Long before the hour appointed for him to wait upon the duke, Jean Charost was up and dressed, expecting every moment to see the servant he had engaged present himself, but no Martin Grille appeared. The attendant of the duke, who had waited upon him the preceding evening, brought him a breakfast not to be despised, consisting of delicacies from various parts of France, and a bottle of no bad wine of Beaugency; but he could tell nothing of Martin Grille, and by the time the meal was over, the hour appointed by the duke had arrived.
On being admitted to the prince's dressing-chamber, Jean Charost found him in hisrobe de chamber, seated at a table, writing. His face, the young man could not help thinking, was even graver and sadder than on the preceding night; but he did not raise his eyes at the secretary's entrance, and continued to write slowly, often stopping to correct or alter, till he had covered one side of the paper before him. When that was done, he handed the sheet to the young secretary, saying, "There, copy me that;" and, on taking the paper, Jean Charost was surprised to see that it was covered with verse; for he was not aware that the duke possessed any of that talent which was afterward so conspicuous in his son. He seated himself at the table, however, and proceeded to fulfill the command he had received, not without difficulty, for the duke's writing, though large and bold, was not very distinct.
To will and not to do,Alas! how sad!Man and his passions tooAre mad--how mad!Oh! could the heart but breakThe heavy chainThat binds it to this stakeOf earthly pain,And see for joys all pure,And hopes all bright,For pleasures that endure,And wells of light,And purge away the drossWith life allied,I ne'er had mourn'd love's loss,Nor ever cried.To will and not to do,Alas! how sad!Man and his passions tooAre mad--how mad!
To will and not to do,Alas! how sad!Man and his passions tooAre mad--how mad!Oh! could the heart but breakThe heavy chainThat binds it to this stakeOf earthly pain,And see for joys all pure,And hopes all bright,For pleasures that endure,And wells of light,And purge away the drossWith life allied,I ne'er had mourn'd love's loss,Nor ever cried.To will and not to do,Alas! how sad!Man and his passions tooAre mad--how mad!
"Read it, read it," said the Duke of Orleans; and, with some timidity, the young secretary obeyed, feeling instinctively how difficult it is to give in reading the exact emphasis intended by the writer. He succeeded well, however. The duke was pleased, perhaps as much with his own verses as with the manner in which they were read. But, after a few words of commendation, he fell into a fit of thought again, from which he was at length startled by the slow tolling of the bell of a neighboring church. He raised his eyes suddenly to the face of Jean Charost as the sounds struck upon his ear, and gazed at him with a strange, inquiring, but sorrowful expression of countenance, as if he would fain have asked, "Do you know what that bell means? Can you comprehend the feelings it begets in me?"
The young man bent his eyes gravely to the ground, and that sort of reverence which we all feel for deep grief, and the sort of awe excited, especially in young minds, by the display of intense passion, gave his countenance naturally an expression of sympathy and sorrow.
A moment after, the duke started up, exclaiming, "I can not let her go without a look or a tear! Come with me, my friend, come with me. God knows I need some support, even in my wrong, and my weakness, and my punishment."
"Oh, that I could give it you, sir!" said Jean Charost, in a low tone; but the duke merely grasped his arm, and, leaning heavily upon him, quitted the chamber by a door through which Jean Charost had not hitherto passed. It led into the prince's bed-room, and from that, through what seemed a private passage, to a distant suite of rooms on another front of the house. The duke proceeded with a rapid but irregular pace, while the bell was still heard tolling, seeming to make the roof shudder with its slow and heavy vibrations. Through five or six different vacant chambers, fitted up with costly decorations, but apparently long unused, the prince hurried forward till he reached that side of the house which looked over the wall of the gardens into the Rue Saint Antoine, but there he paused before a window, and gazed forth.
There was nothing to be seen. The street was almost deserted. A youth in a fustian jacket and wide hose, with a round cap on his head--evidently some laboring mechanic--passed along toward the Bastile, gazing forward with a look of stupid eagerness, and then set off running, as if to see some sight which he was afraid would escape him; and still the bell was heard tolling slow and solemnly, and filling the whole air with melancholy trembling.
The duke quitted his hold of Jean Charost and crossed his arms upon his breast, setting his teeth hard, as if there were a terrible struggle within, in which he was determined to conquer.
A moment after, a song rose upon the air--a slow, melancholy chant, well marked in time, with swelling flow and softening cadence, and now a pause, and then a full burst of song, sometimes one or two voices heard alone, and then a full chorus; but all sad, and solemn, and oppressive to the spirit. At length a man bearing a banner appeared, and then two or three couple of mendicant friars, and then a small train of Celestin monks in their long, flowing garments, and then some boys in white gowns with censers, then priests in their robes, and then two white horses drawing a car, with a coffin upon it--a closed coffin, which was not usual in those days at the funerals of the great. Men on horseback and on foot followed, but Jean Charost did not clearly distinguish who or what they were. He only saw the priests and the boys with their censers, and the Celestins in their white gowns and their black scapularies, and the coffin, and the flowers that strewed it, even in the midst of winter, in an indistinct and confused manner, for his attention was strongly called in another direction, though he did not venture to look round.
The moment the head of the procession had appeared from beyond one of the flanking towers of the garden wall, the Duke of Orleans had laid a hand upon his shoulder, and grasped him tight, as if for support. Heavier and heavier pressed the hand, and then the young man felt that the prince's head was bowed down and rested upon him, while the long-drawn, struggling breath--the gasp, as if existence were coming to an end--told the terrible anguish of his spirit.
