In the Day of Adversity
by John Bloundelle-Burton · English · Gutenberg #33643 · 540,113 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: In the Day of Adversity
Author: John Bloundelle-Burton
Release date: September 5, 2010 [eBook #33643]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33643
Credits: Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE DAY OF ADVERSITY ***
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
IN THE DAY OF ADVERSITY
COPYRIGHT, 1895,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
* * * * *
PREFACE.
Those who are acquainted with the delightful Memoires Secrets de M. Le
Comte de Bussy Rabutin (particularly the supplements to them), and
with Rousset's Histoire de Louvois, will, perhaps, recognise the
inspiration of this story. Those who are not so acquainted with these
works will, I trust, still be able to take some interest in the
adventures of Georges St. Georges.
J. B.-B.
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I.--"THE KING'S COMMAND" 1
II.--HOSPITALITY! 10
III.--IT IS THE MAN 18
IV.--"HER LIFE STANDS IN THE PATH OF OTHERS' GREED" 27
V.--THE GRAVEYARD 34
VI.--A LITTLE LIGHT 44
VII.--A REASON 53
VIII.--DRAWING NEAR 62
IX.--A ROYAL SUMMONS 71
X.--MADAME LA MARQUISE 80
XI.--THE MARQUISE TELLS A STORY 89
XII.--LOST 96
XIII.--DE ROQUEMAURE'S WORK 105
XIV.--"I MUST SPEAK!" 114
XV.--THE MINISTER OF WAR 123
XVI.--PASQUEDIEU! 132
XVII.--"KILL HIM DEAD, RAOUL!" 140
XVIII.--LA GALERE GRANDE REALE 149
XIX.--"A NEW LIFE" 158
XX.--"HURRY, HURRY, HURRY!" 166
XXI.--MAY, 1692 175
XXII.--LA HOGUE 183
XXIII.--THE BITTERNESS OF DEATH 191
XXIV.--ON THE ROAD 199
XXV.--"I KNOW YOUR FACE" 207
XXVI.--IN THE SNARE 216
XXVII.--ANOTHER ESCAPE 224
XXVIII.--THE FLEUR-DE-LIS 231
XXIX.--FAREWELL HOPE 240
XXX.--"IT IS TRUE" 248
XXXI.--ST. GEORGES'S DOOM 256
XXXII.--THE LAST CHANCE 265
XXXIII.--THE DAY OF EXECUTION 274
XXXIV.--"I WILL NEVER FORGIVE HER" 283
XXXV.--AT LAST 291
CONCLUSION 300
* * * * *
IN THE DAY OF ADVERSITY.
THE FIRST PERIOD.
CHAPTER I.
"THE KING'S COMMAND."
All over Franche-Comte the snow had fallen for three days unceasingly,
yet through it for those three days a man--a soldier--had ridden,
heading his course north, for Paris.
Wrapped in his cloak, and prevented from falling by his bridle arm, he
bore a little child--a girl some three years old--on whom, as the
cloak would sometimes become disarranged, he would look down fondly,
his firm, grave features relaxing into a sad smile as the blue eyes of
the little creature gazed upward and smiled into his own face. Then he
would whisper a word of love to it, press it closer to his great
breast, and again ride on.
For three days the snow had fallen; was falling when he left the
garrison of Pontarlier and threaded his way through the pine woods on
the Jura slopes; fell still as, with the wintry night close at hand,
he approached the city of Dijon. Yet, except to sleep at nights, to
rest himself, the child, and the horse, he had gone on and on
unstopping, or only stopping to shoot once a wolf that, maddened with
hunger, had sprung out at him and endeavoured to leap to his saddle;
and once to cut down two footpads--perhaps poor wretches, also
maddened with hunger--who had striven to stop his way.
On and on and on through the unceasing snow he had gone with the child
still held fast to his bosom, resting the first night at Poligny,
since the snow was so heavy on the ground that his horse could go no
further, and another at Dole for the same reason, until now he drew
near to Dijon.
"A short distance to travel in three days," he muttered to himself,
as, afar off, his eye caught the gleam of a great beacon flaring
surlily through the snow-laden air--the beacon on the southern
watchtower of the city walls--"a short distance. Yet I have done my
best. Have obeyed orders. Now let me see for further instructions."
There was still sufficient light left in the wintry gloom to read by,
whereon, shifting the child a little as he drew rein--it needed not
much drawing, since the good horse beneath him could hardly progress
beyond the slowest walk, owing to the accumulated snow--he took from
his holster a letter, and, passing over the beginning of it, turned to
the last leaf and read:
"At Dijon you will stay at the chateau of my good friend and
subject the Marquis Phelypeaux, avoiding all inns; at
Troyes, at the manoir of Madame la Marquise de Roquemaure;
at Melun, if you have to halt there, at the chateau of
Monsieur de Riverac. Between these, if forced to rest, you
are to select the auberges which offer; but at these three
towns you are to repose yourself as stated. Above all, fail
not to present yourself at the manoir of Roquemaure. The
marquise will deliver to your keeping a message for me.
Therefore, be sure you travel by the route indicated, and
not by that which passes by Semur, Tonnerre, and Sens. On
this, I pray God to have you, M. Georges St. Georges, in his
holy keeping. Written at Paris, the 9th of December, 1687.
"_Signe_, LOUIS.
_Soussigne_, LOUVOIS."
"So," said M. Georges St. Georges to himself, as he replaced the
letter in his holster, "it is to the Marquis Phelypeaux that I am to
go. So be it. It may be better for the child than at an inn. And I
cannot gossip, or, if I do, only to my host, who will doubtless retail
it all to the king." Then addressing himself to the watchman on the
southern gate, he cried:
"Open there, and let me in!"
"'Tis too late," the man replied, looking down at him through the
fast-gathering night. "None enter Dijon now after four of the evening.
Ten thousand devils! why could you not have come half an hour earlier?
Yet there is a good auberge outside the walls, and----"
"Open, I say!" called up the horseman. "I ride by the king's orders,
and have to present myself to the Marquis Phelypeaux. Open, I say!"
"_Tiens!_" exclaimed the watchman, peering down at him through the
gray snow and rime with which was now mixed the blackness of the
oncoming night. "You ride in the king's name and would see the
marquis. _C'est autre chose!_ Yet I must be careful. Wait, I will
descend. Draw up to the _grille_ of the gate."
The horseman did as the watchman bid him, looking down once at the
child in his arms, whose face had become uncovered for a moment, and
smiling again into its eyes, while he muttered, "Sweet, ere long you
shall have a softer couch"; then, as the _grille_ opened and the
watchman's ruddy face--all blotched with the consumption of frequent
_pigeolets_ of Macon and other wines--appeared at the grating, he bent
down toward him as though to submit his own face to observation.
"Your name and following?" grunted the man.
"Georges St. Georges. Lieutenant in the Chevaux-Legers of the
Nivernois. In garrison at the Fort de Joux, between Verrieres and
Pontarlier. Recalled to Paris by order of the king. Ordered to visit
the Marquis Phelypeaux. Are you answered, friend?"
"What do you carry in your arms? It seems precious by the way you
clasp it to you."
"It is precious. It is a child--my child."
"_Tiens!_ A strange burden for a soldier _en route_ from the frontier
to Paris. Where is the mother?"
"In her grave! Now open the gate."
For answer the bolts and bars were heard creaking, and presently one
half of the great door swung back to admit the rider. And he,
dismounting, led his horse through it by one hand, while with the
other he clasped his child to his breast beneath the cloak.
Standing in the warder's lodge was a woman--doubtless his wife--who
had heard the conversation; for as St. Georges entered she came
forward and exclaimed gently:
"A cold, long ride, monsieur, for such as that," and she touched with
her finger the rounded back of the child as it lay curled up on his
arm beneath the cloak. Then, still femininely, she went on: "Ah! let
me see the _pauvrette_," and without resistance from him she drew back
the cloak and gazed at it. "Mon Dieu!" she exclaimed, "a pretty
little thing. Poor little _bebe_. And the mother dead, monsieur?" her
eyes filling with tears as she spoke.
"Dead," he replied--"dead. In giving birth to her. I am father and
mother both. God help her!"
The woman stooped down and kissed the little thing, whose soft blue
eyes smiled up at her; then she said:
"The Marquis Phelypeaux is a solitary--dwelling alone. There is little
provision for children there. What will monsieur do?"
"As I have done for three years--attend to all its wants myself. There
is none other. It had a nurse in the fort; but I could not leave it
nor bring her with me. In Paris I may find another. Now tell me where
the house of this marquis is?" and he made a movement to go forward.
"And its name, monsieur?" the kindly woman asked, still touched with
pity for the little motherless thing being carried on so long and cold
a journey. Two or three of her own children were already in their beds
of rags that were none too clean, but they, at least, were housed and
warm, and not like this one.
"Her name," he replied, "is Dorine. It was her mother's." Then turning
to the warder, who stood by, he exclaimed again, "Now direct me to the
marquis's, I beg you."
The man's method of direction was to seize by the ear a boy who at
that moment had come up--he was one of his own numerous brood--and to
bid him lead the monsieur to the marquis's.
"'Tis but a pistol shot," he said, "at the foot of the Rampe. Be off!"
to his son, "away! Escort the gentleman."
Certainly it was no great distance from the southern gate, yet when
Monsieur St. Georges had arrived there, still leading his horse by one
hand and carrying his precious burden by the other, or by the other
arm, the house had so deserted a look that it seemed as though he was
hardly likely to be able to carry out the orders of the king and his
minister to quarter himself upon the marquis instead of going to an
inn. Therefore, he gazed up at the mansion before which he stood
waiting, wondering what kind of man was this who dwelt in it.
The house itself was large and vast, having innumerable windows giving
on to a large, open, bare _place_ in front of it, while the great
_porte cochere_ had a lock which looked as though it would resist an
attack either of battering rams or gunpowder if brought against it.
But the blinds, or shutters, were all closed; the great door itself
looked as though it had not been opened for a century; the knocker--a
Christ upon the cross!--as though it had not been raised for as long a
time.
"Phelypeaux," muttered St. Georges to himself. "Phelypeaux! I know the
name; what do I know of him? Let me think. Ha! I have it. A soldier
like myself. Also another, a brother, a priest, Bishop of
Lodeve--which is my host, I wonder? For choice the soldier, if all is
true of the bishop that is told. _Mon enfant_," turning to the urchin,
"is the marquis soldier or divine?"
The boy laughed, then said:
"Divine, monsieur. But _en retraite_. Oh! _avez ca_--they say droll
things. Only I am young--I do not know." Whereon he grinned. Then he
exclaimed: "_Voila!_ the door is opening."
It was, in truth, or rather a wicket in the door large enough to admit
a man who should stoop, or the urchin by the side of St. Georges; but
certainly by no means large enough to admit of the passage of his
horse if that was also to be entertained for the night.
At that wicket appeared a face, wine-stained and blotchy, but not so
good-humoured-looking as that of the watchman at the southern gate.
Instead, a scowling face, as of a man on whom good liquor had no
improving effect, but, rather, had soured and embittered him.
"What want you?" he asked, staring out moodily at the soldier before
him and at his horse, and observing the great sword, hat, and cloak of
the former with--beneath the latter--its burden; and also the military
trappings of the steed. "What want you?"
"An audience of the marquis. By order of the king. Also food and
lodging by the same authority. _Ma foi!_ if I had my way I should not
demand it. There is a good auberge over there to all appearances,"
nodding his head toward the white-walled inn on the other side of the
_place_, before which hung a bush and on which was painted the whole
length of the house: "_L'Ours de Bourgogne. Logement a pied et a
cheval._" "Doubtless I could be well accommodated."
"Take your horse there, at any rate," said the sour-faced man; "there
is no accommodation for _it_. Then come back. We will see later about
you." And turning to the boy he cried, gesticulating with his hands:
"_Va t'en_. Be off!"
The lad did not wait to be bidden a second time to depart, but
scampered across the open _place_, while St. Georges, regarding the
morose-looking man in front of him, said: "My friend, neither your
courtesy nor your hospitality is of the best. Does your master bid you
treat all who come to visit him in this manner?"
"I am obeying my master," the other replied; "the only one I
acknowledge--when I parley with you. Show me your warrant, however,
for coming to this house."
"There it is," replied St. Georges; "take it to your master, bid him
read it, and then bring me whatever message he may send me.
Perhaps"--regarding the servitor through the wicket, as he gave him
the paper--"if the master is like the man I had best wait until he has
read the king's letter ere I seek shelter for my horse. It may be that
I shall have to demand it for myself also at the inn."
Then, to his amazement, he saw that the other had opened the leaves of
the king's letter and was calmly reading them. "Fellow!" he exclaimed,
"how dare you make so bold? You read a letter from the king to me--to
be shown to your master----"
"Pish!" replied the other. "Be silent. I am Phelypeaux."
"You!" exclaimed the soldier, stepping back--"you!" and his eye fell
on the rusty-brown clothing of the man half in, half out, the wicket.
"You!"
"Yes, I. Now go and put your horse up at the inn. Then come back. But
stay--what have you beneath your arm?"
"A child."
"A child! Does Louis think I keep a nursery? What are we to do with
the child while you stay here?"
"I will attend to that. If you give me a bed the child will share it,
and if you have some white bread and milk it is enough for its food."
"Best get that at the 'Ours,'" replied he who said he was Phelypeaux.
"Bread I have, but no milk. _Ma foi!_ there is no babes' food here.
Now, I counsel you, go seek the inn. Your horse may take a chill. Then
come back. And"--as the soldier turned to lead his animal across the
snow-covered, deserted _place_--"leave the child there. The _patronne_
is a motherly creature with half a dozen of her own brood. 'Twill be
better there than here. Ring loudly when you return--I am somewhat
deaf," and he banged the wicket in St. Georges's face.
"Humph!" muttered the latter, as he crossed to the inn; "the counsel
is good. That seems no place for a child. Yet, how to leave it? Still,
it is best. It has slept often with its nurse; maybe will sleep well
at the inn. Well, let me see what the _patronne_ is like."
He entered the yard of the "Ours" as he meditated thus, engaged a
stall for the animal, saw it fed and rubbed down, and, then taking his
pistols and the king's letter from the holsters and putting them in
his belt, entered the hostelry and called for a cup of wine. And,
seeing that the woman who served him--evidently the mistress from the
manner in which she joked with one or two customers and gave
directions to a servant--was a motherly looking woman, he asked her if
the child he carried would be safe there for the night?
"A child," she exclaimed, "a child, and in the arms of a soldier! Why,
sir, whence come you with a child? _Mon Dieu!_ Of all burdens,
soldiers rarely carry such as that."
"Nevertheless, I carry such a one. I am on the road from Pontarlier to
Paris with my child, and I sleep to-night across the way at the
Marquis Phelypeaux's. It seems there is no accommodation there for
infants."
"_Hein!_" screamed the woman, turning to the customers in the place;
"you hear that?" Then addressing herself to St. Georges, she
continued: "You speak well, monsieur; that is no place for children.
_Ma foi!_ the old _scelerat_ would be as like to eat it."
CHAPTER II.
HOSPITALITY!
"Who, then, is Phelypeaux?" asked St. Georges as he sat himself down
in front of the great kitchen fire--the kitchen serving always in a
Burgundian inn as the general place of assembly and serving room. "Who
is Phelypeaux?"
"Monsieur does not, in truth, know?" she replied, with a glance at the
customers--one a mousquetaire, himself _en route_ to Bar to join his
regiment, and the other evidently a shopkeeper of the place. The
former had risen and saluted St. Georges as he entered, seeing by his
accoutrements and lace[1] that he was an officer, and now he joined in
the conversation deferentially.
[Footnote 1: The various _chevaux-legers_ had not as yet been put by
Louis into uniform, as was the case a few years before with most of
the French regiments.]
"In truth, monsieur, he is a rarity, an oddity. He is priest and
bishop both----"
"So," interrupted St. Georges, "he is the Bishop of Lodeve. I have
heard of him. He has a brother, I think, comrade, who follows our
profession."
"That is true, monsieur. One who will go far. 'Twas but last year the
king sent him ambassador to Cologne; now they say he goes to Turin."
"So, so. But this one here--this bishop? And if Bishop of Lodeve, what
does he do in Burgundy?"
"Villainies, _sceleratesses_," interrupted the hostess, turning away
from the fowl she was basting on the spit and emphasizing her remarks
with her great wooden spoon. "Oh! figure to yourself--he is a villain.
_Ma foi, oui!_ A bishop! Ha! A true one. Boasts he believes not in a
God, yet rules Languedoc with a rod of iron since Cardinal Bonzi fell
off his perch; entertains the wickedest _mondaines_ of Louis's court
as they pass through Lodeve; has boys to sing to him while he dines
and--and--But there," she concluded as she turned to the fowl again;
"he is a Phelypeaux. That tells all. They are sacred with the king."
"But why?" asked St. Georges, as he rose from his seat--"but why? What
does he here if he rules Languedoc, and why should Phelypeaux be a
charmed name? Tell me before I go."
He had made arrangements with the good woman to leave his child there
for the night, she swearing by many saints that it should sleep with
her own and be as carefully guarded and as precious as they were. So
he had confided it to her care, saying: "Remember, 'tis motherless,
and, besides, is all I have in the world, all I have left to me of my
dead wife. Remember that, I beseech you, as you are a mother
yourself"; and she, being a mother and a true one, promised. Therefore
it was now sleeping peacefully upstairs, its little arms around the
neck of one of her own children.
"Why, monsieur, why is he here and why does he bear a charmed name?"
repeated the other customer, the _bon bourgeois_, joining in the
conversation for the first time. "I will tell you. First, he comes
regularly to take his rights of seigniorage, his rents, his taxes, his
fourths of all the produce of his vineyards and arable lands on our
Cote d'Or. They are rich, these Phelypeaux; have been ever since the
days of Charles the Bold, and they are greedy and grasping. Also they
are great and powerful--they are of the Pontchartrain blood, and are
of the court. One was minister to the late king under the cardinal.
And for being bishop, _tiens!_ he was priest under Mazarin, who had
been a cavalryman, as monsieur is himself. It was Barberini who told
him the gown was better than the sword. And it was Mazarin who made
Phelypeaux bishop. To silence him, you understand, monsieur--to
silence him. He knew too much."
"What did he know?" asked the soldier, lifting his cup to his lips for
the last time, though with his eyes fixed on the _bourgeois_ as he
spoke.
"Ha! he knew much. The king's first love for La Beauvais--his first
love--then for Marie de Mancini and for La Mothe Houdancourt. Also he
knew Turenne and Conde--and also much more than the world knew or will
ever know."
"Turenne and Conde!" St. Georges echoed. "Two great captains. Two
great rivals and friends! So! Perhaps he will tell me something of
them to-night. They are names for a soldier to respect. _Bon soir, la
compagnie_," and he made toward the door.
They wished him good-night, the hostess telling him to have no fear,
the child should be well attended to, and the mousquetaire saluting
him; then the latter said: "Monsieur rides north again to-morrow, as I
heard him say. I too go forward to Bar. If monsieur permits, and since
the roads are bad and often infested with vile characters, I will ride
part way with him."
St. Georges looked at the young man; observed his stalwart frame--as
big as his own--his honest face and clear gray eyes, the former ruddy
with many a march and much exposure; then he said: "_Soit!_ We will
ride together; Bar is more than twenty leagues on the journey I have
to make. We must part before it is reached. Still, let us set out
together. At what hour do you leave?"
"As soon after daybreak as possible, monsieur, if that is convenient."
"It shall be. I will quit Phelypeaux at the dawn." Then St. Georges
added aside: "Comrade, I leave here in the inn the two things dearest
to me in the world--my child and horse. I confide them to you. Will
you accept the trust until the morning?"
"With the greatest will, monsieur. Trust me. Ere I sleep to-night I
will see that all is well with both. You may depend on me."
"So be it," replied St. Georges. "I do depend on you. Farewell till
dawn," and he strode across the great, gaunt _place_, on which the
snow still fell and lay.
"'Ring loud!' the old man said," he muttered to himself; "well, here's
for it," and he pulled a peal on the bell chain hanging by the side of
the door that might have waked the dead. Then, as he stood there
musing on why the king should have given him orders to put up at such
a place as Phelypeaux's instead of enjoying the solid, if rough,
comfort of a Burgundian inn, the wicket opened again and the old man's
sour face appeared once more at it.
"So!" he said, "you have come back. And I perceive you have left the
child behind you. 'Tis well. We have no room for children here. Come
in, come in," he added snappishly.
Obeying an invitation given in none too warm a tone, St. Georges
stepped through the wicket into the courtyard of the house--a place
filled with snow that had lain there and increased since the first
flake had fallen until now, and through which a thin path or track had
been trodden from the great doorway to a smaller one that admitted to
the house.
"You perceive," remarked Phelypeaux, "this is not a luxurious halting
for you, monsieur. Still, the _chevaux-legers_ are doubtless used to
an absence of luxury."
"The _chevaux-legers_ can make shift with anything," replied the
soldier. And shrugging his shoulders as he spoke, he said:
"_Monseigneur l'Eveque_, why do you imagine his Majesty has instructed
me to become your guest for a night?"
