Cocheforet lies in a billowy land of oak and beech and chestnuts--a land
of deep, leafy bottoms and hills clothed with forest. Ridge and valley,
glen and knoll, the woodland, sparsely peopled and more sparsely tilled,
stretches away to the great snow mountains that here limit France. It
swarms with game--with wolves and bears, deer and boars. To the end of
his life I have heard that the great king loved this district, and would
sigh, when years and State fell heavily on him, for the beech groves and
box-covered hills of South Bearn. From the terraced steps of Auch you
can see the forest roll away in light and shadow, vale and upland, to
the base of the snow peaks; and, though I come from Brittany and love
the smell of the salt wind, I have seen few sights that outdo this.
It was the second week of October, when I came to Cocheforet, and,
dropping down from the last wooded brow, rode quietly into the place at
evening. I was alone, and had ridden all day in a glory of ruddy beech
leaves, through the silence of forest roads, across clear brooks and
glades still green. I had seen more of the quiet and peace of the
country than had been my share since boyhood, and for that reason, or
because I had no great taste for the task before me--the task now
so imminent--I felt a little hipped. In good faith, it was not a
gentleman’s work that I was come to do, look at it how you might.
But beggars must not be choosers, and I knew that this feeling would
not last. At the inn, in the presence of others, under the spur of
necessity, or in the excitement of the chase, were that once begun, I
should lose the feeling. When a man is young he seeks solitude, when he
is middle-aged, he flies it and his thoughts. I made therefore for the
‘Green Pillar,’ a little inn in the village street, to which I had been
directed at Auch, and, thundering on the door with the knob of my riding
switch, railed at the man for keeping me waiting.
Here and there at hovel doors in the street--which was a mean,
poor place, not worthy of the name--men and women looked out at me
suspiciously. But I affected to ignore them; and at last the host came.
He was a fair-haired man, half-Basque, half-Frenchman, and had scanned
me well, I was sure, through some window or peephole; for when he came
out he betrayed no surprise at the sight of a well-dressed stranger--a
portent in that out-of-the-way village--but eyed me with a kind of
sullen reserve.
‘I can lie here to-night, I suppose?’ I said, dropping the reins on the
sorrel’s neck. The horse hung its head.
‘I don’t know,’ he answered stupidly.
I pointed to the green bough which topped a post that stood opposite the
door.
‘This is an inn, is it not?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he answered slowly. ‘It is an inn. But--’
‘But you are full, or you are out of food, or your wife is ill, or
something else is amiss,’ I answered peevishly. ‘All the same, I am
going to lie here. So you must make the best of it, and your wife
too--if you have one.’
He scratched his head, looking at me with an ugly glitter in his eyes.
But he said nothing, and I dismounted.
‘Where can I stable my horse?’ I asked.
‘I’ll put it up,’ he answered sullenly, stepping forward and taking the
reins in his hand.
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘But I go with you. A merciful man is merciful to
his beast, and wherever I go I see my horse fed.’
‘It will be fed,’ he said shortly. And then he waited for me to go
into the house. ‘The wife is in there,’ he continued, looking at me
stubbornly.
‘IMPRIMIS--if you understand Latin, my friend,’ I answered, ‘the horse
in the stall.’
He saw that it was no good, turned the sorrel slowly round, and began
to lead it across the village street. There was a shed behind the inn,
which I had already marked, and taken for the stable, I was surprised
when I found that he was not going there, but I made no remark, and in
a few minutes saw the horse made comfortable in a hovel which seemed to
belong to a neighbour.
This done, the man led the way back to the inn, carrying my valise.
‘You have no other guests?’ I said, with a casual air. I knew that he
was watching me closely.
‘No,’ he answered.
‘This is not much in the way to anywhere, I suppose?’
‘No.’
