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CONTENTS

THE HUGUENOT.

[VOL. I.]

London:
Printed by A. Spottiswoode,
New-Street-Square.

THE

HUGUENOT

A TALE

OF

THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF

"THE GIPSY," "THE ROBBER,"
&c. &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR

LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS,

PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1839.

[DEDICATION.]

TO

CHARLES RUDOLPHE

LORD CLINTON,

&c. &c. &c.

My Lord,

Although I, of course, look upon the book, which I now venture to dedicate to one whom I so much esteem and respect, with those parental prejudices which make us often overlook all defects, and magnify any good qualities in our offspring, yet, believe me, I feel that it is very far inferior to that which I could wish to present to you. Do not, then, measure my regard by the value of the work, but accept it only as a very slight testimony of great esteem; and, at the same time, allow me, even in my Dedication, to say a few words concerning the book itself.

I will not trouble you or the public with any reasoning upon the general conduct of the story--why I suddenly changed the scene here, or flew off to another character there,--why I gave but a glimpse of such a personage, or dwelt long and minutely upon another. I believe and trust that those who read the work attentively will discover strong reasons for all such proceedings, and I am quite sure that much thought and care was bestowed on each step of the kind before it was taken. Your own good taste will decide whether I was right or wrong, and blame or approve, I know, whatever I might plead. The public will do so also; and, as a general rule, I think it best to conceal, as far as possible, in all cases, the machinery of a composition of this kind, suffering the wheels to produce their effect without being publicly exhibited.

I have heard many authors blamed, however, and, doubtless, have been so myself, for frequently changing the scene or character before the reader's eyes. There are people who read a romance only for the story, and these are always displeased with anything that interrupts their straightforward progress. But nature does not tell her stories in such a way as these readers desire; and, in the course of human life, there are always little incidents occurring, which seem of no earthly importance at the time, but which, in years long after, affect persons and produce events where no one could imagine that such a connexion is likely to be brought about.

I have always in this respect, as in all others, endeavoured to the best of my abilities to copy nature; and those readers who pass over little incidents, because they seem at the time irrelevant, or run on to follow the history of one character whenever a less interesting personage is brought upon the scene, will derive little either of profit or pleasure from any well constructed work of fiction. I have, as far as possible, avoided in all my works bringing prominently forward any character or any scene which has not a direct influence upon the progress and end of the tales; but I have equally avoided pointing out to the superficial reader, by any flourish of trumpets, that the personage he thinks of no importance is "to turn out a great man in the end," or that the scene which seems unconnected and irrelevant will be found not without results.

Besides these considerations, however, I trust every romance-writer in the present day proposes to himself greater objects than the mere telling of a good story. He who, in the course of a well-conceived and interesting tale, excites our good passions to high and noble aspirations; depicts our bad passions so as to teach us to abhor and govern them; arrays our sympathies on the side of virtue, benevolence, and right; expands our hearts, and makes the circle of our feelings and affections more comprehensive; stores our imaginations with images bright, and sweet, and beautiful; makes us more intimately and philosophically acquainted with the characters of our fellow-men; and, in short, causes the reader to rise wiser and with a higher appreciation of all that is good and great,--attains the grand object at which every man should aim, and deserves the thanks and admiration of mankind. Even he who makes the attempt, though without such success, does something, and never can write altogether in vain.

That you, to whom I inscribe this work, can appreciate such purposes, and will encourage the attempt, even where, as in these pages, it goes little beyond endeavour, is no slight pleasure to me: nor is it an unmeaning or insincere compliment when I say, that though I yield my own opinions to no man, yet I have often thought of you and yours while I have been writing these volumes. I know not whether you remember saying one day, after we had visited together the school instituted by our noble acquaintance Guicciardini, "that whether it succeeded or failed, the endeavour to do good ought to immortalize him." Perhaps you have forgotten the words, but I have not.

Allow me, ere I end this long epistle, to add something in regard to the truth of the representations made in the work, and the foundation on which the story rests. If you will look into the curious "Mémoires Historiques sur la Bastille," published in 1789 (vol. i., page 203), you will find some of the bare facts, as they are stated in the Great Register of the Bastille, on which the plot of the tale that follows entirely hinges.

Of course I cannot forestall my story by alluding more particularly to those facts; and I have only further to say on that subject, that for many reasons I have altered the names inserted in the Great Register. I have also taken the same liberty with regard to the scenes of many events which really occurred, placing in Poitou what sometimes took place in Dauphiny, sometimes in Provence. Nor have I felt myself bound in all instances to respect the exact dates, having judged it expedient to bring many events within a short compass which were spread over a greater space of time. I have endeavoured, however, to represent most accurately, without prejudice or favour, the conduct of the French Catholics to French Protestants, and of Protestants to Catholics, during the persecutions of the seventeenth century. My love and esteem for many excellent Catholics--priests as well as laity--would prevent me, I believe, from viewing the question of the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and the consequences thereof, with a prejudiced eye; and when I read the following passages in the writings, not of a Protestant, but of a sincere Catholic, I am only inclined to doubt whether I have not softened the picture of persecution.

"Il restait peu à faire pour exciter le zèle du roi contre une religion solemnellement frappée des plus éclatans anathèmes par l'église universelle, et qui s'en était elle-même frappée la première en se séparant de tout l'antiquité sur des points de foi fondamentaux.

"Le roi était devenu dévot, et dévot dans la dernière ignorance. A la dévotion se joignit la politique. On voulut lui plaire par les endroits qui le touchaient le plus sensiblement, la dévotion et l'autorité. On lui peignit les Huguenots avec les plus noires couleurs; un état dans un état, parvenu à ce point de licence à force de désordres, de révoltes, de guerres civiles, d'alliances étrangères, de résistance à force ouverte contre les rois ses prédécesseurs, et jusqu'à lui-même réduit à vivre en traité avec eux. Mais on se garda bien de lui apprendre la source de tant de maux, les origines de leurs divers dégrès et de leurs progrès, pourquoi et par qui les Huguenots furent premièrement armés, puis soutenus, et surtout de lui dire un seul mot des projets de si longue main pourpensés, des horreurs et des attentats de la ligue contre sa couronne, contre sa maison, contre son père, son aïeul, et tous les siens.

"On lui voila avec autant de soin ce que l'évangile, et d'après cette divine loi les apôtres, et tous les pères et leur suite, enseignent la manière de prêcher Jésus Christ, de convertir les infidèles et les hérétiques, et de se conduire en ce qui regarde la religion. On toucha un dévot de la douceur de faire, aux dépens d'autrui, une pénitence facile qu'on lui persuada sure pour l'autre monde. * * * * *

"Les grands ministres n'étaient plus alors. Le Tellier au lit de la mort, son funeste fils était le seul qui restât, car Seignelay ne faisait guère que poindre. Louvois, avide de guerre, atterré sous le poids d'une trève de vingt ans, qui ne faisait presque que d'être signée, espéra qu'un si grand coup porté aux Huguenots réunirait tout le Protestantisme de l'Europe, et s'applaudit en attendant de ce que le roi ne pouvant frapper sur les Huguenots que par ses troupes, il en serait le principal exécuteur, et par là de plus en plus en crédit. L'esprit et le génie de Madame de Maintenon, tel qu'il vient d'être représenté avec exactitude, n'était rien moins que propre, ni capable d'aucune affaire au-delà de l'intrigue. Elle n'était pas née ni nourrie à voir sur celle-ci au-delà de ce qui lui en était presenté, moins encore pour ne pas saisir avec ardeur une occasion si naturelle de plaire, d'admirer, de s'affermir de plus en plus par la dévotion. Qui d'ailleurs eût su un mot de ce qui ne se délibérait qu'entre le confesseur, le ministre alors comme unique, et l'épouse nouvelle et chérie; et qui de plus eût osé contredire? C'est ainsi que sont menés à tout, par une voie ou par une autre, les rois qui, par grandeur, par défiance, par abandon à ceux qui les tiennent, par paresse ou par orgueil, ne se communiquent qu'à deux ou trois personnes, et bien souvent à moins, et qui mettent entre eux et tout le reste de leurs sujets une barrière insurmontable.

"La revocation de l'édit de Nantes, sans le moindre prétexte et sans aucun besoin, et les diverses proscriptions plutôt que déclarations qui la suivirent, furent les fruits de ce complot affreux qui dépeupla un quart du royaume; qui ruina son commerce; qui l'affaiblit dans toutes ses parties; qui le mit si longtemps au pillage public et avoué des dragons; qui autorisa les tourmens et les supplices dans lesquels ils firent réellement mourir tant d'innocens de tout sexe par milliers; qui ruina un peuple si nombreux; qui déchira un monde de familles; qui arma les parens contre les parens pour avoir leur bien et les laisser mourir de faim; qui fit passer nos manufactures aux étrangers, fit fleurir et regorger leurs états aux dépens du nôtre, et leur fit bâtir de nouvelles villes; qui leur donna le spectacle d'un si prodigieux peuple proscrit, nu, fugitif, errant sans crime, cherchant asile loin de sa patrie; qui mit nobles, riches, vieillards, gens souvent très-estimés pour leur piété, leur savoir, leur vertu, des gens aisés, faibles, délicats, à la ruine, et sous le nerf très-effectif du comité, pour cause unique de religion; enfin qui, pour comble de toutes horreurs, remplit toutes les provinces du royaume de parjures et de sacrilèges, où tout retentissait de hurlemens de ces infortunées victimes de l'erreur, pendant que tant d'autres sacrifiaient leur conscience à leurs biens et à leur repos, et achetaient l'un et l'autre par des abjurations simulées, d'où sans intervalle on les traînait à adorer ce qu'ils ne croyaient point, et à recevoir réellement le divin corps du saint des saints, tandis qu'ils demeuraient persuadés qu'ils ne mangeaient que du pain qu'ils devaient encore abhorrer. Telle fut l'abomination générale enfantée par la flatterie et par la cruauté. De la torture à l'abjuration, et de celle-ci à la communion, il n'y avait pas souvent vingt-quatre heures de distance, et leurs bourreaux étaient leurs conducteurs et leurs témoins. Ceux qui, par la suite, eurent l'air d'être changés avec plus de loisir, ne tardèrent pas par leur fuite ou par leur conduite à démentir leur pretendu retour."--St. Simon, vol. xiii. p. 113. ed. 1829.

I have now nothing further to say, my dear Lord Clinton, but to beg your pardon for having already said so much, and to express a hope that you and the public will deal leniently by that which is now offered to you, with the highest respect and esteem, by

Yours most faithfully,

G. P. R. James.

Fair Oak Lodge, Petersfield.
17th Nov. 1838.

THE HUGUENOT.

CHAPTER I.

[THE HERO, HIS FRIEND, AND HIS DWELLING IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.]

There is a small town in one of the remote provinces of France, about ten miles from the sea shore, and two or three hundred from the capital, on the appearance of which it may be as well to dwell for a short time; noticing not alone its houses and its streets as they appeared in the seventeenth century, but its inhabitants, their feelings, and their customs, at that period.

Were we not to make this formal sort of presentation, the reader would feel as if set down suddenly amidst a crowd of strangers with no one to introduce him, with no one to unpadlock the barrier which the cautious laws of society set up between man and man, to guard against the wild-beast propensities of the race of intellectual tigers to which we belong. Now, however, if we manage skilfully, the reader may become as familiar with the people of another day, and scenes of another land, as if they had been the playfellows of his childhood, and the haunts of his youth; and may go on calmly with those to whom he is thus introduced through the dark and painful events which are recorded in the pages that follow.

That part of France in which our scene is laid, presents features which differ very much from the dull and uninteresting aspect of the land from Calais to Paris, and from Paris to the mountains of Switzerland--the route generally pursued by our travelling countrymen, whether they go forth to make what is usually called the grand tour, or content themselves with idling away a long space of mispent time amongst the Helvetian mountains. In the district that I speak of, the face of the country, though it cannot perhaps be called mountainous, is richly varied, running up into occasional high and pointed hills, presenting frequent masses of rock and wood, diversified by a mile or two, here and there, of soft pasture and meadow; with innumerable streams--some calm and peaceful, some fierce and torrent-like, some sparkling and playful, giving an air of life and glad activity to the land through which they flow. These manifold streams shed also a hue of indescribable verdure, a fresh leafyness of aspect, that is most grateful to the eye; and though there is not there, as in our own land, the frequent hedge-row, with its sweet village associations, yet there is no want of high umbrageous trees scattered here and there, besides the thick woods that, in many places, occupy several leagues in extent, and the lesser copses that nest themselves in many a dell.

The district that we speak of is bright in its skies and warm in its sunshine, though it is not precisely in the region of the richest vine; and there are scarcely five days, during six months of the year, in which, on every stony bank or on the short soft turf above the large lizards may not be seen basking in their coats of green and gold. There are not, indeed, the cloudless skies of Italy, which, notwithstanding their splendid colouring, are insipid from their very cloudlessness: no, but wreathed in grand masses by the free air, sometimes drifting from the British channel, sometimes sweeping from the wide western ocean, the clouds and the sunshine sport together in the heaven, while the shadow and the light chase each other over the earth below, and ever and anon comes down a passing shower, refreshing the lands it lights upon, and leaving them brighter than before.

On the top of one of the tall rocky hills we have mentioned, in very remote feudal times,--for we find it mentioned in all the wars undertaken by the Edwards and the Henries in their vain endeavours to grasp a crown that did not belong to them,--a town had been built and fortified, circumscribed by large stone walls flanked by round towers, and crowned by the square keep of a castle, only one wall of which has been left, for now near a century and a half. This town was of small size, occupying nothing but the summit of the hill, and was strictly confined within the walls; and, indeed, below, on three sides, were such steep ascents--in some places showing precipitous spaces of rude rock, and in others covered with short, green, slippery turf--that it was scarcely possible for the inhabitants to have built beyond the walls, except on one side, even if they had been so inclined.

In such times of danger, however, it had been the object of those who possessed the town to keep that fourth side, by which the ascent was more easy, clear from all houses and buildings of any kind, so that the quarrels from the cross-bow, the arrows from the bow, or the balls from the cannon--as different ages brought different inventions--might sweep down unimpeded upon any approaching enemy, and that the eye might also have a free range to discover the approach of a foe. Thus that gentler slope was not even broken by a road till the end of the sixteenth century, the way up to the town from the valley below being constructed with great skill and care upon one of the steepest sides of the hill, by means of wide short platforms, each of which was defended by some particular fortification of its own, while the whole line of the valley and the lower part of the road were commanded by the cannon of the castle of St. Anne, a rude old fortress on an inferior hill, of little or no use to any persons but those who possessed the higher and more important works above. Through the valley and winding round the foot of the hill of St. Anne was a wide, clear, beautiful stream, navigable up to that spot, and falling into the sea at the distance of ten or twelve miles in a direct line, but which contrived to extend its course, by the tortuous path that it pursued amongst the hills, to a length of nearly twenty leagues.

Such as we have described was the situation, in feudal times, of the small town that we shall call Morseiul; but ere the commencement of our tale those feudal times had passed away. Even during the wars of the League the town had remained in tranquillity and repose. It was remote from the general scene of strife; and although it had sent out many who aided, and not insignificantly, in upholding the throne of Henry IV., there was but one occasion on which the tide of war flowed near its walls, and then speedily retreated, and left it unassailed.

Under these circumstances fortifications were soon neglected--precautions were no longer taken--the cannon for half a century remained upon the walls unused--rust and honeycomb began to gnaw into the heart of the iron--sheds were erected in the embrasures--houses succeeded--gardens were laid out in the round towers--the castle of St. Anne fell utterly into ruins--and some of the patriotic and compassionate inhabitants thought it a hard tax upon the sinews of the horses, who in those days carried from place to place the merchandise of the country, to be forced to climb the zizgag path of one of the more precipitous sides of the hill. Thus in the early part of the reign of Louis XIII. a petition was addressed by the inhabitants to their count, who still retained all his feudal rights and privileges, beseeching him to construct or permit the construction of a gate upon the southern side of the town, and a road down the easier descent.

