Henry of Guise Volume I Part 8

The sweetest of all balms to a hurt mind is the doing a good action; and with that for his consolation, Charles of Montsoreau retired to rest, and, though he slept not well, certainly, he obtained more repose than he had expected. On the following morning, he found--that which we so often find--that things done for kindly and benevolent purposes bear with them sources of recompense to ourselves which we never calculated upon. The unfortunate boy whom he had delivered from the hands of his persecutors on the preceding day, afforded the young count a subject of interest and occupation, that withdrew his thoughts from more painful themes, and gave him a degree of relief, which, though merely temporary, was in itself a blessing.

The boy stood by his side while he took his breakfast, and looked so full of joy, that Charles of Montsoreau could not help congratulating himself upon what he had done, though he was not sufficiently ignorant of the world to suppose that, for the sum of a hundred and fifty crowns, he had bought himself a treasure of high qualities, such as the best education can hardly bestow upon the best disposition.

He had made the boy over entirely to the care of Gondrin, and told the shrewd huntsman to watch his disposition well, and let him know all the peculiarities thereof. He was himself too much occupied with gloomy thoughts, to investigate the matter fully; and, as the boy stood by him, he confined his questions to some points of his former history, and to the various accomplishments which he possessed.

To a question as to whether he could ride, the boy only replied with a smile; and it appeared afterwards that, while with the Italians, the whole of the first part of their journey through Italy and France had been performed on horseback, till some acts of dishonesty, committed in the town of Gren.o.ble, forced them to fly on foot with all speed, and leave their beasts behind them.

The purchase of a fresh horse for the boy, and of some suits of clothes better fitted to a n.o.bleman's page than the gay and mountebank costume in which he had come to his new master, occupied a considerable part of the morning; and by the time Charles of Montsoreau issued forth to proceed upon his journey, the mists of the early day had cleared away; the grey veil of clouds which had obscured the sky during the preceding day had been scattered into small feathery fragments by the sun and the wind; there was a feeling of spring in the breath of the air, and a look of hope and joyfulness upon all the world around.

As the boy Ignati stood by his master's stirrup for a moment before they set out, he lifted his fine dark eyes to the countenance of the young n.o.bleman with a look of love and grat.i.tude that was not to be mistaken. It is true that a man may smile, and smile, and be a villain; it is true that the language of looks may often be as false as the words of the tongue; it is true that no human mode of expression may not be poisoned by hypocrisy, and that even actions themselves are often as false as looks and words. But there are moments when the free soul bursts forth through all the bonds of habit or of cunning, and sports, if it be but for a single instant, at liberty; and in those times, though the words may still be false, or at the best regulated with deliberate skill, yet there are momentary expressions that cross the countenance--lights that beam up in the eye--smiles that flutter round the lip--which betray the secret of the heart's feelings, notwithstanding the most careful guard.

Charles of Montsoreau looked down, and laid his hand upon the boy's head.

"You know, Ignati," he said, "that you are a freeman, and not a slave.

I paid your price to the Italians to give you liberty, and not to purchase you myself; so you are free to come and to go, to stay with me, or to leave me, as you like."

"I will go with you through the world," replied the boy; and though he said no more, he said it in such a tone as to leave no doubt upon the mind of Charles of Montsoreau that he was sincere for the time at least.

The boy sprang into his saddle with alacrity and grace; and the first horseman of the court of France could not have sat his horse with more ease and vigour. His whole demeanour seemed changed from the former day, as if slavery and the degrading trade to which he had been previously bound had bowed down his spirit, and with it his corporeal frame. There was a lightness, a joyous fire in his look, which spoke the consciousness of freedom and of dawning hopes. Before, he had been but a handsome, sullen boy; while, now, he looked older than before, and all was quickness and activity.

The sky, we have said, was brighter, the day more cheerful, and the scenery itself gradually a.s.suming a finer and a bolder character.

Entering that hilly district which lies between Limoges and Tulle, the road was constantly ascending or descending. Wide woods and moors, broken by rocks and streams, were seen on either side; while now a soft green meadow covered the slope, now a rich-coloured fallow field showed traces of man's industrious hand. Here and there, too, a cottage appeared, with its little garden and orchard round about it; here and there a forge, while the castellated houses of many of the small provincial n.o.bility showed their glittering weatherc.o.c.ks above the grey woods. The aspect of the whole scene was very peaceful; and so, indeed, that part of the country was at the time; for no towns of sufficient consequence were near to render it, though extremely defensible, worth the while of any of the various parties which tore the state to defend it against the rest. Through these scenes the young count and his attendants rode on during the day, till they came to their gite for the night, at the pleasant-named town of St. Germain les belles Filles.

