BOURGNEUF.
The chateau of Bourgneuf, within which I so singularly found myself
an inhabitant, stands* on the north slope of a hill, about a mile
from the old highway that leads from Dol to Rennes, the capital of
Brittany, where _bourg_ signifies especially a village or residence.
* We may now say _stood_, as it was demolished in the wars subsequent
to the Revolution.
It was a fabric of striking aspect, but of large and irregular
proportions, having been built in the days of local war and
turbulence, when the lords of Bourgneuf kept constantly a numerous
body of armed men about them. As the household consisted now only of
the widowed countess (then at St. Malo), her niece, Mademoiselle de
Broglie, and a few servants, for the young count was serving with his
regiment, but a small portion of this great mansion was inhabited,
and thus a melancholy stillness reigned in its long, shady galleries,
great suites of apartments, and round towers, the bases of which were
washed by the waters of a lake.
It had at least twenty steep conical roofs on its towers and turrets,
and each of these was surmounted by a grotesque iron girouette, as
the French name those vanes which were exclusively placed on the
houses of their ancient nobility.
In this chateau had Isabelle of Scotland, daughter of James I.,
passed two nights when proceeding to Rennes, where, in 1442, she was
married to Francis I., Duke of Bretagne; where the peasants yet sing
of her beauty, and the luxuriance of her golden hair.
The edifice resembled in style several of our old Scottish baronial
dwellings, such as Glammis or Castle Huntly, and I afterwards learnt
that it had been engrafted on an older fortress of the Counts of
Brittany, in which died Alain with the Strong Beard, in the tenth
century; and like all ancient castles in France, it had its legends
of blood and sorrow.
It was approached from the Rennes road through two rows of ancient
yews, of vast size, towering, solemn, and sombre. Between each of
these stood an orange-tree in a green tub; and in the garden were
long walks covered with closely cut grass, and a labyrinth of trim
beech hedges of great height, amid the dense leaves of which the lark
and yellow-hammer built their nests undisturbed.
I remember the spacious entrance-hall, with its floor of tesselated
marble, its tall cabinets of ebony and _marqueterie_, piled with rare
china and Indian pagodas; its trophies of arms, a barred helmet or
dinted corslet forming the centre of each; its vast dining-hall, with
deeply-recessed windows, tapestry curtains, and chairs covered with
rose-coloured brocaded silk; and in that hall, Francis II., last Duke
of Brittany, had been feasted in 1459 by Roderique, Count of
Bourgneuf, who was slain by a Burgundian knight six years after at
the battle of Montleheri.
The long disused moat of the old mansion was overgrown by wild
brambles, and masses of clematis and ivy shrouded the cannon,
carriages and all, on the bastion at the outer gate. Old pieces they
were--old perhaps as the days of the League; and above the gate they
had once defended, were carved the three besants of Bourgneuf,
impaled with the saltire of Broglie.
Such was the old chateau in Brittany, wherein the fortune of war had
so strangely cast me.
On the window of my bedroom I one day discovered the name of the
author of "Gil Blas," Alain René le Sage (who was a Breton), written
with a diamond, for he had once visited the chateau; this window
overlooked the lake, which was covered by water-lilies, and bordered
by long reedy grass, where the snipe lay concealed, and the tall
heron waded in search of the gold-scaled barbel.
Beyond this lake rose some steep and rugged rocks, nearly covered by
the yellow bells of the wild gorse; and on the highest stood a
haunted Druid stone, around which the fairies and the _poulpicous_
(their husbands) danced on certain nights. This stone, as Angelique
assured me, bore a deep mark, the cut of Excalibur, the sword of King
Arthur, who is peculiarly the national hero of the Bretons.
How was I to get away from this secluded place?
By sea every port and harbour were watched and guarded. If
discovered, the jealous military authorities would certainly put me
to death without much inquiry, as a spy; the peasantry as an invader;
the local magistrates or lords, would be sure to dispose of me as
_both_.
