The spell of the heart of France: the towns, villages and châteaux about ParisHallays, André
History
The spell of the heart of France: the towns, villages and châteaux about Paris
Hallays, André
France -- Description and travel; France -- History
Here begins the most melancholy episode of the life of this worthy man.
He became smitten with his pupil. He allowed himself to be blinded by
some marks of gratitude. "She is tenderly attached to me," he wrote to
one of his friends, "and shows the happiest disposition; so I can no
longer fail to meet her wishes and take her for my wife, despite the
disproportion of our ages." Nevertheless, he still had scruples, and
sent Eudora for several months to the Demoiselles Malortie, who had
given asylum to Roland when a fugitive. It was well for him that he did,
for his illusion was of short duration. Eudora did not love him....
Without employment, without means, his heart broken, he resolved to
expatriate himself. He reached Bordeaux on foot, paid calls on the
widows of his friends of the Gironde, and took passage on a ship
departing for America. He left France in despair, without receiving a
single word of farewell from Eudora. When he landed at Charleston,
he learned of the marriage of his pupil to the son of a certain
Champagneux, a friend of Madame Roland, to whom he had intrusted the
guardianship of the young girl.
Laréveillière, who had become a Director, had him appointed vice-consul
at Wilmington, and later consul at New York. But there were great
difficulties between the United States and France; he could not obtain
his exequatur. He tried to console himself by devotion to botany. But
the wound which he had received still bled. "I do not know," he wrote to
Madame Louvet, "when the wound of my heart will be sufficiently healed
to allow me to revisit without too much bitterness the places and the
individuals still dear to me, whose presence will bring back to me cruel
memories. Although I am much more calm than when I left, although I am
actually easily distracted by my scientific labors and even by manual
occupations, I do not feel that I have courage to return to Paris. I
still need to see persons to whom I am indifferent, in order to accustom
myself to facing certain persons whom I have loved and whom I cannot
forget, whatever injustice they may have done to me or to the Republic,
without counting my Eudora...." And his memory takes him back to the
dear retreat of Sainte Radegonde; he writes to Bancal: "Well! Then
you no longer go to visit Sainte Radegonde? Do you then take no more
interest in it? I conclude from that that you will undergo no further
expense on account of it and that you will soon get rid of it.
Nevertheless I had the project of planting there many trees from this
country, since it is the soil most similar to that of South Carolina
that I know in the neighborhood of Paris..."
Bosc did see Sainte Radegonde again. At the end of two years he returned
to France and married one of his cousins. The Revolution was over and
Eudora was forgotten.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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