The Headsman Or The Abbaye des Vignerons Part 28

"They have done me honor, Monsieur," he said: "it has been my good fortune to cross the Col with many brave gentlemen and fair ladies--and in two instances with princes." (Though a st.u.r.dy republican, Pierre was not insensible to worldly rank.) "The pious monks know me well; and they who enter the convent are not the worse received for being my companions. I shall be glad to lead so fair a party from our cold valley into the sunny glens of Italy, for, if the truth must be spoken, nature has placed us on the wrong side of the mountain for our comfort, though we have our advantage over those who live even in Turin and Milan, in matters of greater importance."

"What can be the superiority of a Valaisan over the Lombard, or the Piedmontese?" demanded the Signor Grimaldi quickly, like a man who was curious to hear the reply. "A traveller should seek all kind of knowledge, and I take this to be a newly-discovered fact."

"Liberty, Signore! We are our own masters; we have been so since the day when our fathers sacked the castles of the barons, and compelled their tyrants to become their equals. I think of this each time I reach the warm plains of Italy, and return to my cottage a more contented man, for the reflection."

"Spoken like a Swiss, though it is uttered by an ally of the cantons!"

cried Melchior de Willading, heartily. "This is the spirit, Gaetano, which sustains our mountaineers, and renders them more happy amid their frosts and rocks, than thy Genoese on his warm and glowing bay."

"The word liberty, Melchior, is more used than understood, and as much abused as used;" returned the Signor Grimaldi gravely. "A country on which G.o.d hath laid his finger in displeasure as on this, needs have some such consolation as the phantom with which the honest Pierre appears to be so well satisfied.--But, Signor guide, have many travellers tried the pa.s.sage of late, and what dost thou think of our prospects in making the attempt?

We hear gloomy tales, sometimes, of thy alpine paths in that Italy thou hold'st so cheap."

"Your pardon, n.o.ble Signore, if the frankness of a mountaineer has carried me too far. I do not undervalue your Piedmont, because I love our Valais more. A country may be excellent, even though another should be better. As for the travellers, none of note have gone up the Col of late, though there have been the usual number of vagabonds and adventurers. The savor of the convent kitchen will reach the noses of these knaves here in the valley, though we have a long twelve leagues to journey in getting from one to the other."

The Signor Grimaldi waited until Adelheid and Christine, who were preparing to retire for the night, were out of hearing, and he resumed his questions.

"Thou hast not spoken of the weather?"

"We are in one of the most uncertain and treacherous months of the good season, Messieurs. The winter is gathering among the upper Alps, and in a month in which the frosts are flying about like uneasy birds that do not know where to alight, one can hardly say whether he hath need of his cloak or not."

"San Francesco! Dost think I am dallying with thee, friend, about a thickness more or less of cloth! I am hinting at avalanches and falling rocks--at whirlwinds and tempests?"

Pierre laughed and shook his head, though he answered vaguely as became his business.

"These are Italian opinions of our hills, Signore," he said; "they savor of the imagination. Our pa.s.s is not as often troubled with the avalanche as some that are known, even in the melting snows. Had you looked at the peaks from the lake, you would have seen that, the h.o.a.ry glaciers excepted, they are still all brown and naked. The snow must fall from the heavens before it can fall in the avalanche, and we are yet, I think, a few days from the true winter."

"Thy calculations are made with nicety, friend," returned the Genoese, not sorry, however, to hear the guide speak with so much apparent confidence of the weather, "and we are obliged to thee in proportion. What of the travellers thou hast named? Are there brigands on our path?"

"Such rogues have been known to infest the place, but, in general, there is too little to be gained for the risk. Your rich traveller is not an every-day sight among our rocks; and you well know Signore, that there may be too few, as well as too many, on a path, for your freebooter."

The Italian was distrustful by habit on all such subjects, and he threw a quick suspicious glance at the guide. But the frank open countenance of Pierre removed all doubt of his honesty, to say nothing of the effect of a well-established reputation.

"But thou hast spoken of certain vagabonds who have preceded us?"

