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The Chaplet of Pearls

by Charlotte M. Yonge · English · Gutenberg #5274 · 1,035,891 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Chaplet of Pearls

Author: Charlotte M. Yonge


        
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #5274]
                Most recently updated: October 12, 2016

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Hanh Vu, and David Widger


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Produced by Hanh Vu








THE CHAPLET OF PEARLS

By Charlotte M. Yonge




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I. THE BRIDAL OF THE WHITE AND BLACK

CHAPTER II. THE SEPARATION

CHAPTER III. THE FAMILY COUNCIL

CHAPTER IV. TITHONUS

CHAPTER V. THE CONVENT BIRD

CHAPTER VI. FOULLY COZENED

CHAPTER VII. THE QUEEN’S PASTORAL

CHAPTER VIII. ‘LE BROUILLON’

CHAPTER IX. THE WEDDING WITH CRIMSON FAVOURS

CHAPTER X. MONSIEUR’S BALLET

CHAPTER XI. THE KING’S TRAGEDY

CHAPTER XII. THE PALACE OF SLAUGHTER

CHAPTER XIII. THE BRIDEGROOM’S ARRIVAL

CHAPTER XIV. SWEET HEART

CHAPTER XV. NOTRE-DAME DE BELLAISE

CHAPTER XVI. THE HEARTHS AND THICKETS OF THE BOCAGE

CHAPTER XVII. THE GHOSTS OF THE TEMPLARS

CHAPTER XVIII. THE MOONBEAM

CHAPTER XIX. LA RUE DES TROIS FEES

CHAPTER XX. THE ABBE

CHAPTER XXI. UNDER THE WALNUT-TREE

CHAPTER XXII. DEPARTURE

CHAPTER XXIII. THE EMPTY CRADLE

CHAPTER XXIV. THE GOOD PRIEST OF NISSARD

CHAPTER XXV. THE VELVET COACH

CHAPTER XXVI. THE CHEVALIER’S EXPIATION

CHAPTER XXVII. THE DYING KING

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE ORPHANS OF LA SABLERIE

CHAPTER XXIX. IN THE KING’S NAME

CHAPTER XXX. CAGED IN THE BLACKBIRD’S NEST

CHAPTER XXXI. THE DARK POOL OF THE FUTURE

CHAPTER XXXII. ‘JAM SATIS’

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SCANDAL OF THE SYNOD OF MONTAUBAN

CHAPTER XXXIV. MADAME LA DUCHESSE

CHAPTER XXXV. THE ITALIAN PEDLAR

CHAPTER XXXVI. SPELL AND POTION

CHAPTER XXXVII. BEATING AGAINST THE BARS

CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE ENEMY IN PRESENCE

CHAPTER XXXIX. THE PEDLAR’S PREDICTION

CHAPTER XL. THE SANDS OF OLONNE

CHAPTER XLI. OUR LADY OF HOPE

CHAPTER XLII. THE SILVER BULLET

CHAPTER XLIII. LA BAISER D’EUSTACIE

CHAPTER XLIV. THE GALIMAFRE






PREFACE



It is the fashion to call every story controversial that deals with
times when controversy or a war of religion was raging; but it should
be remembered that there are some which only attempt to portray human
feelings as affected by the events that such warfare occasioned. ‘Old
Mortality’ and ‘Woodstock’ are not controversial tales, and the ‘Chaplet
of Pearls’ is so quite as little. It only aims at drawing certain scenes
and certain characters as the convulsions of the sixteenth century may
have affected them, and is, in fact, like all historical romance, the
shaping of the conceptions that the imagination must necessarily form
when dwelling upon the records of history. That faculty which might
be called the passive fancy, and might almost be described in Portia’s
song,--

                  ‘It is engendered in the eyes,
              By READING fed--and there it dies,’--

that faculty, I say, has learnt to feed upon character and incident, and
to require that the latter should be effective and exciting. Is it
not reasonable to seek for this in the days when such things were not
infrequent, and did not imply exceptional wickedness or misfortune in
those engaged in them? This seems to me one plea for historical novel,
to which I would add the opportunity that it gives for study of the
times and delineation of characters. Shakespeare’s Henry IV. and Henry
V., Scott’s Louis XI., Manzoni’s Federigo Borromeo, Bulwer’s Harold,
James’s Philip Augustus, are all real contributions to our comprehension
of the men themselves, by calling the chronicles and memoirs
into action. True, the picture cannot be exact, and is sometimes
distorted--nay, sometimes praiseworthy efforts at correctness in the
detail take away whatever might have been lifelike in the outline.
Yet, acknowledging all this, I must still plead for the tales that
presumptuously deal with days gone by, as enabling the young to realize
history vividly--and, what is still more desirable, requiring an effort
of the mind which to read of modern days does not. The details of
Millais’ Inquisition or of his Huguenot may be in error in spite of all
his study and diligence, but they have brought before us for ever the
horrors of the _auto-da-fe_, and the patient, steadfast heroism of the
man who can smile aside his wife’s endeavour to make him tacitly betray
his faith to save his life. Surely it is well, by pen as by picture,
to go back to the past for figures that will stir the heart like these,
even though the details be as incorrect as those of the revolt of Liege
or of La Ferrette in ‘Quentin Durward’ and ‘Anne of Geierstein.’

Scott, however, willfully carved history to suit the purposes of his
story; and in these days we have come to feel that a story must earn
a certain amount of credibility by being in keeping with established
facts, even if striking events have to be sacrificed, and that the order
of time must be preserved. In Shakespeare’s days, or even in Scott’s,
it might have been possible to bring Henry III. and his _mignons_ to due
punishment within the limits of a tale beginning with the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew; but in 1868 the broad outlines of tragedy must be given
up to keep within the bounds of historical verity.

How far this has been done, critics better read than myself must decide.
I have endeavoured to speak fairly, to the best of my ability, of
such classes of persons as fell in with the course of the narrative,
according to such lights as the memoirs of the time afford. The Convent
is scarcely a CLASS portrait, but the condition of it seems to be
justified by hints in the Port Royal memoirs, respecting Maubuisson and
others which Mere Angelique reformed. The intolerance of the ladies
at Montauban is described in Madame Duplessis-Mornay’s life; and if
Berenger’s education and opinions are looked on as not sufficiently
alien from Roman Catholicism, a reference to Froude’s ‘History of Queen
Elizabeth’ will show both that the customs of the country clergy, and
likewise that a broad distinction was made by the better informed among
the French between Calvinism and Protestantism or Lutheranism, in which
they included Anglicanism. The minister Gardon I do not consider as
representing his class. He is a POSSIBILITY modified to serve the
purposes of the story.

Into historical matters, however, I have only entered so far as my
story became involved with them. And here I have to apologize for a
few blunders, detected too late for alteration even in the volumes. Sir
Francis Walsingham was a young rising statesman in 1572, instead of the
elderly sage he is represented; his daughter Frances was a mere infant,
and Sir Philip Sidney was not knighted till much later. For the rest,
I have tried to show the scenes that shaped themselves before me as
carefully as I could; though of course they must not be a presentiment
of the times themselves, but of my notion of them.

C. M. Yonge

November 14th, 1868





THE CHAPLET OF PEARLS

or

THE WHITE AND BLACK RIBAUMONT




CHAPTER I. THE BRIDAL OF THE WHITE AND BLACK



           Small was the ring, and small in truth the finger:
         What then?  the faith was large that dropped it down.
                        Aubrey De Vere, INFANT BRIDAL


Setting aside the consideration of the risk, the baby-weddings of the
Middle Ages must have been very pretty sights.

So the Court of France thought the bridal of Henri Beranger Eustache de
Ribaumont and of Marie Eustacie Rosalie de Rebaumont du Nid-de-Merle,
when, amid the festivals that accompanied the signature of the treaty
of Cateau-Cabresis, good-natured King Henri II. presided merrily at the
union of the little pair, whose unite ages did not reach ten years.

There they stood under the portal of Notre-Dame, the little bridegroom
in a white velvet coat, with puffed sleeves, slashed with scarlet satin,
as were the short, also puffed breeches meeting his long white knitted
silk stockings some way above the knee; large scarlet rosettes were in
his white shoes, a scarlet knot adorned his little sword, and his velvet
cap of the same colour bore a long white plume, and was encircled by a
row of pearls of priceless value. They are no other than that garland
of pearls which, after a night of personal combat before the walls of
Calais, Edward III. of England took from his helmet and presented to Sir
Eustache de Ribaumont, a knight of Picardy, bidding him say everywhere
that it was a gift from the King of England to the bravest of knights.

The precious heirlooms were scarcely held with the respect due to an
ornament so acquired. The manly garb for the first time assumed by his
sturdy legs, and the possession of the little sword, were evidently the
most interesting parts of the affair to the youthful husband, who seemed
to find in them his only solace for the weary length of the ceremony.
He was a fine, handsome little fellow, fair and rosy, with bright blue
eyes, and hair like shining flax, unusually tall and strong-limbed for
his age; and as he gave his hand to his little bride, and walked with
her under a canopy up to kneel at the High Altar, for the marriage
blessing and the mass, they looked like a full-grown couple seen through
a diminishing-glass.

The little bride was perhaps a less beautiful child, but she had a
splendid pair of black eyes, and a sweet little mouth, both set into
the uncomprehending solemnity of baby gravity and contentment in fine
clothes. In accordance with the vow indicated by her name of Marie, her
dress was white and blue, turquoise forget-me-nots bound the little lace
veil on her dark chestnut hair, the bosom of her white satin dress was
sprinkled with the same azure jewel, and turquoises bordered every seam
of the sweeping skirt with a train befitting a count’s daughter, and
meandered in gorgeous constellations round the hem. The little thing
lisped her own vows forth without much notion of their sense, and indeed
was sometimes prompted by her bridesmaid cousin, a pretty little girl
a year older, who thrust in her assistance so glibly that the King, as
well as others of the spectators, laughed, and observed that she would
get herself married to the boy instead of her cousin.

There was, however, to be no doubt nor mistake about Beranger and
Eustacie de Ribaumont being man and wife. Every ceremony, religious or
domestic, that could render a marriage valid, was gone through with real
earnestness, although with infinite gaiety, on the part of the court.
Much depended on their union, and the reconcilement of the two branches
of the family had long been a favourite scheme of King Henri II.

Both alike were descended from Anselme de Ribaumont, renowned in the
first Crusade, and from the brave Picard who had received the pearls;
but, in the miserable anarchy of Charles VI.’s reign, the elder brother
had been on the Burgundian side--like most of the other nobles of
Picardy--and had thus been brought into the English camp, where,
regarding Henry V. as lawfully appointed to the succession, and much
admiring him and his brother Nedford, he had become an ardent supporter
of the English claim. He had married an English lady, and had received
the grant if the castle of Leurre in Normandy by way of compensation for
his ancestral one of Ribaumont in Picardy, which had been declared to be
forfeited by his treason, and seized by his brother.

This brother had always been an Armagnac, and had risen and thriven with
his party,--before the final peace between France and England obliged
the elder line to submit to Charles VII. Since that time there had been
a perpetual contention as to the restitution of Chateau Ribaumont, a
strife which under Louis XI. had become an endless lawsuit; and in
the days of dueling had occasioned a good many insults and private
encounters. The younger branch, or Black Ribaumonts, had received a
grant from Louis XI. of the lands of Nid-de-Merle, belonging to an
unfortunate Angevin noble, who had fallen under the royal displeasure,
and they had enjoyed court favour up to the present generation, when
Henri II., either from opposition to his father, instinct for honesty,
or both, had become a warm friend to the gay and brilliant young Baron
de Ribaumont, head of the white or elder branch of the family.

The family contention seemed likely to wear out of its own accord,
for the Count de Ribaumont was an elderly and childless man, and his
brother, the Chevalier de Ribaumont, was, according to the usual lot
of French juniors, a bachelor, so that it was expected that the whole
inheritance would centre upon the elder family. However, to the general
surprise, the Chevalier late in life married, and became the father of a
son and daughter; but soon after calculations were still more thrown out
by the birth of a little daughter in the old age of the Count.

Almost from the hour in which her sex was announced, the King had
promised the Baron de Ribaumont that she should be the wife of his young
son, and that all the possessions of the house should be settled upon
the little couple, engaging to provide for the Chevalier’s disappointed
heir in some commandery of a religious order of knighthood.

The Baron’s wife was English. He had, when on a visit to his English
kindred, entirely turned the head of the lovely Annora Walwyn, and
finding that her father, one of the gravest of Tudor statesmen, would
not hear of her breaking her engagement to the honest Dorset squire
Marmaduke Thistlewood, he had carried her off by a stolen marriage and
_coup de main_, which, as her beauty, rank, and inheritance were all
considerable, had won him great reputation at the gay court of Henri II.

Infants as the boy and girl were, the King had hurried on their marriage
to secure its taking place in the lifetime of the Count. The Countess
had died soon after the birth of the little girl, and if the arrangement
were to take effect at all, it must be before she should fall under the
guardianship of her uncle, the Chevalier. Therefore the King had caused
her to be brought up from the cottage in Anjou, where she had been
nursed, and in person superintended the brilliant wedding. He himself
led off the dance with the tiny bride, conducting her through its mazes
with fatherly kindliness and condescension; but Queen Catherine, who was
strongly in the interests of the Angevin branch, and had always detested
the Baron as her husband’s intimate, excused herself from dancing with
the bridegroom. He therefore fell to the share of the Dauphiness Queen
of Scots, a lovely, bright-eyed, laughing girl, who so completely
fascinated the little fellow, that he convulsed the court by observing
that he should not have objected to be married to some one like her,
instead of a little baby like Eustacie.

Amid all the mirth, it was not only the Chevalier and the Queen who bore
displeased looks. In truth, both were too great adepts in court life
to let their dissatisfaction appear. The gloomiest face was that of him
whose triumph it was--the bridegroom’s father, the Baron de Ribaumont.
He had suffered severely from the sickness that prevailed in St.
Quentin, when in the last August the Admiral de Coligny had been
besieged there by the Spaniards, and all agreed that he had never been
the same man since, either in health or in demeanour. When he came back
from his captivity and found the King bent on crowning his return by
the marriage of the children, he had hung back, spoken of scruples about
such unconscious vows, and had finally only consented under stress of
the personal friendship of the King, and on condition that he and his
wife should at once have the sole custody of the little bride. Even then
he moved about the gay scene with so distressed and morose an air that
he was evidently either under the influence of a scruple of conscience
or of a foreboding of evil.

No one doubted that it had been the latter, when, three days later,
Henri II., in the prime of his strength and height of his spirits,
encountered young Des Lorges in the lists, received the splinter of a
lance in his eye, and died two days afterwards.

No sooner were his obsequies over than the Baron de Ribaumont set off
with his wife and the little bridal pair for his castle of Leurre, in
Normandy, nor was he ever seen at court again.




CHAPTER II. THE SEPARATION



     Parted without the least regret,
     Except that they had ever met.
         *     *     *     *
     Misses, the tale that I relate,
     This lesson seems to carry:
     Choose not alone a proper mate,
     But proper time to marry!
                     COWPER, PAIRING TIME ANTICIPATED


‘I will have it!’

‘Thou shalt not have it!’

‘Diane says it is mine.’

‘Diane knows nothing about it.’

‘Gentlemen always yield to ladies.’

‘Wives ought to mind their husbands.’

‘Then I will not be thy wife.’

‘Thou canst not help it.’

‘I will. I will tell my father what M. le Baron reads and sings, and
then I know he will.’

‘And welcome.’

Eustacie put out her lip, and began to cry.

The ‘husband and wife,’ now eight and seven years old, were in a large
room hung with tapestry, representing the history of Tobit. A great
state bed, curtained with piled velvet, stood on a sort of _dais_ at
the further end; there was a toilet-table adorned with curiously shaped
boxes, and coloured Venetian glasses, and filagree pouncet-boxes, and
with a small mirror whose frame was inlaid with gold and ivory. A large
coffer, likewise inlaid, stood against the wall, and near it a
cabinet, of Dutch workmanship, a combination of ebony, ivory, wood, and
looking-glass, the centre retreating, and so arranged that by the help
of most ingenious attention to perspective and reflection, it appeared
like the entrance to a magnificent miniature cinque-cento palace, with
steps up to a vestibule paved in black and white lozenges, and with
three endless corridors diverging from it. So much for show; for
use, this palace was a bewildering complication of secret drawers and
pigeon-holes, all depending indeed upon one tiny gold key; but unless
the use of that key were well understood, all it led to was certain
outer receptacles of fragrant Spanish gloves, knots of ribbon, and
kerchiefs strewn over with rose leaves and lavender. However, Eustacie
had secured the key, and was now far beyond these mere superficial
matters. Her youthful lord had just discovered her mounted on a chair,
her small person decked out with a profusion of necklaces, jewels,
bracelets, chains, and rings; and her fingers, as well as they could
under their stiffening load, were opening the very penetralia of the
cabinet, the inner chamber of the hall, where lay a case adorned with
the Ribaumont arms and containing the far-famed chaplet of pearls.
It was almost beyond her reach, but she had risen on tip-toe, and was
stretching out her hand for it, when he, springing behind her on the
chair, availed himself of his superior height and strength to shut the
door of this Arcanum and turn the key. His mortifying permission to his
wife to absent herself arose from pure love of teasing, but the next
moment he added, still holding his hand on the key--‘As to telling what
my father reads, that would be treason. How shouldst thou know what it
is?’

‘Does thou think every one is an infant but thyself?’

‘But who told thee that to talk of my father’s books would get him into
trouble?’ continued the boy, as they still stood together on the high
heavy wooden chair.

She tossed her pretty head, and pretended to pout.

‘Was it Diane? I will know. Didst thou tell Diane?’

Instead of answering, now that his attention to the key was relaxed,
Eustacie made a sudden dart, like a little wild cat, at the back of the
chair and at the key. They chair over-balanced; Beranger caught at the
front drawer of the cabinet, which, unlocked by Eustacie, came out in
his hand, and chair, children, drawer, and curiosities all went rolling
over together on the floor with a hubbub that brought all the household
together, exclaiming and scolding. Madame de Ribaumont’s displeasure at
the rifling of her hoards knew no bounds; Eustacie, by way of defence,
shrieked ‘like twenty demons;’ Beranger, too honourable to accuse her,
underwent the same tempest; and at last both were soundly rapped over
the knuckles with the long handle of Madame’s fan, and consigned to two
separate closets, to be dealt with on the return of M. le Baron, while
Madame returned to her embroidery, lamenting the absence of that dear
little Diane, whose late visit at the chateau had been marked by such
unusual tranquility between the children.

Beranger, in his dark closet, comforted himself with the shrewd
suspicion that his father was so employed as not to be expected at home
till supper-time, and that his mother’s wrath was by no means likely to
be so enduring as to lead her to make complaints of the prisoners;
and when he heard a trampling of horses in the court, he anticipated a
speedy release and summons to show himself to the visitors. He waited
long, however, before he heard the pattering of little feet; then a
stool scraped along the floor, the button of his door was undone, the
stool pushed back, and as he emerged, Eustacie stood before him with
her finger to her lip. ‘CHUT, Beranger! It is my father and uncle, and
Narcisse, and, oh! so many _gens d’armes_. They are come to summon M. le
Baron to go with them to disperse the _preche_ by the Bac de l’Oie. And
oh, Beranger, is he not there?’

‘I do not know. He went out with his hawk, and I do not think he could
have gone anywhere else. Did they say so to my mother?’

‘Yes; but she never knows. And oh, Beranger, Narcisse told me--ah, was
it to tease me?--that Diane has told them all they wanted to know, for
that they sent her here on purpose to see if we were not all Huguenots.

‘Very likely, the little viper! Le me pass, Eustacie. I must go and tell
my father.’

‘Thou canst not get out that way; the court is full of men-at-arms.
Hark, there’s Narcisse calling me. He will come after me.’

There was not a moment to lose. Berenger flew along a corridor, and down
a narrow winding stair, and across the kitchen; then snatching at the
arm of a boy of his own age whom he met at the door, he gasped out,
‘Come and help me catch Follet, Landry!’ and still running across an
orchard, he pulled down a couple of apples from the trees, and bounded
into a paddock where a small rough Breton pony was feeding among the
little tawny Norman cows. The animal knew his little master, and trotted
towards him at his call of ‘Follet, Follet. Now be a wise Follet, and
play me no tricks. Thou and I, Follet, shall do good service, if thou
wilt be steady.’

Follet made his advances, but with a coquettish eye and look, as if
ready to start away at any moment.

‘Soh, Follet. I have no bread for thee, only two apples; but, Follet,
listen. There’s my _beau-pere_ the Count, and the Chevalier, all spite,
and their whole troop of savage _gens d’armes_, come out to fall upon
the poor Huguenots, who are doing no harm at all, only listening to a
long dull sermon. And I am much afraid my father is there, for he went
out his hawk on his wrist, and he never does take Ysonde for any real
sport, as thou and I would do, Follet. He says it is all vanity of
vanities. But thou know’st, if they caught him at the _preche_ they
would call it heresy and treason, and all sorts of horrors, and any
way they would fall like demons on the poor Huguenots, Jacques and
all--thine own Jacques, Follet. Come, be a loyal pony, Follet. Be at
least as good as Eustacie.’

Follet was evidently attentive to this peroration, turning round his
ear in a sensible attitude, and advancing his nose to the apples.
As Beranger held them out to him, the other boy clutched his shaggy
forelock so effectually that the start back did not shake him off, and
the next moment Beranger was on his back.

‘And I, Monsieur, what shall I do?’

