Eager to knowThe worst, and with that fatal certaintyTo terminate intolerable dread,He spurred his courser forward—all his fearsToo surely are fulfilled.—SOUTHEY
Contrary winds made the voyage of the THROSTLE much more tardy than had been reckoned on by Berenger’s impatience; but hope was before him, and he often remembered his days in the little vessel as much happier than he had known them to be at the time.
It was in the calm days of right October that Captain Hobbs at length was putting into the little harbour nearest to La Sablerie. Berenger, on that morning, had for the first time been seized by a fit of anxiety as to the impression his face would make, with its terrible purple scar, great patch, and bald forehead, and had brought out a little black velvet mask, called atour de nez, often used in riding to protect the complexion, intending to prepare Eustacie for his disfigurement. He had fastened on a carnation-coloured sword-knot, would a scarf of the same colour across his shoulder, clasped a long ostrich plume into his broad Spanish hat, and looked out his deeply-fringed Spanish gloves; and Philip was laughing merrily, not to say rudely, at him, for trying to deck himself out so bravely.
‘See, Master Hobbs,’ cried the boy in his high spirits, as he followed his brother on deck, ‘you did not know you had so fine a gallant on board. Here be braveries for my Lady.’
‘Hush, Phil,’ broke in Berenger, who had hitherto taken all the raillery in perfect good part. ‘What is amiss, Master Hobbs?’
‘I cannot justly say, sir,’ returned Master Hobbs, without taking his gaze off the coast, ‘but by yonder banks and creeks this should be the Sables d’Olonne; and I do not see the steeple of La Sablerie, which has always been the landmark for the harbour of St. Julien.’
‘What do you understand by that?’ asked Berenger, more struck by his manner than his words.
‘Well, sir, if I am right, a steeple that has stood three or four hundred years does not vanish out of sight like a cloud of smoke for nothing. I may be lightning, to be sure; or the Protestants may have had it down for Popery; but methinks they would have too much Christian regard for poor mariners than to knock down the only landmark on this coast till you come to Nissard spire.’ Then he hailed the man at the mast-head, demanding if he saw the steeple of La Sablerie. ‘No, no, sir.’ But as other portions of the land became clearer, there was no doubt that the THROSTLE was right in her bearings; so the skipper gave orders to cast anchor and lower a boat. The passengers would have pressed him with inquiries as to what he thought the absence of his landmark could portend; but he hurried about, and shouted orders, with the deaf despotism of a nautical commander; and only when all was made ready, turned round and said, ‘Now, sir, maybe you had best let me go ashore first, and find out how the land lies.’
‘Never!’ said Berenger, in an agony of impatience.
‘I thought so,’ said the captain. ‘Well, then, sir, are your fellows ready? Armed? All right.’
So Berenger descended to the boat, followed by Philip; next came the captain, and then the two serving-men. Six of the crew were ready to row them to the shore, and were bidden by their captain to return at once to the vessel, and only return on a signal from him. the surging rush of intense anxiety, sure to precede the destined moment of the consummation of hope long deferred, kept Berenger silent, choked by something between fear and prayer; but Philip, less engrossed, asked Master Hobbs if it were not strange that none of the inhabitants of the squalid little huts on the shore had not put out to greet them in some of the boats that were drawn up on the beach.
‘Poor wretches,’ said Hobbs; ‘they scarce know friend from foe, and are slow to run their heads into the lion’s mouth. Strange fellows have the impudence to sail under our flag at times.’
However, as they neared the low, flat, sandy shore, a few red caps peeped out at the cottage-doors, and then, apparently gaining confidence from the survey, some wiry, active figures appeared, and were hailed by Hobbs. His Bordeaux trade had rendered him master of the coast language; and a few incomprehensible shouts between him and the natives resulted in a line being thrown to them, and the boat dragged as near as possible to the landing-place, when half a dozen ran up, splashing with their bare legs, to offer their shoulders for the transport of the passengers, both of whom were seized upon before they were aware, Philip struggling with all his might, till a call from Captain Hobbs warned him to resign himself; and then he became almost helpless with laughter at the figure cut by the long-legged Berenger upon a small fisherman’s back.
They were landed. Could it be that Berenger was only two miles—only half an hour’s walk form Eustacie? The bound his heart gave as he touched the shore seemed to stifle him. He could not believe it. Yet he knew how fully he had believed it, the next moment, when he listened to what the fishermen were saying to Captain Hobbs.
‘Did Monsieur wish to go to La Sablerie? Ah! then he did not know what had happened. The soldiers had been there; there had been a great burning. They had been out in their boats at sea, but they had seen the sky red—red as a furnace, all night; and the steeple was down. Surely, Monsieur had missed the steeple that was a guide to all poor seafarers; and now they had to go all the way to Brancour to sell their fish.’
‘And the townspeople?’ Hobbs asked.
‘Ah! poor things; ‘twas pity of them, for they were honest folk to deal with, even if they were heretics. They loved fish at other seasons if not in Lent; and it seemed but a fair return to go up and bury as many of them as were not burnt to nothing in their church; and Dom Colombeau, the good priest of Nissard, has said it was a pious work; and he was a saint, if any one was.’
‘Alack, sir,’ said Hobbs, laying his hand on the arm of Berenger, who seemed neither to have breathed nor moved while the man was speaking: ‘I feared that there had been some such bloody work when I missed the steeple. But take heart yet: your lady is very like to have been out of the way. We might make for La Rochelle, and there learn!’ Then, again to the fisherman, ‘None escaped, fellow?’
‘Not one,’ replied the man. ‘They say that one of the great folks was in a special rage with them for sheltering the lady he should have wedded, but who had broken convent and turned heretic; and they had victualled Montgomery’s pirates too.’
‘And the lady?’ continued Hobbs, ever trying to get a more supporting hold of his young charge, in case the rigid tension of his limbs should suddenly relax.’
‘I cannot tell, sir. I am a poor fisher; but I could guide you to the place where old Gillot is always poking about. He listened to their preachings, and knows more than we do.’
‘Let us go,’ said Berenger, at once beginning to stride along in his heavy boots through the deep sand. Philip, who had hardly understood a word of thepatois, caught hold of him, and begged to be told what had happened; but Master Hobbs drew the boy off, and explained to him and to the two men what were the dreadful tidings that had wrought such a change in Berenger’s demeanour. The way over the shifting sands was toilsome enough to all the rest of the party; but Berenger scarcely seemed to feel the deep plunge at every step as they almost ploughed their way along for the weary two miles, before a few green bushes and half-choked trees showed that they were reaching the confines of the sandy waste. Berenger had not uttered a word the whole time, and his silence hushed the others. The ground began to rise, grass was seen still struggling to grow, and presently a large straggling mass of black and gray ruins revealed themselves, with the remains of a once well-trodden road leading to them. But the road led to a gate-way choked by a fallen jamb and barred door, and the guide led them round the ruins of the wall to the opening where the breach had been. The sand was already blowing in, and no doubt veiled much; for the streets were scarcely traceable through remnants of houses more or less dilapidated, with shreds of broken or burnt household furniture within them.