That was so evident, that I never saw a more retired place. The hanging
woods, rising steeply to a great height, so shut the valley in that I
was puzzled to think how a man could leave it save by the road I had
come. The cottages, which were no more than mean, small huts, ran in
a straggling double line, with many gaps--through fallen trees and
ill-cleared meadows. Among them a noisy brook ran in and out, and the
inhabitants--charcoal-burners, or swine-herds, or poor devils of the
like class, were no better than their dwellings. I looked in vain for
the Chateau. It was not to be seen, and I dared not ask for it.
The man led me into the common room of the tavern--a low-roofed, poor
place, lacking a chimney or glazed windows, and grimy with smoke and
use. The fire--a great half-burned tree--smouldered on a stone hearth,
raised a foot from the floor. A huge black pot simmered over it, and
beside one window lounged a country fellow talking with the goodwife. In
the dusk I could not see his face, but I gave the woman a word, and sat
down to wait for my supper.
She seemed more silent than the common run of her kind; but this might
be because her husband was present. While she moved about getting my
meal, he took his place against the door-post and fell to staring at
me so persistently that I felt by no means at my ease. He was a tall,
strong fellow, with a shaggy moustache and brown beard, cut in the mode
Henri Quatre; and on the subject of that king--a safe one, I knew, with
a Bearnais--and on that alone, I found it possible to make him talk.
Even then there was a suspicious gleam in his eyes that bade me abstain
from questions; so that as the darkness deepened behind him, and the
firelight played more and more strongly on his features, and I thought
of the leagues of woodland that lay between this remote valley and
Auch, I recalled the Cardinal’s warning that if I failed in my attempt I
should be little likely to trouble Paris again.
The lout by the window paid no attention to me; nor I to him, when I
had once satisfied myself that he was really what he seemed to be.
But by-and-by two or three men--rough, uncouth fellows--dropped in to
reinforce the landlord, and they, too seemed to have no other business
than to sit in silence looking at me, or now and again to exchange a
word in a PATOIS of their own. By the time my supper was ready, the
knaves numbered six in all; and, as they were armed to a man with huge
Spanish knives, and made it clear that they resented my presence in
their dull rustic fashion--every rustic is suspicious--I began to think
that, unwittingly, I had put my head into a wasps’ nest.
Nevertheless, I ate and drank with apparent appetite; but little that
passed within the circle of light cast by the smoky lamp escaped me. I
watched the men’s looks and gestures at least as sharply as they watched
mine; and all the time I was racking my wits for some mode of disarming
their suspicions, or failing that, of learning something more of the
position, which far exceeded in difficulty and danger anything that I
had expected. The whole valley, it would seem, was on the look-out to
protect my man!
I had purposely brought with me from Auch a couple of bottles of choice
Armagnac; and these had been carried into the house with my saddle bags.
I took one out now and opened it and carelessly offered a dram of the
spirit to the landlord. He took it. As he drank it, I saw his face
flush; he handed back the cup reluctantly, and on that hint I offered
him another, The strong spirit was already beginning to work, and he
accepted, and in a few minutes began to talk more freely and with less
of the constraint which had before marked us all. Still, his tongue ran
chiefly on questions--he would know this, he would learn that; but even
this was a welcome change. I told him openly whence I had come, by what
road, how long I had stayed in Auch, and where; and so far I satisfied
his curiosity. Only, when I came to the subject of my visit to
Cocheforet I kept a mysterious silence, hinting darkly at business in
Spain and friends across the border, and this and that; in this way
giving the peasants to understand, if they pleased, that I was in the
same interest as their exiled master.
They took the bait, winked at one another, and began to look at me in
a more friendly way--the landlord foremost. But when I had led them so
far, I dared go no farther, lest I should commit myself and be found
out. I stopped, therefore, and, harking back to general subjects,
chanced to compare my province with theirs. The landlord, now become
almost talkative, was not slow to take up this challenge; and it
presently led to my acquiring a curious piece of knowledge. He was
boasting of his great snow mountains, the forests that propped them, the
bears that roamed in them, the izards that loved the ice, and the boars
that fed on the oak mast.