‘Thou, Landry? I know. Speed like a hare, lock the avenue gate, and hide
the key. That will delay them a long time. Off now, Follet.’

Beranger and Follet understood one another far too well to care about
such trifles as saddle and bridle, and off they went through green
grassy balks dividing the fields, or across the stubble, till, about
three miles from the castle, they came to a narrow valley, dipping so
suddenly between the hills that it could hardly have been suspected by
one unaware of its locality, and the sides were dotted with copsewood,
which entirely hid the bottom. Beranger guided his pony to a winding
path that led down the steep side of the valley, already hearing the
cadence of a loud, chanting voice, throwing out its sounds over the
assembly, whence arose assenting hums over an undercurrent of sobs, as
though the excitable French assembly were strongly affected.

The thicket was so close that Beranger was almost among the congregation
before he could see more than a passing glimpse of a sea of heads.
Stout, ruddy, Norman peasants, and high white-capped women, mingled with
a few soberly-clad townsfolk, almost all with the grave, steadfast cast
of countenance imparted by unresisted persecution, stood gathered
round the green mound that served as a natural pulpit for a Calvinist
minister, who more the dress of a burgher, but entirely black. To
Beranger’s despair, he was in the act of inviting his hearers to join
with him in singing one of Marot’s psalms; and the boy, eager to lose
not a moment, grasped the skirt of the outermost of the crowd. The man,
an absorbed-looking stranger, merely said, ‘Importune me not, child.’

‘Listen!’ said Beranger; ‘it imports---’

‘Peace,’ was the stern answer; but a Norman farmer looked round at that
moment, and Beranger exclaimed, ‘Stop the singing! The _gens d’armes_!’
The psalm broke off; the whisper circulated; the words ‘from Leurre’
were next conveyed from lip to lip, and, as it were in a moment, the
dense human mass had broken up and vanished, stealing through the
numerous paths in the brushwood, or along the brook, as it descended
through tall sedges and bulrushes. The valley was soon as lonely as
it had been populous; the pulpit remained a mere mossy bank, more
suggestive or fairy dances than of Calvinist sermons, and no one
remained on the scene save Beranger with his pony, Jacques the groom, a
stout farmer, the preacher, and a tall thin figure in the plainest dark
cloth dress that could be worn by a gentleman, a hawk on his wrist.

‘Thou here, my boy!’ he exclaimed, as Beranger came to his side; and as
the little fellow replied in a few brief words, he took him by the hand,
and said to the minister, ‘Good Master Isaac, let me present my young
son to you, who under Heaven hath been the means of saving many lives
this day.’

Maitre Isaac Gardon, a noted preacher, looked kindly at the boy’s fair
face, and said, ‘Bless thee, young sir. As thou hast been already a
chosen instrument to save life, so mayest thou be ever after a champion
of the truth.’

‘Monsieur le Baron,’ interposed Jacques, ‘it were best to look to
yourself. I already hear sounds upon the wind.’

‘And you, good sir?’ said the Baron.

‘I will see to him,’ said the farmer, grasping him as a sort of
property. ‘M. le Baron had best keep up the beck. Out on the moor there
he may fly the hawk, and that will best divert suspicion.’

‘Farewell, then,’ said the Baron, wringing the minister’s hand, and
adding, almost to himself, ‘Alas! I am weary of these shifts!’ and weary
indeed he seemed, for as the ground became so steep that the beck danced
noisily down its channel, he could not keep up the needful speed, but
paused, gasping for breath, with his hand on his side. ‘Beranger was off
his pony in an instant, assuring Follet that it ought to be proud to be
ridden by his father, and exhaling his own exultant feelings in caresses
to the animal as it gallantly breasted the hill. The little boy had
never been so commended before! He loved his father exceedingly; but
the Baron, while ever just towards him, was grave and strict to a degree
that the ideas even of the sixteenth century regarded as severe.
Little Eustacie with her lovely face, her irrepressible saucy grace and
audacious coaxing, was the only creature to whom he ever showed much
indulgence and tenderness, and even that seemed almost against his
will and conscience. His son was always under rule, often blamed,
and scarcely ever praised; but it was a hardy vigorous nature, and
respectful love throve under the system that would have crushed or
alienated a different disposition. It was not till the party had emerged
from the wood upon a stubble field, where a covey of partridges flew up,
and to Beranger’s rapturous delight furnished a victim for Ysonde, that
M. de Ribaumont dismounted from the pony, and walking towards home,
called his son to his side, and asked him how he had learnt the
intentions of the Count and the Chevalier. Beranger explained how
Eustacie had come to warn him, and also told what she had said of Diane
de Ribaumont, who had lately, by her father’s request, spent a few weeks
at the chateau with her cousins.

‘My son,’ said the Baron, ‘it is hard to ask of babes caution and
secrecy; but I must know from thee what thy cousin may have heard of our
doings?’

‘I cannot tell, father,’ replied Beranger; ‘we played more than we
talked. Yet, Monsieur, you will not be angry with Eustacie if I tell you
what she said to me to-day?’

‘Assuredly not, my son.’

‘She said that her father would take her away if he knew what M. le
Baron read, and what he sung.’

‘Thou hast done well to tell me, my son. Thinkest thou that this comes
from Diane, or from one of the servants?’

‘Oh, from Diane, my father; none of the servants would dare to say such
a thing.’

‘It is as I suspected then,’ said the Baron. ‘That child was sent
amongst us as a spy.’ Tell me, Beranger, had she any knowledge of our
intended journey to England?’

‘To England! But no, father, I did not even know it was intended. To
England--to that Walwyn which my mother takes such pains to make us
speak rightly. Are we then, going?’

‘Listen, my son. Thou hast to-day proved thyself worthy of trust, and
thou shalt hear. My son, ere yet I knew the truth I was a reckless
disobedient youth, and I bore thy mother from her parents in England
without their consent. Since, by Heaven’s grace, I have come to a better
mind, we have asked and obtained their forgiveness, and it has long been
their desire to see again their daughter and her son. Moreover, since
the accession of the present Queen, it has been a land where the light
is free to shine forth; and though I verily believe what Maitre Gardon
says, that persecution is a blessed means of grace, yet it is grievous
to expose one’s dearest thereto when they are in no state to count
the cost. Therefore would I thither convey you all, and there amid thy
mother’s family would we openly abjure the errors in which we have been
nurture. I have already sent to Paris to obtain from the Queen-mother
the necessary permission to take my family to visit thy grand-father,
and it must now be our endeavour to start immediately on the receipt of
the reply, before the Chevalier’s information can lead to any hindrance
or detention of Eustacie.’

‘Then Eustacie will go with us, Monsieur?’

‘Certainly. Nothing is more important than that her faith should be the
same as yours! But discretion, my son: not a word to the little one.’

‘And Landry, father? I had rather Landry went than Eustacie. And Follet,
dear father, pray take him.’

After M. de Ribaumont’s grave confidence to his son and heir, he was
a little scandalized at the comparative value that the boy’s voice
indicated for wife, foster-brother, and pony, and therefore received
it in perfect silence, which silence continued until they reached
the chateau, where the lady met them at the door with a burst of
exclamations.

‘Ah, there you are, safe, my dear Baron. I have been in despair. Here
were the Count and his brother come to call on you to join them in
dispersing a meeting of those poor Huguenots and they would not permit
me to send out to call you in! I verily think they suspected that you
were aware of it.’

M. de Ribaumont made no answer, but sat wearily down and asked for his
little Eustacie.

‘Little vixen!’ exclaimed the Baroness, ‘she is gone; her father took
her away with him.’ And as her husband looked extremely displeased, she
added that Eustacie had been meddling with her jewel cabinet and had
been put in penitence. Her first impulse on seeing her father had been
to cling to him and poor out her complaints, whereupon he had declared
that he should take her away with him at once, and had in effect caused
her pony to be saddled, and he had ridden away with her to his old
tower, leaving his brother, the Chevalier, to conduct the attack on the
Huguenot conventicle.

‘He had no power or right to remove her,’ said the Baron. ‘How could you
let him do so in my absence? He had made over her wardship to me, and
has no right to resume it!’

‘Well, perhaps I might have insisted on his waiting till your return;
but, you see, the children have never done anything but quarrel and
fight, and always by Eustacie’s fault; and if ever they are to endure
each other, it must be by being separated now.’

‘Madame,’ said the Baron, gravely, ‘you have done your utmost to ruin
your son’s chances of happiness.’

That same evening arrived the King’s passport permitting the Baron
de Ribaumont and his family to pay a visit to his wife’s friends in
England. The next morning the Baron was summoned to speak to one of
his farmers, a Huguenot, who had come to inform him that, through the
network of intelligence kept up by the members of the persecuted faith,
it had become known that the Chevalier de Ribaumont had set off for
court that night, and there was little doubt that his interference would
lead to an immediate revocation of the sanction to the journey, if to no
severer measures. At best, the Baron knew that if his own absence were
permitted, it would be only on condition of leaving his son in
the custody of either the Queen-mother or the Count. It had become
impossible to reclaim Eustacie. Her father would at once have pleaded
that she was being bred up in Huguenot errors. All that could be done
was to hasten the departure ere the royal mandate could arrive. A little
Norman sailing vessel was moored two evenings after in a lonely creek on
the coast, and into it stepped M. de Ribaumont, with his Bible, Marot’s
Psalter, and Calvin’s works, Beranger still tenderly kissing a lock of
Follet’s mane, and Madame mourning for the pearls, which her husband
deemed too sacred an heirloom to carry away to a foreign land. Poor
little Eustacie, with her cousin Diane, was in the convent of Bellaise
in Anjou. If any one lamented her absence, it was her father-in-law.




CHAPTER III. THE FAMILY COUNCIL



     He counsels a divorce
            Shakespeare, KING HENRY VIII.


In the spring of the year 1572, a family council was assembled in Hurst
Walwyn Hall. The scene was a wainscoted oriel chamber closed off by a
screen from the great hall, and fitted on two sides by presses of books,
surmounted the one by a terrestrial, the other by a celestial globe, the
first ‘with the addition of the Indies’ in very eccentric geography, the
second with enormous stars studding highly grotesque figures, regarded
with great awe by most beholders.

A solid oaken table stood in the midst, laden with books and papers, and
in a corner, near the open hearth, a carved desk, bearing on one slope
the largest copy of the ‘Bishops’ Bible’; on the other, one of the
Prayer-book. The ornaments of the oaken mantelpiece culminated in a
shield bearing a cross _boutonnee_, i.e. with trefoil terminations. It
was supported between a merman with a whelk shell and a mermaid with a
comb, and another like Siren curled her tail on the top of the gaping
baronial helmet above the shield, while two more upheld the main weight
of the chimney-piece on either side of the glowing wood-fire.

In the seat of honour was an old gentleman, white-haired, and feeble
of limb, but with noble features and a keen, acute eye. This was
Sir William, Baron of Hurst Walwyn, a valiant knight at Guingate and
Boulogne, a statesman of whom Wolsey had been jealous, and a ripe
scholar who had shared the friendship of More and Erasmus. The lady who
sat opposite to him was several years younger, still upright, brisk and
active, though her hair was milk-white; but her eyes were of undimmed
azure, and her complexion still retained a beauteous pink and white. She
was highly educated, and had been the friend of Margaret Roper and her
sisters, often sharing their walks in the bright Chelsea garden. Indeed,
the musk-rose in her own favourite nook at Hurst Walwyn was cherished as
the gift of Sir Thomas himself.

Near her sat sister, Cecily St. John, a professed nun at Romsey till
her twenty-eight year, when, in the dispersion of convents, her sister’s
home had received her. There had she continued, never exposed to tests
of opinion, but pursuing her quiet course according to her Benedictine
rule, faithfully keeping her vows, and following the guidance of the
chaplain, a college friend of Bishop Ridley, and rejoicing in the use of
the vernacular prayers and Scriptures. When Queen Mary had sent for her
to consider of the revival of convents, her views had been found to have
so far diverged from those of the Queen that Lord Walwyn was thankful
to have her safe at home again; and yet she fancied herself firm to
old Romsey doctrine. She was not learned, like Lady Walwyn, but her
knowledge in all needlework and confectionery was consummate, so that
half the ladies in Dorset and Wilts longed to send their daughters to
be educated at Hurst Walwyn. Her small figure and soft cheeks had
the gentle contour of a dove’s form, nor had she lost the conventual
serenity of expression; indeed it was curious that, let Lady Walwyn
array her as she would, whatever she wore bore a nunlike air. Her silken
farthingales hung like serge robes, her ruffs looked like mufflers, her
coifs like hoods, even necklaces seemed rosaries, and her scrupulous
neatness enhanced the pure unearthly air of all belonging to her.

Eager and lively, fair and handsome, sat the Baronne de Ribaumont,
or rather, since the higher title had been laid aside, Dame Annora
Thistlewood. The health of M. de Ribaumont had been shattered at St.
Quentin, and an inclement night of crossing the Channel had brought on
an attack on the lungs, from which he only rallied enough to amaze
his English friends at finding the gay dissipated young Frenchman they
remembered, infinitely more strict and rigid than themselves. He was
never able to leave the house again after his first arrival at Hurst
Walwyn, and sank under the cold winds of the next spring, rejoicing
to leave his wife and son, not indeed among such strict Puritans as
he preferred, but at least where the pure faith could be openly avowed
without danger.

Sir Marmaduke Thistlewood, the husband to whom Annora Walwyn had been
destined before M. de Ribaumont had crossed her path, was about the same
time left a widower with one son and daughter, and as soon as a suitable
interval had passed, she became a far happier wife than she had been in
either the Baron’s gay or grave days. Her son had continued under
the roof of his grandfather, to whose charge his father had specially
committed him, and thus had been scarcely separated from his mother,
since Combe Manor was not above three miles across the downs from Hurst
Walwyn, and there was almost daily intercourse between the families.
Lucy Thistlewood had been brought to Hurst Walwyn to be something
between a maid of honour and a pupil to the ladies there, and her
brother Philip, so soon as he was old enough, daily rode thither to
share with Berenger the instructions of the chaplain, Mr. Adderley, who
on the present occasion formed one of the conclave, sitting a little
apart as not quite familiar, though highly esteemed.

With an elbow on the table, and one hand toying with his long
riding-whip, sat, booted and spurred, the jovial figure of Sir
Marmaduke, who called out, in his hearty voice, ‘A good riddance of an
outlandish Papist, say I! Read the letter, Berenger lad. No, no, no!
English it! I know nothing of your mincing French! ‘Tis the worst fault
I know in you, boy, to be half a Frenchman, and have a French name’--a
fault that good Sir Marmaduke did his best to remedy by always terming
his step-son Berenger or Berry Ribmount, and we will so far follow
his example as henceforth to give the youth the English form of his
Christian name. He was by this time a tall lad of eighteen, with
straight features, honest deep blue eyes, very fair hair cut short and
brushed up to a crest upon the middle of his head, a complexion of red
and white that all the air of the downs and the sea failed to embrown,
and that peculiar openness and candour of expression which seems so much
an English birthright, that the only trace of his French origin was,
that he betrayed no unbecoming awkwardness in the somewhat embarrassing
position in which he was placed, literally standing, according to the
respectful discipline of the time, as the subject of discussion, before
the circle of his elders. His colour was indeed, deepened, but his
attitude was easy and graceful, and he used no stiff rigidity nor
restless movements to mask his anxiety. At Sir Marmaduke’s desire, he
could not but redden a good deal more, but with a clear, unhesitating
voice, he translated, the letter that he had received from the Chevalier
de Ribaumont, who, by the Count’s death, had become Eustacie’s guardian.
It was a request in the name of Eustacie and her deceased father, that
Monsieur le Baron de Ribaumont--who, it was understood, had embraced
the English heresy--would concur with his spouse in demanding from his
Holiness the Pope a decree annulling the childish marriage, which could
easily be declared void, both on account of the consanguinity of the
parties and the discrepancy of their faith; and which would leave each
of them free to marry again.

‘Nothing can be better,’ exclaimed his mother. ‘How I have longed to
free him from that little shrew, whose tricks were the plague of my
life! Now there is nothing between him and a worthy match!’

‘We can make an Englishman of him now to the backbone,’ added Sir
Marmaduke, ‘and it is well that it should be the lady herself who wants
first to be off with it, so that none can say he has played her a scurvy
trick.’

‘What say you, Berenger?’ said Lord Walwyn. ‘Listen to me, fair nephew.
You know that all my remnant of hope is fixed upon you, and that I have
looked to setting you in the room of the son of my own; and I think that
under our good Queen you will find it easier to lead a quiet God-fearing
life than in your father’s vexed country, where the Reformed religion
lies under persecution. Natheless, being a born liegeman of the King of
France, and heir to estates in his kingdom, meseemeth that before you
are come to years of discretion it were well that you should visit them,
and become better able to judge for yourself how to deal in this matter
when you shall have attained full age, and may be able to dispose of
them by sale, thus freeing yourself from allegiance to a foreign prince.
And at the same time you can take measures, in concert with this young
lady, for loosing the wedlock so unhappily contracted.’

‘O sir, sir!’ cried Lady Thistlewood, ‘send him not to France to be
burnt by the Papists!’

‘Peace, daughter,’ returned her mother. ‘Know you not that there is
friendship between the court party and the Huguenots, and that the peace
is to be sealed by the marriage of the King’s sister with the King of
Navarre? This is the most suitable time at which he could go.’

‘Then, madam,’ proceeded the lady, ‘he will be running about to all the
preachings on every bleak moor and wet morass he can find, catching his
death with rheums, like his poor father.’

There was a general smile, and Sir Marmaduke laughed outright.

‘Nay, dame,’ he said, ‘have you marked such a greed of sermons in our
Berry that you should fear his so untowardly running after them?’

‘Tilly-vally, Sir Duke,’ quoth Dame Annora, with a flirt of her fan,
learnt at the French court. ‘Men will run after a preacher in a marshy
bog out of pure forwardness, when they will nod at a godly homily on a
well-stuffed bench between four walls.’

‘I shall commit that matter to Mr. Adderley, who is good enough to
accompany him,’ said Lord Walwyn, ‘and by whose counsel I trust that he
will steer the middle course between the pope and Calvin.’

Mr. Adderley bowed in answer, saying he hoped that he should be enable
to keep his pupil’s mind clear between the allurements of Popery and the
errors of the Reformed; but meanwhile Lady Thistlewood’s mind had taken
a leap, and she exclaimed,--

‘And, son, whatever you do, bring home the chaplet of pearls! I know
they have set their minds upon it. They wanted me to deck Eustacie with
it on that unlucky bridal-day, but I would not hear of trusting her with
it, and now will it rarely become our Lucy on your real wedding-day.’

‘You travel swiftly, daughter,’ said Lord Walwyn. ‘Nor have we yet heard
the thoughts of one who ever thinks wisely. Sister,’ he added, turning
to Cecily St. John, ‘hold not you with us in this matter?’

‘I scarce comprehend it, my Lord,’ was the gentle reply. ‘I knew not
that it was possible to dissolve the tie of wedlock.’

‘The Pope’s decree will suffice,’ said Lord Walwyn.

‘Yet, sir,’ still said the ex-nun, ‘methought you had shown me that the
Holly Father exceeded his power in the annulling of vows.’

‘Using mine own lessons against me, sweet sister?’ said Lord Walwyn,
smiling; ‘yet, remember, the contract was rashly made between two
ignorant babes; and, bred up as they have severally been, it were surely
best for them to be set free from vows made without their true will or
knowledge.’

‘And yet,’ said Cecily, perplexed, ‘when I saw my niece here wedded to
Sir Marmaduke, was it not with the words, ‘What God hath joined let no
man put asunder’?’

‘Good lack! aunt,’ cried Lady Thistlewood, ‘you would not have that poor
lad wedded to a pert, saucy, ill-tempered little moppet, bred up that
den of iniquity, Queen Catherine’s court, where my poor Baron never
trusted me after he fell in with the religion, and had heard of King
Antony’s calling me the Swan of England.’

At that moment there was a loud shriek, half-laugh, half-fright, coming
through the window, and Lady Thistlewood, starting up, exclaimed, ‘The
child will be drowned! Box their ears, Berenger, and bring them in
directly.’

Berenger, at her bidding, hurried out of the room into the hall, and
thence down a flight of steps leading into a square walled garden, with
a couple of stone male and female marine divinities accommodating their
fishy extremities as best they might on the corners of the wall. The
square contained a bowling-green of exquisitely-kept turf, that looked
as if cut out of green velvet, and was edged on its four sides by a
raised broad-paved walk, with a trimming of flower-beds, where the
earliest blossoms were showing themselves. In the centre of each side
another paved path intersected the green lawn, and the meeting of these
two diameters was at a circular stone basin, presided over by another
merman, blowing a conch on the top of a pile of rocks. On the gravelled
margin stood two distressed little damsels of seven and six years
old, remonstrating with all their might against the proceedings of
a roguish-looking boy of fourteen of fifteen, who had perched their
junior--a fat, fair, kitten-like element of mischief, aged about
five--_en croupe_ on the merman, and was about, according to her
delighted request, to make her a bower of water, by extracting the plug
and setting the fountain to play; but as the fountain had been still
all the winter, the plug was hard of extraction, especially to a young
gentleman who stood insecurely, with his feet wide apart upon pointed
and slippery point of rock-work; and Berenger had time to hurry up,
exclaiming, ‘Giddy pate! Dolly would Berenger drenched to the skin.’

‘And she has on her best blue, made out of mother’s French farthingale,’
cried the discreet Annora.

