“Quel triste abaissement!Quelle immortelle gloire!Que de cris de douleur!Que de chants de victoire!Cessons de nous troubler; notre Dieu, quelque jour,Devoilera ce grand mystère.Révérons sa colère;Espérons en son amour.”Athalie.
“Quel triste abaissement!Quelle immortelle gloire!Que de cris de douleur!Que de chants de victoire!Cessons de nous troubler; notre Dieu, quelque jour,Devoilera ce grand mystère.Révérons sa colère;Espérons en son amour.”Athalie.
“Quel triste abaissement!Quelle immortelle gloire!Que de cris de douleur!Que de chants de victoire!Cessons de nous troubler; notre Dieu, quelque jour,Devoilera ce grand mystère.Révérons sa colère;Espérons en son amour.”Athalie.
“Quel triste abaissement!
Quelle immortelle gloire!
Que de cris de douleur!
Que de chants de victoire!
Cessons de nous troubler; notre Dieu, quelque jour,
Devoilera ce grand mystère.
Révérons sa colère;
Espérons en son amour.”
Athalie.
Pleasant was it, on that bright hot morning, to escape at last from Paris altogether. Sir Godfrey, indeed, remained at home to write his letters, with the purpose of riding out to meet them on their return: and Mr Thorpe, on horseback, with charge of the magic passports, was the sole cavalier; shrewdly overseen, doubtless, by the hard-eyed, rough-visaged, experienced Jackson, to whose sturdy driving there lay no perplexity about those great, straight, formal French roads, with staring guide-posts and swarms of Parisian people.
Soon, in fact, does the grand road towards Versailles sweep away from sight of Paris in its wide basin, among avenues and closing woods. With no lanes, nor secluded cross-ways, save to towns, it was harder to leave behind the Parisian people; and they soon heard that Versailles was stripped of its glory, so far as they were concerned, since nothing was doing there that day; the king had gone to Marly, or Fontainebleau, instead of passing in state to the Assembly, as had been expected from the journals. Much to the relief, it must have been, of Lady Willoughby, who disliked crowds and pressures of people, with the bustle and the dust; and to whom foreign kings and queens had but a dim, half-chimerical reality, after all, compared with the accustomed Georges, whose power and royalty were interwoven with any thoughts she had of public life; yet she appeared as much vexed as it was possible for her to be, proposing still to go on and see the outside of the palace, the fountains, or the remaining courtiers, the “houses of parliament,” which perhaps might be worth the pains. But these Charles disdained till another day, when the king should have returned—being even set against the remotest view of the town, its very smoke or spires; and, out of his father’s presence, Charles was always, by some peculiar force of his, indirectly master. His sister Rose, though the expedition had been fondly planned, nor did his arguments seem worth answering, too well knew the issue not to be resigned; while her governess, referred to as a matter of course, expressed as duly an entire acquiescence in any arrangement most satisfactory to Lady Willoughby, preserving an intense calm, and seeming to observe the various objects as their course was changed, the leaves of the trees, the tops of palisades, the very hats of market-people, with strange elevation of countenance, and with an air of suffering which required her vinaigrette. Even Jackson, who had a great share of the selfishness of privileged old servants, and greatly consulted his own personal ease, ventured to console his mistress, turning round and touching his hat, to remark that it was a long drive after all, and they would have had to put up at the town to bait these Flanders beasts—he carefully abstained from calling them horses—whichit might cost a deal of trouble, as these French inns very likely had no stables; the inward satisfaction of Jackson, indeed, somewhat belied his rueful effort to look grieved. All appeared disappointed, save the tutor, ever fain to be serviceable, if seldom very successful where the office was of the present kind. Yet that day Mr Thorpe was excelling himself, now riding on, or now remaining behind, always for some object; nor was it long ere he came posting back, his plain, ineffectual features animated, and his mild short-sighted blue eyes shining moist through the thin-framed spectacles which enlarged them, to mention that they were close to Sèvres, where the royal porcelain was made. And at Sèvres, with its quaint old village houses, and its bridge across the Seine to another village, seeing what could be seen of its manufactory, its water-mill where the clay was ground, or its woody island amidst the river, the earlier part of the day was spent. Then turning to make a wide circuit into the Versailles road again, where the afternoon was to bring Sir Godfrey, the carriage passed at leisure through the quieter country that slopes and rolls westward from the Seine.