He spoke without any of that respect usually shown to exalted members
of the Church in the days of Louis XIV--a monarch who considered
himself a religious man, and demanded that the most scrupulous
reverence should be paid to all things ecclesiastical. But, in truth,
the Bishop of Lodeve was known to be a scandal to the sacred calling
he belonged to; and now that Georges St. Georges was aware that he was
face to face with the man himself, he refused to testify a respect for
him that he could not feel.
"Humph! 'Monseigneur l'Eveque!' Ha! So you know me?" St. Georges
nodded, whereon the other went on:
"Why the king has sent you to me? Eh? Perhaps because he thinks I am a
good host, and because he loves his troops to be well treated. So I am a
good host--only it is when I am in Languedoc. Here, _malheureusement_, I
must be perforce a bad one. I have no servants but those I have brought
with me, and one or two women who look after the chateau during my
absence."
He had by this time opened the door into the house and escorted his
visitor into a large, desolate-looking saloon, on the walls of which
the damp hung in huge beads and drops, and in which there was a
fireplace of vast dimensions that gave the appearance of never having
had a fire lighted in it for years. Yet before this fireplace there
stood two great armchairs, as though to suggest that here was a
comfortable, cosey spot in which to sit.
"We'll soon have a fire," said this strange creature, whereon he went
to a corner of the room in which hung some arras, and, thrusting it
aside, brought forth a handful of kindling wood, two or three green,
newly cut logs of different sizes, and some shavings, to which he
applied the tinder after he had thrown them all pell-mell into the
grate together. Then, when the smoke which arose from the damp green
wood had thoroughly permeated the whole of the room, he looked round
at St. Georges and said:
"You were gone some while to the 'Ours.' Did you sup there?"
"Nay," replied the other, glancing at him through the smoke and by aid
of the single candle by which the room was illuminated, for it was now
night. "Nay, monseigneur, I thought to sup with you."
"And so you shall," exclaimed Phelypeaux, with an assumed air of
hilarity--"and so you shall. Only--I cannot entertain you as in
Languedoc. Now, if we were there----"
"Well," said the soldier, "we are not. We are in Burgundy. The land of
good cheer. We must take what Burgundy offers."
"_Helas!_ it offers little. At least in this house. However, I will
see." Saying which he opened a door at the other end of the room, and
calling, "Pierre, Pierre!" loudly, he cried out, after a harsh voice
had answered him from some distant room: "Bring some supper for
Monsieur St. Georges and myself. For Monsieur St. Georges and myself.
You understand! For Monsieur St. Georges and myself."
"Why emphasize 'Monsieur St. Georges' so strongly, monseigneur?" the
other demanded. "The respected servitor can hardly care much whether
he bring supper for you and Monsieur St. Georges or for you and
Monsieur the dev---- I beg your pardon, monseigneur."
The Bishop of Lodeve laughed a kind of grim, uncanny laugh as St.
Georges said this, then he remarked:
"Surely you don't believe in--in--the gentleman you were about to
mention. Let me see, there is a musty proverb that he who sups with
that personage needs a long spoon. Well, I would not sup with him--if
he exists. Our supper will be none too profuse as it is," and again he
laughed.
So, indeed, it seemed, judging by what Pierre brought in later. The
soup, served in a handsome silver tureen, whose antique form and
chasings must have dated back to the days of Henri de Navarre at
latest, was so thin that it was nothing but boiling water with a
greasy flavour, and St. Georges twisted his long mustaches with dismay
as he gazed into the stuff before him. Moreover, the bread with which
he endeavoured to fortify this meagre commencement was half baked, so
that it was of the consistency of dough. Next, the meat which was
brought to table must have been unkilled at the time he rode into
Dijon, so tough and tasteless was it; and the wine was a disgrace to
France, let alone to Burgundy, where every peasant can obtain a drink
that is palatable if weak. And, to add to the other miseries of this
_regale_, the tablecloth and napkins were so damp that, affected by
the tureen and plates, which were hot if they possessed no other
virtues--such as eatable food upon them--they smoked so much that the
guest could scarcely see his host across the table.
"Not the fare of Languedoc," this worthy divine muttered, once or
twice, "not the fare of Languedoc. Ah, Monsieur St. Georges, you must
come and see me in my bishopric if you want to live well. I can give
you a good supper there."
"So I have heard, monseigneur. With many other things as well. Music,
I hear, accompanies your feasts; the voices of silver-tongued
lads----"
"Ha!" chuckled the other, "you have heard that. Well, why not? The
choir is lazy, and--since it costs me nothing--may as well sing at my
table. Now, since I cannot persuade you to eat more," St. Georges
having pushed his plate away from him with an action of disgust, "let
us have a little talk.--Pierre, go away; we wish to be alone.
Though--stay--first of all bring a bottle of the old clos from the
buffet--the old clos, you understand, the '79 bottling."
The cavalryman wondered if the "old clos" was likely to be any better
than the vinaigrous stuff he had just been treated to, and sat waiting
its arrival with curiosity, if not impatience. Meanwhile, he regarded
his host from under his eyelids as well as he could through the mist
made by the still steaming napkins, and also by the wet, hissing logs
which spluttered and reeked in the grate close by which the table had
been drawn up. The old man, he saw, was perfectly cognizant that he
was being observed; occasionally from under _his_ eyelids he would
shoot a glance in his turn at the great form of the [2]_chevau-leger_
near him, and would then smile in what he evidently intended to be an
engaging manner; while at other times he would swiftly remove his eyes
and gaze meditatively into the green wood that smouldered on the
andirons.
[Footnote 2: Cheval-leger is a modern rendering of the old term.]
Then Pierre came back with a bottle that appeared, outwardly at least,
to give promise of containing good liquor within it, since it was
covered with dust and cobwebs, and, uncorking it and placing two long,
thin, tapering glasses by its side, withdrew--yet not before
Phelypeaux, with that remarkable persistency in mentioning his guest's
name which the latter had previously remarked, had called out:
"Fill Monsieur St. Georges's glass, Pierre. Fill it, I say. Fill the
glass of Monsieur St. Georges.--Monsieur St. Georges," raising his
own, "I drink to you. To your good health and prosperous ride to
Paris. And afterward, Monsieur St. Georges--afterward."
CHAPTER III.
IT IS THE MAN.
The wine _was_ good! Worthy of whatever _clos_ it had ripened on! A
glass of it went far to repay St. Georges for any discomfort he had
suffered during the wretched meal just concluded, and made amends for
all that had passed hitherto. As for the Bishop of Lodeve, he drank
two glasses rapidly in succession, smacked his lips, and peered at the
ruby liquid held between the guttering candle and his eye in the most
approved fashion, and seemed to be making or receiving amends for the
miserable meal he had also partaken of, though so sparingly that the
soldier thought he must either have made a better one recently or be
about to make one later on.
Then, after he had put three of the logs together--which seemed at
last as though about to burn with some effect--by the summary method
of kicking them close to each other with his foot, he said quietly,
though quite unexpectedly on the part of the other:
"His Most Christian Majesty--or rather Louvois for him--wrote me that
I might expect a visit from you on your way from Franche-Comte to
Paris."
"Indeed!" said St. Georges, looking, as he felt, astonished. After
which he added: "Truly, for a poor lieutenant of horse, such as I am,
the king seems much interested in my doings. I marvel much that he
should be so."
"Family interest, perhaps?" said the bishop, glinting an eye at him
from behind the glass which he was again holding up to the light of
the guttering candle. "Family interest is useful at court."
"Family interest!" exclaimed the other, pushing his glass away from
him. "Monseigneur, it is evident you know nothing of Georges St.
Georges, or you would not mention that. Still, how should you know my
affairs?"
"How, indeed!" replied Phelypeaux, though again there was a flash from
the eye--"how, indeed! I--I never heard of you until his Majesty said
you would honour me with a visit. Yet, Captain--I mean Monsieur--St.
Georges, there must be something which guides Louis in sending for
you--in removing you from the miserable garrison in the Jura to Paris.
Ah, Paris!" he interjected with an upward glance. "Paris! Paris!" But
having recovered from this fervent ecstasy, he continued: "And if not
family interest--I am a believer in family interest myself--what can
it be? Unless, of course, you have been selected because of your
military promise."
"Nor can it be that either," replied the guest. "I have been in
garrison at Pontarlier for a year, and as for my service, why I have
done nothing to distinguish myself. No more than thousands of his
Majesty's troops have done--nay, not half so much."
"How old are you, may I ask?"
"Thirty-three."
"Ah," replied monseigneur, "and this is the third day of '88. So you
were born in 1655. Ah!" and he leaned back in his chair and muttered
to himself, though once he said quite audibly: "Yes, yes. That would
do very well."
"What would do very well, monseigneur?" asked the other, looking at
him.
"Pardon me," replied the bishop, and St. Georges could not help
remarking how much more courtly his manner had become by degrees, so
that, while heretofore it was quite in keeping with what he had
originally imagined him to be--a servitor--it was now thoroughly
suitable to his position--the position of a member of an old French
family and of a father of the Church; "pardon me, my mind rambles
sometimes when--when I throw it back. I was reflecting that--that--it
was in that year I was made bishop. So you were born in 1655? And
how--since you say you have none of that valuable family interest--did
you become a _chevau-leger_?"
"It is somewhat of a story, and a long one. Hark! surely that is the
cathedral clock striking. It is too late to pester you with my
affairs."
"Not a jot," exclaimed Phelypeaux--"not a jot. Nay, tell the story,
and--shall we crack another bottle of the clos? It is good wine."
"It is, indeed," replied St. Georges, "excellent. Yet I will drink no
more. Three glasses are all I allow myself after supper at the best of
times. And, after all, my history will not take long in telling. At
least such portions of it as I need tell you."
"Tell me all. I love to hear the history of the young and adventurous,
as you are--as you must be. The _chevaux-legers_ encounter adventure
even in garrison," and he leered at him.
"I have encountered none, or very few. A few indecisive campaigns
against Holland in the year the king gave me my commission--namely,
fourteen years ago--then the Peace of Nimeguen, and since then
stagnation in various garrisons. Yet they say the time is coming for
war. Holland seeks allies everywhere against France; soon a great
campaign should occur."
"Without doubt, when his Most Christian Majesty will triumph as he has
done before. But why--how--did you obtain your commission? You do not
tell me that."
"No, I had forgotten. Yet 'tis not much to tell. My mother--an English
woman--excuse me, Monseigneur l'Eveque, but you have spilt your wine."
"So, indeed, I have," said the bishop, sopping up the wine which his
elbow had overturned by a sudden jerk while the other was speaking,
"so, indeed, I have. But 'tis not much. And there is still that other
bottle uncorked." Then with a sidelong glance he said: "So your mother
was an English woman. _Ah! mon Dieu, elles sont belles, ces
Anglaises_! An English woman. Well, well!"
"Yes, an English woman. Daughter of a Protestant cavalier who left
England when the Commonwealth was declared. He had done his best for
the king, but with his death he could do no more. So he quitted his
country forever."
"Most interesting," exclaimed the bishop, "but your father, Monsieur
St. Georges. Who was he? Of the St. Georges's family, perhaps, of
Auvergne! Or another branch, of Dauphine! A noble family is that of
St. Georges!"
"He was of the branch in Auvergne. A humble member, but still of it. I
know no more."
"No more?"
"No."
"Humph! Strange! Pardon me, monsieur, I would not ask a delicate
question--but--but--did not the family recognise the marriage of
Monsieur St. Georges?"
"They did not recognise it for the simple reason that they were never
told of it. It did not please my father to divulge the marriage to his
family, so they were left in ignorance that it had ever taken place."
"And was Monsieur St. Georges--your father--a soldier like yourself?"
"He was a soldier like myself. And served against Conde."
"Against Conde. Under Turenne, doubtless?" and once more he cast a
sidelong glance at his visitor.
"Yes. Under Turenne. They were, I have heard, more than commander and
subordinate. They were friends."
"A great friendship!" exclaimed the bishop. "A great friendship! To
his influence you doubtless owe your commission, obtained, I think you
said, in '74, the year before Turenne's death."
"Doubtless. So my father said. He died in the same year as the
marshal."
"In battle, too, no doubt?" Then, seeing a look upon the other's face
which seemed to express a desire for no more questioning--though,
indeed, he bowed gravely at the question if his father had died in
battle--monseigneur with a polite bow said he would ask him no more
impertinent questions, and turned the conversation by exclaiming:
"But you must be weary, monsieur. You would rest, I am sure. I will
call Pierre to show you to your room. Your child will sleep better at
the 'Ours' than you will do here, since my accommodation is not of the
first order, owing to my being able to inhabit the house so little.
But we have done our best. We have done our best."
"I thank you," the soldier said, rising from his chair. "Now,
monseigneur, let me pay my farewells to you at the same time I say
'Good-night.' I propose to ride to-morrow at daybreak, and if possible
to reach Bar by night. Though much I doubt doing so; my horse is jaded
already, and can scarce compass a league an hour. And 'tis more than
twenty leagues from here, I take it."
"Ay, 'tis. More like twenty-five. And you have, you know, a burden.
You carry weight. There is the little child."
"Yes, there is the child."
"You guard it carefully, Monsieur St. Georges. By the way, you have
not told me. Where is its mother, your wife?"
Again the soldier answered as he had before answered to the watchman's
wife--yet, he knew not why, he felt more repugnance in speaking of his
dead wife to this strange bishop than he had when addressing either
that simple woman or the landlady of the "Ours." But it had to be
done--he could not make a secret of what was, in fact, no secret. So
he answered, speaking rapidly, as though desirous of getting his
answer over:
"She is dead. Our existence together was short. We loved each other
dearly, but it pleased God to take her from me. She died a year after
our marriage, in giving birth to the babe."
Phelypeaux bowed his head gravely, as though, perhaps, intending
thereby to express sympathy with the other, and said, "It was sad,
very sad." Then he continued:
"And madame--_pauvre dame!_--was she, too, English, or of some French
family?"
"She was, monseigneur, a simple French girl. Of no family--such as
you, monseigneur, would know of. A girl of the people, of the
_bourgeoisie_. Yet I loved her; she became my wife, and now--now"--and
he looked meditatively down into the ashes of the (by this time)
charred and burnt-out logs--"I have no wife. That is all. Monseigneur,
permit me to wish you good-night."
The bishop rang the bell, and while they waited for Pierre to come, he
said:
"You asked me, Monsieur St. Georges, this evening, why his Most
Christian Majesty should have thought fit through Louvois to direct
you to stay at my house in Dijon? I shall not see you to-morrow ere
you depart; let me therefore be frank. The king--and Louvois also--are
in correspondence with me on a political matter, which must not even
be trusted to the post, nor to courier, nor messenger. Nay, we do not
even write what we have to say, but, instead, correspond by words and
signs. Now, you are a trusty man--you will go far--already I see your
captaincy of a troop looming up before you. Therefore I will send by
you one word and one alone. You cannot forget it, for it is perhaps
the simplest in our or any language. You will convey it?"
"I am the king's servant. What is the word, monseigneur?"
"The word '_Yes_.'"
"The word '_Yes_,'" the _chevau-leger_ repeated. "The word '_Yes_.'
That is it? No more?"
"Nothing more. Simply the word '_Yes_.' Yet stay, remember my
instructions. The word is sent as much to Louvois as to the king. It
is a common message to both. And there is one other thing. The
Marquise de Roquemaure is also concerned in this matter; she will
without doubt ask you what the word is I have sent. And, monsieur,
there is no need of secrecy with her. You may frankly tell her."
Again with military precision the other made sure of his instructions.
"I may say that the word you send is '_Yes_'?"
"Precisely."
"I shall remember."
And now, Pierre coming in, the bishop bade him farewell and
good-night.
"The bed, I trust," he said, addressing the servant, "is as
comfortable as may be under the circumstances. Also properly aired.
For Monsieur St. Georges must sleep well to-night. He rides to Troyes
to-morrow or as far upon his road as he can get. He must sleep well."
"So! he rides to Troyes to-morrow," repeated the domestic,
surlily--"to Troyes, eh? And at what hour does Monsieur St. Georges
set forth? I must know, so that he shall be called."
"At daybreak," St. Georges replied.
The man led him after this up some great stairs, evidently the
principal ones of the mansion, and past what were the chief salons,
holding the lantern he carried above his head all the way and casting
thereby weird shadows on to walls and corners. Then up another flight
they went--their feet echoing now on the bare, uncarpeted stairs, and
so along a corridor until at the end the man opened a door and ushered
the guest into a moderately sized room very sparsely furnished in all
except the bed, which was large enough for three men to have slept in
side by side. Next, lighting a taper which looked as though it might
burn ten minutes but not longer, he gruffly bade St. Georges
"Good-night," and, saying that he should be called before daybreak, he
strode away, while the other heard his heavy footfall gradually grow
fainter and fainter until, at last, there was no further sound in the
house except the banging of a door now and again.
"_Nom d'un chien!_" exclaimed the soldier, as he unbuckled his spurs,
drew off his long riding boots, and, unsheathing his sword, laid it
along the side of the bed nearest the wall, "this is a pleasant hole
for a man to find himself in." And throwing himself on the bed, and
discovering that, as he drew the counterpane up about his shoulders,
it was so short that it did not reach below his knees, he wrapped up
the lower part of his body in the great cloak in which he had carried
the child all day, and so, shivering with cold, went at last to sleep.
Down below, while this had been going on, Pierre had rejoined his
master, and, standing before him, was answering several questions put
with great rapidity.
"Your horse is sound?" the bishop asked, as now he partook of a glass
out of the second bottle.
"Ay, it is sound," replied the other. "It has not left the stable for
three days."
"You can, therefore, ride forth to-morrow."
"Further than he can, weather permitting."
"Good. Therefore ride ahead of him until you meet the Marquis de
Roquemaure. Then you can deliver to him a message somewhat similar to
the one he will deliver to the mother of the noble marquis."
"What is the message?"
"The message he will deliver to madame la marquise--if he is fortunate
enough to see her--is the word '_Yes_.' The message you will deliver
to her son, whom you _must_ see, is also '_Yes_.' And, if you can
remember, you may also say to the marquis, 'It is the man.' _Can_ you
remember?"
"Without doubt I can. The words are: 'Yes. It is the man.'"
"Those are the words."
CHAPTER IV.
"HER LIFE STANDS IN THE PATH OF OTHERS' GREED."
Awakened in the dark of the morning by a loud knocking on the door,
St. Georges sprang off the bed and called lustily to know who was
there?
"It is near dawn," a female voice answered. "Monsieur was to be
awakened."
"Where is the man called Pierre?" asked St. Georges, perceiving that
the tones were not his gruff ones.
"He has gone forth to one of the bishop's farms at Pouilly. He bade me
call monsieur."
"And the bishop?"
"Monseigneur is not yet risen. There is a meal prepared for monsieur
below, if he will partake of it."
Monsieur so far partook of it on descending--after he had made a rapid
toilet, cleaned his sword by passing the folds of his cloak over it,
and (good soldier as he was!) having said a prayer at his bedside ere
leaving the room--as to drink a cup of thick, lukewarm chocolate. But
beyond this he would wait no longer, being very anxious to regain the
custody of his child. Also he thought that the "Ours" would offer a
more satisfying meal than that now set before him, which, in truth,
was nothing but the selfsame chocolate, some bread, and a
half-finished _saucisson_ which did not look particularly appetizing.
Therefore he tossed on the table a silver crown to the
miserable-looking old woman who had called him, and who afterward
escorted him downstairs, and, following her across the more than ever
snow-covered courtyard, emerged on to the great _place_.
And still, as he observed, the snow fell, must have been falling all
night, since it lay upon this open space in great tussocks, or mounds,
while across the _place_ itself no footmark was to be seen. It was,
indeed, as though a vast white sea stretched from the house of
Phelypeaux over to where the "Ours" stood.
Beneath a dull leaden canopy of cloud the wintry day was, however,
coming; from the chimneys of the inn he could see the smoke, scarcely
more dull and leaden than that canopy itself, rising; at the door of
the inn he saw the mousquetaire standing, looking up at what should
have been the heavens.
"Is all well?" he asked as he drew close to him now. "Have you seen
the child?"
"All well, monsieur," the other replied, saluting as he spoke--"all
well, both with child and horse. Yet, _ma foi!_ what a day for a
journey! Must monsieur, indeed, continue his?"
"Ay!" replied St. Georges, "I must. My orders are to pause no longer
than necessary on the route to Paris, to report myself to the Minister
of War, the Marquis de Louvois." Then turning to the mousquetaire, he
asked: "What are your orders? Do you ride toward Bar to-day?"
"Since monsieur proceeds, so do I. Yet I doubt if we get even so far
as Bar. _Ciel!_ will the snow ever cease to fall?"
But in spite of the snow, in half an hour both were ready to set out.
The little child, Dorine, had slept well, the _patronne_ said, had
lain snug and close with two of her own all through the night, while
she had seen to its nourishment and had herself washed and fed it.
"Heaven bless you, for a true woman," St. Georges said, "Heaven bless
you!"
But the woman would hear of no thanks; she reiterated again and again
that she was a mother herself and had a mother's heart within her; she
only wished monsieur would leave the little thing with her until he
came back; she would warrant it should be well cared for until he did.