‘Do you know, Dolly, I’ve orders to box your ears, and send you in?’
added Berenger, as he lifted his half-sister from her perilous position,
speaking, as he did so, without a shade of foreign accent, though with
much more rapid utterance than was usual in England. She clung to him
without much alarm, and retaliated by an endeavour to box his ears,
while Philip, slowly making his way back to the mainland, exclaimed, ‘Ah
there’s no chance now! Here comes demure Mistress Lucy, and she is the
worst mar-sport of all.’

A gentle girl of seventeen was drawing near, her fair delicately-tinted
complexion suiting well with her pale golden hair. It was a sweet face,
and was well set off by the sky-blue of the farthingale, which, with
her white lace coif and white ruff, gave her something the air of a
speedwell flower, more especially as her expression seemed to have
caught much of Cecily’s air of self-restrained contentment. She held
a basketful of the orange pistils of crocuses, and at once seeing that
some riot had taken place, she said to the eldest little girl, ‘Ah, Nan,
you had been safer gathering saffron with me.’

‘Nay, brother Berry came and made all well,’ said Annora; ‘and he had
been shut up so long in the library that he must have been very glad to
get out.’

‘And what came of it?’ cried Philip. ‘Are you to go and get yourself
unmarried?’

‘Unmarried!’ burst out the sisters Annora and Elizabeth.

‘What, laughed Philip, ‘you knew not that this is an ancient husband,
married years before your father and mother?’

‘But, why? said Elizabeth, rather inclined to cry. ‘What has poor Lucy
done that you should get yourself unmarried from her?’

There was a laugh from both brothers; but Berenger, seeing Lucy’s
blushes, restrained himself, and said. ‘Mine was not such good luck,
Bess, but they gave me a little French wife, younger than Dolly, and
saucier still; and as she seems to wish to be quit of me, why, I shall
be rid of her.’

‘See there, Dolly,’ said Philip, in a warning voice, ‘that is the way
you’ll be served if you do not mend your ways.’

‘But I thought,’ said Annora gravely, ‘that people were married once for
all, and it could not be undone.’

‘So said Aunt Cecily, but my Lord was proving to her out of all law
that a contract between such a couple of babes went for nought,’ said
Berenger.

‘And shall you, indeed, see Paris, and all the braveries there?’ asked
Philip. ‘I thought my Lord would never have trusted you out of his
sight.’

‘And now it is to be only with Mr. Adderley,’ said Berenger; ‘but there
will be rare doings to be seen at this royal wedding, and maybe I shall
break a lance there in your honour, Lucy.’

‘And you’ll bring me a French fan?’ cried Bess.

‘And me a pouncet-box?’ added Annora.

‘And me a French puppet dressed Paris fashion?’ said Dolly.

‘And what shall he bring Lucy?’ added Bess.

‘I know,’ said Annora; ‘the pearls that mother is always talking about!
I heard her say that Lucy should wear them on her wedding-day.’

‘Hush!’ interposed Lucy, ‘don’t you see my father yonder on the step,
beckoning to you?’

The children flew towards Sir Marmaduke, leaving Berenger and Lucy
together.

‘Not a word to wish me good speed, Lucy, now I have my wish?’ said
Berenger.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Lucy, ‘I am glad you should see all those brave French
gentlemen of whom you used to tell me.’

‘Yes, they will be all at court, and the good Admiral is said to be in
high favour. He will surely remember my father.’

‘And shall you see the lady?’ asked Lucy, under her breath.

‘Eustacie? Probably; but that will make no change. I have heard too much
of _l’escadron de la Reine-mere_ to endure the thought of a wife from
thence, were she the Queen of Beauty herself. And my mother says that
Eustacie would lose all her beauty as she grew up--like black-eyed Sue
on the down; nor did I ever think her brown skin and fierce black eyes
to compare with you, Lucy. I could be well content never to see her
more; but,’ and here he lowered his voice to a tone of confidence, ‘my
father, when near his death, called me, and told me that he feared my
marriage would be a cause of trouble and temptation to me, and that I
must deal with it after my conscience when I was able to judge in
the matter. Something, too, he said of the treaty of marriage being
a burthen on his soul, but I know not what he meant. If ever I saw
Eustacie again, I was to give her his own copy of Clement Marot’s
Psalter, and to tell her that he had ever loved and prayed for her as a
daughter; and moreover, my father added,’ said Berenger, much moved at
the remembrance it brought across him, ‘that if this matter proved a
burthen and perplexity to me, I was to pardon him as one who repented of
it as a thing done ere he had learnt to weigh the whole world against a
soul.’

‘Yes, you must see her,’ said Lucy.

‘Well, what more were you going to say, Lucy?’

‘I was only thinking,’ said Lucy, as she raised her eyes to him, ‘how
sorry she will be that she let them write that letter.’

Berenger laughed, pleased with the simplicity of Lucy’s admiration, but
with modesty and common sense enough to answer, ‘No fear of that, Lucy,
for an heiress, with all the court gallants of France at her feet.’

‘Ah, but you!’

‘I am all very well here, when you have never seen anybody but lubberly
Dorset squires that never went to London, nor Oxford, nor beyond their
own furrows,’ said Berenger; ‘but depend upon it, she has been bred up
to care for all the airs and graces that are all the fashion at Paris
now, and will be as glad to be rid of an honest man and a Protestant
as I shall to be quit of a court puppet and a Papist. Shall you have
finished my point-cuffs next week, Lucy? Depend upon it, no gentleman of
them all will wear such dainty lace of such a fancy as those will be.’

And Lucy smiled, well pleased.

Coming from the companionship of Eustacie to that of gentle Lucy had
been to Berenger a change from perpetual warfareto perfect supremacy,
and his preference to his little sister, as he had been taught to call
her from the first, had been loudly expressed. Brother and sister they
had ever since considered themselves, and only within the last few
months had possibilities been discussed among the elders of the family,
which oozing out in some mysterious manner, had become felt rather than
known among the young people, yet without altering the habitual terms
that existed between them. Both were so young that love was the merest,
vaguest dream to them; and Lucy, in her quiet faith that Berenger was
the most beautiful, excellent, and accomplished cavalier the earth
could afford, was little troubled about her own future share in him. She
seemed to be promoted to belong to him just as she had grown up to curl
her hair and wear ruffs and farthingales. And to Berenger Lucy was
a very pleasant feature in that English home, where he had been far
happier than in the uncertainties of Chateau Leurre, between his naughty
playfellow, his capricious mother, and morose father. If in England his
lot was to be cast, Lucy was acquiesced in willingly as a portion of
that lot.




CHAPTER IV. TITHONUS



     A youth came riding towards a palace gate,
     And from the palace came a child of sin
     And took him by the curls and led him in!
     Where sat a company with heated eyes.
                     Tennyson, A VISION OF SIN


It was in the month of June that Berenger de Ribaumont first came in
sight of Paris. His grandfather had himself begun by taking him to
London and presenting him to Queen Elizabeth, from whom the lad’s good
mien procured him a most favourable reception. She willingly promised
that on which Lord Walwyn’s heart was set, namely, that his title and
rank should be continued to his grandson; and an ample store of letter
of recommendation to Sir Francis Walsingham, the Ambassador, and all
others who could be of service in the French court, were to do their
utmost to provide him with a favourable reception there.

Then, with Mr. Adderley and four or five servants, he had crossed the
Channel, and had gone first to Chateau Leurre, where he was rapturously
welcomed by the old steward Osbert. The old man had trained up his son
Landry, Berenger’s foster-brother, to become his valet, and had him
taught all the arts of hair-dressing and surgery that were part of the
profession of a gentleman’s body-servant; and the youth, a smart, acuter
young Norman, became a valuable addition to the suite, the guidance of
which, through a foreign country, their young master did not find very
easy. Mr. Adderley thought he knew French very well, through books, but
the language he spoke was not available, and he soon fell into a state
of bewilderment rather hard on his pupil, who, though a very good boy,
and crammed very full of learning, was still nothing more than a lad of
eighteen in all matters of prudence and discretion.

Lord Walwyn was, as we have seen, one of those whose Church principles
had altered very little and very gradually; and in the utter diversity
of practice that prevailed in the early years of Queen Elizabeth, his
chaplain as well as the rector of the parish had altered no more than
was absolutely enjoined of the old ceremonial. If the poor Baron de
Ribaumont had ever been well enough to go to church on a Sunday, he
would perhaps have thought himself still in the realms of what he
considered as darkness; but as he had never openly broken with the
Gallic Church, Berenger had gone at once from mass at Leurre to the
Combe Walwyn service. Therefore when he spent a Sunday at Rouen, and
attended a Calvinist service in the building that the Huguenots were
permitted outside the town, he was much disappointed in it; he thought
its very fervour familiar and irreverent, and felt himself much more at
home in the cathedral into which he strayed in the afternoon. And, on
the Sunday he was at Leurre, he went, as a part of his old home-habits,
to mass at the old round-arched church, where he and Eustacie had played
each other so many teasing tricks at his mother’s feet, and had received
so many admonitory nips and strokes of her fan. All he saw there was
not congenial to him, but he liked it vastly better than the Huguenot
meeting, and was not prepared to understand or enter into Mr. Adderley’s
vexation, when the tutor assured him that the reverent gestures that
came naturally to him were regarded by the Protestants as idolatry, and
that he would be viewed as a recreants from his faith. All Mr. Adderley
hoped was that no one would hear of it: and in this he felt himself
disappointed, when, in the midst of his lecture, there walked into the
room a little, withered, brown, dark-eyed man, in a gorgeous dress of
green and gold, who doffing a hat with an umbrageous plume, precipitated
himself, as far as he could reach, towards Berenger’s neck, calling
him fair cousin and dear baron. The lad stood taken by surprise for
a moment, thinking that Tithonus must have looked just like this, and
skipped like this, just as he became a grasshopper; then he recollected
that this must be the Chevalier de Ribaumont, and tried to make up
for his want of cordiality. The old man had, it appeared, come out of
Picardy, where he lived on _soupe maigre_ in a corner of the ancestral
castle, while his son and daughter were at court, the one in Monsieur’s
suite, the other in that of the Queen-mother. He had come purely to meet
his dear young cousin, and render him all the assistance is his power,
conduct him to Paris, and give him introductions.

Berenger, who had begun to find six Englishmen a troublesome charge in
France, was rather relieved at not being the only French scholar of
the party, and the Chevalier also hinted to him that he spoke with a
dreadful Norman accent that would never be tolerated at court, even if
it were understood by the way. Moreover, the Chevalier studied him all
over, and talked of Paris tailors and posture-masters, and, though the
pink of politeness, made it evident that there was immensely too much of
him. ‘It might be the custom in England to be so tall; here no one
was of anything like such a height, but the Duke of Guise. He, in his
position, with his air, could carry it off, but we must adapt ourselves
as best we can.’

And his shrug and look of concern made Berenger for a moment almost
ashamed of that superfluous height of which they were all so proud at
home. Then he recollected himself, and asked, ‘And why should not I be
tall as well as M. de Guise?’

‘We shall see, fair cousin,’ he answered, with an odd satirical bow;
‘we are as Heaven made us. All lies in the management and if you had the
advantages of training, PERHAPS you could even turn your height into a
grace.’

‘Am I such a great lubber?’ wondered Berenger; ‘they did not think so at
home. No; nor did the Queen. She said I was a proper stripling! Well,
it matters the less, as I shall not stay long to need their favour; and
I’ll show them there is some use in my inches in the tilt-yard. But if
they think me such a lout, what would they say to honest Philip?’

The Chevalier seemed willing to take on him the whole management of his
‘fair cousin.’ He inquired into the amount of the rents and dues which
old Osbert had collected and held ready to meet the young Baron’s
exigencies; and which would, it seemed, be all needed to make his dress
any way presentable at court. The pearls, too, were inquired for, and
handed over by Osbert to his young Lord’s keeping, with the significant
intimation that they had been demanded when the young Madame la Baronne
went to court; but that he had buried them in the orchard, and made
answer that they were not in the chateau. The contract of marriage,
which Berenger could just remember signing, and seeing signed by his
father, the King, and the Count, was not forthcoming; and the Chevalier
explained that it was in the hands of a notary at Paris. For this
Berenger was not sorry. His grandfather had desired him to master the
contents, and he thought he had thus escaped a very dry and useless
study.

He did not exactly dislike the old Chevalier de Ribaumont. The system on
which he had been brought up had not been indulgent, so that compliments
and admiration were an agreeable surprise to him; and rebuffs and
rebukes from his elders had been so common, that hints, in the delicate
dressing of the old knight, came on him almost like gracious civilities.
There was no love lost between the Chevalier and the chaplain, that was
plain; but how could there be between an ancient French courtier and
a sober English divine? However, to Mr. Adderley’s great relief, no
attempts were made on Berenger’s faith, his kinsman even was disposed
to promote his attendance at such Calvinist places of worship as they
passed on the road, and treated him in all things as a mere guest, to
be patronized indeed, but as much an alien as if he had been born in
England. And yet there was a certain deference to him as head of the
family, and a friendliness of manner that made the boy feel him a real
relation, and all through the journey it came naturally that he should
be the entire manager, and Berenger the paymaster on a liberal scale.

Thus had the travellers reached the neighbourhood of Paris, when a
jingling of chains and a trampling of horses announced the advance of
riders, and several gentlemen with a troop of servants came in sight.

All were gaily dressed, with feathered hats, and short Spanish cloaks
jauntily disposed over one shoulder; and their horses were trapped with
bright silvered ornaments. As they advanced, the Chevalier
exclaimed: ‘Ah! It is my son! I knew he would come to meet me.’ And,
simultaneously, father and son leapt from their horses, and rushed
into each other’s arms. Berenger felt it only courteous to dismount and
exchange embraces with his cousin, but with a certain sense of repulsion
at the cloud of perfume that seemed to surround the younger Chevalier
de Ribaumont; the ear-rings in his ears; the general air of delicate
research about his riding-dress, and the elaborate attention paid to a
small, dark, sallow face and figure, in which the only tolerable feature
was an intensely black and piercing pair of eyes.

‘Cousin, I am enchanted to welcome you.’

‘Cousin, I thank you.’

‘Allow me to present you.’ And Berenger bowed low in succession several
times in reply to salutations, as his cousin Narcisse named M. d’O, M.
de la Valette, M. de Pibrac, M. l’Abbe de Mericour, who had done him
the honour to accompany him in coming out to meet his father and M.
le Baron. Then the two cousins remounted, something was said to the
Chevalier of the devoirs of the demoiselles, and they rode on together
bandying news and repartee so fast, that Berenger felt that his ears
had become too much accustomed to the more deliberate English speech to
enter at once into what caused so much excitement, gesture, and wit. The
royal marriage seemed doubtful--the Pope refused his sanction; nay, but
means would be found--the King would not be impeded by the Pope;
Spanish influence--nay, the King had thrown himself at the head of the
Reformed--he was bewitched with the grim old Coligny--if order were not
soon taken, the Louvre itself would become a temple.

Then one of the party turned suddenly and said, ‘But I forget, Monsieur
is a Huguenot?’

‘I am a Protestant of the English Church,’ said Berenger, rather
stiffly, in the formula of his day.

‘Well, you have come at the right moment, ‘Tis all for the sermon now.
If the little Abbe there wished to sail with a fair wind, he should
throw away his breviary and study his Calvin.’

Berenger’s attention was thus attracted to the Abbe de Mericour, a young
man of about twenty, whose dress was darker than that of the rest, and
his hat of a clerical cut, though in other respects he was equipped with
the same point-device elegance.

‘Calvin would never give him the rich abbey of Selicy,’ said another;
‘the breviary is the safer speculation.’

‘Ah! M. de Ribaumont can tell you that abbeys are no such securities
in these days. Let yonder Admiral get the upper hand, and we shall see
Mericour, the happy cadet of eight brothers and sisters, turned adrift
from their convents. What a fatherly spectacle M. le Marquis will
present!’

Here the Chevalier beckoned to Berenger, who, riding forward, learnt
that Narcisse had engaged lodgings for him and his suite at one of the
great inns, and Berenger returned his thanks, and a proposal to the
Chevalier to become his guest. They were by this time entering the city,
where the extreme narrowness and dirt of the streets contrasted with the
grandeur of the palatial courts that could be partly seen through
their archways. At the hostel they rode under such an arch, and found
themselves in a paved yard that would have been grand had it been
clean. Privacy had scarcely been invented, and the party were not at all
surprised to find that the apartment prepared for them was to serve both
day and night for Berenger, the Chevalier, and Mr. Adderley, besides
having a truckle-bed on the floor for Osbert. Meals were taken in
public, and it was now one o’clock--just dinner-time; so after a hasty
toilette the three gentlemen descended, the rest of the party having
ridden off to their quarters, either as attendants of Monsieur or to
their families. It was a sumptuous meal, at which a great number of
gentlemen were present, coming in from rooms hired over shops, &c--all,
as it seemed, assembled at Paris for the marriage festivities; but
Berenger began to gather that they were for the most part adherents of
the Guise party, and far from friendly to the Huguenot interest. Some of
them appeared hardly to tolerate Mr. Adderley’s presence at the table;
and Berenger, though his kinsman’s patronage secured civil treatment,
felt much out of his element, confused, unable to take part in the
conversation, and sure that he was where those at home did not wish to
see him.

No sooner was the dinner over than he rose and expressed his intention
of delivering his letters of introduction in person to the English
ambassador and to the Admiral de Coligny, whom, as his father’s old
friend and the hero of his boyhood, he was most anxious to see. The
Chevalier demurred to this. Were it not better to take measures at once
for making himself presentable, and Narcisse had already supplied him
with directions to the fashionable hair-cutter, &c. It would be taken
amiss if he went to the Admiral before going to present himself to the
King.

‘And I cannot see my cousins till I go to court?’ asked Berenger.

‘Most emphatically No. Have I not told you that the one is in the suite
of the young Queen, the other in that of the Queen-mother? I will myself
present you, if only you will give me the honour of your guidance.’

‘With all thanks, Monsieur,’ said Berenger; ‘my grandfather’s desire
was that I should lose no time in going to his friend Sir Francis
Walsingham, and I had best submit myself to his judgment as to my
appearance at court.’

On this point Berenger was resolute, though the Chevalier recurred
to the danger of any proceeding that might be unacceptable at court.
Berenger, harassed and impatient, repeated that he did not care about
the court, and wished merely to fulfil his purpose and return, at which
his kinsman shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, and muttered to
himself, ‘Ah, what does he know! He will regret it when too late; but I
have done my best.’

Berenger paid little attention to this, but calling Landry Osbert, and
a couple of his men, he bade them take their swords and bucklers, and
escort him in his walk through Paris. He set off with a sense of escape,
but before he had made many steps, he was obliged to turn and warn
Humfrey and Jack that they were not to walk swaggering along the
streets, with hand on sword, as if every Frenchman they saw was the
natural foe of their master.

Very tall were the houses, very close and extremely filthy the streets,
very miserable the beggars; and yet here and there was to be seen the
open front of a most brilliant shop, and the thoroughfares were crowded
with richly-dressed gallants. Even the wider streets gave little space
for the career of the gay horsemen who rode along them, still less
for the great, cumbrous, though gaily-decked coaches, in which ladies
appeared glittering with jewels and fan in hand, with tiny white dogs on
their knees.

The persons of whom Berenger inquired the way all uncapped most
respectfully, and replied with much courtesy; but when the hotel of the
English ambassador had been pointed out to him, he hardly believed it,
so foul and squalid was the street, where a large nail-studded door
occupied a wide archway. Here was a heavy iron knocker, to which Osbert
applied himself. A little door was at once opened by a large, powerful
John Bull of a porter, whose looks expanded into friendly welcome when
he heard the English tongue of the visitor. Inside, the scene was very
unlike that without. The hotel was built round a paved court, adorned
with statues and stone vases, with yews and cypresses in them, and a
grand flight of steps led up to the grand centre of the house, around
which were collected a number of attendants, wearing the Walsingham
colours. Among these Berenger left his two Englishmen, well content to
have fallen into an English colony. Landry followed him to announce the
visitor, Berenger waiting to know whether the Ambassador would be at
liberty to see him.

Almost immediately the door was re-opened, and a keen-looking gentleman,
about six-and-thirty years of age, rather short in stature, but
nevertheless very dignified-looking, came forward with out-stretched
hands--‘Greet you well, my Lord de Ribaumont. We expected your coming.
Welcome, mine honoured friend’s grandson.’

And as Berenger bent low in reverent greeting, Sir Francis took his
hand and kissed his brow, saying, ‘Come in, my young friend; we are but
sitting over our wine and comfits after dinner. Have you dined?’

Berenger explained that he had dined at the inn, where he had taken
lodgings.

‘Nay, but that must not be. My Lord Walwyn’s grandson here, and not my
guest! You do me wrong, sir, in not having ridden hither at once.’

‘Truly, my Lord, I ventured not. They sent me forth with quite a
company--my tutor and six grooms.’

‘Our chaplain will gladly welcome his reverend brother,’ said Sir
Francis; and as to the grooms, one of my fellows shall go and bring them
and their horses up. What!’ rather gravely, as Berenger still
hesitated. ‘I have letters for you here, which methinks will make your
grandfather’s wish clear to you.’

Berenger saw the Ambassador was displeased with his reluctance, and
answered quickly, ‘In sooth, my Lord, I would esteem myself only too
happy to be thus honoured, but in sooth----’ he repeated himself, and
faltered.

‘In sooth, you expected more freedom than in my grave house,’ said
Walsingham, displeased.

‘Not so, my Lord: it would be all that I could desire; but I have done
hastily. A kinsman of mine has come up to Paris with me, and I have
made him my guest. I know not how to break with him--the Chevalier de
Ribaumont.’

‘What, the young ruffler in Monsieur’s suite?’