‘Well,’ I said, quite by chance, ‘we have not these things, it is true.
But we have things in the north you have not. We have tens of thousands
of good horses--not such ponies as you breed here. At the horse fair at
Fecamp my sorrel would be lost in the crowd. Here in the south you will
not meet his match in a long day’s journey.’
‘Do not make too sure of that,’ the man replied, his eyes bright with
triumph and the dram. ‘What would you say if I showed you a better--in
my own stable?’
I saw that his words sent a kind of thrill through his other hearers,
and that such of them as understood for two or three of them talked
their PATOIS only--looked at him angrily; and in a twinkling I began to
comprehend. But I affected dullness, and laughed in scorn.
‘Seeing is believing,’ I said. ‘I doubt if you knows good horse when you
see one, my friend.’
‘Oh, don’t I?’ he said, winking. ‘Indeed!’
‘I doubt it,’ I answered stubbornly.
‘Then come with me, and I will show you one,’ he retorted, discretion
giving way to vain-glory. His wife and the others, I saw, looked at him
dumbfounded; but, without paying any heed to them, he rose, took up
a lanthorn, and, assuming an air of peculiar wisdom, opened the door.
‘Come with me,’ he continued. ‘I don’t know a good horse when I see one,
don’t I? I know a better than yours, at any rate!’
I should not have been surprised if the other men had interfered; but
I suppose he was a leader among them, they did not, and in a moment we
were outside. Three paces through the darkness took us to the stable, an
offset at the back of the inn. My man twirled the pin, and, leading the
way in, raised his lanthorn. A horse whinnied softly, and turned its
bright, mild eyes on us--a baldfaced chestnut, with white hairs in its
tail and one white stocking.
‘There!’ my guide exclaimed, waving the lanthorn to and fro boastfully,
that I might see its points. ‘What do you say to that? Is that an
undersized pony?’
‘No,’ I answered, purposely stinting my praise. ‘It is pretty fair--for
this country.’
‘Or any country,’ he answered wrathfully. ‘Or any country, I say--I
don’t care where it is! And I have reason to know! Why, man, that horse
is--But there, that is a good horse, if ever you saw one!’ And with
that he ended--abruptly and lamely; lowered the lanthorn with a sudden
gesture, and turned to the door. He was on the instant in such hurry to
leave that he almost shouldered me out.
But I understood. I knew that he had neatly betrayed all--that he had
been on the point of blurting out that that was M. de Cocheforet’s
horse! M. Cocheforet’s COMPRENEZ BIEN! And while I turned away my face
in the darkness that he might not see me smile, I was not surprised
to find the man in a moment changed, and become, in the closing of the
door, as sober and suspicious as before, ashamed of himself and enraged
with me, and in a mood to cut my throat for a trifle.
It was not my cue to quarrel, however. I made therefore, as if I
had seen nothing, and when we were back in the inn praised the horse
grudgingly, and like a man but half convinced. The ugly looks and ugly
weapons I saw round me were fine incentives to caution; and no Italian,
I flatter myself, could have played his part more nicely than I did. But
I was heartily glad when it was over, and I found myself, at last, left
alone for the night in a little garret--a mere fowl-house--upstairs,
formed by the roof and gable walls, and hung with strings of apples and
chestnuts. It was a poor sleeping-place--rough, chilly, and unclean. I
ascended to it by a ladder; my cloak and a little fern formed my only
bed. But I was glad to accept it, for it enabled me to be alone and to
think out the position unwatched.
Of course M. de Cocheforet was at the Chateau. He had left his horse
here, and gone up on foot; probably that was his usual plan. He was
therefore within my reach, in one sense--I could not have come at a
better time--but in another he was as much beyond it as if I were still
in Paris. For so far was I from being able to seize him that I dared not
ask a question, or let fall a rash word, or even look about me freely.
I saw I dared not. The slightest hint of my mission, the faintest breath
of distrust, would lead to throat-cutting--and the throat would be mine;
while the longer I lay in the village, the greater suspicion I should
incur, and the closer would be the watch kept upon me.
