RICHELIEU,
A TALE OF FRANCE.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
RICHELIEU
A TALE OF FRANCE.
I advise you that you read
The Cardinal’s malice and his potency
Together: to consider further, that
What his high hatred would effect, wants not
A minister in his power.
SHAKSPEARE.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1829.
[DEDICATION.]
[PREFACE.]
[ERRATA.]
[CHAPTER I., ] [CHAPTER II., ] [CHAPTER III., ] [CHAPTER IV., ] [CHAPTER V., ] [CHAPTER VI., ] [CHAPTER VII., ] [CHAPTER VIII., ] [CHAPTER IX., ] [CHAPTER X., ] [CHAPTER XI., ] [CHAPTER XII.]
DEDICATION.
TO
My Dear Sir,
YOUR name is too great a one to be trifled with, and therefore, I do not put it at the head of this page. Should your anticipations in favour of this work be realized, and its success be equal to my utmost hopes, I dedicate it to you in testimony both of my gratitude for your kindness, and my admiration for your genius; but should the hand of criticism cut it short hereafter, or the frost of neglect wither it in the bud, I take a humbler tone, and beg you only to accept my thanks for your good wishes and kind encouragement. If it should succeed, you will, I am sure, receive the work with some pleasure on my account;—if it fail, you will still accept it as the only means I have of expressing my feeling of obligation towards you; and, at all events, you will understand my motive for not prefixing your name to the Dedication of a book, the fate of which is yet doubtful.
The Author.
PREFACE.
DEARLY BELOVED READER,
ALTHOUGH I call the following pages mine, and upon the strength of them write myself Author, yet I must in truth confess, that I have very little to do with them, and still less to do with the story they record; and therefore I am fain to treat the world with something of my own exclusive composition, in the shape of a preface. The facts of the case are as follow: I one day possessed myself of a bundle of manuscript notes—no matter when or how, so that they were honestly come by, for that is all that you, or I, or Sir Richard Birnie, have to do with the matter. Now I say they were honestly come by, and the onus probandi must rest upon the other party. So no more of that.
My dear Mr. Colburn, where was I? I quite forget—Oh, now I have it! Having one day possessed myself of a bundle of manuscript notes,—honestly come by,—I proceeded to read them, and although the hand was small and crooked, with all the k’s shaped like Laocoons, and every g like a pair of spectacles, yet there was something in the tale there written, that made me read it through before I rose off my chair, although I did not then know, what I have since discovered, that every word of it was true. Now this is an advantage which you, my dear reader, have over me in perusing this history for the first time; for unquestionably even upon my pure ipse dixit, you will believe that the whole of the three volumes which follow, is neither more nor less than a plain and simple narration of facts. Nevertheless, in case there should be in the world any person so sceptical as to doubt the assertion, even of a novelist, I will refer my reader to the well-known authorities of the day, and merely observe, that though there may be some discrepancy in the dates and some difference in the names, yet every individual circumstance recorded in these pages, will be found to be collaterally verified by contemporary writers of good repute, who, however, did not know so much of the detail of the events in question as are disclosed in the old manuscript alluded to, nor were they, like the writer of that document, acquainted with the real causes of those movements which shook the whole of France, and which, originating in the heart of the Court, could only be detected by one who was himself a resident there. To you, my dear reader, whose confidence in my word I know to be as unbounded as the conscience of a tailor, or the stomach of an alderman, I have only to remark, that the Hero of my tale is by no means a fabulous person.
My story opens with the latter years of the reign of Louis XIII. King of France—a period memorable in English annals from the civil wars which then raged between Charles I. and his rebellious Parliament, and no less memorable in the history of France, as the most terrific portion of Richelieu’s bloody domination.
At the death of Henry IV. the Regency of the kingdom during her son’s minority, was seized upon by Mary de Medicis, a woman of considerable talent and of vast ambition, whose primary object seems to have been, so to secure the sovereign power to herself, that Louis during her life should remain in a state of tutelage.
In such projects, but still more in her obstinate partiality for the celebrated Marechal d’Ancre and his wife, originated a thousand factions and civil wars, which kept the country in a continual state of tumult during the King’s minority. These factions, and the circumstances which they engendered, necessarily gave rise to various rapid changes in the Queen’s ministry, and amidst these, for the first time, appeared on the political stage Richelieu, then Bishop of Luçon. His prospects yet doubtful, and his ambition still in its infancy, Richelieu made mildness and courtesy his first steps towards pre-eminence. He contented himself with an inferior station in the Council: his urbanity and his talents proved equally agreeable and useful; and no one beheld in the calm and polished Bishop of Luçon, any promise of the aspiring and remorseless Cardinal de Richelieu.
A circumstance, however, occurred almost in the outset of his career, which had nearly thrown him for ever from the destined scene of his aggrandizement. This was the fall of the Marechal d’Ancre, and the arrest of the Queen-mother.
On the marriage of Louis XIII., the jealous eye of Mary de Medicis soon perceived her son’s first affection towards his young wife, and, fearful of an influence which might spring up to counteract her own, she found means to destroy, without remorse, the domestic happiness of her child, in order to secure her own dominion over him. But while she fomented every disagreement between Louis and his wife, and watched the least symptom of reviving affection with the suspicious anxiety of uncertain power, she blindly suffered near his person a favourite who combined with the genius to form great designs, the most consummate art to conceal them. Monsieur de Luynes, it appears, from the first moment of his intimacy with the King, projected his master’s deliverance from the tyranny of Mary de Medicis; but lest he should be suspected of such designs, he hid them beneath the mask of levity and thoughtlessness. It would be little appropriate here to enter more largely into the details of these proceedings. Suffice it that in the end the Queen’s favourite was shot as he entered the palace of the Louvre, and she herself was instantly arrested and exiled to Blois. Amongst others of her council who shared in the fall of the Queen, was Richelieu, and for some time he remained in exile at Avignon.
The Queen’s party, however, was still strong in France; and in her misfortunes, the factious and discontented, who had formerly opposed her measures merely because she held the reins of government, now supported her against the hand to which those reins had been transferred. A civil war seemed inevitable, and in order to avert such an event, the King’s advisers found themselves obliged to negociate with the Princess, whom they had dispossessed; but Mary rejected all intercession, and it was not till the return of Richelieu that any compromise could be effected. That minister, however, with the deep diplomatic skill for which he was conspicuous, instantly availed himself of the weak point in the character of his mistress, and through the medium of her confessor, won her to his purpose. A reconciliation was now speedily effected between Mary and her son, and Richelieu having become the friend of the one and the confident of the other, saw himself placed more surely than ever in the road to political eminence. Many circumstances combined to accelerate his progress. The death of the Duke de Luynes, the religious wars still raging in the heart of the kingdom, and the renewed differences between the King and his mother,—all gave the rising minister the means of increasing his power, and the opportunity of displaying the vast energies of his extraordinary mind. All was subdued before him; the Queen-mother was exiled; the Protestants were crushed; and the King himself became the slave of Richelieu.
But power so acquired was only to be maintained at the expense of much blood. Conspiracy after conspiracy was formed to cast off his dominion, and more than one insurrection burst forth in opposition to his tyranny; but each in turn was overthrown, and the blood of the conspirators only served to cement the fabric of his greatness. Usurped power must still have some object for suspicion, and after having quelled all his more powerful adversaries, the jealousy of Richelieu turned towards the young Queen, persecuting her with such uncalled for virulence as to induce many to believe that his hatred proceeded from some more private and personal cause than was apparent.
In the mean time, Louis himself, seldom called upon, except as a state puppet, to sign some ordonnance, or hold some council under the direction of Richelieu, lingered on in inactivity, yielding one privilege after another to the grasping ambition of his minister, without the dignity of royalty or the peace of private life. It is true that, on more than one occasion, he was roused by circumstances to put forth the native energies of his mind, but this was most frequently on some trifling occurrence. And though the momentary flashes of a vigorous intellect would show that nature had been originally bountiful to him, yet he never evinced any steady determination of purpose. Richelieu spared no pains to secure the power he had acquired; and that he might leave the King no means of extricating himself, plunged the kingdom in wars and negociations which he well knew that none but himself could conduct with success. But here indeed his genius showed itself resplendent. The government of a world seemed in his hands, and yet he managed the complicated machine steadily and firmly, with a clear, discerning eye, and a calm, unshrinking heart. Nevertheless, whether it was that the multitude of his other avocations diverted his attention from the minor regulations of the kingdom, or whether, as some believe, he encouraged a disorganized state of the interior for political purposes, it must be acknowledged that all contemporary accounts represent the internal police of France during his administration, as in a strangely deranged condition—a condition little to have been expected from the vigour of his government, and the severe exactitude of his disposition.
But so it was. The partizans of the various factions which had long been embodied as armies, were fain, after his measures had dispersed them as considerable bodies, to take refuge in the less cultivated parts of the country—the mountains, the forests, or the wastes; and as they had before lived by anarchy, they now contrived to subsist by plunder. The nobles being called from their strong holds to expensive cities, and compelled by Richelieu’s jealousy to show themselves continually at his luxurious Court, could no longer maintain the host of retainers which had formerly revelled at their expense, and these also were obliged to join themselves to the various bands of freebooters that infested the country. Occasionally a merciless execution of some of these banditti awed the rest for a time, but upon examining history, even to the end of Richelieu’s life, we find that while he governed the nobles with a rod of iron, saw every attempt at conspiracy with a prophet’s foresight, and repressed it with a giant’s strength, he overlooked or forgave those crimes which did not affect his political situation.
Such was the state of France at the opening of the following history: and now having attempted to prepare my reader’s mind for what is to follow, I have only farther to refer him to the notes at the end of the third volume, in confirmation of my assertion, that this tale is entirely true. The manuscript from which it is rendered in its present form, possessed that air of fact which from the first left very little doubt on my mind that the narrative was authentic; but not content with this, I examined the best authorities, and had the pleasure of finding that every material circumstance was perfectly unquestionable, and from the acquaintance of the original writer with all the most minute points, I cannot now divest myself of the idea that he must have been, in some degree, an actor in what he narrates.
Be that as it may, I feel sure that whoever peruses it to the end will be perfectly convinced of its truth; and in the hope that many will do so, I leave them to commence their journey, wishing them all a safe and happy arrival at its conclusion.
RICHELIEU.
CHAPTER I.
Which shows what a French forest was in the year of our Lord 1642, and by whom it was inhabited.
THE vast Sylva Lida, which in the days of Charlemagne stretched far along the banks of the Seine, and formed a woody screen round the infant city of Paris, has now dwindled to a few thousand acres in the neighbourhood of St. Germain en Laye. Not so in the time of Louis the Thirteenth. It was then one of the most magnificent forests of France, and extending as far as the town of Mantes, took indifferently the name of the Wood of Mantes, or the Forest of Laye. That portion to the North of St. Germain has been long cut down: yet there were persons living, not many years since, who remembered some of the old trees still standing, bare, desolate, and alone, like parents who had seen the children of their hopes die around them in their prime.
Although much improvement in all the arts of life, and much increase of population had taken place during the latter years of Henry the Fourth, and under the regency of Mary de Medicis; yet at the time of their son Louis the Thirteenth, the country was still but thinly peopled, and far different from the gay, thronged land, that it appears to-day. For besides that it was in earlier days, there had been many a bitter and a heavy war, not only of France against her enemies, but of France against her children. Religious and political differences had caused disunion between man and man, had banished mutual confidence and social intercourse, and raised up those feuds and hatreds, which destroy domestic peace, and retard public improvement. Amidst general distrust and civil wars, industry had received no encouragement; and where stand at present many a full hamlet and busy village, where the vineyard yields its abundance, and the peasant gathers in peace the bounty of Nature, were then the green copses of the forest, the haunt of the wild boar and the deer. The savage tenants of the wood, however, did not enjoy its shelter undisturbed; for, in those days of suspicion, hunting was a safer sport than conversation, and the boughs of the oak a more secure covering than the gilded ceilings of the saloon.