‘No, my Lord; his father. He comes on my business. He is an old man, and
can ill bear the cost, and I could scarce throw him over.’

Berenger spoke with such earnest, bright, open simplicity, and look so
boyish and confiding, that Sir Francis’s heart was won, and he smiled as
he said, ‘Right, lad, you are a considerate youth. It were not well to
cast off your kinsman; but when you have read your letters, you may
well plead your grandfather’s desires, to say nothing of a hint from her
Grace to have an eye to you. And for the rest, you can acquit yourself
gracefully to the gentleman, by asking him to occupy the lodging that
you had taken.’

Berenger’s face brightened up in a manner that spoke for his sincerity;
and Sir Francis added, ‘And where be these lodgings?’

‘At the Croix de Lorraine.’

‘Ha! Your kinsman has taken you into a nest of Guisards. But come, let
me present you to my wife and my other guests, then will I give you
your letters, and you shall return and make your excuses to Monsieur le
Chevalier.’

Berenger seemed to himself to be on familiar ground again as his
host thus assumed the direction of him and ushered him into a large
dining-hall, where the table had been forsaken in favour of a lesser
table placed in the ample window, round which sat assembled some six or
eight persons, with fruit, wine, and conserves before them, a few little
dogs at their feet or on their laps, and a lute lying on the knee of
one of the young gentlemen. Sir Francis presented the young Lord de
Ribaumont, their expected guest, to Lady Walsingham, from whom he
received a cordial welcome, and her two little daughter, Frances and
Elizabeth, and likewise to the gentleman with the lute, a youth about
a year older than Berenger, and of very striking and prepossessing
countenance, who was named as Mr. Sidney, the son of the Lord Deputy of
Ireland. A couple of gentlemen who would in these times have been termed
_attaches_, a couple of lady attendants upon Lady Walsingham, and the
chaplain made up the party, which on this day chanced only to include,
besides the household, the young traveller, Sidney. Berenger was at once
seated, and accepted a welcoming-cup of wine (i.e. a long slender glass
with a beautifully twisted stem), responded to friendly inquiries about
his relatives at home, and acknowledged the healths that were drunk
in honour of their names; after which Lady Walsingham begged that Mr.
Sidney would sing the madrigal he had before promised: afterwards a glee
was sung by Sidney, one of the gentlemen, and Lady Walsingham; and it
was discovered that Mr. de Ribaumont had a trained ear, and the very
voice that was wanting to the Italian song they were practising. And
so sped a happy hour, till a booted and spurred messenger came in
with letters for his Excellency, who being thus roused from his dreamy
enjoyment of the music, carried young Ribaumont off with him to his
cabinet, and there made over to him a packet, with good news from home,
and orders that made it clear that he could do no other than accept the
hospitality of the Embassy. Thus armed with authority, he returned to
the Croix de Lorraine, where Mr. Adderley could not contain his joy at
the change to quarters not only so much more congenial, buts so much
safer; and the Chevalier, after some polite demur, consented to remain
in possession of the rooms, being in fact well satisfied with the
arrangement.

‘Let him steep himself up to the lips among the English,’ said Tithonus
to his son. ‘Thus will he peaceably relinquish to you all that should
have been yours from the first, and at court will only be looked on as
an overgrown English page.’

The change to the Ambassador’s made Berenger happy at once. He was not
French enough in breeding, or even constitution, to feel the society
of the Croix de Lorraine congenial; and, kind as the Chevalier showed
himself, it was with a wonderful sense of relief that Berenger shook
himself free from both his fawning and his patronizing. There was a
constant sense of not understanding the old gentleman’s aims, whereas in
Walsingham’s house all was as clear, easy, and open as at home.

And though Berenger had been educated in the country, it had been in
the same tone as that of his new friends. He was greatly approved by
Sir Francis as a stripling of parts and modesty. Mr. Sidney made him a
companion, and the young matron, Lady Walsingham, treated him as neither
lout nor lubber. Yet he could not be at ease in his state between
curiosity and repulsion towards the wife who was to be discarded by
mutual consent. The sight of the scenes of his early childhood had
stirred up warmer recollections of the pretty little playful torment,
who through the vista of years assumed the air of a tricksy elf rather
than the little vixen he used to think her. His curiosity had been
further stimulated by the sight of his rival, Narcisse, whose effeminate
ornaments, small stature, and seat on horseback filled Sir Marmaduke’s
pupil with inquisitive disdain as to the woman who could prefer anything
so unmanly.

Sidney was to be presented at the after-dinner reception at the Louvre
the next day, and Sir Francis proposed to take young Ribaumont with him.
Berenger coloured, and spoke of his equipment, and Sidney good-naturedly
offered to come and inspect. That young gentleman was one of the
daintiest in apparel of his day; but he was amazed that the suit in
which Berenger had paid his devoir to Queen Elizabeth should have been
set aside--it was of pearl-grey velvet, slashed with rose-coloured
satin, and in shape and fashion point-device--unless, as the Ambassador
said good-humouredly, ‘my young Lord Ribaumont wished to be one of
Monsieur’s clique.’ Thus arrayed, then, and with the chaplet of pearls
bound round the small cap, with a heron-plume that sat jauntily on
one side of his fair curled head, Berenger took his seat beside the
hazel-eyed, brown-haired Sidney, in his white satin and crimson, and
with the Ambassador and his attendants were rolled off in the great
state-coach drawn by eight horses, which had no sinecure in dragging the
ponderous machine through the unsavoury _debris_ of the streets.

Royalty fed in public. The sumptuous banqueting-room contained a
barrier, partitioning off a space where Charles IX. sat alone at his
table, as a State spectacle. He was a sallow, unhealthy-looking
youth, with large prominent dark eyes and a melancholy dreaminess of
expression, as if the whole ceremony, not to say the world itself, were
distasteful. Now and then, as though endeavouring to cast off the mood,
he would call to some gentleman and exchange a rough jest, generally
fortified with a tremendous oath, that startled Berenger’s innocent
ears. He scarcely tasted what was put on his plate, but drank largely
of sherbet, and seemed to be trying to linger through the space allotted
for the ceremony.

Silence was observed, but not so absolute that Walsingham could not
point out to his young companions the notabilities present. The lofty
figure of Henri, Duke of Guise, towered high above all around him,
and his grand features, proud lip, and stern eye claimed such natural
superiority that Berenger for a moment felt a glow on his cheek as he
remembered his challenge of his right to rival that splendid stature.
And yet Guise was very little older than himself; but he walked, a
prince of men, among a crowd of gentlemen, attendants on him rather than
on the King. The elegant but indolent-looking Duke de Montmorency had
a much more attractive air, and seemed to hold a kind of neutral ground
between Guise on the one hand, and the Reformed, who mustered at the
other end of the apartment. Almost by intuition, Berenger knew the fine
calm features of the gray-haired Admiral de Coligny before he heard him
so addressed by the King’s loud, rough voice. When the King rose from
table the presentations took place, but as Charles heard the name of
the Baron de Ribaumont, he exclaimed, ‘What, Monsieur, are you presented
here by our good sister’s representative?’

Walsingham answered for him, alluding to the negotiations for Queen
Elizabeth’s marriage with one of the French princes--‘Sire, in the
present happy conjuncture, it needs not be a less loyal Frenchman to
have an inheritance in the lands of my royal mistress.’

‘What say you, Monsieur?’ sharply demanded the King: ‘are you come here
to renounce your country, religion--and love, as I have been told?’

‘I hope, Sire, never to be unfaithful where I owe faith,’ said Berenger,
heated, startled, and driven to extremity.

‘Not ill answered for the English giant,’ said Charles aside to
an attendant: then turning eagerly to Sidney, whose transcendent
accomplishments had already become renowned, Charles welcomed him to
court, and began to discuss Ronsard’s last sonnet, showing no small
taste and knowledge of poetry. Greatly attracted by Sidney, the King
detained the whole English party by an invitation to Walsingham to hear
music in the Queen-mother’s apartments; and Berenger, following in the
wake of his friends, found himself in a spacious hall, with a raised
gallery at one end for the musicians, the walls decorated with the
glorious paintings collected by Francois I., Greek and Roman statues
clustered at the angles, and cabinets with gems and antiques disposed
at intervals. Not that Berenger beheld much of this: he was absolutely
dazzled with the brilliant assembly into which he was admitted. There
moved the most beautiful women in France, in every lovely-coloured tint
that dress could assume: their bosoms, arms, and hair sparkling with
jewels; their gossamer ruffs surrounding their necks like fairy wings;
their light laugh mingling with the music, as they sat, stood, or walked
in graceful attitudes conversing with one another or with the cavaliers,
whose brilliant velvet and jewels fifty mixed with their bright
array. These were the sirens he had heard of, the ‘squadron of the
Queen-mother,’ the dangerous beings against whom he was to steel
himself. And which of them was the child he had played with, to whom
his vows had been plighted? It was like some of the enchanting dreams
of romance merely to look at these fair creatures; and he stood as if
gazing into a magic-glass till Sir Francis Walsingham, looking round for
him, said, ‘Come, then, my young friend, you must do your devoirs to the
Queens. Sidney, I see, is as usual in his element; the King has seized
upon him.’

Catherine de Medicis was seated on a large velvet chair, conversing with
the German ambassador. Never beautiful, she appeared to more advantage
in her mature years than in her girlhood, and there was all the dignity
of a lifetime of rule in demeanour and gestures, the bearing of her
head, and motion of her exquisite hands. Her eyes were like her son’s,
prominent, and gave the sense of seeing all round at once, and her smile
was to the highest degree engaging. She received the young Baron de
Ribaumont far more graciously than Charles has done, held out her hand
to be kissed, and observed ‘that the young gentleman was like Madame _sa
mere_ whom she well remembered as much admired. Was it true that she was
married in England?’

Berenger bowed assent.

‘Ah! You English make good spouses,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Ever
satisfied with home! But, your Excellency,’ added she, turning to
Walsingham, ‘what stones would best please my good sister for the
setting of the jewel my son would send her with his portrait? He is
all for emeralds, for the hue of hope; but I call it the colour of
jealousy.’

Walsingham made a sign that Berenger had better retreat from hearing
the solemn coquetting carried on by the maiden Queen through her gravest
ambassadors. He fell back, and remained watching the brilliant throng,
trying in vain to discover the bright merry eyes and velvet cheek he
remembered of old. Presently a kind salutation interrupted him, and a
gentleman who perceived him to be a stranger began to try to set him at
ease, pointed out to him the handsome, foppishly-dressed Duke of Anjou,
and his ugly, spiteful little brother of Alengon, then designated as
Queen Elizabeth’s future husband, who was saying something to a lady
that made her colour and bite her lips. ‘Is that the younger Queen?’
asked Berenger, as his eye fell on a sallow, dark-complexioned,
sad-looking little creature in deep mourning, and with three or four
such stately-looking, black-robed, Spanish-looking duennas round her as
to prove her to be a person of high consequence.

‘That? Oh no; that is Madame Catherine of Navarre, who has resided
here ever since her mother’s death, awaiting her brother, our royal
bridegroom. See, here is the bride, Madame Marguerite, conversing with
M. de Guise.’

Berenger paid but little heed to Marguerite’s showy but already rather
coarse beauty, and still asked where was the young Queen Elizabeth of
Austria. She was unwell, and not in presence. ‘Ah! then,’ he said, ‘her
ladies will not be here.’

‘That is not certain. Are you wishing to see any one of them?’

‘I would like to see----’ He could not help colouring till his cheeks
rivaled the colour of his sword-knot. ‘I want just to know if she is
here. I know not if she be called Madame or Mademoiselle de Ribaumont.’

‘The fair Ribaumont! Assuredly; see, she is looking at you. Shall I
present you?’

A pair of exceedingly brilliant dark eyes were fixed on Berenger with
a sort of haughty curiosity and half-recognition. The face was handsome
and brilliant, but he felt indignant at not perceiving a particle of a
blush at encountering him, indeed rather a look of amusement at the deep
glow which his fair complexion rendered so apparent. He would fain have
escaped from so public an interview, but her eye was upon him, and there
was no avoiding the meeting. As he moved nearer he saw what a beautiful
person she was, her rich primrose-coloured dress setting off her
brunette complexion and her stately presence. She looked older than he
had expected; but this was a hotbed where every one grew up early, and
the expression and manner made him feel that an old intimacy was here
renewed, and that they were no strangers.

‘We need no introduction, cousin,’ she said, giving a hand to be
saluted. ‘I knew you instantly. It is the old face of Chateau Leurre,
only gone up so high and become so handsome.’

‘Cousins,’ thought he. ‘Well, it makes things easier! but what audacity
to be so much at her ease, when Lucy would have sunk into the earth with
shame.’ His bow had saved him the necessity of answering in words, and
the lady continued:

‘And Madame _votre mere_. Is she well? She was very good to me.’

Berenger did not think that kindness to Eustacie had been her
chief perfection, but he answered that she was well and sent her
commendations, which the young lady acknowledged by a magnificent
curtsey. ‘And as beautiful as ever?’ she asked.

‘Quite as beautiful,’ he said, ‘only somewhat more _embonpoint_.’

‘Ah!’ she said, smiling graciously, and raising her splendid eyes to
his face, ‘I understand better what that famous beauty was now, and the
fairness that caused her to be called the Swan.’

It was so personal that the colour rushed again into his cheek. No one
had ever so presumed to admire him; and with a degree gratified and
surprised, and sensible more and more of the extreme beauty of the lady,
there was a sort of alarm about him as if this were the very fascination
he had been warned against, and as if she were casting a net about him,
which, wife as she was, it would be impossible to him to break.

‘Nay, Monsieur,’ she laughed, ‘is a word from one so near too much for
your modesty? Is it possible that no one has yet told you of your good
mien? Or do they not appreciate Greek noses and blue eyes in the land of
fat Englishmen? How have you ever lived _en province?_ Our princes are
ready to hang themselves at the thought of being in such banishment,
even at court--indeed, Monsieur has contrived to transfer the noose to
M. d’Alengon. Have you been at court, cousin?’

‘I have been presented to the Queen.’

She then proceeded to ask questions about the chief personages with a
rapid intelligence that surprised him as well as alarmed him, for he
felt more and more in the power of a very clever as well as beautiful
woman, and the attraction she exercised made him long the more to
escape; but she smiled and signed away several cavaliers who would have
gained her attention. She spoke of Queen Mary of Scotland, then in the
fifth years of her captivity, and asked if he did not feel bound to her
service by having been once her partner. Did not he remember that dance?

‘I have heard my mother speak of it far too often to forget it,’ said
Berenger, glowing again for her who could speak of that occasion without
a blush.

‘You wish to gloss over your first inconstancy, sir,’ she said, archly;
but he was spared from further reply by Philip Sidney’s coming to tell
him that the Ambassador was ready to return home. He took leave with
an alacrity that redoubled his courtesy so much that he desired to be
commended to his cousin Diane, whom he had not seen.

‘To Diane?’ said the lady, inquiringly.

‘To Mademoiselle Diane de Ribaumont,’ he corrected himself, ashamed of
his English rusticity. ‘I beg pardon if I spoke too familiarly of her.’

‘She should be flattered by M. le Baron’s slightest recollection,’ said
the lady, with an ironical tone that there was no time to analyze,
and with a mutual gesture of courtesy he followed Sidney to where Sir
Francis awaited them.

‘Well, what think you of the French court?’ asked Sidney, so soon as the
young men were in private.

‘I only know that you may bless your good fortune that you stand in no
danger from a wife from thence.’

‘Ha!’ cried Sidney, laughing, ‘you found your lawful owner. Why did you
not present me?’

‘I was ashamed of her bold visage.’

‘What!--was she the beauteous demoiselle I found you gallanting,’ said
Philip Sidney, a good deal entertained, ‘who was gazing at you with such
visible admiration in her languishing black eyes?’

‘The foul fiend seize their impudence!’

‘Fie! for shame! thus to speak of your own wife,’ said the mischievous
Sidney, ‘and the fairest----’

‘Go to, Sidney. Were she fairer than Venus, with a kingdom to her dower,
I would none of a woman without a blush.’

‘What, in converse with her wedded husband,’ said Sidney. ‘Were not that
over-shamefastness?’

‘Nay, now, Sidney, in good sooth give me your opinion. Should she set
her fancy on me, even in this hour, am I bound in honour to hold by this
accursed wedlock--lock, as it may well be called?’

‘I know no remedy,’ said Sidney, gravely, ‘save the two enchanted founts
of love and hate. They cannot be far away, since it was at the siege of
Paris that Rinaldo and Orlando drank thereof.’

Another question that Berenger would fain have asked Sidney, but could
not for very shame and dread of mockery, was, whether he himself were
so dangerously handsome as the lady had given him to understand. With a
sense of shame, he caught up the little mirror in his casket, and
could not but allow to himself that the features he there saw were
symmetrical--the eyes azure, the complexion of a delicate fairness, such
as he had not seen equaled, except in those splendid Lorraine princes;
nor could he judge of the further effect of his open-faced frank
simplicity and sweetness of expression--contemptible, perhaps, to the
astute, but most winning to the world-weary. He shook his head at the
fair reflection, smiled as he saw the colour rising at his own sensation
of being a fool, and then threw it aside, vexed with himself for being
unable not to feel attracted by the first woman who had shown herself
struck by his personal graces, and yet aware that this was the very
thing he had been warned against, and determined to make all the
resistance in his power to a creature whose very beauty and enchantment
gave him a sense of discomfort.




CHAPTER V. THE CONVENT BIRD



     Young knight, whatever that dost armes professe,
     And through long labours huntest after fame,
     Beware of fraud, beware of ficklenesse,
     In choice and change of thy beloved dame.
                          Spenser, FAERY QUEENE


Berenger’ mind was relieved, even while his vanity was mortified, when
the Chevalier and his son came the next day to bring him the formal
letter requesting the Pope’s annulment of his marriage. After he had
signed it, it was to be taken to Eustacie, and so soon as he should
attain his twenty-first year he was to dispose of Chateau Leurre, as
well as of his claim to the ancestral castle in Picardy, to his cousin
Narcisse, and thus become entirely free to transfer his allegiance to
the Queen of England.

It was a very good thing--that he well knew; and he had a strong sense
of virtue and obedience, as he formed with his pen the words in all
their fullness, Henri Beranger Eustache, Baron de Ribaumont et Seigneur
de Leurre. He could not help wondering whether the lady who looked at
him so admiringly really preferred such a mean-looking little fop as
Narcisse, whether she were afraid of his English home and breeding, or
whether all this open coquetry were really the court manners of
ladies towards gentlemen, and he had been an absolute simpleton to be
flattered. Any way, she would have been a most undesirable wife, and
he was well quit of her; but he did feel a certain lurking desire that,
since the bonds were cut and he was no longer in danger from her, he
might see her again, carry home a mental inventory of the splendid
beauties he had renounced, and decide what was the motive that actuated
her in rejecting his own handsome self. Meantime, he proceeded to enjoy
the amusements and advantage of his sojourn at Paris, of which by no
means the least was the society of Philip Sidney, and the charm his
brilliant genius imparted to every pursuit they shared. Books at the
University, fencing and dancing from the best professors, Italian
poetry, French sonnets, Latin epigrams; nothing came amiss to Sidney,
the flower of English youth: and Berenger had taste, intelligence, and
cultivation enough to enter into all in which Sidney led the way. The
good tutor, after all his miseries on the journey, was delighted to
write to Lord Walwyn, that, far from being a risk and temptation, this
visit was a school in all that was virtuous and comely.

If the good man had any cause of dissatisfaction, it was with the
Calvinistic tendencies of the Ambassador’s household. Walsingham
was always on the Puritanical side of Elizabeth’s court, and such an
atmosphere as that of Paris, where the Roman Catholic system was at that
time showing more corruption than it has ever done before or since in
any other place, naturally threw him into sympathy with the Reformed.
The reaction that half a century later filled the Gallican Church with
saintliness had not set in; her ecclesiastics were the tools of a wicked
and bloodthirsty court, who hated virtue as much as schism in the men
whom they persecuted. The Huguenots were for the most part men whose
instincts for truth and virtue had recoiled from the popular system, and
thus it was indeed as if piety and morality were arrayed on one side,
and superstition and debauchery on the other. Mr. Adderley thus
found the tone of the Ambassador’s chaplain that of far more complete
fellowship with the Reformed pastors than he himself was disposed to
admit. There were a large number of these gathered at Paris; for the
lull in persecution that had followed the battle of Moncontour had given
hopes of a final accommodation between the two parties, and many had
come up to consult with the numerous lay nobility who had congregated
to witness the King of Navarre’s wedding. Among them, Berenger met his
father’s old friend Isaac Gardon, who had come to Paris for the purpose
of giving his only surviving son in marriage to the daughter of a
watchmaker to whom he had for many years been betrothed. By him the
youth, with his innocent face and gracious respectful manners, was
watched with delight, as fulfilling the fairest hopes of the poor Baron,
but the old minister would have been sorely disappointed had he known
how little Berenger felt inclined towards his party.

The royal one of course Berenger could not love, but the rigid bareness,
and, as he thought, irreverence of the Calvinist, and the want of all
forms, jarred upon one used to a ritual which retained much of the
ancient form. In the early years of Elizabeth, every possible diversity
prevailed in parish churches, according to the predilections of rector
and squire; from forms scarcely altered from those of old times, down to
the baldest, rudest neglect of all rites; and Berenger, in his country
home, had been used to the first extreme. He could not believe that what
he heard and saw among the _Sacrementaires_, as they were called, was
what his father had prized; and he greatly scandalized Sidney, the pupil
of Hubert Languet, by openly expressing his distaste and dismay when he
found their worship viewed by both Walsingham and Sidney as a model to
which the English Protestants ought to be brought.