Solemn and slow the notes of the chant rose up as the procession swept along before the gates of the palace, and the words of the penitent King of Israel were heard ascending to the sky, and praying the God of mercy and of power to pardon and to succor. The grasp of the hand grew less firm, but the weight pressed heavier and heavier; and, turning suddenly round, Jean Charost cast his arm about the duke, from an instinctive feeling that he was falling to the ground.
The prince's face was deadly pale, and his strong limbs shook as if with an ague. Bitter tears, too, were on his cheeks, and his lips quivered. "Get me a chair," he said, faintly, grasping the pillar between the windows; "I feel ill--get me a chair."
Although almost afraid to leave him lest he should fall, Jean Charost hurried to obey, brought forward one of the large arm-chairs, and, placing his hand under the duke's arm, assisted him to seat himself in it. Then gazing anxiously in his face, he beheld an expression of deep and bitter grief, such as he had never seen before; no, not even in his mother's face when his father's dead body was brought back to his paternal hall. The young man's heart was touched; the distinction of rank and station was done away, in part; sympathy created a bond between him and one who was comparatively a stranger, and, kneeling at the prince's side, he kissed his hand, saying, "Oh, sir, be comforted. Death ever strikes the dearest and the best beloved. It is the lot of humanity to possess but for a season that which we value most. It is a trial of our faith to yield unrepining to him who lent that which he takes away. Trust--trust in God to comfort and to compensate!"
The duke shook his head sadly. "Trust in God!" he repeated, "and him have I offended. His laws have I broken. Young man, young man, you know not what it is to see the bitter consummation of what you yourself have done--to behold the wreck you have made of happiness--the complete desolation of a life once pure, and bright, and beautiful--all done by you. Yes, yes," he added, almost wildly, "I did it all--what matter the instruments--what signifies it that the dagger was not in my hand? I was the cause of all--I tore her from a peaceful home, where she had tranquillity, if not love--I blasted her fair name--I broke up her domestic peace--I took from her happiness--I gave her penitence and remorse--I armed the hand that stabbed her. Mine, mine is the whole crime, though she has shared the sorrow and endured the punishment."
"But there is mercy, sir," urged Jean Charost; "there is mercy for all repentance. Surely Christ died not in vain. Surely he suffered not for the few, but for the many. Surely his word is not false, his promises not idle! 'Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give ye rest.' He spoke of the weariness of the heart, and the burden of the spirit--He spoke to all men. He spoke to the peasant in his hut, to the king upon his throne, to the saint in his cell, to the criminal in his dungeon, to the sorrowful throughout all the earth, and throughout all time; and to you, oh prince--He spoke also unto you! Weary and heavy laden are you with your grief and your repentance; turn unto him, and he will give you rest!"
There was something in the outburst of fervid feeling with which the young man spoke, from the deep interest that had been excited in him by all he had seen and heard, which went straight home to the heart of the Duke of Orleans, and casting his arm around him, he once more leaned his head upon his shoulder, and wept profusely. But now they seemed to be somewhat calmer tears he shed--tears of grief, but not altogether of despair; and when he lifted his head again, the expression of deep, hopeless bitterness was gone from his face. The chant, too, had ceased in the street, though a faint murmur thereof was still heard in the distance.
"You have given me comfort, Jean," he said; "you have given me comfort, when none else, perhaps, could have done so. You are no courtier, dear boy. You have spoken, when others would have stood in cold and reverent silence. Oh, out upon the heartless forms that cut us off from our fellow-men, even in the moment when the intensity of our human sufferings makes us feel ourselves upon the level of the lowliest! Out upon the heartless forms that drive us to break through their barrier into the sphere of passion, as much in pursuit of human sympathies as of mere momentary pleasure! Come with me, Jean. It is over--the dreadful moment is past--I will seek him to whom thou hast pointed--I will seek comfort there. But on this earth, the hour just passed has forged a tie between thee and me which can never be broken. Now I can understand how thou hast won so much love and confidence; it is that thou hast some heart, where all, or almost all, are heartless."
Thus saying, he raised himself with the aid of the young man's arm, and walked slowly back to his own apartments by the way he had come.
When they had entered his toilet-chamber, the duke cast himself into a chair, saying, "Now leave me, De Brecy; but be not far off. I need not tell you not to speak of any thing you have seen. I know you will not. I will send for you soon; but I must have time for thought."
Jean Charost withdrew and sought his own room; but it is not to be denied that the moment was a perilous one for his favor with the Duke of Orleans. It is a very dangerous thing to witness the weaknesses of great men--or those emotions which they look upon as weaknesses. Pride, vanity, doubt, fear, suspicion, all whisper hate against those who can testify that they are not so strong as the world supposes. Alas, that it should be so! But so it is; and it was but by a happy quality in the mind of the Duke of Orleans--the native frankness and generosity of his disposition--that Jean Charost escaped the fate of so many who have witnessed the secret emotion of princes. Happily for himself, he knew not that there was any peril, and felt, though in a different sense, that, as the prince had said, there was a new tie between him and his royal master.