The count, who was a good-humoured man, a nobleman of the school of Henry IV., and as fond of the people of the good town as they were of him, was quite willing to gratify them in any reasonable desire; but he was the more moved to do what they wished in the present instance, inasmuch as some ten or fifteen years before he had himself broken through the old rules and regulations established in the commune, and not only built himself a château beyond the walls of that very side, but laid out a space of two or three acres of ground in such a manner as to give him shade when he wanted it, and sunshine when the shade was not agreeable.

Of the château we shall speak hereafter: but it is only here necessary to say, that in building this dwelling beyond the walls, the Count de Morseiul of that day had forgotten altogether the possibility of carrying a road down that side of the hill. He had constructed a way for himself into the town by enlarging an old postern in the walls, which he caused to open into his garden, and by this postern, whenever he sought to issue forth into the country beyond, he took his way into the town, traversed the square, and followed the old zigzag road down the steep side of the hill. The peasantry, indeed, had not failed to think of that which their lord had overlooked, and when they had a dozen or two of pigeons, or a pair of fowls, or a fat calf to present to the seigneur, they almost invariably brought it by the slope up the hill. A path had thus been worn from the valley below in the precise direction which was best fitted for the road, and whenever the good townsmen presented their petition to the count, it instantly struck him how very convenient such a road would be to himself as well as to them.

Now the count was neither a cunning nor an ungenerous man; and the moment he saw that the advantage to be derived would be to himself, he determined to open the gate, and make the road at his own expense without subjecting the commune or the peasantry to corvée or fine. He told the inhabitants so at once, and they, as they well might be, were grateful to him in consequence. He made the road, and a handsome one it was; and he threw down a part of the wall, and erected a splendid gate in its place. He gave no name, indeed, to either; but the people immediately and universally bestowed a name on both, and called them the Count's Gate, and the Count's Road, so that the act was perpetuated by the grateful memory of those whom it benefited.

As, following the example of the earth on which we live, every thing upon its surface moves forward, or perhaps we may say appears to move forward, while very likely it is going but in a circle, the opening of the gate and the making of the road was speedily followed by another step, which was the building of houses by the road-side; so that, at the period when our tale commences, the whole aspect, appearance, and construction of the town was altered. A long street, with gardens at the back of the houses, extended all the way down the gentle slope of the hill; the gate had been widened, the summit had been cleared of a great number of small houses, and a view was opened straight up into a fine gay-looking market square at the top, with the ruined wall of the old keep, raising its high head covered with ivy on the western side, and to the north the little church, with its tall thin-slated spire rising high, not only above the buildings of the town itself, but the whole of the country round, and forming a remarkable object, which was seen for many leagues at sea.

We are in this account supposing the reader to be looking up the street, which was turned towards the south, and was consequently full of sunshine towards the middle of the day. It would, indeed, have been intolerably hot in the summer, had it not been that the blessed irregularity of the houses contrived to give some shade at every hour of the four and twenty. But from the bottom of that street almost up to the top was to be seen, upon the left hand, rising above the buildings of the street itself, the weathercocks, and round turrets, and pointed roofs and loop-holes, and windows innumerable, which marked the château built by the count who had constructed the road; while here and there, too, were also seen the tops of the tall limes and elms with which he had shaded his gardens, and which had now grown up into tall splendid trees, flourishing in the years which had brought him to decay and death.

Into the little town of Morseiul had been early introduced the doctrines of Calvin, and the inhabitants clung to those doctrines with peculiar pertinacity. They had constantly sent volunteers to the protestant army; they had bestirred themselves in aid of La Rochelle, and had even despatched succour to the protestants of the far south. The weak, bigotted, and treacherous Louis XIII. had declared that they were the most obstinate heretics in his dominions, and had threatened against them many things, which the wisdom of his great minister had prevented him from performing. But the counts of Morseiul themselves had at all times rendered great services to the state: they had proved themselves on all occasions gallant and determined soldiers and skilful politicians; and, though they too held firm by the religion of their ancestors, and set equally at defiance both threats and seductions--which conduct formed the strongest link between them and their people--Richelieu had judged that it would be hazardous to drive them into open resistance to the crown. We may indeed surmise that he judged it unnecessary also, inasmuch as there can be no doubt that in his dealings with the Huguenots he treated them solely as a political party, and not as a religious sect.

Such being the case, though somewhat courting the persecutions of the times, the town of Morseiul had been left unmolested in the exercise of its religious tenets, and had enjoyed not only all the liberty which was granted to the protestants of France by the edict of Nantes, but various other privileges, obtained perhaps by a little encroachment, and retained by right of prescription.

The inhabitants were a hardy and determined race, frank and good-humoured, and possessing from various points in their position a great degree of simplicity in manners and character, mingled with much religious fervour. They had, indeed, of late years, been somewhat polished, or perhaps one might call it, corrupted. They had acquired more wants and more wishes from the increasing luxuriousness of the day; had heard with wonder, and not perhaps without some longing, of the splendours and the marvels and the gaieties of the court of Louis XIV., then in the bright and butterfly days of its youthful ostentation; and they felt strongly and beneficially the general impulse given to every sort of commerce by the genius of Colbert, and applied themselves to derive the utmost advantage therefrom, by pursuing with skill, activity, and perseverance, various manufactures, in which they displayed no small ingenuity. A good number of them had become wealthy, and all of them indeed were well off in the station of life in which they were placed. The artisan was rich for an artisan, as well as the burgess for a burgess; but they were all simple in their habits, not without their little pride, or without their luxuries on a holyday; but frugal and thoughtful as they were industrious. Such was the town of Morseiul and its inhabitants in the year 168--.

We must now turn to the château of the count, and to its denizens at the time of the opening of our tale. The château was built, as we have said, on the outside of the walls of the town, and was one of those odd buildings of which many a specimen has come down to us. It seemed to have been built by detached impulses, and upon no general plan, though, to admit nothing but the truth, the construction was attributable all to one person. The great hall was along, wide-spreading piece of architecture, with a high roof, and a row of windows turned to the south side, which was the front of the château. Then came two or three square masses of stone-work on either side of the hall, with the gables projecting to the front, no two of them of the same height and size; and many of them separated either by a tall round tower, with loopholes all the way up, like button-holes in the front of a waistcoat, or broken towards the roof by a turret stuck on and projecting from the rest of the building. On the western side of the château was a large square tower, with numerous windows, placed with some degree of regularity; and on the eastern, was an octangular tower containing a separate entrance of a somewhat Gothic character. Two large wings projected behind towards the town on which the château unceremoniously turned its back, and the large open space of ground thus enclosed, was again divided into two by a heavy transverse mass of building, as irregular as the external parts of the whole. The mansion was completed by the stables and offices for the servants and retainers, and the whole was pitched in the centre of a platform, which had formerly been one of the bastions of the town.

Behind the château, and between the building and the walls, were numerous trees, giving that space the name of the bocage, and through this lay the little walk that led to the postern, which was originally the only exit from the château. In front was a tolerably wide esplanade, extending to the edge of the bastion, and from the edge of the terrace descended a flight of steps to the slope below, on which had been laid out a flower-garden, separated from the rest of the ground by a stone wall, surmounted by flower-pots in the shape of vases. The remaining portion of the space enclosed was planted, according to the taste of that day, with straight rows of trees, on the beauties of which it is unnecessary to dwell.

The interior of the castle was fitted up in the taste of the reign of Henry IV. and Louis XIII., few changes having taken place since the time it was first furnished, immediately after it was built. Some of the rooms, indeed, contained the furniture of the older castle formerly inhabited by the counts, which furniture was of a much more remote age, and had been condemned, by scornful posterity, to the dusty oblivion which we so fondly pile upon our ancestors. It may be as well, however, to conduct the reader into one of the rooms of that château, and, telling him that we have ourselves sat therein, furnished exactly as it was then furnished, and looking exactly as it then looked, endeavour to make him see it as the glass of memory now gives it back to us.

It was a large oblong room, with a vaulted roof: not dome-shaped, indeed, for it was flat at the top; but from the walls towards the centre, it sloped for a considerable way before it received the flattened form which we mention. It was indeed a four-sided vault, with the top of the arches cut off. On two sides were windows, or perhaps we should call them casements, with the glass set in leaden frames, and opening only in part. The hearth and chimney were of enormous dimensions, with a seat on either side of the fire-place, which was a sort of raised platform of brick-work, ornamented with two large andirons grinning with lions' heads, for the reception of the fuel.

Over the chimney again was a wide slab of marble, supported by two marble scrolls; and a tablet, on which was recorded, with very tolerable latinity, that that château had been built by Francis Count of Morseiul, in the year of grace one thousand five hundred and ninety. Above this marble, far blacker than the dark oak panelling which supported it, hung an immense ebony frame, carved with a thousand curious figures, and containing a large round mirror of polished metal, reflecting, though in a different size, all the objects that the room contained. On the two sides of the chamber were one or two fine portraits by Rubens and Vandyke, also in ebony frames, but cursed with an internal border of gold. A multitude of high-backed chairs, only fitted for men in armour, and ladies with whalebone bodices; four cabinets of ebony, chequered with small lines of inlaid ivory, with immense locks, marked out by heavy, but not inelegant, silver shields; and two or three round tables, much too small for the size of the room, made up the rest of the furniture of the apartment, if we except some curious specimens of porcelain, and one or two curiosities brought by different members of the family from foreign lands. There was also a lute upon one of the tables, and ten long glasses, with a vein of gold in their taper stalks, ranged in battle array upon the mantelpiece.

The moment at which we shall begin our tale was about the hour of dinner in the province, at that period a very different hour from that at which we dine in the present day. The windows were all open, the bright sunshine was pouring in and throwing the small square panes into lozenges upon the flooring; and from that room, which was high up in the castle, might be seen as wide spread and beautiful a landscape as ever the eye rested upon, a world of verdure, streams, and woods, and hills, with the bright sky above.

Such was the chamber and its aspect at the period that we speak of; and we must now turn to those who inhabited it, and, in the first place, must depict them to the reader's eye, before we enter into any remarks or detailed account of their several characters, which, perhaps, we may be inclined to give in this instance, even while we admit that in general it is far better to suffer our personages to develope themselves and tell their own tale to the reader.

In all, there were some seven persons in that room; but there were only two upon whom we shall at present pause. They were seated at a table in the midst, on which were spread forth various viands in abundance, upon plates of silver of a rich and handsome form; while a profusion of the same metal in the shape of cups, forks, spoons, and lavers appeared upon another table near, which had been converted into a temporary sort of buffet. Ranged on the same buffet was also a multitude of green glass bottles, containing apparently, by their dusty aspect and well-worn corks, several kinds of old and choice wine; and five servants in plain but rich liveries, according to the fashion of that day, bustled about to serve the two superior persons at the table.

Those two persons were apparently very nearly of the same age, about the same height; and in corporeal powers they seemed also evenly matched; but in every other respect they were as different as can well be conceived. The one who sat at the side of the table farthest from the door was a man of about six or seven and twenty years of age, with a dark brown complexion, clear and healthy though not florid, and with large, full, deep-coloured gray eyes, fringed with long black lashes. His hair and mustaches were jet black; and the character of his countenance, for the moment at least, was serious and thoughtful. He was evidently a very powerful and vigorous man, deep-chested, long in the arm; and though, at first look, his form seemed somewhat spare, yet every motion displayed the swelling of strong muscles called into action; and few there were in that day who could have stood unmoved a buffet from his hand. Such was Albert Count of Morseiul, an officer so distinguished during the first wars of Louis XIV., that it is only necessary to name him to bring to the reader's recollection a long train of splendid actions.

Opposite to him sat a friend and comrade, who had gone through many a campaign with him, who had shared watchings, and dangers, and toils, had stood side by side with him in the "imminent deadly breach," and who was very much beloved by the Count, although the other often contrived to tease and annoy him, and sometimes to give him pain, by a certain idle and careless levity which had arisen amongst the young nobles of France some twenty years before, and had not yet been put out by that great extinguisher, the courtly form and ceremony which Louis XIV. placed upon every movement of the imagination.

The friend was, as we have said, very different from his host. Although not more than a year younger than the count, he had a less manly look, which might perhaps be owing to the difference of colouring; for he was of that fair complexion which the pictures of Vandyk have shown us can be combined with great vigour and character of expression. His features were marked and fine, his hazel eye piercing and quick, and his well-cut lip, varying indeed with every changing feeling or momentary emotion, still gave, by the peculiar bend in which it was fashioned when in repose, a peculiar tone of scornful playfulness to every expression his countenance assumed. In form, he appeared at first sight more powerful, perhaps, than the count; but a second glance was sufficient to show that such was not the case; and, though there was indeed little difference, if any thing, it was not in his favour.

We must pause for an instant to notice the dress of the two friends; not indeed to describe pourpoints or paint rich lace, but speak of their garments, as the taste thereof might be supposed to betoken some points in the character of each. The dress of the Count de Morseiul was in taste of the day; which was certainly as bad a taste, as far as it affected the habiliments of the male part of the human race, as could be devised; but he had contrived, by the exercise of his own judgment in the colouring, to deprive it of a part of its frightfulness. The hues were all deep-toned, but rich and harmonious; and though there was no want of fine lace, the ribands, which were then the reigning mode of the day, were reduced to as few in number as any Parisian tailor would consent to withhold from the garb of a high nobleman.

His friend, however, the Chevalier d'Evran, having opinions of his own to which he adhered with a wilful pertinacity, did not fully give in to the fashion of the times; and retained, as far as possible, without making himself a spectacle, the costume of an earlier period. If we may coin a word for the occasion, there was a good deal of Vandykism still about it. All the colours, too, were light and sunshiny; philomot and blue, and pink and gold; and jewels were not wanting, nor rich lace where they could be worn with taste; for though the liking was for splendour, and for a shining and glittering appearance, yet in all the arrangements there was a fine taste visibly predominant.

Such, then, was the general appearance of the two friends; and after partaking of the good things which both the table and the buffet displayed,--for during the meal itself the conversation was brief and limited to a few questions and answers,--the Chevalier turned his chair somewhat more towards the window, and gazing out over the prospect which was spread forth before his eyes, he said,--

"And so, Albert, this is Morseiul; and here thou art again after an absence of six years!"

"Even so, Louis," replied the Count, "even so. This is Morseiul; and I know not whether it be from that inherent love of the place in which some of our happiest days have been spent, or whether the country round us be in reality more lovely than any other that I have seen since I left it, yet just when you spoke I was thinking of asking you whether you were or were not satisfied with my boasted Morseiul."

"It may well be lovelier than any you have seen since you left it," replied the Chevalier; "for, as far as I know aught of your history, and I think I could account for every day of your life since last you were here, you have seen nothing since but the flat prettiness of the Beauvoisis, the green spinage plate of the Cambresis, or the interminable flats of Flanders, where plains are varied by canals, and the only eminence to be seen for forty miles round one is the top of a windmill. Well may Morseiul be prettier than that, and no great compliment to Morseiul either; but I will tell you something more, Albert. I have seen Morseiul long ago. Ay, and sat in these halls, and drank of that wine, and looked out of that window, and thought then as I think now, that it is, indeed, as fair a land as ever I should wish to cast my eyes on."

"Indeed, Louis!" exclaimed his companion; "how happens it, then, if you know the place so well, that you have listened to all my praises thereof, and come hither with me purposely to see it, without giving me one hint that you knew of the existence of such a place upon the surface of the globe?"

"Why it has happened from two causes," replied the Chevalier, "and perhaps from three. In the first place, did you never discover that I have the gift of secrecy in a very high degree?"

"Why I have certainly discovered," replied the Count with a smile, "that you are fond of a mystery; and sometimes, Louis, when there's no great need of one."