‘Ask him forla rue des Trois Fees,’ hoarsely whispered Berenger.
The fisherman nodded, but soon seemed at fault; and an old man, followed by a few children, soon appearing, laden with piece of fuel, he appealed to him as Father Gillot, and asked whether he could find the street. The old man seemed at home in the ruins, and led the way readily. ‘Did he know the Widow Laurent’s house?’
‘Mademoiselle [footnote: This was the title ofbourgeoisewives, for many years, in France.] Laurent! Full well he knew her; a good pious soul was she, always ready to die for the truth,’ he added, as he read sympathy in the faces round; ‘and no doubt she had witnessed a good confession.’
‘Knew he aught of the lady she had lodged?’
‘He knew nothing of ladies. Something he had heard of the good widow having sheltered that shining light, Isaac Gardon, quenched, no doubt, in the same destruction; but for his part, he had a daughter in one of the isles out there, who always sent for him if she suspected danger here on the mainland, and he had only returned to his poor farm a day or two after Michael-mas.’ So saying, he led them to the threshold of a ruinous building, in the very centre, as it were, of the desolation, and said, ‘That, gentlemen, is where the poor honest widow kept her little shop.’
Black, burnt, dreary, lay the hospitable abode. The building had fallen, but the beams of the upper floor had fallen aslant, so as to shelter a portion of the lower room, where the red-tile pavement, the hearth with the gray ashes of the harmless home-fire, some unbroken crocks, a chain, and asabot, were still visible, making the contrast of dreariness doubly mournful.
Berenger had stepped over the threshold, with his hat in his hand, as if the ruin were a sacred place to him, and stood gazing in a transfixed, deadened way. The captain asked where the remains were.
‘Our people,’ said the old man and the fisher, ‘laid them by night in the earth near the church.’
Just then Berenger’s gaze fell on something half hidden under the fallen timbers. He instantly sprang forward, and used all his strength to drag it out in so headlong a manner that all the rest hurried to prevent his reckless proceedings from bringing the heavy beams down on his head. When brought to light, the object proved to be one of the dark, heavy, wooden cradles used by the French peasantry, shining with age, but untouched by fire.
‘Look in,’ Berenger signed to Philip, his own eyes averted, his mouth set.
The cradle was empty, totally empty, save for a woolen covering, a little mattress, and a string of small yellow shells threaded.
Berenger held out his hand, grasped the baby-play thing convulsively, then dropped upon his knees, clasping his hands over his ashy face, the string of shells still wound among his fingers. Perhaps he had hitherto hardly realized the existence of his child, and was solely wrapped up in the thought of his wife; but the wooden cradle, the homely toy, stirred up fresh depths of feelings; he saw Eustacie wither tender sweetness as a mother, he beheld the little likeness of her in the cradle; and oh! that this should have been the end! Unable to repress a moan of anguish from a bursting heart, he laid his face against the senseless wood, and kissed it again and again, then lay motionless against it save for the long-drawn gasps and sobs that shook his frame. Philip, torn to the heart, would have almost forcibly drawn him away; but Master Hobbs, with tears running down his honest cheeks, withheld the boy. ‘Don’t ye, Master Thistlewood, ‘twill do him good. Poor young gentleman! I know how it was when I came home and found our first little lad, that we had thought so much on, had been take. But then he was safe laid in his own churchyard, and his mother was there to meet me; while your poor brother—-Ah! God comfort him!’
‘Le pauvre Monsieur!’ exclaimed the old peasant, struck at the sight of his grief, ‘was it then his child? And he, no doubt, lying wounded elsewhere while God’s hand was heavy on this place. Yet he might hear more. They said the priest came down and carried off the little ones to be bred up in convents.’
‘Who?—where?’ asked Berenger, raising his head as if catching at a straw in this drowning of all his hopes.
‘’Tis true,’ added the fisherman. ‘It was the holy priest of Nissard, for he send down to St. Julien for a woman to nurse the babes.’
‘To Nissard, then,’ said Berenger, rising.
‘It is but a chance,’ said the old Huguenot; ‘many of the innocents were with their mothers in yonder church. Better for them to perish like the babes of Bethlehem than to be bred up in the house of Baal; but perhaps Monsieur is English, and if so he might yet obtain the child. Yet he must not hope too much.’
‘No, for there was many a little corpse among those we buried,’ said the fisher. ‘Will the gentleman see the place?’
‘Oh, no!’ exclaimed Philip, understanding the actions, and indeed many of the words; ‘this place will kill him.’
‘To the grave,’ said Berenger, as if he heard nothing.
‘See,’ added Philip, ‘there are better things than graves,’ and he pointed to a young green sucker of a vine, which, stimulated by the burnt soil, had shot up between the tiles of the floor. ‘Look, there is hope to meet you even here.’
Berenger merely answered by gathering a leaf from the vine and putting it into his bosom; and Philip, whom only extreme need could have thus inspired, perceived that he accepted it as the augury of hope.
Berenger turned to bid the two men bear the cradle with them, and then followed the old man out into the PLACE, once a pleasant open paved square, now grass-grown and forlorn. On one side lay the remains of the church. The Huguenots had been so predominant at La Sablerie as to have engrossed the building, and it had therefore shared the general destruction, and lay in utter, desolate ruin, a mere shell, and the once noble spire, the mariner’s guiding star, blown up with gun-cruel that ever desolated the country. Beyond lay the burial-ground, in unspeakable dreariness. The crossed of the Catholic dead had been levelled by the fanaticism of the Huguenots, and though a great dominant stone cross raised on steps had been re-erected, it stood uneven, tottering and desolate among nettles, weeds, and briers. There seemed to have been a few deep trenches dug to receive the bodies of the many victims of the siege, and only rudely and slightly filled in with loose earth, on which Philippe treading had nearly sunk in, so much to his horror that he could hardly endure the long contemplation in which his brother stood gazing on the dismal scene, as if to bear it away with him. Did the fair being he had left in a king’s palace sleep her last sleep her last sleep amid the tangled grass, the thistles and briers that grew so close that it was hardly possible to keep from stumbling over them, where all memorials of friend or foe were alike obliterated? Was a resting-place among these nameless graves the best he could hope for the wife whose eyes he had hoped by this time would be answering his own—was this her shelter from foe, from sword, famine, and fire?
A great sea-bird, swooping along with broad wings and wild wailing cry, completed the weird dismay that had seized on Philip, and clutching at his brother’s cloak, he exclaimed, ‘Berry, Berry, let us be gone, or we shall both be distraught!’