At the corner of a street, on the island which formed the first nucleus round which gathered the great city of Paris, was a small booth, protruding from a little, ill-favored house, some three or four hundred yards from the church of Nôtre Dame. This booth consisted merely of a coarse wooden shed, open in front, and only covered overhead by rough, unsmoothed planks, while upon a rude table or counter, running along the front, appeared a number of articles of cutlery, knives, great rings, and other iron ware, comprising the daggers worn, and often used in a sanguinary manner, by the lower order of citizens; for, though the possessor of the stall was not a regular armorer by profession, he did not think himself prohibited from dealing in the weapons employed by his own class. Written in white chalk upon a board over the booth were the words, "Simon, dit Caboche, Maître Coutellier."
Behind the table on which his goods were displayed appeared the personage to whom the above inscription referred: a man of some forty-five or forty-six years of age, tall, brawny, and powerful, with his huge arms bare up to the elbows, notwithstanding the severity of the weather. His countenance was any thing but prepossessing, and yet there was a certain commanding energy in the broad, square forehead and massive under jaw, which spoke, truly enough, the character of the man, and obtained for him considerable influence with people of his own class. Yet he was exceedingly ugly; his cheek bones high and prominent; his eyes small, fierce, and flashing, and his nose turned up in the air, as if in contempt of every thing below it. His skin was so begrimed with dirt, that its original color could with difficulty be distinguished; but it was probably of that dark, saturnine brown, which seldom looks completely clean; for his hair was of the stiff, black, bristly nature which usually goes with that complexion.
Limping about in the shop beside him was a creature, which even youth--usually so full of its own special charms--could not render beautiful or graceful. Nature seemed to have stamped upon it, from its birth, the most repulsive marks. It was a boy of some ten or twelve years old, but still his eyes hardly reached above the table on which the cutler's goods were displayed; but, by a peculiarity not uncommon, the growth which should have been upright had, by some obstacle, been forced to spread out laterally, and the shoulders, ribs, and hips were as broad as those of a grown man. The back was humped, though not very distinctly so; the legs were both short, but one was shorter than the other; and one eye was defective, probably from his birth. So short, so stout, so squared was the whole body, that it looked more like a cube, with a large head and very short legs, than a human form; but, though the gait was awkward and unsightly to the eyes, that little creature was possessed of singular activity, and of very great strength, notwithstanding his deformity.
It was a curious thing to see the father and the son standing together: the one with his great, powerful, well-developed limbs, and the other with his minute and apparently slender form. One could hardly believe that the one was the offspring of the other. Yet so it was. Maître Simon was the father of that deformed dwarf, whose appearance would have been quite sufficient to draw the hooting boys of Paris after him when he appeared in the streets, had not the vigor and unmerciful severity of his father's arm kept even the little vagabonds of the most turbulent city in the world in awe.
That which might seem most strange, though in reality it was not so at all, was the doting fondness of the stern, powerful father for that misshapen child. It seems a rule of Nature, that where she refuses to any one the personal attractions which, often undeservedly, command regard, she places in the bosom of some other kindred being that strong affection which generously gives gratuitously the love for which there seems so little claim.
The father and the son had obtained, first from the boys of the town, and then from elder people, the nicknames of the big Caboche and the little Caboche, and, with a good-humor very common in France, they had themselves adopted these epithets without offense; so that the cutler was constantly addressed by his companions merely as Caboche, and had even placed that title over his door. During the hours when he tended his shop, or was engaged in the manual labors of his trade, the boy was almost always with him, limping round him, making observations upon every thing, and enlivening his father's occupations by a sort of pungent wit, perhaps a little smacking of buffoonery, which, if not a gift, could be nowhere so well acquired as in the streets of Paris, and in which the hard spirit of the cutler greatly delighted.
Nevertheless, the characters of the father and the son were not less strongly in contrast than their corporeal frames. Notwithstanding an occasional moroseness and acerbity, perhaps engendered by a sad comparison of his own physical powers with those of others of his age, there was in the boy's nature a fund of kindly sympathies and gentle affections, which characterized his actions more than his words: and as we all love contrasts, the secret of his father's strong affection for him might be, in part, the opposition between their several dispositions.
It was about three o'clock in the day, the hour when Parisians are most abroad; but the cold kept many within doors, and but one person had stopped at the booth to buy.
"Trade is ruined," said big Caboche, in a grumbling tone. "No business is doing. The king's sickness and his brother's influence have utterly destroyed the trade of the city. Armorers, and embroiderers, and dealers in idle goldsmiths' work, may make a living; but no one else can gain his bread. There has not been a single soul in the shop this morning, except an old woman who wanted an ax to cut her meat, because it was frozen."
"My father," replied the boy, "it was not the king nor the Duke of Orleans that made the Seine freeze, or pinched old Joaquim's nose, or burned old Jeannette's flannel coat, or kept any of the folks in who would have been out if it had not been so cold. Don't you see there is nobody in the street but those who have only one coat, and that a thin one. They come out because the frosty sunshine is better than no shine at all; and, though they keep their hands in their pockets, they won't draw them out, because you won't let them have goods without money, and they have not money to buy goods. But here comes Cousin Martin, as fine as a popinjay. It must have snowed feathers, I think, to have clothed his back so gayly."
"Ah, the scapegrace!" exclaimed Caboche "I should think that he had just been plundering some empty-headed master, if my pot had not reason to know that he has had no master to plunder for these last three months. Well, Master Never-do-well, what brings you here in such smart plumes? Violet and yellow, with a silver lace, upon my life! If you are so fully fledged, methinks you can pick up your own grain without coming to mine."
