When states and empires have their
periods of declension, and feel in their turns what distress and
poverty is,—I stop not to tell the causes which gradually
brought the house d’E—, in Brittany, into
decay. The Marquis d’E— had fought up against
his condition with great firmness; wishing to preserve, and still
show to the world, some little fragments of what his ancestors
had been;—their indiscretions had put it out of his
power. There was enough left for the little exigencies of
obscurity.—But he had two boys who looked up to him
for light;—he thought they deserved it. He had
tried his sword—it could not open the way,—the
mounting was too expensive,—and simple economy was
not a match for it:—there was no resource but commerce.
In any other province in France, save Brittany, this was smiting the
root for ever of the little tree his pride and affection
wish’d to see re-blossom.—But in Brittany, there
being a provision for this, he avail’d himself of it; and,
taking an occasion when the states were assembled at Rennes, the
Marquis, attended with his two boys, entered the court; and
having pleaded the right of an ancient law of the duchy, which,
though seldom claim’d, he said, was no less in force, he
took his sword from his side:—Here, said he, take it; and
be trusty guardians of it, till better times put me in condition
to reclaim it.
The president accepted the Marquis’s sword: he staid a
few minutes to see it deposited in the archives of his
house—and departed.
The Marquis and his whole family embarked the next day for
Martinico, and in about nineteen or twenty years of successful
application to business, with some unlook’d for bequests
from distant branches of his house, return home to reclaim his
nobility, and to support it.
It was an incident of good fortune which will never happen to
any traveller but a Sentimental one, that I should be at Rennes
at the very time of this solemn requisition: I call it
solemn;—it was so to me.
The Marquis entered the court with his whole family: he
supported his lady,—his eldest son supported his sister,
and his youngest was at the other extreme of the line next his
mother;—he put his handkerchief to his face
twice.—
—There was a dead silence. When the Marquis had
approached within six paces of the tribunal, he gave the
Marchioness to his youngest son, and advancing three steps before
his family,—he reclaim’d his sword. His sword
was given him, and the moment he got it into his hand he drew it
almost out of the scabbard:—’twas the shining face of
a friend he had once given up—he look’d attentively
along it, beginning at the hilt, as if to see whether it was the
same,—when, observing a little rust which it had contracted
near the point, he brought it near his eye, and bending his head
down over it,—I think—I saw a tear fall upon the
place. I could not be deceived by what followed.
“I shall find,” said he, “some other
way to get it off.”
When the Marquis had said this, he returned his sword into its
scabbard, made a bow to the guardians of it,—and, with his
wife and daughter, and his two sons following him, walk’d
out.
O, how I envied him his feelings!