To our pampered countrymen, long nurtured in that peculiar species of luxury called comfort, the roads of France even now must seem but rude and barbarous constructions, when compared with the smooth, joltless causeways over which they are borne in their own land; but in the time of Louis the Thirteenth, when all works of the kind were carried on by the Seigneur through whose estates they passed, few but the principal roads between one great town and another were even passable for a carriage. Those, however, which traversing the wood of Mantes, served as means of access to the royal residence of St. Germain, were of a superior kind, and would have been absolutely good, had the nature of the soil afforded a steady foundation: but this was not always to be found in the forest, and the engineer had shown no small ingenuity in taking advantage of all the most solid parts of the land, and in avoiding those places where the marshy or sandy quality of the ground offered no secure basis. By these circumstances, however, he was obliged to deviate sadly from those principles of direct progression, so dear to all Frenchmen; and the road from St. Germain to Mantes, as well as that which branched off from it to join the high-road to Chartres, instead of being one interminable, monotonous, straight line, with a long row of trees, like a file of grenadiers, on each side, went winding in and out with a thousand turnings amongst the old oaks of the forest, that seemed to stand forward, and stretch their broad branches across it, as if willing to shelter it from the obtrusive rays of the sun. Sometimes, climbing the side of a hill, it would suddenly display a wide view over the leafy ocean below, till the eye caught the towers and spires of distant cities breaking the far grey line of the horizon. Sometimes, descending into the depths of the forest, it would almost seem to lose itself amongst the wild groves and savannas, being itself the only trace of man’s laborious hand amidst the wilderness around.
In the heart of the wood, at that point where the two roads (which I have mentioned) divaricated from each other, stood the hut of a Woodman, and the abreuvoir where many a gay lord of the Court would stop when his hunting was over, and give his horse time to drink. There, too, many a traveller would pause to ask his way through the forest; so that Philip, the woodman, and his young family, were known to almost all whom business or pleasure brought through the wood of Mantes; and although during the course of this true history, princes and heroes may become the subjects of discourse, it is with Philip that we must commence our tale.
It was at that season of the year, when the first leaves of summer begin to leave the branches from which they sprang, like the bright and tender hopes of early years, that fade and fall before the autumn of life has fully commenced. The sun had abated but little of his force, and the days scarcely seemed to have contracted their span.
The time of day, too, was like the period of the year, “falling gently into the sear,” so that it was only a scarce perceptible shadow, stealing over the landscape, which told that the great power of light was quitting that quarter of the globe, to bestow the equal blessing of his smile on other nations and on distant climes. That shadow had been the signal for Philip the woodman to return towards his home, and he issued forth from one of the forest paths, near his dwelling, singing as he came the old hunting-song of Le bon roi Dagobert.[A]
“King Dagobert in days of yore
Put on his hose wrong side before.
Says St. Eloi, the king’s old squire,
‘I would not offend, most gracious Sire,
But may your slave be soundly switch’d,
If your Majesty is not oddly breech’d,’
For you’ve got the wrong side before.’
Says the King, ‘I do not care a groat;
One’s breeches are scarcely worth a thought;
A beggar’s a king when he’s at his ease,
So turn them about which way you please,
And be quick, you s——”
[A] This song of Le bon roi Dagobert is in the original very long, and contains a great deal of witty ribaldry, unfit to be inserted here. The above is a somewhat free translation of the first verse, which stands thus in the French:
“Le bon roy Dagobert
Mettoit ses culottes à renvers.
Le bon St. Eloi
Lui dit, Oh mon Roy!
Que votre Majesté
Est bien mal culotté.
Eh bien, dit ce bon Roy,
Je consens qu’on les mête à l’endroit.”
Now St. Hubert, in all probability, is the only person who correctly knows how it happened, that the very unmeaning and inapplicable ditty of Le bon roi Dagobert, should have been appropriated exclusively to the noble exercise of hunting, to which it has no reference whatever; but so it has been, and even to the present day where is the chasseur who cannot, as he returns from the chace, blow the notes, or sing the words of Le bon roi Dagobert?
Philip, as woodman, had heard it echoed and re-echoed through the forest from his very infancy; and now, without even knowing that he did so, he sang it as a matter of habit, although his mind was occupied upon another subject: as men are always naturally inclined to employ their corporeal faculties on some indifferent object, when their mental ones are intensely engaged in things of deeper interest.
Philip advanced slowly along the road, with his brow knit in such a manner as to evince that his light song had no part in his thoughts. He was a man perhaps nearly fifty, still hale and athletic, though a life of labour had changed the once dark locks of his hair to grey. His occupation was at once denoted by his dress, which consisted simply of a long-bodied blue coat of coarse cloth, covered over, except the arms, with what is called in Britanny, a Peau de bicque, or goat-skin: a pair of leather breeches, cut off above the knee, with thick gaiters to defend his legs from the thorns, completed his dress below; and a round broad-brimmed hat was brought far over his eyes, to keep them from the glare of the declining sun. His apparel was girded round him by a broad buff belt, in the left of which hung his woodman’s knife; in the right he had placed the huge axe, which he had been using in his morning’s occupation: and thus accoutred, Philip would have been no insignificant opponent, had he met with any of those lawless rovers, who occasionally frequented the forest.
As he approached his dwelling, he suddenly stopped, broke off his song, and turning round, listened for a moment attentively; but the only noise to be heard was the discordant cry of the jay in the trees round about; and the only living things visible were a few wild birds overhead, slowly winging their flight from the distant fields and vineyards towards their forest home.
Philip proceeded, but he sang no more; and opening the cottage door, he spoke without entering. “Charles,” demanded he, “has the young gentleman returned, who passed by this morning to hunt?”
“No, father,” answered the boy coming forward; “nobody has passed since you went—I am sure no one has, for I sat on the old tree all the morning, carving you a sun-dial out of the willow branch you brought home yesterday;” and he drew forth one of those ingenious little machines, by means of which the French shepherds tell the time.
“Thou art a good boy,” said his father, laying his hand on his head, “thou art a good boy.” But still, as the Woodman spoke, his mind seemed occupied by some anxiety, for again he looked up the road and listened. “There are strange faces in the forest,” said Philip, not exactly soliloquizing, for his son was present, but certainly speaking more to himself than to the boy. “There are strange faces in the forest, and I fear me some ill deed is to be done. But here they come, thank God!—No! what is this?”
As he spoke, there appeared, just where the road turned into the wood, a sort of procession, which would have puzzled any one of later days, more than it did the Woodman. It consisted of four men on horseback, and four on foot, escorting a vehicle, the most elegant and tasteful that the age produced. The people of that day had doubtless very enlarged notions, and certainly the carriage I speak of would have contained any three of modern construction (always excepting that in which his most gracious Majesty the King of England appears on state occasions, and also that of the Lord Mayor of London City.)
Indeed the one in question was more like a state carriage than any other; broad at the top, low in the axle, all covered over with painting and gilding, with long wooden shafts for the horses, and green taffeta curtains to the windows: and in this guise it came on, swaying and swaggering about over the ruts in the road, not unlike the bloated Dutch pug of some over-indulgent dame, waddling slowly on, with its legs far apart, and its belly almost trailing on the ground.
When the carriage arrived at the abreuvoir, by the side of which Philip had placed himself, the footmen took the bridles from the horses’ mouths to give them drink, and a small white hand, from within, drew back the taffeta curtain, displaying to the Woodman one of the loveliest faces he had ever beheld. The lady looked round for a moment at the forest scene, in the midst of whose wild ruggedness they stood, and then raised her eyes towards the sky, letting them roam over the clear deepening expanse of blue, as if to satisfy herself how much daylight still remained for their journey.
“How far is it to St. Germain, good friend?” said she, addressing the Woodman, as she finished her contemplations; and her voice sounded to Philip like the warble of a bird, notwithstanding a slight peculiarity of intonation, which more refined ears would instantly have decided as the accent of Roussillon, or some adjacent province: the lengthening of the i, and the swelling roundness of the Spanish u, sounding very differently from the sharp precision peculiar to the Parisian pronunciation.
“I wish, Pauline, that you would get over that bad habit of softening all your syllables,” said an old lady who sat beside her in the carriage. “Your French is scarcely comprehensible.”
“Dear Mamma!” replied the young lady playfully, “am not I descended lineally from Clemence Isaure, the patroness of song and chivalry? And I should be sorry to speak aught but my own langue d’oc—the tongue of the first knights and first poets of France.—— But hark! what is that noise in the wood?”
“Now help, for the love of God!” cried the Woodman, snatching forth his axe, and turning to the horsemen who accompanied the carriage; “murder is doing in the forest. Help, for the love of God!”
But as he spoke, the trampling of a horse’s feet was heard, and in a moment after, a stout black charger came down the road like lightning; the dust springing up under his feet, and the foam dropping from his bit.
Half falling from the saddle, half supported by the reins, appeared the form of a gallant young Cavalier; his naked sword still clasped in his hand, but now fallen powerless and dragging by the side of the horse; his head uncovered and thrown back, as if consciousness had almost left him, and the blood flowing from a deep wound in his forehead, and dripping amongst the thick curls of his dark brown hair.
The charger rushed furiously on; but the Woodman caught the bridle as he passed, and with some difficulty reined him in; while one of the footmen lifted the young gentleman to the ground, and placed him at the foot of a tree.
The two ladies had not beheld this scene unconcerned; and were descending from the carriage, when four or five servants in hunting livery were seen issuing from the wood at the turn of the road, contending with a very superior party of horsemen, whose rusty equipments and wild anomalous sort of apparel, bespoke them free of the forest by not the most honourable franchise.
“Ride on, ride on!” cried the young lady to those who had come with her: “Ride on and help them;” and she herself advanced to give aid to the wounded Cavalier, whose eyes seemed now closed for ever.
He was as handsome a youth as one might look upon: one of those forms which we are fond to bestow upon the knights and heroes that we read of in our early days, when unchecked fancy is always ready to give her bright conceptions “a local habitation and a name.” The young lady, whose heart had never been taught to regulate its beatings by the frigid rules of society, or the sharp scourge of disappointment, now took the wounded man’s head upon her knee, and gazed for an instant upon his countenance, the deadly paleness of which appeared still more ghastly from the red streams that trickled over it from the wound in his forehead. She then attempted to staunch the blood, but the trembling of her hands defeated her purpose, and rendered her assistance of but little avail.
The elder lady had hitherto been giving her directions to the footmen, who remained with the carriage, while those on horseback rode on towards the fray. “Stand to your arms, Michel!” cried she. “You take heed to the coach. You three, draw up across the road, each with his arquebuse ready to fire. Let none but the true men pass.—Fie! Pauline; I thought you had a firmer heart.” She continued, approaching the young lady, “Give me the handkerchief.—That is a bad cut in his head, truly; but here is a worse stab in his side.” And she proceeded to unloose the gold loops of his hunting-coat, that she might reach the wound. But that action seemed to recall, in a degree, the senses of the wounded Cavalier.
“Never! never!” he exclaimed, clasping his hand upon his side, and thrusting her fingers away from him, with no very ceremonious courtesy,—“never, while I have life.”
“I wish to do you no harm, young Sir, but good,” replied the old lady;—“I seek but to stop the bleeding of your side, which is draining your heart dry.”
The wounded man looked faintly round, his senses still bewildered, either by weakness from loss of blood, or from the stunning effects of the blow on his forehead. He seemed, however, to have caught and comprehended some of the words which the old lady addressed to him, and answered them by a slight inclination of the head, but still kept his hand upon the breast of his coat, as if he had some cause for wishing it not to be opened.
The time which had thus elapsed more than sufficed to bring the horsemen, who had accompanied the carriage, (and who, as before stated, had ridden on before) to the spot where the servants of the Cavalier appeared contending with a party, not only greater in number, but superior in arms.
The reinforcement which thus arrived, gave a degree of equality to the two parties, though the freebooters might still have retained the advantage, had not one of their companions commanded them, in rather a peremptory manner, to quit the conflict. This personage, we must remark, was very different, in point of costume, from the forest gentry with whom he herded for the time. His dress was a rich livery suit of Isabel and silver; and indeed he might have been confounded with the other party, had not his active co-operation with the banditti (or whatever they might be) placed the matter beyond a doubt.