"And so I can, and so I will, uncle," replied our friend Martin Grille, pausing at the entrance of the booth to look at himself from head to foot, in evident admiration of his own appearance. "Did you ever see any thing fit better? Upon my life, it is a perfect marvel that any man should ever have been made so perfectly like me as to have worn these clothes before, without the slightest alteration! Nobody would believe it."
"Nobody will believe they are your own, Cousin Martin," said the deformed boy, with a grin.
"But they are my own, Petit Jean," answered Martin Grille, with a very grand air; "for I have bought them, and paid for them; and though they may have been stolen, for aught I know, before I had them, I had no hand in the stealing,foi de valet."
"Ah," said Caboche, dryly, "men always gave you credit for more ingenuity than you possess, and they will in this instance also. I always said you were a good-humored, foolish, hair-brained lad, without wit enough to take a bird's nest or bamboozle a goose; but people would not believe me, even when you were clad in hodden gray. What will they think now, when you dance about in silk and broadcloth?"
"Why they'll think, good uncle, that I have all the wit they imagined, and all the honesty you knew me to have. But I'll tell you all about it, that my own relations, at least, may have cause to glorify themselves."
"Get you gone--get you gone," cried the cutler, in a rough, but not ill-humored tone. "I don't want to know how you got the clothes."
"Tell me, Martin, tell me," said the boy; "I should like to hear, of all things. Perhaps I may get some in the same way, some day."
"Mayhap," answered Martin Grille, seating himself on a bench, and kindly putting his arm round the deformed boy's neck. "Well, you must know, Petit Jean, that there is a certain Signor Lomelini, who is maître d'hôtel to his highness the Duke of Orleans--"
"Big Caboche growled out a curse between his teeth; for while pretending to occupy himself with other things, he was listening to the tale all the time, and the Duke of Orleans was with him an object of that strange, fanciful, prejudiced hatred, which men of inferior station very often conceive, without the slightest cause, against persons placed above them.
"Well, this Signor Lomelini--"
"There, there," cried Caboche; "we know all about that long ago. How his mule put its foot into a hole in the street, and tumbled him head over heels into the gutter, and you picked him out, and scraped, and wiped him, and took him back clean and sound, though desperately frightened, and a little bruised. We recollect all about that, and what gay day-dreams you built up, and thought your fortune made. Has he recollected you at last, and given you a cast off suit of clothes? He has been somewhat tardy in his gratitude, and niggardly, too."
"All wrong, uncle mine, all wrong!" replied Martin Grille, laughing. "There has been hardly a day on which I have not seen him since, and when I hav'n't dined with you, I have dined at the Hôtel d'Orleans. He found out what you never found out: that I was dexterous, serviceable, and discreet, and many has been the little job which required dispatch and secrecy which I have done for him."
"Ay, dirty work, I trow," growled Caboche; but Martin Grille proceeded with his tale, without heeding his uncle's accustomed interruptions.
"Well, Signor Lomelini always promised," he said, "to get me rated on the duke's household. There was a prospect for a penniless lad, Petit Jean!"
"As well get you posted in the devil's kitchen," said Caboche, "and make you Satan's turnspit."
"But are you placed--but are you placed?" cried the deformed boy, eagerly.
"You shall hear all in good time," answered Martin Grille. "He promised, as I have said, to get me rated as soon as there was any vacancy; but the devil seemed in all the people. Not one of them would die, except old Angelo, the squire of the stirrup, and Monsieur De Gray, the duke's secretary. But those places were far too high for me."
"I see not why they should be," answered the deformed boy, "except that the squire is expected to fight at his lord's side, and the secretary to write for him; and I fancy, Cousin Martin, thou wouldst make as bad a hand at the one as the other."
"Ha, ha, ha!" shouted Caboche; "he hit thee there, Martin."
"On my life! I don't know," answered Martin Grille; "for I never tried either. However, yesterday afternoon the signor sent for me, and told me that the duke had got a new secretary--quite a young man, who knew very little of life, less of Paris, and nothing of a court: that this young gentleman had got no servant, and wanted one; that he had recommended me, and that I should be taken if I could recommend myself. I went to him in the gray of the evening, to set off my apparel the better, but I found the youth not quite so pastoral as I expected, and he began to ask me questions. Questions are very troublesome things, and answers still more so; so I made mine as short as possible."
"And he engaged you," cried the boy, eagerly.
"On my life! I can hardly say that," replied Martin Grille. "But the Duke of Orleans himself just happened to come in at the nick of time, when I was beginning to get a little puzzled. So I thought it best to take it for granted I was engaged; and making my way as fast as possible out of the august presence of my master, and my master's master, I went away to Signor Lomelini and told him I was hired, all through his influence. So, then, he patted me on the shoulder, and called me a brave lad. He told me, moreover, to get myself put in decent costume, and wait upon the young gentleman early the next morning."
"Ay, that's the question," cried Caboche; "where did you get the clothes? Did you steal them from your new master the first day; for you will not say that Lomelini gave them to you. If so, men have belied him."
"No," said Martin, in an exceedingly doubtful tone, "no--I can't say he exhibits his money. What his own coin is made of, I can not tell. I never saw any of it that I know of. He pays out of other men's pockets though, and he has been as good as his word with me."
"How so?" asked the cutler.
