the Holy Spirit. The royal founder used occasionally to retire with
the knights to Vincennes. There they shut themselves up, as they said,
to fast and repent; but, as the world said, to indulge in pleasures
of a very monster-like quality. The royal dukes of a later period in
France used to atone for inordinate vice by making their mistresses
fast; the royal duchesses settled their little balance with Heaven,
by making their servants fast. It appears that there was nothing of
this vicarious penance in the case of Henri III. and his knights. Not
that all the knights willingly submitted to penance which mortified
their appetites. Charles de la Marck, Count of Braine. was one of those
impatient penitents. On a day on which rigid abstinence had been
enjoined, the king was passing by the count’s apartment, when he was
struck by a savory smell. King as he was, he immediately applied his
eye to the keyhole of the count’s door, and beheld the knight blowing
lustily at a little fire under a chafing-dish, in which there were two
superb soles frying in savory sauce. “Brother knight, brother knight,”
exclaimed Henri, “I see all and smell much. Art thou not ashamed thus
to transgress the holy rule?”--“I should be much more so,” said the
count, opening the door, “if I made an enemy of my stomach. I can bear
this sort of abstinence no longer. Here am I, knight and gentleman,
doubly famished in that double character, and I have been, in my own
proper person, to buy these soles, and purchase what was necessary for
the most delicious of sauces: I am cooking them myself, and they are
now done to a turn. Cooked _aux gratins_, your majesty yourself can
not surely resist tasting. Allow me”--and he pushed forward a chair,
in which Henri seated himself, and to the “soles _aux gratins_,” such
as Vefour and Very never dished up, the monarch sat down, and with the
hungry count, discussed the merits of fasting, while they enjoyed the
fish. It was but meagre fare after all; and probably the repast did not
conclude there.
Charity is illustrated in the valiant William Pot (a very ancient name
of a very ancient family, of which the late archdeacon of Middlesex and
vicar of Kensington was probably a descendant). He applied a legacy of
sixty thousand livres to the support of wounded soldiers. Henri III.,
who was always intending to accomplish some good deed, resolved to
erect an asylum for infirm military men; but, of course, he forgot it.
Henri IV., who has received a great deal more praise than he deserves,
also expressed his intention to do something for his old soldiers;
but he was too much taken up with the fair Gabrielle, and she was not
like Nell Gwynne, who turned her intimacy with a king to the profit
of the men who poured out their blood for him. The old soldiers were
again neglected; and it was not till the reign of Louis XIV. that Pot’s
example was again recalled to mind, and profitable action adopted in
consequence. When I think of the gallant Pot’s legacy, what he did
therewith, and how French soldiers benefited thereby, I am inclined to
believe that the German troops, less well cared for, may thence have
derived their once favorite oath, and that _Potz tausend!_ may have
some reference to the sixty thousand livres which the compassionate
knight of Rhodes and the Holy Ghost devoted to the comfort and solace
of the brave men who had been illustriously maimed in war.
The kings of France were accustomed to create a batch of knights of
the Holy Ghost, on the day following that of the coronation, when
the monarchs became sovereign heads of the order. The entire body
subsequently repaired from the Cathedral to the Church of St. Remi,
in grand equestrian procession, known as the “cavalcade.” Nothing
could well exceed the splendor of this procession, when kings were
despotic in France, and funds easily provided. Cavalry and infantry in
state uniforms, saucy pages in a flutter of feathers and ribands, and
groups of gorgeous officials preceded the marshals of France, who were
followed by the knights of the Holy Ghost, after whom rode their royal
Grand Master, glittering like an Eastern king, and nodding, as he rode,
like a Mandarin.
The king and the knights performed their devotions before the shrine of
Saint Marcoul, which was brought expressly from the church of Corbeni,
six leagues distance from Rheims. This particular ceremony was in
honor of the celebrated old abbot of Nantua, who, in his lifetime,
had been eminently famous for his success in curing the scrofulous
disorder called “the king’s evil.” After this devotional service, the
sovereign master of the order of the Holy Ghost was deemed qualified
to cure the evil himself. Accordingly, decked with the mantle and
collar of the order, and half encircled by the knights, he repaired
to the Abbey Park to touch and cure those who were afflicted with the
disease in question. It was no little labor. When Louis XVI. performed
the ceremony, he touched two thousand four hundred persons. The form
of proceeding was singular enough. The king’s first physician placed
his hand on the head of the patient; upon which a captain of the
guard immediately seized and held the patient’s hands closely joined
together. The king then advanced, head uncovered, with his knights, and
touched the sufferers. He passed his right hand from the forehead to
the chin, and from one cheek to the other; thus making the sign of the
cross, and at the same time pronouncing the words, “May God cure thee;
the king touches thee!”
