LAURENCE DE CINQ-CYGNE

The old Frank name of the Cinq-Cygnes and the Chargeboeufs was Duineff.  Cinq-Cygne became that of the younger branch of the Chargeboeufs after the defence of a castle made, during their father’s absence, by five daughters of that race, all remarkably fair, and of whom no one expected such heroism.  One of the first Comtes de Champagne wished, by bestowing this pretty name, to perpetuate the memory of their deed as long as the family existed.  Laurence, the last of her race, was, contrary to Salic law, heiress of the name, the arms, and the manor.  She was therefore Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne in her own right; her husband would have to take both her name and her blazon, which bore for device the glorious answer made by the elder of the five sisters when summoned to surrender the castle, “We die singing.”  Worthy descendant of these noble heroines, Laurence was fair and lily-white as though nature had made her for a wager.  The lines of her blue veins could be seen through the delicate close texture of her skin.  Her beautiful golden hair harmonized delightfully with eyes of the deepest blue.  Everything about her belonged to the type of delicacy.  Within that fragile though active body, and in defiance as it were of its pearly whiteness, lived a soul like that of a man of noble nature; but no one, not even a close observer, would have suspected it from the gentle countenance and rounded features which, when seen in profile, bore some slight resemblance to those of a lamb.  This extreme gentleness, though noble, had something of the stupidity of the little animal.  “I look like a dreamy sheep,” she would say, smiling.  Laurence, who talked little, seemed not so much dreamy as dormant.  But, did any important circumstance arise, the hidden Judith was revealed, sublime; and circumstances had, unfortunately, not been wanting.

At thirteen years of age, Laurence, after the events already related, was an orphan living in a house opposite to the empty space where so recently had stood one of the most curious specimens in France of sixteenth-century architecture, the hotel Cinq-Cygne.  Monsieur d’Hauteserre, her relation, now her guardian, took the young heiress to live in the country at her chateau of Cinq-Cygne.  That brave provincial gentleman, alarmed at the death of his brother, the Abbe d’Hauteserre, who was shot in the open square as he was about to escape in the dress of a peasant, was not in a position to defend the interests of his ward.  He had two sons in the army of the princes, and every day, at the slightest unusual sound, he believed that the municipals of Arcis were coming to arrest him.  Laurence, proud of having sustained a siege and of possessing the historic whiteness of her swan-like ancestors, despised the prudent cowardice of the old man who bent to the storm, and dreamed only of distinguishing herself.  So, she boldly hung the portrait of Charlotte Corday on the walls of her poor salon at Cinq-Cygne, and crowned it with