"Why, you must know," answered Martin, with an important air, "that every servant in the duke's house is rated on the duke's household. Each gentleman, down to the very pages, has one or more valets, and they are all on the household-book. To prevent excess, however, and with a paternal solicitude to keep them out of debt, the maître d'hôtel takes upon himself the task of paying all the valets, sending in to the treasurer a regular account against each master every month, to be deducted from that master's salary; and, as it is the custom to give earnest to a valet when he is engaged, I persuaded the signor to advance me a sufficient number of crowns to carry me on silver wings to a frippery shop."
"Where you spent the last penny, Cousin Martin," said the deformed boy, with a sly smile.
"No, I did not, Petit Jean," replied Martin Grille; "for I brought one whole crown to you. There, my boy; you are a good lad, and I love you dearly, though you do break your sharp wit across my hard head sometimes--take it, take it!"
The boy looked as if he would very much like to have the crown, but still put it away from him, with fingers itching as much to clutch it as Cæsar's on the Lupercal.
"Take it," repeated Martin Grille. "I owe your father much more than that."
"You owe me nothing," answered Caboche, quickly; and then added in a softened tone, as he saw how eagerly the boy looked at the piece of money: "you may take it, my son. That will show Martin that I really think he owes me nothing. What I have given him was given for blood relationship, and what he gives you is given in the same way."
The boy took it, exclaiming, "Thank you, Martin--thank you. Now I will buy me a viol of my own; for neighbor Pierrot says I spoil his, just because I make it give out sounds that he can not."
"Ay, thou had'st always a hankering after music," said Martin Grille. "Be diligent, be diligent. Petit Jean, and play me a fine tune on your fiddle at my return; for we are all away to-morrow morning by the crow of the cock."
"Where to?" exclaimed Caboche, eagerly. "More wrangling toward, I warrant. Some day I shall have to put on the salad and corselet myself, for this strife is ruining France; and if the Duke of Orleans will not let his noble cousin of Burgundy save the country, all good men must join to force him."
"Ay, ay, uncle. You always take a leap in the dark when the Duke of Orleans' name is mentioned. There's no wrangling, there's no quarreling, there's no strife. All is peace and good-will between the two dukes; and this is no patched up business, but a regular treaty, which will last till you are in your grave, and Petit Jean is an old man. We shall see bright days yet, for all that's come and gone. But the truth is, the duke is ill, and this business being happily settled, he goes off for his Castle of Beauté to-morrow, to have a little peace and quiet."
"Ill! what makes him ill?" asked the cutler. "If he had to work from morning till night to get a few sous, or to stand here in this cold shop all day long, with nobody coming in to buy, he'd have a right to be ill. But he has every thing he wants, and more than he ought to have. What makes him ill?"
"Ah, that I can't say," answered Martin Grille. "There has something gone wrong in the household, and he has been very sad; but great men's servants may use their eyes, but must hold their tongues. God mend us all."
"Much need of it," answered Caboche, "and him first. Well, I would rather be a rag-picker out of the gutter than one of your discreet, see-every thing, say-nothing serving-men--your curriers of favor, your silent, secret depositories of other men's wickedness. What I see I must speak, and what I think, too. It is the basest part of pimping, to stand by and say nothing. Out upon such a trade."
"Well, uncle, every one loves his own best," answered Martin Grille. "I, for instance, would not make knives for people to cut each other's throats with. But for my part, I think the best plan is for each man to mind his own business, and not to care for what other people do. I have no more business with my master's secrets than with his purse, and if he trusts either the one or the other with me, my duty is to keep them safely."
By his tone, Martin Grille seemed a little nettled; but the rough cutler only laughed at him, saying, "Mind, you do that, nephew of mine, and you will be the very prince of valets. I never knew one who would not finger the purse, or betray a secret, if occasion served; but thou art a phœnix in thy way, so God speed thee and keep thee honest."
"I say amen," answered Martin Grille, turning to leave the booth; "I only came to wish you both good-by; for when a man once sets out from Paris there is no knowing when he may return again."
"Oh, he is certain to come back some time," replied the cutler. "Paris is the centre of all the world, and every thing is drawn toward it by a force not to be resisted. So fare you well, my good nephew, and let us see you when you come back."
Martin promised to come and visit the cutler and his son as soon as he returned, and then sauntered away, feeling himself as fine in his new clothes as a school-boy in a holiday suit.
The cutler resumed his avocations again; but could not forbear some grumbling observations upon valets and valetry, which perhaps he might have spared, had he understood his nephew's character rightly. About quarter of an hour, however, after the young man had left the shop, a letter, neatly tied and sealed, was brought by a young boy, apparently one of the choristers of some great church or cathedral. It was addressed "To Martin Grille;" and, whatever might be his curiosity, Caboche did not venture to open it, but sent the lad on to the palace of the Duke of Orleans, telling him he would find his nephew there.
I know few things more pleasant than a stroll through Paris, as I remember it, in a fine early winter's morning. There was an originality about the people whom one saw out and abroad at that period of the day--a gay, cheerful, pleasant originality--which is not met with in any other nation. Granted that this laughing semblance was but the striped skin of the tiger, and that underneath there was a world of untamable ferocity, which made the cat-like creature dangerous to play with; yet still the sight was an agreeable one, one that the mind's eye rested upon with sensations of pleasure. The sights, too, had generally something to interest or to amuse--very often something that moved the feelings; but more generally something having a touch of the burlesque in it, exciting a smile, though seldom driving one into a laugh.