It was scarce country, indeed, where no hedgerows seemed to break up the wide spaces, no field-gates or clustered farms, nor half-sequestered hamlets, with the sprinkling on of solitary cottage and quiet house toward the next, where the church spire should rise, or tower; but sometimes with no division from the wide crops, save the lines of bushy pollards, they rolled over the paved roadway; again between continual park walls or wooden palisade, from which suddenly it would burst on the space about a large square village, with its cabaret and sign-board of theLion d’orord’argent, its old fountain-well, and double row of trees, noisy, and alive with children, while another road brought through it the market-life from Paris. Though over the nearest wood would peep the white turrets of chateaus, peaked with purple slate, or tin, or gilding, like chandeliers extinguished in the light of day; and near to them were the little stunted churches, with their rounded ends, the squat towers that had lids to them like pots and vases, or the mean belfries perched on the roofs; where the church-yard was blooming with flowers that made its cypresses and yews look gloomier, and the small lonely curacy near it, snowing the cross on some wide gable, had an air of pious seclusion from the world. And still the parks spread round; the woods, with formal alleys striking through them, widened and surged outward, downward, into vale and over height; sometimes opening to let the high road pass on with its vehicles and pedestrians, or the traffic that seemed greater for its confinement,—oftener to show the terraces and bowers of still nobler mansions than before, till the country appeared fading away. They had forgotten their forenoon disappointment: the girl’s eyes sparkled as the sweet sense of being out of Paris grew, in spite of all it held in it; placid, tranquil, her mother leant opposite, while she breathed the freshness, enjoying the mere motion, and the vague variety as she heard it noticed, on pure trust, pleased at what pleased the others—it was not like England, indeed, but how pure and exhilarating seemed the French air—its sun gave a still sleepier stillness to her mild eyes, yet with so healthy a tint and soft fulness of person, that the holding of her parasol, in Lady Willoughby, the trouble she took to observe an object, were pleasant to see; as Mr Thorpe, riding by, devoted his conversation to the governess and her; the while Charles, still in a discontented mood, vented it on the whole country, and leaning across to his sister, one elbow on his knee, kept up his side-current of livelier talk.
For one thing, their constant popularity displeased him, however acceptable to Rose. That national sharpness and curiosity had all at once become particularly disagreeable to the youth, in his grumbling humour; and it mingled through the whole thread of his discourse, not without some acute notions of the people’s character, on which he appeared to have been oddly brooding. Nor the less was his zest in showing that France and England were natural foes, because his tutor on the other side rode discoursing benevolently to the reverse effect; while Mrs Mason responded, in all that propriety of sentiment, which was blended, in her dialogue to gentlemen, with a slight shade of delicate reserve. But really there was a domineering style of argument in Charles, if one ventured to express a different view, that provoked his sister in the end—especially as he was a year younger; she turned her shoulder to him, and sat resolutely looking the other way, as if absorbed in the mild commonplaces of Mr Thorpe, and Mrs Mason’s weary platitudes, which diffused such additional complacency over her mother. After all, theyweretiresome things, such as all good books and worthy people said over and over; though Charles had no right to look down on his tutor with such secret contempt, because he knew nothing of what Charles called “life”—or to hint, because he looked serious, that his mind had got bewildered among triangles ever since he studied so terribly for a degree, leaving out nothing but his memory: perhaps, indeed, itmightbe true that Mrs Mason, in spite of her early loss of some inestimable kind, had a sort of soft regard for him, and paid him little attentions, especially at table, with the sugar,—though moderately, till the curacy at Stoke should be sure; but what she would not for a moment be so disrespectful to Mr Thorpe as to credit, was that a hopeless love, never to be revealed, consumed him, amidst all his learning, for—for herself. Her indignation mounted at the thought,—for a moment even at the excellent tutor, so highly respected by Sir Godfrey, with his thin hair already leaving his forehead bald, through long delay of any preferment—whose sister was his only relative alive, and was to keep his house when he had one,—but most to Charles, with his rough boy’s jokes; even although the girl’s thoughts wandered the more irresistibly to foreign counts and picturesque barons that had hovered in vision before the whole boarding-school, being now eagerly inquired after by her dearest friend, who was still there.