In such a position some men might have given up the attempt in despair,
and saved themselves across the border. But I have always valued myself
on my fidelity, and I did not shrink. If not to-day, to-morrow; if
not this time, next time. The dice do not always turn up aces. Bracing
myself, therefore, to the occasion, I crept, as soon as the house was
quiet, to the window, a small, square, open lattice, much cobwebbed, and
partly stuffed with hay. I looked out. The village seemed to be asleep.
The dark branches of trees hung a few feet away, and almost obscured
a grey, cloudy sky, through which a wet moon sailed drearily. Looking
downwards, I could at first see nothing; but as my eyes grew used to the
darkness--I had only just put out my rushlight--I made out the stable
door and the shadowy outlines of the lean-to roof.
I had hoped for this, for I could now keep watch, and learn at least
whether Cocheforet left before morning. If he did not, I should know
he was still here. If he did, I should be the better for seeing his
features, and learning, perhaps, other things that might be of use to me
in the future.
Making up my mind to the uncomfortable, I sat down on the floor by the
lattice, and began a vigil that might last, I knew, until morning. It
did last about an hour, at the end of which time I heard whispering
below, then footsteps; then, as some persons turned a corner, a voice
speaking aloud and carelessly. I could not catch the words or meaning,
but the voice was a gentleman’s, and its bold accents and masterful
tone left me in no doubt that the speaker was M. de Cocheforet himself.
Hoping to learn more, I pressed my face nearer to the opening, and had
just made out through the gloom two figures--one that of a tall, slight
man, wearing a cloak, the other, I fancied, a woman’s, in a sheeny white
dress--when a thundering rap on the door of my garret made me spring
back a yard from the lattice, and lie down hurriedly on my couch. The
summons was repeated.
‘Well?’ I cried, rising on my elbow, and cursing the untimely
interruption. I was burning with anxiety to see more. ‘What is it? What
is the matter?’
The trap-door was lifted a foot or more. The landlord thrust up his
head.
‘You called, did you not?’ he said.
He held up a rushlight, which illumined half the room and lit up his
grinning face.
‘Called--at this hour of the night, you fool?’ I answered angrily. ‘No!
I did not call. Go to bed, man!’
But he remained on the ladder, gaping stupidly. ‘I heard you,’ he said.
‘Go to bed! You are drunk,’ I answered, sitting up. ‘I tell you I did
not call.’
‘Oh, very well,’ he answered slowly. ‘And you do not want anything?’
‘Nothing--except to be left alone,’ I replied sourly.
‘Umph!’ he said. ‘Good-night!’
‘Good-night! Good-night!’ I answered with what patience I might. The
tramp of the horse’s hoofs as it was led out of the stable was in my
ears at the moment. ‘Good-night!’ I continued feverishly, hoping that he
would still retire in time, and I have a chance to look out. ‘I want to
sleep.’
‘Good,’ he said, with a broad grin. ‘But it is early yet, and you have
plenty of time.’
And then, at last, he slowly let down the trap-door, and I heard him
chuckle as he went down the ladder.
Before he reached the bottom I was at the window. The woman, whom I had
seen, still stood below in the same place, and beside her was a man in
a peasant’s dress, holding a lanthorn. But the man, the man I wanted
to see, was no longer there. He was gone, and it was evident that the
others no longer feared me; for while I gazed the landlord came out to
them with another lanthorn swinging in his hand, and said something to
the lady, and she looked up at my window and laughed.
It was a warm night, and she wore nothing over her white dress. I could
see her tall, shapely figure and shining eyes, and the firm contour of
her beautiful face, which, if any fault might be found with it, erred
in being too regular. She looked like a woman formed by nature to
meet dangers and difficulties, and to play a great part; even here, at
midnight, in the midst of these desperate men, she did not seem out of
place. I could fancy--I did not find it impossible to fancy--that under
her queenly exterior, and behind the contemptuous laugh with which she
heard the landlord’s story, there lurked a woman’s soul, a soul capable
of folly and tenderness. But no outward sign betrayed its presence--as I
saw her then.