Berenger yielded passively, but when the ruins of the town had been again crossed, and the sad little party, after amply rewarding the old man, were about to return to St. Julien, he stood still, saying, ‘Which is the way to Nissard?’ and, as the men pointed to the south, he added, ‘Show me the way thither.’
Captain Hobbs now interfered. He knew the position of Nissard, among dangerous sandbanks, between which a boat could only venture at the higher tides, and by daylight. To go the six miles thither at present would make it almost impossible to return to the THROSTLE that night, and it was absolutely necessary that he at least should do this. He therefore wished the young gentleman to return with him on board, sleep there, and be put ashore at Nissard as soon as it should be possible in the morning. But Berenger shook his head. He could not rest for a moment till he had ascertained the fate of Eustacie’s child. Action alone could quench the horror of what he had recognized as her own lot, and the very pursuit of this one thread of hope seemed needful to him to make it substantial. He would hear of nothing but walking at once to Nissard; and Captain Hobbs, finding it impossible to debate the point with one so dazed and crushed with grief, and learning from the fishermen that not only was the priest one of the kindest and most hospitable men living, but that there was a tolerablecaberetnot far from the house, selected from the loiterers who had accompanied them from St. Julien a trustworthy-looking, active lad as a guide, and agreed with the high tide on the morrow, either to concert measures for obtaining possession of the lost infant, or, if all were in vain, to fetch them off. Then he, with the mass of stragglers from St. Julien, went off direct for the coast, while the two young brothers, their two attendants, and the fishermen, turned southwards along the summit of the dreary sandbanks.
Till at the set of sun all tracks and ways In darkness lay enshrouded. And e’en thus The utmost limit of the great profound At length we reach’d, where in dark gloom and mist Cimmeria’s people and their city lie Enveloped ever.—ODYSSEY (MUSGROVE)
The October afternoon had set in before the brothers were the way to Nissard; and in spite of Berenger’s excited mood, the walk through the soft, sinking sand could not be speedily performed. It was that peculiar sand-drift which is the curse of so many coasts, slowly, silently, irresistibly flowing, blowing, creeping in, and gradually choking all vegetation and habitation. Soft and almost impalpable, it lay heaped in banks yielding as air, and yet far more than deep enough to swallow up man and horse. Nay, tops of trees, summits of chimneys, told what it had already swallowed. The whole scene far and wide presented nothing but the lone, tame undulations, liable to be changed by every wind, and solitary beyond expression—a few rabbits scudding hither and thither, or a sea-gull floating with white, ghostly wings in the air, being the only living things visible. On the one hand a dim, purple horizon showed that the inhabited country lay miles inland; on the other lay the pale, gray, misty expanse of sea, on which Philip’s eyes could lovingly discern the THROSTLE’S masts.
That view was Philip’s chief comfort. The boy was feeling more eerie and uncomfortable than ever he had been before as he plodded along, sinking deep with every step almost up to his ankles in the sand, on which the bare-footed guide ran lightly, and Berenger, though sinking no less deeply, seemed insensible to all inconveniences. This desolateness was well-nigh unbearable; no one dared to speak while Berenger thus moved on in the unapproachableness of his great grief, and Philip presently began to feel a dreamy sense that they had all thus been moving for years, that this was the world’s end, the land of shadows, and that his brother was a ghost already. Besides vague alarms like these, there was the dismal English and Protestant prejudice in full force in Philip’s mind, which regarded the resent ground as necessarily hostile, and all Frenchmen, above all French priests, as in league to cut off every Englishman and Protestant. He believed himself in a country full of murderers, and was walking on with the one determination that his brother should not rush on danger without him, and that the Popish rogues should be kept in mind that there was an English ship in sight. Alas! that consolation was soon lost, for a dense gray mist was slowly creeping in from the sea, and blotted out the vessel, then gathered in closer, and obliterated all landmarks. Gradually it turned to a heavy rain, and about the same time the ground on which they walked became no longer loose sand-hills, but smooth and level. It was harder likewise from the wet, and this afforded better walking, but there lay upon it fragments of weed and shell, as though it were liable to be covered by the sea, and there was a low, languid plash of the tide, which could not be seen. Twilight began to deepen the mist. The guide was evidently uneasy; he sidled up to Philip, and began to ask what he—hitherto obstinately deaf and contemptuous to French—was very slow to comprehend. At last he found it was a question how near it was to All Soul’s day; and then came an equally amazing query whether the gentlemen’s babe had been baptized; for it appeared that on All Soul’s day the spirits of unchristened infants had the power of rising from the sands in a bewildering mist, and leading wayfarers into the sea. And the poor guide, white and drenched, vowed he never would have undertaken this walk if he had only thought of this. These slaughters of heretics must so much have augmented the number of the poor little spirits; and no doubt Monsieur would be specially bewildered by one so nearly concerned with him. Philip, half frightened, could not help stepping forward and pulling Berenger by the cloak to make him aware of this strange peril; but he did not get much comfort. ‘Baptized? Yes; you know she was, by the old nurse. Let me alone, I say. I would follow her wherever she called me, the innocent, and glad—the sooner the better.’
And he shook his brother off with a sadness and impatience so utterly unapproachable, that Philip, poor boy, could only watch his tall figure in the wide cloak and slouched hat, stalking on ever more indistinct in the gloom, while his much confused mind tried to settle the theological point whether the old nurse’s baptism were valid enough to prevent poor little Berangere from becoming one of these mischievous deluders; and all this was varied by the notion of Captain Hobbs picking up their corpses on the beach, and of Sir Marmaduke bewailing his only son.
At last a strange muffled sound made him start in the dead silence, but the guide hailed the sound with a joyful cry—-
‘Hola! Blessings on Notre-Dame and holy Father Colombeau, now are we saved!’ and on Philip’s hasty interrogation, he explained that it was from the bells of Nissard, which the good priest always caused to be rung during these sea-fogs, to disperse all evil beings, and guide the wanderers.
The guide strode on manfully, as the sound became clearer and nearer, and Philip was infinitely relived to be free from all supernatural anxieties, and to have merely to guard against the wiles of a Polish priest, a being almost as fabulously endowed in his imagination as poor little Berangere’s soul could be in that of the fisherman.
The drenching Atlantic mist had wetted them all to the skin, and closed round them so like a solid wall, that they had almost lost sight of each other, and had nothing but the bells’ voices to comfort them, till quite suddenly there was a light upon the mist, a hazy reddish gleam—a window seemed close to them. The guide, heartily thanking Our Lady and St. Julian, knocked at a door, which opened at once into a warm, bright, superior sort of kitchen, where a neatly-dressed elderly peasant woman exclaimed, ‘Welcome, poor souls! Enter, then. Here, good Father, are some bewildered creatures. Eh! wrecked are you, good folks, or lost in the fog?’
At the same moment there came from behind the screen that shut off the fire from the door, a benignant-looking, hale old man in a cassock, with long white hair on his shoulders, and a cheerful face, ruddy from sea-wind.