When the young Count de Logeres sat down to supper, with none but one habitual attendant near him--while the rest of his train dined at a table at the other end of the hall--his mind drew up the short summary of what changes of feeling his heart had undergone, which we are almost always inclined to make unconsciously, when we come to the end of a day's journey.

It were vain to say that the scenes through which he had pa.s.sed, or the aspect of the day, or the occupation of his thoughts by the boy that he had freed, had made his heart lighter; but they had, perhaps, taught that heart to bear its load more firmly. He still thought of Marie de Clairvaut with the intense pa.s.sion of first, true, ardent love. He felt but the more convinced, at every step he took away from her, that that love would last throughout his being. He felt that, without her, life was now a blank, void of the grand pointing interest of existence--void of all sustaining power, but a knowledge of rect.i.tude, and a purpose of endurance. It was hard, far more hard, for a young heart like his, that had seldom, if ever, tasted sorrow before, or known affliction, to undergo at once the extinction of that brightest of life's lights, the hope of mutual affection. We value not our minor sorrows sufficiently: there are great ones to be endured by every man on earth; and did not the lesser ones prepare us gently for the burden, we should be crushed under the first mighty misfortune that befall us. But Charles of Montsoreau had known few, so few, that he felt, as it were, stunned and benumbed by the weight of grief that now came upon him. He had been deprived of the belief that he possessed the love of Marie de Clairvaut; he had abandoned the hope and task of winning that love; and, at the same time, the deep, warm confidence which he had ever till that moment possessed in his brother's strong, unalterable affection, had been swept away too. He could regard Gaspar de Montsoreau no longer as he had regarded him; he could think of him no longer as he had thought; he could not respect or esteem him as heretofore; and all the fraternal love that remained in his bosom towards his brother, rendered him but the more sorrowful, that his brother was less worthy than he thought.

He was sad and gloomy then, and that sadness was seen in every look and action: he seemed scarcely to know what were the meats placed before him, and only mechanically to taste of that which was next to him. After he had eaten as much as was necessary to satisfy mere nature, he leaned his head upon his hand, and fell into deep thought, which was only interrupted by the low sweet voice of the boy, who had come quietly up to his side, saying, "May I not sing to you, sir count? I have seen a song prove better sauce to a poor meal than a duke's kitchen could produce."

"It would not be so with me, Ignati," replied the Count. "You shall not sing to me to-night, my good boy; but go to bed, and rest your young limbs."

Though he refused him, yet the voluntary offer the boy had made came sweetly; for, on the first sweep of disappointment's heavy wing, a sort of misanthropy is cast upon us which we own not even to our own hearts. We doubt, without our will, that there is such a thing as affection, or grat.i.tude, or kindly feeling, or generous sensibility left upon earth; and it is sweet, and happy, and consoling when any thing happens, however light or small, to show us feelingly that our dark judgment of the world was wrong. He still refused the boy's music, however, though kindly; for he was busy with his own thoughts, and wished to pursue them undisturbed.

On the following morning he continued his journey: nor is it worth while to follow him day by day, while, taking his way by Bourges and Chalons, he approached the north-eastern frontier of France. The journey was long and tedious, but it was accomplished without any accident or interruption; and, indeed, till he approached near the frontiers of Lorraine, the traces of the war which desolated France were comparatively small. Commerce, indeed, there was little or none throughout the land; but agriculture was pursued with less difficulty; and in those districts where the strife was not actually going on, the first return of spring saw the husbandman again in the field.

The neighbourhood of Troyes and Chalons, however, began to show evident marks of the ravages of war: the fields were uncultivated; the towns guarded with rigorous strictness; no tall ricks of corn were seen near the farm-house; the cattle lowed not in the plains; the shepherd turned anxiously round at every sound of a horse's steps; and, in many places, the vineyards themselves showed the marks of fire, and the vines were seen cut down and piled up for fuel. Wherever the traveller stopped and inquired what was the cause of the destruction he beheld, he was told that a body of reiters had pillaged here, or a horde of Germans wasted there; and, although there were some who ventured, in the angry indignation of their heart, to curse both the house of Guise and the house of La Mark, and to express their horror of all parties alike, yet it was evident that the chivalrous spirit of the Guises, their gracious demeanour, and their heroic actions against a foreign enemy, had in general won the love of the people, so that they were greatly preferred to the Protestant princes of Sedan, who had led an army of thirty thousand strangers to the invasion of their native country.

Charles of Montsoreau learned all these tales as he pa.s.sed; and at each inn where he stopped he received some warning not to advance rashly in this direction, or in that, lest he should meet with some of the scattered bands who had turned their swords into reaping hooks in a very different sense from the pacific one, and were gathering in a harvest which they had not sown, from the fears and necessities of the country.