There were none of these, certainly, about the highway which the carriage struck into, alive though it was with people of every kind. Charles had ceased, at his mother’s unusually earnest request, to whistle indistinctly between his teeth, as it was of all sounds the one that most annoyed her; he had even left off, of his own accord, the substitution of a drumming motion with a small cane against his boot, as he superciliously noticed the passengers. He got quite silent, in fact, to watch the passing faces that seemed bent towards Paris; though the faint smoke of another large village appeared in the hollow, prettier than any they had passed, among inclining vineyards and whole knolls of roses. It might have been St Genevieve’s own, with that holy well resorted to by kings, where she had kept her sheep long ago; and where, at the May fête ofla rosière, they still crowned the most virtuous girl in the place with roses; as the last work of Madame de Genlis had informed Mrs Mason. The summer afternoon sloped wide above it, full of light and the swarming hum of insects, through the outspread walnut leaves, flickering amber in the sun, from over the white wall that was dappled by the shadows; while the hedgeless corn-fields on the other side were rippling under the long air from the woods, one sea of tenderest green, full of blue-cockle flowers and scarlet poppies; the cottage casements flashed from amidst a pink-white glow of orchard-blossom, of milky cherry-boughs, of old rugged propped-up pear-trees that foamed over to the moss-green thatch, with the wooden chimney shot high, as it breathed blue among the leaves; with here and there a hooded dovecot window on the roof, where the pigeons sat sunning and swelling themselves, and cooing, white, blue, and purple together, in a gush of warm light—all the place beneath them bespattered and splashed with whiteness, through the shadow, to the very foliage of the nearest branch. The hum of the place burst round them as they crossed its little bridge, rattling over the rough causeway; and there were no carriage-ways save through the villages and towns.
It was odd that for some time along the road, as if to meet the lad’s inclinations, the notice of them had been unaccompanied with signs of interest; every one had seemed occupied with his neighbour, talking, or hastening on somewhere; the voices had even grown suppressed as they passed. Here they were busier still, and talking louder, in a perfect babble of sounds. It was wonderful, at least to Charles Willoughby in his private mind, how the cobblers lived—the weavers, blacksmiths, or carpenters, found time to work; how the mill-wheel had a hand to feed it, or the women to mind their matters; they were letting their pitchers run over, in fact, at the old carved fountain-spout, till there was a little brook across the street, down into some one’s door-steps, and a duck that seemed comparatively quiet began to lead her troop of ducklings that way. The French infants even, held plainly enough here and there, in full sunlight, to their slatternly feeding-places, looked dissatisfied as the throng pressed about the doorway of a cabaret, with the sign of the Golden Crown: a horse stood by it with foam-flecked sides, and his head stooped in its corn-bag; while a man in a green jacket, with a leather case slung across him by a belt, apparently a courier, gesticulated in vain from the open window; the door being blocked up by a drunk dragoon, who stood swaying slightly to and fro, yet balancing himself carefully, as he surveyed the various groups from his half-closed eyelids with extreme sternness and grave suspicion; till at length drawing himself up, to extend his hand with a summons for attention, he essayed to speak; but all at once rushed forward with furious gesture amongst the crowd, where he fell flat from the steps. The blood gushed from his features, women shrieking, men running, without a glance behind, as the landlord hurried to his aid from the tavern, followed by more dragoons, who stamped their spurred feet upon the steps, and half drew their sabres, with fierce gestures and execrations. Yet as the carriage passed on through the narrow and awkward street, however slowly, it did not attract attention from any of the party except Charles, who preserved a seemingly sullen silence; not distracted by so much as a look to his sister, when her governess said there must be something improper going on, and sloped her parasol that way, using a scented handkerchief, with evident desire that the young lady should do the same; while his mother had no more suspicion of its not being common to villages all over the world, possibly on a market-day, than a duchess. The tutor was, as usual, on before, with his little note-book, to put down the name of