IN one of the most picturesque provinces on the western coast of France, stand the ruins of the chateau St. Renan. The grass grows untrodden in its deserted courts. The vines wreathe their fragrant blossoms over its crumbling arches, and the wild birds build their nests in its solitary turrets. On one side, the cliff upon which it stands slopes gradually down to the hamlet below, which lies nestled among the surrounding hills, purple with the wealth of the vintage; and on the other, it terminates abruptly in a precipice from whose dizzy height you may gaze far out, where the blue line of the ocean is lost in that of the sky, and watch the white-crested waves, as one after one they come rolling in, to die in murmurs among the rocks below. Towards the close of the last century, the chateau was inhabited by the only remaining heir of the ancient family whose name it bore. But Eugene St. Renan was not distinguished by the same traits that had characterized his warlike ancestors, and given to many of them a place in the annals of their country. Thoughtful and imaginative from his birth, he had early been left to the care of his widowed mother, who lavished upon him all the tenderness and devotion of her young and impassioned heart, and who thus called forth and matured the finer and more poetical elements of a character by nature refined and elevated. Eugene had not passed his whole life at the chateau, however; he had had some months' experience of Parisian life, but its brilliant gayeties and heartless revelries had no charm for him; he had been nursed in the pure atmosphere of a higher region, and his soul seemed stifling in the grosser element where it respired. He hastened back to the home desolate without him, and gave himself up once more to his solitary rambles and his day-dreams. At this time there arrived at the chateau a distant relative of the family, Blanche St. Renan, who claimed the hospitality and protection of its inmates, and who was received by them with all the warmth and affection of their noble hearts. Blanche was scarcely eighteen; she was not beautiful; that is, to vulgar eyes she was not; and the plainness of her features and the deep melancholy of her expression rendered her face, when in repose, wholly unattractive. But those who had the power to see beyond the outward, and whose glance could penetrate the mysteries of the spirit, saw in the varying expressions of her ever-changing countenance, a beauty far deeper than that which the blending hues of the rose and lily could give to lips and brow of classic mould. Blanche and Eugene seemed born for each other; or they seemed rather to realize the old Greek fable, and to have formed but one personality, in some previous existence. As certain chemical substances are endowed with a mysterious attraction or affinity, which brings them together through all opposing circumstances, so, by some unknown law of being, their spirits recognised each other from the first moment of their meeting, and knew that they were one. tears. Blanche had been left an orphan at a very early age. In one of the distant colonies, a stranger in a strange land, she had eaten the bitter bread of dependence, and moistened it with her But sorrow softens the heart, deepens the affections, and gives to the character that trus harmony and strength that in the sunlight of happiness it would never attain. Blanche and Eugene were united, and the first years of their marriage were passed in happiness more perfect than we in this life seem destined even in glimpses to enjoy. All in all to each other, they knew not that there were unsounded depths in their hearts, undiscovered fountains of new affection, until God bestowed on them an infant daughter; then was the beautiful trinity of love complete,-these three separate existences were united in one. But we are not permitted to anticipate here, the heaven that awaits us hereafter; and if wandering rays of its celestial brightness sometimes gleam upon our way, we should know that it is transient as the heat lightning of a summer night, that only renders the succeeding darkness more intense. The clouds which had long been gathering in the political horizon of France, now darkened apace, and at length the threatened storm burst in all its fury over the land. This frightful convulsion, in which the foundations of society were broken up, left no hamlet unvisited; and the destroying angel, on his fearful mission, left the mark of blood over every threshold. Remote from the great centre of agitation, the quiet dwellers of the chateau listened with anxious hearts to the deepening roar that betokened the approaching deluge, and that threatened to overwhelm them in the red billows of the Revolution. It came too soon. An armed band of ruffians attacked the chateau ; resistance was vain, and by the light of its blazing roof the inmates fled from its ruins. But the same glare that lighted them on their path revealed them to their pursuers, and the little Eu THE SOLITARY OF ST. RENAN. genie, in her terror, scarcely conscious of what was passing, saw her father and mother fall beside her. She strove in vain to stanch the wounds from which their life-blood was flowing, and to gain one word from the lips that were now hushed forever. One long, agonizing look, such as only a dying mother can bestow on the child she leaves behind her, was all that remained for her; but that look was burned upon her memory: and in the darkness of midnight, in the brightness of noonday, she would see those pale sad features, lighted by the glare from the blazing pile, cast upon her that last look of fond, despairing agony. 