I scanned her very carefully; and secretly, if the truth be told, I was
glad to find that Madame de Cocheforet was such a woman. I was glad that
she had laughed as she had--with a ring of disdain and defiance; glad
that she was not a little, tender, child-like woman, to be crushed
by the first pinch of trouble. For if I succeeded in my task, if I
contrived to--but, pish! Women, I told myself, were all alike. She would
find consolation quickly enough.
I watched until the group broke up, and Madame, with one of the men,
went her way round the corner of the inn, and out of my sight. Then I
retired to bed again, feeling more than ever perplexed what course I
should adopt. It was clear that to succeed I must obtain admission to
the house, which was garrisoned, according to my instructions, by two
or three old men-servants only, and as many women; since Madame, to
disguise her husband’s visits the more easily, lived, and gave out that
she lived, in great retirement. To seize her husband at home, therefore,
might be no impossible task; though here, in the heart of the village, a
troop of horse might make the attempt, and fail.
But how was I to gain admission to the house--a house guarded by
quick-witted women, and fenced with all the precautions love could
devise? That was the question; and dawn found me still debating it,
still as far as ever from an answer. Anxious and feverish, I was glad
when the light came, and I could get up. I thought that the fresh
air might inspire me, and I was tired of my stuffy closet. I crept
stealthily down the ladder, and managed to pass unseen through the lower
room, in which several persons were snoring heavily. The outer door was
not fastened, and in a hand-turn I was in the street.
It was still so early that the trees stood up black against the
reddening sky, but the bough upon the post before the door was growing
green, and in a few minutes the grey light would be everywhere. Already,
even in the roadway, there was a glimmering of it; and as I stood at the
corner of the house--where I could command both the front and the side
on which the stable opened--sniffing the fresh air, and looking for
any trace of the midnight departure, my eyes detected something
light-coloured lying on the ground. It was not more than two or three
paces from me, and I stepped to it and picked it up curiously, hoping
that it might be a note. It was not a note, however, but a tiny
orange-coloured sachet such as women carry in the bosom. It was full
of some faintly-scented powder, and bore on one side the initial ‘E,’
worked in white silk; and was altogether a dainty little toy, such as
women love.
Doubtless Madame de Cocheforet had dropped it in the night. I turned it
over and over; and then I put it in my pouch with a smile, thinking that
it might be useful sometime, and in some way. I had scarcely done this,
and turned with the intention of exploring the street, when the door
behind me creaked on its leather hinges, and in a moment the host stood
at my elbow, and gave me a surly greeting.
Evidently his suspicions were again aroused, for from this time he
managed to be with me, on one pretence or another until noon. Moreover,
his manner grew each moment more churlish, his hints plainer; until
I could scarcely avoid noticing the one or the other. About mid-day,
having followed me for the twentieth time into the street, he came to
the point by asking me rudely if I did not need my horse.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because,’ he answered, with an ugly smile, ‘this is not a very healthy
place for strangers.’
‘Ah!’ I retorted. ‘But the border air suits me, you see,’
It was a lucky answer, for, taken with my talk the night before, it
puzzled him, by suggesting that I was on the losing side, and had my
reasons for lying near Spain. Before he had done scratching his head
over it, the clatter of hoofs broke the sleepy quiet of the village
street, and the lady I had seen the night before rode quickly round the
corner, and drew her horse on to its haunches. Without looking at me,
she called to the innkeeper to come to her stirrup.
He went. The moment his back was turned, I slipped away, and in a
twinkling was hidden by a house. Two or three glum-looking fellows
stared at me as I passed down the street, but no one moved; and in two
minutes I was clear of the village, and in a half-worn track which ran
through the wood, and led--if my ideas were right--to the Chateau.