‘Welcome, my friends,’ he said. ‘Thanks to the saints who have guided you safely. You are drenched. Come to the fire at once.’
And as they moved on into the full light of the fire and the rude iron lamp by which he had been reading, and he saw the draggled plumes and other appurtenances that marked the two youths as gentlemen, he added, ‘Are you wrecked, Messieurs? We will do our poor best for your accommodation;’ and while both mechanically murmured a word of thanks, and removed their soaked hats, the good man exclaimed, as he beheld Berenger’s ashy face, with the sunken eyes and deep scars, ‘Monsieur should come to bed at once. He is apparently recovering from a severe wound. This way, sir; Jolitte shall make you some hot tisane.’
‘Wait, sir,’ said Berenger, very slowly, and his voice sounding hollow from exhaustion; ‘they say that you can tell me of my child. Let me hear.’
‘Monsieur’s child!’ exclaimed the bewildered curate, looking from him to Philip, and then to the guide, who poured out a whole stream of explanation before Philip had arranged three words of French.
‘You hear, sir,’ said Berenger, as the man finished: ‘I came hither to seek my wife, the Lady of Ribaumont.’
‘Eh!’ exclaimed thecure, ‘do I then see M. le Marquis de Nid de Merle?’
‘No!’ cried Berenger; ‘no, I am not thatscelerat! I am her true husband, the Baron de Ribaumont.’
‘The Baron de Ribaumont perished at the St. Bartholomew,’ said thecure, fixing his eyes on him, as though to confute an impostor.
‘Ah, would that I had!’ said Berenger. ‘I was barely saved with the life that is but misery now. I came to seek her—I found what you know. They told me that you saved the children. Ah, tell me where mine is!—all that is left me.’
‘A few poor babes I was permitted to rescue, but very few. But let me understand to whom I speak,’ he added, much perplexed. ‘You, sir—-’
‘I am her husband, married at five years old—contract renewed last year. It was he whom you call Nid de Merle who fell on me, and left me for dead. A faithful servant saved my life, but I have lain sick in England till now, when her letter to my mother brought me to La Sablerie, to find—to find THIS. Oh, sir, have pity on me! Tell me if you know anything of her, or if you can give me her child.’
‘The orphans I was able to save are—the boys at nurse here, the girls with the good nuns at Lucon,’ said the priest, with infinite pity in his look. ‘Should you know it, sir?’
‘I would—I should,’ said Berenger. ‘But it is a girl. Ah, would that it were here! But you—you, sir—you know more than these fellows. Is there no—no hope of herself?’
‘Alas! I fear I can give you none,’ said the priest; ‘but I will tell all I know; only I would fain see you eat, rest, and be dried.’
‘How can I?’ gasped he, allowing himself, however, to sink into a chair; and the priest spoke:
‘Perhaps you know, sir, that the poor lady fled from her friends, and threw herself upon the Huguenots. All trace had been lost, when, at a banquet given by the mayor of Lucon, there appeared somepatisseries, which some ecclesiastic, who had enjoyed the hospitality of Bellaise, recognized as peculiar to the convent there, where she had been brought up. They were presented to the mayor by his friend, Bailli la Grasse, who had boasted of the excellentconfituresof the heretic pastor’s daughter that lodged in the town of La Sablerie. The place was in disgrace for having afforded shelter and supplies to Montgomery’s pirate crews, and there were narrations of outrages committed on Catholics. The army were enraged by their failure before La Rochelle; in effect, it was resolved to make an example, when, on M. de Nid de Merle’s summons, all knowledge of the lady was denied. Is it possible that she was indeed not there?’
Berenger shook his head. ‘She was indeed there,’ he said, with an irrepressible groan. ‘Was there no mercy—none?’
‘Ask not, sir,’ said the compassionate priest; ‘the flesh shrinks, though there may be righteous justice. A pillaged town, when men are enraged, is like a place of devils unchained. I reached it only after it had been taken by assault, when all was flame and blood. Ask me no more; it would be worse for you to hear than me to tell,’ he concluded, shuddering, but laying his hand kindly on Berenger’s arm. ‘At least it is ended now and God is more merciful than men. Many died by the bombs cast into to city, and she for whom you ask certainly fell not alive into the hands of those who sought her. Take comfort, sir; there is One who watches and takes count of our griefs. Sir, turning to Philip, ‘this gentleman is too much spent with sorrow to bear this cold and damp. Aid me, I entreat, to persuade him to lie down.’
Philip understood the priest’s French far better than that of the peasants, and added persuasions that Berenger was far too much exhausted and stunned to resist. To spend a night in a Popish priest’s house would once have seemed to Philip a shocking alternative, yet here he was, heartily assisting in removing the wet garments in which his brother had sat only too long, and was heartily relieved to lay him down in the priest’s own bed, even though there was an image over the head, which, indeed, the boy never saw. He only saw his brother turn away from the light with a low, heavy moan, as if he would fain be left alone with his sorrow and his crushed hopes.
Nothing could be kinder than Dome Colombeau, the priest of Nissard. He saw to the whole of his guests being put into some sort of dry habiliments before they sat round his table to eat of the savoury mess in the greatpot-au-feu, which had, since their arrival, received additional ingredients, and moreover sundry villagers had crept into the house. Whenever the good Father supped at home, any of his flock were welcome to drop in to enjoy his hospitability. After a cup of hot cider round, they carried off the fisherman to ledge in one of their cottages. Shake-downs were found for the others, and Philip, wondering what was to become of the good host himself, gathered that he meant to spend such part of the night on the kitchen floor as he did not pass in prayer in the church for the poor young gentleman, who was in such affliction. Philip was not certain whether to resent this as an impertinence or an attack on their Protestant principles; but he was not sure, either, that the priest was aware what was their religion, and was still less certain of his own comprehension of these pious intentions: he decided that, any way, it was better not to make a fool of himself. Still, the notion of the mischievousness of priests was so rooted in his head, that he consulted Humfrey on the expedience of keeping watch all night, but was sagaciously answered that ‘these French rogues don’t do any hurt unless they be brought up to it, and the place was as safe as old Hurst.’
In fact, Philip’s vigilance would have been strongly against nature. He never awoke till full daylight and morning sun were streaming through the vine-leaves round the window, and then, to his dismay, he saw that Berenger had left his bed, and was gone. Suspicions of foul play coming over him in full force as he gazed round on much that he considered as ‘Popish furniture,’ he threw on his clothes, and hastened to open the door, when, to his great relief, he saw Berenger hastily writing at a table under the window, and Smithers standing by waiting for the billet.
‘I am sending Smithers on board, to ask Hobbs to bring our cloak bags,’ said Berenger, as his brother entered. ‘We must go on to Lucon.’
