The cool twilight of a fine winter's evening filled the air as the
train of the Duke of Orleans approached his château of Beauté.
Standing on a high bank, with the river flowing in sight, and catching
the last rosy rays, which still lingered in the sky after the sun was
set, the house presented a grand, rather than a graceful appearance,
though it was from the combination of beautiful forms and rich
decoration with the defensive strength absolutely requisite in all
country mansions at that day, that it derived its name of Beauté. The
litter had been repaired at Juvisy, and the Duke of Orleans had taken
possession of it again; but as the cavalcade wound up the ascent
toward the castle, the prince put his head out, and ordered one of the
nearest attendants to call Lomelini to him.
"I am ill, Lomelini," he said, as soon as the maître d'hôtel rode up;
"I am ill. Go forward and see that my bed-chamber is prepared."
"Had I not better send back for your highness's chirurgeon?" asked
Lomelini. "'Tis a pity he was left behind in Paris."
"No, no," replied the prince; "let him stay where he is. He overwhelms
me with his talk of phlebotomy and humors, his calculations of the
moon, and his caption of fortunate hours. 'Tis but a little sickness
that will pass. Besides, there is the man at Corbeil. He can let
blood, or compound a cooling potion."
As soon as the cavalcade had entered the court-yard of the château, the
duke was assisted from his litter, and retired at once to his chamber,
leaning upon the arm of Lomelini, who was all attention and humble
devotion. The rest of the party then scattered in different
directions, most of those present knowing well where to betake
themselves, and each seeking the dwelling-place to which he was
accustomed. Jean Charost, however, had no notion where he was to
lodge, and now, for the first time, came into play the abilities of
his new servant, Martin Grille. His horses were stabled in a
minute--whether in the right place or not, Martin stopped not to
inquire--and, the moment that was done, divining well the
embarrassment of an inexperienced master, the good man darted hither
and thither, acquiring very rapidly, from the different varlets and
pages, a vast amount of information regarding the château and its
customs.
He found Jean Charost walking up and down a large hall, which opened
directly, without any vestibule, from the principal door of entrance,
and plunged so deeply was he in meditation, that he seemed to see none
of the persons who were passing busily to and fro around him. The
revery was deep, and something more: it was not altogether pleasant.
Who, in the cares and anxieties of mature life, does not sometimes
pause and look back wistfully to the calmer days of childhood, decking
them with fanciful memories of joys and sports, and burying in
forgetfulness the troubles and sorrows which seemed severe at the
time. The two spirits that are in man, indeed, never exercise their
influence more strongly in opposition than in prompting the desire for
peace, and the eagerness for action.
Jean Charost was busy at the moment with the unprofitable, fruitless
comparison of the condition in which he had lately lived and his
present station. The calm and tranquil routine of ordinary business;
the daily occupation, somewhat monotonous, but without anxiety, or
even expectation; the peaceful hours for study, for thought, or for
exercise, when not engaged in the service of no very exacting master,
acquired a new and extraordinary interest in his eyes now that
ambition was gratified, and he appeared to be in the road to honor and
success. It was not that he was tired of the Duke of Orleans's
service: it was not that he misappreciated the favors he received, or
the kindness with which he had been treated; but the look back or the
look forward makes a great difference in our estimate of events and
circumstances, and he felt that full appreciation of the past which
nothing that is not past can altogether command. Yet, if he strove to
fix upon any point in regard to which he had been disappointed, he
found it difficult to do so. But there was something in the whole
which created in his breast a general feeling of depression. There was
a sensation of anxiety, and doubt, and suspicion in regard to all that
surrounded him. A dim sort of mist of uncertainty hung over the whole,
which, to his daylight-loving mind, was very painful. One half of what
he saw or heard he did not comprehend. Men seemed to be speaking in a
strange, unlearned language--to be acting a mystery, the secret of
which would not be developed till near the end; and he was pondering
over all these things, and asking himself how he should act in the
midst of them, when Martin Grille approached, and, in a low tone, told
him all that he had discovered, offering to show him where the
secretary's apartments were situated.