"Most cuttingly and ungenerously answered," replied the Chevalier, with a laugh; "but granting the fact, as a man does when he denies it strenuously in his mind all the time---but granting the fact, was not that one good and sufficient cause for my not saying a word about it? And in the next place, Albert, if I had told you I had been here, and knew it very nearly as well as you do yourself, it would have deprived you of the whole pleasure of relating the wonders and the marvels of Morseiul, which would have been most ungenerous of me, seeing and knowing the delight you took therein; and perhaps there might be another cause," he added in a graver tone. "Perhaps I might hesitate to talk to you, Albert,--to you, with whom filial affection is not the evanescent thing that weeps like an April shower for half an hour over the loss of those we love, and then is wafted away in sparkling and in light--I might have hesitated, I say, to speak with you of times when one whom you have loved and lost sat in these halls and commanded in these lands."

"I thank you, Louis," replied the Count; "I thank you from my heart; but you might have spoken of him. My memory of my dead father is something different from such things in general. It is the memory of him, Louis, and not of my own loss; and, therefore, as every thought of him is pleasing, satisfying, ennobling to my heart: as I can call up every circumstance in which I have seen him placed, every word which I have heard him speak, every action which I have seen him perform, with pride, and pleasure, and advantage, I love to let my thoughts rest upon the memories of his life; and though I can behold him no more living, yet I may thus enable myself to dwell with him in the past. We may be sure, Louis, that those who try to banish the loved and the departed from their thoughts, and from their conversation, have more selfishness in their love, have more selfishness in their sorrow, than real affection or than real esteem. The pangs which draw tears from us over the tomb may be permitted to us as a weakness, not unenviable: a lapse of sorrow for the broken tie and the loss of immediate communion, is also but a just tribute to ourselves and to the gone. But those who really loved the dead, and justly loved them, will cherish memory for their sakes; while those whose love was weak, or not founded on esteem, or selfish, may well give up a time to hopeless sorrow, and then banish the painful memory from their mind for ever: but it shows either that there must have been something wrong in the affection of the past, or a want of hope in the eternal meeting of the future. No, no, Louis, I live with my dead father every hour; I call to mind his looks, his words, his gestures; and as I never think to meet a man who could speak one evil word of him, I never fear to hear him mentioned, and to dwell upon his name."

The Chevalier was silent for a moment, for the feelings of his companion were too hallowed for a jest; but he replied immediately after, "I believe you are quite right, Albert; but to banish all serious themes, which you know do not suit me, my love of mystery, which, as you well know, is a part of my nature, was quite sufficient to prevent my mentioning the subject. I wonder I was fool enough to let the whole secret out now. I should only have told you, by rights, just enough to excite your curiosity, in order that I might then disappoint you."

"As you have gone so far, however," replied the Count with a smile, "you may as well tell the whole story at once, as it must be told, sooner or later, I suppose."

"On my word, I do not know whether I can make up my mind to such unusual frankness," answered the Chevalier: "I have already done quite enough to lose my reputation. However, as you seem anxious----"

"Not in the least," answered the Count, "I am quite satisfied. I was so before, and am so still, and shall be so if you resolutely maintain your mystery, concluding that you have some good reason for doing so."

"Oh no," answered the Chevalier, "I never had a good reason for any thing I did in my life: I make a point of never having one; and the very insinuation of such a thing will make me unravel the whole matter at once, and show you that there is no mystery at all in the matter. You may have heard, perchance, that the Duc de Rouvré, who, by the way, is just appointed governor of the province, has a certain property with a certain château, called Ruffigny, which----"

"Which marches with my own," exclaimed the Count.

"Exactly what I was going to say," rejoined the Chevalier; "a certain property, called Ruffigny, which marches with your own, and a château thereupon some five leagues hence. Now, the excellent Duke, being an old friend, and distant relation indeed, of my family, it is scarcely possible, with common decency, for me to be more than ten years at a time without visiting him; and accordingly, about ten years ago, I being then a sprightly youth, shortly about to fit on my first arms, came down and spent the space of about a month in that very château of Ruffigny, and the Duke brought me over here to dine with your father, and hunt the wild boar in the woods behind St. Anne."

"It is very odd," said the Count, "I have no recollection of it."

"How should you?" demanded his friend, "as you were then gone upon your first campaign, under Duras, upon the Rhine. It was not, in all probability, worth your father's while to write you word that a young scapegrace had been brought to dine with him, and had run his couteau de chasse up to the hilt in the boar's gullet."

"Oh, I now remember," exclaimed the Count; "I heard of that, but I forgot the name. Have you not been here since then?"

"Not I," replied the Chevalier. "The Duke asked me, indeed, to return the following year; but something prevented him from returning himself, and I believe he has never come back to Ruffigny since. A man who has so many castles as he has cannot favour any one of them above once in six or seven years or so."

"He is coming down now, however," replied the Count; "for, of course, the affairs of his government must bring him here, if it be but to hold the states."

"Ay, but he does not come to Ruffigny," replied the Chevalier. "He goes to Poitiers. I know all about his movements; and I'll tell you what, Morseiul: take care how you go to visit him at Poitiers, for you might chance not to come back unscathed."

"How so?" demanded the Count, turning sharply as if with some surprise. "Is there any thing new against us poor Huguenots?"

"Poo, I spoke not of that," replied the Chevalier. "You sectarians seem to have a sort of hereditary feeling of martyrdom in you, as if your chief ancestor had been St. Bartholomew himself, and the saint, being skinned alive, had given the world a skinless posterity, which makes them all feel alarmed lest any one should touch them."

"It is an ominous name, St. Bartholomew, you must acknowledge to the ears of a Huguenot," replied the Count. "But what is it I have to fear, if not that, Louis?"

"What is it you have to fear!" rejoined the Chevalier. "Why, a pair of the brightest eyes in all France--I believe I might say in all Europe."

The Count shook his head with a smile.

"Well then," continued the Chevalier, "a pair of lips that look like twin roses; eyebrows that give a meaning to every lustrous look of the eyes; a hand small, white, and delicate, with fingers tapering and rounded like those with which the Venus of the Greeks gathers around her timid form the unwilling drapery; a foot such as no sandle-shod goddess of the golden age could match: and a form which would have left the sculptor nothing to seek in other beauties but herself."

The Count laughed aloud. "I am quite safe," he said, "quite safe, Louis, quite safe. I have nothing on earth to fear."

"Indeed!" exclaimed his companion, in the same gay tone. "Pray, what panoply of proof do you possess sufficient to resist such arms as these when brought against you?"

"Mine is twofold," answered the Count. "In the first place, your own enthusiasm cannot be misunderstood, and, of course, I do not become the rival of my friend. Our great hero, Condé, has set all soldiers a better example."

"What then, do you intend to follow his example in regard to the Chatillon?" demanded the Chevalier; "to yield me the lady, and as soon as I am comfortably killed off, make love to my widow? But no, no, Albert, I stand not in your way; there are other attractions for me, I tell you fairly! Even if it were not so, let every man in love, as in war, do the best for himself. But, at all events, I tell you take care of yourself if you go to Poitiers, unless, indeed, you have some better armour than the thought of rivalry with me."

"I must go to Poitiers of course," replied the Count, "when the governor comes down; but yet I shall go without fear, as I think you might by this time know. Have you not seen me amongst the fairest, and the gayest, and the sweetest of this world's daughters, and yet I do not think in all the catalogue you could find one cabalistic name sufficiently powerful to conjure up a sigh from my lips."

"Why, to say the truth," replied the Chevalier, "I have often thought you as cold as a cannon ball before it is fired; but then, my dear Count, all that time you have had something else to do, something to excite, to interest, and to engross you. But now the stir and bustle of the camp is over,--the march, the countermarch, the advance, the retreat is done,--the fierce excitement of the battle-field does not bring forth all the energies of a fiery heart,--the trumpet no longer calls you from the ear of the fair one, before the whispered tale of love be well begun. In this piping time of peace, why, man, you have nothing for it but to make love, or die of melancholy. If you have a charm, let us hear what it is!"

"Oh, I am no man of mysteries," replied the Count, "and my tale is very soon told. It is just five years ago--I was at that time in the heyday of all sorts of passions, in love, I believe, with every thing in woman's form that came in my way,--when, after spending the winter in Paris, I came down here to take leave of my father before joining the army in Flanders. It seemed as if he felt that we were parting for the last time, for he gave me many a caution, and many a warning regarding the woman that I might choose for my wife. He exacted no promise indeed, nor gave his counsels the shape of a command; but, amongst other injunctions, which I would most unwillingly violate, he strongly advised me never to wed any one of a different religious creed from myself. About the same time, however, a little incident occurred, which fancy worked up so strongly as to have had an effect upon my whole after feelings. You know the deep and bowery lanes and roads about the place, how beautifully the sunshine streams amongst them, how richly the song of the birds sound in the trees above, how full of a sparkling and fanciful light is the whole scenery round us when we dive into its depths. I was always fond of wandering through these scenes, and one day about that time I was out alone, at some distance beyond the castle of St. Anne's, when suddenly, as I was musing, and gazing, and drinking in, as it were, the sights and sounds around me, I heard the cry of dogs, and the sound of horns. But they were distant, and they passed away, and I went on wandering slowly, with my horse's bridle hanging loosely over my arm, till suddenly I heard the sound of galloping hoofs; and, immediately after, down the little road in which I was, came a gay wild horse of the Limousin, with a fair girl upon its back, who should hardly have been trusted to ride a fiery creature like that. She was not, indeed, a mere child, being apparently some sixteen or seventeen years of age, but extreme youth was in every feature and in every line, and, I might add, beauty also, for never in my life did I behold such visionlike loveliness as hers. The horse, with some sudden fright, must have darted away while she had laid down the rein, for at the time I met her, though not broken, it was floating at his feet, hazarding at every instant to throw him down. She sat firmly in the seat, and rode with grace and ease; but she was evidently much frightened, and as soon as she saw some one before her in the lane, she pointed with an eager gesture to the rein, and uttered some words which I did not hear. I easily divined her meaning however, and turning my own horse loose, knowing I could catch him again in a moment, I snatched at the rein of her horse as he passed, ran for a moment by its side, not to check it too sharply, then brought it to a halt, and asked her if she would alight. She bowed her head gracefully, and smiled most sweetly, replying, as soon as he could find breath, with many thanks for the service I had rendered her, that she was not hurt, and but a little frightened, the horse having darted away while she had laid down the rein to put on her gloves. She would not alight she said, but must return quickly to her friends, who would be frightened, and, without saying more, she again gracefully bent her head, turned her horse, and cantered rapidly away. I saw her once afterwards, passing along with a gay cortege, composed of persons that I did not know. As we passed each other she recognised me instantly, and, with a heightened colour, noticed me by another marked inclination of the head. When I had passed on, I could judge by her own gestures and those of the persons around her, that she was telling them what had occurred, and explaining to them the sign of recognition which she had made. On this second occasion she seemed to my eyes even more lovely than before. Her voice, too, though I had heard it so little, was the most musical that ever spoke to the heart of man, and I pondered and thought over the vision of loveliness that I had just seen, till it took so strong a hold of my heart and my imagination, that I could not rest satisfied without seeking to behold it again. I rode through all the country round; I was every day, and almost all day, on horseback; I called at every neighbouring house; I inquired at every place where I was likely to meet with information, but I could never see, or speak with, or hear of that fair creature again, and the time came rapidly on when I was compelled to rejoin the army. I thought of her often, however, I have thought of her ever since; that lovely face, that sweet voice will never go from my mind, and reason and fancy combine to make me resolve never to wed any one that I do not think as lovely as herself."

"Pray what share had reason," demanded the Chevalier, "in a business altogether so unreasonable? Poo! my dear Albert, you have worked yourself into a boyish fancy of love, and then have clung to it, I suppose, as the last bit of boyhood left about you. What had reason to do with your seeing a pretty girl in a dark lane, and fancying there was nothing like her upon earth?"

"With that, nothing certainly," replied the Count, "but with my after-determination much. Before that time long I had began to school myself a good deal on account of a propensity not so much to fall in love, but, as you term it, Louis, to make love to every fair creature I met with. I had found it needful to put some check upon myself: and if an artificial one was to be chosen, I did not see why this should not be selected as well as any other. I determined that, as the knights of old, and our own troubadours too, if you will, and even--as by your laughing I suppose you would have it--excellent Don Quixote himself, that pattern of all true gentlemen, vowed and dedicated themselves to some fair lady, whom they had seen even less frequently than I had her--I determined, I say, that I would encourage this fancy of loving my fair horsewoman, and would employ the image of beauty, which imagination, perhaps, had its share in framing, and the fine qualities of the mind and heart, which were shadowed out beneath that lovely exterior, as a test, a touchstone, whereby to try and to correct my feelings towards others, and to approach none with words of love who did not appear to me as beautiful in form as she was, and who did not seem at least equal to the standard which fancy had raised up under her image. The matter perhaps was carried farther than I intended, the feeling became more intense than I had expected. For some time I sincerely and truly fancied myself in love; but even since reason has come to my aid in such a matter, and I know how much imagination has to do with the whole, yet from that one circumstance, from that fanciful accident, my standard of perfection in woman has been raised so high, that I find none who have attained it; and yet so habitual has it become with me to apply it to every one I see, that whenever I am introduced to any beautiful creature, to whom I might otherwise become attached, the fanciful image rises up, and the new acquaintance is tried and ever is found wanting."

"Thou art a strange composition, my good friend the Count," said the Chevalier, "but we shall see, now that peace and tranquillity have fallen over the world, whether you can go on still resisting with the courage of a martyr. I don't believe a word of it, although, to say sooth, your quality of heretic is something in your favour. But, in the name of fortune, tell me what are all those loud and tumultuous sounds which are borne by the wind through the open window. Your good people of Morseiul are not in rebellion, I hope."

"Not that I know of," replied the Count, with a smile at the very idea of such a thing as rebellion under Louis XIV.; "but I will call my fellow Riquet, who ought, I think, to have been called Scapin, for I am sure Molière must have had a presentiment of the approaching birth of such a scoundrel. He will tell us all about it; for if a thing takes place on the other side of the earth, Riquet knows it all within five minutes after it happens."

Before he had well finished speaking, the person he alluded to entered. But Riquet deserves a pause for separate notice.

CHAPTER II.

[THE VALET--THE TOWNSPEOPLE--THE PROCLAMATION.]

The personage who entered the room, which on that the first actual day after his arrival at his own dwelling the Count de Morseiul had used as a dining-room, was the representative of an extinct race, combining in his own person all the faults and absurdities with all the talents and even virtues which were sometimes mingled together in that strange composition, the old French valet. It is a creature that we find recorded in the pages of many an antique play, now either banished altogether from the stage, or very seldom acted; but, alas! the being itself is extinct; and even were we to find a fossil specimen in some unexplored bed of blue clay, we should gain but a very inadequate idea of all its various properties and movements. We have still the roguish valet in sad abundance--a sort of common house-rat; and we have, moreover, the sly and the silent, the loquacious and the lying, the pilfering and the impudent valet, with a thousand other varieties; but the old French valet, that mithridatic compound of many curious essences, is no longer upon the earth, having gone absolutely out of date and being at the same period with his famous contemporary "le Marquis."

At the time we speak of, however, the French valet was in full perfection; and, as we have said, an epitome of the whole race and class was to be found in Maître Jerome Riquet, who now entered the room, and advanced with an operatic step towards his lord. He was a man perhaps of forty years of age, which, as experience and constant practice were absolute requisites in his profession, was a great advantage to him, for he had lost not one particle of the activity of youth, seeming to possess either a power of ubiquity, or a rapidity of locomotion which rendered applicable to him the famous description of the bird which flew so fast "as to be in two places at once." Quicksilver, or a lover's hours of happiness, a swallow, or the wind, were as nothing when compared to his rapidity; and it is also to be remarked, that the rapidity of the mind went hand in hand with the rapidity of the body, enabling him to comprehend his master's orders before they were spoken, to answer a question before it was asked, and to determine with unerring sagacity by a single glance whether it would be most for his interests or his purposes to understand or misunderstand the coming words before they were pronounced.