In connection with this subject, I may add here that Evelyn, in his
diary, records that Charles II. “began first to touch for the evil,
according to custom,” on the 6th of July, 1660, and after this fashion.
“His Majesty sitting under his state in the Banqueting House, the
chirurgeons caused the sick to be brought, and led up to the throne,
where they kneeling, the king strokes their faces or cheeks with both
his hands at once, at which instant a chaplain, in his formalities,
says, ‘He put his hands upon them, and He healed them.’ This is said to
every one in particular. When they have been all touched, they come up
again in the same order, and the other chaplain kneeling, and having
angel-gold strung on white riband on his arm, delivers them one by one
to his Majesty, who puts them about the necks of the touched as they
pass, while the first chaplain repeats, ‘That is the true light who
came into the world.’” The French ceremonial seems to me to have been
the less pretentious; for the words uttered by the royal head of the
order of the Holy Ghost, simply formed a prayer, and an assertion of a
fact: “May God heal thee; the king touches thee!” And yet who can doubt
the efficacy of the royal hand of Charles II., seeing that, at a single
touch, he not only cured a scrofulous Quaker, but converted him into a
good churchman?
The history of the last individual knight given in these imperfect
pages (Guy of Warwick), showed how history and romance wove themselves
together in biography. Coming down to a later period, we may find
another individual history, that may serve to illustrate the object
I have in view. The Chevalier de Bayard stands prominently forward.
But there was before _his_ time, a knight who was saluted by nearly
the same distinctive titles which were awarded to Bayard. I allude
to Jacques de Lelaing, known as “the knight without fear and without
doubt.” His history is less familiar to us, and will, therefore, the
better bear telling. Besides, Bayard was but a butcher. If he is not to
be so accounted, then tell us, gentle shade of Don Alonzo di Sotomayor,
why thy painful spirit perambulates the groves of Elysium, with a
scented handkerchief alternately applied to the hole in thy throat and
the gash in thy face? Is it not that, with cruel subtlety of fence
Bayard run his rapier into thy neck “four good finger-breadths,” and
when thou wast past resistance, did he not thrust his dagger into
thy nostrils, crying the while, “Yield thee, Signor Alonzo, or thou
diest!” The shade of the slashed Spaniard bows its head in mournful
acquiescence, and a faint sound seems to float to us upon the air, out
of which we distinguish an echo of “_The field of Monervyne_.”
JACQUES DE LELAING,
THE GOOD KNIGHT WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT DOUBT.
“Faites silence; je vais parler de _lui_!”--_Boileau._
Between the city of Namur and the quaint old town of Dinant there is
as much matter of interest for the historian as of beauty for the
traveller and artist. War has been the most terrible scourge of the two
localities on the Meuse which I have just named. Namur has a present
reputation for cutlery, and an old one for “slashing blades” of another
description. Don John, the great victor at Lepanto, lies entombed in
the city, victim of the poison and the jealousy of his brother Philip.
There the great Louis proved himself a better soldier than Boileau did
a poet, when he attempted to put the royal soldier’s deeds into rhyme.
Who, too, can stand at St. Nicholas’s gate, without thinking of “my
uncle Toby,” and the Frenchmen, for whose dying he cared so little,
on the glacis of Namur? At present the place, it is true, has but a
dull and dreamy aspect. Indeed, it may be said of the inhabitants, as
of Molly Carew’s lovers, that “It’s dhrames and not sleep that comes
into their heads.” Such, at least, would seem to be the case, if I
may draw a conclusion from what I saw during the last summer, at the
bookseller’s stall at the Namur station, where I found more copies of
a work professing to interpret dreams than of any other production,
whether grave or _gaillard_.