Their obedience, also, to his commands showed, that if he were not the instigator of the violence we have described, at least his influence over his lawless companions was singularly powerful; for at a word from him they drew off from a combat in which they were before engaged with all the hungry fury of wolves eager for their prey; and retreated in good order up the road, till its windings concealed them from the view of the servants to whom they had been opposed.
These last did not attempt to follow, but turning their horses, together with those who had brought them such timely aid, galloped up to the spot where their master lay. When they arrived, he had again fallen into a state of apparent insensibility, and they all flocked round him with looks of eager anxiety, which seemed to speak more heartfelt interest than generally existed between the murmuring vassal and his feudal lord.
One sprightly boy, who appeared to be his page, sprang like lightning from the saddle, and kneeling by his side, gazed intently on his face, as if to seek some trace of animation. “They have killed him!” he cried at length, “I fear me they have killed him!”
“No, he is not dead,” answered the old lady; “but I wish, Sir Page, that you would prevail on your master to open his coat, that we may staunch that deep wound in his side.”
“No, no! that must not be,” cried the boy quickly; “but I will tie my scarf round the wound.” So saying, he unloosed the rich scarf of blue and gold, that passing over his right shoulder crossed his bosom till it nearly reached the hilt of his sword, where forming a large knot it covered the bucklings of his belt. This he bound tightly over the spot in his master’s side from whence the blood flowed; and then asked thoughtfully, without raising his eyes, “But how shall we carry him to St. Germain?”
“In our carriage,” said the young lady; “we are on our way thither, even now.”
The sound of her voice made the Page start, for since his arrival on the spot, he had scarcely noticed any one but his master, whose dangerous situation seemed to occupy all his thoughts: but now there was something in that sweet voice, with its soft Languedocian accent, which awakened other ideas, and he turned his full sunny face towards the lady who spoke.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed she, as that glance showed her a countenance not at all unfamiliar to her memory: “Is not this Henry de La Mothe, son of our old farmer Louis?”
“No other indeed, Mademoiselle Pauline,” replied the boy; “though, truly, I neither hoped nor expected to see you at such a moment as this.”
“Then who”—demanded the young lady, clasping her hands with a look of impatient anxiety—“in the name of heaven, tell me who is this!”
For an instant, and but for an instant, a look of arch meaning played over the boy’s countenance; but it was like a flash of lightning on a dark cloud, lost as quickly as it appeared, leaving a deep gloom behind it, as his eye fell upon the inanimate form of his master. “That, Madam,” said he, while something glistened brightly, but sadly, in his eye, “that is Claude Count de Blenau.”
Pauline spoke not, but there was a deadly paleness come upon her face, which very plainly showed, how secondary a feeling is general benevolence, compared with personal interest.
“Is it possible?” exclaimed the elder lady, her brow darkening thoughtfully. “Well, something must be done for him.”
The Page did not seem particularly well pleased with the tone in which the lady spoke, and, in truth, it had betrayed more pride than compassion.
“The best thing that can be done for him, Madame la Marquise,” answered he, “is to put him in the carriage and convey him to St. Germain as soon as possible, if you should not consider it too much trouble.”
“Trouble!” exclaimed Pauline; “trouble! Henry de La Mothe, do you think that my mother or myself would find any thing a trouble, that could serve Claude de Blenau, in such a situation?”
“Hush, Pauline!” said her mother. “Of course we shall be glad to serve the Count—Henry, help Michel and Regnard to place your master in the carriage.—Michel, give me your arquebuse; I will hold it till you have done.—Henry, support your master’s head.”
But Pauline took that post upon herself, notwithstanding a look from the Marchioness, if not intended to forbid, at least to disapprove. The young lady, however, was too much agitated with all that had occurred to remark her mother’s looks, and following the first impulse of her feelings, while the servants carried him slowly to the carriage, she supported the head of the wounded Cavalier on her arm, though the blood continued to flow from the wound in his forehead, and dripped amidst the rich slashing of her Spanish sleeves, dabbling the satin with which it was lined.
“Oh Mademoiselle!” said the Page, when their task was accomplished, “this has been a sad day’s hunting. But if I might advise,” he continued, turning to the Marchioness, “the drivers must be told to go with all speed.”
“Saucy as a page!” said the old lady, “is a proverb, and a good one. Now, Monsieur La Mothe, I do not think the drivers must go with all speed; for humbly deferring to your better opinion, it would shake your master to death.”
The Page bit his lip, and his cheek grew somewhat red, in answer to the high dame’s rebuke, but he replied calmly, “You have seen, Madam, what has happened to-day, and depend on it, if we be not speedy in getting out of this accursed forest, we shall have the same good gentry upon us again, and perhaps in greater numbers. Though they have wounded the Count, they have not succeeded in their object; for he has still about him that which they would hazard all to gain.”
“You are in the right, boy,” answered the lady: “I was over-hasty. Go in, Pauline. Henry, your master’s horse must carry one of my footmen, of whom the other three can mount behind the carriage—thus we shall go quicker. You, with the Count’s servants, mix with my horsemen, and keep close round the coach; and now bid them, on, with all speed.” Thus saying, she entered the vehicle; and the rest having disposed themselves according to her orders, the whole cavalcade was soon in motion on the road to St. Germain.
CHAPTER II.
In which new characters are brought upon the stage, and some dark hints given respecting them.
THE sun had long gone down, and the large clear autumn moon had risen high in his stead, throwing a paler, but a gentler light upon the wood of Laye, and the rich wild forest-scenery bordering the road from St. Germain to Mantes. The light, unable to pierce the deeper recesses of the wood, fell principally upon those old and majestic trees, the aristocracy of the forest, which, raising their heads high above their brethren of more recent growth, seemed to look upon the beam in which they shone, as the right of elder birth, and due alone to their aspiring height. The deep shadows of their branches fell in long sombre shapes across the inequalities of the road, leaving but glimpses every now and then, to light the footsteps of whatever being might wander there at that hour of silence.
On one of those spots where the full beams fell, stood the cottage of Philip, the woodman: and the humble hut with its straw thatch, the open space of ground before it, with a felled oak which had lain there undisturbed till a coat of soft green moss had grown thick over its rugged bark, the little stream dammed up to afford a sufficient supply of water for the horses, and the large square block of stone to aid the traveller in mounting, all were displayed in the clear moonlight as plainly as if the full day had shone upon them.
Yet, however fair might be the night, there were very few who would have chosen the beams of the moon to light them across the wood of Mantes. In sooth, in those days sunshine was the best safeguard to travellers. For France swarmed with those who gathered in their harvest at night, and who (to use their own phrase) had turned their swords into reaping-hooks.
Two grand objects fully occupied the mind of that famous minister, the Cardinal de Richelieu (who then governed the kingdom with almost despotic sway): the prosecution of those mighty schemes of foreign policy, which at the time shook many a throne, and in after years changed more than one dynasty; and the establishment of his own power at home, which, threatened by factions, and attacked by continual conspiracies, was supported alone by the terror of his name, and the favour of a weak and irresolute monarch. These more immediate calls upon his attention gave him but little time to regulate the long-neglected police of the country; and indeed it was whispered, that Richelieu not only neglected, but knowingly tolerated many of the excesses of the times; the perpetrators of which were often called upon to do some of those good services which statesmen occasionally require of their less circumspect servants. It was said too, that scarce a forest in France but sheltered a band of these free rovers, who held themselves in readiness to merit pardon for their other offences, by offending in the State’s behalf whenever it should be demanded, and in the mean time took very sufficient care to do those things on their own account for which they might be pardoned hereafter.
We may suppose then, it rarely happened that travellers chose that hour for passing through the wood of Mantes, and that those who did so were seldom of the best description. But on the night I speak of, two horsemen wound slowly along the road towards the cottage of the Woodman, with a sort of sauntering, idle pace, as if thoughtless of danger, and entirely occupied in their own conversation.
They were totally unattended also, although their dress bespoke a high station in society, and by its richness might have tempted a robber to inquire farther into their circumstances. Both were well armed with pistol, sword, and dagger, and appeared as stout cavaliers as ever mounted horse, having, withal, that air of easy confidence, which is generally the result of long familiarity with urgent and perilous circumstances.
Having come near the abreuvoir, one of the two gave his horse to drink without dismounting, while the other alighted, and taking out the bit, let his beast satisfy its thirst at liberty. As he did so, his eye naturally glanced over the ground at the foot of the tree. Something caught his attention; and stooping down to examine more closely, “Here is blood, Chavigni!” he exclaimed; “surely, they have never been stupid enough to do it here, within sight of this cottage.”
“I hope they have not done it at all, Lafemas,” replied the other. “I only told them to tie him, and search him thoroughly; but not to give him a scratch, if they could avoid it.”
“Methinks, thou hast grown mighty ceremonious of late, and somewhat merciful, Master Chavigni,” replied his companion; “I remember the time, when you were not so scrupulous. Would it not have been the wiser way, to have quieted this young plotter at once, when your men had him in their hands?”
“Thou wert born in the Fauxbourg St. Antoine, I would swear, and served apprenticeship to a butcher,” replied Chavigni. “Why, thou art as fond of blood, Lafemas, as if thou hadst sucked it in thy cradle! Tell me, when thou wert an infant Hercules, didst thou not stick sheep, instead of strangling serpents?”
“Not more than yourself, lying villain!” answered the other in a quick deep voice, making his hand sound upon the hilt of his sword. “Chavigni, you have taunted me all along the road; you have cast in my teeth things that you yourself caused me to do. Beware of yourself! Urge me not too far, lest you leave your bones in the forest!”
“Pshaw, man! pshaw!” cried Chavigni, laughing: “Here’s a cool-headed judge! Here’s the calm placid Lafemas! Here’s the Cardinal’s gentle hangman, who can condemn his dearest friends to the torture with the same meek look that he puts on to say grace over a Beccafico, suddenly metamorphosed into a bully and a bravo in the wood of Mantes.—But hark ye, Sir Judge!” he added, in a prouder tone, tossing back the plumes of his hat, which before hung partly over his face, and fixing his full dark eye upon his companion, who still stood scowling upon him with ill-repressed passion—“Hark ye, Sir Judge! Use no such language towards me, if you seek not to try that same sharp axe you have so often ordered for others. Suffice it for you to know, in the present instance, that it was not the Cardinal’s wish that the young man should be injured. We do not desire blood, but when the necessity of the State requires it to be shed. Besides, man,” and he gradually fell into his former jeering tone—“besides, in future, under your gentle guidance, and a touch or two of the peine forte et dure, this young nightingale may be taught to sing, and, in short, be forced to tell us all he knows. Now do you understand?”
“I do, I do,” replied Lafemas. “I thought that there was some deep, damnable wile that made you spare him; and as to the rest, I did not mean to offend you. But when a man condemns his own soul to serve you, you should not taunt him, for it is hard to bear.”
“Peace! peace!” cried Chavigni, in a sharp tone; “let me hear no more in this strain. Who raised you to what you are? We use you as you deserve; we pay you for your services; we despise you for your meanness; and as to your soul,” he added with a sneer, “if you have any fears on that head—why you shall have absolution. Are you not our dog, who worries the game for us? We house and feed you, and you must take the lashes when it suits us to give them. Remember, Sir, that your life is in my hand! One word respecting the affair of Chalais mentioned to the Cardinal, brings your head to the block! And now let us see what is this blood you speak of?”
So saying, he sprang from his horse, while Lafemas, as he had been depicted by his companion, hung his head like a cowed hound, and in sullen silence pointed out the blood, which had formed a little pool at the foot of the tree, and stained the ground in several places round about.
Chavigni gazed at it with evident symptoms of displeasure and uneasiness; for although, when he imagined that the necessities of the State required the severest infliction on any offender, no one was more ruthless than himself as to the punishment, no one more unhesitating as to the means—although, at those times, no bond of amity, no tie of kindred, would have stayed his hand, or restrained him in what he erroneously considered his political duty; yet Chavigni was far from naturally cruel; and, as his after life showed, even too susceptible of the strongest and deepest affections of human nature.