Riquet was slightly made, though by no means fulfilling the immortal caricature of the gates of Calais; but when dressed in his own appropriate costume, he contrived to make himself look more meagre than he really was, perhaps with a view of rendering his person less recognisable when, dressed in a suit of his master's clothes with sundry additions and ornaments of his own device, he appeared enlarged with false calves to his legs, and manifold paddings on his breast and shoulders, enacting with great success the part of the Marquis of Kerousac, or of any other place which he chose to raise into the dignity of a marquisate for his own especial use.

His features, it is true, were so peculiar in their cast and expression, that it would have seemed at first sight utterly impossible for the face of Jerome Riquet to be taken for any other thing upon the earth than the face of Jerome Riquet. The figure thereof was long, and the jaws of the form called lantern, with high cheek bones, and a forehead so covered with protuberances, that it seemed made on purpose for the demonstration of phrenology. Along this forehead, in almost a straight line drawn from a point immediately between the eyes, at a very acute angle towards the zenith, were a pair of eyebrows, strongly marked throughout their whole course, but decorated by an obtrusive tuft near the nose, from which tuft now stuck out several long grey bristles. The eyes themselves were sharp, small, and brilliant; but being under the especial protection of the superincumbent eyebrows, they followed the same line, leaving a long lean cheek on either side, only relieved by a congregation of radiating wrinkles at the corners of the eyelids. The mouth was as wide as any man could well desire for the ordinary purposes of life, and it was low down too in the face, leaving plenty of room for the nose above, which was as peculiar in its construction as any that ever was brought from "the promontory of noses." It was neither the judaical hook nose, nor the pure aquiline, nor the semi-judaical Italian, nor the vulture, nor the sheep, nor the horse nose. It had no affinity whatever to the "nez retroussé," nor was it the bottle, nor the ace of clubs. It was a nose sui generis, and starting from between the two bushy eyebrows, it made its way out, with a slight parabolic curve downwards, till it had reached about the distance of an inch and a half from the fundamental base line of the face. Having attained that elevation, it came to a sharp abrupt point, through the thin skin of which the white gristle seemed inclined to force its way, and then suddenly dropping a perpendicular, it joined itself on to the lower part of the face, at a right angle with the upper lip, with the extensive territories of which it did not interfere in the slightest degree, being as it were a thing apart, while the nostrils started up again, running in the same line as the eyes and eyebrows.

Such in personal appearance was Jerome Riquet, and his mental conformation was not at all less singular. Of this mental conformation we shall have to give some illustrations hereafter; but yet, to deal fairly by him, we must afford some sketch of his inner man in juxtaposition with his corporeal qualities. In the first place, without the reality of being a coward, he affected cowardice as a very convenient reputation, which might be serviceable on many occasions, and could be shaken off whenever he thought fit. "A brave man," he said, "has something to keep up, he must never be cowardly; but a poltroon can be a brave man, without derogating from a well-earned reputation, whenever he pleases. No, no, I like variety; I'll be a coward, and a brave man only when it suits me." He sometimes, indeed, nearly betrayed himself, by burlesquing fear, especially when any raw soldier was near, for he had an invincible inclination to amuse himself with the weaknesses of others, and knew how contagious a disease fear is.

The next remarkable trait in his character was a mixture of honesty and roguery, which left him many doubts in his own mind as to whether he was by nature a knave or a simpleton. He would pilfer from his master any thing he could lay his hands upon, if he thought his master did not really want it; but had that master fallen into difficulties or dangers he would have given him his last louis, or laid down his life to save him. He would pick the locks of a cabinet to see what it contained, and ingeniously turn the best folded letter inside out to read the contents; but no power on earth would ever have made him divulge to others that which he practised such unjustifiable means to learn.

He was also a most determined liar, both by habit and inclination. He preferred it, he said, to truth. It evinced greater powers of the human mind. Telling truth, he said, only required the use of one's tongue and one's memory; but to lie, and to lie well, demanded imagination, judgment, courage, and, in short, all the higher qualities of the human intellect. He could sometimes, however, tell the truth, when he saw that it was absolutely necessary. All that he had was a disposition to falsehood, controllable under particular circumstances, but always returning when those circumstances were removed.

As to the religion of Maître Jerome Riquet, the less that is said upon the matter the better for the honour of that individual. He had but one sense of religion, indeed, and his definition of religion will give that sense its clearest exposition. In explaining his views one day on the subject to a fellow valet, he was known to declare that religion consisted in expressing those opinions concerning what was within a man's body, and what was to become of it after death, which were most likely to be beneficial to that body in the circumstances in which it was placed. Now, to say the truth, in order to act in accordance with this definition, Maître Jerome had a difficult part to perform. His parents and relations were all Catholics and having been introduced at an early age into the house of a Huguenot nobleman, and attached for many years to the person of his son, with only one other Catholic in the household, it would seem to have been the natural course of policy for the valet, under his liberal view of things, to abandon Catholicism, and betake himself to the pleasant heresy of his masters. But Riquet had a more extensive conception of things than that. He saw and knew that Catholicism was the great predominant religion of the country; he knew that it was the predominant religion of the court also; and he had a sort of instinctive foresight from the beginning of the persecutions and severities--the dark clouds of which were now gathering fast around the Huguenots, and were likely sooner or later to overwhelm them.

Now, like the famous Erasmus, Jerome Riquet had no will to be made a martyr of; and though he could live very comfortable in a Huguenot family, and attach himself to its lords, he did not think it at all necessary to attach himself to its religion also, but, on the contrary, went to mass when he had nothing else to do, confessed what sins he thought fit to acknowledge or to invent once every four or five years, swore that he performed all the penances assigned to him, and tormented the Protestant maid-servants of the château, by vowing that they were all destined to eternal condemnation, that there was not a nook in purgatory hot enough to bake away their sins, and that a place was reserved for them in the bottomless pit itself, with Arians and Socinians, and all the heretics and heresiarchs from the beginning of the world. After having given way to one of these tirades, he would generally burst into a loud fit of laughter at the absurdity of all religious contentions, and run away leaving his fellow-servants with a full conviction that he had no religion at all.

He dared not, it is true, indulge in such licences towards his master; but he very well knew that the young Count was not a bigot himself, and would not by any means think that he served him better if he changed his religion. In times of persecution and danger, indeed, the Count might have imagined that there was a risk of a very zealous Catholic being induced to injure or betray his Protestant lord; but the Count well knew Jerome to be any thing but a zealous Catholic, and he had not the slightest fear that any hatred of Protestantism or love for the church of Rome would ever induce the worthy valet to do any thing against the lord to whom he had attached himself.

Such, then, was Jerome Riquet; and we shall pause no longer upon his other characteristic qualities than to say, that he was the exemplification of the word clever; that there was scarcely any thing to which he could not turn his hand, and that though light, and lying and pilfering, and impudent beyond all impudence, he was capable of strong attachments and warm affections; and if we may use a very colloquial expression to characterise his proceedings, there was fully as much fun as malice in his roguery. A love of adventure and of jest was his predominant passion; and although all the good things and consolations of this life by no means came amiss to him, yet in the illegitimate means which he took to acquire them he found a greater pleasure even than in their enjoyment when obtained.

When the door opened, as we have said, and Riquet presented himself, the eyes of the Count de Morseiul fixed upon him at once; and he immediately gathered from the ludicrous expression of fear which the valet had contrived to throw into his face, that something of a serious nature had really happened in the town, though he doubted not that it was by no means sufficient to cause the astonishment and terror which Jerome affected. Before he could ask any questions, however, Jerome, advancing with the step of a ballet master, cast himself on one knee at the Count's feet, exclaiming,--

"My lord, I come to you for protection and for safety."

"Why, what is the matter, Jerome?" exclaimed the Count. "What rogue's trick have you been playing now? Is it a cudgel or the gallows that you fear?"

"Neither, my good lord," replied Jerome, "but it is the fagot and the stake. I fear the rage of your excited and insubordinate people in the town of Morseiul, who are now in a state of heretical insurrection, tearing down the king's proclamations, trampling his edicts under foot, and insulting his officers; and as I happen, I believe, to be the only Catholic in the place, I run the risk of being one of the first to be sacrificed, if their insane vehemence leads them into further acts of phrenzy."

"Get up, fool, get up," cried the Count, shaking him off as he clung to his knee; "tell me, if you can speak truth and common sense, what is it you mean, and what has occasioned all these shouts that we heard just now?"

"I mean, my lord," said Riquet, starting up and putting himself in an attitude, "I mean all that I say. There is some proclamation," he continued in a more natural tone, "concerning the performance of the true Catholic and apostolic religion, which some of the king's officers posted up on the gate at the bottom of the Count's street, and which the people instantly tore down. The huissier and the rest were proceeding up the street to read the edict in the great square, amidst the shouts and imprecations of the vulgar; but I saw them gathering together stones, and bringing out cudgels, which showed me that harder arguments were about to be used than words; and as there is no knowing where such matters may end, I made haste to take care of my own poor innocent skin, and lay myself at your feet, humbly craving your protection."

"Then, get out of my way," said the Count, putting him on one side, and moving towards the door. "Louis, we must go and see after this. This is some new attack upon us poor Huguenots--some other Jesuitical infraction of the privileges assured to us by our good King Henry IV. We must quiet the people, however, and see what the offence is;--though, God help us," he added with a sigh, "since the parliaments have succumbed there is no legal means left us of obtaining redress. Some day or another these bad advisers of our noble and magnificent monarch will drive the Protestant part of his people into madness, or compel them to raise the standard of revolt against him, or to fly to other lands, and seek the exercise of their religion unoppressed."

"Hush, hush, hush, Morseiul," said his companion, laying his hand kindly on his arm, "your words are hasty. You do not know how small a matter constitutes treason now-a-days, or how easy is the passage to the Bastille."

"Oh! I know--I know quite well," replied the Count; "and that many a faithful and loyal subject, who has served his king and country well, has found his way there before me. I love and admire my king. I will serve him with my whole soul and the last drop of my blood, and all I claim in return is that liberty of my own free thoughts which no man can take from me. Chains cannot bind that down; bastilles cannot shut it in; and every attempt to crush it is but an effort of tyranny both impotent and cruel. However, we must calm the people. Where is my hat, knave?"

"I have often wished, my dear Morseiul," said the Chevalier, as they followed the valet, who ran on to get the Count's hat: "I have often wished that you would give yourself a little time to think and to examine. I am very sure that if you did you would follow the example of the greatest man of modern times, abjure your religious errors, and gain the high station and renown which you so well deserve."

"What, do you mean Turenne?" exclaimed the Count. "Never, Louis, never! I grant him, Louis, to have been one of the greatest men of this, or perhaps of any other age, mighty as a warrior, just, clearsighted, kind-hearted, and comprehensive as a politician, and perhaps as great in the noble and honest simplicity of his nature as in any other point of view. I grant him all and every thing that you could say in his favour. I grant every thing that his most enthusiastic admirers can assert; but God forbid that we should ever imitate the weakness of a great man's life. No, no, Chevalier, it is one of the most perverted uses of example to justify wrong because the good have been tempted to commit it. No man's example, no man's opinion to me is worth any thing, however good or however wise he may be, if there be stamped upon its face the broad and unequivocal marks of wrong."

By this time they had reached the vestibule from which a little flight of steps conducted into the garden, and Maître Jerome stood there with his lord's hat and polished cane in his hand. The Count took them with a quick gesture and passed on, followed by his friend, who raised his eyebrows a little with a look of regret, as his only answer to the last words. These words had been heard by the valet also, and the raising of the eyebrows was not unmarked; and Maître Jerome, understanding the whole train of the argument, as well as if he had heard every syllable, commented upon what he considered his lord's imbecility by a shrug of the shoulders, in which his head almost utterly disappeared.

In the mean time the young Count and his friend passed up the little avenue to the postern gate, opened it, and entered the town of Morseiul; and then, by a short and narrow street, which was at that moment all in shadow, entered the market square, at which they arrived, by the shorter path they pursued, long before the officers who were about to read the proclamation. A great number of persons were collected in the square, and it was evident that by this time the whole place was in a state of great excitement. The Chevalier was in some fear for the effect of the coming scene upon his friend; and, as they entered the market place, he stopped him, laying his hand upon his arm, and saying,--

"Morseiul, you are a good deal heated, pause for one moment and think of what you are about. For the sake of yourself and of your country, if not for mine; neither say nor do any thing rashly."

The Count turned towards him with a calm and gentle smile, and grasped his hand.

"Thank you, Louis," he said, "thank you, though your caution, believe me, is unnecessary. You will see that I act as calmly and as reasonably, that I speak as quietly and as peacefully as the most earnest Catholic could desire. Heaven forbid," he added, "that I should say one word, or make one allusion to any thing that could farther excite the passions of the people than they are likely to be excited already. Civil strife, Louis, is the most awful of all things so long as it lasts, and seldom, very seldom if ever obtains the end for which it first commenced. But even if I did not think so," he added in a lower voice, "I know that the Protestants of France have no power to struggle with the force of the crown, unless--" and his voice fell almost to a whisper, "unless the crown force upon them the energetic vigour of despair."

The two had paused while they thus spoke, and while they heard the murmuring sounds of the people coming up the hill from the right hand, the noise of several persons running could be distinguished on the other side, and turning round towards the postern, the Count saw that, thanks to the care and foresight of Maître Jerome, a great number of his domestics and attendants were coming up at full speed to join him, so that when he again advanced, he was accompanied by ten or twelve persons ready to obey without hesitation or difficulty the slightest command that he should give. As there was no telling the turn which events might take, he was not sorry that it should be so; and as he now advanced towards the centre of the square the sight of his liveries instantly attracted the attention of the people, and he was recognised with joyful exclamations of "The Count! The Count!"

Gladness was in every face at his approach, for the minds of the populace were in that state of anxious hesitation, in which the presence and direction of any one to whom they are accustomed to look up is an absolute blessing. Taking off his hat and bowing repeatedly to every one around him, speaking to many, and recognising every one with whom he was personally acquainted with a frank and good-humoured smile, the Count advanced through the people, who gathered upon his path as he proceeded, till he reached the top of the hill, and obtained a clear view of what was passing below.

Had not one known the painful and angry feelings which were then excited, it would have been a pleasant and a cheerful scene. The sun had by this time got sufficiently round to the westward to throw long shadows from the irregular gable-ended houses more than half way across the wide open road that conducted from the valley to the top of the hill. The perspective, too, was strongly marked by the lines of the buildings; the other side of the road was in bright light; there was a beautiful prospect of hill and dale seen out beyond the town; numerous booths and stalls, kept by peasant women with bright dresses and snowy caps, chequered the whole extent; and up the centre of the street, approaching slowly, were the officers of the district, with a small party of military, followed on either side by a much more considerable number of the lower order of town's people and peasantry.

Such was the scene upon which the eyes of the Count de Morseiul fell; and it must be admitted, that when he saw the military his heart beat with considerable feelings of indignation, for we must remember that in towns like that which was under his rule the feudal customs still existed to a very great extent. It was still called his town of Morseiul. The king, indeed, ruled; the laws of the land were administered in the king's name; but the custody, defence, and government of the town of Morseiul was absolutely in the hands of the Count, or of the persons to whom he delegated his power during his absence. It was regularly, in fact, garrisoned in his name; and there were many instances, scarcely twenty years before, in which the garrisons of such towns had resisted in arms the royal authority; and if not held to be fully justified, at all events had passed without punishment, because they were acting under the orders of him in whose name they were levied. The attempt, therefore, of any body of the king's troops to penetrate into the Count's town of Morseiul, without his having been formally deprived of the command thereof, seemed to him one of the most outrageous violations of his privileges which it was possible to imagine; and his heart consequently beat, as we have said, with feelings of high indignation. He suppressed them, however, with the calm determination of doing what was right; and turned to gaze upon the people who surrounded him, in order to ascertain as far as possible by what feelings they were affected.