"I doubt my ever coming back this way," he said, as he ate his
breakfast--a substantial one, far different from that which the
bishop's servant had been able to set before him--and she ministered
to his wants, "unless the future war rolls toward Burgundy. I am _en
route_ for Paris, and Heaven only knows where to afterward."
"Find a good home for her, monsieur," she said, "a home where she may
at least be safe while you are away campaigning. Nay," she continued,
"if I might make so bold, meaning no offence, find a new mother for
her. It would be a sad life for her even though monsieur followed a
stay-at-home existence; 'twill be doubly hard when you are separated
from her."
But St. Georges only shook his head and said mournfully there was no
other wife for him; a statement from which she dissented vehemently.
Then she asked:
"Does monsieur know of any one in Paris to whom the little Dorine
might be confided? If not," she continued--"she intended no
liberty!--she could recommend one with whom it would always be safe. A
woman of Dijon like herself, married and settled in Paris; married,
indeed, to a cousin of her late husband, who, rest his soul! had been
dead eighteen months. This woman's husband was a mercer in a large way
of business in the Rue de Timoleon, lived well, and had children of
his own; it would be an _abri_ for the child if monsieur cared to
consider it."
"Care to consider it!" exclaimed St. Georges, "why, it is the very
thing I should wish." Then he paused a moment, reflecting deeply and
looking round the kitchen, as though to see that they were alone,
which they were with the exception of the mousquetaire, who sat by the
great fire warming himself.
"Hark you, dame," he said, lowering his voice a little, though not
from any fear of the mousquetaire hearing, but more from instinct
than anything else. "You have done me one great kindness in being so
tender to my poor little motherless babe. Will you answer me,
therefore, a question? Will--will--suppose, I would say, that I wished
the whereabouts of this, my child, unknown to any one--would she be
safe in the house of this mercer you speak of? Also--if you--should be
asked by any one--high or low, here in Dijon--if, _par hasard_, you
know, or could guess, had indeed the faintest suspicion, where that
little child might be--would you hold your peace? Would you let this
be a secret locked only in your own honest heart?"
"Would I? Ay, monsieur, I would! Your child has slept with my little
_fillettes_; when I went to arouse them ere dawn they all lay cheek to
cheek, and with their arms entwined. She is as one of mine, therefore;
she shall be as sacred. _Je le jure._"
"Give me your friend's name and address," St. Georges made answer.
"What you have said is enough. I trust you as I should have trusted
her dead mother." And he took his tablets from his pouch as he spoke.
"Write," said the woman, "the name of Le Sieur Blecy, 5 Rue de
Timoleon. That is sufficient. His wife Susanne will arrange with you
for the safety of the little one when she knows that I have sent you."
"But," exclaimed St. Georges, "can you give me no line, no word, to
her or him? Surely she will not accept me on my own assurances.
Besides, 'tis much to ask. She will scarcely receive my child into her
house, into her family, without some proofs from you."
"How," exclaimed the woman, "can I send such proof? I can not
write--alas! I can not even read." She blushed as she spoke--though
truly she need not have done so, since in all Burgundy, in the days
of Louis _le Dieudonne_, not one in a hundred could do more than
she--and he himself reddened at having so put her to shame, and
muttered some sort of excuse under his thick mustache.
"Send some trifle that she will recognise--some little thing she will
know to have been yours," exclaimed the mousquetaire from his seat in
the chimney-piece. "She will know that."
"Ha!" she said, recovering instantly from her confusion, "and so I
will." Then, casting her eyes round the great stone-floor kitchen and
seeing nothing therein that she could send to her friend, she ran up
the stairs and came back bearing in her hand a little missal, with her
name written in it.
"It was given to me by Susanne's mother on my wedding day, she saying
that, though I could not follow the service with it, my children might
learn to do so--as they shall!--as they shall!"
St. Georges took the book--a tiny one--and put it in his pouch also,
along with his tablets; then he said to the mousquetaire: "Friend, if
you have still a mind to depart, let us set out. Yet I would not take
you from your comfortable nook if duty does not make it absolutely
necessary for you to go."
"I will go," the other said, springing to his feet. "All is ready; my
horse has rested for two days; at least we can get some distance on
our route. Come, monsieur, let us away."
Therefore St. Georges paid the reckoning due, not forgetting among
other things to give the woman's children--who were now all up and
ready for their breakfast--some little sums to buy things with; and so
he bade the woman farewell, thanking her again and again for her
goodness, and promising that he should certainly seek the Sieur de
Blecy on his arrival in Paris.
"Also," he said, as he shook her by the hand, "I shall find some means
of letting you know of her welfare. Burgundy is far from Paris, yet
there is always continuous passing to and fro from one to the
other--you shall hear from me."
"I hope so," she said, "and, _tenez!_ De Blecy is himself of Burgundy;
his old mother lives near here--not a league away--send through him.
He corresponds often with her and others. A word to me will reach.
Farewell, monsieur;--farewell, mousquetaire. Adieu!"
Yet the last word was not said; for while the soldier went into the
inn yard to fetch the horses and St. Georges brought down from the
room she slept in his little child--who prattled in her baby way to
him while her soft blue eyes smiled up in his--and wrapped it in his
great cloak preparatory to mounting the block before the inn door, she
asked:
"Why, why, monsieur, do you desire that no one should know where she
is? Why keep her existence a secret? Surely there are none who would
harm so innocent a little thing as that?"
He paused a moment, looking down at her from his great height as
though meditating deeply; then he said:
"I will trust you fully. I wish her whereabouts--not her existence,
that is already known--kept secret until the time comes that either
she shall be in safety out of France or I can be ever near to guard
and watch over her; for her life--after mine--stands in the path of
others' greed--perhaps of others' ambition. My life first, then hers.
I know it, have known it long; until a day or so ago I thought none
other knew it----"
"And?" she asked, glancing up at him, while she stole her hand into
the folds of his cloak and again softly patted the child's little
dimpled cheek--"and----?"
"And," he continued, "I am sure now that against her life, or at least
her liberty, some attempt will be made--as it will against mine.
That," he said, sinking his voice to a whisper, "is why I am recalled
to Paris. Farewell!"
CHAPTER V.
THE GRAVEYARD.
By the time that the wintry night was about once more to close in upon
them they were nearing Aignay-le-Duc, having passed through the
village of Baigneux some two or three hours previously.
A change in the weather had set in; the snow had ceased to fall at
last; right in their faces from the north-northwest there blew a cold,
frosty wind; from beneath their horses' hoofs there came a crisp
sound, which told as plainly as words that the soft, feathery snow was
hardening, while the ease with which the animals now lifted their feet
showed that the travelling was becoming easier to them every moment.
"Courage! courage!" exclaimed St. Georges; "if we proceed thus we may
reach Chatillon-sur-Seine to-night. What think you, Boussac?"
On their road the men, as was natural between two comrades of the
sword, had become intimate, St. Georges telling the mousquetaire some
of that history of his life which will be unfolded as these pages
proceed, while the other had in a few words given him his own. His
name was Boussac--Armand Boussac--the latter drawn from a little
village or town in Lower Berri, wherein his father was a _petit
seigneur_.
"A poor place, monsieur," he said, "a rock--fortified, however,
strongly--and with a castle almost inaccessible except to the crows
and hawks. A place in which a man who would see the world can yet
scarce find the way to study his fellow-creatures. _Ma foi_, there are
not many there! A priest or two--those always!--some farmers whose
fields lie at the foot of the rock, some old crones who, no longer
able to earn anything in those fields, are kept until they die by
those who can. And on the rock a few soldiers drawn from the regiment
of Berri--men who eat their hearts out in despair when sent to
garrison it."
"A cheerful spot, in truth!" said St. Georges, with a smile; "no
wonder you left the rock and sought the mousquetaires. And I see by
your horse that you are of the black regiment.[3] How did you find
your way to it?"
[Footnote 3: "Les mousquetaires tiraient leur noms de la couleur de
leur chevaux."--_St. Simon._]
"Easily. I descended once to Clermont, having bade farewell to my father
and intending to join the Regiment de Berri, when, lo! as I entered the
town, I saw our _grand seigneur_ of Creuse in talk with an officer of the
Mousquetaires Noirs. Then as I saluted him he called out to me: 'Boussac!
Boussac! what have you crossed the mountains for and come to Clermont?'
'_Pardie!_' I replied, 'monsieur, to seek my fortune as a soldier. I hear
there are some of the Regiment of Berri here. And the _arriere-ban_ is
out, the summons made.' 'And so it is,' replied the seigneur, 'only the
Regiment of Berri is complete, has all its complement. Now, here is the
colonel of the mousquetaires; if he would take you, why, your fortune's
made. Ask him, Boussac. Ask him.' So, monsieur, I asked him, telling him I
could ride any horse; would do so if he brought one; knew the
_escrime_--_ma foi!_ many a time had I fenced in the old castle with those
of the regiment; was strong and healthy, and, _voila!_ it was done. Even
the Mousquetaires--the king's own guard, the men of the _Maison du Roi_
were recruiting--it needed only that one should be of gentle blood, as the
Boussacs are. So, monsieur, I am mousquetaire; have fought when they
fight; we, of Ours, were at Mulhausen, Turckheim, and Salzbach----"
"Did you see Turenne killed?" asked St. Georges, turning on his horse
to look at his comrade.
"Nay, not killed, but just before the battle. Ah! he was a soldier!"
Then he went on with his recollections, finishing up by saying: "But,
alas! since then the peace has come, and we have naught to do but to
dance about the galleries of Versailles and be in attendance on the
king and his court. That," he said, patting his horse's coal-black
neck, "is no work for a soldier."
"It will change ere long," said St. Georges, "if all accounts be true.
Louis is threatened from all sides by the Dutchman, William, above
all. It will come."
"Let us hope so, monsieur. Peace is no good to us."
"No! peace is no good to us. My only hope is, England may not be drawn
into the game."
"And wherefore, monsieur?"
"I am half English--my mother was of that country. To draw a sword
against the land that gave her birth would be no pleasure to me."
"Yet, on the other--and the greater--side, monsieur is French. How
should you decide, therefore, if war comes?"
St. Georges rode on silently for a little while ere he answered this
question, and the mousquetaire could see that he was pondering deeply.
Then he seemed to shake himself clear of his doubts, and said:
"My allegiance is to France. I have sworn fidelity to the king. To him
consequently I belong. If, therefore," he continued, "my fidelity to
him brings no harm to one whom I love best of all in the world"--and
Boussac saw his arm enfold more closely the little child he
carried--"I draw my sword for him."
"Can your fidelity do that--bring harm to her?" he asked.
"It might," replied the other, "it might. In serving Louis, in serving
France, it may be that I put her in deadly peril. But as yet, Boussac,
I can tell you no more."
That Boussac was bewildered by this enigmatical remark he could
plainly see. The soldier had wrinkled his brow and stared at him as he
made it. Now he rode quietly by his side, saying no further word, yet
evidently turning it over in his own mind. And so, as they progressed,
the night came nearly upon them, and had the weather not now changed
altogether and become fine and clear, there would have been no
daylight left.
Suddenly, however, as they rode thus silently but at a good pace--for
the frosted snow on the path or road shone out clear and distinct now
to their and their horses' eyes in spite of the oncoming night--St.
Georges became sure of what at first he had only imagined--namely,
that Boussac suspected something, was watching for something--perhaps
an ambush or an attack.
"What is it?" he asked in a low voice, as the mousquetaire tightened
his hand upon the rein of his horse and, bending forward over its
jet-black mane, peered into the bushes of the side on which he rode;
and also he noticed that his comrade put his hand to his long sword
and, drawing it an inch or two from its scabbard once or twice,
loosened it. "What is it, Boussac?" But as he spoke he, too, made his
weapon ready in the same way.
"Take no notice," muttered the mousquetaire, "ride straight ahead,
look neither to left nor right. Yet--listen. All day from the time we
were a league outside of Dijon--_ma foi!_" in a loud tone that might
have been heard fifty yards off, "a fine night, a pleasant night for
the season!"--then lowering it again, "a man has tracked us, a man
armed and masked, or masked whenever we drew near him--_si, si_,
monsieur"; again in the loud voice assumed for the purpose, "the _vin
du pays_, especially of Chantillon, is excellent; a cup will cheer us
to-night."
"Doubtless," replied St. Georges, in a similar voice; then sinking it,
he asked beneath his teeth, "Why not warn me before?"
"Oh! red wine, monsieur, above all," replied Boussac, loudly. "There
is little white grows here." Again lowering his tone: "I feared to
distress, to alarm you. You had the child. Now I am forced to do so.
He has been joined by five others at different points since we passed
Flavigny. All armed and all masked. Yes," in the loud voice, "and with
a _soupe a l'oignon_, as monsieur says. They are around us," sinking
it again. "I judge they mean attack. Well, we know _we are_ soldiers:
they should be brigands, _larrons!_ Shall we encounter them, give them
a chance to show who, and what they are?"
"Ay," said St. Georges. "Observe, here is a small church and
graveyard; wheel in and let us await them. I see them now, even in the
dusk."
Swiftly, as on parade, the order was given, and as swiftly executed.
The black horse wheeled by the side of the chestnut of the
_chevau-leger_ into the open graveyard--the gate of the place hung on
one hinge down toward the road from which the church rose
somewhat--and then St. Georges in a loud voice said:
"Halt here, comrade. Our horses are a little blown. We will breathe
them somewhat."
It was a wretched, uncared-for spot into which they had ridden, the
church being a little, low-built edifice of evidently great antiquity,
and doubtless utilized for service by the out-dwellers of
Aignay-le-Duc, which lay half a league further off, and some sparse
lights of which might be now seen twinkling in the clear, frosty air
beneath a young moon that rose to the right of the village. In the
graveyard itself there was the usual heterogeneous accumulation of
tombstones and memorials of the dead; here and there some dark-slate
headstones; in other places wooden crosses with imitation flowers
hanging on their crossbars, covered with frozen snow; in others, huge
mounds alone, to mark the spots where the dead lay.
"Not bad," said the mousquetaire, as he glanced his eye round the
melancholy spot, "for an encounter, if they mean one.--Steady, _mon
brave_," to his horse, "steady!--Ah! here comes one. Well, we have the
point o' vantage. We are in the churchyard; they have to come up the
rise to attack us. _Peste!_ what can they want with two soldiers?"
St. Georges arranged his child under his arm more carefully, gathered
his reins into the hand of that arm, and then, with the other, drew
his long sword--it glittered in the rays of the young moon like a
streak of phosphorus!--and was followed in this action by Boussac.
After which he whispered: "See! All six are coming. Which is the one
who, you say, followed us from Flavigny?"
"He who hangs behind all the others. The biggest of all."
As the mousquetaire answered, the men of whom he had spoken, and who
had gradually come from behind the hedges and trees that grew all
along the way, formed up together, five of them being in a body behind
one who was evidently their leader and who rode a little ahead. And
all were, as Boussac had said, masked, while one or two had
breastpieces over their jerkins and some large gorgets. As for the
leader himself, he wore what, even for the end of the seventeenth
century, was almost now obsolete, a burganet with the visor down.
As he advanced until his horse's head was where the graveyard gate
would have been, had it hung properly on its hinges and been closed,
he spoke, saying--while his voice sounded hollow by reason of the band
of steel which muffled it: "Who are you who ride on the king's
highroad to-night? Soldiers, I see, by your accoutrements, and one a
mousquetaire. Answer and explain why neither are with your regiments."
"First," replied St. Georges, "answer you, yourself. By what right do
you demand so much of a _chevau-leger_, whose cockade is his passport,
and of a mousquetaire who is of the king's own house?"
"I represent the governor of the territory of Burgundy, and have the
right to make the demand."
"That we will concede when you give us proof of it. Meanwhile, take my
assurance as an officer that we ride by the king's orders. That order
I carry in my pocket for myself; my comrade goes to join the
Mousquetaires Noirs at Bar."
"Still we must see your papers."
"As you shall," said St. Georges, "when you produce your own.
Otherwise we intend to proceed to-night to that village ahead."
"You do? How if we prevent you?"
"Prevent!" echoed St. Georges, with a contemptuous laugh. "Prevent!
Come, sir, come. You are no representative of the governor, as you
know very well. He scarcely, I imagine, sets spies, such as that
skulking fellow behind you, to track the king's soldiers from village
to village, from daybreak to night." Then raising his voice
authoritatively, he said: "Stand out of our way!--Boussac, _avancez!_"
and he urged his horse forward to the leader so that the animals'
heads touched.
"So be it," exclaimed the other, and, turning his head to those
behind, the two comrades heard him say: "The bait takes. Fall on."
In an instant the _melee_ had begun--in another St. Georges knew what
he had from the first suspected. It was his life and the life of his
child that was aimed at!
All hurled their horses against him--except the sixth man, he who had
tracked them all day, and who now, masked and with his sword drawn,
sat his horse outside of the fray, looking on at what was being done
by the others.
The leader dealt blow after blow at St. Georges without effect, owing
to the latter's skilful swordsmanship; the remaining four directed
theirs at the arm which bore and shielded the child, and which, had
Armand Boussac not been by, would have been pierced through and
through. But the adroit swordsman perceived the intention of these
murderers--the would-be murderers of a little child!--and foiled them
again and again, beating off their weapons with his own, and at the
same time losing no opportunity of attacking them. And so far was he
successful that already he had put two _hors de combat_. One was by
now off his horse, lying across a snow-covered grave which was rapidly
becoming red from the blood that poured from his lungs, through which
the mousquetaire's sword had passed two minutes before; the other,
lying forward on his horse's neck, was urging the animal out of the
press of the fight.
And now the odds were but three to two--for still the man who took no
part in the attack sat on his animal's back, and, indeed, from the
glances he cast round him appeared to be meditating flight.
Yet withal they were unequal odds, especially since their three
antagonists were skilful swordsmen, the leader in particular wielding
his weapon with remarkable craft. Moreover, by his possession of the
burganet he wore, the odds were still greater in his favour--it had
saved his life more than once already, from the blows dealt at his
head by St. Georges.
Yet now those odds were soon further diminished--the chances became at
last equal. As one of the two followers thrust at the arm of the
_chevau-leger_, meaning to strike the burden he carried beneath,
Boussac with a quick parry turned his weapon off, and thus gliding it
along his own blade, brought its hilt with a clash against his own.
Then in a moment the mousquetaire had seized the sword arm of his
antagonist, and, holding it a moment, struck through the man's body
with his own weapon, which he shortened in his grasp. A second later
the fellow was writhing on the ground beneath the feet of the various
steeds, and helping to crimson the snow, as the others had done who
had fallen previously.
"_Pasquedieu!_" the comrades heard the leader mutter through the bars
of his helmet, "we fail." Then, as he and St. Georges wheeled around
on their horses, while still their weapons clashed and writhed
together, he shouted to the man who had taken no part in the affray,
"Hound! cur! come and render assistance!"
"Ay," exclaimed Boussac, "come and render him assistance. The chances
are even without you. We shall defeat him ere long if you assist not!"
and with a mocking laugh he again attacked his own particular
adversary, taking heed at the same time to insure that no thrust nor
blow of his should strike the precious burden under St. Georges's arm.
In truth, the fellow skulking on the horse seemed to think that
matters tended in the direction indicated, for, instead of responding
to the leader's orders, he shook up the reins of his own horse, and in
a moment had vanished into the night, leaving the four combatants
equally matched--except that on the side of St. Georges and Boussac
there was the child to be protected.
And now those four set grimly to work--though had there been an
onlooker of the fray in that deserted churchyard he would have said
that the defenders, and not the attackers, had most stomach for the
fight! St. Georges, his blood at boiling point at the assaults made on
his little child--now screaming lustily at the noise and clash of
steel, and perhaps at the unwonted tossing about to which it had been
subjected--fought determinately, his teeth clinched, his eyes gleaming
fire. He had sworn to kill this assassin, who had led his band
against him. He meant to kill him!
Yet it was hard to do--the other was himself a swordsman of skill.
But, skilful as he was, one good thing had now happened: neither he
nor his follower could any more threaten harm to the little Dorine!
They had sufficient to do to protect themselves from the two
soldiers--to protect themselves from the blows and thrusts that came
at them; so that, at last, they were forced to retreat down the slope
to the road--driven back by the irresistible fury of St. Georges and
his follower. And, eventually, seeing that he had got the worst of it,
the leader, after one ineffectual thrust at his antagonist, wheeled
his horse round and, with a cry to the other to follow him, dashed off
down the road in the same direction that the man who had skulked all
through the fight had taken.
Yet such an order was more easily given than obeyed, since, at the
moment he uttered it, Boussac had by a clever parry sent the other's
sword flying out of his hand, while, an instant afterward, he dealt
him such a buffet with his own gantleted hand as knocked him off his
horse on to the top of those lying on the ground beneath.
CHAPTER VI.
A LITTLE LIGHT.
The first thought of both the victors was to see to the child, who,
while still screaming piteously, was unharmed--though a deep cut in
St. Georges's sleeve and, as he afterward found, a slight sword thrust
in the forearm, showed how great had been her peril and how near her
little body to being pierced by one of the ruffians' swords. Still she
was safe, untouched, and her father muttered a hasty thanksgiving to
God as he found such was the case.
