Suddenly, on the very eve of her intended nuptials, Charles de La-Hirè returned!—ransomed, as it turned out, by Brissac, from the Italian dungeons of the prince of Parma, and making fearful charges of treason and intended murder against Armand de Laguy. The king had commanded that the truth should be proved by a solemn combat; had sworn to execute upon the felon’s block whichever of the two should yield or confess falsehood; had sworn that the inconstant Marguerite—who, on the return of De La-Hirè, had returned instantly to her former feelings, asserting her perfect confidence in the truth of Charles, the treachery of Armand—should either wed the victor, or live and die the inmate of the most rigorous convent in his realm.
The battle had been fought yesterday! Armand de Laguy fell, mortally wounded by his wronged cousin’s hand, and with his latest breath declared his treasons, and implored pardon from his king, his kinsman, and his God—happy to perish by a brave man’s sword, not by a headman’s axe. And Marguerite, the victor’s prize—rejected by the man she had betrayed—herself refusing, even if he were willing, to wed with him whom she could but dishonor—had now no option save death or the detested cloister.
And now men pitied—women wept—all frowned, and wondered, and kept silence. That a young, vain, capricious beauty—the pet and spoiled child from her very cradle of a gay and luxurious court, worshipped for her charms like a second Aphrodite, intoxicated with the love of admiration—that such a one should be inconstant, fickle—should swerve from her fealtyto the dead—a questionable fealty always—and be won to a rash second love by the falsehood and treasons of a man young, and brave, and handsome—falsehood which had deceived wise men—that such should be the course of events, men said, was neither strange nor monstrous! It was a fault, a lapse, of which she had been guilty—which might indeed make her future faith suspected, which would surely justify Charles de La-Hirè in casting back her proffered hand—but which at the worst was venial, and deserving no such doom as the soul-chilling cloister.
She had, they said, in no respect participated in the guilt or shared the treacheries of Armand. On the contrary, she, the victim of his fraud, had been the first to denounce, to spit at, to defy him.
Moreover, it was understood that, although De La-Hirè had refused her hand, several of equal and even higher birth than he had offered to redeem her from the cloister by taking her to wife of their free choice. Jarnac had claimed the beauty, and it was whispered that the duke de Nevers had sued to Henry vainly for the fair hand of the unwilling novice.
But the king was relentless. “Either the wife of De La-Hirè, or the bride of God in the cloister!” was his unvarying reply. No further answer would he give—no disclosure of his motives would he make, even to his wisest councillors. Some, indeed, augured that the good monarch’s anger was but feigned, and that, deeming her sufficiently punished already, he was desirous still of forcing her to be the bride of him to whom she had been destined, and whom she still, despite her brief inconstancy, unquestionably worshipped in her heart; for all men still supposed that at the last Charles would forgive the hapless girl, and so relieve her from the living tomb that even now seemed yawning to enclose her. But others—and they were those who understood the best mood of France’s second Henry—vowed that the wrath was real; and felt that, though no man could fathom the cause of his stern ire, he never would forgive the guilty girl, whose frailty, as he swore, had caused such strife and bloodshed.
But now it was high noon; and forth filed from the palace-gates a long and glittering train—Henry and all his court, with all the rank and beauty of the realm, knights, nobles, peers and princes, damsels and dames—the pride of France and Europe. But at the monarch’s right walked one, clad in no gay attire—pale, languid, wounded, and warworn—Charles de La-Hirè, the victor. A sad, deep gloom o’ercast his large dark eye, and threw a shadow over his massy forehead. His lip had forgot to smile, his glance to lighten; yet was there no remorse, no doubt, no wavering in his calm, noble features—only fixed, settled sorrow. His long and waving hair of the darkest chestnut, evenly parted on his crown, fell down on either cheek, and flowed over the broad, plain collar of his shirt, which, decked with no embroidery-lace, was folded back over the cape of a plain black pourpoint, made of fine cloth indeed, but neither laced nor passemented, nor even slashed with velvet; a broad scarf of black taffeta supported his weapon—a heavy, double-edged, straight broadsword—and served at the same time to support his left arm, the sleeve of which hung open, tied in with points of riband; his trunk-hose and nether stocks of plain black silk, black velvet shoes, and a slouched hat, with neither feather nor cockade, completed the suit of melancholy mourning which he wore.
In the midst of the train was a yet sadder sight—Marguerite de Vaudreuil, robed in the snow-white vestments of a novice, with all her glorious ringlets flowing in loose redundance over her shoulders and her bosom, soon to be cut close by the fatal scissors—pale as the monumental stone, and only not as rigid. A hard-featured, gray-headed monk supported her oneither hand; and a long train of priests swept after, with crucifix, and rosary, and censer.
Scarcely had this strange procession issued from the great gates of Les Tournelles—the death-bells tolling still from every tower and steeple—before another train, gloomier yet and sadder, filed out from the gate of the royal tiltyard, at the farther end of which stood a superb pavilion. Sixteen black Benedictine monks led the array, chanting the mournfulMiserere. Next behind these (strange contrast!) strode on the grim, gaunt form, clad in his blood-stained tabard, and bearing full displayed his broad, two-handed axe—fell emblem of his odious calling—the public executioner of Paris. Immediately in the rear of this dark functionary, not borne by his bold captains, nor followed by his gallant vassals with arms reversed and signs of martial sorrow, but ignominiously supported by the grim-visaged ministers of the law, came on the bier of Armand, the last count de Laguy.
Stretched in a coffin of the rudest material and construction, with his pale visage bare, displaying still in its distorted lines and sharpened features the agonies of mind and body which had preceded his untimely dissolution, the bad but haughty noble was borne to his long home in the graveyard of Nôtre Dame. His sword, broken in twain, was laid across his breast, his spurs had been hacked from his heels by the base cleaver of the scullion, and his reversed escutcheon was hung above his head.