Dinant, a curious old town, the high limestone-rocks behind which
seems to be pushing it from off its narrow standing-ground into the
Meuse, has even bloodier reminiscences than Namur; but of these I
will not now speak. Between the two cities, at the most picturesque
part of the stream, and on the loftiest cliff which rises above the
stream, is the vast ruin of the old _titanic_ castle of Poilvache, the
once rather noisy home of the turbulent household of those terrible
brothers, known in chivalrous history as the “Four Sons of Aymon.”
During one of the few fine evenings of the last summer, I was looking
up at this height, from the opposite bank, while around me stood in
groups a number of those brilliant-eyed, soft-voiced, ready-witted
Walloons, who are said to be the descendants of a Roman legion, whose
members colonized the country and married the ladies in it! A Walloon
priest, or one at least who spoke the dialect perfectly, but who had a
strong Flemish accent when addressing to me an observation in French,
remained during the period of my observation close at my side. “Are
these people,” said I to him, “a contented people?” He beckoned to a
cheerful-looking old man, and assuming that he was contented with the
dispensation that had appointed him to be a laborer, inquired of him
which part of his labor he loved best? After pausing for a minute,
the old peasant replied in very fair French, “I think the sweetest
task I have is when I mow that meadow up at Bloquemont yonder, for
the wild thyme in it embalms the very air.” “But your winter-time,”
said I, “must be a dark and dreary time.” “Neither dark nor dreary,”
was the remark of a tidy woman, his wife, who was, at the moment, on
her knees, sewing up the ragged rents in the gaberdine of a Walloon
beggar--“Neither dark nor dreary. In winter-time, at home, we don’t
want light to get the children about us to teach them their catechism.”
The priest smiled. “And as for spring-time,” said her husband, “you
should be here to enjoy it; for the fields are then all flower, and
the sky is one song.” “There is poetry in their expressions,” said
I to the priest. “There is better than that,” said he, “there is
love in their hearts;” and, turning to the woman who was mending the
raiment of the passive mendicant, he asked her if she were not afraid
of infection. “Why should I fear?” was her remark. “I am doing but
little; Christ did more; He washed the feet of beggars; and we must
risk something, if we would gain Paradise.” The particular beggar to
whom she was thus extending most practical charity was by no means a
picturesque bedesman; but, not to be behind-hand in Χάρις toward him, I
expressed compassion for his lot. “My lot is not so deplorable,” said
he, uncovering his head; “I have God for my hope, and the charity of
humane people for my succor.” As he said this, my eye turned from him
to a shepherd who had just joined our group, and who was waiting to be
ferried over to the little village of Houx. I knew him by name, and
knew something of the solitariness of his life, and I observed to him,
“Jacques, you, at least, have a dull life of it; and you even now look
weary with the long hours you have been spending alone.” “Alone!” he
exclaimed, in a joyful tone, “I am never alone, and never weary. How
should I be either, when my days are passed in the company of innocent
animals, and time is given me to think of God!” The priest smiled even
more approvingly than before; and I remarked to him, “We are here in
Arcadia.” “But not without human sin,” said he, and pointing to a woman
at a distance, who was in the employ of the farmer’s wife, he asked the
latter how she could still have anything to do with a well-known thief.
“Eh, father,” was the comment of a woman whom John Howard would have
kissed, “starving her in idleness would not cure her of pilfering; and
between working and being well-watched, she will soon leave her evil
habits.” “You are a good Christian,” I said to her, “be you of what
community you may.” “She is a good Catholic,” added the priest. “I am
what the good God has made me,” was the simple reply of the Walloon
wife; “and my religion is this to go on my knees when all the house is
asleep, and then pray for the whole world.” “Ay, ay,” was the chorus
of those around her, “that is true religion.” “It is a part of true
religion,” interposed the priest; but I could not help thinking that he
would have done as well had he left Marie Justine’s text without his
comment. We walked together down to the bank of the river opposite the
Chateau of the young Count de Levignon the proprietor and burgomaster
of Houx. I looked up from the modern chateau to the ruins of the vast
castle where the sons of Aymon once held barbaric state, maintained
continual war, and affected a reverence for the mother of Him who was
the Prince of Peace. The good priest seemed to guess my thoughts, for
he remarked, “We live now in better times; the church is less splendid,
and chivalry less ‘glorious,’ if not extinct; but there is a closer
brotherhood of all men--at least,” he added hesitatingly--“at least I
hope so.” “I can not remember,” said I, “a single virtue possessed by
either Aymon or his sons, except brute courage, and a rude sort of
generosity, not based on principle, but born of impulse. It is a pity
that Belgium can not boast of more perfect chevaliers than the old
proprietors of Poilvache, and that you have not a hero to match with
Bayard.” “Belgium,” was his answer, “can make such boast, and had a
hero who had finished his heroic career long before Bayard was born.