His own attendants had congregated immediately behind him; on his right hand stood his friend the Chevalier; on his left, about half a step behind, so as to be near the Count, but not to appear obtrusive, was a personage of considerable importance in the little town of Morseiul, though he exercised a handicraft employment, and worked daily with his own hands, even while he directed others. This was Paul Virlay, the principal blacksmith of the place. He was at this time a man of about fifty years of age, tall, and herculean in all his proportions. The small head, the broad muscular chest and shoulders, the brawny arms, the immense thick hands, the thin flanks, and the stout legs and thighs, all bespoke extraordinary strength. He was very dark in complexion, with short-cut curly black hair, grizzled with grey; and the features of his face, though short, and by no means handsome, had a good and a frank expression, but at all times somewhat stern.

At the present moment his brow was more contracted than usual; not that there was any other particular mark of very strongly excited passions upon his countenance; and the attitude he had assumed was one of calm and reposing strength, resting with his right hand supported by one of the common quarter-staffs of the country, a full inch and a half thick, much in the same position which he frequently assumed when, pausing in his toil, he talked with his workmen, leaving the sledge hammer, that usually descended with such awful strength, to support the hand which wielded it at other times like a feather.

Behind him again, was a great multitude of the town's people of different classes, though the mayor and the municipal officers had thought fit to absent themselves carefully from the scene of probable strife. But the eyes of the Count fell, as we have said, upon Paul Virlay; and knowing him to be a man both highly respected in his own class, and of considerable wealth and importance in the city, he addressed him in the first instance, saying,--

"Good morrow, Virlay, it is long since I have seen you all. What is all this about?"

"You don't forget us, Count Albert, even when you are away," replied the blacksmith, with his brow unbending. "We know that very well, and have proofs of it too, when any thing good is to be done; but this seems to me to be a bad business. We hear that the king has suppressed the chamber of the edict, which was our greatest safeguard; and now my boy tells me, for I sent him down to see when they first came to the bottom of the hill, that this is a proclamation forbidding us from holding synods; and be you sure, sir, that the time is not far distant when they will try to stop us altogether from worshipping God in our own way. What think you, my lord?" he said, in a lower tone, "Were it not better to show them at once that they cannot go on?" and his looks spoke much more than even his words.

"No, Virlay," replied the Count; "no, by no means. You see the people are in tumult below evidently. Any unadvised and illegal resistance to the royal authority will immediately call upon us harsh measures, and be made the pretext by any bad advisers who may surround the king for irritating his royal mind against us. Let us hear what the proclamation really is; even should it be harsh and unjust, which from the king's merciful nature we will hope is not the case: let us listen to it calmly and peaceably, and after having considered well, and taken the advice and opinion of wise and experienced men, let us then make what representations to the king we may think fit, and petition him in his clemency to do us right."

"Clemency!" said the blacksmith. "However, my lord, you know better than I, but I hope they will not say any thing to make our blood boil, that's all."

"Even if they should," replied the Count, "we must prevent it from boiling over. Virlay, I rely upon you, as one of the most sensible men in the place, not only to restrain yourself, but to aid me in restraining others. The king has every right to send his own officers to make his will known to his people."

"But the dragoons," said Virlay, fixing his eyes upon the soldiers; "what business have they here? Why they might, Count Albert----"

The Count stopped him.

"They are yet without the real bounds of the town, Virlay," he said; "and they do not enter into it! Send some one you can trust for the mayor with all speed; unhook the gates from the bars that keep them back; place a couple of men behind each; I will prevent the military from entering into the town: but I trust to you, and the other men of good sense who surround me, to guard the king's officers and the king's authority from any insult, and to suffer the proclamation of his will to take place in the market-place without any opposition or tumult whatsoever."

"I will do my best, Count," replied the blacksmith, "for I am sure you are a true friend to us--and we may well trust in you."

The crowd from below had in the meantime advanced steadily up the hill, surrounding the officers of the crown and the soldiery; and by this time the whole mass was within a hundred and fifty yards of the spot where the Count and his companions stood. Their progress had been without violence, indeed, but not without hootings and outcry, which seemed greatly to annoy the officer in command of the soldiers, he having been accustomed alone to the court of the grand monarch, and to the scenes in the neighbourhood of the capital, where the people might well be said to lick the dust beneath the feet of their pageant-loving king. It seemed, then, something so strange and monstrous to his ears, that any expression of the royal will should be received otherwise than with the most deep and devoted submission, that he was more than once tempted to turn and charge the multitude. A prudent consideration, however, of the numbers by which he was surrounded, and the scantiness of his own band, overcame all such purposes; and, though foaming with indignation, he continued to advance, without noticing the shouts that assailed him, and playing with the manifold ribands and pieces of silk that decorated his buff coat and his sword knot, to conceal his vexation and annoyance.

"Who have we here at the head of them?" demanded the Count, turning to the Chevalier. "His face is not unknown to me."

"As far as I can see," replied his companion, "it is young Hericourt, a nephew of Le Tellier's--do you not remember? as brave as a lion, but moreover a young coxcomb, who thinks that he can do every thing, and that nothing can be done without him; as stupid as an owl too. I wonder you do not recollect his getting great credit for taking the little fort of the bec de l'oie by a sheer act of stupidity,--getting himself and his party entangled between the two forts, and while Lamets was advancing to extricate him, forcing his way in, from not knowing what else to do."

"I remember, I remember," said the Count, with a smile; "he was well rewarded for his fortunate mistake. But what does he here, I wonder? I thought he never quitted the precincts of Versailles, but to follow the King to the camp."

"He is the worst person who could have been sent upon this errand," replied the Chevalier; "for he is certain to make mischief wherever he goes. He has attached himself much to the Rouvrés, however, of late, and I suppose Le Tellier has given him some post about the new governor, in order that his rule may not be the most tranquil in the world."

While they were speaking, the eyes of the people who were coming up the hill fell upon the group that had assembled just in front of the gates, with the Count, his friend, and his servants, in the foreground; and immediately a loud shout made itself heard, of "The Count! the Count! Long live the Count!" followed by various other exclamations, such as "He will protect us! He will see justice done us! Long live our own good Count!"

I The moment that the Count's name was thus loudly pronounced, the young officer, turning to those who followed, gave some orders in a low voice, and then, spurring on his horse through the crowd, rode directly up to the Count de Morseiul; who, as he saw him approaching, turned to the Chevalier, saying, "You bear witness, Louis, that I deal with this matter as moderately and loyally as may be."

"I trust, for the sake of all," said the Chevalier, "that you will. You know, Albert, that I do not care two straws for one religion more than the other; and think that a man can serve God singing the psalms of Clement Marot as well, or perhaps better, than if he sung them in Latin, without, perhaps, understanding them. But for Heaven's sake keep peace in the inside of the country at all events. But here comes our young dragoon."

As he spoke, the young officer rode up with a good deal of irritation evident in his countenance. He seemed to be three or four and twenty years of age, of a complexion extremely fair, and with a countenance sufficiently unmeaning, though all the features were good. He bowed familiarly to the Chevalier, and more distantly to the Count de Morseuil; but addressed himself at once to the latter:--

"I have the honour," he said, "I presume, of speaking to the Count de Morseuil, and I must say that I hope he will give me his aid in causing proclamation of the king's will amongst these mutinous and rebellious people of his town of Morseuil."

"My friend the Chevalier here tells me," replied the Count, "that I have the honour of seeing Monsieur de Hericourt----"

"The Marquis Auguste de Hericourt," interrupted the young officer.

"Well, sir, well," said the Count, somewhat impatiently, "I stand corrected: the Marquis Auguste de Hericourt, and I am very happy to have the honour of seeing him, and also to inform him that I will myself ensure that the king's will is, as he says, proclaimed in my town of Morseiul by the proper officers, taking care to accompany them into the town myself for that purpose, although I cannot but defend my poor townsmen from the accusation of being mutinous and rebellious subjects, nothing being further from the thoughts of any one here present than mutiny or rebellion."

"Do you not hear the cries and shouts?" cried the young officer. "Do you not see the threatening aspect of the people?"

"I hear some shouts, certainly," answered the Count, "as if something had given offence or displeasure; but what it is I do not know. I trust and hope that it is nothing in any proclamation of the king's; and if I should find it to be so, when I hear the proclamation read, I shall take every means to put an end to such demonstrations of disappointment or grief, at once. We have always the means of approaching the royal ear, and I feel sure that there will be no occasion for clamour or outcry in order to obtain justice at the hands of our most gracious and wise monarch.--But allow me to observe, Monsieur le Marquis," he continued somewhat more quickly, "your dragoons are approaching rather too near the gates of Morseiul."

"You do not intend, I presume, sir," said the young officer sharply, "to refuse an entrance to the officers of the King, charged with a proclamation from his Majesty!"

"Not to the King's proper civil officers," replied the Count, keeping his eye, while he spoke, warily fixed upon the dragoons. "But, most assuredly, I do intend to refuse admittance to any body of military whatsoever, great or small, while I retain the post with which his Majesty has entrusted me of governor to this place."

There was a pause for a single instant, and the young officer turned his head, without replying, towards the soldiers, on whom the Count's eye also was still fixed. There was something, however, suspicious in their movements. They had now reached the brow of the hill, and were within twenty yards of the gate. They formed into a double file as they came up in front of the civil officers, and the head man of each file was seen passing a word to those behind him. At the moment their officer turned his head towards them, they began to move forward in quicker time, and in a moment more would have passed the gates; but at that instant the clear full voice of the Count de Morseiul was heard exclaiming, in a tone that rose above all the rest of the sounds--

"Close the gates!" and the two ponderous masses of wood, which had not been shut for many years, swung forward grating on their hinges, and at once barred all entrance into the town.

"What is the meaning of this, Monsieur de Hericourt?" continued the Count. "Your men deserve a severe reprimand, sir, for attempting to enter the town without my permission or your orders."

The young man turned very red, but he was not ready with a reply, and the Chevalier, willing as far as possible to prevent any unpleasant consequences, and yet not to lose a jest, exclaimed--

"I suppose the Marquis took it for the bec de l'oie, but he is mistaken, you see."

"He might have found it a trap for a goose, if not a goose's bill," said a loud voice from behind; but the Marquis either did not or would not hear any thing but the pleasant part of the allusion, and, bowing to the Chevalier with a smile, he said, "Oh, you are too good, Monsieur le Chevalier, the affair you mention was but a trifle, far more owing to the courage of my men than to any skill on my part. But, in the present instance, I must say, Count," he added, turning towards the other, "that the king's officers must be admitted to make proclamations in the town of Morseiul."

"The king's civil officers shall, sir," replied the Count, "as I informed you before: but no soldiers, on any pretence whatsoever. However, sir," he continued, seeing the young officer mustering up a superabundant degree of energy, "I think it will be much the best plan for you to do me the honour of reposing yourself, with any two or three of your attendants you may think fit, at my poor château here, without the walls, while your troopers can refresh themselves at the little auberge at the foot of the hill. My friend, the Chevalier here, will do the honours of my house till I return, and I will accompany the officers charged with the proclamation, and see that they meet with no obstruction in the fulfilment of their duty."

"I do not know that I am justified," said the young officer, hesitating, "in not insisting upon seeing the proclamation made myself."

"I am afraid there will be no use of insisting," replied the Count; "and depend upon it, sir, you will serve the king better by suffering the proclamation to be made quietly, than even by risking a disturbance by protracting, unnecessarily, an irritating discussion. I wish to treat you with all respect, and with the distinction due to your high merit. Farther, I have nothing to say, but that I am governor of Morseiul, and as such undertake to see the king's proclamation duly made within the walls."

The hesitation of the young dragoon was only increased by the cool and determined tone of the Count. Murmurs were rising amongst the people round, and the voice of Paul Virlay was heard muttering,

"He had better decide quickly, or we shall not be able to keep the good men quiet."

The Marquis heard the words, and instantly began to bristle up, to fix himself more firmly in the saddle, and put his hand towards the hilt of his sword; but the Chevalier advanced close to his side, and spoke to him for a moment or two in a low voice. Nothing was heard of their conversation, even by the Count de Morseiul , but the words "good wine--pleasant evening--laugh over the whole affair."

But at length the young courtier bowed his head to the Count, saying, "Well then, sir, I repose the trust in you, knowing you to be a man of such high honour, that you would not undertake what you could not perform, nor fail to execute punctually that which you had undertaken. I will do myself the honour of waiting your return with the Chevalier, at your château."

After some further words of civility on both parts, the young officer dismounted and threw his rein to a page, and then formally placing the civil officers under the care and protection of the Count de Morseiul, he gave orders to his dragoons to bend their steps down the hill, and refresh themselves at the auberge below; while he, bowing again to the Count, took his way with the Chevalier and a single attendant along the esplanade which led to the gates of the château without the walls. The civil officers, who had certainly been somewhat maltreated as they came up the hill, seemed not a little unwilling to see the dragoons depart, and a loud shout, mingled of triumph and scorn, with which the people treated the soldiers as they turned to march down the hill, certainly did not at all tend to comfort or re-assure the poor huissiers, greffiers, and other officers. The shout caused the young marquis, who had proceeded twenty or thirty steps upon his way, to stop short, and turn round, imagining that some new collision had taken place between the town's people and the rest; but seeing that all was quiet he walked on again the moment after, and the Count, causing the civil officers to be surrounded by his own attendants, ordered the wicket to be opened, and led the way in, calling to Virlay to accompany him, and urging upon him the necessity of preserving peace and order, let the nature of the proclamation be what it might.

"I have given you my promise, Count," replied the blacksmith, "to do my best, and I won't fail; but I won't answer for myself or others on any other occasion."

"We are only speaking of the present," replied the Count; "for other occasions other measures, as the case may be: but at present every thing requires us to submit without any opposition.--Where can this cowardly mayor be," he said, "that he does not choose to show himself in a matter like this? But the proclamation must be made without him, if he do not appear."

They had by this time advanced into the midst of the great square, and the Count signified to the officer charged with the proclamation, that it had better be made at once: but for some moments what he suggested could not be accomplished from the pressure of the people, the crowd amounting by this time to many hundred persons. The Count, his attendants, and Virlay, however, contrived, with some difficulty, to clear a little space around, the first by entreaties and expostulations, and the blacksmith by sundry thrusts of his strong quarterstaff and menaces, with an arm which few of those there present seemed inclined to encounter.

The Count then took off his hat, and the officer began to read the proclamation, which was long and wordy; but which, like many another act of the crown then taking place from day to day, had a direct tendency to deprive the protestants of France of the privileges which had been secured to them by Henry IV. Amongst other galling and unjust decrees here announced to the people was one which--after stating that many persons of the religion affecting the title of reformed, being ill-disposed towards the king's government, were selling their landed property with the view of emigrating to other lands--went on to declare and to give warning to all purchasers, that if heretical persons effecting such sales did quit the country within one year after having sold their property, the whole would be considered as confiscated to the state, and that purchasers would receive no indemnity.

When this part of the proclamation was read, the eyes of the sturdy blacksmith turned upon the Count, who, by a gesture of the hand, endeavoured to suppress all signs of disapprobation amongst the multitude. It was in vain, however; for a loud shout of indignation burst forth from them, which was followed by another, when the proclamation went on to declare, that the mayors of towns, professing the protestant faith, should be deprived of the rank of nobles, which had been formerly granted to them. The proclamation then proceeded with various other notices of the same kind, and the indignation of the people was loud and unrestrained. The presence of the Count, however, and the exertions of Virlay, and several influential people, who were opposed to a rash collision with the authority of the king, prevented any act of violence from being committed, and when the whole ceremony was complete, the officers were led back to the gates by the Count, who gave orders that they should be conducted in safety beyond the precincts of the place by his own attendants.

After returning into the great square, and holding a momentary conversation with some of the principal persons present, he returned by the postern to his own abode, where he found his friend and the young officer, apparently forgetting altogether the unpleasant events of the morning, and laughing and talking gaily over indifferent subjects.