Doubtless the same was the case on the morning when the Duke of Orleans and his household set out from his brother's capital; for the Parisians have always been Parisians, and that word, as far as history shows us, has always meant one thing. It was very early in the morning, too. The sun hardly tipped the towers of Nôtre Dame, or gilded the darker and more sombre masses of the Châtelet. The most matutinal classes--the gatherers of rags: the unhappy beings who pilfered daily from unfastened doors and open entries: the peasants coming into market: the laborers going out with ax or shovel: even the roasters of chestnuts (coffee was then unknown) were all astir, and many a merry cry to wake slumbering cooks and purveyors was heard along the streets of the metropolis. Always cheerful except when ferocious, the population of Paris was that day in gayer mood than usual, for the news that a reconciliation had taken place between the Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy, whose feuds had become wearisome as well as detrimental, had spread far and wide during the preceding evening, and men anticipated prosperous and peaceful times, after a long period of turbulence and disaster. Seldom had the Duke of Orleans gone forth from the metropolis in such peaceful array. Sometimes he had galloped out in haste with a small body of attendants, hardly enough in number to protect his person; sometimes he had marched forward in warlike guise, to do battle with the enemy. But now he proceeded quietly in a horse-litter, feeling himself neither very well nor very ill. His saddle-horse, some pages, squires, and a few men-at-arms followed close, and the rest of the attendants, who had been selected to go with him, came after in little groups as they mounted, two or three at a time. The whole cavalcade did not amount to more than fifty persons--no great retinue for a prince of those days; but yet, in its straggling disorder, it made a pretty long line through the streets, and excited a good deal of attention in the multitude as it passed. But the distance to the gates was not great, and the whole party soon issued forth through the very narrow suburbs which then surrounded the city, into the open country beyond. To tell the truth, though the whole land was covered with the white garmenture of winter, it was a great relief to Jean Charost to find his sight no longer bounded by stone walls, and his chest no longer oppressed by the heavy air of a great city. The sun sparkling on the snow, the branches of the trees incrusted with frost, the clear blue sky without a cloud, the river bridged with its own congealed waters, all reminded him of early days and happy hours, and filled his mind with the memory of rejoicing.
One or two of the elder and superior officers of the duke's household had mounted at the same time with himself, and were riding along close by him. But there was no sympathetic tie between them; they were old, and he was young; they were hackneyed in courts, and he was inexperienced; they were accustomed to all the doings of the household in which he dwelt, and to him every thing was fresh and new. Thus they soon gathered apart, as it were, though they were perfectly courteous and polite to the duke's new secretary; for by this time he was known to all the attendants in that capacity, and the more politic heads shrewdly calculated upon his acquiring, sooner or later, considerable influence with their princely master. But they talked among themselves of things they knew and understood, and of which he was utterly ignorant; so that he was suffered to ride on with uninterrupted thoughts, enjoying the wintery beauty of the landscape, while they conversed of what had happened at St. Denis, or of the skirmish at Toul, or of the march into Aquitaine, or gossiped a little scandal of Madame De * * * * and Monsieur De * * * *.
Insensibly the young man dropped behind, and might be said to be riding alone, when an elderly man, in the habit of a priest, ambled up to his side on a sleek, well-fed mule. His hair was very white, and his countenance calm and benignant; but there was no very intellectual expression in his face, and one might have felt inclined to pronounce him, at the first glance, a very simple, good man, with more rectitude than wit, more piety than learning. There would have been some mistake in this, for Jean Charost soon found that he had read much, and studied earnestly, supplying by perseverance and labor all that was wanting in acuteness.
"Good morning, my son," said the old man, in a frank and familiar tone. "I believe I am speaking to Monsieur De Brecy, am I not? his highness's secretary."
"The same, sir," replied Jean Charost; "though I have not been long in that office."
"I know, I know," replied the good priest. "You were commended to his favor by my good friend Jacques Cœur. I was absent from the palace till last night, or I would have seen you before. I am his highness's chaplain and director--would to Heaven I could direct him right; but these great men--"
There he stopped, as if feeling himself treading upon dangerous ground, and a pause ensued; for Jean Charost gave him no encouragement to go on in any discussion of the duke's doings, of which probably he knew as much as his confessor, without any great amount of information either.
The priest continued to jog on by his side, however, turning his head very frequently, as if afraid of being pursued by something. Once he muttered to himself, "I do believe he is coming on;" and then added, a moment after, in a relieved tone, "No, it is Lomelini."
They had not ridden far, after this exclamation, when they were joined by the maître d'hôtel, who seemed on exceedingly good terms with the chaplain, and rather in a merry mood. "Ah, Father Peter!" he exclaimed; "you passed me in such haste, you would neither see nor hear me. What was it lent wings to your mule?"
"Oh, that fool, that fool!" cried the good father. "He has got on a black cloak like yours, signor--stolen it from some one, I dare say--and he declares he is a doctor of the university, and must needs chop logic with me."
"What was his thesis?" asked Lomelini, laughing heartily. "He is grand at an argument, I know; and I have often heard him declare that he likes to spoil a doctor of divinity."
"It was no thesis at all," answered Father Peter. "He propounded a question for debate, and asked me which of the seven capital sins was the most capital. I told him they were all equally heinous; but he contended that could not be, and said he would prove it by a proposition divided into three parts and three members, each part divided into six points--"
"Let us hear," cried Lomelini. "Doubtless his parts and points were very amusing. Let us hear them, by all means."