the place, the probable population, and apparent area of the church, according to some dim theory that had been growing on him since he crossed the Channel. As for Jackson, he merely whipped his horses, and made a slash at some dogs, with obvious inclination to curse whatever came in his way. So they rolled through by degrees in sight of the church; but there was a greater throng at that end, in and about the low-walled enclosure before a smart new building, the use of which was not plain at first sight; for considering the size of the place, with the general squalidness of the long cottages or bald white houses, really the number of people of all ages was extraordinary, till one observed that single roofs seemed shared among ever so many families,—a thing the odder to the lad, as at school he used to know plenty of Eton folks, from bargemen to bat-maker. He even thought, somehow, of that one visit to Stoke. Oh! that was the school—the first he happened to have seen in France; and that youngish man, in an old figured dressing-gown, with a sharp dry face, standing up on something, without a hat—the schoolmaster; while they pushed and jumped to hear him, though quietly enough except for the hushing of each other, since the schoolmaster had evidently a weak voice; it only reached the carriage in an occasional screech, when he lifted his hand impressively in the air. “Ecoutez—ecoutez, au Père Pierre!” This Père Pierre must be rather an odd fellow; why, his school was in a perfect riot within, to judge by the dust, the flying books, and the noise sometimes louder than his voice outside. But he was not making a speech—the white article he held up to the blaze of the sun was not a pocket-handkerchief, but—yes—a newspaper. He must have a good deal of influence there, this teacher—at least over the grown-up men, with leather aprons and bare arms—one could not help marking him—with that scanty head of hair done up in bobs from his temples, and such a short queue behind, not to think of his short nose and high cheekbones, or a chin as bare as one’s palm. Perhaps something had happened—something important—a battle somewhere? There was peace, though. Some murder, it was likely—or a shipwreck—well, at any rate these boys didn’t mind, so crop-headed and stunted-looking, who were playing pitch-and-toss with such an old-mannish look in their eager faces, at the end of the school. There were more beneath the big bulging church-gable, with its black ugly windows and its zigzag crack in the plaster—in such long old livery coats, with plated saucer-buttons. Actually it was with the buttons they were playing—as if it had been money—cutting them off their coats, too, and their breeches, to rush back for another chance! The silent speculations of Charles reached their climax in profound wonder. It was beneath his notice to regard Mrs Mason’s words, as they cleared the place, and began to rise from the hollow—that it was an interesting village, so lively, so full of a holiday air, not without a degree of quick intelligence. “After labour,” his mother said, lifting up her eyelids, “it must be pleasant.”
Beyond the church and an old crooked, high-arched bridge, was Mr Thorpe in the turning of a very narrow by-road, stony and grass-grown, that took a winding as if to avoid the village, by ditch-side and over rubbish, till it caught the highway behind again: the worthy tutor had drawn up his horse, he was settling his spectacles, putting in his note-book, and feeling in his pocket for some coin, apparently to bestow on a man he had been talking to. A very singular group revealed itself as they reached him. A dark-faced jet-eyed man with a beard, black and bushy, his rough cap in hand, and a little organ slung from his back, stood replying to Mr Thorpe in strange broken French, mingled with English; while he seemed carefully to keep the trees between himself and the village: somewhat further down the by-way sat a disconsolate-looking boy with a guitar, beside a crouching monkey; while another man held the chain of a huge muzzled beast, shaggy and brown, which reared on its hind-legs, now growling, now dancing, now shrinking from the threatened whip, like a creature enraged by the distant voices. Their trade had been ruined, the man said; for it was the first time they had been turned out into thechemin des affronteux, belonging to thieves and villains. It would be known for miles round Paris in a day, for it was wonderful how the news travelled there. They had often been at Charlemont before, and were received well. The bear felt it worst, he thought. He was as good a bear as you would see, owing to his love of society. Perhaps it might have been owing to some news in the place—but one could not know what tunes would offend people nowadays, to dance to.