However, Sidney excused all this as more boyish distaste to sermons and
love of externals, and Berenger himself reflected little on the subject.
The aspect of the venerable Coligny, his father’s friend, did far more
towards making him a Huguenot than any discussion of doctrine. The good
old Admiral received him affectionately, and talked to him warmly of his
father, and the grave, noble countenance and kind manner won his heart.
Great projects were on foot, and were much relished by the young King,
for raising an army and striking a blow at Spain by aiding the Reformed
in the Netherlands; and Coligny was as ardent as a youth in the cause,
hoping at once to aid his brethren, to free the young King from evil
influences, and to strike one good stroke against the old national
enemy. He talked eagerly to Sidney of alliances with England, and then
lamented over the loss of so promising a youth as young Ribaumont to the
Reformed cause in France. If the marriage with the heiress could have
taken effect, he would have obtained estates near enough to some of
the main Huguenot strongholds to be very important, and these would now
remain under the power of Narcisse de Ribaumont, a determined ally of
the Guise faction. It was a pity, but the Admiral could not blame the
youth for obeying the wish of his guardian grandfather; and he owned,
with a sigh, that England was a more peaceful land than his own beloved
country. Berenger was a little nettled at this implication, and began to
talk of joining the French standard in a campaign in their present home
and described the conversation, Walsingham said,--

‘The Admiral’s favourite project! He would do wisely not to brag of it
so openly. The King of Spain has too many in his interest in this place
not to be warned, and to be thus further egged on to compass the ruin of
Coligny.’

‘I should have thought,’ said Sidney. ‘that nothing could add to his
hatred of the Reformed.’

‘Scarcely,’ said Walsingham; ‘save that it is they who hinder the Duke
of Guise from being a good Frenchman, and a foe to Spain.’

Politics had not developed themselves in Berenger’s mind, and he
listened inattentively while Walsingham talked over with Sidney the
state of parties in France, where natural national enmity to Spain was
balanced by the need felt by the Queen-mother of the support of that
great Roman Catholic power against the Huguenots; whom Walsingham
believed her to dread and hate less for their own sake than from the
fear of loss of influence over her son. He believed Charles IX. himself
to have much leaning towards the Reformed, but the late victories has
thrown the whole court entirely into the power of the Guises, the truly
unscrupulous partisans of Rome. They were further inflamed against the
Huguenots by the assassination of the last Duke of Guise, and by the
violences that had been committed by some of the Reformed party, in
especial a massacre of prisoners at _Nerac_.

Sidney exclaimed that the Huguenots had suffered far worse cruelties.

‘That is true,’ replied Sir Francis, ‘but, my young friend, you will
find, in all matters of reprisals, that a party has no memory for what
it may commit, only for what it may receive.’

The conversation was interrupted by an invitation to the Ambassador’s
family and guests to a tilting-match and subsequent ball at the Louvre.
In the first Berenger did his part with credit; to the second he went
feeling full of that strange attraction of repulsion. He knew gentlemen
enough in Coligny’s suite for it to be likely that he might remain
unperceived among them, and he knew this would be prudent, but he found
himself unexpectedly near the ranks of ladies, and smile and gesture
absolutely drew him towards his semi-spouse, so that he had no
alternative but to lead her out to dance.

The stately measure was trod in silence as usual, but he felt the dark
eyes studying him all the time. However, he could bear it better now
that the deed was done, and she had voluntarily made him less to her
than any gallant parading or mincing about the room.

‘So you bear the pearls, sir?’ she said, as the dance finished.

‘The only heirloom I shall take with me,’ he said.

‘Is a look at them too great a favour to ask from their jealous
guardian?’ she asked.

He smiled, half ashamed of his own annoyance at being obliged to place
them in her hands. He was sure she would try to cajole him out of them,
and by way of asserting his property in them he did not detach them from
the band of his black velvet cap, but gave it with them into her hand.
She looked at each one, and counted them wistfully.

‘Seventeen!’ she said;’ and how beautiful! I never saw them so near
before. They are so becoming to that fair cheek that I suppose no offer
from my--my uncle, on our behalf, would induce you to part with them?’

An impulse of open-handed gallantry would have made him answer, ‘No
offer from your uncle, but a simple request from you;’ but he thought in
time of the absurdity of returning without them, and merely answered,
‘I have no right to yield them, fair lady. They are the witness to my
forefather’s fame and prowess.’

‘Yes, sir, and to those of mine also,’ she replied. ‘And you would take
them over to the enemy from whom that prowess extorted them?’

‘The country which honoured and rewarded that prowess!’ replied
Berenger.

She looked at him with an interrogative glance of surprise at the
readiness of his answer; then, with half a sigh, said, ‘There are your
pearls, sir; I cannot establish our right, though I verily believe it
was the cause of our last quarrel;’ and she smiled archly.

‘I believe it was,’ he said, gravely; but added, in the moment of relief
at recovering the precious heirloom, ‘though it was Diane who inspired
you to seize upon them.’

‘Ah! poor Diane! you sometimes recollect her then? If I remember right,
you used to agree with her better than with your little spouse, cousin!’

‘If I quarrelled with her less, I liked her less,’ answered
Berenger--who, since the act of separation, had not been so guarded in
his demeanour, and began to give way to his natural frankness.

‘Indeed! Diane would be less gratified than I ought to be. And why, may
I ask?’

‘Diane was more caressing, but she had no truth.’

‘Truth! that was what _feu_ M. le Baron ever talked of; what Huguenots
weary one with.’

‘And the only thing worth seeking, the real pearl,’ said Berenger,
‘without which all else is worthless.’

‘Ah!’ she said, ‘who would have thought that soft, youthful face could
be so severe! You would never forgive a deceit?’

‘Never,’ he said, with the crystal hardness of youth; ‘or rather I might
forgive; I could never esteem.’

‘What a bare, rude world yours must be,’ she said, shivering. ‘And no
weak ones in it! Only the strong can dare to be true.’

‘Truth is strength!’ said Berenger. ‘For example: I see yonder a face
without bodily strength, perhaps, but with perfect candour.’

‘Ah! some Huguenot girl of Madame Catherine’s, no doubt--from the depths
of Languedoc, and dressed like a fright.’

‘No, no; the young girl behind the pale, yellow-haired lady.’

‘Comment, Monsieur. Do you not yet know the young Queen?’

‘But who is the young demoiselle!--she with the superb black eyes, and
the ruby rose in her black hair?’

‘Take care, sir, do you not know I have still a right to be jealous?’
she said, blushing, bridling, and laughing.

But this pull on the cords made him the more resolved; he would not be
turned from his purpose. ‘Who is she?’ he repeated; ‘have I ever seen
her before? I am sure I remember that innocent look of _espieglerie_.’

‘You may see it on any child’s face fresh out of the convent; it does
not last a month!’ was the still displeased, rather jealous answer.
‘That little thing--I believe they call her Nid-de-Merle--she has only
just been brought from her nunnery to wait on the young Queen. Ah! your
gaze was perilous, it is bringing on you one of the jests of Madame
Marguerite.’

With laughter and gaiety, a troop of gentlemen descended on M. de
Ribaumont, and told him that Madame Marguerite desired that he should be
presented to her. The princess was standing by her pale sister-in-law,
Elizabeth of Austria, who looked grave and annoyed at the mischievous
mirth flashing in Marguerite’s dark eyes.

‘M. de Ribaumont,’ said the latter, her very neck heaving with
suppressed fun, ‘I see I cannot do you a greater favour than by giving
you Mademoiselle de Nid-de-Merle for your partner.’

Berenger was covered with confusion to find that he had been guilty of
such a fixed stare as to bring all this upon the poor girl. He feared
that his vague sense of recognition had made his gaze more open than he
knew, and he was really and deeply ashamed of this as his worst act of
provincial ill-breeding.

Poor little convent maid, with crimson cheeks, flashing eyes, panting
bosom, and a neck evidently aching with proud dignity and passion, she
received his low bow with a sweeping curtsey, as lofty as her little
person would permit.

His cheeks burnt like fire, and he would have found words to apologize,
but she cut him short by saying, hastily and low, ‘Not a word, Monsieur!
Let us go through it at once. No one shall make game of us.’

He hardly durst look at her again; but as he went through his own
elaborate paces he knew that the little creature opposite was swimming,
bending, turning, bounding with the fluttering fierceness of an angry
little bird, and that the superb eyes were casting flashes on him that
seemed to carry him back to days of early boyhood.

Once he caught a mortified, pleading, wistful glance that made him feel
as if he had inflicted a cruel injury by his thoughtless gaze, and he
resolved to plead the sense of recognition in excuse; but no sooner
was the performance over than she prevented all conversation by saying,
‘Lead me back at once to the Queen, sir; she is about to retire.’ They
were already so near that there was no time to say anything; he could
only hold as lightly as possible the tiny fingers that he felt burning
and quivering in his hand, and then, after bringing her to the side of
the chair of state, he was forced to release her with the mere whisper
of ‘Pardon, Mademoiselle;’ and the request was not replied to, save by
the additional stateliness of her curtsey.

It was already late, and the party was breaking up; but his head
and heart were still in a whirl when he found himself seated in the
ambassadorial coach, hearing Lady Walsingham’s well-pleased rehearsal of
all the compliments she had received on the distinguished appearance
of both her young guests. Sidney, as the betrothed of her daughter, was
property of her own; but she also exulted in the praises of the young
Lord de Ribaumont, as proving the excellence of the masters whom she
had recommended to remove the rustic clownishness of which he had been
accused.

‘Nay,’ said Sir Francis; ‘whoever called him too clownish for court
spake with design.’

The brief sentence added to Berenger’s confused sense of being in a
mist of false play. Could his kinsman be bent on keeping him from
court? Could Narcisse be jealous of him? Mademoiselle de Ribaumont was
evidently inclined to seek him, and her cousin might easily think her
lands safer in his absence. He would have been willing to hold aloof as
much as his uncle and cousin could wish, save for an angry dislike to
being duped and cajoled; and, moreover, a strong curiosity to hear and
see more of that little passionate bird, fresh from the convent cage.
Her gesture and her eyes irresistibly carried him back to old times,
though whether to an angry blackbird in the yew-tree alleys at Leurre,
or to the eager face that had warned him to save his father, he could
not remember with any distinctness. At any rate, he was surprised to
find himself thinking so little in comparison about the splendid beauty
and winning manners of his discarded spouse, though he quite believed
that, now her captive was beyond her grasp, she was disposed to catch
at him again, and try to retain him, or, as his titillated vanity might
whisper, his personal graces might make her regret the family resolution
which she had obeyed.




CHAPTER VI. FOULLY COZENED



      I was the more deceived.--HAMLET


The unhappy Charles IX. had a disposition that in good hands might have
achieved great nobleness; and though cruelly bound and trained to evil,
was no sooner allowed to follow its natural bent than it reached out
eagerly towards excellence. At this moment, it was his mother’s policy
to appear to leave the ascendancy to the Huguenot party, and he was
therefore allowed to contract friendships which deceived the intended
victims the more completely, because his admiration and attachment were
spontaneous and sincere. Philip Sidney’s varied accomplishment and pure
lofty character greatly attracted the young King, who had leant on his
arm conversing during great part of the ball, and the next morning
sent a royal messenger to invite the two young gentlemen to a part at
pall-mall in the Tuileries gardens.

Pall-mall was either croquet or its nearest relative, and was so
much the fashion that games were given in order to keep up political
influence, perhaps, because the freedom of a garden pastime among groves
and bowers afforded opportunities for those seductive arts on which
Queen Catherine placed so much dependence. The formal gardens, with
their squares of level turf and clipped alleys, afforded excellent scope
both for players and spectators, and numerous games had been set on
foot, from all of which, however, Berenger contrived to exclude himself,
in his restless determination to find out the little Demoiselle de
Nid-de-Merle, or, at least, to discover whether any intercourse in early
youth accounted for his undefined sense of remembrance.

He interrogated the first disengaged person he could find, but it was
only the young Abbe de Mericour, who had been newly brought up from
Dauphine by his elder brother to solicit a benefice, and who knew
nobody. To him ladies were only bright phantoms such as his books had
taught him to regard like the temptations of St. Anthony, but whom he
actually saw treated with as free admiration by the ecclesiastic as by
the layman.

Suddenly a clamour of voices arose on the other side of the
closely-clipped wall of limes by which the two youths were walking.
There were the clear tones of a young maiden expostulating in indignant
distress, and the bantering, indolent determination of a male annoyer.

‘Hark!’ exclaimed Berenger; ‘this must be seen to.’

‘Have a care,’ returned Mericour; ‘I have heard that a man needs look
twice are meddling.’

Scarcely hearing, Berenger strode on as he had done at the last village
wake, when he had rescued Cis of the Down from the impertinence of a
Dorchester scrivener. It was a like case, he saw, when breaking
through the arch of clipped limed he beheld the little Demoiselle de
Nid-de-Merle, driven into a corner and standing at bay, with glowing
cheeks, flashing eyes, and hands clasped over her breast, while a young
man, dressed in the extreme of foppery, was assuring her that she was
the only lady who had not granted him a token--that he could not allow
such _pensionnaire_ airs, and that now he had caught her he would have
his revenge, and win her rose-coloured break-knot. Another gentleman
stood by, laughing, and keeping guard in the walk that led to the more
frequented part of the gardens.

‘Hold!’ thundered Berenger.

The assailant had just mastered the poor girl’s hand, but she took
advantage of his surprise to wrench it away and gather herself up as
for a spring, but the Abbe in dismay, the attendant in anger, cried out,
‘Stay--it is Monsieur.’

‘Monsieur; be he who he may,’ exclaimed Berenger, ‘no honest man can see
a lady insulted.’

‘Are you mad? It is Monsieur the Duke of Anjou,’ said Mericour, pouncing
on his arm.

‘Shall we have him to the guardhouse?’ added the attendant, coming up on
the other side; but Henri de Valois waved them both back, and burst
into a derisive laugh. ‘No, no; do you not see who it is? Monsieur the
English Baron still holds the end of the halter. His sale is not yet
made. Come away, D’O, he will soon have enough on his hands without
us. Farewell, fair lady, another time you will be free of your jealous
giant.’

So saying, the Duke of Anjou strolled off, feigning indifference and
contempt, and scarcely heeding that he had been traversed in one of the
malicious adventures which he delighted to recount in public before the
discomfited victim herself, often with shameful exaggeration.

The girl clasped her hands over her brow with a gesture of dismay, and
cried, ‘Oh! if you have only not touched your sword.’

‘Let me have the honour of reconducting you, Mademoiselle,’ said
Berenger, offering his hand; but after the first sigh of relief, a
tempestuous access seized her. She seemed about to dash away his
hand, her bosom swelled with resentment, and with a voice striving for
dignity, though choked with strangled tears, she exclaimed, ‘No, indeed!
Had not M. le Baron forsaken me, I had never been thus treated!’ and her
eyes flashed through their moisture.

‘Eustacie! You are Eutacie!’

‘Whom would you have me to be otherwise? I have the honour to wish M. le
Baron a good morning.’

‘Eustacie! Stay! Hear me! It concerns my honour. I see it is you--but
whom have I seen? Who was she?’ he cried, half wild with dismay and
confusion. ‘Was it Diane?’

‘You have seen and danced with Diane de Ribaumont,’ answered Eustacie,
still coldly; ‘but what of that? Let me go, Monsieur; you have cast me
off already.’

‘I! when all this has been of your own seeking?’

‘Mine?’ cried Eustacie, panting with the struggle between her dignity
and her passionate tears. ‘I meddled not. I heard that M. le Baron was
gone to a strange land, and had written to break off old ties.’ Her face
was in a flame, and her efforts for composure absolute pain.

‘I!’ again exclaimed Berenger. ‘The first letter came from your uncle,
declaring that it was your wish!’ And as her face changed rapidly, ‘Then
it was not true! He has not had your consent?’

‘What! would I hold to one who despised me--who came here and never even
asked to see this hated spouse!’

I did! I entreated to see you. I would not sign the application
till--Oh, there has been treachery! And have they made you too sign it!’

When they showed me your name they were welcome to mine.’

Berenger struck his forehead with wrath and perplexity, then cried,
joyfully, ‘It will not stand for moment. So foul a cheat can be at once
exposed. Eutacie, you know--you understand, that it was not you but
Diane whom I saw and detested; and no wonder, when she was acting such a
cruel treason!’

‘Oh no, Diane would never so treat me,’ cried Eustacie. ‘I see how it
was! You did not know that my father was latterly called Marquis de
Nid-de-Merle, and when they brought me here, they WOULD call me after
him: they said a maid of honour must be Demoiselle, and my uncle said
there was only one way in which I could remain Madame de Ribaumont! And
the name must have deceived you. Thou wast always a great dull boy,’ she
added, with a sudden assumption of childish intimacy that annihilated
the nine years since their parting.

‘Had I seen thee, I had not mistaken for an instant. This little face
stirred my heart; hers repelled me. And she deceived me wittingly,
Eustacie, for I asked after her by name.’

‘Ah, she wished to spare my embarrassment. And then her brother must
have dealt with her.’

‘I see,’ exclaimed Berenger, ‘I am to be palmed off thus that thou
mayest be reserved for Narcisse. Tell me, Eustacie, wast thou willing?’

‘I hate Narcisse!’ she cried. ‘But oh, I am lingering too long. Monsieur
will make some hateful tale! I never fell into his way before, my Queen
and Madame la Comtesse are so careful. Only to-day, as I was attending
her alone, the King came and gave her his arm, and I had to drop behind.
I must find her; I shall be missed,’ she added, in sudden alarm. ‘Oh,
what will they say?’

‘No blame for being with thy husband,’ he answered, clasping her hand.
‘Thou art mine henceforth. I will soon cut our way out of the web thy
treacherous kindred have woven. Meantime---’

‘Hush! There are voices,’ cried Eustacie in terror, and, guided by
something he could not discern, she fled with the swiftness of a bird
down the alley. Following, with the utmost speed that might not bear
the appearance of pursuit, he found that on coming to the turn she
had moderated her pace, and was more tranquilly advancing to a bevy
of ladies, who sat perched on the stone steps like great butterflies
sunning themselves, watching the game, and receiving the attentions of
their cavaliers. He saw her absorbed into the group, and then began to
prowl round it, in the alleys, in a tumult of amazement and indignation.
He had been shamefully deceived and cheated, and justice he would have!
He had been deprived of a thing of his own, and he would assert his
right. He had been made to injure and disown the creature he was bound
to protect, and he must console her and compensate to her, were it only
to redeem his honour. He never even thought whether he loved her;
he merely felt furious at the wrong he had suffered and been made to
commit, and hotly bent on recovering what belonged to him. He might even
have plunged down among the ladies and claimed her as his wife, if the
young Abbe de Mericour, who was two years older than he, and far less
of a boy for his years, had not joined him in his agitated walk. He then
learnt that all the court knew that the daughter of the late Marquis
de Nid-de-Merle, Comte de Ribaumont, was called by his chief title, but
that her marriage to himself had been forgotten by some and unknown to
others, and thus that the first error between the cousins had not been
wonderful in a stranger, since the Chevalier’s daughter had always been
Mdlle. de Ribaumont. The error once made, Berenger’s distaste to Diane
had been so convenient that it had been carefully encouraged, and the
desire to keep him at a distance from court and throw him into the
background was accounted for. The Abbe was almost as indignant as
Berenger, and assured him both of his sympathy and his discretion.

‘I see no need for discretion,’ said Berenger. ‘I shall claim my wife in
the face of the sun.’

‘Take counsel first, I entreat,’ exclaimed Mericour. ‘The Ribaumonts
have much influence with the Guise family, and now you have offended
Monsieur.’

‘Ah! Where are those traitorous kinsmen?’ cried Berenger.

‘Fortunately all are gone on an expedition with the Queen-mother.
You will have time to think. I have heard my brother say no one ever
prospered who offended the meanest follower of the house of Lorraine.’

‘I do not want prosperity, I only want my wife. I hope I shall never see
Paris and its deceivers again.’

‘Ah! But is it true that you have applied to have the marriage annulled
at Rome?’

‘We were both shamefully deceivers. That can be nothing.’

‘A decree of his Holiness: you a Huguenot; she an heiress. All is
against you. My friend, be cautions, exclaimed the young ecclesiastic,
alarmed by his passionate gestures. ‘To break forth now and be accused
of brawling in the palace precincts would be fatal--fatal--most fatal!’

‘I am as calm as possible,’ returned Berenger. ‘I mean to act most
reasonably. I shall stand before the King and tell him openly how I have
been tamperes with, demanding my wife before the whole court.’

‘Long before you could get so far the ushers would have dragged you away
for brawling, or for maligning an honour-able gentlemen. You would have
to finish your speech in the Bastille, and it would be well if even your
English friends could get you out alive.’

‘Why, what a place is this!’ began Berenger; but again Mericour
entreated him to curb himself; and his English education had taught
him to credit the house of Guide with so much mysterious power and
wickedness, that he allowed himself to be silenced, and promised to take
no open measures till he had consulted the Ambassador.

‘He could not obtain another glimpse of Eustacie, and the hours passed
tardily till the break up of the party. Charles could scarcely release
Sidney from his side, and only let him go on condition that he should
join the next day in an expedition to the hunting chateau of Montpipeau,
to which the King seemed to look forward as a great holiday and
breathing time.

When at length the two youths did return, Sir Francis Walsingham was
completely surprised by the usually tractable, well-behaved stripling,
whose praises he had been writing to his old friend, bursting in on him
with the outcry, ‘Sir, sir, I entreat your counsel! I have been foully
cozened.’