"Why, I did not stay to hear them myself," replied Father Peter. "He began by explaining and defining the seven capital sins; and fearing some greater scandal--for all the boys were roaring with laughter--I rode on and left him."
"Ah, father, father! He will say that he has defeated you in argument," replied Lomelini; and then added, with a sly glance at Jean Charost, "the sharpest weapon in combat with a grave man is a jest."
The good father looked quite distressed, as if to be defeated in argument by a fool were really a serious disgrace. With the natural kindliness of youth, Jean Charost felt for him, and, turning the conversation, proceeded to inquire of the maître d'hôtel who and what was the person who had driven the good chaplain so rapidly from the field.
"Oh, you will become well acquainted with him by-and-by, my son," answered Lomelini, who still assumed a sort of paternal and patronizing air toward the young secretary. "They call him the Seigneur André in the household, and his lordship makes himself known to every body--sometimes not very pleasantly. He is merely the duke's fool, however, kept more for amusement than for service, and more for fashion even than amusement; for at bottom he is a dull fellow; but he contrives occasionally to stir up the choler of the old gentlemen, and, when the duke is in a gay humor, makes him laugh with their anger."
"To be angry with a fool is to show one's self little better than a fool, methinks," answered Jean Charost; but Lomelini shook his head, with his usual quiet smile, saying, "Do not be too sure that he will not provoke you, Monsieur De Brecy. He has a vast fund of malice, though no great fund of wit, and, as you may see, can contrive to torment very grave and reverend personages. I promised you a hint from time to time, and one may not be thrown away in regard to Seigneur André. There are two or three ways of dealing with him which are sure to put him down. First, the way which Monsieur Blaize takes: never to speak to him at all. When he addresses any of his witticisms to our good friend, Monsieur Blaize stares quietly in his face, as if he spoke to him in an unknown tongue, and takes care not to give him a single word as a peg to hang a rejoinder upon. Another way is to break his head, if he be over saucy, for he is mighty careful of his person, and has never attacked young Juvenel de Royans since he cuffed him one morning to his heart's content. He has no reverence for any thing, indeed, but punishment and fisticuffs. He ventured at first to break his jests on me, for whom, though a very humble personage, his highness's officers generally have some respect."
"May I ask how you put a stop to this practice?" asked Jean Charost.
"Oh, very easily," replied the maître d'hôtel. "I listened to all he had to say quietly, answered him as best I might, a little to the amusement of the by-standers, and did not fare altogether ill in the encounter; but Seigneur André found hislevrée; for supper somewhat scanty and poor that night. He had a small loaf of brown bread, a pickled herring, and some very sour wine. Though it was all in order, and he had wine, fish, and bread, according to the regulations of the household for eveninglevrées, he thought fit to complain to the master-cook. The cook told him that all his orders were taken from me. He did not know what to make of this, but was very peaceable for a day or two afterward. Then he forgot his lesson, and began his impertinence again. He had another dose that night of brown bread, salt herring, and vinegar, and it made so deep an impression on his mind that he has not forgotten it yet."
"Well, I do think it is impious," said Father Peter, in a tone of melancholy gravity. "I do, indeed."
"What, to give a fool a pickled herring as a sort of corrective of bad humors?" asked Lomelini.
"No, no," replied the chaplain, peevishly "But to keep such poor, benighted creatures in great houses for the purpose of extracting merriment from their infirmities. It is making a mockery of the chastisement of God."
"Pooh, pooh," said Lomelini. "What can you do with them? If you do not keep them in great houses, you would be obliged to shut them up in little ones; and, I will answer for it, Seigneur André would rather be kept as a fool in the palace of the Duke of Orleans than pent up as a madman in the hospitals. But here he comes to answer for himself."
"Then I won't stay to hear him," cried the chaplain, putting his mule into a quicker pace, and riding on after the litter of the Duke of Orleans, which was not above two hundred yards in advance.
"There he goes," cried Signor Lomelini. "Poor man! this fool is a complete bugbear to him. To Father Peter he is like a gnat, or a great fly, which keeps buzzing about our ears all night, and gives us neither peace nor rest."
As he spoke, the personage who had been so long the subject of their conversation rode up, presenting to the eyes of Jean Charost a very different sort of man from that which he had expected to see, and, in truth, a very different personage altogether from the poetical idea of the jester which has been furnished to us by Shakspeare and others. Seigneur André, indeed, was not one of the most famous of his class, and he has neither been embalmed in fiction nor enrolled in history. The exceptions I believe, in truth have been taken generally for the types, and if we could trace the sayings and doings of all the jesters downward from the days of Charlemagne, we should find that nine out of ten were very dull people indeed. His lordship was a fat, gross-looking man of the middle age, with a countenance expressive of a good deal of sensuality--dull and heavy-looking, with a nose glowing with wine; bushy, overhanging eyebrows, and a fat, liquorish under lip. His stomach was large and protuberant, and his legs short; but still he rode his horse with a good, firm seat, though with what seemed to the eyes of Jean Charost a good deal of affected awkwardness of manner. There was an expression of fun and joviality about his face, it is true, which was a very good precursor to a joke, and, like the sauce of a French cook's composing, which often gives zest to a very insipid morsel, it made many a dull jest pass for wit. His eye, indeed, had an occasional fire in it, wild, wandering, mysterious, lighted up and going out on a sudden, which to a physician might probably have indicated the existence of some degree of mental derangement, but which, with ordinary persons, served at once to excite and puzzle curiosity.
