Maurice Tiernay Soldier of Fortune , livre ebook

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344 pages

English

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pubOne.info present you this wonderfully illustrated edition. 'Maurice Tiernay was first published as a serial in 'The Dublin University Magazine, ' commencing in the issue for April 1850, and ending in the issue for December 1851. It was first published in book form (as a volume of The Parlour Library) with the following title-page (undated)

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819946762
Langue	English

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MAURICE TIERNAY
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
By Charles James Lever
Illustrations by A. D. M'Cormick
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
'Maurice Tiernay was first published as a serial in'The Dublin University Magazine, ' commencing in the issue forApril 1850, and ending in the issue for December 1851. It was firstpublished in book form (as a volume of The Parlour Library) withthe following title-page (undated):
The earliest edition which has Lever's name on thetitle-page is one published in Leipzig in 1861. This edition hasthe following title-page:
NOTICE
The strangeness of some of the incidents, and therapidity with which events so remarkable succeeded each other,almost deterred the writer from ever committing them to the press;nor was it till after much consultation, and some persuasiveinfluence on the part of friends, that he at length yielded anddecided upon so doing. Whether in that determination his choice wasa wise one, must be left to the judgment of the reader; forhimself, he has but to say that to ponder over some of these earlyscenes, and turn over, in thought, some of his youthful passages,has solaced many a weary hour of an age when men make few newfriendships, and have almost as few opportunities to cultivate oldones.
That the chief events related in these pages— such,for instance, as every detail of the French invasion, the captureof Wolfe Tone, and the attack on Monte di Faccio— are describedwith rigid exactness, the writer is most sincere in the expressionof his conviction. For the truth of incident purely personal, it isneedless to press any claim, seeing that the hero owns no highername than that of— A Soldier of Fortune.
MAURICE TIERNAY
THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
CHAPTER I. 'THE DAYS OF THE GUILLOTINE'
Neither the tastes nor the temper of the age we livein are such as to induce any man to boast of his family nobility.We see too many preparations around us for laying down newfoundations, to think it a suitable occasion for alluding to theancient edifice. I will, therefore, confine myself to saying, thatI am not to be regarded as a mere pretender because my name is notchronicled by Burke or Debrett. My great-grandfather, after whom Iam called, served on the personal staff of King James at the Battleof the Boyne, and was one of the few who accompanied the monarch onhis flight from the field, for which act of devotion he was createda peer of Ireland, by the style and title of Timmahoo— LordTiernay, of Timmahoo the family called it— and a very rich-soundingand pleasant designation has it always seemed to me.
The events of the time, the scanty intervals ofleisure enjoyed by the king, and other matters, prevented a dueregistry of my ancestors' claims; and, in fact, when more peaceabledays succeeded, it was judged prudent to say nothing about a matterwhich might revive unhappy recollections, and open old scores,seeing that there was now another king on the throne 'who knew notJoseph'; and so, for this reason and many others, mygreatgrandfather went back to his old appellation of MauriceTiernay, and was only a lord among his intimate friends and croniesof the neighbourhood.
That I am simply recording a matter of fact, thepatent of my ancestors' nobility, now in my possession, willsufficiently attest: nor is its existence the less conclusive, thatit is inscribed on the back of his commission as a captain in theShanabogue Fencibles— the well-known 'Clear-the-way-boy s'— a proudtitle, it is said, to which they imparted a new reading at thememorable battle aforementioned.
The document bears the address of a smallpublic-house called the 'Nest, ' on the Kells road, and contains inone corner a somewhat lengthy score for potables, suggesting thenotion that his Majesty sympathised with vulgar infirmities, andfound, as the old song says, 'that grief and sorrow are dry. '
The prudence which for some years sealed mygreatgrandfather's lips, lapsed, after a time, into a careless andeven boastful spirit, in which he would allude to his rank in thepeerage, the place he ought to be holding, and so on: till at last,some of the Government people, doubtless taking a liking to thesnug house and demesne of Timmahoo, denounced him as a rebel, onwhich he was arrested and thrown into gaol, where he lingered formany years, and only came out at last to find his estateconfiscated, and himself a beggar.