"In that particular, matters might be better;" answered the plain-minded mountaineer, dropping his head in an att.i.tude of meditation so naturally expressed as to give additional weight to his words. "Many of bad appearance have certainly gone up to-day; such as a Neapolitan named Pippo, who is anything but a saint--a certain pilgrim, who will be nearer heaven at the convent than he will be at the death--St. Pierre pray for me if I do the man injustice!--and one or two more of the same brood. There is another that hath gone up also, post haste, and with good reason as they say, for he hath made himself the but of all the jokers in Vevey on account of some foolery in the games of the Abbaye--a certain Jacques Colis."

The name was repeated by several near the speaker.

"The same, Messieurs. It would seem that the Sieur Colis would fain take a maiden to wife in the public sports, and, when her birth came to be be known, that his bride was no other than the child of Balthazar, the common headsman of Berne!"

A general silence betrayed the embarra.s.sment of most of the listeners.

"And that tale hath already reached this glen," said Sigismund, in a tone so deep and firm as to cause Pierre to start, while the two old n.o.bles looked in another direction, feigning not to observe what was pa.s.sing.

"Rumor hath a nimbler foot than a mule, young officer;" answered the honest guide. "The tale, as you call it, will have travelled across the mountains sooner than they who bore it--though I never knew how such a miracle could pa.s.s--but so it is; report goes faster than the tongue that spreads it, and if there be a little untruth to help it along, the wind itself is scarcely swifter. Honest Jacques Colis has bethought him to get the start of his story, but, my life on it, though he is active enough in getting away from his mockers, that he finds it, with all the additions, safely housed at the inn at Turin when he reaches that city himself."

"These, then, are all?" interrupted the Signor Grimaldi, who saw, by the heaving bosom of Sigismund, that it was time in mercy to interpose.

"Not so, Signore--there is still another and one I like less than any. A countryman of your own, who, impudently enough, calls himself Il Maledetto."

"Maso!"

"The very same."

"Honest, courageous Maso, and his n.o.ble dog!"

"Signore, you describe the man so well in some things, that I wonder you know so little of him in others. Maso hath not his equal on the road for activity and courage, and the beast is second only to our mastiffs of the convent for the same qualities; but when you speak of the master's honesty, you speak of that for which the world gives him little credit, and do great disparagement to the brute, which is much the best of the two, in this respect."

"This may be true enough," rejoined the Signore Grimaldi, turning anxiously towards his companions:--"man is a strange compound of good and evil; his acts when left to natural impulses are so different from what they become on calculation that one can scarcely answer for a man of Maso's temperament. We know him to be a most efficient friend, and such a man would be apt to make a very dangerous enemy! His qualities were not given to him by halves. And yet we have a strong circ.u.mstance in our favor; for he who hath once done the least service to a fellow-creature feels a sort of paternity in him he hath saved, and would be little likely to rob himself of the pleasure of knowing, that there are some of his kind who owe him a grateful recollection."

This remark was answered by Melchior de Willading in the same spirit, and the guide, perceiving he was no longer wanted, withdrew.

Soon after, the travellers retired to rest.

Chapter XXI.

As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed, And winter oft, at eve, resumes the breeze, Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets Deform the day delightful:----

Thomson.

The horn of Pierre Dumont was blowing beneath the windows of the inn of Martigny, with the peep of dawn. Then followed the appearance of drowsy domestics, the saddling of unwilling mules, and the loading of baggage. A few minutes later the little caravan was a.s.sembled, for the cavalcade almost deserved this name, and the whole were in motion for the summits of the Alps.

The travellers now left the valley of the Rhone to bury themselves amid those piles of misty and confused mountains, which formed the back-ground of the picture they had studied from the castle of Blonay and the sheet of the Leman. They soon plunged into a glen, and, following the windings of a brawling torrent, were led gradually, and by many turnings, into a country of bleak upland pasturage, where the inhabitants gained a scanty livelihood, princ.i.p.ally by means of their dairies.