Then they addressed themselves to Boussac's vanquished antagonist--the
last living and remaining remnant of their foes. For of those who had
been overcome earlier in the fray, all three were dead, lying stark
and stiff on the frozen ground across the graves where they had
fallen. As for him, the living one, he presented as ghastly a
spectacle as they who were gone to their doom--sitting up as he now
did, and endeavouring to stanch the blood that flowed from his lips
and nose in consequence of the blow dealt him by Boussac.
"Stand up," said St. Georges, as he towered over him, his drawn sword
in his hand, while by the light of the moon, such as it was, he was
able to see the fellow's face. "Stand up and answer my questions."
"What are you going to do to me?" asked the man, staggering to his
feet at the other's command.
"Hang you to the nearest tree," replied St. Georges, "in all
likelihood. Especially if you trifle with me. I will have the truth
from you somehow. Now, _spadassin_, the meaning of this attack.
Quick!"
"Monsieur, I know no more than you--monsieur, I----"
"No lies. Answer!" and he lifted his arm and drew his sword back as
though about to plunge it into the other's throat. "Answer, I say! Who
are you all, you and this carrion here?" and he spurned the dead with
his foot. "Above all, who is the fellow in the antique morion, the man
who takes double precautions to guard his head and, _ma foi!_ to hide
his features!"
"Again, I say monsieur, I know not. Nay, nay," he cried, seeing once
more the threatening aspect of the other, and again the sword drawn
back. "Nay, I swear it is the truth. Let me tell my tale."
"Tell it and be brief."
"Monsieur," the man, therefore, began, as St. Georges stood in front
of him and Boussac never took his eyes off his face, while at the same
time he held the horses' reins, "there came into our village--not this
which you see down there, but Reccy, two leagues off--yesterday the
man you call the leader, he who wears the burganet. And accompanied by
one other--this," and he looked down at the dead men lying across the
graves and touched one with his toe, thereby to indicate him. "Then,"
the fellow went on, "when he had drunk a cup and made a meal he spake
to us sitting round the fire; to him, Gaspard," pointing to a dead
man, "and to him, Arnaud," pointing to another, "and said that he and
his follower were in search of a brigand riding to Paris from the Cote
d'Or who had stolen a child from its lawful parents--a child, he said,
whom the brigand desired to make away with, since it stood between him
and great wealth."
"He said that?"
"Ay, monsieur, and more. That he must save the child at all costs,
wrench it away from the man who had it."
"Now," exclaimed St. Georges passionately, "I know you lie! Neither he
nor you endeavoured to save it, to wrench it away from me. On the
contrary, all aimed at that harmless child's life, endeavoured to stab
it through my cloak, under my arm. Villain! you shall die," and this
time he made as though he would indeed slay the fellow.
"No! no! monsieur!" the man howled, overcome with fear of instant
death--death that seemed so near now--"hear my story out; you will see
I do not lie. It was not until later--when he had bought us--that we
knew what he truly wanted. Let me proceed, monsieur."
"Go on!" said St. Georges, again dropping the point of his weapon.
"Also, he said," the man continued, "that he needed more men to make
certain of catching him and hauling him to justice and releasing the
child. Those were his very words. And he asked us, Gaspard, Arnaud,
and myself, if we would take service with him. We looked strong and
lusty, he thought--soldiers, perhaps. If we would take part in the
undertaking there were fifty gold pistoles for us to divide. Was it
worth our while? We said, Yes, it was worth our while; we were
disbanded soldiers of the Verdelin Regiment--our time expired, and we
looking for a fresh recruiting. If what he said was true--that we were
wanted to arrest a kidnapper--we would join. But for no other purpose.
Then he swore at us, told us we were _canaille_, that he explained not
his movements nor made any oath to the truth of his statements; there
was a bag of pistoles, and if we had horses and weapons--but not
without--he would employ us. So we took service. Arnaud had two horses
at his mother's farm; he lent one to Gaspard, I borrowed mine for two
_ecus_. _Voila tout._"
"Is that all?" asked St. Georges quietly.
"All of importance. The pact was made, and then he said we must, this
morning, move on toward Aignay-le-Duc. Le Brigand--as he called
monsieur--would pass that way to-night, he thought. But, later on, he
would know. A messenger from Dijon would arrive to tell him."
"A messenger from Dijon!" Both St. Georges and Boussac started at this
and looked at each other in the uncertain light. A messenger from
Dijon! Who could it be? Who was there who knew of St. Georges's
whereabouts? Yet, as the man spoke, they guessed that the fellow whom
Boussac had noticed, who had tracked them all day, mostly masked, must
have been that messenger.
"He came at last," the narrator continued, "an hour or so before
monsieur and his companion. And he told us that there were two, so
that we had to do more than we had undertaken. Yet, we thought not
much of that. We were five to two, for he, the messenger, averred he
would take no part in the fight unless absolutely necessary. He was
not well, he said; he had ridden all day--fighting was not his
business; he was a messenger, not a soldier. So our employer cursed
him for a poltroon, but told him he might stand out of the attack. We
were five without him--that was enough."
"Go on," said St. Georges once more, seeing that again the man paused
as though his narrative had concluded. "Go on. There is more to be
told."
"But little, monsieur. Only this. As you wheeled into this graveyard
he gave us one final order. 'They will resist,' he said, 'therefore
spare not. Dead or alive they must be taken. Child and man. Dead or
alive. You understand!'"
"And it was for that reason that all endeavoured to plunge their
swords into this innocent child! My God!" And St. Georges paused a
moment ere he went on; then he said to Boussac: "What shall we do to
him? He merits death."
"_Ma foi!_ he does," replied the mousquetaire, while he grimly added,
"For my part, I am willing to execute it on him now."
At this sinister remark, uttered with the callousness which a brave
soldier would naturally feel for the existence of such a creature, the
other flung himself on his feet before them and began to howl so for
mercy that St. Georges, more for fear that he would call the attention
of some who might be about the village than aught else, bade him cease
the noise he was making or he would indeed take effectual steps to
stop it. Then, when this remark had produced the desired effect,
namely, a cessation of the man's shouts, though he whimpered and
whined like a beaten hound, the other continued:
"In spite of your villainy, of your assaults on one so harmless as the
child I carry, you are too vile for us to stain our weapons with your
blood. Yet, what to do with you?"
"Throw him in there," said Boussac with _sang froid_. "That will keep
him quiet for some time at least," and he pointed to an open grave
which yawned very near where they stood, and into whose black mouth he
had been peering for some time. He added also: "It will be his only
chance of ever occupying one. Such as he end by hanging on roadside
gibbets or rotting on the wheel they have been broken upon--the
peaceful grave is not for them."
St. Georges turned his eyes to the spot indicated, exclaiming that it
would do very well. It was no newly made grave, he saw, prepared for
one who had recently departed, but, instead, an old one that had been
opened, perhaps to receive some fresh body; for by the side of it
there lay a slab that had, it was plain to see, been pushed aside from
where it had previously rested, as though to permit of it being so
opened.
"Ay," echoed Boussac, sardonically, "it will do very well. Add when
he is in--as we will soon have him--the stone shall be pushed back to
keep him safe. Then he may holla loud enough and long: no one will
hear him."
His hollas began again at once, however, for at the terrifying
prospect of being thus incarcerated in so awful a manner he flung
himself once more on his knees, and bellowed out:
"Nay! Nay! In pity, I beseech you. You know not what you do--what
terrors you condemn me to. A plague, a horrible one, a sweating
sickness, passed over this province a year back--it took many, among
others him who laid here. He was of Chantillon--a seigneur--and is now
removed by his friends. Mercy! Mercy! Mercy! Condemn me not to this.
Think, I beseech you. The grave is infected, impregnated with
contagion. Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!"
The fellow had thrust at his child's life--St. Georges remembered it
even as he spoke!--yet, being a brave soldier himself, he could not
condemn the ruffian to such horrors as these. Revenge he would have
taken earlier, in the heat of the fight; would have killed the man
with his own hand, even as he would have killed that other, the
leader, had the chance arisen; but--this was beneath him. Therefore,
he said:
"Bind him, Boussac, to this old yew. Bind him with his horse's reins
and gag him. Then he must take his chance--the night grows late. We
must away."
It was done almost as soon as ordered, the mousquetaire detaching the
coarse reins of the man's horse--which was itself wounded and seemed
incapable of action--and lashing him to the tree, while he took one of
his stirrup leathers and bade him open his mouth to be gagged.
"To-morrow," he remarked to the unhappy wretch, "at matins you may be
released. Meanwhile, heart up! you are not alone. You have your
comrades for company." And he glanced down at the others lying still
in death.
"Stay," said St. Georges, "ere you put the gag in his mouth let me ask
him one question.--Who," turning to the shivering creature before him,
"who was your leader? Answer me that, and even now you shall go free.
Answer!"
For a moment the man hesitated--doubtless he was wondering if he could
not invent some name which might pass for a real one, and so give him
his freedom--then, perhaps because his inventive powers were not
great, or--which was more probable--his captor might have some means
of knowing that he was lying, he answered:
"I do not know. I never saw him before."
"You do not know, or will not tell--which?"
"I do not know."
"Whence came he to your village? From what quarter?"
"The north road. The great road from Paris. He had not come many
leagues; his horse was fresh."
"So! What was he like? He did not wear his burganet all the time--when
he ate, for instance."
"He was young," the man replied, hoping, it may be, that by his ready
answers he would earn his pardon even yet, "passably young. Of about
monsieur's age. With a brown beard cropped close and gray eyes."
"Is that all you can tell?"
"It is all, monsieur. _Ayez pitie_, monsieur."
"Gag him," said St. Georges to Boussac, "and let us go."
So they left the fellow gagged and bound, and rode on once more upon
their road, passing swiftly through Aignay-le-Duc without stopping.
"For," said St. Georges, "badly as we want rest, we must not halt
here. To-morrow those dead men will be found, with, perhaps, another
added to their number if the frost is great to-night, as it seems like
to be. We must push on for Chatillon now, even though we ride all
night. Pray Heaven our horses do not drop on the road!"
So through Aignay-le-Duc they went, clattering up the one wretched
street, their animals' hoofs waking peasants from their early
slumbers, and the jangling of their scabbards and steel trappings
arousing the whole village. Even the _guet de nuit_--who because it
was his duty to be awake was always asleep--was roused by the sound of
the oncoming hoofs, and, rushing to his cabin door, cried out, "Who
goes there?"
"_Chevau-leger en service du roi_," cried St. Georges; and
"_Mousquetaire de la maison du roi_," answered Boussac; and so, five
minutes later, they had passed the hamlet and were once more on their
road north.
"Yet," said St. Georges as, stopping to breathe their horses, he
opened the cloak and gazed on his sleeping child, "I would give much
to know who our enemy is--who the cruel wretch who aimed at your
innocent little life. 'A young man with a fair beard and gray eyes!'
the ruffian said. Who, who is he?"
And, bending over, he brushed her lips with his great mustache.
"My darling," he whispered, "I pray God that all attacks on you may be
thwarted as was this one to-night; that he may raise up for you always
so stout and true a protector as he who rides by my side."
"Amen!" muttered Boussac, who among his good qualities did not find
himself overwhelmed with modesty. "Amen! Though," he exclaimed a
second after, "he who would not fight for such an innocent as that
deserves never to have one of his own."
CHAPTER VII.
A REASON.
Midnight was sounding from the steeples of Chatillon as the soldiers
rode their tired beasts across the bridge over the Seine and through
the deserted street that led up to the small guard-house, where,
Boussac said, would be found the Governor of the Bailliage with some
soldiers of the Montagne Regiment.
As they had come along they had naturally talked much on the attack
that had been made upon them outside Aignay-le-Duc, and St. Georges
had decided that, as Chatillon was the most important town on this
side of Troyes, it would be his duty here to give notice to any one in
authority of that attack having taken place.
"For," said he, "that it was premeditated who can doubt? The leader
spoke of me as a brigand who had stolen a child, while he himself was
the brigand who desired to steal my child. Then, see, Boussac, we were
followed--or preceded--from Dijon by that man who warned him we were
coming--merciful heavens! who could he have been?--so that it shows
plainly that I am a marked man. Marked! tracked! known all along the
route."
"But why? Why?" interposed Boussac. "Why is your life, the life of the
_pauvrette_, aimed at? Across whose path do you and she stand?"
"That I can but guess at," replied the other; "though I have long
suspected that I have powerful enemies to whom my existence was
hateful." Then, since their tired horses were now walking side by side
across a wide plain, at the end of which rose Chatillon, he leaned
over, and, putting his hand on the mousquetaire's saddle, said
gravely:
"Boussac, you have shown to-night the true metal you are made of.
Listen to me; hark to a secret; though first you must assure me you
will never divulge to any one that which I tell you until I give you
leave. Will you promise?"
"Ay," replied Boussac. "I will." Whereon he stretched out his own
hand, drawing off first the great riding gantlet he wore, and said,
"There's my hand. And with it the word of a brother soldier, of a
mousquetaire."
"So be it," taking the offered hand in his own. "Listen. I believe
that I am the Duke de Vannes."
"What!" exclaimed Boussac, "you the Duke de Vannes! _Mon Dieu_,
monsieur, this is extraordinary. But stay. You bewilder me. Your name
is St. Georges--if it is as you say, it should be De la Bresse. I knew
him--your father. He died at Salzbach the same day as Turenne did. And
_you believe_--do you not know? Or--or did--or was----"
"Stop there, Boussac. I can suppose what you are going to say. To ask
if my mother was--well, no matter. But be sure of this: if I am what I
think, I am his lawful son. His heir, and myself a De Vannes, the De
Vannes."
"But 'what you think!' 'what you believe yourself to be!' Do you not
know?"
"No. I may be his son, I may in truth be only Monsieur St. Georges.
Yet--yet--this attack on me and mine points to the presumption that I
am what I believe myself to be. The cavalry soldier, St. Georges, and
his helpless babe would not be worth waylaying, putting out of
existence forever. De Vannes's heir would be."
"Only--again--you do not know. Does not a man know whose son he is?"
Chatillon still lay far off on the plain through which they were
riding; the flickering flambeaux on its gate and walls were but little
specks of light at present, and St. Georges decided that he would
confide in the mousquetaire who had shown himself so good a friend
that night. Moreover, Boussac had said he was of gentle blood; his
being in the Mousquetaires proved it, since none were admitted who had
not some claim to good birth--above all, he wanted a friend, a
confidant. And as, in those days, there was scarcely any gulf between
the officers of the inferior grades and the soldiers themselves,
Boussac was well fitted to be that friend and confidant. Also he knew,
he felt now, since the attack of the evening, how insecure his own
life was; he recognised that at any moment the little motherless child
he bore on his breast might be left alone unfriended in the world.
Suppose, for instance, he fell to-night in a second attack, or ere he
reached Paris, in a week, or a month hence. Well! a mousquetaire whose
principal duties were in Paris near the king's person would be a
friend worth having!
So he told him his tale.
"My mother, a Protestant cavalier's daughter, was in Holland with her
father after the execution of the king. As you know, that country was
full of refugees from England. There she met my father, 'Captain St.
Georges.' But at that time De Vannes was out of favour with the court;
he was allied with the party of the Fronde, also he was a Protestant.
And I believe he was 'Captain St. Georges,' I believe he was my
mother's husband."
"Always you 'believe,' monsieur. Surely there must be proofs! Your
mother, what does she say?"
"She died," went on St. Georges, "when I was two years old--suddenly
of the plague that spread from Sardinia to many parts of Europe. It
was because of her memory that I spared that fellow we have left
behind from the infected grave. I would not condemn him to the death
that robbed me of her."
"Therefore," exclaimed Boussac, "you gathered nothing from her!"
"Nothing. I cannot even remember her. Nay, some more years had to pass
ere I, growing up, knew that my name was St. Georges. Then, as
gradually intelligence dawned, I learned from the man with whom I
lived, a Huguenot pastor at Montereau, that I had no mother, and that
my father was a soldier who could rarely find time to come and see me.
Nay, was not often in Paris, and then not always able to make even so
short a journey as that to Montereau. Yet," went on St. Georges,
meditatively, "he came sometimes, loaded with presents for me which he
brought in the coach, and passed the day with us, being always
addressed as Captain St. Georges by the pastor. Those were happy days,
for he was always kind and good to me, would walk out with me hand in
hand, would spend the day with me in the Forest of Fontainebleau, hard
by, and would talk about my future. Yet he was sad, too; his eyes
would fill with tears sometimes as he looked at me or stroked my hair,
and always he asked me if I would be a soldier as he was. And always
in reply I answered, 'Yes,' which seemed to please him. So I grew up,
treated with more and more respect mingled with affection from the
pastor as time went on; and, also, I was now taught military exercises
and drilled in preparation for my future career. But as the time went
on my father came less and less, though he never failed to send ample
sums to provide for my education and also for my pleasures. When I
asked the pastor why he never came near us, he said he was occupied
with his profession, that he was away in the Palatinate with Turenne.
Now, at that period, I being then about eighteen, there came
frequently to Paris the story of all that was doing in the
Palatinate--stories that made the blood run cold to hear. Stories of
villages and towns burnt, so that never more should that region send
forth enemies against Louis."
"They penetrated further than Paris and Montereau," interrupted
Boussac, "ay, even to our out-of-the-way part of France. And not only
of villages and towns burnt and destroyed, but of fathers and
breadwinners burnt in their beds, women ill treated, ruin everywhere.
There were those who said it was not war, but rapine."
"And so I said," replied St. Georges; "once even I went so far as to
say that I regretted that my father followed so cruel and bloodthirsty
a man as Turenne. But the pastor stopped me, rose up in his chair in
anger, bade me never say another word against him--told me that I, of
all alive, had least right to judge him."
"But," exclaimed Boussac, "this does not show that the duke was your
father, monsieur. The worthy pastor may have thought it wrong to
encourage you in speaking ill of one----"
"Nay; listen," said St. Georges. "The year 1674 arrived, my twentieth
year, when there came one night my commission in the regiment--the
Nivernois. You have perhaps never seen one of these documents,
Boussac, but you will ere long, I make no doubt, when your own is made
out for the Mousquetaires. Therefore, I will tell you of its strange
character and wording. It was that the king, at the request of the Duc
de Vannes, had been graciously pleased to appoint me to the position
of _porte-drapeau_ in the Nivernois under De Mailly-Sebret--a brave
man, now dead--and that I was to join it in Holland. I did so, and,
from that day to this, have prosecuted many inquiries as to why De
Vannes should have procured me that commission. But up to now I have
never received positive proof that he was my father--though still I do
believe it."
"But why, why, why?" asked Boussac impatiently. "A man must have some
friend who obtains him his presentation to a regiment--even I had our
grand seigneur. And I never suspected _him_ of being my father!"
"Doubtless you had no reason to do so. Yet, again, listen. De Vannes
was killed in 1675; in the same year--a month before him--died my old
friend and protector--the one man who had ever stood in the light of a
parent to me. His successor found among his papers and chattels a
packet addressed to me, and forwarded it by a sure hand to Holland.
When I opened it I found therein a miniature of my mother--though I
should not have known it was she had he not informed me of it--and
also instructions that I should myself seek out the Duc de Vannes at
the first opportunity and boldly ask him who my father was. 'For,' he
wrote, 'he can tell you if he will, and he ought in justice to tell
you. I would do so only the most solemn promise binds me to keep
silence--a promise which, had I never given it, would have stood in
the way of my ever being to you all that I have been--of having my
life cheered by you, my dear, dear one.' I was preparing to seek the
duke out, had obtained leave to do so and to join Turenne in the
campaign, when, lo! the news came that both he and De Vannes were
killed on the same day."
"And you know no more?" asked Boussac, as now the plain was passed,
and from the watch towers of Chatillon they could hear the guard being
changed. And also, as they rode up to the gate, the challenge of "Who
comes there?" rang out on the frosty air.
Again the usual answer was given, "Chevau-Leger" and "Mousquetaire,"
and then, while the bolts were heard creaking harshly in their sockets
as the gate was being opened for them, St. Georges turning to his
comrade said, in answer to his last question:
"I know no more, though still my belief is fixed. But, Boussac, she at
whose manoir I am bidden to stay at Troyes--the Marquise de
Roquemaure--may be able to enlighten me. She was, if all reports are
true, beloved by De Vannes once, and I have heard loved him. Yet they
never married--perhaps because they were of different faith--and she
instead married De Roquemaure, De Vannes's cousin and heir. He left a
son by his first wife, who is now that heir in his place. Boussac,
does any light break in on you now--can you conceive why I and my
little darling asleep under my cloak should run hourly, daily risks of
assassination--ay! even as to-night we have run them?"
"_Mon Dieu!_" exclaimed Boussac, "yes. You stand in the path of----"
"Precisely. Hush! See, the gate is open. We may enter."
The soldiers of the guard saluted St. Georges as he rode in, followed
by the mousquetaire, while the officer of the night, after bowing
politely to him, held out his hand, as greeting to a comrade.