Thus it happened in setting out from Chalons, the good aubergiste, who had taken care to extract from the purse of the young n.o.bleman as much as could be obtained with any appearance of honesty, counselled him strongly, instead of pursuing the high road towards Rheims, to follow the way along the river towards Mareuil, and thence across the country. "For," said he, "there is a band of at least fifty reiters have been watching the Rheims' gate for the last ten days, and have taken toll of every one that pa.s.sed, be he citizen or gentleman. Your train, too, is so scanty, young sir, that one sees evidently you come from a quieter place. Why, no one here ever thinks of riding without forty men at least; and the good Duke of Guise dare not go himself from one chateau to another without a hundred salads at his back."

As Charles of Montsoreau was not by any means well satisfied with the peculiar species of honesty of his host, he made no reply to his counsels, but followed his former purpose, and took the high road. Ere he had pursued it two miles, however, the merry huntsman Gondrin rode up, with the boy Ignati by his side, and some eagerness on his countenance.

"My Lord," he said, "the boy declares that he saw the gleaming of spear-heads upon the side of the hill a mile on."

"Indeed, Ignati!" said the Count--"your eyes must be sharp. Point out to me these spears; for I have seen nothing of them, though I have been watching anxiously."

"I can't show them to you now, sir," replied the boy, "for they have gone slowly behind the wood; but I saw them, believe me, and I am not mistaken."

Even while he was speaking a peasant was seen coming along the road upon an a.s.s which he was beating forward to as fast a pace as the brute's natural indocility would admit. The moment, however, that he saw the count's troop drawn up in the midst of the road, he suddenly paused in his course, with a look of some alarm, which did not seem at all to subside upon the young n.o.bleman riding up to him with Gondrin and the boy, and insisting upon his stopping; for he was now endeavouring to drive his beast into one of the by-paths through the country.

He was soon re-a.s.sured, however; and no sooner did he find that the party he had met with was not calculated to be an object of terror, than he endeavoured to inspire the persons of whom it was composed with the same fears which had taken possession of himself, informing the young count that he had just himself pa.s.sed the reiters, who, though they had left him the vegetables that he was carrying in his panniers to the market at Chalons, had taken from him all his poultry and eggs. He magnified their number and their ferocity very greatly; and as it was evident that they would not prove the most agreeable of companions on the road he was about to travel, Charles of Montsoreau obtained more correct information of the peasant as to the way to Mareuil, and struck back again from the high road towards the course of the Marne.

The circuit that he had made, however, and the time that had been lost by one interruption or another, rendered it late before he reached the village of Conde, and it was dark before he approached Mareuil. The place was unfortified, and, as far as he could judge in pa.s.sing through the little narrow street by which he first entered it, had an air of greater tranquillity and comfort than he had lately seen.

No house of public entertainment was apparent till he reached an open part of the street, near the centre of the little town, where a large stone building stood back from the rest, and displayed a wide front, with windows few and far between, and a single large archway for a door. Over this swung the sign of the inn, under a highly ornamented and gilded grating of iron-work; and as soon as the feet of horses were heard in the dusty open s.p.a.ce before the building, mine host and two of his palefreniers rushed forth to receive the new guests.

The night was clear, and the moon was up; and what between the a.s.sistance of the fair planet and the host's lantern, a very sufficient knowledge could be obtained in a moment of the persons of the strangers. That knowledge seemed in some degree to surprise and puzzle the landlord; and had Charles of Montsoreau remarked very acutely, he would have perceived that some one else had been expected in his place.

He noted not the demeanour of the landlord at all, however; but, springing from his horse, entered the archway, and pa.s.sed through a door which stood ajar to the right, showing through the crevice a well lighted room within. It was one of the large open halls of an old French inn, the rafters low and black with smoke, the chimney wide and stretching out far into the room, the andirons, on which were piled up immense ma.s.ses of wood, containing each more than one hundred weight of iron, and the table in the midst fit to support viands for forty or fifty people. The light which the young n.o.bleman had seen proceeded both from the fire which was blazing and crackling cheerfully, and from two large sconces of polished bra.s.s hung in different parts of the room.

The hall possessed at the moment of the Count's entrance only one tenant, of whom he could see little more, than that he was dressed in grey of the most ordinary kind. His hat was on, and differed a good deal from the cap and feather then common at the court of France, being tall in the crown, broad in the brim, and decorated by a single c.o.c.k's feather raising itself from the b.u.t.ton on the right side. Large untanned riding-boots were drawn up above his knees, a light sword was by his side, as if he felt himself in perfect security; and he wore a falling collar of lace over his doublet, instead of the ruff, which was ordinary at that period. The b.u.t.tons of the grey suit were of jet, and on the middle finger of his right hand was a large seal ring, of apparently coa.r.s.e manufacture. He was sitting at one of the farther corners of the table, with an inkhorn before him and a pen in his hand, busily writing on a sheet of coa.r.s.e paper, which had been supplied to him by the host; so that looking at him as he sat, one might very well have taken him for some public notary of a neighbouring town, in not the best practice in the world.