In his early youth, the Cardinal de Richelieu had remarked in him a strong and penetrating mind; but above all, an extraordinary power of governing and even subduing the ardent passions by which he was at times excited. As son to the Count de Bouthilliers, one of the oldest members of the Privy Council, the road to political preferment was open to Chavigni; and Richelieu, ever fearful of aught that might diminish his power, and careful to strengthen it by every means, resolved to bind the young Count to his cause by the sure ties of early habit and mutual interest. With this view he took him entirely under his own protection, educated him in his own line of policy, instilled into him, as principles, the deep stern maxims of his own mighty and unshrinking mind, and having thus moulded him to his wish, called him early to the council-table, and intrusted him with a greater share of his power and confidence than he would have yielded to any other man.
Chavigni repaid the Cardinal with heartfelt gratitude, with firm adherence, and uncompromising service. In private life, he was honourable, generous, and kind; but it was his axiom, that all must yield to State necessity, or (as he said) in other words, to the good of his country; and upon the strength of this maxim, which, in fact, was the cause of every stain that rests upon his memory, he fancied himself a patriot!
Between Chavigni and the Judge Lafemas, who was the Jeffreys of his country, and had received the name of Le Bourreau du Cardinal, existed a sort of original antipathy; so that the Statesman, though often obliged to make use of the less scrupulous talents of the Judge, and even occasionally to associate with him, could never refrain for any length of time from breaking forth into those bitter taunts which often irritated Lafemas almost to frensy. The hatred of the Judge, on his part, was not less strong, even at the times it did not show itself; and he still brooded over the hope of exercising his ungentle functions upon him who was at present, in a degree, his master.
But to return, Chavigni gazed intently on the spot to which Lafemas pointed. “I believe it is blood, indeed,” said he, after a moment’s hesitation, as if the uncertainty of the light had made him doubt it at first: “they shall rue the day that they shed it contrary to my command. It is blood surely, Lafemas: is it not?”
“Without a doubt,” said Lafemas; “and it has been shed since mid-day.”
“You are critical in these things, I know,” replied the other with a cool sneer; “but we must hear more of this, Sir Judge, and ascertain what news is stirring, before we go farther. Things might chance, which would render it necessary that one or both of us should return to the Cardinal. We will knock at this cottage and inquire.—Our story must run, that we have lost our way in the wood, and need both rest and direction.”
So saying, he struck several sharp blows with the hilt of his sword against the door, whose rickety and unsonorous nature returned a grumbling indistinct sound, as if it too had shared the sleep of the peaceable inhabitants of the cottage, and loved not to be disturbed by such nocturnal visitations. “So ho!” cried Chavigni; “will no one hear us poor travellers, who have lost our way in this forest!”
In a moment after, the head of Philip, the woodman, appeared at the little casement by the side of the door, examining the strangers, on whose figures fell the full beams of the moon, with quite sufficient light to display the courtly form and garnishing of their apparel, and to show that they were no dangerous guests. “What would ye, Messieurs?” demanded he, through the open window: “it is late for travellers.”
“We have lost our way in your wood,” replied Chavigni, “and would fain have a little rest, and some direction for our farther progress. We will pay thee well, good man, for thy hospitality.”
“There is no need of payment, Sir,” said the Woodman, opening the door. “Come in, I pray, Messieurs.—Charles!” he added, calling to his son, “get up and tend these gentlemen’s horses. Get up, I say, Sir Sluggard!”
The boy crept sleepily out of the room beyond, and went to give some of the forest-hay to the beasts which had borne the strangers thither, and which gave but little signs of needing either rest or refreshment. In the mean while, his father drew two large yew-tree seats to the fire-side, soon blew the white ashes on the hearth into a flame, and having invited his guests to sit, and lighted the old brazen lamp that hung above the chimney, he bowed low, asking how he could serve them farther; but as he did so, his eye ran over their persons with a half-satisfied and inquiring glance, which made Lafemas turn away his head. But Chavigni answered promptly to his offer of service: “Why now, good friend, if thou couldst give us a jug of wine, ‘twould be well and kindly done, for we have ridden far.”
“This is no inn, Sir,” replied Philip, “and you will find my wine but thin: nevertheless, such as it is, most welcomely shall you taste.”
From whatever motive it proceeded, Philip’s hospitality was but lukewarm towards the strangers; and the manner in which he rinsed out the tankard, drew the wine from a barrique standing in one corner of the room, half covered with a wolf-skin, and placed it on a table by the side of Chavigni, bespoke more churlish rudeness than good-will. But the Statesman heeded little either the quality of his reception or of his wine, provided he could obtain the information he desired; so, carrying the tankard to his lips, he drank, or seemed to drink, as deep a draught as if its contents had been the produce of the best vineyard in Medoc. “It is excellent,” said he, handing it to Lafemas, “or my thirst does wonders. Now, good friend, if we had some venison-steaks to broil on your clear ashes, our supper were complete.”
“Such I have not to offer, Sir,” replied Philip, “or to that you should be welcome too.”
“Why, I should have thought,” said Chavigni, “the hunters who ran down a stag at your door to-day, should have left you a part, as the woodman’s fee.”
“Do you know those hunters, Sir?” demanded Philip, with some degree of emphasis.
“Not I, in truth,” replied Chavigni; though the colour rose in his cheek, notwithstanding his long training to courtly wile and political intrigue, and he thanked his stars that the lamp gave but a faint and glimmering light: “Not I, in truth; but whoever ran him down got a good beast, for he bled like a stag of ten. I suppose they made the curée at your door?”
“Those hunters, Sir,” replied Philip, “give no woodman’s fees; and as to the stag, he is as fine a one as ever brushed the forest dew, but he has escaped them this time.”
“How! did he get off with his throat cut?” demanded Chavigni, “for there is blood enough at the foot of yon old tree, to have drained the stoutest stag that ever was brought to bay.”
“Oh! but that is not stag’s blood!” interrupted Charles, the woodman’s son, who had by this time not only tended the strangers’ horses, but examined every point of the quaint furniture with which it was the fashion of the day to adorn them. “That is not stag’s blood; that is the blood of the young Cavalier, who was hurt by the robbers, and taken away by—”
At this moment the boy’s eye caught the impatient expression of his father’s countenance.
“The truth is, Messieurs,” said Philip, taking up the discourse, “there was a gentleman wounded in the forest this morning. I never saw him before, and he was taken away in a carriage by some ladies, whose faces were equally strange to me.”
“You have been somewhat mysterious upon this business, Sir Woodman,” said Chavigni, his brow darkening as he spoke; “why were you so tardy in giving us this forest news, which imports all strangers travelling through the wood to know?”
“I hold it as a rule,” replied Philip boldly, “to mind my own business, and never to mention any thing I see; which in this affair I shall do more especially, as one of the robbers had furniture of Isabel and silver;” and as he spoke he glanced his eye to the scarf of Chavigni, which was of that peculiar mixture of colours then called Isabel, bordered by a rich silver fringe.
“Fool!” muttered Chavigni between his teeth; “Fool! what need had he to show himself?”
Lafemas, who had hitherto been silent, now came to the relief of his companion: taking up the conversation in a mild and easy tone, “Have you many of these robbing fraternity in your wood?” said he; “if so, I suppose we peril ourselves in crossing it alone.” And, without waiting for any answer, he proceeded, “Pray, who was the cavalier they attacked?”
“He was a stranger from St. Germain,” answered the Woodman; “and as to the robbers, I doubt that they will show themselves again, for fear of being taken.”
“They did not rob him then?” said the Judge. Now nothing that Philip had said bore out this inference; but Lafemas possessed in a high degree the talent of cross-examination, and was deeply versed in all the thousand arts of entangling a witness, or leading a prisoner to condemn himself. But there was a stern reserve about the Woodman which baffled the Judge’s cunning: “I only saw the last part of the fray,” replied Philip, “and therefore know not what went before.”
“Where was he hurt?” asked Lafemas; “for he lost much blood.”
“On the head and in the side,” answered the Woodman.
“Poor youth!” cried the Judge in a pitiful tone. “And when you opened his coat, was the wound a deep one?”
“I cannot judge,” replied Philip, “being no surgeon.”
It was in vain that Lafemas tried all his wiles on the Woodman, and that Chavigni, who soon joined in the conversation, questioned him more boldly. Philip was in no communicative mood, and yielded them but little information respecting the events of the morning.
At length, weary of this fruitless interrogation, Chavigni started up—“Well, friend!” said he, “had there been danger in crossing the forest, we might have stayed with thee till daybreak; but, as thou sayest there is none, we will hence upon our way.” So saying he strode towards the door, the flame-shaped mullets of his gilded spurs jingling over the brick-floor of Philip’s dwelling, and calling the Woodman’s attention to the knightly rank of his departing guest. In a few minutes all was prepared for their departure, and having mounted their horses, the Statesman drew forth a small silk purse tied with a loop of gold, and holding it forth to Philip, bade him accept it for his services. The Woodman bowed, repeating that he required no payment.
“I am not accustomed to have my bounty refused,” said Chavigni proudly; and dropping the purse to the ground, he spurred forward his horse.
“Now, Lafemas,” said he, when they had proceeded so far as to be beyond the reach of Philip’s ears, “what think you of this?”
“Why, truly,” replied the Judge, “I deem that we are mighty near as wise as we were before.”
“Not so,” said Chavigni. “It is clear enough these fellows have failed, and De Blenau has preserved the packet: I understand it all. His Eminence of Richelieu, against my advice, has permitted Madame de Beaumont and her daughter Pauline to return to the Queen, after an absence of ten years. The fact is, that when the Cardinal banished them the Court, and ordered the Marchioness to retire to Languedoc, his views were not so extended as they are now, and he had laid out in his own mind a match between one of his nieces and this rich young Count de Blenau; which, out of the royal family, was one of the best alliances in France. The boy, however, had been promised, and even, I believe, affianced by his father, to this Pauline de Beaumont; and accordingly his Eminence sent away the girl and her mother, with the same sangfroid that a man drives a strange dog out of his court-yard; at the same time he kept the youth at Court, forbidding all communication with Languedoc: but now that the Cardinal can match his niece to the Duke D’Enghien, De Blenau may look for a bride where he lists, and the Marquise and her daughter have been suffered to return. To my knowledge, they passed through Chartres yesterday morning on their way to St. Germain.”
“But what have these to do with the present affair?” demanded Lafemas.
“Why thus has it happened,” continued Chavigni. “The youth has been attacked. He has resisted, and been wounded. Just then, up come these women, travelling through the forest with a troop of servants, who join with the Count, and drive our poor friends to cover. This is what I have drawn from the discourse of yon surly Woodman.”
“You mean, from your own knowledge of the business,” replied Lafemas, “for he would confess nothing.”
“Confess, man!” exclaimed Chavigni.—“Why he did not know that he was before a confessor, and still less before a Judge, though thou wouldest fain have put him to the question. I saw your lip quivering with anxiety to order him the torture; rack, and thumb-screw, and oubliette were in your eye, every sullen answer he gave.”
“Were it not as well to get him out of the way?” demanded Lafemas. “He remarked your livery, Chavigni, and may blab.”
“Short-sighted mole!” replied his companion. “The very sulkiness of humour which has called down on him thy rage, will shield him from my fears—which might be quite as dangerous. He that is so close in one thing, depend upon it, will be close in another. Besides, unless he tells it to the trees, or the jays, or the wild boars, whom should he tell it to? I would bet a thousand crowns against the Prince de Conti’s brains, or the Archbishop Coadjutor’s religion, or Madame de Chevreuse’s—reputation, or against any thing else that is worth nothing, that this good Woodman sees no human shape for the next ten years, and then all that passes between them will be, “Good day, Woodman!’—‘Good day, Sir!’—and he mimicked the deep voice of him of whom they spoke. But, notwithstanding this appearance of gaiety, Chavigni was not easy; and even while he spoke, he rode on with no small precipitation, till, turning into a narrow forest path, the light of the moon, which had illuminated the greater part of the high road, was cut off entirely by the trees, and the deep gloom obliged them to be more cautious in proceeding. At length, however, they came to a little savanna, surrounded by high oaks, where Chavigni entirely reined in his horse, and blew a single note on his horn, which was soon answered by a similar sound at some distance.
CHAPTER III.
Which shows what a French forest was at night, and who inhabited it.