Narrowly saved by his wronged kinsman’s intercession from dying by the headman’s weapon ere yet his mortal wounds should have let out his spirit, he was yet destined to the shame of a dishonored sepulchre. Such was the king’s decree—alas! inexorable.
The funeral-train proceeded; the king and his court followed. They reached the graveyard, hard beneath thosesuperb gray towers!—they reached the grave, in a remote and gloomy corner, where, in unconsecrated earth, reposed the executed felon. The priests attended not the corpse beyond the precincts of that unholy spot; their solemn chant died mournfully away; no rites were done, no prayers were said above the senseless clay, but in silence was it lowered into the ready pit—silence disturbed only by the deep, hollow sound of the clods that fell fast and heavy on the breast of the guilty noble! For many a day a headstone might be seen—not raised by the kind hands of sorrowing friends, nor watered by the tears of kinsmen, but planted there to tell of his disgraceful doom—amid the nameless graves of the self-slain, and the recorded resting-places of well-known thieves and felons. It was of dark-gray freestone, and it bore these brief words—brief words, but in that situation speaking the voice ofvolumes:—
“Ci git Armand,Le dernier Comte de Laguy.”
“Ci git Armand,Le dernier Comte de Laguy.”
“Ci git Armand,Le dernier Comte de Laguy.”
Three forms stood by the grave—stood till the last clod had been heaped upon its kindred clay, and the dark headstone planted: Henry the king; and Charles the baron de La-Hirè; and Marguerite de Vaudreuil.
And as the last clod was flattened down upon the dead—after the stone was fixed—De La-Hirè crossed the grave to the despairing girl, where she had stood gazing with a fixed, rayless eye on the sad ceremony, and took her by the hand, and spoke so loud that all might hear his words, while Henry looked on calmly, but not without an air of wonderingexcitement:—
“Not that I did not love thee,” he said, “Marguerite! Not that I did not pardon thee thy brief inconstancy, caused as it was by evil arts of which we will say nothing now—since he who plotted them hath suffered even above his merits, and is,we trust, now pardoned! Not for these causes, nor for any of them, have I declined thine hand thus far; but that the king commanded, judging it in his wisdom best for both of us. Now Armand is gone hence; and let all doubt and sorrow go hence with him! Let all your tears, all my suspicions, be buried in his grave for ever! I take your hand, dear Marguerite—I take you as mine honored and loved bride—I claim you mine for ever!”
Thus far the girl had listened to him, not blushingly, nor with a melting eye, nor with any sign of renewed hope or rekindled happiness in her pale features—but with cold, resolute attention. But now she put away his hand very steadily, and spoke with a firm, unfaltering voice.
“Be not so weak!” she said; “be not so weak, Charles de La-Hirè—nor fancy me so vain! The weight and wisdom of years have passed above my head since yester morning: then was I a vain, thoughtless girl; now am I a stern, wise woman! That I have sinned, is very true—that I have betrayed thee, wronged thee! It may be, had you spoke pardon yesterday—it might have been all well! It may be it had been dishonor in you to take me to your arms; but if to do so had been dishonor yesterday, by what is it made honor now? No! no! Charles de La-Hirè—no! no! I had refused thee yesterday, hadst thou been willing to redeem me, by self-sacrifice, then, from the convent-walls; I had refused thee then, with love warming my heart toward thee—in all honor! Force me not to reject theenowwith scorn and hatred. Nor dare to think that Marguerite de Vaudreuil will owe to man’s compassion what she owes not to love! Peace, Charles de La-Hirè!—I say, peace! my last words to thee have been spoken, and never will I hear more from thee! And now, Sir King, hear thou—may God judge between thee and me, as thou hast judged! If Iwasfrail and fickle, nature and God made woman weakand credulous—but made mannotwise, to deceive and ruin her. If I sinned deeply against this baron de La-Hirè, I sinned not knowingly, nor of premeditation! If I sinned deeply, more deeply was I sinned against—more deeply was I left to suffer—even hadst thou heaped no more brands upon the burning! If to bear hopeless love—to pine with unavailing sorrow—to repent with continual remorse—to writhe with trampled pride!—if these things be to suffer, then, Sir King, had I enough suffered without thyjustinterposition!” As she spoke, a bitter sneer curled her lip for a moment; but as she saw Henry again about to speak, a wilder and higher expression flashed over all her features: her form appeared to distend, her bosom heaved, her eye glared, her ringlets seemed to stiffen, as if instinct with life.
“Nay!” she cried, in a voice clear as the strain of a silver trumpet—“nay, thou shalt hear me out! And thou didst swear yesterday I should live in a cloister-cell for ever! and I replied to thy words then, ‘Not long!’ I have thought better now; and now I answer, ‘Never!’ Lo here! lo here! ye who have marked the doom of Armand—mark now the doom of Marguerite! Ye who have judged the treason, mark the doom of the traitress!”
And with the words, before any one could interfere, even had they suspected her intentions, she raised her right hand on high—and all then saw the quick twinkle of a weapon—and struck herself, as it seemed, a quick, slight blow immediately under the left bosom! It seemed a quick, slight blow! but it had been so accurately studied—so steadily aimed and fatally—that the keen blade, scarcely three inches long and very slender, of the best of Milan steel, with nearly a third of the hilt, was driven home into her very heart. She spoke no syllable again, nor uttered any cry!—nor did a single spasm contract her pallid features, a single convulsion distort hershapely limbs; but she leaped forward, and fell upon her face, quite dead, at the king’s feet!
Henry smiled not again for many a day thereafter. Charles de La-Hirè died very old, a Carthusian monk of the strictest order, having mourned sixty years and prayed in silence for the sorrows and the sins of that most hapless being.