The inhabitants were a hardy and determined race, frank and good-humoured, and possessing from various points in their position a great degree of simplicity in manners and character, mingled with much religious fervour. They had, indeed, of late years, been somewhat polished, or perhaps one might call it, corrupted. They had acquired more wants and more wishes from the increasing luxuriousness of the day; had heard with wonder, and not perhaps without some longing, of the splendours and the marvels and the gaieties of the court of Louis XIV., then in the bright and butterfly days of its youthful ostentation; and they felt strongly and beneficially the general impulse given to every sort of commerce by the genius of Colbert, and applied themselves to derive the utmost advantage therefrom, by pursuing with skill, activity, and perseverance, various manufactures, in which they displayed no small ingenuity. A good number of them had become wealthy, and all of them indeed were well off in the station of life in which they were placed. The artisan was rich for an artisan, as well as the burgess for a burgess; but they were all simple in their habits, not without their little pride, or without their luxuries on a holyday; but frugal and thoughtful as they were industrious. Such was the town of Morseiul and its inhabitants in the year 168--.
We must now turn to the château of the count, and to its denizens at the time of the opening of our tale. The château was built, as we have said, on the outside of the walls of the town, and was one of those odd buildings of which many a specimen has come down to us. It seemed to have been built by detached impulses, and upon no general plan, though, to admit nothing but the truth, the construction was attributable all to one person. The great hall was along, wide-spreading piece of architecture, with a high roof, and a row of windows turned to the south side, which was the front of the château. Then came two or three square masses of stone-work on either side of the hall, with the gables projecting to the front, no two of them of the same height and size; and many of them separated either by a tall round tower, with loopholes all the way up, like button-holes in the front of a waistcoat, or broken towards the roof by a turret stuck on and projecting from the rest of the building. On the western side of the château was a large square tower, with numerous windows, placed with some degree of regularity; and on the eastern, was an octangular tower containing a separate entrance of a somewhat Gothic character. Two large wings projected behind towards the town on which the château unceremoniously turned its back, and the large open space of ground thus enclosed, was again divided into two by a heavy transverse mass of building, as irregular as the external parts of the whole. The mansion was completed by the stables and offices for the servants and retainers, and the whole was pitched in the centre of a platform, which had formerly been one of the bastions of the town.
Behind the château, and between the building and the walls, were numerous trees, giving that space the name of the bocage, and through this lay the little walk that led to the postern, which was originally the only exit from the château. In front was a tolerably wide esplanade, extending to the edge of the bastion, and from the edge of the terrace descended a flight of steps to the slope below, on which had been laid out a flower-garden, separated from the rest of the ground by a stone wall, surmounted by flower-pots in the shape of vases. The remaining portion of the space enclosed was planted, according to the taste of that day, with straight rows of trees, on the beauties of which it is unnecessary to dwell.
The interior of the castle was fitted up in the taste of the reign of Henry IV. and Louis XIII., few changes having taken place since the time it was first furnished, immediately after it was built. Some of the rooms, indeed, contained the furniture of the older castle formerly inhabited by the counts, which furniture was of a much more remote age, and had been condemned, by scornful posterity, to the dusty oblivion which we so fondly pile upon our ancestors. It may be as well, however, to conduct the reader into one of the rooms of that château, and, telling him that we have ourselves sat therein, furnished exactly as it was then furnished, and looking exactly as it then looked, endeavour to make him see it as the glass of memory now gives it back to us.
It was a large oblong room, with a vaulted roof: not dome-shaped, indeed, for it was flat at the top; but from the walls towards the centre, it sloped for a considerable way before it received the flattened form which we mention. It was indeed a four-sided vault, with the top of the arches cut off. On two sides were windows, or perhaps we should call them casements, with the glass set in leaden frames, and opening only in part. The hearth and chimney were of enormous dimensions, with a seat on either side of the fire-place, which was a sort of raised platform of brick-work, ornamented with two large andirons grinning with lions' heads, for the reception of the fuel.
Over the chimney again was a wide slab of marble, supported by two marble scrolls; and a tablet, on which was recorded, with very tolerable latinity, that that château had been built by Francis Count of Morseiul, in the year of grace one thousand five hundred and ninety. Above this marble, far blacker than the dark oak panelling which supported it, hung an immense ebony frame, carved with a thousand curious figures, and containing a large round mirror of polished metal, reflecting, though in a different size, all the objects that the room contained. On the two sides of the chamber were one or two fine portraits by Rubens and Vandyke, also in ebony frames, but cursed with an internal border of gold. A multitude of high-backed chairs, only fitted for men in armour, and ladies with whalebone bodices; four cabinets of ebony, chequered with small lines of inlaid ivory, with immense locks, marked out by heavy, but not inelegant, silver shields; and two or three round tables, much too small for the size of the room, made up the rest of the furniture of the apartment, if we except some curious specimens of porcelain, and one or two curiosities brought by different members of the family from foreign lands. There was also a lute upon one of the tables, and ten long glasses, with a vein of gold in their taper stalks, ranged in battle array upon the mantelpiece.
The moment at which we shall begin our tale was about the hour of dinner in the province, at that period a very different hour from that at which we dine in the present day. The windows were all open, the bright sunshine was pouring in and throwing the small square panes into lozenges upon the flooring; and from that room, which was high up in the castle, might be seen as wide spread and beautiful a landscape as ever the eye rested upon, a world of verdure, streams, and woods, and hills, with the bright sky above.
Such was the chamber and its aspect at the period that we speak of; and we must now turn to those who inhabited it, and, in the first place, must depict them to the reader's eye, before we enter into any remarks or detailed account of their several characters, which, perhaps, we may be inclined to give in this instance, even while we admit that in general it is far better to suffer our personages to develope themselves and tell their own tale to the reader.
In all, there were some seven persons in that room; but there were only two upon whom we shall at present pause. They were seated at a table in the midst, on which were spread forth various viands in abundance, upon plates of silver of a rich and handsome form; while a profusion of the same metal in the shape of cups, forks, spoons, and lavers appeared upon another table near, which had been converted into a temporary sort of buffet. Ranged on the same buffet was also a multitude of green glass bottles, containing apparently, by their dusty aspect and well-worn corks, several kinds of old and choice wine; and five servants in plain but rich liveries, according to the fashion of that day, bustled about to serve the two superior persons at the table.
Those two persons were apparently very nearly of the same age, about the same height; and in corporeal powers they seemed also evenly matched; but in every other respect they were as different as can well be conceived. The one who sat at the side of the table farthest from the door was a man of about six or seven and twenty years of age, with a dark brown complexion, clear and healthy though not florid, and with large, full, deep-coloured gray eyes, fringed with long black lashes. His hair and mustaches were jet black; and the character of his countenance, for the moment at least, was serious and thoughtful. He was evidently a very powerful and vigorous man, deep-chested, long in the arm; and though, at first look, his form seemed somewhat spare, yet every motion displayed the swelling of strong muscles called into action; and few there were in that day who could have stood unmoved a buffet from his hand. Such was