He spoke briefly and decidedly, and Philip was satisfied to see him quite calm and collected—white indeed, and with the old haggard look, and the great scar very purple instead of red, which was always a bad sign with him. He was not disposed to answer questions; he shortly said, ‘He had slept not less than usual,’ which Philip knew meant very little; and he had evidently made up his mind, and was resolved not to let himself give way. If his beacon of hope had been so suddenly, frightfully quenched, he still was kept from utter darkness by straining his eyes and forcing his steps to follow the tiny, flickering spark that remained.
The priest was at his morning mass; and so soon as Berenger had given his note to Smithers, and sent him off with a fisherman to the THROSTLE, he took up his hat, and went out upon the beach, that lay glistening in the morning sun, then turned straight towards the tall spire of the church, with had been their last night’s guide. Philip caught his cloak.
‘You are never going there, Berenger?’
‘Vex me not now,’ was all the reply he got. ‘There the dead and living meet together.’
‘But, brother, they will take you for one of their own sort.’
‘Let them.’
Philip was right that it was neither a prudent nor consistent proceeding, but Berenger had little power of reflection, and his impulse at present bore him into the church belonging to his native faith and land, without any defined felling, save that it was peace to kneel there among the scattered worshippers, who came and went with their fish-baskets in their hands, and to hear the low chant of the priest and his assistant from within the screen.
Philip meantime marched up and down outside in much annoyance, until the priest and his brother came out, when the first thing he heard the good Colombeau say was, ‘I would have called upon you before, my son, but that I feared you were a Huguenot.’
‘I am an English Protestant,’ said Berenger; ‘but, ah! sir, I needed comfort too much to stay away from prayer.’
Pere Colombeau looked at him in perplexity, thinking perhaps that here might be a promising convert, if there were only time to work on him; but Berenger quitted the subject at once, asking the distance to Lucon.
‘A full day’s journey,’ answered Pere Colombeau, and added, ‘I am sorry you are indeed a Huguenot. It was what I feared last night, but I feared to add to your grief. The nuns are not permitted to deliver up children to Huguenot relations.’
‘I am her father!’ exclaimed Berenger, indignantly.
‘That goes for nothing, according to the rules of the Church,’ said the priest. ‘The Church cannot yield her children to heresy.’
‘But we in England and not Calvinists,’ cried Berenger. ‘We are not like your Huguenots.’
‘The Church would make no difference,’ said the priest. ‘Stay, sir,’ as Berenger stuck his own forehead, and was about to utter a fierce invective. ‘Remember that if your child lives, it is owing to the pity of the good nuns. You seem not far from the bosom of the Church. Did you but return—-’
‘It is vain to speak of that,’ said Berenger, quickly. ‘Say, sir, would an order from the King avail to open these doors?’
‘Of course it would, if you have the influence to obtain one.’
‘I have, I have,’ cried Berenger, eagerly. ‘The King has been my good friend already. Moreover, my English grandfather will deal with the Queen. The heiress of our house cannot be left in a foreign nunnery. Say, sir,’ he added, turning to the priest, ‘if I went to Lucon at once know your name, and refuse all dealings with you.’
‘She could not do so, if I brought an order from the King.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Then to Paris!’ And laying his hand on Philip’s shoulder, he asked the boy whether he had understood, ad explained that he must go at once to Paris—riding post—and obtain the order from the King.
‘To Paris—to be murdered again!’ said Philip, in dismay.
‘They do not spend their time there in murder,’ said Berenger. ‘And now is the time, while the savage villain Narcisse is with his master in Poland. I cannot but go, Philip; we both waste words. You shall take home a letter to my Lord.’
‘I—I go not home without you,’ said Philip, doggedly.
‘I cannot take you, Phil; I have no warrant.’
‘I have warrant for going, though. My father said he was easier about you with me at your side. Where you go, I go.’
The brothers understood each other’s ways so well, that Berenger knew the intonation in Philip’s voice that meant that nothing should make him give way. He persuaded no more, only took measures for the journey, in which the kind priest gave him friendly advice. There was no doubt that the good man pitied him sincerely, and wished him success more than perhaps he strictly ought to have done, unless as a possible convert. Of money for the journey there was no lack, for Berenger had brought a considerable sum, intending to reward all who had befriended Eustacie, as well as to fit her out for the voyage; and this, perhaps, with his papers, he had brought ashore to facilitate his entrance into La Sablerie,—that entrance which, alas! he had found only too easy. He had therefore only to obtain horses and a guide, and this could be done at la Motte-Achard, where the party could easily be guided on foot, or conveyed in a boat if the fog should not set in again, but all the coast-line of Nissard was dangerous in autumn and winter; nay, even this very August an old man, with his daughter, her infant, and a donkey, had been found bewildered between the creeks on a sandbank, where they stood still and patient, like a picture of the Flight into Egypt, when an old fisherman found them, and brought them to the beneficent shelter of the Presbytere.
Stories of this kind were told at the meal that was something partaking of the nature of both breakfast and early dinner, but where Berenger ate little and spoke less. Philip watched him anxiously; the boy thought the journey a perilous experiment every way, but, boyishly, was resolved neither to own his fears of it nor to leave his brother. External perils he was quite ready to face, and he fancied that his English birth would give him some power of protecting Berenger, but he was more reasonably in dread of the present shock bringing on such an illness as the last relapse; and if Berenger lost his senses again, what should they do? He even ventured to hint at this danger, but Berenger answered, ‘That will scarce happen again. My head is stronger now. Besides, it was doing nothing, and hearing her truth profaned, that crazed me. No one at least will do that again. But if you wish to drive me frantic again, the way would be to let Hobbs carry me home without seeking her child.’
Philip bore this in mind, when, with flood-tide, Master Hobbs landed, and showed himself utterly dismayed at the turn affairs had taken. He saw the needlessness of going to Lucon without royal authority; indeed, he thought it possible that the very application there might give the alarm, and cause all tokens of the child’s identity to be destroyed, in order to save her from her heretic relations. But he did not at all approve of the young gentlemen going off to Paris at once. It was against his orders. He felt bound to take them home as he has brought them, and they might then make a fresh start if it so pleased them; but how could he return to my Lord and Sir Duke without them? ‘Mr. Ribaumont might be right—it was not for him to say a father ought not to look after his child—yet he was but a stripling himself, and my Lord had said, ‘Master Hobbs, I trust him to you.‘’ He would clearly have liked to have called in a boat’s crew, mastered the young gentlemen, and carried them on board as captives; but as this was out of his power, he was obliged to yield the point. He disconsolately accepted the letters in which Berenger had explained all, and in which he promised to go at once to Sir Francis Walsingham’s at Paris, to run into no needless danger, and to watch carefully over Philip; and craved pardon, in a respectful but yet manly and determined tone, for placing his duty to his lost, deserted child above his submission to his grandfather. Then engaging to look out for a signal on the coast if he should said to Bordeaux in January, to touch and take the passengers off, Captain Hobbs took leave, and the brothers were left to their own resources.