THOSE whom either the love of sylvan sports, or that calm meditative charm inherent to wood scenery, has tempted to explore the deeper recesses of the forest, must be well aware that many particular glades and coverts will often lie secret and undiscovered, amidst the mazes of the leafy labyrinth, even to the eyes of those long accustomed to investigate its most intricate windings. In those countries where forest hunting is a frequent sport, I have more than once found myself led on into scenes completely new, when I had fancied that long experience had made me fully acquainted with every rood of the woodland round about, and have often met with no small trouble in retracing the spot, although I took all pains to observe the way thither, and fix its distinctive marks in my memory.
In the heart of the forest of St. Germain, at a considerable distance from any of the roads, or even by-paths of the wood, lay a deep dingle or dell, which probably had been a gravel-pit many centuries before, and might have furnished forth sand to strew the halls of Charlemagne, for aught I know to the contrary. However, so many ages had elapsed since it had been employed for such purpose, that many a stout oak had sprung, and flourished, and withered round about it, and had left the ruins of their once princely forms crumbling on its brink. At the time I speak of, a considerable part of the dell itself was filled up with tangled brush-wood, which a long hot season had stripped and withered; and over the edge hung a quantity of dry shrubs and stunted trees, forming a thick screen over the wild recess below.
One side, and one side only, was free of access, and this was by means of a small sandy path winding down into the bottom of the dell, between two deep banks, which assumed almost the appearance of cliffs as the road descended. This little footway conducted, it is true, into the most profound part of the hollow, but then immediately lost itself in the thick underwood, through which none but a very practised eye would have discovered the means of entering a deep lair of ground, sheltered by the steep bank and its superincumbent trees on one side, and concealed by a screen of wood on every other.
On the night I have mentioned, this well concealed retreat was tenanted by a group of men, whose wild attire harmonized perfectly with the rudeness of the scene around. The apparel of almost every class was discernible among them, but each vesture plainly showed, that it had long passed that epoch generally termed “better days;” and indeed, the more costly had been their original nature, the greater was their present state of degradation. So that what had once been the suit of some gay cavalier of the court, and which doubtless had shone as such in the circles of the bright and the fair, having since passed through the hands of the page, who had perhaps used it to personate his master, and the fripier, who had tried hard to restore it to a degree of lustre, and the poor petitioner who had bought it and borne it second-hand to court, and lost both his labour and his money—having passed through these, and perhaps a thousand other hands, it had gradually acquired that sort of undefinable tint, which ought properly to be called old-age colour, and at present served, and only served, to keep its owner from the winds of heaven. At the same time the buff jerkin which covered the broad shoulders of another hard by, though it had never boasted much finery, had escaped with only a few rusty stains from its former intimacy with a steel cuirass, and a slight greasy gloss upon the left side, which indicated its owner’s habit of laying his hand upon his sword.
Here, too, every sort of offensive weapon was to be met with. The long Toledo blade with its basket hilt and black scabbard tipped with steel; the double-handed heavy sword, which during the wars of the League had often steaded well the troops of Henry the Fourth, when attacked by the superior cavalry of the Dukes of Guise and Mayenne, and which had been but little used since; the poniard, the stiletto, the heavy petronel, or horse pistol, and the smaller girdle pistol, which had been but lately introduced, were all to be seen, either as accompaniments to the dress of some of the party, or scattered about on the ground, where they had been placed for greater convenience.
The accoutrements of these denizens of the forest were kept in countenance by every other accessory circumstance of appearance; and a torch stuck in the sand in the midst, glared upon features which Salvator might have loved to trace. It was not alone the negligence of personal appearance, shown in their long dishevelled hair and untrimmed beards, which rendered them savagely picturesque, but many a furious passion had there written deep traces of its unbounded sway, and marked them with that wild undefinable expression, which habitual vice and lawless licence are sure to leave behind in their course.
At the moment I speak of, wine had been circulating very freely amongst the robbers; for such indeed they were. Some were sleeping, either with their hands clasped over their knees and their heads drooping down to meet them, or stretched more at their ease under the trees, snoring loud in answer to the wind, that whistled through the branches. Some sat gazing with a wise sententious look on the empty gourds, many of which, fashioned into bottles, lay scattered about upon the ground: and two or three, who had either drunk less of the potent liquor, or whose heads were better calculated to resist its effects than the rest, sat clustered together singing and chatting by turns, arrived exactly at that point of ebriety, where a man’s real character shows itself, notwithstanding all his efforts to conceal it.
The buff jerkin we have spoken of, covered the shoulders of one among this little knot of choice spirits, who still woke to revel after sleep had laid his leaden mace upon their companions; and it may be remarked, that a pair of broader shoulders are rarely to be seen than those so covered.
Wouvermans is said to have been very much puzzled by a figure in one of his pictures, which, notwithstanding all his efforts, he could never keep down (as painters express it). Whatever he did, that one figure was always salient, and more prominent than the artist intended; nor was it till he had half blotted it out, that he discovered its original defect was being too large. Something like Wouvermans’ figure, the freebooter I speak of, stood conspicuous amongst the others, from the Herculean proportion of his limbs; but he had, in addition, other qualities to distinguish him from the rest. His brow was broad, and of that peculiar form to which physiognomists have attached the idea of a strong determined spirit; at the same time, the clear sparkle of his blue Norman eye bespoke an impetuous, but not a depraved mind.
A deep scar was apparent on his left cheek; and the wound which had been its progenitor, was most probably the cause of a sneering turn in the corner of his mouth, which, with a bold expression of daring confidence, completed the mute history that his face afforded, of a life spent in arms, or well, or ill, as circumstances prompted,—an unshrinking heart, which dared every personal evil, and a bright but unprincipled mind, which followed no dictates but the passions of the moment.
He was now in his gayest mood, and holding a horn in his hand, trolled forth an old French ditty, seeming confident of pleasing, or perhaps careless whether he pleased or not.
“Thou’rt an ass, Robin, thou’rt an ass,
To think that great men be
More gay than I that lie on the grass
Under the greenwood tree.
I tell thee no, I tell thee no,
The Great are slaves to their gilded show.
Now tell me, Robin, tell me,
Are the ceilings of gay saloons
So richly wrought as yon sky we see,
Or their glitter so bright as the moon’s?
I tell thee no, I tell thee no,
The Great are slaves to their gilded show.
Say not nay, Robin, say not nay!
There is never a heart so free,
In the vest of gold, and the palace gay,
As in buff ‘neath the forest tree.
I tell thee yea, I tell thee yea,
The Great were made for the poor man’s prey.”
So sang the owner of the buff jerkin, and his song met with more or less applause from his companions, according to the particular humour of each. One only amongst the freebooters seemed scarcely to participate in the merriment. He had drunk as deeply as the rest, but he appeared neither gay, nor stupid, nor sleepy; and while the tall Norman sang, he cast, from time to time, a calm sneering glance upon the singer, which showed no especial love, either for the music, or musician.
“You sing about prey,” said he, as the other concluded the last stanza of his ditty—“You sing about prey, and yet you are no great falcon, after all; if we may judge from to-day.”
“And why not, Monsieur Pierrepont Le Blanc?” demanded the Norman, without displaying aught of ill-humour in his countenance: “though they ought to have called you Monsieur Le Noir—Mr. Black, not Mr. White.—Nay, do not frown, good comrade; I speak but of your beard, not of your heart. What, art thou still grumbling, because we did not cut the young Count’s throat outright?”
“Nay, not for that,” answered the other, “but because we have lost the best man amongst us, for want of his being well seconded.”
“You lie, Parbleu!” cried the Norman, drawing his sword, and fixing his thumb upon a stain, about three inches from the point. “Did not I lend the youth so much of my iron toothpick? and would have sent it through him, if his horse had not carried him away. But I know you, Master Buccaneer—You would have had me stab him behind, while Mortagne slashed his head before. That would have been a fit task for a Norman gentleman, and a soldier! I whose life he saved too!”
“Did you not swear, when you joined our troop,” demanded the other, “to forget every thing that went before?”
The Norman hesitated; he well remembered his oath, against which the better feelings of his heart were perhaps sometimes rebellious. He felt, too, confused at the direct appeal the other had made to it; and to pass it by, he caught at the word forget, answering with a stave of the song—
“Forget! forget! let slaves forget
The pangs and chains they bear;
The brave remember every debt
To honour, and the fair.
For these are bonds that bind us more,
Yet leave us freer than before.
“Yes, let those that can do so, forget: but I very well remember, at the battle at Perpignan, I had charged with the advance guard, when the fire of the enemy’s musketeers, and a masked battery which began to enfilade our line, soon threw our left flank into disorder, and a charge of cavalry drove back De Coucy’s troop. Mielleraye’s standard was in the hands of the enemy, when I and five others rallied to rescue it. A gloomy old Spaniard fired his petronel and disabled my left arm, but still I held the standard-pole with my right, keeping the standard before me; but my Don drew his long Toledo, and had got the point to my breast, just going to run it through me and standard and all, as I’ve often spitted a duck’s liver and a piece of bacon on a skewer; when, turning round my head, to see if no help was near, I perceived this young Count de Blenau’s banderol, coming like lightning over the field, and driving all before it; and blue and gold were then the best colours that ever I saw, for they gave me new heart, and wrenching the standard-pole round—But hark, there is the horn!”
As he spoke, the clear full note of a hunting-horn came swelling from the south-west; and in a moment after, another, much nearer to them, seemed to answer the first. Each, after giving breath to one solitary note, relapsed into silence; and such of the robbers as were awake, having listened till the signal met with a reply, bestirred themselves to rouse their sleeping companions, and to put some face of order upon the disarray which their revels had left behind.
“Now, Sir Norman,” cried he that they distinguished by the name of Le Blanc; “we shall see how Monseigneur rates your slackness in his cause. Will you tell him your long story of the siege of Perpignan?”
“Pardie!” cried the other, “I care no more for him, than I do for you. Every man that stands before me on forest ground is but a man, and I will treat him as such.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” exclaimed his companion; “it were good to see thee bully a privy counsellor; why, thou darest as soon take a lion by the beard.”
“I dare pass my sword through his heart, were there need,” answered the Norman; “but here they come,—stand you aside and let me deal with him.”
Approaching steps, and a rustling sound in the thick screen of wood already mentioned, as the long boughs were forced back by the passage of some person along the narrow pathway, announced the arrival of those for whom the robbers had been waiting.
“Why, it is as dark as the pit of Acheron!” cried a deep voice amongst the trees. “Are we never to reach the light I saw from above? Oh, here it is.—Chauvelin, hold back that bough, it has caught my cloak.” As the speaker uttered the last words, an armed servant, in Isabel and silver, appeared at the entrance of the path, holding back the stray branches, while Chavigni himself advanced into the circle of robbers, who stood grouped around in strange picturesque attitudes, some advancing boldly, as if to confront the daring stranger that thus intruded on their haunts, some gazing with a kind of curiosity upon the being so different from themselves, who had thus placed himself in sudden contact with them, some lowering upon him with bended heads, like wolves when they encounter a nobler beast of prey.
The Statesman himself advanced in silence; and, with something of a frown upon his brow, glanced his eye firmly over every face around, nor was there an eye amongst them that did not sink before the stern commanding fire of his, as it rested for a moment upon the countenance of each, seeming calmly to construe the expression of the features, and read into the soul beneath, as we often see a student turn over the pages of some foreign book, and collect their meaning at a glance.
“Well, Sirs,” said he at length, “my knave tells me, that ye have failed in executing my commands.”
The Norman we have somewhat minutely described heretofore, now began to excuse himself and his fellows; and was proceeding to set forth that they had done all which came within their power and province to do, and was also engaged in stating, that no man could do more, when Chavigni interrupted him. “Silence!” cried he, with but little apparent respect for these lords of the forest, “I blame ye not for not doing more than ye could do; but how dare ye, mongrel bloodhounds, to disobey my strict commands? and when I bade ye abstain from injuring the youth, how is it ye have mangled him like a stag torn by the wolves?”
The Norman turned with a look of subdued triumph towards him who had previously censured his forbearance. “Speak, speak, Le Blanc!” cried he; “answer Monseigneur.—Well,” continued he, as the other drew back, “the truth is this, Sir Count: we were divided in opinion with respect to the best method of fulfilling your commands, so we called a council of war—”
“A council of war!” repeated Chavigni, his lip curling into an ineffable sneer. “Well, proceed, proceed! You are a Norman, I presume—and braggart, I perceive.—Proceed, Sir, proceed!”