Have you never heard of ‘the Good Knight without fear and without
doubt’?” “I have heard of one without fear and without reproach.” “That
title,” he remarked, “was but a plagiarism from that conferred on
Jacques de Lelaing, by his contemporaries.” And then he sketched the
outline of the good knight’s career, and directed me to sources where
I might gather more detailed intelligence. I was interested in what I
learned, and it is because I hope also to interest readers at home,
that I venture to place before them, however imperfectly rendered, a
sketch of the career of a brave man before the time of Bayard; one who
illustrates the old saying that--
“Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona.”
Jacques de Lelaing, the good knight, without fear and without doubt,
was born in the château of Lelaing, in the first quarter of the
fifteenth century. The precise year is not known, but it was full half
a century before the birth of Bayard. He came of a noble race; that
is, of a race, the male portion of which saw more honor in slaughter
than in science. His mother was celebrated for her beauty as well as
nobility. She was wise, courteous, and _débonnaire_; well-mannered, and
full of all good virtues. So, at least, in nearly similar terms, wrote
George Chastellan of her, just two centuries ago.
Jacques de Lelaing was as precocious a boy as the Duke of Wharton in
his youth. At the age of seven, a priestly tutor had perfected him in
French and Latin, and the good man had so imbued him with literary
tastes that, in after life, the good knight found time to cultivate the
acquaintance of Captain Pen, as well as of Captain Sword; and specimens
of his handiwork are yet said to exist in the libraries of Flanders and
Brabant.
Jacques, however, was never a mere student, “sicklied o’er with the
pale cast of thought.” He loved manly sports; and he was yet but a
blooming youth when the “demoiseau of Clèves,” nephew of that great
Duke whom men, for no earthly reason, called Philip _the Good_, carried
off his young friend from the castle of Lelaing, and made of him a
squire, not of dames, but of knights, in the turbulent court of the
ducal Philip, with the benevolent qualification to his name.
The youth entered upon his career with a paternal provision which
bespoke at once the liberality and the wisdom of his father, stout
William de Lelaing. The sire bestowed upon his son four splendid
horses, a well-skilled groom, and a “_gentleman of service_” which,
in common phrase, means a valet, or “gentleman’s gentleman.” But the
young soldier had more than this in his brain; namely, a well-lettered
cleric, commissioned to be for ever expounding and instructing, with
a special object, to boot, that Jacques should not forget his Latin!
Excellent sire thus to care for his son! If modern fathers only might
send into barracks with their sons, when the latter first join their
regiments, reverend clerks, whose office it should be to keep their
pupils well up in their catechism, the Eton grammar, and English
orthography, what a blessing it would be to the young gentlemen and to
all acquainted with them! As it is, we have officers worse instructed
and less intelligent than the sons of the artists who make their
uniforms.
When Jacques went forth into the world, his sire gave him as good
advice as Polonius threw away on his son Laertes. The sum of it was
according to the old French maxim, “Noblesse oblige”--“Inasmuch,” said
the old man, “as you are more noble than others by birth, so,” said he,
“should you be more noble than they by virtues.” The hearty old father
added an assurance, that “few great men gained renown for prowess and
virtue who did not entertain love for some dame or damoiselle.” This
last, however, was but an equivocal assurance, for by counselling
Jacques to fall in love with “some dame or damoiselle,” he simply
advised him to do so with any man’s wife or daughter. But it was
advice commonly given to young gentlemen in arms, and is, to this day,
commonly followed by them. Jacques bettered the paternal instruction,
by falling in love with two ladies at the same time. As ambitious
youths are wont to do, he passed by the white and pink young ladies
whom he met, and paid his addresses, with remarkable success, to two
married duchesses. Neither of these suspected that the smooth-chinned
young “squire” was swearing eternal fidelity to the other, or that this
light-mailed Macheath wooed his madiæval Polly with his pockets full of
“favors,” just bestowed on him by an unsuspecting Lucy. Thus has love
ever been made by officers and highwaymen.