139 the sea-side; and, seated on the rocks which overhung the shore, she would watch the gradual disappearing of twilight into night. The surf, which at this point rolls in with tremendous force upon the rocky coast, broke the deep silence with its solemn roar; and the mighty pulsations of the great deep, as their monotonous and unceasing sound struck upon her ear, filled her with awe, and awoke the deepest emotions of sublimity and adoration. Eugenie withdrew herself more and more from the haunts of men. Her eye, always beaming and lustrous, grew wild, and burned with a strange light. Spirit forms, unseen by mortal eye, hovered near her; and spirit voices, unheard by mortal ear, called her away. The rude peasant quickened his pace when her light form flitted past him in the twilight; and the children fled with fear when the "wild girl of St. Renan," as they called her, crossed their paths-though Eugenie was gentle as the flowers, which she called her sisters. Eugenie found shelter in the cabin of an old couple named Jaques and Manon, who had formerly been servants at the chateau; but the sentiment of loyalty was dead in the hearts of the people, and hatred sprung up in its place; and on the innocent head of Eugenie, Jaques and Manon poured all the bitterness and venom of their newly acquired principles of freedom and equality. She strove in vain with all the winning arts of child-Day by day the over-mastering and excited spirit hood to soften the rude hearts with whom she dwelt. Gradually, as she grew older, she withdrew from the outward scenes in which she lived, and dwelt wholly in the creations of her own imagination. Gifted with the poetical temperament of her father, and with all the sensibility of her mother, the ideal world was not far removed from her gaze, and it required but little effort on her part to cast aside all consciousness of the actual wretchedness of her daily life, and to live wholly in its charmed regions. Now she was no longer alone and unloved. The flowers sprang to kiss her feet when she roamed through the fields and forests; they poured forth all their perfume to delight her senses; and from every mossy bank and shaded glen they seemed to speak to her, in low, sweet voices, messages of consolation and leve. The wind was her playmate, and when fresh from its dance with the waves, it tossed the dark ringlets from her brow, with her cheek glowing, and her white garments fluttering in its breath. She would bound over the hills, fleet us the breeze that pursued her; or when the evening zephyr, laden with the perfume of the orange-groves of the South, sighed its sad tale in her ear, she would sit on some mossy bank, and dream away the hours, lost in delicious reverie. The stars, too, had a language for her; and as the shining hosts trooped nightly through the blue concave above her, her spirit seemed bound to them in a mysterious and holy communion. All day she would wander through the forest-now tracing the rivulet to its source-now listening to the song of the wild birds, or chasing the butterfly from his chosen flowers. But as the sun sank behind the western horizon, she would seek her favorite retreat by gained ascendency over the fair and frail form it inhabited; and the eye gleamed with a more unearthly lustre, as if the mysteries of the unseen world were already revealed to its gaze. And when the grosser elements of our material nature are dispersed in the intenser light of the spiritual, may it not be, that it is given us to look upon those scenes, and to hold converse with those beings, of whose existence even, we have now only dim and vague intimations? Who shall say, that music from the celestial choir has not vibrated on the ear of the dying, or that gleams of brightness from the Better Land have not gladdened the eyes that had not yet closed upon the shadows of this? The last hours of Eugenie were drawing near. No more would her bounding footsteps brush the dew from the waving grass--no more would her slight form be seen in the shade of forest, or beside the murmuring stream. She sought, for the last time, her retreat among the rocks that over-hung the shore. The sun was sinking in the west, like the life-lamp in that young heart; and the heavy rolling of the surf, as it washed the beach below, seemed mournful and dirge-like. But the impatient spirit was too eager for its flight to heed the sad symbols of its departure. The radiant forms that had held communion with her for so long, were watching over her, and waiting to bear her to their blessed abode. The music she had so often listened to was lulling her to repose; and the beloved ones, that had gone before, seemed to beckon her away. Morning came, and the form of Eugenie still reclined upon the rock; but her freed spirit now wandered on the shore of the unknown ocean. No mourners followed her bier, and not even a rude cross marked the spot where slept the last of the ancient line of St. Renan. |