"But can I be sure that the same rooms are destined for me?" asked
Jean Charost.
"Take them, sir, take them," answered Martin Grille; "that is to say,
if they are good, and suit you. The only quality that is not valued at
a court is modesty. It is always better to seize what you can get, and
the difficulty of dispossessing you, nine times out of ten, makes men
leave you what you have taken. Signor Lomelini is still with the duke;
so that you can ask him no questions. You must be lodged some where,
so you had better lodge yourself."
Jean Charost thought the advice was good, especially as night had by
this time fallen, and a single cresset in the hall afforded the only
light, except when some one passed by with a lamp in his hand. He
followed Martin Grille, therefore, and was just issuing forth, when
Juvenel de Royans, and another young man of the same age, came in by
the same door out of which he was going. At the sight of the young
secretary, De Royans drew back with a look of affected reverence, and
a low inclination of the head, and then burst into a loud laugh. Jean
Charost gazed at him with a cold, unmoved look, expressive, perhaps,
of surprise, but nothing else, and then passed on his way.
"Those gentlemen will bring themselves into trouble before they have
done," said Martin Grille. "That Monsieur De Royans is already deep in
the bad books."
"No deeper than he deserves," answered Jean Charost. "But perhaps they
may find they have made a mistake before they have done."
"Ah, good sir, never quarrel with a courtier," said the servant. "They
are like wary fencers, and try to put a man in a passion in order to
throw him off his guard. But here are your rooms, at the end of this
passage. That door is the back entrance to the duke's apartments. The
front is on the other corridor."
With some lingering still of doubt, Jean Charost took possession of
the rooms, which he found more convenient than those he had inhabited
in Paris, and, by the aid of Martin Grille, all was speedily put in
order. The hour of supper soon arrived, and, descending to the general
table of the household, he found a place reserved for him by Monsieur
Blaize, but a good deal of strange coldness in the manners of all
around. Even the old _écuyer_ himself was somewhat distant and
reserved; and it was not till long afterward that Jean Charost
discovered how much malice any marks of favor from a prince can
excite, and to how much falsehood such malice may give birth. His
attempt to stop the horses of the litter had been severely commented
on, as an act of impertinent forwardness, by all those who ought to
have done it themselves; and they and every one else agreed,
notwithstanding the duke's own words, that the attempt had only served
to throw one of the horses down. The only person who seemed cordial at
the table was the good priest, Father Peter; but the chaplain could
afford very little of his conversation to his young friend, being
himself, during the whole meal, the butt of the jester's wit, to which
he could not refrain from replying, although, to say sooth, he got
somewhat worsted in the encounter. All present were tired, however,
and all retired soon to rest, with the exception of Jean Charost, who
sat up in his bed-room for two or three hours, laying out for himself
a course of conduct which would save him, as far as possible, from all
minor annoyances. Nor was that course altogether ill devised for the
attainment of even higher objects than he proposed.
"I will live in this household," he thought, "as far as possible, by
myself. I will seek my own amusements apart, if I can but discover at
what time the duke is likely to want me. Any who wish for my society
shall seek it, and I will, keep all familiarity at a distance. I will
endeavor to avoid all quarrels with them; but, if I am forced into
one, I will try to make my opponent rue it."
At an early hour on the following morning the young man went forth to
inquire after the duke's health, and learned from one of the
attendants at his door that he had passed a bad and feverish night. "I
was bidden to tell you, sir," said the man, "if you presented
yourself, that his highness would like to see you at three this
evening, but will not want you till then."
This intimation was a relief to Jean Charost; and, returning to his
room, where he had left Martin Grille, he told him to prepare both
their horses for along ride.
"Before breakfast, sir?" asked the man.
"Yes, immediately," replied the young secretary. "We will breakfast
somewhere, Martin, and dine somewhere too; but I wish to explore the
country, which seemed beautiful enough as we rode along."
"Monstrous white, sir," replied Martin Grille. "However, you had
better take some arms with you, for we may chance to miss the
high-road, I being in no way topographical. The country in this
neighborhood does not bear the best reputation."