"Monsieur has had a cold journey, though fine--Heavens!" he exclaimed,
as he saw that the other had a strange burden under his cloak, "what
does monsieur carry there?"
"A harmless child," St. Georges said, while the men of the garrison
gathered round to peer at the little creature whose blue eyes were now
staring at them in the rays of the great lantern that swung over the
gateway. "My child, whose life would have been taken to-night by five
desperadoes had it not been for this honest mousquetaire who, by
Heaven's providence, happened to be riding my road."
From the soldiers around the newcomers--some risen half asleep from
their wooden planks in the guard room, some already on duty and with
every sense awake to its utmost--there rose a murmur of indignation
that was not at all extinguished by Boussac's description of the
attack in the graveyard, and at the passes made more than once at
Dorine under his own guard and the _chevau-leger's_ arm.
"_Grand Dieu!_" exclaimed the officer, "five men attack two, and one
burdened with a little child under his arm. Of what appearance were
these assassins?"
St. Georges described them as well as he could--mentioning in
particular the leader, who wore the burganet, and the fellow who
skulked outside the fight--the man who, the comrades knew, had brought
the news from Dijon that they were on the road. And then from all who
surrounded those fresh comers there arose a hubbub, a babel of sound
that drowned everything like intelligible question or answer.
"A man who wore a burganet," one cried; "a rusty thing that would have
disgraced the days of the Bearnais." "_Fichte!_" hissed another, "you
have come an hour too late." "'Twas but at midnight," exclaimed a
third, "that he rode through--ten minutes of midnight. And, by good
chance for him, it was to-night, since 'tis the last of our New-Year
carousals; to-morrow the town will be closed at dusk as usual."
"But where--where is he gone?" asked St. Georges.
"_Corbleu!_" exclaimed the officer, "we had no right to ask him, since
both this and the other gates were open. Yet, stay; has he left the
town yet? It may be not."
"Ay! but he has, though," exclaimed a boyish young officer who at this
moment joined the group. "In truth, he has. I was at the north gate as
he clattered up to it, calling out that he must go through. 'And why
the devil must you?' I asked, not liking the fellow's tone, which
sounded hollow enough through the rusty iron pot on his head. 'I have
been attacked,' he said;' nigh murdered by some ruffians, and am
wounded. I must get me home.' 'And where is your home?' I asked.
'Beyond Bar,' he replied; 'for Heaven's sake, do not stop me!'
Whereon," continued the young officer, "since I had no right whatever
to prevent his exit, I let him go, and a second afterward the clock
struck midnight, and we clapped the gate behind him. Yet, ere that was
done, I saw him spurring along the north road as though the devil, or
a king's exempt, were after him."
"The north road!" St. Georges said in a low voice to Boussac. "The
north road! You hear? And the north road leads to De Roquemaure's
manoir."
CHAPTER VIII.
DRAWING NEAR.
Two days later, when again the wintry evening was fast approaching,
St. Georges, by now alone, drew near to the ancient city of Troyes. So
near, indeed, had he arrived that its walls and fortifications were
plainly visible to him, and from its steeples the bells could be
heard, either chiming the hour or summoning the inhabitants to evening
worship. Beneath his cloak, as ever, he bore his precious burden, who
showed no signs of being fatigued by the long journey she had made in
so rough a fashion, but often woke up and, thrusting her little head
from out the folds of the cloak, smiled up into the face of her
father.
He had parted with Boussac at Bar, leaving him there surrounded by his
comrades of two troops of the Mousquetaires Noirs, from whom he had
received the joyful intelligence that they were soon to move on to
Paris, to be quartered at Versailles, while two other troops of the
"Gris" were to replace them--a piece of news that had given St.
Georges almost as much pleasure as it had done to the other. For it
seemed to him that, should aught take him away from Paris when he had
left the child in the house of the Sieur Blecy in the Rue de
Timoleon, there was one faithful friend on whom he could rely to keep
watch over it and see to its welfare.
"And be sure," said the mousquetaire, "that I will do so. Monsieur St.
Georges, we are friends now in spite of our difference in military
rank; we have fought side by side; if you are not there to guard your
child, I shall be. Meanwhile, prosecute your inquiries as to the rank
and position--ay, and the fortune!--you believe, is yours, and may the
good God put you in the right way! Farewell, monsieur, and Heaven
bless you! You know where I may be communicated with; let me know also
where I may send to you," and he stooped down and kissed the child ere
he grasped the other's hand as he prepared to mount his horse.
"Adieu," St. Georges said, "adieu, friend. You helped me to save her
life once. For that I thank you, am bound to you forever. I pray
Heaven that, if she should need it, you may be by to do so again."
Whereon, with a farewell to his new friend and to several officers and
men who had all testified as much interest in him and his charge as
those others had done at Chatillon, he set forth once more upon
another stage of his journey.
Both at Chatillon and in Bar, which he was now leaving behind, he and
Boussac had spoken to those whose duty it was to keep an eye to the
safety of the highroads, and had informed the captain of the
_marechausse_--or mounted patrol of the highroads--of the attack that
had been made on them. But this official had only shrugged his
shoulders and remarked that "it was possible, very possible."
"Louvois," he said, "is responsible for all. Either he denudes the
country of men to send on his campaigns, so that none are left to
guard it, or, the campaigns being over, he pours back into it
thousands of disbanded soldiers who, for want of aught else to do,
become _filous_ and _spadassins_. What would you? And according to
your own account, monsieur, you and your friend, the mousquetaire,
could take good care of yourselves."
"These were neither _filous_ nor _spadassins_," replied St. Georges,
"or at least the leader was not. Oh! that I may meet him again, and
when I am not encumbered with a harmless child to protect!"
"You know him, then, monsieur?"
"No. And since he carefully disguised his face as well as protected
his head, I may not even assert that I have ever seen him. But I
suspect."
"Tell me the name of him you suspect, and I may do something--may call
upon him to answer your charge."
"Nay," replied St. Georges, "that cannot be. For I must not tarry
here; I have the king's orders to ride straight for my destination,
halting no more than is necessary; and so, perforce, I must go on. But
should you hear of a man wearing an ancient burganet whose appearance
in your neighbourhood seems suspicious, and who"--remembering the
description given by the man they had gagged and left tied to the tree
at Aignay-le-Duc--"is young, with a brown beard cropped close and gray
eyes, I pray you question him as to his doings two nights ago. It may
save your roads from further brigandage, and--should you confine him
for any length of time--his life from my sword. For, I promise you, if
ever I encounter him again, and am sure of my man, he shall not escape
a second time."
"_Mon Dieu!_" replied the captain of the _marechausse_, "if he falls
into our hands I will warrant him against your sword. If we can but
bring his attack on you at Aignay-le-Duc home to him, it will be the
wheel and not the sword with which he will find his account."
"So best. Yet I doubt your catching him, and must believe and hope the
punishment he deserves shall reach him through my hand. If it is he
whom I think, he is of high position."
"Many of high position have come to the wheel when in our grip," said
the fierce old captain, a man who had followed his trade under Conde.
"_Ma foi!_ we have great powers, we of the _marechausse_, and for
brigandage on the king's highway we use those powers swiftly. Poof! If
we catch him and bring his vagabondage home to him, he will be broken
all to pieces before his position is of any avail."
So in this frame of mind St. Georges left the old man, and now, as
night drew on, he neared Troyes.
All day he had pondered on the meeting that was before him--on the
fact that he was about to encounter the woman who had once loved so
dearly the man he believed to be his father. For, that he would meet
her, stand face to face with her, he supposed was certain. She would
scarce let an officer of the _chevaux-legers_ stay in her house--sent
there by the king's orders--and not summon him to her presence.
Moreover, did he not go there, as that evil-seeming bishop had said,
so that he might also hear a word possessing great significance to
both the king and his minister? A word of similar import to the one
the bishop had himself sent!
"Yet," he pondered, as now the hum from the busy old city reached his
ears and he saw its smoke rising in the evening air, "yet, does she
know who I am, whom I believe myself to be? Ha!" as a thought struck
him, "how else should it be? If De Roquemaure, her son, or stepson,
knows, then she must know too. And--and does she, too, wish me
dead--and you--you, also, my darling," with a pressure of his arm
against his burden, "as well? _Mon Dieu!_ If that is so, then it is to
the lion's jaws I am going in entering this manoir of hers. No matter!
I will do it. It is in the king's name I present myself; let us see
who dares assault his messenger. And," he muttered fiercely to
himself, "if her whelp, De Roquemaure, is the man with the brown
beard--the man whose voice I shall know in a thousand, although it
reached me before through iron bars--he shall have one more chance at
my life in spite of his lady mother." And he clinched his white teeth
as he reflected thus.
Knowing what he did, namely, that "the whelp, De Roquemaure," as he
had termed him, was heir in a year or two to De Vannes's great
fortune, and coupling with that fact that he and his child had been
attacked in a neighbourhood at no great distance from Troyes, he had
begun on his solitary ride this day to speculate as to whether the
whole of his journey, his sudden summons from Pontarlier to Paris, was
not some deeply devised plot to remove him out of existence. For,
although he had long suspected who and what he was, might it not be
the case that those in whose light he stood had only recently learned
that such was the case? And, if such were the fact, what a revelation,
what a blow, such knowledge would be to them! They had doubtless long
looked forward to the enjoyment of the Duc de Vannes's wealth; if they
had now discovered that the possession of that wealth might be
disputed, what more likely than that they should endeavour to remove
for ever from their path the two--himself and his child--who could so
dispute it with them?
"Yet," he had mused all through that day, "how know it since I, of all
people, have no certain knowledge; how, above all, learn that their
opportunity had come? How know that I who stand between them and their
greed should pass upon their way, come across their path? Bah!" he
finally exclaimed, "it is a coincidence that I should so travel their
road, seek shelter in the house that my father's heir dwells in. It
may be that when I see this young De Roquemaure he shall in no way
resemble that night assassin who attacked me; it may be that his
mother no more dreams that she is about to see the son of the man she
loved than that she will ever see him again in life."
Yet, even as he so decided, he knew that there was more than
coincidence in it. He knew that those who had attacked him and Boussac
at Aignay-le-Duc were more than common bravos. Otherwise the child's
life would not have been sought as fiercely as his own; the spy,
whomsoever he might be, would not have ridden so many leagues from
Dijon to carry the news of his approach.
Therefore, in spite of his attempted dismissal of all his doubts and
suspicions, he resolved that, above all, he would be cautious as
regarded one thing--his child. She, at least, was under no orders to
seek shelter in the manoir; the roof that covered this marquise and
her stepson should never be slept under by Dorine.
"All women's hearts," he murmured, "go out to my motherless babe,
strangers though they be. There must be many such in this old city,
and one such I will find. If as--God help me!--I must suppose, this
she-wolf and her husband's son seek our lives, at least they shall get
no chance at hers. The mistress of a common inn, a warder's wife, will
keep her in greater safety than she may be under the roof-tree of
madame la marquise."
The gates of Troyes were not yet shut--the city having too much
traffic with the outlying hamlets to permit of their being closed
early--so that St. Georges rode in without any formalities beyond
replying to the usual questions as to who he was and what was his
business, and, passing slowly into the quaint streets, soon came to a
great _auberge_ which looked as though suitable for the purpose he
required, a shelter for the child. In the vast kitchen, or hall,
through whose diamond-paned windows he could see perfectly, he
perceived a young bare-armed woman cooking at a large fireplace, while
around her at wooden tables sat the usual company of such places--men
drinking in groups or eating from platters which another woman brought
from the first and set before them. So he rode in under the great
gateway and called loudly for an hostler to come.
At his summons a man came forth who, seeing his soldier-like
appearance, asked if he desired to rest there for the night, and
stated at the same time that the inn was very full.
"That may be so," replied St. Georges, "yet, perhaps, not so full but
that a child can be sheltered here for one night. See, friend," he
continued, opening his cloak, "I bear one here who has been carried
far by me. Think you the hostess will give her protection? She needs a
good bed sorely."
As it always was--to the credit of humanity--the sight of the little
helpless thing sleeping on its father's arm roused this man's sympathy
as it had roused that of all others.
"_Ma foi!_" he said, stooping to gaze at it as it lay on that arm, "a
rude cradle for _la petite_. Yet--there is no hostess; the landlord's
wife is dead. And why--why--do you leave it? Why not stay yourself?"
"I have to present myself to the Marquise de Roquemaure at her manoir.
Where is that manoir? Heaven grant I have not passed it on the road!"
"Half a league outside the city--to the north, on the Paris road. If
you have come from the south, you have not passed it."
"So! It is from the south I come. Now, quick, can I leave the child
here--in safety?"
"I will see. Wait." And he went away toward the kitchen, leaving St.
Georges standing by his horse easing its saddle, and then holding a
bucket of water, which he had picked up, to its thirsty mouth with his
disengaged hand.
Presently the man came back, followed by one of the young women whom
St. Georges had seen waiting on the company--a dark girl with her arms
bare--a girl whose face looked kind and honest. And again with her, as
with the others, her heart went out to the little child in the great
man's arms. The sense of helplessness, of dependence on so unusual a
nurse, touched all those hearts, especially feminine ones.
Briefly as might be he explained to her what it was he required--a
night's shelter for and watchfulness over the child, he having to
visit the Manoir de Roquemaure. Also, he said, he would come back
early in the morning to fetch it away.
"If," said the girl, a little hesitatingly, for she was but a waitress
at the inn, "monsieur will intrust the child to me--it is a pretty
thing, and see--see--how tired it is!--how it yawns!--then I will do
my best. It may sleep with me, and I am used to children. I have
several little sisters whom I saw to after my mother's death and
before I took service."
"I will intrust it to you most thankfully," St. Georges replied. "Your
face is honest, my girl, and true."
So--telling her, as he had told others on his road, that the child was
motherless--he kissed it, and bade it good-night, saying inwardly, as
he ever said when he parted from it, a little prayer that God would
guard and have it in his keeping, and so let the waitress take it
away. But, because something told him he was in a dangerous
neighbourhood, he impressed upon her that she should in no way leave
it more than was absolutely necessary; above all, he begged her and
the hostler, who was a witness to the proceedings, to remember that
they need say nothing about a child having been left in her care. And
they, with many protestations that they would not chatter, assured him
that he need be under no apprehension.
"I take my rest," the girl said, "at the close of day. The child shall
not leave me till I rise at dawn, nor, indeed, until monsieur returns.
I promise."
Then he let her go away with it, and busied himself next with his
horse, seeing that it was rubbed down and freshened with a feed.
"For," said he, patting its flank, "you have another league to do, my
friend, ere your rest comes." And the animal being refreshed, he gave
the hostler a piece of silver as earnest of more in the morning if he
found he had not been chattering, and so made for the North Gate.
"And now," he said to himself as he passed out, "for the house of the
woman De Vannes loved, the house of the man who, I believe, thirsts
for my life and the life of my child."
CHAPTER IX.
A ROYAL SUMMONS.
"La plus cruelle de toutes les voies par laquelle le roi fut
instruit bien des annees fut celle de l'ouverture des
lettres. Il est incroyable combien des gens de toutes les
sortes en fureut plus ou moins perdus."
_St. Simon._
A fortnight before St. Georges had set out upon his long and, as it
had already proved, hazardous ride from Pontarlier to Paris, four men
were busily employed in a small, neatly furnished _cabinet_ at
Versailles--a little apartment that partook more of the appearance of
a bureau, or office, than aught else.
Two were seated at a table facing each other; behind each of these was
one of the others, who handed them papers rapidly drawn from
portfolios which they carried. Of the men who were seated, the one
with his hat on and wearing a costume of brown velvet--because already
the days were very cold--was Louis the Fourteenth; the other, whose
manner was extremely rough and coarse--indeed brutal, except when
addressing the king himself--was Louvois, the Minister of War,
ostensibly, but in reality the one minister who had his fingers in all
the business of the state. Those standing behind each of the others
were Pajot and Rouillier, who farmed the postal service from the
crown.
"_Finissons_," said Louis, in the low clear voice that expressed,
according to all reports, more authority than even the trumpet tones
of many of his great commanders--"_finissons_. The morning wears away.
What remains to be done?" Then in a rich murmur he said: "It has not
been too interesting to-day. My subjects are losing the art of
letter-writing."
On the table there lay five large portfolios bound in purple leather
and impressed with a crown and the letters L. R. Also upon each was
stamped a description of its contents. On one was inscribed, in French
of course, "Letters opened at the Post"; another "Conduct of Princes
and Lords"; a third bore upon it "Private Life of Bishops and
Prelates"; a fourth, "Private Life of Ecclesiastics"; and the fifth,
"Report of the Lieutenant of the Police."
Furnished thus with these five reports, which reached his august hands
and were inspected weekly by his august eyes, Louis considered that
the whole of his subjects' existences were, if not known to him, at
least very likely at some period or other to come under his
supervision. What he did not know, however, was that Louvois, who was
the originator of the odious system of opening letters sent through
the post, did not always show to him those epistles which came first
into his own hands. Therefore in this case, as in many others before
and after the days of Louis _le Dieudonne_, the valet was a greater
man than his master.
It was the case now--as it had often been!--the king had seen some
threescore letters marked with the senders' names or initials; and
there was one he had not seen.
He seemed a little weary this morning--nay, had he not been so great a
king, as well as a man who had almost every impulse under control, it
would almost have appeared that he was a little irritated at the
contents of the first portfolio, that one inscribed "Letters opened at
the Post." "For," he continued, after descanting on the art of
letter-writing which his subjects appeared to have lost, "the
responsibility given to the masters of our royal post seems to me, my
good Louvois, to be greater than their minds--provincial in most
cases--appear able to sustain. They mark letters from the local
seigneurs as worthy of perusal by us in Paris ere being forwarded to
their destination, which, in truth, are barren of interest. To wit,"
he went on, with that delicate irony for which he was noted, "we have
opened fifty-five letters, and in not one of them is there the
slightest hint of even murmuring against our royal authority, no
suggestion of resisting our, or the seigniorial, imposts, not even the
faintest suggestion of an attack against our royal person. They are
harmless, and consequently wearisome."
"I regret," replied Louvois, softening his raucous voice to the tones
absolutely necessary when addressing Louis, "that your Majesty finds
the system so barren of interest. But, I may with all deference
suggest, perhaps, that it has one gratifying result. All these letters
are from the most important persons among your Majesty's subjects, yet
there is, as your Majesty observes, no one word hostile to your rule
or sacred person. The system--my system--testifies at least to that
agreeable fact."
"Yes," replied the king, in the calm, unruffled voice, "it testifies
to that. You are right. What else is there to do?"
"But little, your Majesty. Yet, with your permission, something. May I
also suggest that Monsieur Pajot and the Vicomte de Rouillier may
retire?"
Louis signified by a bend of his head that they might do so, whereon
the two "farmers," after profound obeisances, left the room, and the
king and his minister again applied themselves to the work before
them.
It was of a multifarious nature, since it dealt with the contents of
each of the portfolios, exclusive of the first--the one whose contents
had been so barren of interest to the king, and which contents would
never now arrive at their destination in spite of his Majesty's remark
about their being forwarded on. For, since the seals and thread had
necessarily to be broken ere those contents could be perused, it would
be impossible to send them on to those to whom they were addressed.
But what became of them instead, probably Louvois only knew. It may be
that they were put away carefully, to be brought out years afterward,
if needed, and when their present harmless contents might, in the
movement of time, have altered their nature and have become, if not
damning, at least compromising.
Taking up the second portfolio, marked "Conduct of Princes and Lords,"
Louvois extracted one paper and read out briefly: "The young Count de
Quince has eloped with Mademoiselle le Brun, daughter of a rich mercer
in Guise. Her brother, attempting to stop the carriage in which they
were setting out for Paris, was slain by the count's body-servant."
After reading which, Louvois looked up at his master.
"Write," said Louis in reply, "that De Quince is not to enter Paris.
He is to be arrested at the gate and taken to the Bastille. There he
will be judged. Proceed."
Selecting from the third portfolio two papers, Louvois went on: "The
Bishop of Beauvais referred in a sermon, delivered three weeks ago, to
the birth of Madame de Maintenon in the prison of Niort, and pointed a
moral as to how----"
"One may rise by good works," interrupted the king. "The bishop is
indiscreet, but truthful. Let it pass. Proceed."
"The Grand Prior of Chavagnac entertains daily in Paris many
courtesans at his table."
"Write that he retires at once to his priory. If he refuses, arrest
him and bring him before me. Above all, the Church must be kept pure.
Continue."
The work was done, however, since Louvois informed the king that the
contents of the fourth and fifth portfolios scarcely needed his
attention. Yet, since he knew that Louis would not be satisfied
without himself seeing the reports which they contained, he rose, and,
bringing each in its turn to the king, placed it before him.
"So," his Majesty said, when he had glanced at them, "our morning's
work is done and easily done. The reports are meagre, and, in the
latter cases, deal with persons better left to the magistrates. Now,"
as a clock above the mantelpiece struck eleven, "I am expected," and
he rose from the table as though to depart.
"There are a few papers requiring your Majesty's signature," the
minister said, "though none of great importance. Will your Majesty
please to sign?"
"Let me see them," and, as before, the papers were placed before the
king for him to read ere affixing his signature.