To discover the house and learn all that was to be learned about its
situation were my most pressing needs; and these, even at the risk of a
knife thrust, I was determined to satisfy.
I had not gone two hundred paces along the path, however, before I
heard the tread of a horse behind me, and I had just time to hide myself
before Madame came up and rode by me, sitting her horse gracefully, and
with all the courage of a northern woman. I watched her pass, and then,
assured by her presence that I was in the right road, I hurried after
her. Two minutes walking at speed brought me to a light wooden bridge
spanning a stream. I crossed this, and, as the wood opened, saw before
me first a wide, pleasant meadow, and beyond this a terrace. On the
terrace, pressed upon on three sides by thick woods, stood a grey
mansion, with the corner tourelles, steep, high roofs, and round
balconies, that men loved and built in the days of the first Francis.
It was of good size, but wore a gloomy aspect. A great yew hedge, which
seemed to enclose a walk or bowling-green, hid the ground floor of the
east wing from view, while a formal rose garden, stiff even in neglect,
lay in front of the main building. The west wing, of which the lower
roofs fell gradually away to the woods, probably contained the stables
and granaries.
I stood a moment only, but I marked all, and noted how the road reached
the house, and which windows were open to attack; then I turned and
hastened back. Fortunately, I met no one between the house and the
village, and was able to enter my host’s with an air of the most
complete innocence.
Short as had been my absence, however, I found things altered there.
Round the door lounged three strangers--stout, well-armed fellows, whose
bearing, as they loitered and chattered, suggested a curious mixture of
smugness and independence. Half a dozen pack-horses stood tethered to
the post in front of the house; and the landlord’s manner, from being
rude and churlish only, had grown perplexed and almost timid. One of
the strangers, I soon found, supplied him with wine; the others were
travelling merchants, who rode in the first one’s company for the sake
of safety. All were substantial men from Tarbes--solid burgesses; and
I was not long in guessing that my host, fearing what might leak out
before them, and, particularly, that I might refer to the previous
night’s disturbance, was on tenter-hooks while they remained.
For a time this did not suggest anything to me. But when we had all
taken our seats for supper, there came an addition to the party. The
door opened, and the fellow whom I had seen the night before with Madame
de Cocheforet entered and took a stool by the fire. I felt sure that
he was one of the servants at the Chateau; and in a flash his presence
inspired me with the most feasible plan for obtaining admission which
I had yet hit upon. I felt myself grow hot at the thought--it seemed so
full of promise, yet so doubtful--and, on the instant, without giving
myself time to think too much, I began to carry it into effect.
I called for two or three bottles of better wine, and, assuming a jovial
air, passed it round the table. When we had drunk a few glasses I fell
to talking, and, choosing politics, took the side of the Languedoc party
and the malcontents in so reckless a fashion that the innkeeper was
beside himself at my imprudence. The merchants, who belonged to the
class with whom the Cardinal was always most popular, looked first
astonished and then enraged. But I was not to be checked; hints and sour
looks were lost upon me. I grew more outspoken with every glass, I drank
to the Rochellois, I swore it would not be long before they raised their
heads again; and, at last, while the innkeeper and his wife were engaged
lighting the lamp, I passed round the bottle and called on all for a
toast.
‘I’ll give you one to begin,’ I bragged noisily. ‘A gentleman’s toast!
A southern toast! Here is confusion to the Cardinal, and a health to all
who hate him!’
‘MON DIEU!’ one of the strangers cried, springing from his seat in
a rage. ‘I am not going to stomach that! Is your house a common
treason-hole,’ he continued, turning furiously on the landlord, ‘that
you suffer this?’
‘Hoity-toity!’ I answered, coolly keeping my seat. ‘What is all this?
Don’t you relish my toast, little man?’
‘No--nor you!’ he retorted hotly; ‘whoever you may be!’
‘Then I will give you another,’ I answered, with a hiccough. ‘Perhaps it
will be more to your taste. Here is the Duke of Orleans, and may he soon
be King!’