"Ah, reverend signor," he exclaimed, as he pulled up his horse by Lomelini's side, "I am glad to find you so far in advance. It betokens that all good things of life will be provided for--that we shall not have to wait three hours at Juvisy for dinner, nor be treated with goat's flesh and rye bread, sour wine and stale salad."
"That depends upon circumstances, Seigneur André," replied Lomelini. "That his highness shall have a good dinner, I have provided for; but, good faith, the household must look out for themselves. In any other weather you would find eggs enough, and the water is generally excellent, but now it is frozen. But let me introduce you to Monsieur De Brecy, his highness's secretary."
"Ha! I kiss his fingers," cried the jester. "I asked for him all yesterday, hearing of his advent, but was not blessed with his presence. They told me he was in the nursery, and verily he seems a blessed babe. May I inquire how old you are, Signor De Brecy?"
"Like yourself, Seigneur André," replied Jean Charost, with a smile; "old enough to be wiser."
"Marvelous well answered!" exclaimed the jester. "The dear infant is a prodigy! Did you ever see any thing like that?" he continued, throwing back his black cloak, and exhibiting his large stomach, dressed in his party-colored garments, almost resting on the saddle-bow.
"Yes, often," answered Jean Charost. "I have seen it in men too lazy to keep down the flesh, too fond of good things to refrain from what is killing them, and too dull in the brain to let the wit ever wear the body."
A sort of wild, angry fire came up in the jester's face, and he answered, "Let me tell you there is more wit in that stomach than ever you can digest."
"Perhaps so," answered Jean Charost. "I doubt not in the least you have more brain under your belt than under your cap; but it is somewhat soft, I should think, in both places."
Signor Lomelini laughed, but at the same time made a sign to his young companion to forbear, saying, in a low tone, "He won't forgive you easily, already. Don't provoke him farther. Here we are coming to that accursed hill of Juvisy, Seigneur André. Don't you see the town lying down there, like an egg in the nest of a long-tailed titmouse?"
"Or like a bit of sugar left at the bottom of a bowl of mulled wine," replied the jester. "But, be it egg or be it sugar, the horses of his highness seem inclined to get at it very fast."
His words first called the attention of both Lomelini and Jean Charost to what was going on before them, and the latter perceived with dismay that the horses in the litter--a curious and ill-contrived sort of vehicle--which had been going very slowly till they reached the top of the high hill of Juvisy, had begun to trot, and then to canter, and were now in high course toward a full gallop. The man who drove them, usually walking at the side, was now running after them as fast as he could go, and apparently shouting to them to stop, though his words were as unheeded by the horses as unheard by Jean Charost.
"Had we not better ride on and help?" asked the young gentleman, eagerly.
Lomelini shrugged his shoulders, replying, with a sort of fatalism hardly less ordinary in Italians than in Turks, "What will be, will be;" and the jester answered, "Good faith! though they call me fool, yet I have as much regard for my skin as any of them; so I shall not trot down the hill."
Jean Charost hardly heard the end of the sentence, for he saw that the horses of the litter were accelerating their pace at every instant, and he feared that some serious accident would happen. The duke was seen at the same moment to put forth his head, calling sharply to the driver, and the young secretary, without more ado, urged his horse on at the risk of his own neck, and, taking a little circuit which the broadness of the road permitted, tried to reach the front horse of the litter without scaring him into greater speed. He passed two groups of the duke's attendants before he came near the vehicle, but all seemed to take as much or as little interest in their master's safety as Lomelini and the jester, uttering, as the young man passed, some wild exclamations of alarm at the duke's peril, but taking no means on earth to avert it.
Jean Charost did not pause or stop to inquire, however, but dashed on, passed the litter, and got in front of the horses just at the moment that one of them stumbled and fell.
There was a steep, precipitous descent over the hillside, as the old road ran, down which there was the greatest possible risk of the vehicle being thrown; but, luckily, one of the shafts broke, and Jean Charost was in time to prevent the horse from doing any further damage, as he sprang up from his bleeding knees.
While the young man, jumping from the saddle, held the horses tight by the bridle, the driver and half a dozen attendants hurried up and assisted the prince to alight. Their faces were now pale and anxious enough; but the countenance of the duke himself was as calm and tranquil as if he had encountered no danger. Lomelini and the jester were soon upon the spot; and the latter thought fit to remark, with a sagacious air, that haste spoiled speed. "Your highness went too fast," he said; "and this young gentleman went faster still. You were likely to be at the bottom of the hill of Juvisy before you desired it, and he had nearly sent you thither sooner still in trying to stop you."
"You are mistaken, Seigneur André," said the duke, gravely. "The horse fell before he touched it; and even had it not been so, I would always rather see too much zeal than too little. He came in time, however, to prevent the litter going over."
Two of the squires instantly led forward horses for the prince to ride, as the litter, in its damaged state, was no longer serviceable. But the duke replied, "No, I will walk. Give me your arm, De Brecy; it is but a step now."
The little accident which had occurred undoubtedly served to confirm Jean Charost in the favor of the Duke of Orleans; but, at the same time, it made him a host of enemies. The tenants of a wasp's nest are probably not half as malicious as the household of a great man. The words of the jester had given them their cue, and the report ran through all the little cavalcade that Jean Charost had thrown the horse down in attempting to stop it.