Chapter 2

THE BARON, HIS WIFE, AND SISTER

Early in the month of May, in the year 1836, the period when this
scene opens, the family of Guenic (we follow henceforth the modern
spelling) consisted of Monsieur and Madame du Guenic, Mademoiselle du
Guenic the baron's elder sister, and an only son, aged twenty-one,
named, after an ancient family usage, Gaudebert-Calyste-Louis. The
father's name was Gaudebert-Calyste-Charles. Only the last name was
ever varied. Saint Gaudebert and Saint Calyste were forever bound to
protect the Guenics.

The Baron du Guenic had started from Guerande the moment that La
Vendee and Brittany took arms; he fought through the war with
Charette, with Cathelineau, La Rochejaquelein, d'Elbee, Bonchamps, and
the Prince de Loudon. Before starting he had, with a prudence unique
in revolutionary annals, sold his whole property of every kind to his
elder and only sister, Mademoiselle Zephirine du Guenic. After the
death of all those heroes of the West, the baron, preserved by a
miracle from ending as they did, refused to submit to Napoleon. He
fought on till 1802, when being at last defeated and almost captured,
he returned to Guerande, and from Guerande went to Croisic, whence he
crossed to Ireland, faithful to the ancient Breton hatred for England.

The people of Guerande feigned utter ignorance of the baron's
existence. In the whole course of twenty years not a single indiscreet
word was ever uttered. Mademoiselle du Guenic received the rents and
sent them to her brother by fishermen. Monsieur du Guenic returned to
Guerande in 1813, as quietly and simply as if he had merely passed a
season at Nantes. During his stay in Dublin the old Breton, despite
his fifty years, had fallen in love with a charming Irish woman,
daughter of one of the noblest and poorest families of that unhappy
kingdom. Fanny O'Brien was then twenty-one years old. The Baron du
Guenic came over to France to obtain the documents necessary for his
marriage, returned to Ireland, and, after about ten months (at the
beginning of 1814), brought his wife to Guerande, where she gave him
Calyste on the very day that Louis XVIII. landed at Calais,--a
circumstance which explains the young man's final name of Louis.

The old and loyal Breton was now a man of seventy-three; but his
long-continued guerilla warfare with the Republic, his exile, the perils
of his five crossings through a turbulent sea in open boats, had weighed
upon his head, and he looked a hundred; therefore, at no period had
the chief of the house of Guenic been more in keeping with the
worn-out grandeur of their dwelling, built in the days when a court
reigned at Guerande.

Monsieur du Guenic was a tall, straight, wiry, lean old man. His oval
face