No, my good Lord, Diana—ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
A late autumn journey from the west coast to Paris was a more serious undertaking in the sixteenth century than the good seaman Master Hobbs was aware of, or he would have used stronger dissuasive measures against such an undertaking by the two youths, when the elder was in so frail a state of health; but there had been a certain deceptive strength and vigour about young Ribaumont while under strong excitement and determination, and the whole party fancied him far fitter to meet the hardships than was really the case. Philip Thistlewood always recollected that journey as the most distressing period of his life.
They were out of the ordinary highways, and therefore found the hiring of horses often extremely difficult. They had intended to purchase, but found no animals that, as Philip said, they would have accepted as a gift, though at every wretched inn where they had to wait while the country was scoured for the miserable jades, their proposed requirements fell lower and lower. Dens of smoke, dirt, and boorishness were the great proportion of those inns, where they were compelled to take refuge by the breaking down of one or other of the beasts, or by stress of weather. Snow, rain, thaw and frost alternated, each variety rendering the roads impassable; and at the best, the beasts could seldom be urged beyond a walk, fetlock-deep in mire or water. Worse than all, Berenger, far from recovered, and under the heavy oppression of a heartrending grief, could hardly fail to lose the ground that he had gained under the influence of hope. The cold seemed to fix itself on the wound on his cheek, terrible pain and swelling set in, depriving him entirely of sleep, permitting him to take no nourishment but fragments of soft crumbs soaked in wine or broth—when the inns afforded any such fare—and rendering speech excessively painful, and at last unintelligible.
Happily this was not until Philip and Humfrey both had picked up all the most indispensable words to serve their needs, and storming could be done in any language. Besides, they had fallen in at La Motte-Achard with a sharp fellow named Guibert, who had been at sea, and knew a little English, was a Norman by birth, knew who the Baron de Ribaumont was, and was able to make himself generally useful, though ill supplying the place of poor Osbert, who would have been invaluable in the present predicament. Nothing was so much dreaded by any of the party as that their chief should become utterly unable to proceed. Once let him be laid up at one of these littleauberges, and Philip felt as if all would be over with him; and he himself was always the most restlessly eager to push on, and seemed to suffer less even in the biting wind and sleet than on the dirty pallets or in the smoky, noisy kitchens of the inns. That there was no wavering of consciousness was the only comfort, and Philip trusted to prevent this by bleeding him whenever his head seemed aching or heated; and under this well-meant surgery it was no wonder that he grew weaker every day, in spite of the most affectionate and assiduous watching on his brother’s part.
Nearly six weeks had been spent in struggling along the cross-roads, or rather in endless delays; and when at last they came on more frequented ways, with better inns, well-pavedchaussees, and horses more fit for use, Berenger was almost beyond feeling the improvement. At their last halt, even Philip was for waiting and sending on to Paris to inform Sir Francis Walsingham of their situation; but Berenger only shook his head, dressed himself, and imperatively signed to go on. It was a bright morning, with a clear frost, and the towers and steeples of Paris presently began to appear above the poplars that bordered the way; but by this time Berenger was reeling in his saddle, and he presently became so faint and dizzy, that Philip and Humfrey were obliged to lift him from his horse, and lay him under an elm-tree that stood a little back from the road.
‘Look up, sir, it is but a league further,’ quoth Humfrey; ‘I can see the roof of the big church they call Notre-Dame.’
‘He does not open his eyes, he is swooning,’ said Philip. ‘He must have some cordial, ere he can sit his horse. Can you think of no lace where we could get a drop of wine or strong waters?’
‘Not I, Master Philip. We passed a convent wall but now, but ‘twas a nunnery, as good as a grave against poor travelers. I would ride on, and get some of Sir Francis’s folk to bring a litter or coach, but I doubt me if I could get past the barrier without my young Lord’s safe-conduct.’
Berenger, hearing all, here made an effort to raise himself, but sank back against Philip’s shoulder. Just then, a trampling and lumbering became audible, and on the road behind appeared first three horsemen riding abreast, streaming with black and white ribbons; then eight pair of black horses, a man walking at the crested heads of each couple, and behind these a coach, shaped like an urn reversed, and with a coronet on the top, silvered, while the vehicle itself was, melon-like, fluted, alternately black, with silver figures, and white with black landscapes; and with white draperies, embroidered with black and silver, floating from the windows. Four lacqueys, in the same magpie-colouring, stood behind, and outriders followed; but as the cavalcade approached the group by the road-side, one of the horsemen paused, saying lightly, ‘Over near the walls from an affair of honour! Has he caught it badly? Who was the other?’
Ere Guibert could answer, the curtains were thrust aside, the coach stopped, a lady’s head and hand appeared, and a female voice exclaimed, in much alarm, ‘Halt! Ho, you there, in our colours, come here. What is it? My brother here? Is he wounded?’
‘It is no wound, Madame,’ said Guibert, shoved forward by his English comrades, ‘it is M. le Baron de Ribaumont who is taken ill, and—ah! here is Monsieur Philippe.’
For Philip, seeing a thick black veil put back from the face of the most beautiful lady who had ever appeared to him, stepped forward, hat in hand, as she exclaimed, ‘Le Baron de Ribaumont! Can it be true? What means this? What ails him?’
‘It is his wound, Madame,’ said Philip, in his best French; ‘it has broken out again, and he has almost dropped from his horse fromdefaillance.’
‘Ah, bring him here—lay him on the cushions, we will have the honour of transporting him,’ cried the lady; and, regardless of the wet road, she sprang out of the coach, with her essences in her hand, followed by at least three women, two pages, and two little white dogs which ran barking towards the prostrate figure, but were caught up by their pages. ‘Ah, cousin, how dreadful,’ she cried, as she knelt down beside him, and held her essences towards him. Voice and scent revived him, and with a bewildered look and gesture half of thanks, half of refusal, he gazed round him, then rose to his feet without assistance, bent his head, and making a sign that he was unable to speak, turned towards his horse.
‘Cousin, cousin,’ exclaimed the lady, in whose fine black eyes tears were standing, ‘you will let me take you into the city—you cannot refuse.’
‘Berry, indeed you cannot ride,’ entreated Philip; ‘you must take her offer. Are you getting crazed at last?’
Berenger hesitated for a moment, but he felt himself again dizzy; the exertion of springing into his saddle was quite beyond him, and bending his head he submitted passively to be helped into the black and white coach. Humfrey, however, clutched Philip’s arm, and said impressively, ‘Have a care, sir; this is no other than the fine lady, sister to the murderous villain that set upon him. If you would save his life, don’t quit him, nor let her take him elsewhere than to our Ambassador’s. I’ll not leave the coach-door, and as soon as we are past the barriers, I’ll send Jack Smithers to make known we are coming.’