Be it remarked, that by this time the influence of Chavigni’s first appearance had greatly worn away from the mind of the Norman. The commanding dignity of the Statesman, though it still, in a degree, overawed, had lost the effect of novelty; and the bold heart of the freebooter began to reproach him for truckling to a being who was inferior to himself, according to his estimate of human dignities—an estimate formed not alone on personal courage, but also on personal strength.
However, as we have said, he was, in some measure, overawed; and though he would have done much to prove his daring in the sight of his companions, his mind was not yet sufficiently wrought up to shake off all respect, and he answered boldly, but calmly, “Well, Sir Count, give me your patience, and you shall hear. But my story must be told my own way, or not at all. We called a council of war, then, where every man gave his opinion, and my voice was for shooting Monsieur de Blenau’s horse as he rode by, and then taking advantage of the confusion among his lackeys, to seize upon his person, and carrying him into St. Herman’s brake, which lies between Le Croix de bois and the river—You know where I mean, Monseigneur?”
“No, truly,” answered the Statesman; “but, as I guess, some deep part of the forest, where you could have searched him at your ease—The plan was a good one. Why went it not forward?”
“You shall hear in good time,” answered the freebooter, growing somewhat more familiar in his tone. “As you say, St. Herman’s brake is deep enough in the forest—and if we had once housed him there, we might have searched him from top to toe for the packet—ay, and looked in his mouth, if we found it no where else. But the first objection was, that an arquebuse, though a very pretty weapon, and pleasant serviceable companion in broad brawl and battle, talks too loud for secret service, and the noise thereof might put the Count’s people on their guard before we secured his person. However, they say ‘a Norman cow can always get over a stile,’ so I offered to do the business with yon arbalete;” and he pointed to a steel cross-bow lying near, of that peculiar shape which seems to unite the properties of the cross-bow and gun, propelling the ball or bolt by means of the stiff arched spring and cord, by which little noise is made, while the aim is rendered more certain by a long tube similar to the barrel of a musket, through which the shot passes.
“When was I ever known to miss my aim?” continued the Norman. “Why, I always shoot my stags in the eye, for fear of hurting the skin. However, Mortagne—your old friend, Monsieur de Chavigni—who was a sort of band captain amongst us, loved blood, as you know, like an unreclaimed falcon; besides, he had some old grudge against the Count, who turned him out of the Queen’s anteroom, when he was Ancient in the Cardinal’s guard. He it was who over-ruled my proposal. He would have shot him willingly enough, but your gentleman would not hear of that; so we attacked the Count’s train, at the turn of the road—boldly, and in the face. Mortagne was lucky enough to get a fair cut at his head, which slashed through his beaver, and laid his skull bare, but went no farther, only serving to make the youth as savage as a hurt boar; for I had only time to see his hand laid upon his sword, when its cross was knocking against Mortagne’s ribs before, and the point shining out between his blade-bones behind. It was done in the twinkling of an eye.”
“He is a gallant youth,” said Chavigni; “he always was from a boy; but where is your wounded companion?”
“Wounded!” cried the Norman. “Odds life! he’s dead. It was enough to have killed the Devil. There he lies, poor fellow, wrapped in his cloak. Will you please to look upon him, Sir Counsellor?” and snatching up one of the torches, he approached the spot where the dead man lay, under a bank covered with withered brush-wood and stunted trees.
Chavigni followed with a slow step and gloomy brow, the robbers drawing back at his approach; for though they held high birth in but little respect, the redoubted name and fearless bearing of the Statesman had power over even their ungoverned spirits. He, however, who had been called Pierrepont Le Blanc by the tall Norman, twitched his companion by the sleeve as he lighted Chavigni on. “A cowed hound, Norman!” whispered he—“thou hast felt the lash—a cowed hound!”
The Norman glanced on him a look of fire, but passing on in silence, he disengaged the mantle from the corpse, and displayed the face of his dead companion, whose calm closed eyes and unruffled features might have been supposed to picture quiet sleep, had not the ashy paleness of his cheek, and the drop of the under-jaw, told that the soul no longer tenanted its earthly dwelling. The bosom of the unfortunate man remained open, in the state in which his comrades had left it, after an ineffectual attempt to give him aid; and in the left side appeared a small wound, where the weapon of his opponent had found entrance, so trifling in appearance, that it seemed a marvel how so little a thing could overthrow the prodigious strength which those limbs announced, and rob them of that hardy spirit which animated them some few hours before.
Chavigni gazed upon him, with his arms crossed upon his breast, and for a moment his mind wandered far into those paths, to which such a sight naturally directs the course of our ideas, till, his thoughts losing themselves in the uncertainty of the void before them, by a sudden effort he recalled them to the business in which he was immediately engaged.
“Well, he has bitterly expiated the disobedience of my commands; but tell me,” he said, turning to the Norman, who still continued to hold the torch over the dead man, “how is it ye have dared to force my servant to show himself, and my liveries, in this attack, contrary to my special order?”
“That is easily told,” answered the Norman, assuming a tone equally bold and peremptory with that of the Statesman. “Thus it stands, Sir Count: you men of quality often employ us nobility of the forest to do what you either cannot, or dare not do for yourselves; then, if all goes well, you pay us scantily for our pains; if it goes ill, you hang us for your own doings. But we will have none of that. If we are to be falcons for your game, we will risk the stroke of the heron’s bill, but we will not have our necks wrung after we have struck the prey. When your lackey was present, it was your deed. Mark ye that, Sir Counsellor?”
“Villain, thou art insolent!” cried Chavigni, forgetting, in the height of passion, the fearful odds against him, in case of quarrel at such a moment. “How dare you, slave, to—”
“Villain! and slave!” cried the Norman, interrupting him, and laying his hand on his sword. “Know, proud Sir, that I dare any thing. You are now in the green forest, not at council-board, to prate of daring.”
Chavigni’s dignity, like his prudence, became lost in his anger. “Boasting Norman coward!” cried he, “who had not even courage, when he saw his leader slain before his face—”
The Norman threw the torch from his hand, and drew his weapon; but Chavigni’s sword sprang in a moment from the scabbard. He was, perhaps, the best swordsman of his day; and before his servant (who advanced, calling loudly to Lafemas to come forth from the wood where he had remained from the first) could approach, or the robbers could show any signs of taking part in the fray, the blades of the statesman and the freebooter had crossed, and, maugre the Norman’s vast strength, his weapon was instantly wrenched from his hand, and, flying over the heads of his companions, struck against the bank above.
Chavigni drew back, as if to pass his sword through the body of his opponent; but the one moment he had been thus engaged, gave time for reflection on the imprudence of his conduct, and calmly returning his sword to its sheath, “Thou art no coward, after all,” said he, addressing the Norman in a softened tone of voice; “but trust me, friend, that boasting graces but little a brave man. As for the rest, it is no disgrace to have measured swords with Chavigni.”
The Norman was one of those men so totally unaccustomed to command their passions, that, like slaves who have thrown off their chains, each struggles for the mastery, obtains it for a moment, and is again deprived of power by some one more violent still.
The dignity of the Statesman’s manner, the apparent generosity of his conduct, and the degree of gentleness with which he spoke, acted upon the feelings of the Norman, like the waves of the sea when they meet the waters of the Dordogne, driving them back even to their very source with irresistible violence. An unwonted tear trembled in his eye. “Monseigneur, I have done foul wrong,” said he, “in thus urging you, when you trusted yourself amongst us. But you have punished me more by your forbearance, than if you had passed your sword through my body.”
“Ha! such thoughts in a freebooter!” cried Chavigni. “Friend, this is not thy right trade. But what means all this smoke that gathers round us?—Surely those bushes are on fire;—see the sparks how they rise!”
His remark called the eyes of all upon that part of the dingle, into which the Norman had incautiously thrown his torch, on drawing his sword upon the Statesman. Continued sparks, mingled with a thick cloud of smoke, were rising quickly from it, showing plainly that the fire had caught some of the dry bushes thereabout; and in a moment after a bright flame burst forth, speedily communicating itself to the old withered oaks round the spot, and threatening to spread destruction into the heart of the forest.
In an instant all the robbers were engaged in the most strenuous endeavours to extinguish the fire; but the distance, to which the vast strength of the Norman had hurled the torch among the bushes, rendered all access extremely difficult. No water was to be procured, and the means they employed, that of cutting down the smaller trees and bushes with their swords and axes, instead of opposing any obstacle to the flames, seemed rather to accelerate their progress. From bush to bush, from tree to tree, the impetuous element spread on, till, finding themselves almost girt in by the fire, the heat and smoke of which were becoming too intense for endurance, the robbers abandoned their useless efforts to extinguish it, and hurried to gather up their scattered arms and garments, before the flames reached the spot of their late revels.
The Norman, however, together with Chavigni and his servant, still continued their exertions; and even Lafemas, who had come forth from his hiding-place, gave some awkward assistance; when suddenly the Norman stopped, put his hand to his ear, to aid his hearing amidst the cracking of the wood and the roaring of the flames, and exclaimed, “I hear horse upon the hill—follow me, Monseigneur. St. Patrice guide us! this is a bad business:—follow me!” So saying, three steps brought him to the flat below, where his companions were still engaged in gathering together all they had left on the ground.
“Messieurs!” he cried to the robbers, “leave all useless lumber; I hear horses coming down the hill. It must be a lieutenant of the forest, and the gardes champétres, alarmed by the fire—Seek your horses, quick!—each his own way. We meet at St. Herman’s brake—You, Monseigneur, follow me, I will be your guide; but dally not, Sir, if, as I guess, you would rather be deemed in the Rue St. Honoré, than in the Forest of St. Germain.”
So saying, he drew aside the boughs, disclosing a path somewhat to the right of that by which Chavigni had entered their retreat, and which apparently led to the high sand-cliff which flanked it on the north. The Statesman, with his servant and Lafemas, followed quickly upon his steps, only lighted by the occasional gleam of the flames, as they flashed and flickered through the foliage of the trees.
Having to struggle every moment with the low branches of the hazel and the tangled briars that shot across the path, it was some time ere they reached the bank, and there the footway they had hitherto followed seemed to end. “Here are steps,” said the Norman, in a low voice; “hold by the boughs, Monseigneur, lest your footing fail. Here is the first step.”
The ascent was not difficult, and in a few minutes they had lost sight of the dingle and the flames by which it was surrounded; only every now and then, where the branches opened, a broad red light fell upon their path, telling that the fire still raged with unabated fury. A moment or two after, they could perceive that the track entered upon a small savanna, on which the moon was still shining, her beams showing with a strange sickly light, mingled as they were with the fitful gleams of the flames and the red reflection of the sky. The whole of this small plain, however, was quite sufficiently illuminated to allow Chavigni and his companion to distinguish two horses fastened by their bridles to a tree hard by; and a momentary glance convinced the Statesman, that the spot where he and Lafemas had left their beasts, was again before him, although he had arrived there by another and much shorter path than that by which he had been conducted to the rendezvous.
“We have left all danger behind us, Monseigneur,” said the robber, after having carefully examined the savanna, to ascertain that no spy lurked amongst the trees around. “The flies are all swarming round the flames. There stand your horses—mount, and good speed attend you! Your servant must go with me, for our beasts are not so nigh.”
Chavigni whispered a word in the robber’s ear, who in return bowed low, with an air of profound respect. “I will attend your Lordship—” replied he, “—and without fear.”
“You may do so in safety,” said the Statesman, and mounting his horse, after waiting a moment for the Judge, he took his way once more towards the high road to St. Germain.
CHAPTER IV.
In which the learned reader will discover that it is easy to raise suspicions without any cause, and that royalty is not patent against superstition.
WE must now return to the principal personage of our history, and accompany him on his way towards St. Germain, whither he was wending when last we left him.