"I have the pleasure of informing you, Monsieur de Hericourt," said the Count when he appeared, "that the proclamation has been made without interruption, and that the king's officers have been conducted out of the town in safety. We have therefore nothing more of an unpleasant kind to discuss, and I trust that you will take some refreshment."

Wine, and various sorts of meats, which were considered as delicacies in those days, were brought and set before the young courtier, who did justice to all, declaring that he had never in his life tasted any thing more exquisite than the produce of the Count's cellars. He even ventured to praise the dishes, though he insinuated, much to the indignation of the cook, to whom it was repeated by an attendant, that there was a shade too much of taragon in one of the ragouts, and that if a matelotte had been five minutes more cooked, the fish would have been tenderer, and the flavour more decided. The Count smiled, and apologised for the error, reminding him, that the poor rustics in the country could not boast the skill and delicacy, or even perhaps the nicety of natural taste of the artists of the capital. He then turned the conversation to matters of some greater importance, and inquired when they were to expect the presence of the Duc de Rouvré in the province.

The young Marquis opened his eyes at the question, as if he looked upon it as a sign of the most utter and perfect ignorance and rusticity that could be conceived.

"Is it possible, Monsieur le Comte," he said, "that you, so high in the service of the king, and so highly esteemed, as I may add, at court, are not aware that the duke arrived at Poitiers nearly five days ago? I had the honour of accompanying him thither, and he has himself been within the last three days as near as seven leagues to the very place where we are now sitting."

"You must remember, my good sir," replied the Count, "as some excuse for my ignorance, that I received his Majesty's gracious permission to return hither upon some important affairs direct from the army, without visiting the court, and that I only arrived late last night. Pray, when you return to Monsieur de Rouvré, present my compliments to him, and tell him that I shall do myself the honour of waiting upon him, to congratulate him and the Duchess upon their safe arrival in the province, without any delay."

"Wait till they are fully established at Poitiers," replied the young officer. "They are now upon a little tour through the province, not choosing to stay at Poitiers yet," he added, sinking his voice into a low and confidential tone, "because their household is not in complete order. None of the new liveries are made; the guard of the governor is not yet organised; two cooks and three servers have not arrived from Paris. Nothing is in order, in short. In a week, I trust, we shall be more complete, and then indeed I do not think that the household of any governor in the kingdom will exceed in taste, if not in splendour, that of the Duc de Rouvré."

"Which is, I presume," said the Chevalier, "under the direction and superintendence of the refined and celebrated good taste of the Marquis Auguste de Hericourt."

"Why, to say the truth," replied the young nobleman, "my excellent friend De Rouvré has some confidence in my judgment of such things: I may say, indeed, has implicit faith therein, as he has given all that department over to me for the time, beseeching me to undertake it, and of course I cannot disappoint him."

"Of course not! of course not!" replied the Chevalier, and in such conversation passed on some time, the worthy Marquis de Hericourt, swallowed up in himself, not at all perceiving a certain degree of impatience in the Count de Morseiul, which might have afforded any other man a hint to take his departure. He lingered over his wine; he lingered over his dessert; he perambulated the gardens; he criticised the various arrangements of the château with that minute attention to nothings, which is the most insufferable of all things when obtruded upon a mind bent upon matters of deep importance.

It was thus fully five o'clock in the afternoon before he took his departure, and the Count forced himself to perform every act of civility by him to the last moment. As soon as he was gone, however, the young nobleman turned quickly to his friend, saying,--

"I thought that contemptible piece of emptiness would never depart, and of course, Louis, after what has taken place this morning, it is absolutely necessary for me to consult with some of my friends of the same creed as myself. I will not in any degree involve you in these matters, as the very fact of your knowing any of our proceedings might hereafter be detrimental to you; and I only make this excuse because I owe it to the long friendship between us not to withhold any part of my confidence from you, except out of consideration for yourself."

"Act as you think fit, my dear Albert," replied his friend; "but only act with moderation. If you want my advice on any occasion, ask it, without minding whether you compromise me or not; I'm quite sure that I am much too bad a Catholic to sacrifice my friend's secrets either to Pellisson, La Chaise, or Le Tellier. If I am not mistaken, the devil himself will make the fourth at their card-table some day, and perhaps Louvois will stand by and bet."

"Oh! I entertain no fear of your betraying me," answered the Count with a smile; "but I should entertain great fear of embroiling you with the court."

"Only take care not to embroil yourself," replied the Chevalier. "I am sure I wish there were no such thing as sects in the world. If you could but take a glance at the state of England, which is split into more sects than it contains cities, I am sure you would be of Turenne's opinion, and come into the bosom of the mother church, if it were but for the sake of getting rid of such confusion. Nay, shake not your wise head. If the truth be told, you are a Protestant because you were bred so in your youth; and one half of the world has no other motive either for its religion or its politics. But get thee gone, Albert, get thee gone. Consult with your wise friends, and come back more Huguenotised than ever."

The Count would have made some further apologies for leaving him, but his friend would not hear them, and sending for his horse, Albert of Morseiul took his departure from his château, forbidding any of his attendants to follow him.

CHAPTER III.

[THE PASTOR.]

The Count's orders were given so distinctly for no one to accompany him on his way, that none of his domestics presumed even to gaze after him from the gate, or to mark the path he took. As he wished to call no attention, he kept under the walls of the town, riding slowly along over the green till he came to the zigzag path which we have before mentioned as being now almost entirely disused. He had cast a large cloak around him, of that kind which at an after period degenerated into what was called a roquelaure, and his person was thus sufficiently concealed to prevent him from being recognised by any body at a distance.

At the foot of the zigzag which he now descended he chose a path which led along the bank of the river for some way to the right, and then entered into a beautiful wooded lane between high banks. The sun was shining full over the world, but with a tempered and gentle light from the point of its declination at which it had arrived. The rays, however, did not in general reach the road, except where the bank sloped away; and then pouring through the green leaves and branches of the wild briar the honeysuckle and the hazel, it streamed upon the miniature cliffs of yellow sand on the opposite side, and chequered the uneven path which the young Count was pursuing. The birds had as yet lost little of their full song, and the deep round tones of the blackbird bidding the golden day adieu as he saw the great light-bearer descending in the heaven, poured forth from beneath the holly bushes, with a melancholy and a moralising sound, speaking to the heart of man with the grand philosophic voice of nature, and counselling peace and affection, and meditation on the bounties of God.

It is impossible to ride through such scenes at such an hour on the evening of bright summer days without feeling the calm and elevating influence of all things, whether mute or tuneful, taught by almighty beneficence to celebrate either by aspect or by song the close of another day's being and enjoyment. The effect upon the heart of the Count de Morseiul was full and deep. He had been riding slowly before, but after passing through the lane for about a minute, he gently drew in the bridle upon his horse till the beast went slower still, then laid the rein quietly upon his neck, and gave himself up to meditation.

The chief theme in his mind at that moment was certainly the state and prospects of himself and his fellow Protestants: and perhaps--even in experiencing all the beauty and the peacefulness of the scene through which he wandered, the calm tone of enjoyment in every thing around, the voice of tranquillity that spoke in every sound--his feelings towards those who unnecessarily disturbed the contented existence of an industrious and happy race, might become bitterer, and his indignation grow more deep and stern, though more melancholy and tranquil. What had the Huguenots done, he asked himself, for persecution to seek them out there in the midst of their calm and pleasant dwellings--to fill them with fiery passions that they knew not of before--to drive them to acts which they as well as their enemies might bitterly repent at an after period--and to mar scenes which seemed destined for the purest and happiest enjoyment that the nature of man and its harmony with the other works of God can produce, by anxiety, care, strife, and perhaps with bloodshed?

What had the Huguenots done? he asked himself. Had they not served their king as loyally, as valiantly, as readily in the battle field, and upon the wide ocean, as the most zealous Catholic amongst them all? Had not the most splendid victories which his arms had obtained by land been won for him by Huguenot generals? Was not even then a Huguenot seaman carrying the thunders of his navy into the ports of Spain? Were the Huguenots less loyal subjects, less industrious mechanics, less estimable as citizens, than any other of the natives of the land? Far from it. The contrary was known to be the fact--the decided contrary. They were more peaceable, they were more tranquil, they were more industrious, they were more ready to contribute either their blood or their treasure to the service of the state than the great mass of the Catholic population; and yet tormenting exactions, insults, cavillings, inquiries, and investigations, all tending to irritate and to enrage, were going on day by day, and were clearly to be followed soon by the persecuting sword itself.

On such themes he paused and thought as he went on, and the first effect produced upon his mind was of course painful and gloomy. As the sweetest music sounding at the same time with inharmonious notes can but produce harsh dissonance, so the brightest scenes to a mind filled with painful thoughts seems but to deepen their sadness. Still, however, after a time, the objects around him, and their bright tranquillity, had their effect upon the heart of the Count; his feelings grew calmer, and the magic power of association came to lay out a road whereby fancy might lead his thoughts to gentler themes. The path that he was pursuing led him at length to the spot where the little adventure had occurred which he had related in the course of the morning to his friend. He never passed by that spot without giving a thought to the fair girl he had there met; but now he dwelt upon the recollection longer than he otherwise might have done, in consequence of having spoken of her and of their meeting that very day. He smiled as he thought of the whole, for there was nothing like pain of any kind mingled with the remembrance. It was merely a fanciful dream he had cherished, half amused at himself for the little romance he had got up in his own mind, half employing the romance itself as a check upon the very imagination that had framed it.

"She was certainly very lovely," he thought as he rode on, "and her voice was certainly very sweet; and unless nature, as is but too often the case, had in her instance become accomplice to a falsehood, that form, that face, that voice, must have betokened a bright spirit and a noble heart. Alas! why is it," he went on to ask himself, "why is it that the countenance, if we read it aright, should not be the correct interpreter of the heart? Doubtless such was at first God's will, and the serpent taught us, though we could not conceal our hearts from the Almighty, to falsify the stamp he had fixed upon them for our fellow men. And yet it is strange--however much we may have gained from experience, however painfully we may learn that man's heart is written in his actions, not in his face--it is strange we ever judge more or less by the same deceitful countenance, and guess by its expressions, if not by its features, though we might as well judge of what is at the bottom of a deep stream by the waves that agitate its surface."

In such fanciful dreams he went on, often turning again to the fair vision that he had there seen, sometimes wondering who she could have been, and sometimes deciding and deciding the question wrongly in his own mind, but never suffering the wild expectation which he had once nourished of meeting her again to cross his mind--for he had found that to indulge it rendered him uneasy, and unfit for more real pursuits.

At length, the lane winding out upon some hills where the short dry turf betokened a rocky soil below, took its way through a country of a less pleasing aspect. Here the Count de Morseiul put his horse into a quicker pace, and after descending into another low valley full of streams and long luxuriant grass, he climbed slowly a high hill, surmounted by a towering spire. The village to which the spire belonged was very small, and consisted entirely of the low houses of an agricultural population. They were neat, clean, and cheerful however in aspect, and there was an attention to niceness of exterior visible every where, not very frequently found amongst the lower classes of any country.

There was scarcely any one in the street, as the Count passed, except, indeed, a few children enjoying their evening sport, and taking the day's last hour of happy life, before the setting sun brought the temporary extinction of their bright activity. There was also at the end of the town a good old dame sitting at a cottage door and spinning in the tempered sunshine of the evening, while her grey cat rolled happy in the dust beside her; but the whole of the rest of the villagers were still in the fields.

The Count rode on, giving the dame "good even" as he passed; and, leaving what seemed the last house of the village behind him, he took his way along a road shadowed by tall walnut trees growing upon the edge of a hill, which towered up in high and broken banks on the left, and sloped away upon the right, displaying the whole track of country through which the young nobleman had just passed, bright in the evening light below, with his own town and castle rising up a fellow hill to that on which he now stood, at the distance of some seven or eight miles.

As he turned one sharp angle of the hill, however, he suddenly drew in his rein on seeing a carriage before him. It was stationary, however, and the two boorish looking servants, dressed in grey, who accompanied it, were standing at the edge of the hill, gazing over the country, as if the scene were new to them; while the horses, which the coachman had left to their own discretion, were stamping in a state of listless dozing, to keep off the flies which the season rendered troublesome.

It was evident that the carriage was held in waiting for some one, and the Count, after pausing for a single instant, rode on, looking in as he passed it. There was no one, however, within the wide and clumsy vehicle, and the servants, though they stared at the young stranger, took no notice, and made no sign of reverence as he went by them; with which, indeed, he was well satisfied, not desiring to be recognised by any one who might noise his proceedings abroad.

He rode on then with somewhat of a quicker pace, to a spot where, at the side of the road, a little wicket gale led into a small grove of old trees, through which a path conducted to a neat stone-built house, of small size, with its garden around it: flowers on the one hand, and pot-herbs on the other. Nothing could present an aspect cleaner, neater, more tasteful than the house and the garden. Not a straw was out of its place in the thatch, and every flower-bed of the little parterre was trimmed exactly with the same scrupulous care. The door was of wood, painted grey, with a rope and handle by the side, to which was attached a large bell, but, though at almost all times that door stood open, it was closed on the present occasion. The young Count took his way through the grove and the garden straight to the door, as if familiar with the path of old, leaving his horse, however, under the trees, not far from the outer gate. On finding the door closed, he pulled the handle of the bell, though somewhat gently; but, for a moment or two, no one replied, and he rang again, on which second summons a maid servant, of some forty or fifty years, appeared, bearing on her head a towering structure of white linen, in the shape of a cap, not unlike in shape and snowy whiteness the uncovered peak of some mountain ridge in the Alps.

On her appearance she uttered an exclamation of pleasure at the sight of the young Count, whom she instantly recognised; and, on his asking for her master, she replied, that he was busy in conference with two ladies, but that she was sure that the Count de Morseiul might go in at any time. She pointed onward with her hand, as she spoke, down the clean nicely-sanded passage to the door of a small room at the back of the house, looking over the prospect which we have mentioned. It was evidently the good woman's intention that the Count should go in and announce himself; but he did not choose to do so, and sent her forward to ask if he might be admitted. A full clear round voice instantly answered from within, on her application, "Certainly, certainly," and, taking that as his warrant, the Count advanced into the room at once. He found it tenanted by three people, on only one of whom, however, we shall pause, as the other two, consisting of a lady, dressed in a sort of half mourning, with a thick veil which she had drawn over her face before the Count entered, and another who was apparently a female servant of a superior class, instantly quitted the room, merely saying to their companion,

"I will not forget."

The third was a man of sixty-two or sixty-three years of age, dressed in black, without sword or any ornament to his plain straight cut clothes. His head was bare, though a small black velvet cap lay on the table beside him, and his white hair, which was suffered to grow very long at the back and on the temples, fell down his neck, and met the plain white collar of his shirt, which was turned back upon his shoulders. The top of his head was bald, rising up from a fine wide forehead, with all those characteristic marks of expansion and elevation which we are generally inclined to associate in our own minds with the idea of powerful intellect and noble feelings. The countenance, too, was fine, the features straight, clear, and well-defined, though the eyes, which had been originally fine and large, were somewhat hollowed by age, and the cheeks, sunken also, left the bones beneath the eyes rather too prominent. The chin was rounded and fine, and the teeth white and undecayed; but, in other respects, the marks of age were very visible. There were lines and furrows about the brow; and, on the cheeks; and, between the eyebrows, there was a deep dent, which might give, in some degree, an air of sternness, but seemed still more the effect of intense thought, and perhaps of anxious care.

The form of the old man bore evident traces of the powerful and vigorous mould in which it had been originally cast; the shoulders were broad, the chest deep, the arms long and sinewy, the hands large and muscular. The complexion had been originally brown, and perhaps at one time florid; but now it was pale, without a trace of colour any where but in the lips, which for a man of that age were remarkably full and red. The eye, the light of the soul, was still bright and sparkling. It gave no evidence of decay, varying frequently in expression from keen and eager rapidity of thought, and from the rapid changes of feeling in a heart still full of strong emotions.