Philip, without further ceremony, followed the lady into the coach, where he found her insisting that Berenger, who had sunk back in a corner, should lay his length of limb, muddy boots and all, upon the white velvet cushions richly worked in black and silver, with devices and mottoes, in which the crescent moon, and eclipsed or setting suns, made a great figure. The original inmates seemed to have disposed of themselves in various nooks of the ample conveyance, and Philip, rather at a loss to explain his intrusion, perched himself awkwardly on the edge of the cushions in front of his brother, thinking that Humfrey was an officious, suspicious fellow, to distrust this lovely lady, who seemed so exceedingly shocked and grieved at Berenger’s condition. ‘Ah! I never guessed it had been so frightful as this. I should not have known him. Ah! had I imagined—-’ She leant back, covered her face, and wept, as one overpowered; then, after a few seconds, she bent forward, and would have taken the hand that hung listlessly down, but it was at once withdrawn, and folded with the other on his breast.
‘Can you be more at ease? Do you suffer much?’ she asked, with sympathy and tenderness that went to Philip’s heart, and he explained. ‘He cannot speak, Madame; the shot in his cheek’ (the lady shuddered, and put her handkerchief to her eyes) ‘from time to time cases this horrible swelling and torture. After that he will be better.’
‘Frightful, frightful,’ she sighed, ‘but we will do our best to make up. You, sir, must be histrucheman.’
Philip, not catching the last word, and wondering what kind of man that might be, made answer, ‘I am his brother, Madame.’
‘Eh! Monsieur son frere. HadMadame sa merea son so old?’
‘I am Philip Thistlewood, her husband’s son, at your service, Madame,’ said Philip, colouring up to the ears; ‘I came with him for he is too weak to be alone.’
‘Great confidence must be reposed in you, sir,’ she said, with a not unflattering surprise. ‘But whence are you come? I little looked to see Monsieur here.’
‘We came from Anjou, Madame. We went to La Sablerie,’ and he broke off.
‘I understand. Ah! let us say no more! It rends the heart;’ and again she wiped away tear. ‘And now—-’
‘We are coming to the Ambassador’s to obtain’—he stopped, for Berenger gave him a touch of peremptory warning, but the lady saved his embarrassment by exclaiming that she could not let her dear cousin go to the Ambassador’s when he was among his own kindred. Perhaps Monsieur did not know her; she must present herself as Madame de Selinville,neede Ribaumont, a poor cousin ofce cher Baron, ‘and even a little to you,M. le frere, if you will own me,’ and she held out a hand, which he ought to have kissed, but not knowing how, he only shook it. She further explained that her brother was at Cracow with Monsieur, now King of Poland, but that her father lived with her at her hotel, and would be enchanted to see his dear cousin, only that he, like herself, would be desolated at the effects of that most miserable of errors. She had been returning from her Advent retreat at a convent, where she had been praying for the soul of the late M. de Selinville, when a true Providence had made her remark the colours of her family. And now, nothing would serve her, but that this dear Baron should be carried at once to their hotel, which was much nearer than that of the Ambassador, and where every comfort should await him. She clasped her hands in earnest entreaty, and Philip, greatly touched by her kindness and perceiving that every jolt of the splendid by springless vehicle caused Berenger’s head a shoot of anguish, was almost acceding to her offer, when he was checked by one of the most imperative of those silent negatives. Hitherto, Master Thistlewood had been rather proud of his bad French, and as long as he could be understood, considered trampling on genders, tenses, and moods as a manful assertion of Englishry, but he would just now have given a great deal for the command of any language but a horseboy’s, to use to this beautiful gracious personage. ‘Merci, Madame, nous ne fallons pas, nous avons passe notre parole d’aller droit a l’Ambassadeur’s et pas ou else,’ did not sound very right to his ears; he coloured up to the roots of his hair, and knew that if Berry had had a smile left in him, poor fellow, he would have smiled now. But this most charming and polite of ladies never betrayed it, if it were ever such bad French; she only bowed her head, and said something very pretty—if only he could make it out—of being the slave of one’s word, and went on persuading. Nor did it make the conversation easier, that she inquired after Berenger, and mourned over his injuries as if he were unconscious, while Philip knew, nay, was reminded every instant, that he was aware of all that was passing, most anxious that as little as possible should be said, and determined against being taken to her hotel. So unreasonable a prejudice did this seem to Philip, that had it not been for Humfrey’s words, he would have doubted whether, in spite of all his bleeding, his brother’s brain were not wandering.
However, what with Humfrey without, and Berenger within, the turn to the Ambassador’s hotel was duly taken, and in process of time a hearty greeting passed between Humfrey and the porter; and by the time the carriage drew up, half the household were assembled on the steps, including Sir Francis himself, who had already heard more than a fortnight back from Lord Walwyn, and had become uneasy at the non-arrival of his two young guests. On Smithers’s appearance, all had been made ready; and as Berenger, with feeble, tardy movements, made courteous gestures of thanks to the lady, and alighted form the coach, he was absolutely received into the dignified arms of the Ambassador. ‘Welcome, my poor lad, I am glad to see you here again, though in such different guise. Your chamber is ready for you, and I have sent my secretary to see if Maitre Par be at home, so we will, with God’s help, have you better at ease anon.’
Even Philip’s fascination by Madame de Selinville could not hold out against the comfort of hearing English voices all round him, and of seeing his brother’s anxious brow expand, and his hand and eyes return no constrained thanks. Civilities were exchanged on both sides; the Ambassador thanked the lady for the assistance she had rendered to his young friend and guest; she answered with a shade of stiffness, that she left her kinsman in good hands, and said she should send to inquire that evening, and her father would call on the morrow; then, as Lady Walsingham did not ask her in, the black and white coach drove away.
The lady threw herself back in one corner, covered her face, and spoke no word. Her coach pursued its way through the streets, and turned at length into another great courtyard, surrounded with buildings, where she alighted, and stepped across a wide but dirty hall, where ranks of servants stoop up and bowed as she passed; then she ascended a wide carved staircase, opened a small private door, and entered a tiny wainscoted room hardly large enough for her farthingale to turn round in. ‘You, Veronique, come in—only you,’ she said, at the door; and a waiting-woman, who had been in the carriage, obeyed, no longer clad in the Angevin costume, but in the richer and less characteristic dress of the ordinary Parisianfemme de chambre.
‘Undo my mantle in haste!’ gasped Madame de Selinville. ‘O Veronique—you saw—what destruction!’
‘Ah! if my sweet young lady only known how frightful he had become, she had never sacrificed herself,’ sighed Veronique.
‘Frightful! What, with the grave blue eyes that seem like the steady avenging judgment of St. Michael in his triumph in the picture at the Louvre?’ murmured Madame de Selinville; then she added quickly, ‘Yes, yes, it is well. She and you, Veronique, may see him frightful and welcome. There are other eyes—make haste, girl. There—another handerchief. Follow me not.’