Such, indeed, would have been the interpretation which Charles of Montsoreau would have put upon his appearance, had it not been for the somewhat Spanish cut of his hat, and the singular fas.h.i.+on of his collar, which puzzled him a good deal; for, notwithstanding the occupation of his mind with other thoughts, and the very ordinary apparel of the stranger, there was something in his form and aspect which attracted attention and excited curiosity in the young n.o.bleman, he neither knew why nor how.

As soon as he heard a step entering the room, the stranger turned partially round and half rose from his seat; but a momentary glance was sufficient to show him that the person who appeared was unknown to him; and, turning towards the table again, he pursued his occupation.

The young count advanced slowly to the fire, and drawing a settle near, stretched out his feet to warm himself, turning his back to the stranger so as to avoid any air of scanning his proceedings. Gondrin and the other attendants came and went, asking him questions and directions as he thus sat; and from time to time the writer turned round his head and examined their movements and appearance, but without uttering a word. The aubergiste himself at length approached the fireplace, in order, it seemed, to consult with the young gentleman regarding his supper. There was but little, he said, in the house, and at that late hour it was impossible to procure much more.

However, he would do his best, he added, and a.s.sured his new guest of at least giving him good wine.

Charles of Montsoreau informed him that he was easily satisfied, and doubted not that every thing would be good and abundant. But somewhat to his surprise--for such things were not at all customary in that day--the aubergiste proceeded to demand whether he would not prefer having a chamber apart to sup in, rather than take his meal in the common hall. He was in the act of replying in the negative, when the voice of the stranger who was writing at the table made itself heard for the first time, exclaiming, in an authoritative tone, "Pierre Jean."

The innkeeper instantly flew to his side, and the other addressed him in a low tone, to which the innkeeper replied almost in a whisper.

"As you will, Maitre Henri, as you will," said the landlord in conclusion. "But I think it very strange they have not come."

The other merely nodded his head in reply, and then folding up the paper he had written, he put it in his pocket, and approached the fire with an air of being quite at home. He was a man of about six or seven and thirty years of age, and, as he now stood before Charles of Montsoreau at his full height, appeared to the eyes of the young n.o.bleman one of the most powerful men he had ever beheld. His chest was at once broad and deep, his limbs muscular and long, the head small, the flanks thin, and the foot and hand well formed. Every indication was there of great strength and great activity, and the countenance also harmonised perfectly well with the figure, the broad high forehead giving that air of a powerful and active mind which we are all, whether physiognomists or not, inclined by nature to see in the expanse which covers and seems to represent the great instrument of the human intellect. He wore the mustachio somewhat long, and the beard pointed, but small. The eyes were large and fine, the eyebrows strongly marked, the nose was beautifully formed, displaying the wide expansive nostril, generally reckoned a sign of generous feelings; and though there was a cut upon his brow scarcely healed, and a deep scar in his cheek of a more remote date, yet they did not at all detract from the handsomeness of the countenance, which, notwithstanding the plainness of his dress and appearance, was peculiarly striking and attractive.

"This is a cold night, young gentleman," he said, as he approached the fire, "and you ride out somewhat late for a traveller in these parts of the world."

"Oh, I fear not the cold," replied Charles of Montsoreau; "and though I certainly prefer not the night to travel in, yet, when I must betake myself to it, I do so without much discomfort or hesitation."

"Ay; but there are other things sweep over this country besides the wind," said the stranger, "things more cutting and more sharp, I can a.s.sure you."

"Oh, against those I go pretty well prepared also," replied Charles of Montsoreau; "every French gentleman is a soldier, you know; and we are not unwilling or unable to make use of our arms when it may be needful."

"You have served, I suppose," said the stranger, "perhaps at Coutras, with the Duke of Joyeuse, or with Harry of Navarre and his Huguenots."

Charles of Montsoreau looked up with a smile. "If we begin talking of where we served, and on what causes, good sir," he said, "we shall have our worthy host, Pierre Jean, requiring us to give up our swords into his safe keeping till we set out again, as indeed he is bound by law to do."

"Oh, no fear, no fear," replied the stranger, laughing. "We shall not quarrel and cut each other's throats, depend upon it. You are here, a young lord, with, it seems to me, a dozen or two of attendants, and I am alone, a poor Escribano, by name Maitre Henri, as you just heard."

"And yet," replied Charles of Montsoreau, "the poor Escribano, I should judge, had seen some service in his day, and that not very many years ago either."

"Oh, you judge from that cut upon my forehead. That is but the scratch of a cat."

"Well, then," answered Charles, "if you will tell me sincerely whether that cat's claw was a reiter's estramacon, or the spear of a De la Mark, I will tell you whether I drew my sword at Coutras, and on what part."