‘Of how much?’ said Sir Francis, in a tone of reprobation.

‘Of my wife. Of mine honour. Sir, your Excellency, I crave pardon, if I
spoke too hotly,’ said Berenger, collecting himself; ‘but it is enough
to drive a man to frenzy.’

‘Sit down, my Lord de Ribaumont. Take breath, and let me know what is
this coil. What hath thus moved him, Mr. Sidney?’

‘It is as he says, sir,’ replied Sidney, who had beard all as they
returned; ‘he has been greatly wronged. The Chevalier de Ribaumont not
only writ to propose the separation without the lady’s knowledge, but
imposed his own daughter on our friend as the wife he had not seen since
infancy.’

‘There, sir,’ broke forth Berenger; ‘surely if I claim mine own in the
face of day, no man can withhold her from me!’

‘Hold!’ said Sir Francis. ‘What mean this passion, young sir? Methought
you came hither convinced that both the religion and the habits in which
the young lady had been bred up rendered your infantine contract most
unsuitable. What hath fallen out to make this change in your mind?’

‘That I was cheated, sir. The lady who palmed herself off on me as my
wife was a mere impostor, the Chevalier’s own daughter!’

‘That may be; but what known you of this other lady? Has she been bred
up in faith or manners such as your parents would have your wife?’

‘She is my wife,’ reiterated Berenger. ‘My faith is plighted to her.
That is enough for me.’

Sir Francis made a gesture of despair. ‘He has seen her, I suppose,’
said he to Sidney.

‘Yes truly, sir,’ answered Berenger; ‘and found that she had been as
greatly deceived as myself.’

‘Then mutual consent is wanting,’ said the statesman, gravely musing.

‘That is even as I say,’ began Berenger, but Walsingham help up his
hand, and desired that he would make his full statement in the presence
of his tutor. Then sounding a little whistle, the Ambassador despatched
a page to request the attendance of Mr. Adderley, and recommended young
Ribaumont in the meantime to compose himself.

Used to being under authority as Berenger was, the somewhat severe tone
did much to allay his excitement, and remind him that right and reason
were so entirely on his side, that he had only to be cool and rational
to make them prevail. He was thus able to give a collected and coherent
account of his discovery that the part of his wife had been assumed by
her cousin Diane, and that the signature of both the young pair to the
application to the Pope had been obtained on false pretences. That he
had, as Sidney said, been foully cozened, in both senses of the word,
was as clear as daylight; but he was much angered and disappointed to
find that neither the Ambassador nor his tutor could see that Eustacie’s
worthiness was proved by the iniquity of her relation, or that any one
of the weighty reasons for the expediency of dissolving the marriage was
remove. The whole affair had been in such good train a little before,
that Mr. Adderley was much distressed that it should thus have been
crossed, and thought the new phase of affairs would be far from
acceptable at Combe Walwyn.

‘Whatever is just and honourable must be acceptable to my grandfather,’
said Berenger.

‘Even so,’ said Walsingham; ‘but it were well to consider whether
justice and honour require you to overthrow the purpose wherewith he
sent you hither.’

‘Surely, sir, justice and require me to fulfil a contract to which the
other party is constant,’ said Berenger, feeling very wise and prudent
for calling that wistful, indignant creature the other party.

‘That is also true,’ said the Ambassador, ‘provided she be constant; but
you own that she signed the requisition for the dissolution.’

‘She did so, but under the same deception as myself, and further
mortified and aggrieved at my seeming faithlessness.’

‘So it may easily be represented,’ muttered Walsingham.

‘How, sir?’ cried Berenger, impetuously; ‘do you doubt her truth?’

‘Heaven forefend,’ said Sir Francis, ‘that I should discuss any
fair lady’s sincerity! The question is how far you are bound. Have I
understood you that you are veritably wedded, not by a mere contract of
espousal?’

‘Berenger could produce no documents, for they had been left at Chateau
Leurre, and on his father’s death the Chevalier had claimed the custody
of them; but he remembered enough of the ceremonial to prove that the
wedding had been a veritable one, and that only the papal intervention
could annul it.

Indeed an Englishman, going by English law, would own no power in the
Pope, nor any one on earth, to sever the sacred tie of wedlock; but
French courts of law would probably ignore the mode of application, and
would certainly endeavour to separate between a Catholic and a heretic.

‘I am English, sir, in heart and faith,’ said Berenger, earnestly. ‘Look
upon me as such, and tell me, am I married or single at this moment?’

‘Married assuredly. More’s the pity,’ said Sir Francis.

‘And no law of God or man divides us without our own consent.’ There was
no denying that the mutual consent of the young pair at their present
age was all that was wanting to complete the inviolability of their
marriage contract.

Berenger was indeed only eighteen, and Eustacie more than a year
younger, but there was nothing in their present age to invalidate their
marriage, for persons of their rank were usually wedded quite as
young or younger. Walsingham was only concerned at his old friend’s
disappointment, and at the danger of the young man running headlong into
a connection probably no more suitable than that with Diane de Ribaumont
would have been. But it was not convenient to argue against the
expediency of a man’s loving his own wife; and when Berenger boldly
declared he was not talking of love but of justice, it was only possible
to insist that he should pause and see where true justice lay.

And thus the much-perplexed Ambassador broke up the conference with his
hot and angry young guest.

‘And Mistress Lucy---?’ sighed Mr. Adderley, in rather an _inapropos_
fashion it must be owned; but then he had been fretted beyond endurance
by his pupil striding up and down his room, reviling Diane, and
describing Eustacie, while he was trying to write these uncomfortable
tidings to Lord Walwyn.

‘Lucy! What makes you bring her up to me?’ exclaimed Berenger. ‘Little
Dolly would be as much to the purpose!’

‘Only, sir, no resident at Hurst Walwyn could fail to know that has been
planned and desired.’

‘Pshaw!’ cries Berenger; ‘have you not heard that it was a mere figment,
and that I could scarce have wedded Lucy safely, even had this matter
gone as you wish? This is the luckiest chance that could have befallen
her.’

‘That may be,’ said Mr. Adderley; ‘I wish she may think so--sweet young
lady!’

‘I tell you, Mr. Adderley, you should know better! Lucy has more sense.
My aunt, whom she follows more than any other creature, ever silenced
the very sport or semblance of love passages between us even as
children, by calling them unseemly in one wedded as I am. Brother and
sister we have ever been, and have loved as such--ay, and shall! I know
of late some schemes have crossed my mother’s mind---’

‘Yea, and that of others.’

‘But they have not ruffled Lucy’s quiet nature--trust me! And for the
rest? What doth she need me in comparison of this poor child? She--like
a bit of her own gray lavender in the shadiest nook of the walled
garden, tranquil there--sure not to be taken there, save to company
with fine linen in some trim scented coffer, whilst this fresh glowing
rosebud has grown up pure and precious in the very midst of the foulest
corruption Christendom can show, and if I snatch her not from it, I,
the innocence and sweetness, what is to be her fate? The very pity of a
Christian, the honour of a gentleman, would urge me, even if it were not
my most urgent duty!’

‘Mr. Adderley argued no more. When Berenger came to his duty in the
matter he was invincible, and moreover all the more provoking, because
he mentioned it with a sort of fiery sound of relish, and looked so very
boyish all the time. Poor Mr. Adderley!’ feeling as if his trust were
betrayed, loathing the very idea of a French court lady, saw that his
pupil had been allured into a headlong passion to his own misery,
and that of all whose hopes were set on him, yet preached to by this
stripling scholar about duties and sacred obligations! Well might he rue
the day he ever set foot in Paris.

Then, to his further annoyance, came a royal messenger to invite the
Baron de Ribaumont to join the expedition to Montpipeau. Of course he
must go, and his tutor must be left behind, and who could tell into what
mischief he might not be tempted!

Here, however, Sidney gave the poor chaplain some comfort. He believed
that no ladies were to be of the party, and that the gentlemen were
chiefly of the King’s new friends among the Huguenots, such as Coligny,
his son-in-law Teligny, Rochefoucauld, and the like, among whom the
young gentleman could not fall into any very serious harm, and might
very possibly be influenced against a Roman Catholic wife. At any rate,
he would be out of the way, and unable to take any dangerous steps.

This same consideration so annoyed Berenger that he would have declined
the invitation, if royal invitations could have been declined. And in
the morning, before setting out, he dressed himself point device, and
with Osbert behind him marched down to the Croix de Larraine, to call
upon the Chevalier de Ribaumont. He had a very fine speech at his
tongue’s end when he set out, but a good deal of it had evaporated when
he reached the hotel, and perhaps he was not very sorry not to find the
old gentleman within.

On his return, he indited a note to the Chevalier, explaining that he
had now seen his wife, Madame la Baronne de Ribaumont, and had come to
an understanding with her, by which he found that it was under a mistake
that the application to the Pope had been signed, and that they should,
therefore, follow it up with a protest, and act as if no such letter had
been sent.

Berenger showed this letter to Walsingham, who, though much concerned,
could not forbid his sending it. ‘Poor lad,’ he said to the tutor; ‘’tis
an excellently writ billet for one so young. I would it were in a wiser
cause. But he has fairly the bit between his teeth, and there is no
checking him while he has this show of right on his side.’

And poor Mr. Adderley could only beseech Mr. Sidney to take care of him.




CHAPTER VII. THE QUEEN’S PASTORAL



     Either very gravely gay,
     Or very gaily grave,
            --W. M. PRAED


Montpipeau, though in the present day a suburb of Paris, was in the
sixteenth century far enough from the city to form a sylvan retreat,
where Charles IX, could snatch a short respite from the intrigues of his
court, under pretext of enjoying his favourite sport. Surrounded with
his favoured associates of the Huguenot party, he seemed to breathe
a purer atmosphere, and to yield himself up to enjoyment greater than
perhaps his sad life had ever known.

He rode among his gentlemen, and the brilliant cavalcade passed through
poplar-shaded roads, clattered through villages, and threaded their
way through bits of forest still left for the royal chase. The people
thronged out of their houses, and shouted not only ‘Vive le Roy,’ but
‘Vive l’Amiral,’ and more than once the cry was added, ‘Spanish war, or
civil war!’ The heart of France was, if not with the Reformed, at
least against Spain and the Lorrainers, and Sidney perceived, from the
conversation of the gentlemen round him, that the present expedition had
been devised less for the sake of the sport, than to enable the King to
take measures for emancipating himself from the thraldom of his mother,
and engaging the country in a war against Philip II. Sidney listened,
but Berenger chafed, feeling only that he was being further carried out
of reach of his explanation with his kindred. And thus they arrived
at Montpipeau, a tower, tall and narrow, like all French designs, but
expanded on the ground floor by wooden buildings capable of containing
the numerous train of a royal hunter, and surrounded by an extent of
waste land, without fine trees, though with covert for deer, boars, and
wolves sufficient for sport to royalty and death to peasantry. Charles
seemed to sit more erect in his saddle, and to drink in joy with every
breath of the thyme-scented breeze, from the moment his horse bounded
on the hollow-sounding turf; and when he leapt to the ground, with the
elastic spring of youth, he held out his hands to Sidney and to Teligny,
crying ‘Welcome, my friends. Here I am indeed a king!’

It was a lovely summer evening, early in August, and Charles bade the
supper to be spread under the elms that shaded a green lawn in front
of the chateau. Etiquette was here so far relaxed as to permit the
sovereign to dine with his suite, and tables, chairs, and benches were
brought out, drapery festooned in the trees to keep off sun and wind,
the King lay down in the fern and let his happy dogs fondle him, and
as a hers-girl passed along a vista in the distance, driving her goats
before her, Philip Sidney marvelled whether it was not even thus in
Arcadia.

Presently there was a sound of horses trampling, wheels moving, a party
of gaily gilded archers of the guard jingled up, and in their midst
was a coach. Berenger’s heart seemed to leap at once to his lips, as a
glimpse of ruffs, hats, and silks dawned on him through the windows.

The king rose from his lair among the fern, the Admiral stood forward,
all heads were bared, and from the coach-door alighted the young Queen;
no longer pale, subdued, and indifferent, but with a face shining with
girlish delight, as she held out her hand to the Admiral. ‘Ah! This is
well, this is beautiful,’ she exclaimed; ‘it is like our happy chases
in the Tyrol. Ah, Sire!’ to the King, ‘how I thank you for letting me be
with you.’

After her Majesty descended her gentleman-usher. Then came the
lady-in-waiting, Madame de Sauve, the wife of the state secretary in
attendance on Charles, and a triumphant, coquettish beauty, than a fat,
good-humoured Austrian dame, always called Madame la Comtesse, because
her German name was unpronounceable, and without whom the Queen never
stirred, and lastly a little figure, rounded yet slight, slender yet
soft and plump, with a kitten-like alertness and grace of motion, as
she sprang out, collected the Queen’s properties of fan, kerchief,
pouncet-box, mantle, &c., and disappeared in to the chateau, without
Berenger’s being sure of anything but that her little black hat had a
rose-coloured feather in it.

The Queen was led to a chair placed under one of the largest trees, and
there Charles presented to her such of his gentlemen as she was not yet
acquainted with, the Baron de Ribaumont among the rest.

‘I have heard of M. de Ribaumont,’ she said, in a tone that made
the colour mantle in his fair cheek; and with a sign of her hand she
detained him at her side till the King had strolled away with Madame la
Sauve, and no one remained near but her German countess. Then changing
her tone to one of confidence, which the high-bred homeliness of her
Austrian manner rendered inexpressibly engaging, she said, ‘I must
apologize, Monsieur, for the giddiness of my sister-in-law, which I fear
caused you some embarrassment.’

‘Ah, Madame,’ said Berenger, kneeling on one knee as she addressed him,
and his heart bounding with wild, undefined hope, ‘I cannot be grateful
enough. It was that which led to my being undeceived.’

‘It was true, then, that you were mistaken?’ said the Queen.

‘Treacherously deceived, Madame, by those whose interest it is to keep
us apart,’ said Berenger, colouring with indignation; ‘they imposed
my other cousin on me as my wife, and caused her to think me cruelly
neglectful.’

‘I know,’ said the Queen. ‘Yet Mdlle. de Ribaumont is far more admired
than my little blackbird.’

‘That may be, Madame, but not by me.’

‘Yet is it true that you came to break off the marriage?’

‘Yes, Madame,’ said Berenger, honestly, ‘but I had not seen her.’

‘And now?’ said the Queen, smiling.

‘I would rather die than give her up,’ said Berenger. ‘Oh, Madame, help
us of your grace. Every one is trying to part us, every one is arguing
against us, but she is my own true wedded wife, and if you will but give
her to me, all will be well.’

‘I like you, M. de Ribaumont,’ said the Queen, looking him full in the
face. ‘You are like our own honest Germans at my home, and I think you
mean all you say. I had much rather my dear little Nid de Merle were
with you than left here, to become like all the others. She is a good
little _Liegling_,--how do you call it in French? She has told me all,
and truly I would help you with all my heart, but it is not as if I
were the Queen-mother. You must have recourse to the King, who loves you
well, and at my request included you in the hunting-party.’

Berenger could only kiss her hand in token of earnest thanks before the
repast was announced, and the King came to lead her to the table spread
beneath the trees. The whole party supped together, but Berenger could
have only a distant view of his little wife, looking very demure and
grave by the side of the Admiral.

But when the meal was ended, there was a loitering in the woodland
paths, amid healthy openings or glades trimmed into discreet wildness
fit for royal rusticity; the sun set in parting glory on one horizon,
the moon rising in crimson majesty on the other. A musician at intervals
touched the guitar, and sang Spanish or Italian airs, whose soft or
quaint melody came dreamily through the trees. Then it was that with
beating heart Berenger stole up to the maiden as she stood behind the
Queen, and ventured to whisper her name and clasp her hand.

She turned, their eyes met, and she let him lead her apart into the
wood. It was not like a lover’s tryst, it was more like the continuation
of their old childish terms, only that he treated her as a thing of his
own, that he was bound to secure and to guard, and she received him as
her own lawful but tardy protector, to be treated with perfect reliance
but with a certain playful resentment.

‘You will not run away from me now,’ he said, making full prize of her
hand and arm.

‘Ah! is not she the dearest and best of queens?’ and the large eyes were
lifted up to him in such frank seeking of sympathy that he could see
into the depths of their clear darkness.

‘It is her doing then. Though, Eustacie, when I knew the truth, not
flood nor fire should keep me long from you, my heart, my love, my
wife.’

‘What! wife in spite of those villainous letter?’ she said, trying to
pout.

‘Wife for ever, inseparably! Only you must be able to swear that you
knew nothing of the one that brought me here.’

‘Poor me! No, indeed! There was Celine carried off at fourteen, Madame
de Blanchet a bride at fifteen; all marrying hither and thither; and
I--’ she pulled a face irresistibly droll--‘I growing old enough to
dress St. Catherine’s hair, and wondering where was M. le Baron.’

‘They thought me too young,’ said Berenger, ‘to take on me the cares of
life.’

‘So they were left to me?’

‘Cares! What cares have you but finding the Queen’s fan?’

‘Little you know!’ she said, half contemptuous, half mortified.

‘Nay, pardon me, _ma mie_. Who has troubled you?’

‘Ah! you would call it nothing to be beset by Narcisse; to be told one’s
husband is faithless, till one half believes it; to be looked at by ugly
eyes; to be liable to be teased any day by Monsieur, or worse, by that
mocking ape, M. d’Alecon, and to have nobody who can or will hinder it.’

She was sobbing by this time, and he exclaimed, ‘Ah, would that I could
revenge all! Never, never shall it be again! What blessed grace has
guarded you through all?’

‘Did I not belong to you?’ she said exultingly. ‘And had not Sister
Monique, yes, and M. le Baron, striven hard to make me good? Ah, how
kind he was!’

‘My father? Yes, Eustacie, he loved you to the last. He bade me, on his
deathbed, give you his own Book of Psalms, and tell you he had always
loved and prayed for you.’

‘Ah! his Psalms! I shall love them! Even at Bellaise, when first we came
there, we used to sing them, but the Mother Abbess went out visiting,
and when she came back she said they were heretical. And Soeur Monique
would not let me say the texts he taught me, but I WOULD not forget
them. I say them often in my heart.’

‘Then,’ he cried joyfully, ‘you will willingly embrace my religion?’

‘Be a Huguenot?’ she said distastefully.

‘I am not precisely a Huguenot; I do not love them,’ he answered
hastily; ‘but all shall be made clear to you at my home in England.’

‘England!’ she said. ‘Must we live in England? Away from every one?’

‘Ah, they will love so much! I shall make you so happy there,’ he
answered. ‘There you will see what it is to be true and trustworthy.’

‘I had rather live at Chateau Leurre, or my own Nid de Merle,’ she
replied. ‘There I should see Soeur Monique, and my aunt, the Abbess,
and we would have the peasants to dance in the castle court. Oh! if
you could but see the orchards at Le Bocage, you would never want to go
away. And we could come now and then to see my dear Queen.

‘I am glad at least you would not live at court.’

‘Oh, no, I have been more unhappy here than ever I knew could be borne.’

And a very few words from him drew out all that had happened to her
since they parted. Her father had sent her to Bellaise, a convent
founded by the first of the Angevin branch, which was presided over by
his sister, and where Diane was also educated. The good sister Monique
had been mistress of the _pensionnaires_, and had evidently taken much
pains to keep her charge innocent and devout. Diane had been taken to
court about two years before, but Eustacie had remained at the convent
till some three months since, when she had been appointed maid of honour
to the recently-married Queen; and her uncle had fetched her from Anjou,
and had informed her at the same time that her young husband had turned
Englishman and heretic, and that after a few formalities had been
complied with, she would become the wife of her cousin Narcisse. Now
there was no person whom she so much dreaded as Narcisse, and when
Berenger spoke of him as a feeble fop, she shuddered as though she knew
him to have something of the tiger.

‘Do you remember Benoit?’ she said; ‘poor Benoit, who came to Normandy
as my _laquais_? When I went back to Anjou he married a girl from
Leurre, and went to aid his father at the farm. The poor fellow had
imbibed the Baron’s doctrine--he spread it. It was reported that there
was a nest of Huguenots on the estate. My cousin came to break it up
with his _gens d’armes_ O Berenger, he would hear no entreaties, he
had no mercy; he let them assemble on Sunday, that they might be all
together. He fired the house; shot down those who escaped; if a prisoner
were made, gave him up to the Bishop’s Court. Benoit, my poor good
Benoit, who used to lead my palfrey, was first wounded, then tried, and
burnt--burnt in the PLACE at Lucon! I heard Narcisse laugh--laugh as he
talked of the cries of the poor creatures in the conventicler. My own
people, who loved me! I was but twelve years old, but even then the
wretch would pay me a half-mocking courtesy, as one destined to him; and
the more I disdained him and said I belonged to you, the more both he
and my aunt, the Abbess, smiled, as though they had their bird in a
cage; but they left me in peace till my uncle brought me to court, and
then all began again: and when they said you gave me up, I had no hope,
not even of a convent. But ah, it is all over now, and I am so happy!
You are grown so gentle and so beautiful, Berenger, and so much taller
than I ever figured you to myself, and you look as if you could take me
up in your arms, and let no harm happen to me.’

‘Never, never shall it!’ said Berenger, felling all manhood, strength,
and love stir within him, and growing many years in heart in that happy
moment. ‘My sweet little faithful wife, never fear again now you are
mine.’

Alas! poor children. They were a good way from the security they had
begun to fancy for themselves. Early the next morning, Berenger went
in his straightforward way to the King, thanked him, and requested his
sanction for at once producing themselves to the court as Monsieur le
Baron and Madame la Baronne de Ribaumont.