He glanced at each ere he did so, but, since he already knew their
purport, made no remark as he signed, until, at last, he came to one
addressed to "Monsieur Georges St. Georges, Lieutenant des
Chevaux-Legers de Nivernois, en garnison a Pontarlier," when he
stopped and began to read it all through; while Louvois, pretending to
be busy at some other papers, watched him stealthily from under his
eyebrows.
"Georges St. Georges," he said at last--"Georges St. Georges--I recall
the name and that I ordered this letter to be prepared last week.
Repeat the circumstances."
"Your Majesty will remember that this gentleman's commission was
obtained from you by the late Duc de Vannes, and that you ordered me
to watch his career, and, when the time came, to recommend him to you
for promotion, should he have proved himself worthy of it."
"I remember, although it was some time ago. And also that a month or
so ago you told me the time had come for such promotion, and that,
therefore, he should be ordered to come to Paris. But, my good
Louvois, you have here given orders to Monsieur St. Georges to
particularly quarter himself upon the Bishop of Lodeve, now at Dijon,
upon the Marquise de Roquemaure at Troyes, and, at Melun, upon
Monsieur de Riverac. I remember no instructions of that nature, nor do
I see any necessity for them. Why should not this officer stay at any
inn? Others have had to do so. Why not he?"
"Again," replied Louvois, once more glancing furtively at his master,
"I have to remind your Majesty that, by issuing these orders to
Monsieur St. Georges, we are utilizing him as a special courier on
behalf of your Majesty, and that he is one who can be trusted--since
he has no opportunity of betraying us. We desire to know from
Phelypeaux--the bishop--whether the riots in Languedoc are to be
feared or not; whether, indeed, it is necessary quietly to put into
that neighbourhood any more regiments. St. Georges will bring the
word, 'Yes,' or 'No.' Far better that, your Majesty, than any letter.
Also we desire to know whether in Champagne, and especially in Troyes,
the capital of the department, the Flemings from the north and the
Lorrainers from the east are still endeavouring to stir them to
revolt. And who better than the Marquise de Roquemaure to send us the
word, the one word, 'Yes' or 'No'? A fervent loyalist, your Majesty,
and devoted to your royal interests."
"Ay," the king said, "a fervent loyalist." Then, after musing a
moment, he said: "'Twas strange she never married De Vannes; all
thought she loved him in those far-off days. And, _ciel!_ Hortense de
Foy was handsome enough to suit any man's taste. I see her now as she
was then, beautiful as the morning. Why, I wonder, did she marry De
Vannes's cousin and friend, Roquemaure, instead of him?"
Louvois shrugged his shoulders--though as respectfully as a man must
perform such an action before a superior--then he said with a slight
and also respectful smile, the smile of the dependent:
"Your Majesty's royal ancestor said,'_Souvent femme varie_.' That may
explain why Mademoiselle de Foy married one man, when the world, when
even your Majesty," with subtle flattery, "thought she loved another."
"My ancestor knew what he was talking about when he discussed
womankind," Louis remarked. "Well, perhaps his saying explains the
caprices of Hortense. I have not seen her for years. She rests ever in
her provincial manoir. It may be she has changed much--her beauty
vanished."
"If so, your Majesty, at least she has transmitted it to her daughter.
I have seen Mademoiselle de Roquemaure, and she is beautiful as ever
her mother could have been. She was the guest of Madame de Chevreuse
last summer."
"I would I had seen her, too. She would have recalled Hortense de Foy
as she was in her youth; perhaps," with what seemed to the wily
minister something like a sigh, "my own youth, too." Then changing
his tone back to his ordinary one, he asked: "There is a son, the
present Marquis de Roquemaure; why does he so rarely come to court?"
"He thinks, your Majesty, of but two things: first, the inheritance of
the Duc de Vannes, of which, through his father, he is the heir on
arriving at his thirtieth year; and, secondly, of his horses and
hounds. But when he has attained his majority and has the duke's
fortune, he proposes to present himself to your Majesty. And----"
The speaker was interrupted by a scratching at the door, which brought
a smile to both their faces, while Louis, starting up from his chair,
exclaimed:
"_Ciel!_ It is the half hour, and Malice is hungry"; and, thrusting
his hand into the pocket of his velvet coat, he produced come crumbs
of cake, which he presented to a little spaniel that rushed in and
leaped about him as Louvois opened the door.[4] Then, turning to the
minister, he said:
"Write to the Marquis de Roquemaure that the king desires his company
at court for the _fetes_ of the Epiphany. Also write that he desires
that Mademoiselle de Roquemaure shall accompany her brother, as the
king's guests. I would see this beautiful offshoot of so fair a woman
as her mother was," and, bending his head, he advanced toward the
door, followed by Malice. But as he was about to leave the room,
Louvois observed with great humility that "doubtless his Majesty had
omitted, forgotten in his royal recollections of other days, that the
letter to Monsieur St. Georges, the trustworthy officer who would
bring the word from the Bishop of Lodeve, and from the Marquise de
Roquemaure, was still unsigned."
[Footnote 4: "Le roi donner a manger a ses chiens toujours
soi-meme."--_La Fare, St. Simon, and others._]
"Ah! Monsieur St. Georges," exclaimed the king; and taking up the pen
he wrote his name at the bottom of the last sheet, leaving room only
for Louvois to undersign it. Then, with many bows from the minister
and amid the salutes of the two sentinels outside in the corridor, he
passed to Madame de Maintenon's rooms, accompanied by the little
spaniel.
Left alone by himself, Louvois worked at his papers for two hours
unceasingly, reading some that were already written, signing and
undersigning others--among the latter the one to the Lieutenant St.
Georges--and destroying some. Also, he directed much correspondence
with the marshals and generals commanding in various parts of
France--working at this with two secretaries whom he summoned. But at
last all his voluminous despatches were finished, closed up, and
directed to the different persons for whom they were intended, some to
go by the king's couriers and some by the royal post. And among all
the correspondence which went forth that night from the minister were
two letters, one of which was addressed to the officer commanding the
Regiment de Nivernois at Pontarlier, and containing those instructions
for St. Georges which bade him repair forthwith to Paris. The other
was directed to the Marquis de Roquemaure, at his manoir near Troyes,
and was as follows:
"He sets out for Paris the last day of the year or the first
of the new one. He may take his child with him. He is
ordered to rest at Phelypeaux's, at madame your mother's,
and at De Riverac's."
That was all, the letter containing neither date nor signature.
CHAPTER X.
MADAME LA MARQUISE.
"A manoir!" exclaimed St. Georges, as he halted his horse in front of
the place. "More like a fort! _Mon Dieu!_ Madame is well installed."
She was, indeed, judging by the building which now rose before him
from the side of the road along which he had come. Unapproached by any
path, unsurrounded by any out-towers or fortalices, the Manoir of
Roquemaure raised a great stone wall or rampart to the road; a wall
almost blank on this side of windows with the exception of some
arrow-slits, and at either end of it--one looking south, the other
north--two tourelles, penetrated also with _oillets_ at regular
distances from each other; and by each tourelle, on its outer side, a
small, high door of antique, Francois Premier style, or even older,
through which a mounted man might ride. Doors shut fast on this wintry
night, and with no sign of life at either doorways or loopholes,
except in so far as a great lantern, swinging on a rope above one of
the former and emitting its dull rays, might be said to testify to the
place being inhabited.
"More like a fort!" again exclaimed St. Georges as he regarded the
almost blank wall, "far more; yet, unless I am spied on and watched
from within, not over-well guarded, though I presume my lady has no
foes to guard against. Well, here's for it," and advancing his horse
to the doorway he reached out his hand, took the horn that hung on a
chain close by, and sounded some notes. Then, while waiting for an
answer to his summons, he backed his horse into the middle of the road
which bulged out semicircularly in front of the long building, and
observed it carefully. "A grim, hard place," he said to himself,
regarding it under the rays of the young moon that was now stronger
and clearer than when it had shed its feeble rays over the hamlet of
Aignay-le-Duc, "and my enemy's stronghold, or I am mistaken. A place
in which a man when once entrapped might find it difficult to fight
his way out of. No exit but those doors at either side--a cat could
hardly slip through the arrow-slits!--and all along beyond either side
a wide moat, with palisades on the inner bank. Humph! Well, let us
see. If my friend in the burganet, or volant-piece, or whatever he
terms his rusty headdress, is here, the fight will be inside. So, so!
May the end of it be as the other was! I am at least forearmed."
As he mused thus--firm, determined, and cool, and fearing not to enter
this grim abode, since she whom he loved more than his life was safe
in the city half a league away--he heard the locks being turned in the
doorway and saw the door open, doubtless after he had been regarded
from the grille high up in it. Then a man appeared in the open space
and, shading his eyes with his hands, looked out at the cavalier
sitting there on his horse--a man dressed as a servitor in some dark
material, elderly, and with upon his head the serving-man's wig known
as _la brigadiere_. Behind him there stood another--almost a boy, and
also evidently a servant.
"What," he asked, "may monsieur desire? He summons the house somewhat
late."
"To obey the order of his Majesty the king--to wait upon Madame la
Marquise de Roquemaure. Say to her, if she be in her house, that
Monsieur St. Georges, of the Chevaux-Legers of Nivernois, has come by
order of the king to attend upon madame as he passes on his way to
Paris from Pontarlier."
The man bowed as he heard the words "by order of the king"; then he
said he would carry his message. Would monsieur be so good as to wait
until he returned? And monsieur answering that he would do so, the
other withdrew, leaving the door open, and the younger servant
standing in it, regarding St. Georges, who still continued to cast his
eyes over the ancient pile.
Presently the man came back and said:
"Madame la marquise bids me say that any one ordered to visit her by
his Majesty is welcome. Will monsieur be good enough to enter?
Monsieur doubtless stops the night--a room shall be at his service.
Madame and her daughter sup half an hour later; she trusts monsieur
will honour her by joining the repast."
"Her daughter!" exclaimed St. Georges; "she has a daughter! Indeed!"
Then remembering himself, he replied: "Make my compliments to madame
and say that I will join her. Yet, my friend, excuse me to her, too,
for the manner in which I shall appear before her. I have ridden far
in rough weather; I am scarce presentable."
"Madame will understand," the servitor answered respectfully. "As will
Mademoiselle Aurelie.--Gaston," to the younger servant, "take
monsieur's horse."
"And," said St. Georges, "be very attentive to it, I pray you. No
soldier ever had a better or a truer one." He would have liked to see
it fed and littered down himself, but could hardly insist on doing so;
therefore--though he feared he was in the house of a deadly
enemy!--he was forced to let the trusty creature, the animal on whose
fleetness and strength not only his journey, but maybe his life
depended--be taken away to some unknown stable.
"Have no fear, monsieur," said the old man. "Gaston loves animals
better than his own kind. Even though you were his most hated foe,
your beast would be sacred to him."
"I am glad to hear it," replied St. Georges, as the youth, with a
smile, led the horse away. Then to himself he said, "I only hope that,
should he know I am his master's enemy, he will be equally good to
it!"
And now, as he followed the old man it was revealed to him how
inappropriate was the name of manoir to this place, it having indeed
been, if it was no longer altogether so, a strongly fortified
residence, and doubtless had served as such in bygone ages. An outer
court led into a second or inner one, which seemed to constitute a
hall, since it was roofed and more or less furnished. On the walls
hung arms of all kinds, both ancient and of the period of the day, and
ranging from battle-axes, maces and two-handled swords, boar-spears,
halberds, and crossbows to more modern rapiers, pikes, musketoons,
pistols, and blunderbusses. Also about this court or hall there was
much armour, plate, mail, both gambeson and chain, and many
headpieces, gantlets, shields, etc.
"Doubtless," thought St. Georges as he followed the old man past all
these and up a broad staircase leading to the first floor; "it was
from this choice armoury that my friend of the burganet drew his
protection. Faith! he had enough to choose from!"
Escorted along a passage on this flight, the old man showed him into a
room comfortably furnished as a sleeping apartment--vastly different
from that of Phelypeaux at Dijon--and informed him that he would
return later, in a quarter of an hour, to escort him to the presence
of madame la marquise, who would receive him for supper--after which
and having proffered his services as valet, which St. Georges said he
had no need for, he left the room.
The toilet made by the cavalier was necessarily short, since a soldier
_en route_ in those days had to depend upon any attentions to his
appearance which he might be able to pay by whatever opportunities
came in his way. There were, however, in this room all the articles
generally to be found in a country house of the time--a large metal
basin and ewer of fresh water, some brushes, and a mirror--and with
these he was able to attend to his hands, face, and hair, to remove
some of the stains of travel from his clothes and long brown boots,
and to make himself sufficiently presentable. At first, because he was
a gentleman and could not suppose that treachery might be intended
him, at least before ladies, he had thought to leave his sword behind,
but a second reflection prompted him to take it with him. It was true
no attack was likely to be made while he sat at meat with the woman
whose hospitality he was receiving, but a sword, he reflected, was
part of a soldier's dress and therefore not out of place, and--it was,
perhaps, not safe to leave it behind!
Having decided thus and the servitor not being yet returned, he made a
slight inspection of his room, as became one who was in a stranger's
house, and that stranger a person whose friendliness toward him
might--if he knew as much as he suspected of his history--be doubtful.
The room itself was a fairly large one, hung with tapestry
representing, as he supposed, scenes from the ancient romancists, and
lit by a window let into the upper part of the wall, so high up that
no one could see out of it except by standing on the table. Of doors
he could perceive no other but the one by which he had entered; nor on
the floor, which was of polished wood or _parquet_, was there any sign
that entrance could be made thereby--such entrance being a not
uncommon thing in ancient houses of the type of this manoir. On the
walls, let in between the tapestry and either lightly fastened to the
panelling or painted thereon, were two full-length pictures--one of a
man in full armour with his visor up and showing a stern, heavily
mustached face; the other of a young woman in antique costume.
Satisfied by this inspection--made as best might be by the feeble rays
of the lamp which the old man had left behind for his use--St. Georges
sat down upon the chair by the bed and waited for the servitor to come
and escort him to his hostess, and meditated--a little anxiously,
perhaps--on what his interview with her and her daughter might bring
forth.
"Is she, I wonder," he thought, "the she-wolf I have pictured her to
myself as being? Does she know, for truth, who and what I am--who and
what I believe myself to be? She may! It may indeed be so. If all
reports are true that I have been able to gather and piece together in
my remote life, far away from Paris and the world, she loved De Vannes
once--was his affianced wife. What may she not therefore have known of
his past? May know that I stand between this son of her husband and
his desire, his succession; may stand, indeed, between her and the
enjoyment for her lifetime of what her husband would have enjoyed had
he lived. And more--far more--does she know of the attack on me three
nights ago? Did she encourage--perhaps prompt--that attack? I must
watch her, study her for myself! The time is at hand, surely."
It was, indeed, for at that moment a knocking at the door told him
that the old man had come back for him. And so he went forth, prepared
to meet his hostess.
His conductor led him down the great stairs and back into the great
hall; then he knocked at a door on the left, and, on being bidden to
enter, opened the door and ushered St. Georges into the room.
A room large and vast, hung with great tapestries--representing here
battle and hunting scenes--with, at the end, a great oriel window over
which more tapestry was drawn, but beneath which could be seen the
brackets, or corbels, supporting it. Near this was the great marble
chimney-piece, the jambs richly carved with figures, the mantel six
feet from the floor, and in the grate a huge wood fire burning. And by
a table in front of this there sat, as he saw by the light of a large
clear lamp, two women, one almost old and the other young.
Coming in out of the sombre hall, the light of the fire and lamp
dazzled him so that at first he could see nothing beyond the fact that
they were two female forms which rose at his entrance; then, while he
advanced to meet them as they came forward, he heard a soft voice say:
"Monsieur St. Georges visits on behalf of his Majesty. He is very
welcome.--Monsieur, let me present you to my daughter, Mademoiselle de
Roquemaure."
In the instant that he was bowing with easy grace before them, and
while they in their turn observed the tall, gallant form of the
soldier, his long, curling hair, long mustaches, and somewhat
weather-worn riding dress, there flashed through his mind the
thought: "Can this be the she-wolf who sends her whelp forth to
midnight murder? Can she have had a hand in that foul attack?" Then,
aloud, he murmured his thanks for her reception, and looking his
hostess straight in the face, observed the features of the woman who,
as he believed, his father had once loved.
Her hair was almost white now, yet rich and beautiful, and still with
some of the original brown left in it, her eyes soft and clear, her
features delicate and telling plainly of the beauty that had been. And
as he gazed at the daughter standing by her side--a girl but just
entering womanhood, a girl whose hazel eyes looked out at him from
under her dark lashes, and whose colour came and went as she returned
his bow with stately courtesy--he knew what her mother had once been
like.
"Monsieur has ridden far," the marquise said, as she motioned him to a
seat by the fire where they had been sitting, and regarded him with
interest; "has come a long, perhaps perilous, voyage from Pontarlier?
The roads at this season are none too safe, they say, in spite of the
_Marechausse_. Yet, monsieur is a soldier."
St. Georges bowed in reply--though swift as lightning there flashed
through his mind the thought that the words "perilous voyage" showed
that she knew, doubtless, of one great danger to which he had been
exposed. Then he replied:
"As madame remarks, it was long and has been somewhat eventful. Yet,
as I have said, I ride in the king's service. It may be that you know
that, madame?"
"I know," she replied, "that you were to call at the Bishop of
Lodeve's--ce _Phelypeaux_!--and take from him one word to the king, or
to Louvois. Also that you are charged to take another word, perhaps a
similar one, from me. Is it not so?"
Remembering what the bishop had said, recalling his utterance--"There
is no need of secrecy; you may frankly tell her"--he answered: "It is
so, madame. The bishop has sent the word. It may be that you will send
the same by me when I ride forth to-morrow."
Her glance rested on him ere she answered. It seemed as if her reply
depended on some unknown, subtle something pertaining to his mind or
face which she was endeavouring to decipher or understand. Then she
let her eyes fall upon the logs burning in the grate, and said:
"How can I say? You do not as yet tell me the word the bishop has
sent."
Again he recalled Phelypeaux's remark that there was no need of
secrecy. Therefore he answered, "The word that the bishop has sent,
madame, is 'Yes.'"
"Ah!" she said, and again her glance scanned his face half eagerly,
half wistfully, while now he noticed that Mademoiselle de Roquemaure's
hand stole into hers as she sat by her side.
"Ah! It is as I thought: the word is 'Yes.'"
"That is it, madame."
"Come," she said, moving from her seat as the old servitor appeared in
the shadows far down the room--"come; supper is served. Monsieur St.
Georges, I pray you give me your arm"; and she placed her hand on it,
and, her daughter following, went with him to the door. Then, ere they
reached the corridor, she, looking up into his face, said quietly:
"It would be best--I--I--have not the same word to send as Phelypeaux.
The one that I shall ask you to carry will be 'No.'"
CHAPTER XI.
THE MARQUISE TELLS A STORY.
It was a vastly different repast from that of the Bishop of Lodeve's
which was offered to St. Georges, although the difference consisted
more, perhaps, in the manner of cooking and serving than in aught
else. The wine, which was excellent--though no better than that last
bottle from the old Clos--did not come in at the end, but cheered the
fasting and wayworn man from the commencement; the viands were in good
condition and properly prepared; the soup was not dishwater, but of a
good, sufficient quality. Moreover, here, as in the great _salon_, a
cheerful fire blazed on the hearth, instead of the spluttering,
snow-soaked logs that had hissed and smoked in Phelypeaux's house.
Also, he had for company two women, each beautiful according to her
time of life--women soft, gentle, and well bred--instead of the
cynical bishop of whom all France told strange tales.
Sitting there, his eyes resting sometimes on the budding loveliness of
Aurelie de Roquemaure, sometimes on the mellowed sweetness of the face
of the marquise, St. Georges forced himself to discard from his mind
the thought which he had now come to deem unworthy--the thought that
treachery lurked in their bosoms against him--that, though the present
marquis might be the man who had led the foul and despicable attack on
him in the graveyard at Aignay-le-Duc, they had had part or share in
it. For, he told himself, to believe this was to believe that there
was no faith nor honesty in womankind.
Yet one thing, at the commencement of the meal, and when the old
servant and another had withdrawn from the room, had almost served to
keep his suspicions alive. The marquise--as far as a woman of rank and
high breeding might do so--had asked him many questions about himself,
while Aurelie, following the rigidness which prevailed in French life
of the time, sat by, a silent listener, scarce joining in the
conversation at all.
And St. Georges, moved perhaps by the company in which he found
himself, and, soldier-like, scorning to conceal any part of his
history except that which he deemed absolutely necessary--he making no
reference whatever to the name of De Vannes--told them much of his
existence. His career in Holland until the peace; his lonely life in
garrison; his marriage with a young girl, a daughter of the middle
classes; her death, and the little child she had left to his care,
were all touched upon by him and listened to attentively--indeed,
absorbingly. And so, at last, he came to the summons to Paris, to his
setting forth, to his stay at Dijon, and the attack made upon him and
Boussac.
To both women this portion of his narrative caused great excitement.
