he refrained from seizing the urchins, and flinging them into the harbour. At length some acquaintances unriddled the riddle to him as clearly as their information and his impatience would permit. And straight Pierre Paul flew to the auberge, where had re-arrived, expectant of the fishing squadron's return, the person charged to reclaim the lost boy. He imagined that he came upon a welcomed errand, and was greatly surprised to find in his long-sought protegé a rude young fellow, overflowing with a sense of insult and injury, and almost menacing instant vengeance with a drawn cutlass, unless what he considered the derogatory report was contradicted. Despite his confusion and alarm, the avoué or man of business reasoned with the mad boy, and although he could not content nor pacify him, he at least talked down his threats of immediate vengeance, and brought him to listen to an account of his fortune, deem it good or bad, as he might. Poor Pierre Paul returned home that night as addled in brain, as if he had fallen from the shrouds of a vessel. He attempted to cross the threshold of Louise, but the old Captain barred the entrance. "No, boy-no ci-devants enter here. I am glad of your fortune, but a fisherman's cabin is no place to come to show it in." "You are wrong, mon Capitaine, I am still but Pierre Paul, the sailor, and never will be anything else—may be richer.-" "That's no harm," quoth the Captain. "But the devil a nobler." "You promise?" rejoined the old tar. "I do." The Captain was about to strike his hand into that of his young sailor, when he suddenly checked himself, and coolly observed:— "Let us see, first. Good night!" Pierre Paul heaved a sigh, as the door closed against him. His own abode was thronged with a levee of noisy congratulators, with whom he kept his temper for a certain time, when it altogether gave way, and the poor boy was soon set down by his rudely dismissed friends, as being already "spoiled by fortune." La nuit porte conseil-night brings counsel, saith the French proverb. On his pillow, Pierre Paul arranged his ideas, and proceeded the next day to develope them to his new friend of the inn. The young sailor wore a brighter face, and instantly began by observing, that he had no objection to riches;-" If there were sufficient to buy him a lugger, he would be happy; but if a brig, a very prince." The man of affairs hemmed twice or thrice in answer to this tarlike view of fortune, and proceeded with some preliminary circumlocution to give Pierre Paul a clear view of circumstances. Imprimis, he could be proved of gentle race, the son of Maurice de Feniss, a gallant officer, and though neither Marquis nor Baron, yet a Chevalier of St. Louis. Pierre Paul's countenance brightened at this excessively. Dugay Trouin, and other heroes of the French navy, had been Chevaliers, and Louise herself might have no objection to the title. The homme d'affaires explained, however, that it was not here-' ditary. "But the wealth, the estate, the chateau!" None of these things existed. They had gone with the goods of other rebels to the Revolution; been sold and lost. What brought the man of business with promises of fortune? Simply this, the latter was to be made, by the Vendean's son making his appearance at court, having first undergone a preparatory polishing in some school of land language and polite manners. This conduct, the crafty man promised, would forthwith procure some comfortable little situation in the household, until the time, not long distant, should arrive, when the properties of Royalists and emigrants were to be restored. For the accomplishment of these schemes money was not wanting. The requisite advance would be made by him who employed the agent, an old friend and comrade of the unfortunate Vendean and his family. The countenance of poor Pierre Paul was overthrown. He had counted upon wealth at least as a compensation for the queer reports circulated of him. But here was the evil without aught to counterbalance it. He was to be stigmatised as a ci-devant, yet left a beggar as before. The commerce of Granville and other fishing towns in the north of France is carried on in this way. The ships proceed in the summer to the North Seas to fish. They return in autumn for a short time, but not to unload their cargo, with which in a few days they again set sail for some port in the south of Bourdeaux, or for Marseilles. There they dispose of their stock-fish to a right Catholic, Lent-keeping population, and return home once more, laden with the wines and oils and other luxuries of those regions. According to this routine, the brig of Louise's sire hoisted sail in about ten days; and Pierre Paul flinging himself from the pier-head swam aboard of her :-the Captain had previously refused to admit a Marquis as a sailor. But the latter thus compelled his admission, and proved himself determined to be a sailor and no courtier. Louise heard of the feat, and saw the resolve, which dictated it. The good-humour and gaiety of the girl thereupon returned. The self-denial of the sailor was vaunted in Granville, even more than his previous fortune, and the original course of reprobation became for him a source of universal esteem. On board, Pierre Paul won definitively the good graces of the Captain, and on the second return of the brig, Louise met him, and suffered a lover's salute, which in a few brief Sundays was converted by the old Curate into a husband's. Such is the story, which I heard at Granville of the fortunes of my friend, Pierre Paul Feniss. He discarded the De. The first years of his married life were as humble and as hard-working, as those of his bachelordom. His gleam of fortune seemed to have evaporated. What was the surprise of the writer then, in 1826, to find him in a slated two-storied house, surrounded with all the comforts of Dugay Trouin himself. Could all this have been acquired by stock-fish? No, verily. His friend, the homme d'affaires, had not all abandoned the Vendean's offspring, and Pierre Paul received one hundred thousand francs, as his share of the indemnity to emigrants. Part of the money was to build the slated house, and part to fit out the Louise of Granville, an inscription to be observed in golden letters on the helm of a goodly brig, on the deck of which, moreover, was oft to be seen a sturdy boy, a second Pierre Paul, in the capacity of mousse, mopping said deck, or mending the vessel's cordage. The prosperity of our tar was not, however, without alloy. Betimes, when he sat himself in the ever-memorable hotel, or auberge, to enjoy with a comrade a game of dominos and a choppine of Bourdeaux, a wicked urchin would peep in at the door, and yell out the nick-name of Marquis. The sensibility of Pierre Paul was never proof against the insult. But on the other hand, mighty was the esteem which Feniss enjoyed in the town and port. And by and by, when the honest cod-fisher shall be laid in his grave, his story will be told and magnified and adorned into a legend, far surpassing the simple and true narrative preserved in the New Monthly Magazine for October eighteen hundred and thirty-one. THE MAINOTE MOTHER. WHO has not heard that not a tear Sparta has fall'n-and with her sleep Proud thoughts that Nature's self defied; Yet she can give, with Spartan joy, Not this or that devoted boy— But weep, and pray, and yield them all! Thus did Glyara, who to Greece A widow's three sole blessings gave; These, too, were brave-and though her ear That on the neck of heroes fell? They parted-and with lingering trace Oct.-VOL. XXXII. NO. CXXX. 2 c |