At Mr Thorpe’s condolence, however, backed by his gift of a six-sous piece, the Italian retreated thankfully. They watched him as he was joined by his singular company, slowly and with a crestfallen air disappearing round the by-way. All the tutor could find out was that they had been chased out from that end of the place just before, with sticks, stones, and pitchforks, by the very young people who had been dancing sociably enough along with the bear and monkey—because an air they commenced wascontre la liberté. How any tune could be against liberty, Mr Thorpe could not conceive: nay, if they did not like dancing to it, they might have stood still; they might have requested it to be stopped; indeed, it was probable that some of these very people might have wished the liberty of dancing it! Still less could he perceive howlibertycould be connected with that particular tune—“Richard o mon roi”? And he looked interrogatively to Mrs Mason. Certainly not, the governess responded: Gretry’s new music! In fact, he rejoined, the musician could not, either: but that day mysteries seemed to grow, he added,—for, before himself emerging from the place, at sight of the church, he had very civilly inquired, from a group of inhabitants, what was the name of the village. What had been his astonishment to perceive, that passing from uncivil silence, from stares of wonder, and extraordinary, sudden indignation, they looked very much disposed to treat him as it now seemed they had before treated these inoffensive strangers. Until, adding insult, they had significantly touched their foreheads, looking to each other, or whispering, until one, perhaps still more ingenious in giving offence, had suddenly called out, “Bah! c’est un Anglais!” There had been then no farther notice of him—indeed absolute indifference; nor did he discover, till he encountered the injured foreigner, what the name of the place actually was. And was there, then, really any peculiar crime in asking the name ofCharlemont—any strange privacy—any unutterable horror connected withit—that no one should put the mere question? But, at all events, was a spirit of inquiry to be thought madness! Nay more, was it lower than madness to be—an Englishman!
Mr Thorpe looked a little discomposed and changed, in fact, even since they last had seen him. Usually, though not pedantic, he was tedious; but he began for a moment to appear almost respectable in the very eyes of his pupil, who had often thought before that the present curate at Stoke could not be more monotonous, nor the old rector duller: a spark of spirit seemed for the time to have given emphasis to his words, and meaning to his face—some faint dignity to his lengthy awkward person, sitting ordinarily like a sack on his horse, with the gaiters dangling in the stirrups. Yet how amazingly simple was Mr Thorpe; it was chiefly the Italian with his battered instruments and beaten animals that seemed to have roused him from his wont: while as for his chief puzzle, a light broke on it to the boy at once, from all he had seen and heard of these French. Why,—of course they thought the whole world should know Charlemont already!
But, to the ladies, softly plashed and clattered below, from among alders in the deeper hollow, the mill-wheel of the village, dusty light flying from the upper door: the cracked striking of a clock was heard from farther off, till they saw the grey turrets of another yellow chateau among trees, though but a thread of smoke rose from it, and its discoloured plaster, where the sunlight struck, gave it a dilapidated aspect, helped by the pigeons from the dovecote tower close by, that were sitting on the window-sills and eaves. Full to the light on the brow of the eminence rose the carriage, widening the landscape on every side, save where the woods before it extended: there was a smooth, broad road in front, sweeping round where the labourers were still at work on it: they were on a hill, and all was exquisitely solitary otherwise for the first time, except close by, where the highway ran between the two porter’s-lodges of two great gates that faced each other. These great gates were, indeed, gorgeously beautiful, being each double, with side-wickets, all of open ironwork, elaborately complex; gilt crowns surmounted the globes upon their massy pillars of stone, their upper rims were formed of fleur-delis, as if of lance-heads, richly gilded; while the blade-shaped leaves, damasked and lettered with mottoes, stretched throughout the whole, hither and thither, like guardian swords, from the uncouth grasp of grotesque naked monsters at the lower corners; everywhere were small puzzling circles of cipher, and in the midst the joined