Such--though the picture is but a faint one--such was the appearance of Claude de l'Estang, Huguenot minister of the small village of Auron, at equal distances from Ruffigny and Morseiul. He had played, in his youth, a conspicuous part in defence of the Huguenot cause; he had been a soldier as well as a preacher, and the sword and musket had been familiar to his hands, so long as the religion of his fathers was assailed by open persecution. No sooner, however, did those times seem to have passed away, than, casting from him the weapons of carnal warfare, he resumed the exercise of the profession to which he had been originally destined, and became, for the time, one of the most popular preachers in the south of France.

Though his life was irreproachable, his manners pure, and his talents high, Claude de l'Estang had not been without his portion of the faults and failings of humanity. He had been ambitious in his particular manner; he had been vain; he had loved the admiration and applause of the multitude; he had coveted the fame of eloquence, and the reputation of superior sanctity; youth, and youth's eagerness, joined with the energy inseparable from high genius, had carried his natural errors to an extreme: but long before the period of which we now speak, years, and still more sorrows, had worked a great and beneficial, but painful alteration. His first disappointment was the disappointment of the brightest hopes of youth, complicated with all that could aggravate the crossing of early love; for there was joined unto it the blasting of all bright confidence in woman's sincerity, and the destruction of that trust in the eternal happiness of one whom he could never cease to love which was more painful to the mind of a sincere and enthusiastic follower of his own particular creed than the loss of all his other hopes together. He had loved early, and loved above his station; and encouraged by hope, and by the smiles of one who fancied that she loved in return, his ambition had been stimulated by passion, till all the great energies of his mind were called forth to raise himself to the highest celebrity. When he had attained all, however, when he saw multitudes flock to hear his voice, and thousands hanging upon the words of his lips as upon oracles, even then, at the moment when he thought every thing must yield to him, he had seen an unexpected degree of coldness come upon her he loved, and apparent reluctance to fulfil the promises which had been given when his estate was lowlier. Some slight opposition on the part of noble and wealthy parents--opposition that would have yielded to entreaties less than urgent, was assigned as the cause of the hesitation which wrung his heart. The very duties which he himself had inculcated, and which, had there been real love at heart, would have found a very different interpretation, were now urged in opposition to his wishes; and, mortified and pained, Claude de l'Estang watched anxiously for the ultimate result. We need not pause upon all the steps; the end was, that he saw her, to whom he had devoted every affection of a warm and energetic heart, break her engagements to him, wed an enemy of her father's creed, renounce the religion in which she had been brought up, and after some years of ephemeral glitter in a corrupt court, become faithless to the husband for whom she had become faithless to her religion, and end her days, in bitterness, in a convent, where her faith was suspected, and her real sins daily reproved.

In the meanwhile, Claude de l'Estang had wrestled with his own nature. He had refrained from showing mortification, or grief, or despair; he had kept the serpent within his own bosom, and fed him upon his own heart: he had abandoned not his pulpit; he had neglected, in no degree, his flock; he had publicly held up as a warning to others the dereliction of her whom he most loved, as one who had gone out from amongst them because she was not of them; he had become sterner, indeed more severe, in his doctrines as well as in his manners, and this first sorrow had a tendency rather to harden than to soften his heart.

The next thing, however, which he had to undergo, was the punishment of that harshness. A youth of a gentle but eager disposition, who had been his own loved companion and friend, whom he still esteemed highly for a thousand good and engaging qualities, was betrayed into an error, on the circumstances of which we will not pause. Suffice it to say that it proceeded from strong passion and circumstances of temptation, and that for it he was eager and willing to make atonement. He was one of the congregation of Claude de l'Estang, however, and the minister showed himself the more determined, on account of the friendship that existed between them, not to suffer the fault to pass without the humiliation of public penitence; and he exacted all, to the utmost tittle, that a harsh church, in its extremest laws, could demand, ere it received a sinner back into its bosom again. The young man submitted, feeling deep repentance, and believing his own powers of endurance to be greater than they were. But the effect was awful. From the church door, when he had performed the act demanded of him, fancying that the finger of scorn would be pointed at him for ever, he fled to his own home with reason cast headlong from her throne. Ere two hours were over he had died by his own hand; scrawling with his blood, as it flowed from him, a brief epistle to his former friend to tell him that the act was his.

That awful day, and those few lines, not only filled the bosom of the minister with remorse and grief, but it opened his eyes to every thing that had been dark in his own bosom. It showed him that he had made a vanity of dealing with his friend more severely than he would have done with others; that it was for his own reputation's sake that he had thus acted; that there was pride in the severe austerity of his life; that there was something like hypocrisy in the calm exterior with which he had covered over a broken heart. He felt that he had mighty enemies to combat in himself; and, as his heart was originally pure and upright, his energies great, and his power over himself immense, he determined that he would at once commence the war, and never end it till--to use his own words--"he had subdued every strong hold of the evil spirit in his breast, and expelled the enemy of his eternal Master for ever."

He succeeded in his undertaking: his very first act was to resign to others the cure of his congregation in Rochelle; the next to apply for and obtain the cure of the little Protestant congregation, in the remote village of Auron. Every argument was brought forward to induce him to stay in La Rochelle, but every argument proved inefficacious. The vanity of popularity he fancied might be a snare to him, and he refused all entreaties. When he came amongst the good villagers, he altered the whole tone and character of his preaching. It became simple, calm, unadorned, suited in every respect to the capacity of the lowest person that heard him. All the fire of his eloquence was confined to urging upon his hearers their duties, in the tone of one whose whole soul and expectations were staked upon their salvation. He became mild and gentle, too, though firm when it was needful; and the reputation which he had formerly coveted still followed him when he sought to cast it off. No synod of the Protestant clergy took place without the opinion of Claude de l'Estang being cited almost without appeal; and whenever advice, or consolation, or support was wanting, men would travel for miles to seek it at the humble dwelling of the village pastor.

His celebrity, joined with his mildness, gained great immunities for himself and his flock, during the early part of the reign of Louis XIV. At first, indeed, when he took upon himself the charge of Auron, the Catholic authorities of the neighbouring towns, holding in remembrance his former character, imagined that he had come there to make proselytes, and prepared to wage the strife with vehemence against him. The intendant of the province was urged to visit the little village of Auron, to cause the spire of the church--which had been suffered to remain, as all the inhabitants of the neighbouring district were Protestants--to be pulled down, and the building reduced to the shape and dimensions to which the temples of the Protestants were generally restricted: but ere the pastor had been many months there, his conduct was so different from what had been expected; he kept himself so completely aloof from every thing like cabal or intrigue; he showed so little disposition to encroach upon the rights, or to assail the religion, of others; that, knowing his talents and his energies when roused into action, the neighbouring Catholics embraced the opinion, that it would be better to leave him undisturbed.

The intendant of the province was a wise and a moderate man, and although, when urged, he could not neglect to visit the little town of Auron, yet he did so after as much delay as possible, and with the determination of dealing as mildly with its pastor, and its population, as was possible. When he came, he found the minister so mild, so humble, so unlike what he had been represented, that his good intentions were strengthened. He was obliged to say, that he must have the spire of the church taken down, although it was shown that there was not one Catholic family to be offended by the sight within seven or eight miles around. But Claude de l'Estang only smiled at the proposal, saying, that he could preach quite as well if it were away; and the intendant, though he declared that it was absolutely necessary to be done, by some accident always forgot to give orders to that effect; and even at a later period discovered that the spire, both from its own height and from the height of the hill on which it stood, sometimes acted as a landmark to ships at sea.

Thus the spire remained; and here, in calm tranquillity, Claude de l'Estang had, at the time we speak of, passed more than thirty years of his life. A small private fortune of his own enabled him to exercise any benevolent feelings to which his situation might give rise: simple in habits, he required little for himself; active and energetic in mind, he never wanted time to attend to the spiritual and temporal wants of his flock with the most minute attention. Though ever grave and sad himself, he was ever well pleased to see the peasantry happy and amused; and he felt practically every day, in comparing Auron with Rochelle, how much better is love than popularity. No magistrate, no judge, had any occupation in the town of Auron, for the veneration in which he was held was a law to the place. Any disputes that occurred amongst the inhabitants in consequence of the inseparable selfishnesses of our nature, were instantly referred to him; and he was sure to decide in such a way as instantly to satisfy the great bulk of the villagers that he was right. There were no recusants; for though there might be individuals who, from folly or obstinacy, or the blindness of selfishness, would have opposed his decision if it had stood unsupported, yet when the great mass of their fellow villagers were against them also, they dared not utter a word. If there was any evil committed; if youth, and either youth's passions or its follies produced wrong, the pastor had learned ever to censure mildly, to endeavour to amend rather than to punish, and to repair the evil that had been done, rather than to castigate him to whom it was attributable.

In such occupations passed the greater part of his time; and he felt to the very heart the truth of the words--even in this world--that "blessed are the peace-makers." The rest of his time he devoted either to study or to relaxation. What he called study was the deep intense application of his mind to the knowledge and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, whether in translation or in the original languages. What he called relaxation divided itself into two parts: the reading of that high classical literature, which had formed the great enjoyment of his youth, and by attention to which his eloquence had been chiefly formed; and the cultivation of his flower-garden, of which he was extremely fond, together with the superintendence of the little farm which surrounded his mansion. His life, in short, was a life of primeval simplicity: his pleasures few, but sweet and innocent; his course of existence, for many years at least, smooth and unvaried, remote from strife, and dedicated to do good.

From time to time, indeed, persons of a higher rank, and of thoughts and manners much more refined than those of the villagers by whom he was surrounded, would visit his retirement, to seek his advice or enjoy his conversation; and on these occasions he certainly did feel a refreshment of mind from the living communion with persons of equal intellect, which could not be gained even from his converse with the mighty dead. Still it never made him wish to return to situations in which such opportunities were more frequent, if not constant. "It is enough as it is," he said; "it now comes like a refreshing shower upon the soil of the heart, teaching it to bring forth flowers; but, perhaps, if that rain were more plentiful and continued always, there would be nothing but flowers and no fruit. I love my solitude, though perhaps I love it not unbroken."

It rarely happened that these visits had any thing that was at all painful or annoying in them, for the means of communication between one part of the country and another were in that day scanty; and those who came to see him could in no degree be moved by curiosity, but must either be instigated by some motive of much importance, or brought thither by the desire of a mind capable of comprehending and appreciating his. He seldom, we may almost say he never, went out to visit any one but the members of his own flock in his spiritual capacity. He had twice, indeed, in thirty years, been at the château of Morseiul, but that was first on the occasion of a dangerous illness of the Countess, the mother of Count Albert, and then, on the commencement of those encroachments upon the rights of the Huguenots, which had now been some time in progress.

The Counts of Morseiul, however, both father and son, visited him often. The first he had regarded well nigh as a brother; the latter he looked upon almost in the light of a son. He loved their conversation from its sincerity, its candour, and its vigour. The experience of the old Count, which came united with none of the hardness of heart and feeling which experience too often brings; the freshness of mind, the fanciful enthusiasms of the younger nobleman, alike interested, pleased, and attached him. With both there were points of immediate communication, by which his mind entered instantly into the thoughts and feelings of theirs; and he felt throughout every fresh conversation with them, that he was dealing with persons worthy of communication with him, both by brightness and elevation of intellect, by earnest energy of character, by virtue, honour, and uprightness, and by the rare gem of unchangeable truth.

It may well be supposed, then, that he rose to meet the young Count de Morseiul, of whose return to his own domains he had not been made aware, with a smile of unmixed satisfaction.

"Welcome, my dear Albert," he said, addressing him by the name which he had used towards him from childhood; "welcome back to your own dwelling and your own people. How have you fared in the wars? How have you fared in perilous camps and in the field, and in the still more perilous court? And how long is it since you returned to Morseiul?"

"I have fared well, dear friend," replied the Count, "in all; have had some opportunity of serving the king, and have received more thanks than those services deserved. In regard to the court, where I could neither serve him nor myself, nor any one else, I have escaped its perils this year, by obtaining permission to come straight from the army to Morseiul, without visiting either Paris or Versailles; and now, as to your last question, when I arrived, I would say but yesterday afternoon, were it not that you would, I know, thank me for coming to see you so speedily, when in truth I only intended to come to-morrow, had not some circumstances, not so pleasant as I could wish, though not so bad as I fear may follow, brought me hither, to consult with you to-day."

A slight cloud came over the old man's countenance as his younger companion spoke.

"Is the difficulty in which you seek counsel, Albert," he demanded, "in your own household, or in the household of our suffering church?"

"Alas," replied the Count, "it is in the latter, my excellent friend; had it been in my own household, unless some urgent cause impelled me, I should not have thus troubled you."

"I feared so, I feared so," replied the old man; "I have heard something of these matters of late:--so they will not leave us in repose!" And as he spoke he rose from the chair he had resumed after welcoming the Count, and paced the room backwards and forwards more than once.

"It is in vain," he said at length, casting himself back into his seat, "to let such things agitate me. The disposal of all is in a better and a firmer hand than mine. 'On this rock will I found my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it!' So said our divine Master; and I need not tell you, Albert of Morseiul, that when he said, 'on this rock,' he meant on the rock of faith, and did not mean the trumpery juggle, the buffoon-like playing on the name of Peter, which 'the disciples of a corrupt sect would attribute to him. He has founded his church upon the rock of faith, and thereon do I build my hope; for I cannot but see that the enemy are preparing the spear and making ready the bow against us. Whether it be God's will that we shall resist, as we have done in former times, and be enabled, though but a handful amongst a multitude, to smite the enemies and the perverters of our pure religion, or whether we shall be called upon to die as martyrs, and seal our faith by the pouring out of our blood, leaving another ensample to the elect that come after us, will be pointed out by the circumstances in which we are placed. But I see clearly that the sword is out to smite us, and we must either resist or endure."

"It is precisely on that point," replied the Count, "that I came to consult with you. Measures of a strong, a harassing, and of an unjust nature, are taking place against us, because we will not say we believe that which we are sure is false, and follow doctrines which our soul repudiates. Did I hope, my excellent friend, that the matter would stop here; did I expect that such measures of petty annoyance as I have heard proclaimed in the town of Morseiul to-day, or any thing, indeed, similar to those measures, would be the final end and limit of the attack upon our liberties and our faith, I should be most anxious to calm the minds of the people, to persuade them to endure rather than to resist, and to remember that patience will cure many things: I should ask you, I should beseech even you, plighted as you are to support the cause of truth and righteousness, to aid me in my efforts, and to remember at what an awful price indemnity must be bought; to remember how fearful, how terrible, must be the scenes through which we wade to the attainment of those equal rights which should be granted even without our seeking them."

"And I would aid you! and I would remember!" exclaimed the pastor, grasping his hand, "so help me the God of my trust, Albert of Morseiul," he continued more vehemently, "as I have ever avoided for long years every cause of strife and dissension, every matter of offence thrown in my way by those who would persecute us. Nay more, far more; when my counsels have been sought, when my advice has been required, the words that I have spoken have always been pacific, not alone peaceful in sound, but peaceful in spirit and in intent, and peaceful in every tendency; I have counselled submission where I might have stirred up war; I have advised mild means and supplications, when the time for successful resistance was pointed out both by just cause for bitter indignation, and by the embarrassment of our enemies in consequence of their over ambition: and now I tell thee, Albert, I tell thee with pain and apprehension, that I doubt, that I much doubt, whether in so doing I have acted right or wrong; whether, by such timid counsels, the happy moment has not been suffered to slip; whether our enemies, more wise in their generation than we are, have not taken advantage of our forbearance, have not waited till they themselves were in every way prepared, and are now ready to execute the iniquitous designs which have only been suspended in consequence of ambitious efforts in other quarters."

"I fear, indeed, that it is so," replied the young Count; "but, nevertheless, neither you nor any other person has cause to reproach himself for such conduct. Forbearance, even if taken advantage of by insidious enemies, must always be satisfactory to one's own heart."