There are some authors fond of holding their readers in suspense, of bringing them into unexpected situations, and surprising them into applause. All such things are extremely appropriate in a novel or romance; but as this is a true and authentic history, and as eke I detest what theatrical folks call “claptrap,” I shall proceed to record the facts in the order in which they took place, as nearly as it is possible to do so, and will, like our old friend Othello, “a round unvarnished tale deliver.”
The distance to St. Germain was considerable, and naturally appeared still longer than it really was, to persons unacquainted with one step of the road before them, and apprehensive of a thousand occurrences both likely and unlikely. Nothing, however, happened to interrupt them on the way; and their journey passed over, not only in peace, but pretty much in silence also. Both the ladies who occupied the inside of the carriage, seemed to be very sufficiently taken up with their own thoughts, and no way disposed to loquacity, so that the only break to the melancholy stillness which hung over them, was now and then a half-formed sentence, proceeding from what was rapidly passing in the mind of each, or the complaining creak of the heavy wheels, as they ground their unwilling way through the less practicable parts of the forest road.
At times, too, a groan from the lips of their wounded companion interrupted the silence, as the roughness of the way jolted the ponderous vehicle in which he was carried, and re-awakened him to a sense of pain.
Long ere they had reached St. Germain, night had fallen over their road, and nothing could be distinguished by those within the carriage, but the figures of the two horsemen who kept close to the windows. The interior was still darker, and it was only a kind of inarticulate sob from the other side, which made the Marchioness inquire, “Pauline! you are not weeping?”
The young lady did not positively say whether she was so or not, but replied in a voice which showed her mother’s conjecture to be well founded.
“It was not thus, Mamma,” she said, “that I had hoped to arrive at St-Germain.”
“Fie, fie! Pauline,” replied the old lady; “I have long tried to make you feel like a woman, and you are still a child, a weak child. These accidents, and worse than these, occur to every one in the course of life, and they must be met with fortitude. Have you flattered yourself that you would be exempt from the common sorrows of humanity?”
“But if he should die?” said Pauline, with the tone of one who longs to be soothed out of their fears. The old lady, however, applied no such unction to the wound in her daughter’s heart. Madame de Beaumont had herself been reared in the school of adversity; and while her mind and principles had been thus strengthened and confirmed, her feelings had not been rendered more acute. In the present instance, whether she spoke it heedlessly, or whether she intended to destroy one passion by exciting another, to cure Pauline’s grief by rousing her anger, her answer afforded but little consolation. “If he dies,” said she dryly, “why I suppose the fair lady, whose picture he has in his bosom, would weep, and you——”
A deep groan from their wounded companion broke in upon her speech, and suggested to the Marchioness that he might not be quite so insensible as he seemed. Such an answer, too, was not so palatable to Pauline as to induce her to urge the conversation any farther; so that Silence again resumed her empire over the party, remaining undisturbed till the old lady, drawing back the curtain, announced that they were entering St. Germain.
A few minutes more brought them to the lodging of the Count de Blenau; and here the Marchioness descending, gave all the necessary directions in order that the young gentleman might be carried to his sleeping-chamber in the easiest and most convenient method, while Pauline, without proffering any aid, sat back in a dark corner of the carriage. Nor would any thing have shown that she was interested in what passed around her, but when the light of a torch glared into the vehicle, discovering a handkerchief pressed over her eyes to hide the tears she could not restrain.
As soon as the Count was safely lodged in his own dwelling, the carriage proceeded towards the palace, which showed but little appearance of regal state. However the mind of Pauline might have been accustomed to picture a court in all the gay and splendid colouring which youthful imagination lends to anticipated pleasure, her thoughts were now far too fully occupied, to admit of her noticing the lonely and deserted appearance of the scene. But to Madame de Beaumont it was different. She, who remembered St. Germain in other days, looked in vain for the lights flashing from every window of the palace; for the servants hurrying along the different avenues, the sentinels parading before every entrance, and the gay groups of courtiers and ladies, in all the brilliant costume of the time, which used to crowd the terrace and gardens to enjoy the cool of the evening after the sun had gone down.
All that she remembered had had its day; and nothing remained but silence and solitude. A single sentry, at the principal gate, was all that indicated the dwelling of a king; and it was not till the carriage had passed under the archway, that even an attendant presented himself to inquire who were the comers at that late hour.
The principal domestic of Madame de Beaumont, who had already descended from his horse, gave the name of his lady with all ceremony, and also tendered a card (as he had been instructed by the Marchioness), on which her style and title were fully displayed. The royal servant bowed low, saying that the Queen, his mistress, had expected the Marchioness before; and seizing the rope of a great bell, which hung above the staircase, he rang such a peal that the empty galleries of the palace returned a kind of groaning echo to the rude clang which seemed to mock their loneliness.
Two or three more servants appeared, in answer to the bell’s noisy summons; yet such was still the paucity of attendants, that Madame de Beaumont, even while she descended from her carriage, and began to ascend the “grand escalier,” had need to look, from time to time, at the splendid fresco paintings which decorated the walls, and the crowns and fleurs-de-lis with which all the cornices were ornamented, before she could satisfy herself that she really was in the royal chateau of St. Germain.
Pauline’s eyes, fixed on the floor, wandered little to any of the objects round, yet, perhaps, the vast spaciousness of the palace, contrasted with the scarcity of its inhabitants, might cast even an additional degree of gloom over her mind, saddened, as it already was, by the occurrences of the day. Doubtless, in the remote parts of Languedoc, where Pauline de Beaumont had hitherto dwelt, gay visions of a court had come floating upon imagination like the lamps which the Hindoos commit to the waters of the Ganges, casting a wild and uncertain light upon the distant prospect; and it is probable, that even if St. Germain had possessed all its former splendour, Pauline would still have been disappointed, for youthful imagination always outrivals plain reality; and besides, there is an unpleasing feeling of solitude communicated by the aspect of a strange place, which detracts greatly from the first pleasure of novelty. Thus there were a thousand reasons why Mademoiselle de Beaumont, as she followed the attendant through the long empty galleries and vacant chambers of the palace, towards the apartments prepared for her mother and herself, felt none of those happy sensations which she had anticipated from her arrival at court; nor was it till, on entering the antechamber of their suite of rooms, she beheld the gay smiling face of her Lyonaise waiting-maid, that she felt there was any thing akin to old recollections within those cold and pompous walls, which seemed to look upon her as a stranger.
The soubrette had been sent forward the day before with a part of the Marchioness de Beaumont’s equipage; and now, having endured a whole day’s comparative silence with the patience and fortitude of a martyr, she advanced to the two ladies with loquacity in her countenance, as if resolved to make up, as speedily as possible, for the restraint under which her tongue had laboured during her short sojourn in the palace; but the deep gravity of Madame de Beaumont, and the melancholy air of her daughter, checked Louise in full career; so that, having kissed her mistress on both cheeks, she paused, while her lip, like an overfilled reservoir whose waters are trembling on the very brink, seemed ready to pour forth the torrent of words which she had so long suppressed.
Pauline, as she passed through the anteroom, wiped the last tears from her eyes, and on entering the saloon, advanced towards a mirror which hung between the windows, as if to ascertain what traces they had left behind. The soubrette did not fail to advance, in order to adjust her young lady’s dress, and finding herself once more in the exercise of her functions, the right of chattering seemed equally restored; for she commenced immediately, beginning in a low and respectful voice, but gradually increasing as the thought of her mistress was swallowed up in the more comprehensive idea of herself.
“Oh, dear Mademoiselle,” said she, “I am so glad you are come at last. This place is so sad and so dull! Who would think it was a court? Why, I expected to see it all filled with lords and ladies, and instead of that, I have seen nothing but dismal-looking men, who go gliding about in silence, seeming afraid to open their lips, as if that cruel old Cardinal, whom they all tremble at, could hear every word they say. I did see one fine-looking gentleman this morning, to be sure, with his servants all in beautiful liveries of blue and gold, and horses as if there were fire coming out of their very eyes; but he rode away to hunt, after he had been half an hour with the Queen and Mademoiselle de Hauteford, as they call her.”
“Mademoiselle who?” exclaimed Pauline, quickly, as if startled from her reverie by something curious in the name. “Who did you say, Louise?”
“Oh, such a pretty young lady!” replied the waiting-woman. “Mademoiselle de Hauteford is her name. I saw her this morning as she went to the Queen’s levee. She has eyes as blue as the sky, and teeth like pearls themselves; but withal she looks as cold and as proud as if she were the Queen’s own self.”
While the soubrette spoke, Pauline raised her large dark eyes to the tall Venetian mirror which stood before her, and which had never reflected any thing lovelier than herself, as hastily she passed her fair small hand across her brow, brushing back the glossy ringlets that hung clustering over her forehead. But she was tired and pale with fatigue and anxiety; her eyes, too, bore the traces of tears, and with a sigh and look of dissatisfaction, she turned away from the mirror, which, like every other invention of human vanity, often procures us disappointment as well as gratification.
Madame de Beaumont’s eyes had been fixed upon Pauline; and translating her daughter’s looks with the instinctive acuteness of a mother, she approached with more gentleness than was her wont. “You are beautiful enough, my Pauline,” said she, pressing a kiss upon her cheek; “you are beautiful enough. Do not fear.”
“Nay, Mamma,” replied Pauline, “I have nothing to fear, either from possessing or from wanting beauty.”
“Thou art a silly girl, Pauline,” continued her mother, “and take these trifles far too much to heart. Perhaps I was wrong concerning this same picture. It was but a random guess. Besides, even were it true, where were the mighty harm? These men are all alike, Pauline—Like butterflies, they rest on a thousand flowers before they settle on any one. We all fancy that our own lover is different from his fellows; but, believe me, my child, the best happiness a woman can boast, is that of being most carefully deceived.”
“Then no such butterfly love for me, Mamma,” replied Pauline, her cheek slightly colouring as she spoke. “I would rather not know this sweet poison—love. My heart is still free, though my fancy may have—have—”
“May have what, Pauline?” demanded her mother, with a doubtful smile. “My dear child, thy heart, and thy fancy, I trow, have not been so separate as thou thinkest.”
“Nay, Mamma,” answered Pauline, “my fancy, like an insect, may have been caught in the web of a spider; but the enemy has not yet seized me, and I will break through while I can.”
“But, first, let us be sure that we are right,” said Madame de Beaumont. “For as every rule has its exception, there be some men, whose hearts are even worthy the acceptance of a squeamish girl, who, knowing nothing of the world, expects to meet with purity like her own. At all events, love, De Blenau is the soul of honour, and will not stoop to deceit. In justice, you must not judge without hearing him.”
“But,” said Pauline, not at all displeased with the refutation of her own ideas, and even wishing, perhaps, to afford her mother occasion to combat them anew,—“but—”
The sentence, however, was never destined to be concluded; for, as she spoke, the door of the apartment opened, and a form glided in, the appearance of which instantly arrested the words on Pauline’s lips, and made her draw back with an instinctive feeling of respect.
The lady who entered had passed that earlier period of existence when beauties and graces succeed each other without pause, like the flowers of spring, that go blooming on from the violet to the rose. She was in the summer of life, but it was the early summer, untouched by autumn; and her form, though it possessed no longer the airy lightness of youth, had acquired in dignity a degree of beauty which compensated for the softer loveliness that years had stolen away. Her brown hair fell in a profusion of large curls round a face, which, if not strictly handsome, was highly pleasing: and even many sorrows and reverses, by mingling an expression of patient melancholy with the gentle majesty of her countenance, produced a greater degree of interest than the features could have originally excited.
Those even who sought for mere beauty of feature, would have perceived that her eyes were quick and fine; that her skin was of the most delicate whiteness, except where it was disfigured by the use of rouge; and that her small mouth might have served as model to a statuary, especially while her lips arched with a warm smile of pleasure and affection, as advancing into the apartment, she pressed Madame de Beaumont to her bosom, who on her part, bending low, received the embrace of Anne of Austria with the humble deference of a respectful subject towards the condescension of their sovereign.
“Once more restored to me, my dear Madame de Beaumont!” said the Queen. “His Eminence of Richelieu does indeed give me back one of the best of my friends—And this is your Pauline.”—She added, turning to Mademoiselle de Beaumont, “You were but young, my fair Demoiselle, when last I saw you. You have grown up a lovely flower from a noble root; but truly you will never be spoiled by splendour at our court.”