halves composed a grand shield-shaped device, burnished and resplendent on either hand, of the royal arms of France. The very radiance of the afternoon sun came dazzling towards it, and threw the other way on the cross road, into one park, a mottled shadow of fleur-de-lis; shapes of crowns, ciphers, and monsters, even vanished among the dust of the horses’ feet on the highway as they trotted past—strange traces from the days of Louis Quatorze. Still was all that nothing to the broad glimpses of park scenery both ways through them. Mrs Mason herself saw one way, with unusual commendation, where a stately distance was made by Lenotre’s taste, in straight avenue, level turf, and high-clipped side-alleys, where a few well-dressed people were walking; her frequent headache did not, perhaps, at any time wholly leave her, but the vinaigrette paused in her hand, as she directed the attention of Lady and Miss Willoughby to each fine effect. Yet it was difficult to draw the latter from her absorbed delight the other way; for there the wilder chase seemed left to nature, the sun levelled more and more all his yellowing splendour through its deep-green, sinking glades, flinging out fantastic shadows, shooting gushes of verdurous light, in which the delicate young fern peeped from about the trunk of some far-off oak, while the broad umbrage of its gnarled boughs retreated crisply into cooler shade; the knolls were hung with the foxglove buds, like crimson bells that had not found a tongue; and all there was moist, secluded, solitary, sweet, save when some single bird seemed to wake up and make it musical, till again it trilled and rang with their innumerable notes. But gradually the road had lifted the carriage higher yet; it seemed to drive slow by instinct; and ere they well knew, the whole party made exclamations together, as, with Rose, they did not know which way to look first. Mr Thorpe came to a stand-still, and Jackson was shading his eyes, whip in hand, to look under the sun. Even Lady Willougbby said, fanning herself gently, “Dear me—what a fine country! what crops!” “Yes—the harvest will be excellent, I should think,” Mrs Mason replied, using her fan also, it was so hot. The young lady stood up, and her brother jumped out to get from the top of the bank upon the wall.
They were nearer Paris than they thought; it bristled and shone through its haze, some miles away on the plain: westward, the high woods of Marly showed faint through the edges of two broad sunbeams, as through a veil, with bluer distinctness between, here a spire, there smoke; the waves of forest verdure undulating round, began to burn and blaze towards sunset; all was spotted with towns, sprinkled rich-red and white with villages, flushed with orchards, and in the barer spaces embroidered like a carpet that blended with the dark suburbs of the city on the horizon. Here and there appeared a soft misty glitter of the circuitous Seine in the level, with some faint white sails; the distant azure of some hills could be seen; it was all like one mighty map made real. Yet greatest of all to their eyes, even greater than the dusky grimness of Paris in the sun, showing its domes so helmet-like, and its pinnacles so like weapons—was where, with one accord looking back, they could perceive the silvered slates of one large town among the avenues they had turned from that forenoon, its steeples shining, its windows sparkling—and through that transparent French air, some lustrous snowy glimpses between embosoming bowers, of long level palace-roofs, embossed, and fringed, and tipped with undistinguishable ornament. Palaces, indeed, seemed to be visible in every direction; but they thickened towardsit; all that way the landscape was but one mass of park-woods, and with those alleys, gardens, terraces, that long road at intervals perceived, it could be nothing but Versailles! Charles himself could not but look. The rainbow flashing of the fountains, and gleam of statues—the grand stairs of the terrace—they could almost fancy they distinguished.
It was he who first broke the thread of their interest. Well, he shouldn’t care to have seen King Louis XVI.; he had once seen George III. It was easy enough to see him, in fact; if you only but knew it was he. He had seen a boy at Eton, fag to a friend of his, who was once spoken to a good while at a turnstile in Windsor Park by an elderly gentleman in drab gaiters, a nankeen waistcoat, and a blue coat with bright buttons; and when a ranger came up afterwards from behind, and told him it was the king, he nearly fainted. He could never learn anything after that, and always turned pale at the sight of a gold sovereign, so he had to be sent to sea.