For, stately as the marquise was, environed, so to speak, by all the
dignity of the _haute noblesse_ of the days of the Great King, she
could not prevent her agitation from being apparent to him. Her white,
jewelled hand quivered as she raised it to her breast; her eyes
sparkled as they might have sparkled when she was her daughter's age;
while, as for that daughter, her bosom rose and fell with her rapid
breathing, her colour came and went--once she was as pale as death,
the next moment her face suffused.
"The cowards!" exclaimed the marquise; "the base, cowardly dogs, to
attack two men thus, and one hampered with a defenceless child! _Quel
tour de lache!_ Oh! sir, I would to God your brand or that of your
brave companion had struck the poltroon, the craven who sheltered
himself behind his visor, his death blow! I would to God one of your
swords had found out his heart as they found out the hearts of his
mercenaries!"
The sympathy of this graceful woman--sympathy that roused her from the
well-bred calmness which was her natural state, to one of almost
fury--earned the deepest respect and gratitude of St. Georges; yet he
looked at her almost with amazement as he bowed and murmured some
words of appreciation. For there was no acting here, he knew; yet she
was De Roquemaure's stepmother, the kinswoman of the man whom he
believed to be his and his child's attempted assassin!
And Aurelie de Roquemaure, too--what of her? A glance from under his
eyes showed him that still the beauteous face was agitated as it had
been before, that all which her mother had said was re-echoed by her.
Again the marquise spoke, though now she rose from the table as she
did so.
"Sir," she said, "never rest until that man and you stand face to
face, point to point; since, until that happens, your child's life
will not be safe. For you, a man, a soldier, it matters not--is best,
indeed, that you should meet him and end his miserable existence
forever. I pray you may do ere long. And, when you do meet him, slay
him like a dog! It is the only way."
Still astonished, almost appalled, by her vehemence, St. Georges took
the hand she extended him and bent over it, and next, that of her
daughter, ere the two passed out of the room.
"Forgive," said the marquise, "that I should feel so strongly.
I--I--have a child myself." Then, after a pause, and turning round as
she reached the corridor, she added: "If we do not meet to-morrow ere
you return to the city to fetch your child, remember, sir, I pray you,
that my answer to the king or his minister is precisely different from
that of the bishop. It is 'No.'"
"I will remember, madame."
Then, with a last glance from each, both were gone. And St. Georges,
standing in front of the great fireplace waiting for the old servitor
to come and escort him to his room, was more overwhelmed with
amazement than he had been at aught which had occurred since he set
out from Pontarlier.
"What does it mean?" he whispered to himself. "What does it mean?"
* * * * *
In a room at the opposite end of the corridor from that where the
apartment was situated which had been bestowed on St. Georges, the
mother and daughter sat. It was the sleeping-room of madame la
marquise, large, vast, and sombre--save that here, too, a fire burnt
in the grate, and that there were many candles alight in the sconces
set about the room.
And the marquise, lying back in her deep fauteuil before the fire, her
face white and drawn, and with tears upon her cheeks, was speaking to
her daughter who knelt by her side.
"The wolf!" she said, "the wolf! How know it? How find out? God! I
thought that I alone, of all living people, knew, until I divulged my
story to you, until I wrote to Louis asking him to do justice to a
much-wronged man. Who--who has betrayed my confidence? Not the king,
surely. Oh! not he, not he! Nay, more, I doubt if the letter ever
reached his hands."
"Mother," Aurelie said, as she stroked her hand, "there must be some
other who knows."
"There was no living soul on earth. Listen, even you do not know all."
The girl seated herself against her mother's knee and gazed up into
her face. Then she whispered: "Tell me all now, mother. From to-night
let me understand exactly with what he is encompassed. Tell me, I
beg."
"You know," the marquise said, "for I have told you often, that the
Duc de Vannes and I loved each other when we were young--yet that we
never married. No matter for the reason now--it was my fault! Let that
suffice. And we parted--he to go his way, I mine. Then, some years
later, not many it is true, but still long enough for us to have
forgotten what had separated us, we met again, and once more he asked
me to be his wife, to renew the love vows we once had made. But it was
then impossible. I was affianced to your father--the day was fixed,
and I had come to admire him, to respect him; in no case would I have
gone back from my plighted word. So again we parted to meet only once
more in life."
The girl touched her hand--perhaps--who knows?--in admiration of her
mother's strength in keeping her vow to the man who was not her first
love and in discarding the man who was. And the marquise continued:
"It was one night a few weeks before he set out to join Turenne in the
Palatinate. A great _fete_ was given by Louis to celebrate his
birthday at St. Germain-en-Laye, his birthplace, and it was there we
met again. Presently, when both of us were able to escape from the
great crowd of courtiers, marshals, and ministers who surrounded the
king, he told me that he was glad he had met me once more--that he
wished to confide a secret to me if I would hear it, a charge if I
would accept it. At first I hesitated, then--when I found it would not
thrust against your father's honour"--again the girl stroked her
mother's hand--"I told him he might confide in me. Aurelie, he told me
that, embittered by having lost me, he had married in private an
English lady, daughter of a refugee, that he had learned to love her,
and that death had parted them after a few years of marriage. Also, he
told me, she left him a son, whom he had brought up in ignorance of
the position that must be his, but that--should he return from the
Palatinate--he meant to acknowledge him. He never did return, and his
son has never been acknowledged."
"Why, my mother?" asked Aurelie, with an upward glance. "Why?"
"Nay, child," the marquise replied. "Think no evil of me. No base
thoughts entered my mind. No remembrance that his son stood in the way
of your half-brother's inheritance--he and your father being
ostensibly De Vannes's heir. No! no! no! But in that hurried interval
both he and I had made one fatal slip--had committed one hideous act
of forgetfulness. He had forgotten to tell me--I to ask--where this
son was, and in what name he was known."
The girl dropped her hands with a despairing action into her lap; then
a moment later she turned the soft hazel eyes up again toward her
mother's face and said: "Yet now you know! You have found out!"
"Yes, I have found out. That son is the man who sleeps beneath our
roof to-night--Lieutenant St. Georges."
"But how? How? How?"
"Again, listen. For years I sought to find him, made inquiries in
every quarter I could think of, asked--quietly and cautiously--of all
who might by chance possess any information. Then, at last, it
came--from the quarter least to be imagined. From your half-brother."
"Raoul?"
"Ay, Raoul, your father's heir--also heir to the fortune of the Duc de
Vannes, as all the world thought and still thinks. He came to me one
day--three months ago--when he had been privately to Paris; for what
reason I know not, although I know that his visit was a secret one,
since he had not been presented to the king. He came in, I say, and
standing before me, he said, 'Madame, who is Monsieur St. Georges?' I
answered that I had never heard of the gentleman before, to which he
replied: ''Tis strange, madame. He is an officer of the Regiment de
Nivernois. And his commission was given him by the king at the request
of your late--friend, shall I say?--the Duc de Vannes!'
"Aurelie, I fell to trembling then, for I thought to myself, 'I have
found his son.' De Vannes had told me that son was being educated for
his own profession of arms--nay, more, that he sought for him a
commission from the king. Meanwhile, Raoul was watching me carefully,
so that I disguised as best I could my agitation, while I replied: 'It
seems to me you need not to demand information of me. You know of
Monsieur St. Georges's existence--of the calling he follows. On my
part, I have never heard of him before!' 'Nor perhaps,' he replied,
'ever will again!' and with that he left me."
"It must be the man," Mademoiselle de Roquemaure murmured. "It must be
he."
"It is he," the marquise replied emphatically. "It is he. As he stood
before me to-night I saw his father in his eyes, in his glance--nay,
in his bearing. That man is the son of De Vannes--is the De Vannes
himself. And if more proof was wanted, is it not forthcoming when we
have learned that not only his life, but the life of his child, is
thrust against? His father died without a will, without naming him;
_your_ father was therefore the heir, and--after him--your brother
Raoul. In another year, when he is thirty, De Vannes's wealth is his,
if--if," and her eyes glistened as she spoke, "no direct heir bars the
way. You understand?"
"Yes," the girl said slowly. "Yes, I understand."
CHAPTER XII.
LOST.
A considerable hubbub outside the manoir--the crying of a woman, and
the voices of various men all talking together--aroused St. Georges
from his sleep as the wintry dawn broke through the fogs and mists of
the night.
"_Fichte_," he heard the old servitor say, "you are a fool, my girl,
to come here and thrust your head in the lion's jaws. Better make off
another way; he will kill you, I warrant, when he hears how you have
kept your promise."
"Let him," he heard next a woman's voice reply, a voice all broken and
rendered indistinct by her tears and sobs, "let him. O _mon Dieu_!"
she wailed, "have pity on me! I would have shielded the little thing
with my life. I left it but a few, nay, not ten, minutes, and
then--then it was gone. Oh, pity me, pity me, _mon Dieu_!"
With a bound St. Georges had flung himself from out of his bed, and
was hastily putting on his clothes. For the words of the weeping woman
in the roadway, as they rose to his ears--above all, the voice which
he recognised--told him the worst. The child, his child, was missing;
the woman below was the one to whom he had confided Dorine overnight.
Huddling on his garments, therefore, while still he heard arising the
voices from a short distance below him (for the first floor of the
manoir, on which his room was situated, was not more than twelve or
fourteen feet from the ground) and the girl's sobs and weeping as she
exclaimed, "Not more than ten minutes did I leave it alone, not more,
while I regarded the troops coming in," he descended rapidly to the
great hall below. He met no one on his way as he did so--doubtless,
neither the marquise nor her daughter were yet risen--and finding the
door in the tourelle with little difficulty, he emerged into the
roadway.
Standing in it were those two whose voices he had already heard--the
old servitor and the girl from the inn in Troyes--and by them was the
youth, Gaston, his arm this morning being bound up in a sling, as
though he had met with some hurt. He was gazing silently at the girl
as she sobbed and wept before the old man, listening evidently with
interest to all she said, and with a look of sympathy on his face for
the evident distress of mind she was in.
But now, as St. Georges appeared before her, his face stern and
fierce--though already there was on it a look of misery and
foreboding--she flung herself upon her knees before him in the hard,
frost-bound road, and lifting up her clasped hands she cried:
"Oh, monsieur, forgive me, pardon me! I did but leave the child for
ten moments, and----"
"And," said St. Georges, his face growing almost darker than before,
"it is stolen, or dead! Is that what you have come to tell me?"
"Alas! alas!" she moaned, "that it should be so. Stolen, not dead,
thank God. Oh, monsieur," and again the coarse, hard-working hands
were clasped and lifted up before his face, "_ayez pitie, je_----"
"Be brief," the _chevau-leger_ interrupted, taking no heed of her
wailings, while the old and young man started at the misery revealed
by the changed tones of his voice. "Be brief. I confided my child to
you, and you have failed in your trust. Tell me how. Then I may know
how to act. Proceed."
"Oh, monsieur," the poor creature said, wondering that, ere now, he
had not torn her to pieces or thrust his sword through her, as would
likely enough have been done by many of her own kind under a similar
breach of faith--"oh, monsieur, my heart is broken, my heart----"
"No matter for your heart," St. Georges interrupted her peremptorily
again; "tell your story at once. At once, I say!" And again the two
standing by wondered that he could master himself so, in spite of his
grief; while the girl, seeing that she had best obey him, told with
many sobs, which still she could not repress, what had happened.
It was in the early morning, she said, and she and the little thing
had slept warm and peacefully together--oh, so peacefully!--and the
time had come for her to arise; the hostler had come to knock on her
door, for she slept heavily. Then he told her, as he stood outside,
that a troop of the Vicomte d'Arpajou's regiment was come in and
seeking billets in the town; and she, because she was _une
malheureuse_, and also because she had a cousin who rode in the ranks,
got up and ran downstairs to get news of him. For his mother had heard
nothing of him for many months; they were anxious--oh, so anxious! But
it was not his troop, and so, gleaning no news, she had returned to
her bedroom, meaning to finish her dressing and to prepare the child.
And then, she went on, sobbing again, and with more wringings of her
hands--and then, oh! horror, she found the bed empty and the child
gone. Gone! Gone! Gone! Oh, it was terrible! She aroused the other
servants with her screams; high and low they sought for it--it might
have crept even from the bed--but, no! it was gone. And after half an
hour's further search, she, feeling demented, had told her master all
and how she had taken charge of the child, and had begged him to let
her come to the manoir to see its father. Perhaps, it might yet be
found, might, because God was good, have been found since she had come
away. Who knew? Oh! she prayed it might be so--on her knees she
prayed----
"My horse!" exclaimed St. Georges, turning to the younger man, Gaston,
still standing close by, "my horse, I beg of you! Lose no time in
saddling it. I must go back to the city at once." And turning his head
away from them he murmured: "My child! My little lonely child! Oh, my
child!"
They heard his moan, those three standing there--for now the woman
had risen to her feet--and they pitied him. The old man shook his head
sadly; he was a father and a grandfather himself; the girl sobbed
afresh, and Gaston moved off at once to obey his behest. "My arm is
injured," he stammered, seeing that the soldier's eye was on it now;
"one of the horses kicked it last night in the stable; but--but--I can
still saddle your animal. In an instant, monsieur, in an instant," and
he moved away.
Seeing that he was in pain--indeed, the lad's face was bloodless and
also drawn with suffering--and being himself devoured with eagerness
to return to the city and seek for his child, St. Georges followed him
through the courtyard to where the stables were. And then, noticing
that Gaston could not use his wounded arm at all, he saddled his
animal with his own hands while the young man stood by helpless, or
only able to render him the slightest assistance with his uninjured
arm. And when this was done he led the horse forth to the front of the
manoir and mounted it.
"There is no time for me to pay my respects to madame la marquise," he
said to the servitor--"she will understand my lack of courtesy. Yet,
since it is impossible I can continue my journey to Paris--even the
king's commands must wait now!--I will endeavour not to quit Troyes
without bidding her farewell. Will you tell her that, my friend?"
The old man said he would--that he knew madame would understand and
sympathize with him--and--and--but ere he could finish whatever he
intended to say, St. Georges had put spurs to his horse and was
speeding back to Troyes, while following him along the road on foot
went the unfortunate servant from the inn, still weeping and
bemoaning.
The hostler was standing in the gateway of the auberge as he rode in,
his horse already sweating and with foam about its mouth from the pace
it had come; and throwing himself off it St. Georges advanced to the
man and asked him if he had heard any news of his missing child.
"Nay," he replied. "Nay. No news. _Mon Dieu!_ I know not who could
have stolen it. 'Tis marvellous. 'Twas none of D'Arpajou's troop, to
be sure. And there were no others."
"None lurking about the inn last night--none sleeping here who might
have stolen into the girl's room when she quitted it? Oh! man, I tell
you," he cried, almost beside himself with grief, "there are those who
would have tracked it across France to get at it!" And then, overcome
with remorse at having left the child in any other custody but his
own, though he had thought it was for the best when he did so, he
murmured: "Why, why, did I not keep it with me? My arm sheltered it
when the attack was made at Aignay-le-Duc; no worse than that could
have befallen it."
"None lurking about," the man repeated, looking up at the great
soldier while he chewed a straw. "None lurking about. _Mon Dieu!_ why
did I not think of that before?"
"There _was_ one!" St. Georges exclaimed, "there was one, then? You
saw some man--I know it; I see it in your face. For God's sake, answer
me! Who? Who was it?"
But the hostler was a slow man--one whose mind moved cumbrously, and
again he muttered to himself: "No! No, it could not be he. It----"
"Could not be whom? Oh, do not torture me! Tell me! Tell me!"
"There was one," the other replied, "who rode in last night, seeking a
bed for himself and a stall for his horse. Yet he could have neither
here. We were full, and we knew too that D'Arpajou's horse were on the
road. So we sent him away to the _Cheval Rouge_, yet I saw him again
late at night in the yard, and, asking him his business, he said that
he had lost his glove when here----"
"My God!" St. Georges exclaimed, more to himself than the man. "Was it
De Roquemaure?"
"De Roquemaure!" the other exclaimed. "De Roquemaure! _Par hasard_,
does monsieur mean the young marquis?"
"Yes, yes. You know him--must know him, since his mother's manoir is
so near here. Answer me," and in his fervour he grasped the man's arm
firmly, "_was it he_?"
The hostler wrenched his arm away from the soldier's nervous grasp;
then he answered emphatically--scornfully indeed: "Was it he? He! De
Roquemaure? _Mon Dieu_, no! Not he, indeed!"
"You know him?"
"_Know him?_ Yes. And hate him. A wild beast, _un sauvage_. See here,"
and he pointed to his face, on which was a long, discoloured stain or
bruise, "he gave me that a week or so ago, as he rode out of the inn,
because I had not brought his horse quickly enough to please him. Know
him? Oh, yes, I know him. And some day, great and strong and powerful
seigneur as he is, he shall know me. The seigneurs do not lord it over
us always. We shall see!"
"Not De Roquemaure," St. Georges mused aloud. "Not De Roquemaure.
Great God! have we more enemies than one? Into whose hands has my
little babe fallen, then?" And again he murmured to himself, "Not De
Roquemaure!"
"No, not De Roquemaure," the man replied, overhearing him. "Nor one
like him. Instead, a stranger to the town--a sour, dark-visaged man,
elderly. None too well clad nor mounted either, and both he and his
beast well spent as though with long travel."
"Who could it be?" St. Georges muttered. "Who?" Yet, think as he
might, no light broke in upon him. But, if this man was indeed the one
who had kidnapped his child, he felt sure of one thing: he was an
agent of De Roquemaure's. It was in the latter's light alone that he
and Dorine stood!
Again he questioned the hostler, but all that he could glean was that
the lurking traveller, the fellow who, after being refused the
hospitality of the inn, was yet prowling about the stables at
midnight, in search--if his story were true--of a worthless glove, was
undoubtedly a stranger in the city. Than that the hostler could tell
him no more.
"But," said the latter, "why not inquire at the _Cheval
Rouge_?--there, if anywhere, monsieur may glean tidings of him."
Clutching at the suggestion he went toward that inn, which was but in
the next street--a place that turned out to be a frowsy, dirty house,
frequented by the humblest travellers only. And here, after describing
the man he sought, he gathered the following facts, the stranger's
actions since he had put up at the _Cheval Rouge_ being indeed enough
to set the tongues of the landlord and landlady wagging directly they
were questioned about him:
For, strange circumstances in connection with a traveller who appeared
to be, as he stated he was, dead beaten with a long journey--whence
he had not said--he had not been in all night. His bed was still
unslept in, his horse still in the stable. He had supped at the
ordinary with one or two others, and the landlady noticed he had eaten
ravenously, as one might who had fasted long; had drunk copiously,
too, of _petite Bourgogne_, and had then gone out, saying he would be
back shortly. Also, one thing was curious. "_Mon Dieu!_" the woman
said, "it was remarkable!" He had given orders that, after his horse
was rubbed down and fed, it was to be kept saddled. He might, he said,
have to set forth again at any moment; he was on important business.
Yet now, the woman stated, the horse was still in its stall and the
man had never returned.
"And his necessaries?" St. Georges asked, after he had told the people
of the house as much as he deemed fit. "What of them? His bags, his
holsters, where are they? Were they taken to his room or left with his
horse?"
"Necessaries! bags!" the landlord replied, "he had none. And as for
pistols--well--the holsters were empty; doubtless he had them about
him. Perhaps monsieur would like to see the horse?"
Yes, monsieur would like to see the horse, and was consequently taken
to the stable to do so. It was a poor beast, not groomed properly for
some days; at least, it looked poor and overstrained now, though
perhaps a good enough animal when fresh. It showed signs, too, of
having been hard ridden. For the rest, it was an ordinary animal of
the most usual colour--a dark chestnut.
As to the holsters, they were empty, and in none of the horse's
trappings was there aught to give any hint as to who its owner was or
whence he had come.
CHAPTER XIII.
DE ROQUEMAURE'S WORK.
The weather had changed, the frost was gone, and the night was hot and
murky, while rain was falling, as alone, now, alas! St. Georges
mounted the summit of a hill that rose close above Troyes on the road
to Paris.
He had commenced his journey again.
It was a gruesome spot to which he had arrived on this night--an
elevation that surmounted a billowy country, over all of which, in the
summer time, the vines and corn grew in rich profusion, but which now
looked bare and melancholy as the southwest wind swept the rain clouds
over it beneath a watery moon. To the left of him there swung, upon
the exact crest of the hill, a corpse in chains, with, perched upon
its mouldering head, a crow--looking for the eyes long since pecked
out by others of its brood! To the right there rose a little wood,
through which the wind moaned and sighed onto his face, bringing with
it warm drops of rain.
Involuntarily he glanced up at the thing swinging above his
head--heartbroken as he was at having had to leave Troyes with his
child still unfound, he could not refrain from doing that!--and
wondered who and what the malefactor had been who was thus exalted.
And as he lowered his eyes from the ghastly mass of corruption, he saw
against the gibbet a thicker, darker thing than the gallows tree
itself--a thing surmounted by a white, corpselike face, from which
stared a pair of large gray eyes at him--eyes in which, as the clouds
scurried by beneath the moon, the moon itself shone dazzlingly,
lighting them up and showing their large pupils.