At this Charles swore a great oath, as one in perplexity, and bade him
not go so fast.

‘See here,’ said he, with the rude expletives only too habitual with
him; ‘she is a pretty little girl, and she and her lands are much better
with an honest man like you than with that _pendard_ of a cousin; but
you see he is bent on having her, and he belongs to a cut-throat crew
that halt at nothing. I would not answer for your life, if you tempted
him so strongly to rid himself of you.’

‘My own sword, Sire, can guard my life.’

‘Plague upon your sword! What does the foolish youth think it would
do against half-a-dozen poniards and pistols in a lane black as hell’s
mouth?’

The foolish young WAS thinking how could a king so full of fiery words
and strange oaths bear to make such an avowal respecting his own
capital and his own courtiers. All he could do was to bow and reply,
‘Nevertheless, Sire, at whatever risk, I cannot relinquish my wife; I
would take her at one to the Ambassador’s.’

‘How, sir!’ interrupted Charles, haughtily and angrily, ‘if you
forget that you are a French nobleman still, I should remember it! The
Ambassador may protect his own countrymen-none else.’

‘I entreat your Majesty’s pardon,’ said Berenger, anxious to retract his
false step. ‘It was your goodness and the gracious Queen’s that made me
hope for your sanction.’

‘All the sanction Charles de Valois can give is yours, and welcome,’
said the King, hastily. ‘The sanction of the King of France is another
matter! To say the truth, I see no way out of the affair but
an elopement.’ ‘Sire!’ exclaimed the astonished Berenger, whose
strictly-disciplined education had little prepared him for such counsel.

‘Look you! if I made you known as a wedded pair, the Chevalier and
his son would not only assassinate you, but down on me would come my
brother, and my mother, and M. de Guise and all their crew, veritably
for giving the prize out of the mouth of their satellite, but nominally
for disregarding the Pope, favouring a heretical marriage, and I know
not what, but, as things go here, I should assuredly get the worst of
it; and if you made safely off with your prize, no one could gainsay
you--I need know nothing about it--and lady and lands would be your
without dispute. You might ride off from the skirts of the forest; I
would lead the hunt that way, and the three days’ riding would bring you
to Normady, for you had best cross to England immediately. When she is
one there, owned by your kindred, Monsieur le cousin may gnash his teeth
as he will, he must make the best of it for the sake of the honour of
his house, and you can safely come back and raise her people and yours
to follow the Oriflamme when it takes the field against Spain. What! you
are still discontented? Speak out! Plain speaking is a treat not often
reserved for me.’

‘Sire, I am most grateful for your kindness, but I should greatly prefer
going straightforward.’

‘Peste! Well is it said that a blundering Englishman goes always right
before him! There, then! As your King on the one hand, as the friend who
has brought you and your wife together, sir, it is my command that you
do not compromise me and embroil greater matters than you can understand
by publicly claiming this girl. Privately I will aid you to the best of
my ability; publicly, I command you, for my sake, if you heed not your
own, to be silent!’

Berenger sought out Sidney, who smiled at his surprise.

‘Do you not see,’ he said, ‘that the King is your friend, and would be
very glad to save the lady’s lands from the Guisards, but that he cannot
say so; he can only befriend a Huguenot by stealth.’

‘I would not be such a king for worlds!’

However, Eustacie was enchanted. It was like a prince and princess
in Mere Perinne’s fairy tales. Could they go like a shepherd and
shepherdess? She had no fears-no scruples. Would she not be with her
husband? It was the most charming frolic in the world. So the King
seemed to think it, though he was determined to call it all the Queen’s
doing--the first intrigue of her own, making her like all the rest of
us--the Queen’s little comedy. He undertook to lead the chase as far as
possible in the direction of Normandy, when the young pair might ride on
to an inn, meet fresh horses, and proceed to Chateau Leurre, and thence
to England. He would himself provide a safe-conduct, which, as Berenger
suggested, would represent them as a young Englishman taking home his
young wife. Eustacie wanted at least to masquerade as an Englishwoman,
and played off all the fragments of the language she had caught as a
child, but Berenger only laughed at her, and said they just fitted the
French bride. It was very pretty to laugh at Eustacie; she made such a
droll pretence at pouting with her rosebud lips, and her merry velvety
eyes belied them so drolly.

Such was to be the Queen’s pastoral; but when Elisabeth found the
responsibility so entirely thrown on her, she began to look grave and
frightened. It was no doubt much more than she had intended when she
brought about the meeting between the young people, and the King, who
had planned the elopement, seemed still resolved to make all appear her
affair. She looked all day more like the grave, spiritless being she was
at court than like the bright young rural queen of the evening before,
and she was long in her little oratory chapel in the evening. Berenger,
who was waiting in the hall with the other Huguenot gentlemen, thought
her devotions interminable since they delayed all her ladies. At length,
however, a page came up to him, and said in a low voice, ‘The Queen
desires the presence of M. le Baron de Ribaumont.’

He followed the messenger, and found himself in the little chapel,
before a gaily-adorned altar, and numerous little shrines and niches
round. Sidney would have dreaded a surreptitious attempt to make him
conform, but Berenger had no notion of such perils,--he only saw
that Eustacie was standing by the Queen’s chair, and a kindly-looking
Austrian priest, the Queen’s confessor, held a book in his hand.

The Queen came to meet him. ‘For my sake,’ she said, with all her
sweetness, ‘to ease my mind, I should like to see my little Eustacie
made entirely your own ere you go. Father Meinhard tells me it is safer
that, when the parties were under twelve years old, the troth should be
again exchanged. No other ceremony is needed.’

‘I desire nothing but to have her made indissolubly my own,’ said
Berenger, bowing.

‘And the King permits,’ added Elisabeth.

The King growled out, ‘It is your comedy, Madame; I meddle not.’

The Austrian priest had no common language with Berenger but Latin. He
asked a few questions, and on hearing the answers, declared that the
sacrament of marriage had been complete, but that--as was often done in
such cases--he would once more hear the troth-plight of the young pair.
The brief formula was therefore at once exchanged--the King, when the
Queen looked entreatingly at him, rousing himself to make the bride over
to Berenger. As soon as the vows had been made, in the briefest manner,
the King broke in boisterously: ‘There, you are twice marred, to please
Madame there; but hold your tongues all of you about this scene in the
play.’

Then almost pushing Eustacie over to Berenger, he added, ‘There she is!
Take your wife, sir; but mind, she was as much yours before as she is
now.’

But for all Berenger had said about ‘his wife,’ it was only now that
he really FELT her his own, and became husband rather than lover-man
instead of boy. She was entirely his own now, and he only desired to be
away with her; but some days’ delay was necessary. A chase on the scale
of the one that was to favour their evasion could not be got up without
some notice; and, moreover, it was necessary to procure money, for
neither Sidney nor Ribaumont had more than enough with them for the
needful liberalities to the King’s servants and huntsmen. Indeed
Berenger had spent all that remained in his purse upon the wares of an
Italian pedlar whom he and Eustacie met in the woods, and whose gloves
‘as sweet as fragrant posies,’ fans, scent-boxes, pocket mirrors, Genoa
wire, Venice chains, and other toys, afforded him the mean of making up
the gifts that he wished to carry home to his sisters; and Eustacie’s
counsel was merrily given in the choice. And when the vendor began
with a meaning smile to recommend to the young pair themselves a
little silver-netted heart as a love-token, and it turned out that all
Berenger’s money was gone, so that it could not be bought without
giving up the scented casket destined for Lucy, Eustacie turned with her
sweetest, proudest smile, and said, ‘No, no; I will not have it; what do
we two want with love-tokens now?’

Sidney had taken the youthful and romantic view of the case, and
considered himself to be taking the best possible bare of is young
friend, by enabling him to deal honourably with so charming a little
wife as Eustacie. Ambassador and tutor would doubtless be very angry;
but Sidney could judge for himself of the lady, and he therefore threw
himself into her interests, and sent his servant back to Paris to
procure the necessary sum for the journey of Master Henry Berenger and
Mistress Mary, his wife. Sidney was, on his return alone to Paris, to
explain all to the elders, and pacify them as best he could; and his
servant was already the bearer of a letter from Berenger that was to be
sent at once to England with Walsingham’s dispatches, to prepare Lord
Walwyn for the arrival of the runaways. The poor boy laboured to
be impressively calm and reasonable in his explanation of the
misrepresentation, and of his strong grounds for assuming his rights,
with his persuasion that his wife would readily join the English
church--a consideration that he knew would greatly smooth the way for
her. Indeed, his own position was impregnable: nobody could blame him
for taking his own wife to himself, and he was so sure of her charms,
that he troubled himself very little about the impression she might make
on his kindred. If they loved her, it was all right; if not, he could
take her back to his own castle, and win fame and honour under the
banner of France in the Low Countries. As the Lucy Thistlewood, she was
far too discreet to feel any disappointment or displeasure; or if she
should, it was her own fault and that of his mother, for all her life
she had known him to be married. So he finished his letter with a
message that the bells should be ready to ring, and that when Philip
heard three guns fired on the coast, he might light the big beacon pile
above the Combe.

Meantime ‘the Queen’s Pastoral’ was much relished by all the spectators.
The state of things was only avowed to Charles, Elisabeth, and Philip
Sidney, and even the last did not know of the renewed troth which the
King chose to treat as such a secret; but no one had any doubt of the
mutual relations of M. de Ribaumont and Mdlle. de Nid de Merle, and
their dream of bliss was like a pastoral for the special diversion of
the holiday of Montpipeau. The transparency of their indifference
in company, their meeting eyes, their trysts with the secrecy of an
ostrich, were the subjects of constant amusement to the elders, more
especially as the shyness, blushes, and caution were much more on the
side of the young husband than on that of the lady. Fresh from her
convent, simple with childishness and innocence, it was to her only
the natural completion of her life to be altogether Berenger’s, and
the brief concealment of their full union added a certain romantic
enchantment, which added to her exultation in her victory over her cruel
kindred. She had been upon her own mind, poor child, for her few weeks
of court life. She had been upon her own mind, poor child, for her few
weeks of court life, but not long enough to make her grow older, though
just so long as to make the sense of her having her own protector with
her doubly precious. He, on the other hand, though full of happiness,
did also feel constantly deepening on him the sense of the charge
and responsibility he had assumed, hardly knowing how. The more dear
Eustacie became to him, the more she rested on him and became entirely
his, the more his boyhood and INSOUCIANCE drifted away behind him; and
while he could hardly bear to heave his darling a moment out of his
sight, the less he could endure any remark or jest upon his affection
for her. His home had been a refined one, where Cecile’s convent purity
seemed to diffuse an atmosphere of modest reserve such as did not
prevail in the court of the Maiden Queen herself, and the lad of
eighteen had not seem enough of the outer world to have rubbed off any
of that grace. His seniority to his little wife seemed to show itself
chiefly in his being put out of countenance for her, when she was too
innocent and too proud of her secret matronhood to understand or resent
the wit.

Little did he know that this was the ballet-like interlude in a great
and terrible tragedy, whose first act was being played out on the stage
where they schemed and sported, like their own little drama, which was
all the world to them, and noting to the others. Berenger knew indeed
that the Admiral was greatly rejoiced that the Nid de Merle estates
should go into Protestant hands, and that the old gentleman lost no
opportunity of impressing on him that they were a heavy trust, to be
used for the benefit of ‘the Religion,’ and for the support of the King
in his better mind. But it may be feared that he did not give a very
attentive ear to all this. He did not like to think of those estates;
he would gladly have left them all the Narcisse, so that he might have
their lady, and though quite willing to win his spurs under Charles and
Coligny against the Spaniard, his heart and head were far too full to
take in the web of politics. Sooth to say, the elopement in prospect
seemed to him infinitely more important than Pope or Spaniard, Guise or
Huguenot, and Coligny observed with a sigh to Teligny that he was a good
boy, but nothing but the merest boy, with eyes open only to himself.

When Charles undertook to rehearse their escape with them, and the Queen
drove out in a little high-wheeled litter with Mne. la Comtesse,
while Mme. De Sauve and Eustacie were mounted on gay palfreys with the
pommelled side-saddle lately invented by the Queen-mother, Berenger,
as he watched the fearless horsemanship and graceful bearing of his
newly-won wife, had no speculations to spend on the thoughtful face
of the Admiral. And when at the outskirts of the wood the King’s
bewildering hunting-horn--sounding as it were now here, now there, now
low, now high--called every attendant to hasten to its summons, leaving
the young squire and damsel errant with a long winding high-banked lane
before them, they reckoned the dispersion to be all for their sakes, and
did not note, as did Sidney’s clear eye, that when the entire company
had come straggling him, it was the King who came up with Mme. De Sauve
almost the last; and a short space after, as if not to appear to have
been with him, appeared the Admiral and his son-in-law.

Sidney also missed one of the Admiral’s most trusted attendants, and
from this and other symptoms he formed his conclusions that the King had
scattered his followers as much for the sake of an unobserved conference
with Coligny as for the convenience of the lovers, and that letters had
been dispatched in consequence of that meeting.

Those letters were indeed of a kind to change the face of affairs in
France. Marshal Strozzi, then commanding in the south-west, was bidden
to embark at La Rochelle in the last week of August, to hasten to
the succour of the Prince of Orange against Spain, and letters were
dispatched by Coligny to all the Huguenot partisans bidding them
assemble at Melun on the third of September, when they would be in the
immediate neighbourhood of the court, which was bound for Fontainebleau.
Was the star of the Guises indeed waning? Was Charles about to escape
from their hands, and commit himself to an honest, high-minded policy,
in which he might have been able to purify his national Church, and
wind back to her those whom her corruptions had driven to seek truth and
morality beyond her pale?

Alas! there was a bright pair of eyes that saw more than Philip
Sidney’s, a pair of ears that heard more, a tongue and pen less faithful
to guard a secret.




CHAPTER VIII. ‘LE BROUILON’



     But never more the same two sister pearls
     Ran down the silken thread to kiss each other.
                        --Tennyson


Berenger was obliged to crave permission from the King to spend some
hours in riding with Osbert to the first hostel on their way, to make
arrangements for the relay of horses that was to meet them there, and
for the reception of Veronique, Eustacie’s maid, who was to be sent off
very early in the morning on a pillion behind Osbert, taking with her
the articles of dress that would be wanted to change her mistress from
the huntress maid of honour to the English dame.

It was not long after he had been gone that a sound of wheels and
trampling horses was heard in one of the forest drives. Charles, who
was amusing himself with shooting at a mark together with Sidney and
Teligny, handed his weapon to an attendant, and came up with looks of
restless anxiety to his Queen, who was placed in her chair under the
tree, with the Admiral and her ladies round her, as judges of the prize.

‘Here is _le brouillon_,’ he muttered. ‘I thought we had been left in
peace too long.’

Elisabeth, who Brantome says was water, while her husband was fire,
tried to murmur some hopeful suggestion; and poor little Eustacie,
clasping her hands, could scarcely refrain from uttering the cry, ‘Oh,
it is my uncle! Do not let him take me!’

The next minute there appeared four horses greatly heated and jaded,
drawing one of the court coaches; and as it stopped at the castle gate,
two ladies became visible within it--the portly form of Queen Catherine,
and on the back seat the graceful figure of Diane de Ribaumont.

Charles swore a great oath under his breath. He made a step forward,
but then his glance falling on Eustacie’s face, which had flushed to
the rosiest hue of the carnation, he put his finger upon his lip with
a menacing air, and then advanced to greet his mother, followed by his
gentlemen.

‘Fear not, my dear child,’ said the young Queen, taking Eustacie’s arm
as she rose for the same purpose. ‘Obey the King, and he will take care
that all goes well.’

The gentle Elisabeth was, however, the least regarded member of the
royal family. Her mother-in-law had not even waited to greet her, but
had hurried the King into his cabinet, with a precipitation that made
the young Queen’s tender heart conclude that some dreadful disaster had
occurred, and before Mademoiselle de Ribaumont had had time to make her
reverence, she exclaimed, breathlessly, ‘Oh, is it ill news? Not from
Vienna?’

‘No, no, Madame; reassure yourself,’ replied Diane; ‘it is merely that
her Majesty, being on the way to Monceaux with Mesdames, turned out
of her road to make a flying visit to your graces, and endeavour to
persuade you to make her party complete.’

Elisabeth looked as if questioning with herself if this would possibly
be the whole explanation. Monceaux was a castle belonging to the Queen
Dowager at no great distance from Montpipeau, but there had been no
intention of leaving Paris before the wedding, which was fixed for the
seventeenth of August, and the bridegroom was daily expected. She asked
who was the party at Monceaux, and was told that Madame de Nemours had
gone thither the evening before, with her son, M. de Guise, to make
ready; and that Monsieur was escorting thither his two sisters, Madame
de Lorraine and Madame Marguerite. The Queen-mother had set out before
them very early in the morning.

‘You must have made great speed,’ said Elisabeth; ‘it is scarcely two
o’clock.’

‘Truly we did, Madame; two of our horses even died upon the road; but
the Queen was anxious to find the King ere he should set off on one of
his long chases.’

Diane, at every spare moment, kept her eyes interrogatively fixed on her
cousin, and evidently expected that the taciturn Queen, to whom a long
conversation, in any language but Spanish, was always a grievance, would
soon dismiss them both; and Eustacie did not know whether to be thankful
or impatient, as Elisabeth, with tardy, hesitating, mentally-translated
speech, inquired into every circumstance of the death of the poor
horses, and then into all the court gossip, which she was currently
supposed neither to hear nor understand; and then bethought herself
that this good Mademoiselle de Ribaumont could teach her that embroidery
stitch she had so long wished to learn. Taking her arm, she entered
the hall, and produced her work, so as effectually to prevent any
communication between the cousins; Eustacie, meanwhile her heart
clinging to her friend, felt her eyes filling with tears at the thoughts
of how unkind her morrow’s flight would seem without one word of
farewell or of confidence, and was already devising tokens of tenderness
to be left behind for Diane’s consolation, when the door of the cabinet
opened, and Catherine sailed down the stairs, with her peculiar
gliding step and sweep of dignity. The King followed her with a face of
irresolution and distress. He was evidently under her displeasure; but
she advanced to the young Queen with much graciousness, and an air of
matronly solicitude.

‘My daughter,’ she said, ‘I have just assured the King that I cannot
leave you in these damp forests. I could not be responsible for the
results of the exposure any longer. It is for him to make his own
arrangements, but I brought my coach empty on purpose to transport you
and your ladies to Monceaux.

The women may follow with the mails. You can be ready as soon as the
horses are harnessed.’

Elisabeth was used to passiveness. She turned one inquiring look to
her husband, but he looked sullen, and, evidently cowed by his mother,
uttered not a word. She could only submit, and Catherine herself add
that there was room for Madame de Sauve and Mademoiselle de Nid de
Merle. Madame la Comtesse should follow! It was self-evident that
propriety would not admit of the only demoiselle being left behind among
the gentlemen. Poor Eustacie, she looked mutely round as if she hoped to
escape! What was the other unkindness to this? And ever under the
eyes of Diane too, who followed her to their chamber, when she went to
prepare, so that she could not even leave a token for him where he would
have been most certain to find it. Moments were few; but at the very
last, while the queens were being handed in the carriage, she caught
the eye of Philip Sidney. He saw the appealing look, and came near. She
tried to laugh. ‘Here is my gage, Monsieur Sidney,’ she said, and held
out a rose-coloured knot of ribbon; then, as he came near enough, she
whispered imploringly three of her few English words--

‘Give to HIM.’

‘I take the gage as it is meant,’ said Sidney, putting a knee to the
ground, and kissing the trembling fingers, ere he handed her into the
carriage. He smiled and waved his hand as he met her earnest eyes. One
bow contained a scrap of paper pricked with needle-holes. Sidney would
not have made out those pricks for the whole world, even had he been
able to do more than hastily secure the token, before the unhappy King,
with a paroxysm of violent interjections, demanded of him whether the
Queen of England, woman though she were, ever were so beset, and never
allowed a moment to herself; then, without giving time for an answer, he
flung away to his cabinet, and might be heard pacing up and down there
in a tempest of perplexity. He came forth only to order his horse, and
desire M. de Sauve and a few grooms to be ready instantly to ride with
him. His face was full of pitiable perplexity--the smallest obstacle was
met with a savage oath; and he was evidently in all the misery of a weak
yet passionate nature, struggling with impotent violence against a yoke
that evidently mastered it.

He flung a word to his guests that he should return ere night, and they
thus perceived that he did not intend their dismissal.

‘Poor youth,’ said Coligny, mildly, ‘he will be another being when we
have him in our camp with the King of Navarre for his companion.’

And then the Admiral repaired to his chamber to write one of his many
fond letters to the young wife of his old age; while his son-in-law and
Philip Sidney agreed to ride on, so as to met poor young Ribaumont, and
prepare him for the blow that had befallen him personally, while they
anxiously debated what this sudden descent of the Queen-mother might
portend. Teligny was ready to believe in any evil intention on her part,
but he thought himself certain of the King’s real sentiments, and in
truth Charles had never treated any man with such confidence as this
young Huguenot noble, to whom he had told his opinion of each of his
counsellors, and his complete distrust of all. That pitying affection
which clings to those who cling to it, as well as a true French loyalty
of heart, made Teligny fully believe that however Catherine might
struggle to regain her ascendancy, and whatever apparent relapses
might be caused by Charles’s habitual subjection to her, yet the high
aspirations and strong sense of justice inherent in the King were
asserting themselves as his youth was passing into manhood; and that the
much-desired war would enable him to develop all his higher qualities.
Sidney listened, partially agreed, talked of caution, and mused within
himself whether violence might not sometimes be mistaken for vigour.