There was a small gathering of Jacobites in one ofthe towns of Flanders, and thither he repaired; but how he lived,or how he died, I never learned. I only know that his son wanderedaway to the east of Europe, and took service in what was calledTrenck's Pandours— as jolly a set of robbers as ever stalked themap of Europe, from one side to the other. This was my grandfather,whose name is mentioned in various chronicles of that estimablecorps, and who was hanged at Prague afterwards, for an attempt tocarry off an archduchess of the empire, to whom, by the way, thereis good reason to believe he was privately married. This suspicionwas strengthened by the fact that his infant child, Joseph, was atonce adopted by the imperial family, and placed as a pupil in thegreat military school of Vienna. From thence he obtained acommission in the Maria Theresa Hussars, and subsequently, beingsent on a private mission to France, entered the service of Louisxvi. , where he married a lady of the Queen's household— aMademoiselle de la Lasterie— of high rank and some fortune; andwith whom he lived happily till the dreadful events of 17— , whenshe lost her life, beside my father, then fighting as a Garde duCorps, on the staircase at Versailles. How he himself escaped onthat day, and what were the next features in his history, I neverknew; but when again we heard of him, he was married to the widowof a celebrated orator of the Mountain, and he himself an intimatefriend of St. Just and Marat, and all the most violent of theRepublicans.
My father's history about this period is involved insuch obscurity, and his second marriage followed so rapidly on thedeath of his first wife, that, strange as it may seem, I never knewwhich of the two was my mother— the lineal descendant of a house,noble before the Crusades, or— the humble bourgeoise of theQuartier St. Denis. What peculiar line of political action myfather followed I am unable to say, nor whether he was suspectedwith or without due cause; but suspected he certainly was, and at atime when suspicion was all-sufficient for conviction. He wasarrested, and thrown into the Temple, where I remember I used tovisit him every week; and whence I accompanied him one morning, ashe was led forth with a string of others to the Place de Grève, tobe guillotined. I believe he was accused of royalism; and I knowthat a white cockade was found among his effects, and in mockerywas fastened on his shoulder on the day of his execution. Thisemblem, deep dyed with blood, and still dripping, was taken up by abystander, and pinned on my cap, with the savage observation,'Voilà, it is the proper colour; see that you profit by the way itbecame so. ' As, with a bursting heart, and a head wild withterror, I turned to find my way homeward, I felt my hand grasped byanother— I looked up, and saw an old man, whose threadbare blackclothes and emaciated appearance bespoke the priest in the times ofthe Convention.
'You have no home now, my poor boy, ' said he to me;'come and share mine. '
I did not ask him why. I seemed to have suddenlybecome reckless as to everything present or future. The terriblescene I had witnessed had dried up all the springs of my youthfulheart; and, infant as I was, I was already a sceptic as toeverything good or generous in human nature. I followed him,therefore, without a word, and we walked on, leaving thethoroughfares and seeking the less frequented streets, till wearrived in what seemed a suburban part of Paris— at least thehouses were surrounded with trees and shrubs; and at a distance Icould see the hill of Montmartre and its windmills— objects wellknown to me by many a Sunday visit.
Even after my own home, the poverty of the PèreMichel's household was most remarkable: he had but one small room,of which a miserable settle-bed, two chairs, and a tableconstituted all the furniture; there was no fireplace, a little panfor charcoal supplying the only means for warmth or cookery; acrucifix and a few coloured prints of saints decorated thewhitewashed walls; and, with a string of wooden beads, a clothskull-cap, and a bracket with two or three books, made up the wholeinventory of his possessions; and yet, as he closed the door behindhim, and drew me towards him to kiss my cheek, the tears glistenedin his eyes with gratitude as he said—
'Now, my dear Maurice, you are at home. '
'How do you know that I am called Maurice? ' said I,in astonishment.
'Because I was an old friend of your poor father, mychild; we came from the same country— we held the same faith, hadthe same hopes, and may one day yet, perhaps, have the same fate.'
He told me that the closest friendship had boundthem together for years past, and in proof of it showed me avariety of papers which my father had intrusted to his keeping,well aware, as it would seem, of the insecurity of his ownlife.
'He charged me to take you home with me, Maurice,should the day come when this might come to pass. You will now livewith me, and I will be your father, so far, at least, as humblemeans will suffer me. '
I was too young to know how deep my debt ofgratitude ought to be. I had not tasted the sorrows of utterdesertion; nor did I know from what a hurricane of blood andanarchy Fortune had rescued me; still I accepted the père'sbenevolent offer with a thankful heart, and turned to him at onceas to all that was left to me in the world.
All this time, it may be wondered how I neitherspoke nor thought of my mother, if she were indeed such; but forseveral weeks before my father's death I had never seen her, nordid he ever once allude to her. The reserve thus