A few leagues above Martigny, the paths again separated, one inclining to the left towards the elevated valley that has since become so celebrated in the legends of this wild region, by the formation of a little lake in its glacier, which, becoming too heavy for its foundation, broke through its barrier of ice, and descended in a mountain of water to the Rhone, a distance of many leagues, sweeping before it every vestige of civilization that crossed its course, and even changing, in many places, the face of nature itself. Here the glittering peak of Velan became visible, and, though so much nearer to the eye than when viewed from Vevey, it was still a distant s.h.i.+ning pile, grand in its solitude and mystery, on which the sight loved to dwell, as it studies the pure and spotless edges of some sleepy cloud.

It has already been said, that the ascent of the great St. Bernard, with the exception of occasional hills and hollows, is nowhere very precipitous but at the point at which the last rampart of rock is to be overcome. On the contrary, the path, for leagues at a time, pa.s.ses along tolerably even valleys, though of necessity the general direction is upward, and for most of the distance through a country that admits of cultivation, though the meagreness of the soil, and the shortness of the seasons, render but an indifferent return to the toil of the husbandman. In this respect it differs from most of the other Alpine pa.s.ses; but if it wants the variety, wildness, and sublimity of the Splugen. the St. Gothard, the Gemmi, and the Simplon, it is still an ascent on a magnificent scale, and he who journeys on its path is raised, as it were, by insensible degrees, to an elevation that gradually changes all his customary a.s.sociations with the things of the lower world.

From the moment of quitting the inn to that of the first halt, Melchior de Willading and the Signor Grimaldi rode in company, as on the previous day.

These old friends had much to communicate in confidential discourse which the presence of Roger de Blonay, and the importunities of the bailiff, had hitherto prevented them from freely saying. Both had thought maturely, too, on the situation of Adelheid, of her hopes, and of her future fortunes, and both had reasoned much as two old n.o.bles of that day, who were not without strong sympathies for their kind, while they were too practised to overlook the world and its ties, would be likely to reason on an affair of this delicate nature.

"There came a feeling of regret, perhaps I might fairly call it by its proper name, of envy," observed the Genoese, in the pursuance of the subject which engrossed most of their time and thoughts, as they rode slowly along, the bridles dangling from the necks of their mules,--"there came a feeling of regret, when I first saw the fair creature that calls thee father, Melchior. G.o.d has dealt mercifully by me, in respect to many things that make men happy; but he rendered my marriage accursed, not only in its bud, but in its fruit. Thy child is dutiful and loving, all that a father can wish; and yet here is this unusual attachment come to embarra.s.s, if not to defeat, thy fair and just hopes for her welfare! This is no common affair, that a few threats of bolts and a change of scene will cure, but a rooted affection that is but too firmly based on esteem.--By San Francesco, but I think, at times, thou wouldst do well to permit the ceremony!"

"Should it be our fortune to meet with the absconding Jacques Colis at Turin, he might give us different counsel," answered the old baron drily.

"That is a dreadful barrier to our wishes! Were the boy anything but a headsman's child! I do not think thou couldst object, Melchior, had he merely come of a hind, or of some common follower of thy family?"

"It were far better that he should have come of one like ourselves, Gaetano. I reason but little on the dogmas of this or that sect in politics; but I feel and think, in this affair, as the parent of an only child. All those usages and opinions in which we are trained, my friend, are so many ingredients in our happiness, let them be silly or wise, just or oppressive; and though I would fain do that which is right to the rest of mankind, I could wish to begin to practise innovation with any other than my own daughter. Let them who like philosophy and justice, and natural rights, so well, commence by setting us the example."

"Thou hast hit the stumbling-block that causes a thousand well-digested plans for the improvement of the world to fail, honest Melchior. Could we toil with others' limbs, sacrifice with others' groans, and pay with others' means, there would be no end to our industry, our disinterestedness, or our liberality--and yet it were a thousand pities that so sweet a girl and so n.o.ble a youth should not yoke!"

"'Twould be a yoke indeed, for a daughter of the house of Willading;"

returned the graver father, with emphasis. "I have looked at this matter in every face that becomes me, Gaetano, and though I would not rudely repulse one that hath saved my life, by driving him from my company, at a moment when even strangers consort for mutual aid and protection, at Turin we must part for ever!"

"I know not how to approve, nor yet how to blame thee, poor Melchior!