This was a tormenting question which even my kind little nurse
Angelique could in no way answer. Indeed, she detailed so many
difficulties to be overcome, and so many dangers to be dared, that
there seemed a probability of my spending the term of my natural life
at the chateau of Bourgneuf, unless Commodore Howe with his fleet,
and His Grace of Marlborough with at least ten thousand men, paid
again a special visit to Brittany, the chance of which was very
slender; and a conversation, a portion of which I was compelled to
overhear, between Angelique and her lover Jacquot, served still more
to increase my anxiety to be gone.
He had come to announce the return of the countess in a few days,
after a certain pilgrimage, in which she was to accompany Père
Celestine and a train of devotees to the Hole of the Serpent, and see
the silver cross of St. Suliac dipped three times in the lonely cave
of La Guivre, a famous religious superstition of the Bretons.
What I overheard took place on the fourth day of my convalescence.
"So you are sulky and in a pet, Monsieur Jacquot?" said the
_soubrette_, pouting, with her hands in the pockets of her little
apron.
"Perchance I have reason to be so, Mademoiselle Angelique," replied
the other, with his hands thrust into his breeches pockets.
"You think yourself very clever, no doubt!"
"_Parbleu!_ what if I do?"
"I have heard that when at school----"
"Bah! don't talk of our days at school. All clever men are dunces
there."
"A clever boy _you_ must have been!"
"_Morbleu!_" growled Jacquot; "a lover does not like to be laughed
at."
"In such a humour, Monsieur Jacquot, what in the name of goodness
brings you to me?"
"Say rather _badness_, mademoiselle, and it may better suit your
disposition."
"Indeed! are you jealous of anyone again? Monsieur de Boisguiller
and his hussars are now gone to Rennes."
"Yes; but the spark who walks with you on the north terrace in the
twilight----"
"_O ciel!_ what are you saying?"
"Yes, and whom I have caught so often lurking among the shrubbery and
in the avenue at night; he, at least, is _not_ gone to Rennes. An
ugly fellow he is too, with a mark like a bullet-hole in each cheek.
Eh, Mademoiselle Angelique, what say you to this?"
I did not hear the girl's reply, and they moved away from the room
adjoining mine; but I had heard enough to cause me intense alarm. I
had been twice on the north terrace in the evening with Angelique;
but _who_ was the lurker detected by Jacquot in the shrubbery and
avenue?
"An ugly fellow with a mark like a bullet-hole in each cheek!" My
heart foreboded in a moment that he must be the ruffian Hautois.
If he had traced me to the chateau, I was lost indeed!
No sooner was Jacquot gone, than Angelique came to me, and repeated
all that I had previously heard, adding that some disguise was
necessary now; but we knew not what kind to adopt. In the meantime,
my uniform--my poor red coat, which I had first donned with such
pride at Rothbury--was concealed or destroyed, and she brought me a
hunting-suit of green cloth from the wardrobe of the absent count.
Still complete seclusion was necessary, and I could only take the air
in the evening, on a secluded terrace or upper bartizan of the
chateau, where Mademoiselle de Broglie and her attendant frequently
sat in a kind of bower formed by the projection of a turret and a
mass of wild roses, and where they read, chatted, or worked.
I had the pleasure of spending several evenings with Mademoiselle de
Broglie there, and with each of these lovely summer evenings, when
the purple shadow of the chateau fell far across the weedy lake,
whose waters rippled in opal tints, and when the Druid monolith on
the opposite rocks shone like a pillar of flame in the crimson light
of the setting sun, it seemed to me that I was becoming less and less
anxious about my escape from Bourgneuf, my flight from Brittany, and
my return to the army.
Why was this? I asked my heart, and could only look for an answer in
the quiet deep eyes of Jacqueline.
Her emerald ring was still on my finger, and as I looked at it again
and again, and then on the lovely donor, the words of Charters, when
I first showed him the ring on that morning near our camp at Paramé,
came back to my memory like a prediction about to be verified.