Ere long, the merry cadence of an old English song fell with a homelike
sound upon Sidney’s ear, and in another moment they were in sight of
Berenger, trotting joyously along, with a bouquet of crimson and
white heather-blossoms in his hand, and his bright young face full of
exultation in his arrangements. He shouted gaily as he saw them, calling
out, ‘I thought I should meet you! but I wondered not to have heard the
King’s bugle-horn. Where are the rest of the hunters?’

‘Unfortunately we have had another sort of hunt to-day,’ said Sidney,
who had ridden forward to meet him; ‘and one that I fear, will disquiet
you greatly.’

‘How! Not her uncle?’ exclaimed Berenger.

‘No, cheer up, my friend, it was not she who was the object of the
chase; it was this unlucky King,’ he added, speaking English, ‘who has
been run to earth by his mother.’

‘Nay, but what is that to me?’ said Berenger, with impatient superiority
to the affairs of the nation. ‘How does it touch us?’

Sidney related the abstraction of the young Queen and her ladies, and
then handed over the rose-coloured token, which Berenger took
with vehement ardour; then his features quivered as he read the
needle-pricked words-two that he had playfully insisted on her speaking
and spelling after him in his adopted tongue, then not vulgarized, but
the tenderest in the language, ‘Sweet heart.’ That was all, but to him
they conveyed constancy to him and his, whatever might betide, and an
entreaty not to leave her to her fate.

‘My dearest! never!’ he muttered; then turning hastily as he put the
precious token into his bosom, he exclaimed, ‘Are their women yet gone?’
and being assured that they were not departed when the two friends had
set out, he pushed his horse on at speed, so as to be able to send
a reply by Veronique. He was barely in time: the clumsy wagon-like
conveyance of the waiting-women stood at the door of the castle, in
course of being packed with the Queen’s wardrobe, amid the janglings
of lackeys, and expostulating cries of _femmes de chambre_, all in the
worst possible humour at being crowded up with their natural enemies,
the household of the Queen-mother.

Veronique, a round-faced Angevin girl--who, like her lady, had not
parted with all her rustic simplicity and honesty, and who had been
necessarily taken into their confidence--was standing apart from the
whirl of confusion, holding the leashes of two or three little dogs that
had been confided to her care, that their keepers might with more ease
throw themselves into the _melee_. Her face lighted up as she saw the
Baron de Ribaumont arrive.

‘Ah, sir, Madame will be so happy that I have seen Monsieur once more,’
she exclaimed under her breath, as he approached her.

‘Alas! there is not a moment to write,’ he said, looking at the vehicle,
already fast filling, ‘but give her these flowers; they were gathered
for her; give her ten thousand thanks for her token. Tell her to hold
firm, and that neither king nor queen, bolt nor bar, shall keep me from
her. Tell her, our watchword is HOPE.’

The sharp eyes of the duenna of the Queen’s household, a rigid Spanish
dame, were already searching for stray members of her flock, and
Veronique had to hurry to her place, while Berenger remained to hatch
new plans, each wilder than the last, and torment himself with guesses
whether his project had been discovered. Indeed, there were moments when
he fancied the frustration of his purpose the special object of Queen
Catherine’s journey, but he had the wisdom to keep any such suggestion
to himself.

The King came back by supper-time, looking no longer in a state of
indecision, but pale and morose. He spoke to no one as he entered, and
afterwards took his place at the head of the supper-table in silence,
which he did not break till the meal was nearly over. Then he said
abruptly, ‘Gentlemen, our party has been broken up, and I imagine that
after our great hunt tomorrow, no one will have any objection to return
to Paris. We shall have merrier sport at Fontainebleau when this most
troublesome of weddings is over.’

There was nothing to be done but to bow acquiescence, and the King again
became grimly silent. After supper he challenged Coligny to a game of
chess, and not a word passed during the protracted contest, either from
the combatants or any other person in the hall. It was as if the light
had suddenly gone out to others besides the disappointed and anxious
Berenger, and a dull shadow had fallen on the place only yesterday so
lively, joyous, and hopeful.

Berenger, chained by the etiquette of the royal presence, sat like a
statue, his back against the wall, his arms crossed on his breast, his
eyes fixed, chewing the cud of the memories of his dream of bliss, or
striving to frame the future to his will, and to decide what was the
next reasonable step he could take, or whether his irrepressible longing
to ride straight off to Monceaux, claim his wife, and take her on
horseback behind him, were a mere impracticable vision.

The King, having been checkmated twice out of three times by the
Admiral, too honest a man not truly to accept his declaration of not
wanting courtly play, pushed away the board, and was attended by them
all to his COUCHER, which was usually made in public; and the Queen
being absent, the gentlemen were required to stand around him till he
was ready to fall asleep. He did not seem disposed to talk, but begged
Sidney to fetch his lute, and sing to him some English airs that had
taken his fancy much when sung by Sidney and Berenger together.

Berenger felt as if they would choke him in his present turbid state of
resentful uncertainty; but even as the unhappy young King spoke, it was
with a heavy, restless groan, as he added, ‘If you know any lullaby that
will give rest to a wretch tormented beyond bearing, let us have it.’

‘Alas, Sire!’ said the Admiral, seeing that no perilous ears remained
in the room; ‘there are better and more soothing words than any mundane
melody.’

‘_Peste_! My good father,’ said the King, petulantly, ‘has not old
Phlipote, my nurse, rocked me to the sound of your Marot’s Psalms, and
crooned her texts over me? I tell you I do not want to think. I want
what will drive thought away--to dull---’

‘Alas! what dulls slays,’ said the Admiral.

‘Let it. Nothing can be worse than the present,’ said the wretched
Charles; then, as if wishing to break away from Coligny, he threw
himself round towards Berenger, and said, ‘Here; stoop down, Ribaumont;
a word with you. Your matters have gone up the mountains, as the
Italians say, with mine. But never fear. Keep silence, and you shall
have the bird in your hand, only you must be patient. Hold! I will make
you and Monsieur Sidney gentlemen of my bed-chamber, which will give you
the _entree_ of the Louvre; and if you cannot get her out of it without
an _eclat_, then you must be a much duller fellow than half my court.
Only that it is not their own wives that they abstract.

With this Berenger must needs content himself; and the certainty of the
poor King’s good-will did enable him to do his part with Sidney in the
songs that endeavoured to soothe the torments of the evil spirit which
had on that day effected a fresh lodgment in that weak, unwilling heart.

It was not till the memoirs of the secret actors in this tragedy were
brought to light that the key to these doings was discovered. M. de
Sauve, Charles’s secretary, had disclosed his proceedings to his wife;
she, flattered by the attentions of the Duke of Anjou, betrayed them to
him; and the Queen-mother, terrified at the change of policy, and the
loss of the power she had enjoyed for so many years, had hurried to the
spot.

Her influence over her son resembled the fascination of a snake:
once within her reach he was unable to resist her; and when in their
_tete-a-tete_ she reproached him with ill-faith towards her, prophesied
the overthrow of the Church, the desertion of his allies, the ruin of
his throne, and finally announced her intention of hiding her head in
her own hereditary estates in Auvergne, begging, as a last favour, that
he would give his brother time to quit France instead of involving him
in his own ruin, the poor young man’s whole soul was in commotion.
His mother knew her strength, left the poison to work, and withdrew in
displeasure to Monceaux, sure that, as in effect happened, he would not
be long in following her, imploring her not to abandon him, and making
an unconditional surrender of himself, his conscience, and his friends
into her hands. Duplicity was so entirely the element of the court,
that, even while thus yielding himself, it was as one checked, but
continuing the game; he still continued his connection with
the Huguenots, hoping to succeed in his aims by some future
counter-intrigue; and his real hatred of the court policy, and the
genuine desire to make common cause with them, served his mother’s
purpose completely, since his cajolery thus became sincere. Her purpose
was, probably, not yet formed. It was power that she loved, and hoped to
secure by the intrigues she had played off all her life; but she herself
was in the hands of an infinitely more bloodthirsty and zealous faction,
who could easily accomplish their ends by working on the womanly terrors
of an unscrupulous mind.




CHAPTER IX. THE WEDDING WITH CRIMSON FAVOURS



     And trust me not at all or all in all.
                       --TENNYSON


So extensive was the Louvre, so widely separated the different suites
of apartments, that Diane and Eustacie had not met after the pall-mall
party till they sat opposite to their several queens in the coach
driving through the woods, the elder cousin curiously watching the eyes
of the younger, so wistfully gazing at the window, and now and then
rapidly winking as though to force back a rebellious tear.

The cousins had been bred up together in the convent at Bellaise, and
had only been separated by Diane’s having been brought to court two
years sooner than Eustacie. They had always been on very kindly,
affectionate terms; Diane treating her little cousin with the patronage
of an elder sister, and greatly contributing to shield her from
the temptations of the court. The elder cousin was so much the more
handsome, brilliant, and admired, that no notion of rivalry had crossed
her mind; and Eustacie’s inheritance was regarded by her as reserved for
her brother, and the means of aggradizement an prosperity for herself
and her father. She looked upon the child as a sort of piece of property
of the family, to be guarded and watched over for her brother; and
when she had first discovered the error that the young baron was making
between the two daughters of the house, it was partly in kindness to
Eustacie, partly to carry out her father’s plans, and partly from
her own pleasure in conversing with anything so candid and fresh as
Berenger, that she had maintained the delusion. Her father believed
himself to have placed Berenger so entirely in the background, that he
would hardly be at court long enough to discover the imposition; and
Diane was not devoid of a strong hope of winning his affection and
bending his will so as to induce him to become her husband, and become
a French courtier for her sake--a wild dream, but a better castle in the
air than she had ever yet indulged in.

This arrangement was, however, disconcerted by the King’s passion for
Sidney’s society, which brought young Ribaumont also to court; and at
the time of the mischievous introduction by Madame Marguerite, Diane had
perceived that the mistake would soon be found out, and that she should
no longer be able to amuse herself with the fresh-coloured, open-faced
boy who was unlike all her former acquaintance; but the magnetism that
shows a woman when she produces an effect had been experienced by her,
and she had been sure that a few efforts more would warm and mould the
wax in her fingers. That he should prefer a little brown thing, whose
beauty was so inferior to her own, had never crossed her mind; she
did not even know that he was invited to the pall-mall party, and was
greatly taken by surprise when her father sought an interview with her,
accused her of betraying their interests, and told her that this
foolish young fellow declared that he had been mistaken, and having now
discovered his veritable wife, protested against resigning her.

By that time the whole party were gone to Montpipeau, but that the Baron
was among them was not known at the Louvre until Queen Catherine, who
had always treated Diane as rather a favoured, quick-witted _protegee_,
commanded her attendance, and on her way let her know that Madame
de Sauve had reported that, among all the follies that were being
perpetrated at the hunting-seat, the young Queen was absolutely throwing
the little Nid-de-Merle into the arms of her Huguenot husband, and that
if measures were not promptly taken all the great estates in the
Bocage would be lost to the young Chevalier, and be carried over to the
Huguenot interest.

Still Diane could not believe that it was so much a matter of love
as that the young had begun to relish court favour and to value the
inheritance, and she could quite believe her little cousin had been
flattered by a few attentions that had no meaning in them. She was not
prepared to find that Eustacie shrank from her, and tried to avoid
a private interview. In truth, the poor child had received such
injunctions from the Queen, and so stern a warning look from the King,
that she durst not utter a syllable of the evening that had sealed her
lot, and was so happy with her secret, so used to tell everything
to Diane, so longing to talk of her husband, that she was afraid of
betraying herself if once they were alone together. Yet Diane, knowing
that her father trusted to her to learn how far things had gone, and
piqued at seeing the transparent little creature, now glowing and
smiling with inward bliss, now pale, pensive, sighing, and anxious, and
scorning her as too childish for the love that she seemed to affect, was
resolved on obtaining confidence from her.

And when the whole female court had sat down to the silk embroidery in
which Catherine de Medicis excelled, Diane seated herself in the recess
of a window and beckoned her cousin to her side, so that it was not
possible to disobey.

‘Little one,’ she said, ‘why have you cast off your poor cousin? There,
sit down’--for Eustacie stood, with her silk in her hand, as if meaning
instantly to return to her former place; and now, her cheeks in a flame,
she answered in an indignant whisper, ‘You know, Diane! How could you
try to keep him from me?’

‘Because it was better for thee, my child, than to be pestered with an
adventurer,’ she said, smiling, though bitterly.

‘My husband!’ returned Eustacie proudly.

‘Bah! You know better than that!’ Then, as Eustacie was about to
speak, but checked herself, Diane added, ‘Yes, my poor friend, he has
a something engaging about him, and we all would have hindered you from
the pain and embarrassment of a meeting with him.’

Eustacie smiled a little saucy smile, as though infinitely superior to
them all.

‘_Pauvre petite_,’ said Diane, nettled; ‘she actually believes in his
love.’

‘I will not hear a word against my husband!’ said Eustacie, stepping
back, as if to return to her place, but Diane rose and laid her hand on
hers. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘we must no part thus. I only wish to know
what touches my darling so nearly. I thought she loved and clung to us;
why should she have turned from me for the sake of one who forgot her
for half his life? What can he have done to master this silly little
heart?’

‘I cannot tell you, Diane,’ said Eustacie, simply; and though she looked
down, the colour on her face was more of a happy glow than a conscious
blush. ‘I love him too much; only we understand each other now, and it
is of no use to try to separate us.’

‘Ah, poor little thing, so she thinks,’ said Diane; and as Eustacie
again smiled as one incapable of being shaken in her conviction, she
added, ‘And how do you know that he loves you?’

Diane was startled by the bright eyes that flashed on her and the bright
colour that made Eustacie perfectly beautiful, as she answered, ‘Because
I am his wife! That is enough!’ Then, before her cousin could speak
again, ‘But, Diane, I promised not to speak of it. I know he would
despise me if I broke my word, so I will not talk to you till I have
leave to tell you all, and I am going back to help Gabrielle de Limeuil
with her shepherdess.’

Mademoiselle de Ribaumont felt her attempt most unsatisfactory, but she
knew of old that Eustacie was very determined--all Bellaise know that
to oppose the tiny Baronne was to make her headstrong in her resolution;
and if she suspected that she was coaxed, she only became more
obstinate. To make any discoveries, Diane must take the line of most
cautious caresses, such as to throw her cousin off her guard; and this
she was forced to confess to her father when he sought an interview with
her on the day of her return to Paris. He shook his head. She must be
on the watch, he said, and get quickly into the silly girl’s confidence.
What! had she not found out that the young villain had been on the point
of eloping with her? If such a thing as that should succeed, the whole
family was lost, and she was the only person who could prevent it. He
trusted to her.

The Chevalier had evidently come to regard his niece as his son’s lawful
property, and the Baron as the troublesome meddler; and Diane had much
the same feeling, enhanced by sore jealousy at Eustacie’s triumph over
her, and curiosity as to whether it could be indeed well founded. She
had an opportunity of judging the same evening--mere habit always caused
Eustacie to keep under her wing, if she could not be near the Queen,
whenever there was a reception, and to that reception of course Berenger
came, armed with his right as gentleman of the bedchamber. Eustacie was
colouring and fluttering, as if by the instinct of his presence, even
before the tall fair head became visible, moving forward as well as the
crowd would permit, and seeking about with anxious eyes. The glances
of the blue and the black eyes met at last, and a satisfied radiance
illuminated each young face; then the young man steered his way through
the throng, but was caught midway by Coligny, and led up to be presented
to a hook-nosed, dark-haired, lively-looking young man, in a suit of
black richly laced with silver. It was the King of Navarre, the royal
bridegroom, who had entered Paris in state that afternoon. Eustacie
tried to be proud of the preferment, but oh! she thought it mistimed,
and was gratified to mark certain wandering of the eye even while the
gracious King was speaking. Then the Admiral said something that brought
the girlish rosy flush up to the very roots of the short curls of flaxen
hair, and made the young King’s white teeth flash out in a mirthful,
good-natured laugh, and thereupon the way opened, and Berenger was
beside the two ladies, kissing Eustacie’s hand, but merely bowing to
Diane.

She was ready to take the initiative.

‘My cousins deem me unpardonable,’ she said; ‘yet I am going to purchase
their pardon. See this cabinet of porcelain _a le Reine_, and Italian
vases and gems, behind this curtain. There is all the siege of Troy,
which M. le Baron will not doubt explain to Mademoiselle, while I shall
sit on this cushion, and endure the siege of St. Quentin from the _bon_
Sieur de Selinville.’

Monsieur de Selinville was the court bore, who had been in every battle
from Pavia to Montcontour, and gave as full memoirs of each as did
Blaise de Monluc, only _viva voce_ instead of in writing. Diane was
rather a favourite of his; she knew her way through all his adventures.
So soon as she had heard the description of the King of Navarre’s entry
into Paris that afternoon, and the old gentleman’s lamentation that his
own two nephews were among the three hundred Huguenot gentleman who had
formed the escort, she had only to observe whether his reminiscences
had gone to Italy or to Flanders in order to be able to put in the
appropriate remarks at each pause, while she listened all the while to
the murmurs behind the curtain. Yet it was not easy, with all her court
breeding, to appear indifferent, and solely absorbed in hearing of
the bad lodgings that had fallen to the share of the royal troops at
Brescia, when such sounds were reaching her. It was not so much the
actual words she heard, though these were the phrases--‘_mon ange_,
my heart, my love;’ those were common, and Diane had lived in the
Queen-mother’s squadron long enough to despise those who uttered
them only less than those who believed them. It was the full depth of
tenderness and earnestness, in the subdued tones of the voice, that gave
her a sense of quiet force and reality beyond all she had ever known.
She had heard and overheard men pour out frantic ravings of passion, but
never had listened to anything like the sweet protecting tenderness of
voice that seemed to embrace and shelter its object. Diane had no doubts
now; he had never so spoken to her; nay, perhaps he had had no such
cadences in his voice before. It was quite certain that Eustacie was
everything to him, she herself nothing; she who might have had any
gallant in the court at her feet, but had never seen one whom she
could believe in, whose sense of esteem had been first awakened by this
stranger lad who despised her. Surely he was loving this foolish child
simply as his duty; his belonging, as his right he might struggle hard
for her, and if he gained her, be greatly disappointed; for how could
Eustacie appreciate him, little empty-headed, silly thing, who would be
amused and satisfied by any court flatterer?

However, Diane held out and played her part, caught scraps of the
conversation, and pieced them together, yet avoided all appearance
of inattention to M. de Selinville, and finally dismissed him, and
manoeuvred first Eustacie, and after a safe interval Berenger, out of
the cabinet. The latter bowed as he bade her good night, and said, with
the most open and cordial of smiles, ‘Cousin, I thank you with all my
heart.’

The bright look seemed to her another shaft. ‘What happiness!’ said she
to herself. ‘Can I overthrow it? Bah! it will crumble of its own accord,
even if I did nothing! And my father and brother!’

Communication with her father and brother was not always easy to Diane,
for she lived among the Queen-mother’s ladies. Her brother was quartered
in a sort of barrack among the gentlemen of Monsieur’s suite, and the
old Chevalier was living in the room Berenger had taken for him at the
Croix de Lorraine, and it was only on the most public days that they
attended at the palace. Such a day, however, there was on the ensuing
Sunday, when Henry of Navarre and Marguerite of France were to be
wedded. Their dispensation was come, but, to the great relief of
Eustacie, there was no answer with it to the application for the
CASSATION of her marriage. In fact, this dispensation had never emanated
from the Pope at all. Rome would not sanction the union of a daughter
of France with a Huguenot prince; and Charles had forged the document,
probably with his mother’s knowledge, in the hope of spreading her toils
more completely round her prey, while he trusted that the victims might
prove too strong for her, and destroy her web, and in breaking forth
might release himself.

Strange was the pageant of that wedding on Sunday, the 17th of August,
1572. The outward seeming was magnificent, when all that was princely in
France stood on the splendidly decked platform in front of Notre-Dame,
around the bridegroom in the bright promise of his kingly endowments,
and the bride in her peerless beauty. Brave, noble-hearted, and devoted
were the gallant following of the one, splendid and highly gifted the
attendants of the other; and their union seemed to promise peace to a
long distracted kingdom.

Yet what an abyss lay beneath those trappings! The bridegroom and his
comrades were as lions in the toils of the hunter, and the lure that had
enticed them thither was the bride, herself so unwilling a victim that
her lips refused to utter the espousal vows, and her head as force
forward by her brother into a sign of consent; while the favoured lover
of her whole lifetime agreed to the sacrifice in order to purchase the
vengeance for which he thirsted, and her mother, the corrupter of her
own children, looked complacently on at her ready-dug pit of treachery
and bloodshed.

Among the many who played unconscious on the surface of that gulf of
destruction, were the young creatures whose chief thought in the pageant
was the glance and smile from the gallery of the Queen’s ladies to the
long procession of the English ambassador’s train, as they tried to
remember their own marriage there; Berenger with clear recollection of
his father’s grave, anxious face, and Eustacie chiefly remembering her
own white satin and turquoise dress, which indeed she had seen on every
great festival-day as the best raiment of the image of Notre Dame
de Bellaise. She remained in the choir during mass, but Berenger
accompanied the rest of the Protestants with the bridegroom at their
head into the nave, where Coligny beguiled the time with walking about,
looking at the banners that had been taken from himself and Conde at
Montcontour and Jarnac, saying that he hoped soon to see them taken down
and replaced by Spanish banne

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