But if Jacques loved two, there was not a lady at the Court of Burgundy
who did not love _him_. The most virtuous of them sighingly expressed
a wish that their husbands, _or their lovers_, were only like him. The
men hated him, while they affected to admire his grace, his bearing,
and his irresistible bravery. Jacques very complacently accepted the
love of the women and the envy of the men; and feeling that he had
something to be thankful for, he repaired to the shrine of the Virgin
at Hal, and thanked “Our Lady,” accordingly.
Now Philip the Good was good only just as Nicholas the Czar was “good.”
He had a fair face and a black heart. Philip, like Nicholas, joined
an outward display of conjugal decency with some private but very
crapulous indecency; and the Duke, like the Czar, was _the_ appalling
liar of his day. Philip had increased the ducal territory of Burgundy
by such means as secured Finland to Muscovy, by treachery of the most
fiendish quality; and in 1442, affecting to think that Luxembourg was
in the sick condition which Nicholas described as the condition of
Turkey--when the imperial felon thought he was making a confederate of
Sir Hamilton Seymour, the Duke resolved to seize on the territory in
question, and young Jacques de Lelaing was in an ecstacy of delight at
being permitted to join in this most rascally of expeditions.
Within a year, desolation was spread throughout a wide district. Fire
and sword did their devastating work, and the earth was swept of the
crops, dwellings, and human beings, which lay between the invaders
and Luxembourg. The city was ultimately taken by surprise, and the
good Philip delivered it up to pillage; then ensued a scene which
hell itself could not equal; and the Duke and his followers having
enacted horrors from which devils would have recoiled, they returned to
Brussels, where they were received with ten times more delight than if
they had come back from an expedition which had been undertaken for
the benefit of humanity.
What was called _peace_ now followed, and Jacques de Lelaing, having
fleshed his maiden sword, and gained the praise of brave men, and
the love of fair women, resolved to commence a series of provincial
excursions for his own especial benefit. As, in modern times,
professors without scholars, and actors without engagements, wander
from town to town, and give lectures at “the King’s Arms,” so Jacques
de Lelaing went forth upon his way, offering to fight all comers, in
presence of kings themselves.
His first appearance on this provincial tour was at Nancy, in 1445,
where a brilliant French Court was holding joyous festival while
awaiting the coming of Suffolk, who was commissioned to escort to
England a royal bride, in the person of Margaret of Anjou. The French
knights made light of the soldier of Burgundy; but Jacques, when
announcing that he was the holder of the tournament, added that no
French knight should unhorse him, unless God and his good lady decreed
otherwise.
The latter was not likely, and he felt himself secure, doubly so, for
he rode into the lists decorated with favors, gold embroidery, and
rich jewels, the gifts of the Duchesses of Orleans and Calabria, each
of whom fondly believed that she was the sole fair one by whose bright
eyes Jacques de Lelaing swore his prettiest oath. Accordingly, there
was not a cavalier who rode against him in that passage of arms, who
left the field otherwise than with broken or bruised bones. “What
manner of man will this be?” cried they, “if, even as a lad, he lays on
so lustily?”
The lad, at the subsequent banquet, to which he was borne in triumph,
again proved that he had the capacity of a man. He was fresh as a
rose just blown; gay as a lark in early spring. The queens of France
and Sicily conversed with him by the half hour, while ladies of lower
degree gazed at him till they sighed; and sighed, knowing full well
_why_, and caring very much, wherefore. Charles VII. too, treated him
with especial distinction, and conferred on him the rich prizes he had
won as victor in the rough tourney of the day. But there were other
guerdons awarded him that night, which he more highly prized. Jacques
visited the Duchess of Orleans in her bower, and carried away with him,
on leaving, the richest diamond she had to bestow. He then passed to
the pavilion of the Duchess of Calabria, a lady who, among other gifts
willingly made by her, placed upon his finger a brilliant ruby set in
a gorgeous gold ring. He went to his own bed that night as impudently
happy as a modern Lifeguardsman who is successfully fooling two ladies’
maids. His _cleric_ had left him, and Jacques had ceased to care for
the keeping-up of his Latin, except, perhaps, the conjugation of the
imperative mood of _amo_. “Amemus,” _let us love_, was the favorite
part of the mood, and the most frequently repeated by him and his brace
of duchesses.