As she spoke, her mind seemed naturally to return to other days, and her eye fixed intently on the ground, as if engaged in tracing out the plan of her past existence, running over all the lines of sorrow, danger and disappointed hope, till the task became too bitter, and she turned to the Marchioness with one of those long deep sighs, that almost always follow a review of the days gone by, forming a sort of epitaph to the dreams, the wishes, and the joys, that once were dear, and are now no more.
“When you met me, De Beaumont,” said the Queen, “with the proud Duke of Guise on the banks of the Bidasoa—quitting the kingdom of my father, and entering the kingdom of my husband—with an army for my escort, and princes kneeling at my feet—little, little did ever you or I think, that Anne of Austria, the wife of a great king, and daughter of a long line of monarchs, would, in after years, be forced to dwell at St. Germain, without guards, without court, without attendants, but such as the Cardinal de Richelieu chooses to allow her.—The Cardinal de Richelieu!” she proceeded thoughtfully; “the servant of my husband!—but no less the master of his master, and the king of his king.”
“I can assure your Majesty,” replied Madame de Beaumont, with a deep tone of feeling which had no hypocrisy in it, for her whole heart was bound by habit, principle, and inclination, to her royal mistress—“I can assure your Majesty, that many a tear have I shed over the sorrows of my Queen; and when his Eminence drove me from the court, I regretted not the splendour of a palace, I regretted not the honour of serving my sovereign, I regretted not the friends I left behind, or the hopes I lost, but I regretted that I could not be the sharer of my mistress’s misfortunes.—But your Majesty has now received a blessing from Heaven,” she continued, willing to turn the conversation from the troubled course of memory to the more agreeable channels of hope—“a blessing which we scarcely dreamed of, a consolation under all present sorrows, and a bright prospect for the years to come.
“Oh, yes, my little Louis, you would say,” replied the Queen, her face lightening with all a mother’s joy as she spoke of her son. “He is indeed a cherub; and sure am I, that if God sends him years, he will redress his mother’s wrongs by proving the greatest of his race.”
She spoke of the famous Louis the Fourteenth, and some might have thought she prophesied. But it was only the fervour of a mother’s hope, an ebullition of that pure feeling, which alone, of all the affections of the heart, the most sordid poverty cannot destroy, and the proudest rank can hardly check.
“He is indeed a cherub,” continued the Queen; “and such was your Pauline to you, De Beaumont, when the Cardinal drove you from my side: a consolation not only in your exile, but also in your mourning for your noble lord. Come near, young lady; let me see if thou art like thy father.”
Pauline approached; and the Queen laying her hand gently upon her arm, ran her eye rapidly over her face and figure, every now and then pausing for a moment, and seeming to call memory to her aid, in the comparison she was making between the dead and the living. But suddenly she started back, “Sainte Vierge!” cried she, crossing herself, “your dress is all dabbled with blood. What bad omen is this?”
“May it please your Majesty,” said the Marchioness, half smiling at the Queen’s superstition, for her own strong mind rejected many of the errors of the day, “that blood is only an omen of Pauline’s charitable disposition; for in the forest hard by, we came up with a wounded cavalier, and, like a true demoiselle errante, Pauline rendered him personal aid, even at the expense of her robe.”
“Nay, nay, De Beaumont,” said the Queen, “it matters not how it came; it is a bad omen: some misfortune is about to happen. I remember the day before my father died, the Conde de Saldaña came to court with a spot of blood upon the lace of his cardinal; and on that fatal day which——”
The door of the apartment at this moment opened, and Anne of Austria, filled with her own peculiar superstition, stopped in the midst of her speech and turned her eye anxiously towards it, as if she expected the coming of some ghastly apparition. The figure that entered, however, though it possessed a dignity scarcely earthly, and a calm still grace—an almost inanimate composure, rarely seen in beings agitated by human passions, was, nevertheless, no form calculated to inspire alarm.
“Oh, Mademoiselle de Hauteford!” cried the Queen, her face brightening as she spoke, “De Beaumont, you will love her, for that she is one of my firmest friends.”
At the name of De Hauteford, Pauline drew up her slight elegant figure to its full height, with a wild start, like a deer suddenly frightened by some distant sound, and drawing her hand across her forehead, brushed back the two or three dark curls which had again fallen over her clear fair brow.
“De Hauteford!” cried Anne of Austria as the young lady advanced, “what has happened? You look pale—some evil is abroad.”
“I would not have intruded on your Majesty, or on these ladies,” said Mademoiselle de Hauteford with a graceful but cold inclination of the head towards the strangers, “had it not been that Monsieur Seguin, your Majesty’s Surgeon, requests the favour of an audience immediately. Nor does he wish to be seen by the common attendants; in truth, he has followed me to the antechamber, where he waits your Majesty’s pleasure.”
“Admit him, admit him!” cried the Queen. “What can he want at this hour?”
The surgeon was instantly brought into the presence of the Queen by Mademoiselle de Hauteford; but, after approaching his royal mistress with a profound bow, he remained in silence glancing his eye towards the strangers who stood in the apartment, in such a manner as to intimate that his communication required to be made in private.
“Speak, speak, Seguin!” cried the Queen, translating his look and answering it at once; “these are all friends, old and dear friends.”
“If such be your Majesty’s pleasure,” replied the Surgeon, with that sort of short dry voice, which generally denotes a man of few words. “I must inform you at once, that young Count de Blenau has been this morning attacked by robbers, while hunting in the forest, and is severely hurt.”
While Seguin communicated this intelligence, Pauline (she scarce knew why) fixed her eye upon Mademoiselle de Hauteford, whose clear pale cheek, ever almost of the hue of alabaster, showed that it could become still paler. The Queen too, though the rouge she wore concealed any change of complexion, appeared manifestly agitated. “I told you so, De Beaumont,” she exclaimed—“that blood foreboded evil: I never knew the sign to fail. This is bad news truly, Seguin,” she continued. “Poor De Blenau! surely he will not die.”
“I hope not, Madam,” replied the Surgeon; “I see every chance of his recovery.”
“But speak more freely,” said the Queen. “Have you learnt any thing from him? These are all friends, I tell you.”
“The Count is very weak, Madam,” answered Seguin, “both from loss of blood and a stunning blow on the head; but he desired me to tell your Majesty, that though the wound is in his side, his heart is uninjured!”
“Oh, I understand, I understand,” exclaimed the Queen. “De Blenau is one out of a thousand; I must write him a note; follow me, Seguin. Good night, dear Madame de Beaumont. Farewell, Pauline!—Come to my levee to-morrow, and we will talk over old stories and new hopes.—But have a care, Pauline—No more blood upon your robe. It is a bad sign in the house of Austria.”
The moment the Queen was gone, Pauline pleaded fatigue, and retired to her chamber, followed by her maid Louise, who, be it remarked, had remained in the room during the Royal visit.
“This is a strange place, this St. Germain,” said the waiting-woman, as she undressed her mistress.
“It is indeed!” replied Pauline. “I wish I had never seen it. But of one thing let me warn you, Louise, before it is too late. Never repeat any thing you may see or hear, while you are at the court; for if you do, your life may answer for it.”
“My life! Mademoiselle Pauline,” exclaimed the soubrette, as if she doubted her ears.
“Yes indeed, your life!” replied the young lady: “So beware.”
“Then I wish I had never seen the place either,” rejoined the maid; “for what is the use of seeing and hearing things, if one may not talk about them?—and who can be always watching one’s tongue?”
CHAPTER V.
A Chapter of mighty import, which may be read or not, as the Reader thinks fit, the Book being quite as well without it.
WITH the happy irregularity of all true stories, we must return, for a moment, to a very insignificant person,—the Woodman of Mantes. Indeed, I have to beg my reader’s pardon for saying so much about any one under the rank of a Chevalier at least; but all through this most untractable of all histories, I have been pestered with a set of shabby fellows in very indifferent circumstances. Woodcutters, robbers, gentlemen’s servants, and the like, who make themselves so abominably useful, that though we wish them at the Devil all the time, we can no way do without them. Let the sin not be attributed to me; for I declare, upon my conscience, that when first I undertook to record this tale, I attempted a thorough reform; I superseded a great number of subordinate characters, put others upon the retired list, and dismissed a great many as useless sinecurists; but when I had done, all was in confusion; and then, after considering matters for half an hour, and turning over a page or two in the book of Nature, I found, that the most brilliant actions and the greatest events were generally brought about from the meanest motives and most petty causes: I perceived, that women and valets de-chambre govern the world: I found that saur-kraut had disagreed with Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, made her insolent to Queen Anne, made Queen Anne threaten to box her ears, made England resign her advantages over France—placed the Bourbon dynasty on the throne of Spain, and changed the face of Europe even to the present day. So, if saur-kraut did all this, surely I may return to Philip, the woodman of Mantes.
Chavigni, as we have seen, cast his purse upon the ground, and rode away from the cottage of the Woodman, little heeding what so insignificant an agent might do or say. Yet Philip’s first thought was one which would have procured him speedy admission to the Bastille, had Chavigni been able to divine its nature. “The young Count shall know all about it,” said Philip to himself. “That’s a great rogue in Isabel and silver, for all his fine clothes, or I’m much mistaken.”
His next object of attention was the purse; and after various pros and cons, Inclination, the best logician in the world, reasoned him into taking it. “For,” said Philip, “dirty fingers soil no gold;” and having carefully put it into his pouch, the Woodman laid his finger upon the side of his nose, and plunged headlong into a deep meditation concerning the best and least suspicious method of informing the young Count de Blenau of all he had seen, heard, or suspected. We will not follow the course of this cogitation, which, as it doubtless took place in the French tongue, must necessarily suffer by translation, but taking a short cut straight through all the zig-zags of Philip’s mind, arrive directly at the conclusion, or rather at the consequences, which were these. In the first place, he commanded his son Charles to load the mule with wood, notwithstanding the boy’s observation, that no one would buy wood at that time of the morning, or rather the night; for, to make use of Shakspeare’s language, the Morn, far from being yet clad in any russet mantle, was snugly wrapped up in the blanket of the dark, and snoring away, fast asleep, like her betters.
Precisely in the same situation as Aurora, that is to say, soundly sleeping, till her ordinary hour of rising, was Joan, the Woodman’s wife. Philip, however, by sundry efforts, contrived to awaken her to a sense of external things; and perceiving that, after various yawns and stretches, her mind had arrived at the point of comprehending a simple proposition, “Get up, Joan, get up!” cried he. “I want you to write a letter for me; writing being a gift that, by the blessing of God, I do not possess.”
The wife readily obeyed; for Philip, though as kind as the air of spring, had a high notion of marital privileges, and did not often suffer his commands to be disputed within his little sphere of dominion. However, it seemed a sort of tenure by which his sway was held, that Joan, his wife, should share in all his secrets; and accordingly, in the present instance, the good Woodman related in somewhat prolix style, not only all that had passed between Chavigni and Lafemas in the house, but much of what they had said before they even knocked at his door.
“For you must know, Joan,” said he, “that I could not sleep for thinking of all this day’s bad work; and, as I lay awake, I heard horses stop at the water, and people speaking, and very soon what they said made me wish to hear more, which I did, as I have told you. And now, Joan, I think it right, as a Christian and a man, to let this young cavalier know what they are plotting against him. So sit thee down; here is a pen and ink, and a plain sheet out of the boy’s holy catechism,—God forgive me! But it could not go to a better use.”
It matters not much to tell all the various considerations which were weighed and discussed by Philip and his wife in the construction of this epistle. Suffice it to say, that like two unskilful players at battledoor and shuttlecock, they bandied backwards and forwards the same objections a thousand times between them, for ever letting them drop, and taking them up again anew, till such time as day was well risen before they finished. Neither would it much edify the world, in all probability, to know the exact style and tenor of the composition when it was complete, although Philip heard his wife read it over with no small satisfaction, and doubtless thought it as pretty a piece of oratory as ever was penned.
It is now unfortunately lost to the public, and all that can be satisfactorily vouched upon the subject is, that it was calculated to convey to the Count de Blenau all the information which the Woodcutter possessed, although that information might be clothed in homely language, without much perfection, either in writing or orthography.