“My dear young gentleman,” said Mr Thorpe seriously, “the King of France is a much more powerful monarch than even His Majesty King George! I must beg to correct you on a point of history. He is absolute ruler, not only of all the land we see, but over the property, nay, the very persons of his subjects—he is the State himself—as the great Louis XIV. so emphatically told his nobles. Think of thoselettres du cachet, given away even blank in thousands upon thousands—a kind of money, as it were—exchanged by the courtiers for all kinds of objects—with which, for all one knows, were he worth notice from some enemy, he may be sent to a Bastille on no account whatever, to remain there unknown the rest of his life!”
Charles Willoughby still endeavoured to look indifferent, though the slight whistle died between his teeth, while he pushed his cap down on his head, deeply resolved never to lift it to a French king. Mr Thorpe, drawn into unwonted earnestness, by the expression of the ladies’ faces, sought to reassure them.
“The character of the present king is such as to make this power a benefit,” he said. “There seems a rapid decrease of superstition in the church. Really, Lady Willoughby, there was something idolatrous in this excessive honour to a human being! To conceive that at his Majesty’s death, while the body lay for forty days embalmed in lead, a waxen effigy was placed in the grand hall of entertainment, and served by gentlemen-waiters at the usual times, while the meal was blessed by the almoner, the meat carved, and the wine presented to the figure; its hands were washed and thanks returned. The queen, in white mourning—”
“In white mourning?” inquired the governess, with interest.
“In white, I think, Mrs Mason—sat for six weeks in a chamber lighted by lamps alone. For a whole year she could not stir out of her own apartments, if she had received the intelligence there. Although similar ceremonies were observed after her own decease.”
The feminine impression of former evils in France grew deep. The tutor could not say whether his present majesty would require such honours. There was only one person of inferior rank who had ever been distinguished by a shade of the same respect, though for a shorter time her effigy had sat. It was the far Gabrielle d’Estrées. “Who was she?” Rose asked,—“and why”—
“Miss Willoughby,” interrupted Mrs Mason with a sudden air of severity, rustling and extending and drawing herself erect, “there are some questions too shocking and improper for us to ask?” Mr Thorpe, with a frightened look, sat dumb in his saddle; yet Mrs Mason professed to know history, and her charge must surely learn it: nay, unknown to them all, among the distant chateaus, palaces, and mansions they were gazing at, were St Germain’s in the blue eminence, which the great Louis had given to La Vallière when he wearied of her for Madame de Montespan; and Luciennes, where Madame du Barry was then living in fashionable retirement. But the one had been gallant, stately even in his vices; the royal patron of the other, in his dissipations, had at least been elegant. Probably Mr Thorpe’s confusion led him to a graver topic.
“The chronicler I have lately perused,” he said, hastily, “is really worth study. Nothing can be so mournfully salutary. As the coffin was borne at night to yonder Notre Dame, and thence thereafter to the ancient town of St Denis, the streets were hung with black, and before every house was planted a tall lighted torch of white wax. First went the Capuchins, in their coarse sackcloth girt with ropes, bearing their huge cross, crowned with thorns—then five hundred poor men, under their bailiff, all in mourning as for a father—the magistrates and courts of justice, the parliament of Paris in rich sable furs, the high clergy in purple and gold—followed by the funeral car drawn by white horses, covered with black velvet crossed with white satin, and the long train of officers of the household.”
The great knowledge of the tutor as to textile fabrics interested Mrs Mason. “Think of the expense!” Lady Willoughby said.
“This vast procession,” pursued Mr Thorpe with solemnity, “went on in silence, while, as the chronicler quaintly expresses it, ‘ever and aye the royal musicians made a sound of lamentation, with instruments clothed in crape, very fierce and marvellously dolorous to hear or to behold, until they arrived at the church of St Denis,—blessed be his name! And the bier was borne into the choir, it being a-blaze with lamps and tapers beyond number, and the service lasted for the King’s soul several days—whereupon was the body let down into the vault, but not admitted within the inner chamber until the end of the next reign—and Normandy, the most ancient king of arms, summoned with a loud voice, that the high dignitaries should therein deposit their ensigns and truncheons of command—which done, the sacred oriflamme of France was let fall down upon the coffin, until thefleur-de-lisbegan with the noble Bourbons—and the king of arms cried three times so that the vaults heard and replied—Ho! the king is dead! The king is dead! The king is dead! And when silence had been renewed, the same voice proclaimed—Long live the king!—and all the other heralds repeated it. Then was all finished, and they departed joyously.’ Really, in those older writers, compared with those of the present day,—however superstitious, there is considerable profit to be found.”