And Madame de Selinville moved out of the room, past the great state bedroom and thesallebeyond, to another chamber where more servants waited and rose at her entrance.
‘Is any one with my father?’
‘No, Madame;’ and a page knocking, opened the door and announced, ‘Madame la Comtesse.’
The Chevalier, in easydeshabille, with a flask of good wine, iced water, and delicate cakes andconfituresbefore him, a witty and licentious epigrammatic poem close under his hand, sat lazily enjoying the luxuries that it had been his daughter’s satisfaction to procure for him ever since her marriage. He sprang up to meet her with a grace and deference that showed how different a person was the Comtesse de Selinville from Diane de Ribaumont.
‘Ah!ma belle, my sweet,’ as there was a mutual kissing of hands, ‘thou art returned. Had I known thine hour, I had gone down for thy first embrace. But thou lookest fair, my child; the convent has made thee lovelier than ever.’
‘Father, who think you is here? It is he—the Baron.’
‘The Baron? Eh, father!’ she cried impetuously. ‘Who could it be but one?’
‘My child, you are mistaken! That young hot-head can never be thrusting himself here again.’
‘But he is, father; I brought him into Paris in my coach! I left him at the Ambassador’s.’
‘Thou shouldest have brought him here. There will be ten thousand fresh imbroglios.’
‘I could not; he is as immovable as ever, though unable to speak! Oh, father, he is very ill, he suffers terribly. Oh, Narcisse! Ah! may I never see him again!’
‘But what brings him blundering her again?’ exclaimed the Chevalier. ‘Speak intelligibly, child! I thought we had guarded against that! He knows nothing of the survivance.’
‘I cannot tell much. He could not open his mouth, and his half-brother, a big dull English boy, stammered out a few words of shocking French against his will. But I believe they had heard ofla pauvre petiteat La Sablerie, came over for her, and finding the ruin my brother makes wherever he goes, are returning seeking intelligence and succour for HIM.’
‘That may be,’ said the Chevalier, thoughtfully. ‘It is well thy brother is in Poland. I would not see him suffer any more; and we may get him back to England ere my son learns that he is here.’
‘Father, there is a better way! Give him my hand.’
‘Eh quoi, child; if thou art tired of devotion, there are a thousand better marriages.’
‘No, father, none so good for this family. See, I bring him all—all that I was sold for. As the price of that, he resigns for ever all his claims to the ancestral castle—to La Leurre, and above all, that claim to Nid de Merle as Eustacie’s widower, which, should he ever discover the original contract, will lead to endless warfare.’
‘His marriage with Eustacie was annulled. Yet—yet there might be doubts. There was the protest; and who knows whether they formally renewed their vows when so much went wrong at Montpipeau. Child, it is a horrible perplexity. I often could wish we had had no warning, and the poor things had made off together. We could have cried shame till we forced out a provision for thy brother; and my poor little Eustacie—-’ He had tears in his eyes as he broke off.
Diane made an impatient gesture. ‘She would have died of tedium in England, or broken forth so as to have a true scandal. That is all over, father, now; weigh my proposal! Nothing else will save my brother from all that his cruel hand merits! You will win infinite credit at court. The King loved him more than you thought safe.’
‘The King has not a year to live, child, and he has personally offended the King of Poland. Besides, this youth is heretic.’
‘Only by education. Have I not heard you say that he had by an abjuration. And as to Monsieur’s enmity, if it be not forgotten, the glory of bringing about a conversion would end that at once.’
‘Then, daughter, thou shouldst not have let him bury himself among the English.’
‘It was unavoidable, father, and perhaps if he were here he would live in an untamable state of distrust, whereas we may now win him gradually. You will go and see him to-morrow, my dear father.’
‘I must have time to think of this thy sudden device.’
‘Nay, he is in no condition to hear of it at present. I did but speak now, that you might not regard it as sudden when the fit moment comes. It is the fixed purpose of my mind. I am no girl now, and I could act for myself if I would; but as it is for your interest and that of my brother thus to dispose of me, it is better that you should act for me.’
‘Child, headstrong child, thou wilt make no scandal,’ said the Chevalier, looking up at his daughter’s handsome head drawn up proudly with determination.
‘Certainly not, sir, if you will act for me.’ And Diane sailed away in her sweeping folds of black brocade.
In a few moments more she was kneeling with hands locked together before a much-gilded little waxem figure of St. Eustacie with his cross-bearing stag by his side, which stood in a curtained recess in the alcove where her stately bed was placed.
‘Monseigneur St. Eustache, ten wax candles everyday to your shrine at Bellaise, so he recovers; ten more if he listen favourably and loves me. Nay, all—all the Selinville jewels to make you a shrine. All—all, so he will only let me love him;’ and then, while taking up the beads, and pronouncing the repeated devotions attached to each, her mind darted back to the day when, as young children, she had played unfairly, defrauded Landry Osbert, and denied it; how Berenger, though himself uninjured, had refused to speak to her all that day—how she had hated him then—how she had thought she had hated him throughout their brief intercourse in the previous year; how she had played into her brother’s hands; and when she thought to triumph over the man who had scorned her, found her soul all blank desolation, and light gone out from the earth! Reckless and weary, she had let herself be united to M. de Selinville, and in her bridal honours and amusements had tried to crowd out the sense of dreariness and lose herself in excitement. Then came the illness and death of her husband, and almost at the same time the knowledge of Berenger’s existence. She sought excitement again that feverish form of devotion then in vogue at Paris, and which resulted in the League. She had hitherto stunned herself as it were with penances, processions, and sermons, for which the host of religious orders then at Paris had given ample scope; and she was constantly devising new extravagances. Even at this moment she wore sackcloth beneath her brocade, and her rosary was of death’s heads. She was living on the outward husk of the Roman Church not penetrating into its living power, and the phase of religion which fostered Henry III. and the League offered her no more.
All, all had melted away beneath the sad but steadfast glance of those two eyes, the only feature still unchanged in the marred, wrecked countenance. That honest, quiet refusal, that look which came from a higher atmosphere, had filled her heart with passionate beatings and aspirations once more, and more consciously than ever. Womanly feeling for suffering, and a deep longing to compensate to him, and earn his love, nay wrest it from him by the benefits she would heap upon him, were all at work; but the primary sense was the longing to rest on the only perfect truth she had ever known in man, and thus with passionate ardour she poured forth her entreaties to St. Eustache, a married saint, who had known love, and could feel for her, and could surely not object to the affection to which she completely gave way for one whose hand was now as free as her own.
But St. Eustache was not Diane’s only hope. That evening she sent Veronique to Rene of Milan, the court-perfumer, but also called by the malicious,l’empoisonneur de le Reine, to obtain from him the most infallible charm and love potion in his whole repertory.