It was as he said. She found the son, weak and fainting, fallen within the porch, a worn, bearded man, returned from failure and suffering and the husks of evil. They clothed him and cared for him, and strengthened him with wine, while the woman wept over him, and at last set him at the loaded, well-lighted table. Then the seigneur came in, leaning his arm very lightly on that of Medallion, with a kingly air, and, greeting his son before them all as if they had parted yesterday, sat down. For two hours they sat there, and the seigneur talked gayly, with a color, and his fine eyes glowing; at last he rose, lifted his glass, and said: “The angel of patience is wise: I drink to my son.” He was about to say something more, but a sudden whiteness passed over his face. He drank off the wine and, as he put the glass down, shivered, and fell back in his chair. “Three hours short, chemist,” he said, and smiled, and was still--forever.
THE BRONTËS AL FRESCO. THE BRONTËS AND THE GHOSTS. THE DEVIL AND THE POTATO BLIGHT. THE GREAT BRONTË FIGHT.
I proceed with this chapter in the first person, though the story came to me at second-hand. My tutor, the Reverend W. McAllister, narrated it to me, in the words in which he had heard it from a youthful cousin, and I am able to give it almost in the same words and in the form in which I wrote it out as an exercise in composition.
The scene described does not, however, rest on the authority of Mr. McAllister or his friend, but on the testimony of all who knew the Brontës in their home life. The same scene has been described to me by old men whose memory extended back to matters in the last century, and quite recently, when visiting the place, an aged neighbor pointed out the exact spot where he himself had witnessed the Brontës engaged in their amusements. The story is so characteristic that I give it _in extenso_, and with all details, as I got it:
“In 1824 I made my first great journey out into the big world, accompanied by my elder brother. I was then very young. The nature of our business obliged us to go on foot, and the distance traversed was two or three miles.
“Our errand brought us into the midst of the Brontës, and as we had to remain there six or seven hours, I had an opportunity of seeing, under various aspects, that extraordinary and unique family, whose genius came to be revealed a few years later by three little girls, on English soil.