And the worthy graduate settled his glasses complacently, used his pocket-handkerchief in the loud manner he was addicted to, and looked round with increased attention on the mighty view; for devouter wishes had long been breeding dimly in his mind, such as the chill Protestantism even of his revered mother-church did not at that period satisfy. He did not notice the shrinking, under that full sunlight and wide azure, with the swarm of summer flies in the ears, and the warble of birds at hand, with which the youngest of his hearers, at least, felt the thought of death—above all, that universal one, of sovereign power. As for Lady Willoughby, her anxious look was chiefly from a reference to her watch; and it had been growing. She had not even heard Mr Thorpe. It was time for them to turn into the road from Versailles, as Colonel Willoughby—Sir Godfrey—would soon be leaving Paris, and he was punctual to a moment. There was no other way, Jackson said in reply, but by turning right again through the last village; at his mistress’s request, accordingly, he suited the action to the word, by backing and wheeling round. But where was Charles? He had vanished over the wall, apparently, during his tutor’s irrelevant remarks. To the calls of Mr Thorpe, echoed from among the woods, he returned no sign. It was annoying. They must wait; and, at any rate, according to the views of Jackson, generally unfavourable if required—with these beasts, it would be impossible to get on in good time, besides having to walk through that village, which was like nothing English whatever—with perhaps a bucket of water needed at that there tavern, if such a thing was to be had. The sudden intelligence of Mr Thorpe suggested a way: he could ride off at once to meet Sir Godfrey, and set him at ease; in fact, for himself, at least, it would be easy to avoid the village of Charlemont altogether—by—yes—by taking thatchemin des affronteux, as they called it. Lady Willoughby’s face brightened. Her thanks to Mr Thorpe were something energetic forher: and spurring, rising in his stirrups, bumping up and down on his white mare, that worthy man disappeared. Rose pressed her parasol against her mouth to repress a smile, at the thought how Charles would have enjoyed his following the bear and monkey: but, throughhermeans, she was resolved he should know nothing of it.
When least expected, Charles reappeared, jumping with a flushed face over the wall, and carrying a load of wild-flowers for his mother, for Rose, even for Miss Mason. He had heard distant sounds over the woods of the chase, which he thought were those of hunting-horns. But all was again still, bright, sleepy and solitary, under the glory of the sloping sun. He got in; Jackson whipped his horses at last to a trot, for again and again they had been passed each way by humbler vehicles; and they rolled on their way back towards Charlemont. Mr Thorpe’s mission excited no extraordinary satisfaction in Charles, though he was sure they would get on better without him. Mr Thorpe ran a strong chance of being taken up as a spy. All at once it occurred to him that Mr Thorpe had all their passports. But a scene of far more exciting interest next moment eclipsed everything like that. Again, from the distance of those secluded glades, did a sound draw his ear—and it was really the sound of a bugle-horn—a faint, far-off, musical sound, sometimes smothered by the woods, then breaking out clearer. It sank into a long-drawn, almost wailing note, that rose up into a livelier quaver, joined by a burst from others. It must be a hunt. They were blowing theMort—as they did only for a stag, and a stag that was dead. Such luck!—for it came ever nearer. But what a crowd at the turning, near those splendid gates—twenty times even Charlemont must be there, by the swarming noise! And the gates themselves, thrown each way open with their double leaves, closed up the road.
The lad rose half up, with breath suspended, and without a look to spare for his party, kept mute as the carriage rolled into the crowd on that side. He did not so much as think what it could be.
Though had there been a chance of thechemin des affronteux, and the carriage could have gone through it—indeed through one long enough and circuitous enough to avoid all France—it might have been better for the Willoughbies. Yet who knows? The master-history that shapes our ends is wiser than we.