Jean Charost laughed at his fears, and ere half an hour was over they
were on their horses' backs and away. The morning was bright and
pleasant, notwithstanding the keen frostiness of the air. Not a breath
of wind stirred the trees, and the sun was shining cheerfully, though
his rays had no effect upon the snow. There was a silence, too, over
the whole scene, as soon as the immediate vicinity of the castle was
passed, which was pleasant to Jean Charost, cooped up as he had been
for several months previously in the close atmosphere of a town. From
a slow walk, he urged his horse on into a trot, from a trot into a
canter, and when at length the wood which mantled the castle was
passed, and the road opened out upon the rounded side of the hill,
boyhood's fountain of light spirits seemed reopened in his heart, and
he urged his horse on into a wild gallop over the nearly level ground
at the top.
Martin Grille came panting after. He was not one of the best horsemen
in the world, and, though he clung pretty fast to his steed's back, he
was awfully shaken. That gay gallop, however, had a powerful moral
effect upon the good varlet. Bad horsemen have always a great
reverence for good ones. Martin Grille's esteem for his master's
talents had been but small before, simply because his own worldly
experience, his intimate knowledge of all tricks and contrivances, and
the facile impudence and fertility of resources, which he possessed as
the hereditary right of a Parisian of the lower orders, had enabled
him to direct and counsel in a thousand trifles which had embarrassed
Jean Charost simply because he had been unaccustomed to deal with
them. But now, when Martin saw his easy mastery of the strong horse,
and the light rein, the graceful seat, the joyous hilarity of aspect
with which the young man bounded along, while he himself was clinging
tight to the saddle with a fearful pressure, the sight made him feel
an inferiority which he had never acknowledged to himself before.
At length, Jean Charost stopped, looked round and smiled, and Martin
Grille, riding up, exclaimed, in a half-dolorous half-laughing tone,
"Spare me, sir, I beseech you. You forget I am not accustomed to such
wild capers. Every man is awkward, I find, in a new situation; and
though I can get on pretty well at procession pace, if my horse
neither kicks nor stumbles, I would rather be excused galloping over
hillsides, for a fortnight at least, till my leather and his leather
are better acquainted."
"Well, well," answered his master, "we will go a little more slowly,
though we must have a canter now and then, if but to make the snow
fly. We will ride on straight for that village where the church tower
is peeping up over the opposite side of the hill."
"There is a thick wood between us and it," said Martin Grille.
"Doubtless the wood has a road through it," answered his master; and,
without further discussion, rode on.
The wood, or rather forest--for it was a limb of the great forest of
Corbeil--of which Martin Grille spoke, lay in the hollow between two
gentle ranges of hills, upon one of which he and his master were
placed at the moment. It was deeper, more extensive, and more
intricate than it had appeared to Jean Charost, seeing across from
slope to slope, but not high enough to look down upon it as a map. As
he directed his horse toward it, however, he soon came upon a road
marked out by the track of horses, oxen, and carts, showing that many
a person and many a vehicle had passed along it since the snow had
fallen; and even had he clearly comprehended that his servant really
entertained any apprehensions at all, he would only have laughed at
them.
On entering the wood, the snow upon the ground, shining through the
bare stems of the trees and the thin, brown branches of the underwood,
at first showed every object on either hand for several yards into the
thicket. Even the footprints of the hare and the roe-deer could be
seen; and Jean Charost, well accustomed to forest sports in his
boyhood, paused at one spot, where the bushes were a good deal beaten
down, to point out the marks to his servant, and say, "A boar has been
through here."
Some way further on, the wood became thicker, oaks and rapidly
deciduous trees gave way to the long-persistent beech; and beneath the
tall patriarchs of the forest, which had been suffered to grow up
almost beyond maturity, a young undergrowth, reserved for firewood,
and cut every thirteen or fourteen years, formed a screen into which
the eye could not penetrate more than a very few feet. Every here and
there, too, were stunted evergreens thickening the copse, and bearing
upon their sturdy though dwarfish arms many a large mass of snow which
they had caught in its descent toward the ground. Across the road, in
one place, was a solid mass of ice, which a few weeks before had been
running in a gay rivulet; and not twenty yards further was a little
stream of beautiful, limpid water, without a trace of congelation,
except a narrow fringe of ice on either bank.