The horse saw them too, and started forward a pace or so until reined
in by his master's hand, and then whimpered and quivered all over,
while its rider, with his own flesh creeping, bent over his saddle and
peered toward the dark form surmounted by the pallid face and glaring
eyes.
"Who in Heaven's name are you?" St. Georges whispered, "and why select
this ghastly spot to stand in and affright passers-by? What are you,
man or woman?" and he leaned still further over his demi-pique to gaze
at the figure, though as he did so his right hand stole to his sword
hilt.
"A woman," a voice answered. "A woman who comes here to weep her
husband's death. He"--and she cast the staring gray eyes upward to the
object swinging with each gust of the wind in its chains--"was my
husband. Pass on, and leave me with his murdered remains."
"Murdered! Rather, poor soul, say executed. Murderers slay not thus."
Slowly the figure left the foot of the gibbet as he spoke, so that he
saw she was a tall young woman of the peasant class, clad in dark,
poor clothes, and slowly she advanced the few yards that separated
them, whereby he could observe her features and notice more plainly
the awful whiteness of her face.
"Murdered, I say!" she replied, still with the glare in her eyes.
"Murdered! Wrongfully accused, foully tried, falsely condemned. Done
to death wickedly as a _braconnier_. But he was none--yet there he
swings. O God! that life can be so easily torn from us by the
powerful!"
"Who, then, has done this deed?" St. Georges asked, deeply stirred by
the woman's wild sorrow, perhaps also by the gloomy surroundings. "Who
can do such things as this, even though powerful?"
"Who?" she replied. "Who? Who but one in these parts? The hound, De
Roquemaure!"
"De Roquemaure!" St. Georges exclaimed with a start that caused his
trembling horse to move forward, thinking that he had pressed its
flanks to urge it on, which start was perfectly perceptible to the
unhappy woman. "De Roquemaure!"
"You know him?" she asked eagerly, bending her face toward and up to
him so that he could see her pale lips--lips, indeed, almost as pale
as her cheeks--"you know him?"
"I know of him," St. Georges replied.
"And hate him, perhaps, as I do. It may be, would kill him as I would.
Is it so? Answer me?"
Carried away by this strange encounter, and with so strange a third
thing near them as _that_ above, which once had life as they had
still; carried away, too, by the woman's vehemence--a vehemence which
caused her, a peasant, to speak on equal terms with one whose dress
and accoutrements showed the difference between them--he answered
almost in a whisper:
"It may be," he said, bending down still further to her, "that I shall
be doomed to kill him some day. May be that he has merited death at my
hands."
"You hate him?"
"I fear I have but too just cause to hate him."
"As all do! As all! He lives," she went on, "but to slay and injure
others as he slew and injured him," and she half turned her head and
cast up her eyes at the miserable relic above her. Then she continued:
"Listen. _He_ was no poacher, no thief. But I--I--his wife--was
unfortunate enough to fall under the other's notice--he sought me--you
understand?--and _he_"--with again the upward glance--"resisted his
desires. You see the end!"
Looking into her eyes, observing her well-defined features, noticing
that, except for her awful pallor, she might well be a handsome woman,
especially when bright and happy instead of, as now, grief-stained,
St. Georges could understand. Then, while also he meditated as to
whether this De Roquemaure was a fiend that had taken human shape, the
woman went on:
"Daily almost some fall under his bane. But a week ago a stranger
here--one carrying a helpless babe--was set upon----"
"What!" and now he felt as though the universe was spinning round.
--"was set upon," she continued, "struck to death--he is dying now, or
dead----"
"And the babe?" St. Georges interposed.
"Carried off by those who did his bidding."
"O God! Lost again!" and the moan he uttered startled the woman out of
her own grief.
"Who are you?" she asked, her great eyes piercing him.
"As I believe, that child's unhappy father."
Aroused by this to forget her own sufferings, even to forget for the
moment the dreadful burden borne by the gallows tree, she thrust out
her hand and seized his sleeve.
"Who, then, is the dying man?" she whispered.
"I know not--but--but--for mercy's sake, in memory of the misery you
have suffered, in pity for mine, lead me to this man! You know where
he is; you can do so?"
"Come," she said. "Come. He is in my hut close by. We were very poor,
we had no better. Come. Tie your horse to a tree and follow me."
Dazed, scarce knowing whether he was awake or asleep and dreaming, he
obeyed her, leading the horse away some paces so that it should be no
more frightened by the horrible burden of the gibbet, and following
her through a thicket. In other circumstances he might have feared an
ambush; now, a thousand hidden enemies would not have held him back.
She wound her way along a trodden track leading down into the valley
below, but went only a few score yards when she stopped outside what
was indeed no better than a hut, a wooden building thatched with turf,
from a window in which there gleamed a ray of light. And she, placing
her ears to the door ere she pushed it open, said to him: "He lives
still. You can hear his breathing. Hark!"
"Thank God!" St. Georges said fervently. "Whoever he may be, he will
be able to tell me of the child. Open, I beg you; open in the name of
mercy!"
She obeyed him at once, thrusting the door open and drawing him in,
and then by the light of a miserable, small oil lamp that flickered on
a rude wooden table he saw stretched upon a pallet in a corner of the
place the dying man. Also he noticed that the room reeked and was
fetid with his hot breath and with another hot, dry odour that he knew
was the odour of blood.
In the shadow of the room St. Georges could see a white face, could
also perceive two great staring eyes turned up to the rafters; he
could hear, too, the drawn, labouring breath as it rattled through his
throat and chest, accompanied by a moan as it came forth.
"Quick!" he exclaimed, "quick! The light! He lives still, but his
minutes are numbered. He is dying, dying fast. Where is his wound?"
"In the lower part of his body, through him. A sword thrust. I have
tried to stanch it, but it flows always. I marvel he has lived so
long."
She brought the oil lamp forward as she spoke and held it near the
man, and St. Georges, kneeling down, looked at him. Then with a bound
he sprang up again, exclaiming: "He here! Heaven and earth! what
brings him here? How comes he in this mystery? What--what does it
mean, what portend?"
"You know him?"
"Yes, I know him."
The man stretched upon the pallet was Pierre, the Bishop of Lodeve's
man-servant!
* * * * *
"Speak!" said St. Georges to him a moment later, smothering for the
time his wonder and astonishment. "Speak if you can. One word from you
may alter my whole life, my child's life. Speak ere you die."
It seemed, however, that he would never speak again. But, also, it
seemed as if all consciousness was not gone from him yet--as if he
recognised the man kneeling once more at his side, while again the
woman held the lamp above them. As far as he was able with his failing
strength, he endeavoured to shrink from St. Georges while as he did so
his eyes, distended either with fear or horror, glared at him. But
from his mouth there came no sound but the laboured breathing.
Again St. Georges besought him to speak; plied him with questions.
Was the child taken from him Dorine; by whom had it been taken; how
had he whom St. Georges had never seen until he slept at the bishop's,
and whom he had left at Dijon, found his way here only to be murdered?
And still no answer came, while once the dying man tried with his
feeble hand to push St. Georges away, and still stared in ghastly
horror at him.
At last the end arrived. The breathing grew faster and faster and more
laboured; it rattled more horribly in his chest; a spasm convulsed
him, and he sank back exhausted, while from his face and throat which
were all uncovered a heavy sweat poured. Then suddenly he raised
himself to almost a sitting posture with his hands, and, with a
rolling glance that seemed to take in all the hut, he sank back slowly
again. Yet as he did so his lips moved, and a whisper came from
them--a whisper that seemed to frame the words "De Roquemaure." A
moment after he was dead.
* * * * *
"Tell me all you know," St. Georges said to the woman a few moments
later. "How he came here, how he was set upon and done to death? I
must ride on and on to-night, yet ere long, if I can compass it, I
will return to Troyes and never leave it until I have found my child
and know all. Tell me."
"He came here," she said, "five days ago--was brought here by me, for
I saw him attacked and wounded to the death, as you know now. I was up
there by--by him who swings upon that hellish gibbet; the dawn was at
hand."
"The dawn," St. Georges whispered to himself. "The dawn of five days
ago, when D'Arpajou's horse rode into the town. The day Dorine was
lost."
"Then," the woman continued, "through the coming day I saw him
advancing from the town upon this road, carrying a bundle under his
arm."
"Ah!"
"Yet not so fast but that two others who had left the gate behind him
came swifter than he. One, a man, young and supple, clad in the De
Roquemaure russet--no need of that to tell me that devil had a hand in
what was to be done; the other, a woman, all in sombre black, a mask
upon her face."
"A woman in it!"
"Ho!" said the peasant, "doubt not! He has his women, too, at his beck
and call. Easy enough to find one of the scourings of Troyes--perhaps
an innocent girl once, before she knew him!--to do his bidding."
"Go on."
"Swiftly they came behind him, yet silently, too, the man ahead of the
woman, each on different sides of the way, the former outstripping the
latter, so fast did he come. Then, at last, the hunted one, this dead
one here, knew that it was so; he turned and saw he was pursued. At
first he made as though about to run for it; then, because, may be,
the burden he bore was heavy, he paused. Next he placed the child upon
the ground--for now I knew, I saw, what it was as he did so--and he
drew his sword with one hand, took a pistol from his belt and held it
in the other, and so awaited his pursuer."
Again St. Georges said beneath his breath, "Go on."
"The other came swiftly up, paused once himself--perhaps he feared the
doubly armed man--then looked round at the masked woman, who seemed to
say something. Doubtless she urged him on, and again he came forward
until he and the fugitives were face to face."
"Yes," came from St. Georges's close-set lips.
"What they said I know not; I was too far away. But their action was
swift. De Roquemaure's man made as though he would seize upon the
child lying at the roadside--the disguised woman creeping ever
nearer--when the other fired his pistol at him, and missed. I saw that
as the smoke cleared away, for when it had done so they were closely
engaged with their swords. Some passes they made; once it seemed as if
the fugitive won upon the other, for I saw his blade go through his
left sleeve; then, ere he could recover himself, the other had thrust
his sword through his body--I heard him shriek; I saw him fall! A
moment later the woman had snatched up the child and was hurrying back
to the city, the man following after her, his left arm hanging
straight by his side, as though still from pain. And I ran to this one
here and saw that he had got his death. 'Tis strange he died not
sooner than to-night. Strange he should linger so long."
"How got you him here?"
"My brother, who hates the De Roquemaures as I do--as God knows I have
cause to do--works near here on his farm. I dragged that dead
creature, all insensible as he was, into the copse, then fetched Jean,
and so, together, we brought him. Say," the woman continued, leaning
forward under the lamp to regard the soldier fixedly, "you are a
gentleman, an officer of some regiment. You can tell me. Is not so
foul a crime as this enough to doom De Roquemaure, if brought home to
him?"
"If brought home to him, perhaps. But the nobles are powerful. You say
that he is so, especially in this neighbourhood."
"Curse him, yes!" she replied, her livid lips drawn tight together.
"Yet not forever. There are those who will set the snare and trap him
yet."
"I pray God!" St. Georges replied. "He has wronged many; surely
justice will yet be done."
CHAPTER XIV.
"I MUST SPEAK!"
The Epiphany--called in old France, under the Bourbons, _la Fete des
Rois_--was drawing to a close, as St. Georges, his handsome face
looking very dejected and his heart heavy as lead within him, rode
into Paris by the Charenton gate.
Not so entirely over, however, but that the streets were still crowded
with holiday makers of all kinds, with those who were there solely to
enjoy and amuse themselves, and also with those who sought to make
profit out of the others. Moreover, still from all the towers and
steeples the bells rang in honour of those who had died during the
past year, so that, as Boileau sneeringly remarked, "_Pour honorer les
morts ils font mourir les vivants_," while from the dark,
sombre-looking houses--of which the same writer observed that they
must have been built by philosophers instead of architects, so filthy
were they without and so brilliant within--were still hung paper
lanterns, flags, banners, and all kinds of devices and decorations.
St. Georges had found it difficult to pick his way through the many
obstacles with which the streets were encumbered from the time he left
the Bastille and the Rue St. Antoine, and began to approach the more
fashionable part of Paris, the vicinity of the Pont Neuf. Richly gilt
carriages of the _noblesse_ and the _nouveaux riches_ passed each
other frequently, the inmates of the former disdaining to notice the
inmates of the other--human nature was the same then as now--and threw
the January mud upon an extraordinary crowd of foot passengers--a
crowd composed of ladies with mirrors in their hands; men with huge
blonde or white wigs, who would stop suddenly to take a comb from
their servants' hands and arrange their false locks; others of the
commoner sort selling coffee and chocolate on the footway, another
drawing teeth in the open street, two men fighting a duel with short
swords, a woman and a child picking pockets.[5]
[Footnote 5: See engravings of Della Bella, done at the time and
representing such scenes.]
Because it was the Epiphany--the King's Fete--Louis and the court were
at the Louvre this year, occupying the vast and stately palace on
which the Grande Monarque had spent since 1664 the sum of ten million
seven hundred thousand francs; and high festival was being kept. All
the court had come with him, including the wife who was still
suspected by some of being the mistress; the duchesses and countesses
who had been mistresses if they were so no longer; the bishops who
were not in disgrace and under the displeasure of De Maintenon; the
numerous offspring by various mothers; the ministers and
officials--including Louvois. And it was to present himself to the
latter first, and afterward to seek audience with Louis, that St.
Georges now rode toward the palace.
"Surely," he thought to himself as he directed his course through the
heterogeneous mass in the streets, "surely when I relate my tale,
tell of the terrible blow that has fallen upon me, I shall be forgiven
for having halted on my route. I am more than a week behind, have
lagged on my road, yet for what a cause--what a cause! Oh, my child,
my little Dorine, that I should have had to come away and leave you
behind! My child! My child!"
Never for a moment since he had left the peasant's hut had his
thoughts been absent from that child, never had they ceased to dwell
upon the conspiracy that existed without doubt against both him and
her. Moreover, so intricate, so entangled did all appear that the mesh
seemed incapable of being unravelled, and his brain whirled as he
endeavoured to pierce the darkness of it all.
"Let me reflect," he had pondered to himself, as day by day he drew
nearer to the capital, "let me try to think it all out, see it
clearly. God give me power to do so!"
Then he had endeavoured, by going over his life from the commencement,
to reduce matters to something short of chaos.
"That I am De Vannes's son--his heir--must be!" he thought; "it gives
the cause, the reason for what follows. This is clear. Also the attack
on me, the stealing of Dorine, proceeds from a like cause. And if all
that was the duke's--his title, his wealth--is mine, and, after me,
hers, in whose light can we stand, against whose interest thrust, but
De Roquemaure's? All this is as clear as day; it is here the mystery
begins. For, first, how does he know this? Next--which is more
strange--how know that on a certain night I should be on the road
between two such remote places as Pontarlier and Paris? How know, too,
that I have my child with me, as he must have known, since he
mentioned it to the myrmidons he enlisted at Recey? If I could
discover this--should ever discover it, a light might break in upon
what followed--more mysterious still."
When he had turned this over and over again in his thoughts as mile by
mile and league by league he drew nearer the end of his journey, he
endeavoured to arrange and piece together the further, the newer, and
fresher mystery of all that had happened since the night he rested
under the roof of the De Roquemaures' house. And here his perplexity
was even greater than before.
"He acts alone," he reflected; "at least without assistance from his
kinswomen--his stepmother and half-sister. For if such is not the
case, then viler wretches than they never bore the shape of womanhood.
The excitement of the marquise, the noble sympathy of that girl
expressed in every glance of those pure eyes, were not, could not have
been assumed--false! If so, perish all my belief in woman's truth and
honour! Yet from that very manoir over which she, his mother, rules
more than he, for the present at least, came forth two--one a man in
his garb, the dress of his house--the other a woman. For her, though,
it is not so difficult of explanation! The murdered peasant's wife
spoke of him as having female instruments at his beck and call, and
although her companion wore his livery she might be any creature in
the city over whom he possessed influence."
And now, as he reflected, he knew that he had come to the most
difficult of all knots to untie, the hardest of all the mystery to be
solved. For, arrived so far in his endeavours to unwind the plot with
which he was surrounded, he found himself at fault, groping
helplessly in the dark, when he stood face to face with the memory of
the man who had been assassinated by De Roquemaure's vassal--face to
face with Pierre, the Bishop of Lodeve's servant, who at the time he
was set upon was in possession of Dorine!
One thought alone rose to his mind at first, one only which would have
explained his presence on the scene, his possession of the child--the
thought that the cynical Bishop of Lodeve, the man of whom the whole
of France spoke so ill, might in truth have known of some deep-laid
scheme for kidnapping that child and have sent Pierre forward--or
after him--to rescue it at all costs, thinking, perhaps, that if
abstracted by him, it could be better kept in safety than even by its
own father. A wild and visionary idea, in truth, to have entered St.
Georges's mind, yet, perhaps, not too remote to suggest itself to an
unhappy parent so bereft as he was. But, in a moment, another
reflection chased it away.
"No!" he exclaimed to himself as the second thought arose. "No! no!
More like that the fellow Pierre was the messenger from Dijon who put
the ruffians on their guard; who warned them that I was accompanied by
the Mousquetaire Noir; that they would have two soldiers to contend
against instead of one. The fellow who had tracked us all day, then
passed us, and who, masked like the others, had stood out of the fight
in the graveyard. So! so! That vile bishop is in it, too. Fool that I
am to have thought that that sneering, evil priest had ever a kindly
thought in his heart. Yet why in it also? Why? why?"
He could follow his chain of reasoning no more--against all his
thoughts a blacker wall of impenetrable mystery rose than ever. He was
forced to desist from thinking, or go mad in doing so. For if this
man Pierre was De Roquemaure's auxiliary--if, as was undoubted from
the peasant woman's story, he had possessed himself of Dorine on
behalf of De Roquemaure--why had two other of that villain's myrmidons
slain him and possessed themselves of her? His mind could find no
answer to this; his reasoning ceased; he could go no further through
the maze.
"God, he knows," he muttered reverently. "In his good time, in his
infinite mercy, it may be he will let me know all, too."
But even as he rode through the crowded streets and drew near the
great courtyard of the Louvre he was still thinking--thinking
always--of the web in which he was entangled and of his helpless
little child alone, unhappy--perhaps ill treated--perhaps dead! There
was that day no more heartbroken man in Paris than he.
As he drew rein at the courtyard door, vast as a cathedral's, there
issued from it a great emblazoned carriage, with arms and crests upon
its panels, the four horses drawing it being also richly apparelled
with velvet and nodding plumes, and with at the back three footmen
who, as was the custom of the time, stood each behind the other on a
platform instead of side by side.
His eye, glancing into the interior of the vast fabric, saw within a
woman, young and beautiful, yet with her fair face disfigured--as was
indeed obligatory on all women who attended the court of Louis--with
powder and paint, and with _mouches_, or patches, cut into the various
forms of stars, half moons, and so forth. Her dress, too, was
gorgeous, being of rich velvet of the colour then known as "pigeon
breast," faced with silver brocade and slashed with seams to show the
red and silver lace, while the whole was enriched with plain satin
and watered ribbons, and deep full point lace at breast and sleeves.
On her head, though not hiding her much-curled hair, was a rich
_escoffion_ of ruby velvet surmounted by pearls, and tied beneath her
chin.
She saw him in a moment, the soft hazel eyes resting full on him--saw,
too, that he hesitated as though about to draw his horse away out of
her range of vision; then with a look she beckoned him to draw near
her carriage door, while through the window at the back of the vehicle
she made a sign to the first of the three footmen to have it stopped
against the _chaussee_.
And he, scarce knowing what to do--whether, indeed, to content himself
with coldly taking off his hat and avoiding her, or to obey her
glance, yet instinctively did the latter, and drew up to the window.
And in another moment the embroidered glove had been withdrawn from
her white hand, which was resting in his, while her eyes scanned his
sorrow-stricken face.
"Monsieur St. Georges honoured our poor house no more," she said, "ere
he quitted Troyes. Yet, considering all, it was not strange he should
not do so."
On his guard, since--believing though he did in her honour and in her
mother's--he could not forget she was a De Roquemaure, the kinswoman
of the devil who had already worked him so much ill, and might--nay,
would, if not thwarted--work so much more, he replied cautiously:
"'Considering all,' mademoiselle; you doubtless refer to----"
"Oh, monsieur," she said, "let there be no more cross purposes. I
know--I know as though I could see deep into your heart, beneath your
gorget, that--that--you couple us with my brother. And you know,"
while as she spoke she leaned forward so that her fair--yet, alas!
painted--face almost bent over his sleeve, and her clear, starlike
eyes gazed into his, "that he is your enemy; at least, you fear so."
"I know nothing," he replied, "except that all--all--in one case
suspicion in the other certainty--points to him. I know that when one,
whose part in the affair I cannot yet unravel, had my child"--he said
"my child" with a sob in his voice--"in his keeping, a vassal of De
Roquemaure's, clad in the russet livery of your house, and accompanied
by one of his master's lemans, slew him and stole her. I know that."
"One of his lemans!" she whispered, while over her face there crept a
blush deeper than the court-ordained paint--"one of his lemans! You
know that?"
"I know it," he replied
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