CHAPTER VI. BUT it is time to return once more to the proper object of our narrative, the history and fortunes of our hero and, as we hope, our interesting heroine. We have said that Richard Bazancourt had visited Fontainebleau, and that on his return from that place he had waited but one day in his passage through Paris. Ever amiable and bent upon doing good to his fellow-creatures, he had considered himself fortunate on this occasion, and in some measure repaid for the trouble and tedium of his journey, by the number of opportunities which had presented themselves of benefitting those who required his assistance. His very first arrival in the French capital had been signalized by the deliverance of his brother from his arrest, a work which would certainly have been less easy to accomplish, had not his timely presence afforded the ready means of effecting it. On his old acquaintance, Bob Tracy, he had also conferred such solid and useful assistance as might have at once relieved him from all the more pressing of his difficulties, if Bob had had sufficient resolution to tear himself away at once from the scene of his ruin. But it was at Fontainebleau that his success had been most gratifying to his own feelings; for it affected the fate of her who alone outweighed every other thought or claim which found place in his bosom. At that place, he had sought and found an interview with the mysterious old lady, who had first of all been instrumental in rescuing Jeannette Isabelle from the custody of her barbarous husband. Still unacquainted with her real name or rank, for even at Fontainebleau she appeared to maintain a strict incognito, he had obtained access to her by means of an address which she had communicated to our heroine. Nothing could exceed the graciousness of her manner, or the readiness with which she acceded to Bazancourt's proposal that an immediate asylum should be prepared for Jeannette Isabelle, under her superintending eye, at Fontainebleau. There was something so amiable and so interesting in this quiet and unobtrusive person, who seemed to live upon actions of benevolence and the practice of that Gospel which was ever in her mouth, that no one could help loving her. Fontainebleau itself is a beautiful spot. The huge forest with which it is surrounded, gives a savage and picturesque effect to the scenery, interspersed as it is with enormous masses of rock which look like cliffs of the sea, and even Salvator Rosa might have studied here with advantage. The town itself is possessed of one property, which, although a less poetical, is not a less useful feature than the forest; it is built upon a stratum of stone so porous that the streets are constantly dry, and however severe the rain which may have fallen in the night, it is all completely absorbed within a few minutes after the ceasing of the storm, and you may walk throughout Fontainebleau the next morning and scarcely be aware that any water has fallen. A small but well-built stone house, which was the habitation of the ancient lady herself, was offered to Bazancourt to be shared with her by Jeannette Isabelle; and Bazancourt himself, seeing for the time no more advisable arrangement, aware that he could not now as formerly continue to be the daily visitor of our heroine, and prepossessed not a little by the goodness of heart displayed by the inhabitant of the house, accepted thankfully her offer, and, bidding adieu to Fontainebleau, hastened his return to England, in order to bring back with him the two objects which were as dear to him as a wife and child. Few hearts are so susceptible of the passion of love-we should rather, perhaps, say retentive of it to the same excess-as that of Richard Bazancourt. By his affection for Isabelle his whole character had been changed. It had worked a revolution in his nature. He had passed, on a sudden, from the boy to the man; from the light-hearted levity of the one to the serious solidity of the other. Whatever might be the future fate of his passion, his whole life and being was to receive its impress from it. The hue of his existence was to take its colouring of joy or sorrow from no other source. There was a melancholy even now observable in his manner; for, however he might be happy in his love, in loving, and in being loved, he felt that his position, as well as hers, was false; that so long as society is constituted as it is at present, a shade and a cloud must hang over those who dare to differ from its rules. Not a little, too, was he moved to sadness by the mournful reality which had broken upon his knowledge in the course of the last conversation, which we have recorded, between him and Isabelle. The discovery that she did not believe or recognise the articles of the Christian faith, as it had at first startled him, so it had ever since weighed down his spirits with anguish. He could not bear to think that such could be the case. Infidelity-awful in all-seems peculiarly out of place in a young, and beautiful, and tender woman. The gentleness of the sex does not appear adapted to receive such hard doctrines. The enthusiastic temperament of our heroine, above all, seemed strangely ill-calculated to maintain so severe a lesson. The warmth and earnest eagerness of her character were markedly opposed to the cold and chilling doubts and denials of a sceptical philosophy. More than all this, Bazancourt himself entertained, from conviction, a firm belief in revelation, as it is explained to us by the most liberal and comprehensive of its interpreters. He had inquired, and debated, and deliberated, and the result of all was a firmer and deeper faith than before. Then came the fearful conclusion to his mind, that if what he himself held to be true, was true, then the object of all his affec |