"I know not, I know not," replied the old man. "In my early days, Albert, these hands have grasped the sword in defence of my religion; and we were then taught that resistance to the will of those bigots and tyrants who would crush out the last spark of the pure worship of God, and substitute in its place the gross idolatry which disfigures this land, was a duty to the Author of our faith. We were taught that resistance was not optional, but compulsory; and that to our children, and to our brethren, and to our ancestors, we owed the same determined, persevering, uncompromising efforts that were required from us by the service of the Lord likewise. We were taught that we should never surrender, that we should never hesitate, that we should never compromise, till the liberty of the true reformed church of France was established upon a sure and permanent basis, or the last drop of blood in the veins of her saints was poured out into the cup of martyrdom. Such were the doctrines, Albert, that were taught in my youth, such were the doctrines under which I myself became a humble soldier of the cross. But, alas, lulled with the rest of my brethren into a fatal security, thinking that no farther infraction of our liberties would take place, believing that we should always be permitted to worship the God of our salvation according to the dictates of our own conscience--perhaps even believing, Albert, that some degree of contumely and persecution, some stigma attached to the poor name of Huguenot, might be beneficial, if not necessary, in our frail condition as mortal men, to be a bond of union amongst us to maintain our religion in its purity, and to keep alive the flame of zeal;--believing all this, I have not bestirred myself to resist small encroachments, I have even counselled others to pass them over without notice. Now, however, I am convinced that it is the intention, perhaps not of the King, for men say that he is kind and clement, but of the base men that surround him, gradually to sap the foundations of our church, and cast it down altogether. I have seen it in every act that has been taking place of late, have marked it in every proceeding of the court; and, though slow and insidious, covered with base pretexts and pitiful quibbles, the progress of our enemies has been sure, and I fear that it may be too late to close the door against them: I could recall all their acts one by one, and the summing up would clearly show, that the idolatrous priesthood of this popish land are determined not to suffer a purer faith to remain any longer as an offence and reproach unto them."

"I much wish," replied the Count earnestly, "that you would put down, in order, these encroachments. I have been long absent, serving in the field, where my faith has, of course, been no obstacle, and where we have little discussion of such matters: but if I had them clearly stated before me, I and the other Protestant noblemen of France might draw up a petition to the king, whose natural sense of right is very strong, which would induce him to do us justice----"

The old man shook his head with a look of melancholy doubt, but the Count immediately added, repeating the words he had just used, "to do us justice, or to make such a declaration of his intentions, as to enable us to take measures to meet the exigency of the moment."

"Willingly, most willingly," said Claude de l'Estang, "will I tell you all that is done, and has been doing, by our enemies. I will tell you also, Albert, all the false and absurd charges that they urge against us to justify their own iniquitous dealings towards us. We will consider the whole together calmly and dispassionately, and take counsel as to what may best be done. God forbid that I should see the blood of my fellow Christians shed; but God forbid, also, that I should see his holy church overthrown."

"You speak of charges against us, sir," said the Count, with some surprise in his countenance: "I knew not that even malice itself could find or forge a charge against the Huguenots of France. At the court and in the camp there is no charge; tell me what we have done in the provinces to give even a foundation for a charge."

"Nothing, my young friend," replied the clergyman; "we have done nothing but defend the immunities secured unto us by the hand of the very king who now seeks to snatch them from us. We have not even defended, as perhaps we should, the unalienable privileges given us by a greater king. No; the insidious plan of our deceitful enemies has been to attack us first, and then to lay resistance to our charge as a crime. Take but a few instances. In the towns of Tonnay and of Privas, the reformed religion was not only the dominant religion, but the sole religion, and had been so for near a century; the inhabitants were all Protestants, tranquil, quiet, industrious. There were no religious contentions, there were no jealous feuds, when some one, prompted by the fiend, whispered to the crown that means should be taken to establish, in those places, the authority of the idolatrous church; that opportunity should be given for making converts from the pure to the corrupted faith; that in the end the pillage of the Protestant congregations should be permitted to the Romish priesthood. An order was instantly given for opening a Romish church in a place where there were no Papists, and for preaching against our creed in the midst of its sincere followers. The church was accordingly opened; the singing of Latin masses, and the exhibition of idolatrous processions commenced where such things had not been known in the memory of man: a few boys hooted, and instantly there was raised a cry, that the Romish priests were interrupted in their functions, that the ceremonies of the church were opposed by the whole mass of Huguenots. What was the result? The parliament of Paris gave authenticity to the calumny, by granting letters of protection to the intruding clergy; and then, taking its own act as proof of the guilt of the Huguenots, commanded our temples to be pulled down, and the free exercise of our religion in that place to be abolished. This was the case at Tonnay; and if at the same time the decree, which announced its fate to that city, had boldly forbidden our worship throughout the land, we might have displayed some union, and made some successful resistance. But our enemies were too wise to give us such a general motive: they struck an isolated blow here, and an isolated blow there; they knew man's selfishness; they foresaw how apathetic we should be to the injuries of our fellows; and they were right. The Huguenots of France made no effort in favour of those who suffered; some never inquired into the question at all, and believed that the people of Tonnay had brought the evil on their own heads; some shrugged the indifferent shoulder, and thought it not worth while to trouble the peace of the whole community for the sake of a single small town. Had it been your town of Morseiul it would have been the same, for such has been the case with Privas, with Dexodun, with Melle, with Chevreux, with Vitré, and full fifty more; and not one Protestant has moved to support the rights of his brother. Whenever, indeed, any thing has occurred affecting the whole body, then men have flocked to us, demanding advice and assistance; they have talked of open resistance, of immediate war, of defending their rights, of opposing further aggressions; but I have ever seen, Albert, that, mingled with a few determined and noble spirits, there have been many selfish, many indifferent; and I know that, unless some strong and universal bond of union be given them, some great common motive be afforded, thousands will fall off in the hour of need, and leave their defenders in the hands of the enemy. For this reason, as well as for many others, I have always urged peace where peace can be obtained; but I see now such rapid progress made against us, that I tremble between two terrible results."

The young Count gazed thoughtfully in the pastor's face for a few moments ere he replied. "I fear," he said at length, "that we have not yet a sufficient motive to bind all men, as is most needful in the strong assertion of a common cause.--Heaven forbid that we should do or even think of aught disloyal or rebellious; but I doubt much, though the new injury we have received is gross, that it will furnish a sufficient motive to unite all our brethren in one general representation to the king of our general grievances. Yet there are many points in the edict I heard read to-day wounding to the vanity of influential men amongst us, and that motive will often move them when others fail. But listen, and tell me what you think. These were the chief heads of the proclamation:"--and he went on to recapitulate all that he had heard, the old man listening with attention while he spoke.

"I fear there is no bond of union here," replied the pastor, commenting upon some of the heads which the young Count had given him; "rather, my good young friend, matter for dissension. They have cunningly thrown in more than one apple of discord to divide the mayors of the Protestant towns from their people, ay, and even to make the pastors odious to the flock."

"Let us, however," said the Count, "endeavour to act as unitedly as possible--let us keep a wary eye upon the proceedings of our enemies--let us be prepared to seize the fit moment for opposition, that we may seize it before it be necessary to resist in a manner that may be imputed to us as disloyal. Doubtless, at the assembling of the states of the province, which will take place shortly, there will be a great number of the Protestant nobles present, and I will endeavour to bring them to a general conference, in the course of which we may perhaps----"

"Hark!" said the old man, "there is the noise of a horse's feet;" and the next instant a loud ringing of the bell was heard, followed by the sound of a voice in the passage speaking to the maid servant in jocular and facetious tones, with which the young Count was well acquainted.

"It is my rascally valet, Riquet," he said. "He's always thrusting himself where he has no business."

"I wonder you retain him in your service," said the pastor; "I have marked him in your father's time, and have heard you both say that he is a knave."

"And yet he loves me," said the young Count; "and I do in truth believe would sooner injure himself than me."

The old man shook his head with an expression of doubt; but the Count went on: "However, I did not wish him to know that I came here to-night, and still less should wish him to be acquainted with the nature of my errand. He is a Papist, you know, and may suspect, perhaps, that we are holding a secret council with others. We had better, therefore, give him admittance at once."

There was a small silver bell stood on the table beside the pastor; and, as the maid did not come in, he rang it, inquired who it was that had arrived when she did make her appearance, and then ordered the valet to be admitted.

"What brought you here, Maître Jerome?" demanded the young Count, somewhat sternly, as the valet entered on his tiptoes, with a look of supreme self-satisfaction.

"Why, my lord," replied the man, "scarcely had you set out when there arrived a courier from the Duc de Rouvré, bringing you a packet. He was asked to leave it, as you were absent; but he said it was of vast importance, and that he was to get your answer from your own mouth: so he would give it to nobody. I took him into what used to be called the page's room, and made him drink deep of château Thierry, picked his pocket of the packet while he was looking out of the window, and seeing that he was tired to death, commended him to his bed, with a night cap of good liquor, promising to wake him as soon as you returned, and then set off with the packet to seek you, Monsieur le Comte."

"And pray what was the object of all this trickery?" demanded the Count. "If you be not careful, Maître Jerome, you will place your neck in a cord some day."

"So my mother used to say," replied the man, with cool effrontery; "but I only wished to serve your lordship, and knowing that there were difficult matters in hand, thought you might like to read the packet first, in order to be prepared to give a ready answer. We could easily seal up the letter again, and slip it into the courier's jerkin--which the poor fool put under his head when he went to sleep, thinking to secure the packet that was already gone. He would then present it to you in due form, and you give your answer without any apparent forethought."

The Count could not refrain from turning a smiling look upon the pastor, who, however, bent down his eyes and shook his head with a disapproving sigh.

The Count at the same time tore open the packet which the servant had handed to him, with a ruthless roughness, that made good Jerome Riquet start, and cry "Oh!" with an expression of pain upon his countenance, to see not the slightest possibility left of ever patching up the letter again, so as to make it appear as if it had never been opened.

"And I suppose, Master Jerome," continued the Count, while making his way into the packet, "that you took the trouble of watching me when I set out this afternoon."

"Heaven forbid, sir," replied the man; "that would have been both very impertinent, and an unnecessary waste of time and attention, as I knew quite well where you were going. As soon as you had been out to hear the proclamation and keep the people quiet, and came home and sat with the shuttlecock Marquis de Hericourt, and then ordered your horse, I said to myself, and I told Henriot, 'his lordship is gone to consult with Monsieur Claude de l'Estang; and where, indeed, could he go so well as to one who is respected by the Catholics almost as much as by the Huguenots? Whom could he apply to so wisely as to one whose counsels are always judicious, always peaceful, and always benevolent?'" and having finished this piece of oratory, Riquet--perceiving that his master, busy in the letter, gave him no attention--made a low but somewhat grotesque reverence to the good pastor, bending his head, rounding his back, and elevating his shoulders, while his long thin legs stuck out below, so that he assumed very much the appearance of a sleeping crane.

The pastor, however, shook his head, replying gravely, "My good friend, I have lived more than sixty-five years in the world, and yet I trust age has not diminished the intellect which experience may have tended to improve."

By the time he had said this the young Count had read to the end of the short letter which he had received, and put it before the pastor.

"This is kind," he said, "and courteous of my good friend the Duke, who, though I have not seen him for many years, still retains his regard for our family. Jerome, you may retire," he added, "and wait for me without. This letter which you have brought is of no importance whatever, a mere letter of civility, so that either you or the Duke's courier have lied."

"Oh, it was the courier, sir," replied the valet, with his usual quiet impudence, "it was the courier of course, otherwise there is no truth in the old proverb, Cheat like a valet, lie like a courier. I always keep to my own department, sir;" and so saying he marched out of the room.

In the mean time Claude de l'Estang had read the letter, which invited the young Count to visit the Duc de Rouvré at Poitiers, and take up his abode in the governor's house some days before the meeting of the states. It went on to express great regard for the young nobleman himself, and high veneration for his father's memory; and then, glancing at the religious differences existing in the province, and the measures which had been lately taken against the Huguenots, it went on to state that the writer was anxious to receive the private advice and opinion of the young Count as to the best means of extinguishing all irritation on such subjects.

"Were this from any other man than the Duc de Rouvré," said the pastor, "I should say that it was specious and intended to mislead; but the Duc has always shown himself favourable to the Protestants as a politician, and I have some reason to believe is not unfavourable to their doctrines in his heart: but go, my son, go as speedily as possible, and God grant that your efforts may conclude with peace."

After a few more words of the same tenor, the pastor and his young friend separated, and the Count and his valet, mounting their horses, took their way back towards the château, with the shades of night beginning to gather quickly about them.

CHAPTER IV.

[UNEXPECTED COMPANIONS.]

The two horsemen rode to the village at a quick rate, but then slackened their pace, and passed through the single little street at a walk. The scene, however, was now changed; the children were no longer playing before the doors; from out of the windows of some of the cottages streamed forth the reddish light of a resin candle; from others was heard issuing the sound of a psalm, sung before the inhabitants retired to rest; and at the doors of others again appeared a peasant returned late from the toil of the day, and--as is so natural to the heart of man--pausing in the thickening twilight to take one more look of the world, before the darkness of night shut it out altogether. A star or two was beginning to appear in the sky; the bats were flitting hither and thither through the dusk; and, though it was still warm and mild, every thing betokened the rapid approach of night.

From the village the Count rode on, relapsing, after having spoken a few words to his servant, into the same meditative mood which had possessed him on his way to Auron. He hastened not his pace, and after he had gone about three miles complete darkness surrounded him. There was no moon in the sky; the road by which he had come, steep, stony, and irregular, required full light to render it safe for his horse's knees; and, after the animal had tripped more than once, the Count struck into a path to the right, which led by a little détour into the high road from Paris to Poitiers.

High roads, however, in those days were very different things from those which they have now become; and there is scarcely a parish road in England, or a commercial road in France, which is not wider, more open, and better in every respect than the high road we speak of was at that time. When he had gained it, however, the Count went on more easily till he arrived at the spot where it entered one of the large woods which supplied the inhabitants with fuel in a country unproductive of coal. There, however, he met with an obstruction which he had not at all anticipated. As he approached the outskirts of the wood, there was a sudden flash to the right, and a ball whistled across the Count's path, but without hitting either himself or his servant.

He was too much accustomed to scenes in which such winged messengers of death were common, to be startled by the shot, but merely muttering to himself, "This is unpleasant; we must put a stop to this so near Morseiul," he considered whether it would be better for him to push his horse forward or to go back upon the open road. But the matter was settled for him by others; for he was surrounded in a moment by five or six men, who speedily pulled him off his horse, though he made no effort to resist where resistance he saw would be vain, and then demanded his name in an imperative and threatening manner. He heard, however, at the same time, the galloping of the horse of Jerome Riquet, who had remained some twenty or thirty yards behind him; and perfectly certain, therefore, that very efficient aid would soon be brought to deliver him, he determined to procrastinate as far as possible, in the hopes of taking some of the plunderers who had established themselves so near his dwelling.

"I cannot see," he said, "what your business can be with my name; if it is my money that you want, any that I have upon my person you can take.--My good friend, you will oblige me by not holding my collar so tight; it gives me a feeling of strangulation, which, as you may perhaps some day know, is not very pleasant."

The man who held him, and who seemed the principal of the group, did not appear to be at all offended at being reminded of what might be the end of his exploits, but let go his collar, laughing and saying, "You are merry! however, your money we shall take as our own right. It is fair toll you know; and your name we must have too, as being officers of the King's highway, if not of the King, we have certainly a right to ask for passports."

"Heaven forbid that I should deny any of your rights," replied the Count; "my money I will give you with all my heart: but my name is my own, and I do not choose to give that to any one."

"Well, then, we must take you where we can see your face," replied the other. "Then if we know you, well and good, you shall go on; if we do not know you, we shall find means to make you speak more clearly, I will warrant."