Here Jean Charost pulled up his horse, and then, slackening the rein,
let the beast put down his head to drink. Martin Grille did so
likewise; but a moment after both heard a sound of voices speaking at
some little distance on the left.
"Hark! hark!" whispered Martin Grille. "There are people in the
wood--in the very heart of the wood."
"Why, where would you find woodmen but in the wood?" asked Jean
Charost. "You will hear their axes presently."
"I hope we shall not feel them," said Martin Grille, in the same low
tone. "I declare that the only fine wood scenery I ever saw has been
at the back of the fire."
"They have got a fire there," said Jean Charost, pointing onward, but
a little to the left. "Don't you see the blue smoke curling up through
the trees into the clear, cool air?"
"I do indeed, sir," said Martin Grille. "Pray, sir, let us turn back.
It's not half so pretty as a smoky chimney."
"Are you a coward?" asked Jean Charost, turning somewhat sharply upon
him.
"Yes, sir," replied Martin, meekly: "desperate--I have an uncle who
fights for all the family."
"Then stay where you are, or go back if you like," replied his master.
"I shall go and see who these folks are. You had better go back, if
you are afraid."
"Yes, sir--no, sir," replied Martin Grille. "I am afraid--very much
afraid--but I won't go back. I'll stay by you if I have my brains
knocked out--though, good faith, they are not much worth knocking just
now, for they feel quite addled--curd--curd; and a little whey, too, I
have a notion. But go on, sir; go on. They are not worth keeping if
they are not worth losing."
Jean Charost rode on, with a smile, pitying the man's fears, but
believing them to be perfectly idle and foolish. The district of
Berri, his native place, had hitherto escaped, in a great degree, the
calamities which for years had afflicted the neighborhood of Paris.
There was too little to be got there, for the plundering bands, which
had sprung up from the dragon's teeth sown by the wars of Edward the
Third of England and Philip and John of France, or those which had
arisen from the contentions between the Orleans and Burgundian
parties, to infest the neighborhood of Bourges; and while the
Parisian, with his mind full of tales brought daily into the capital
of atrocities perpetrated in its immediate vicinity, fancied every
bush, not an officer, but a thief, his young master could hardly bring
himself to imagine that there was such a thing as danger in riding
through a little wood within less than half a league of the château of
the Duke of Orleans.
He went on then, in full confidence, for some fifty or sixty yards
further; but then suddenly stopped, and raised his hand as a sign for
his servant to do so likewise. Martin Grille almost jumped out of the
saddle, on his master's sudden halt, and drew so deep a snorting sort
of sigh that Jean Charost whispered, with an impatient gesture,
"Hush!"
The fact was, his ears had caught, as they rode on, a sound coming
from the direction where rose the smoke, which did not altogether
satisfy him. It was an exceedingly blasphemous oath--in those days,
common enough in the mouths of military men, and not always a stranger
to the lips of kings, but by no means likely to be uttered by a plain
peasant or honest wood-cutter.
He listened again: more words of similar import were uttered. It was
evident that the approach of horses over the snow had not been heard,
and that, whoever were the persons in the wood, they were conversing
together very freely, and in no very choice language.
Curiosity seized upon Jean Charost, who was by no means without his
faults, and, quietly swinging himself from his horse's back, he gave
the rein to Martin Grille, saying, in a whisper, "Here, hold my horse.
I want to see what these people are about. If you see danger--and you
have put the fancy into my head too--you may either bring him up to
me, or ride away as fast as you can to the château of Beauté, and tell
what has happened."
"I will do both, sir," said Martin Grille, with his head a good deal
confused by fear. "That is to say, I will first bring him up to you,
and then ride away. But I do see danger now. Hadn't you better get up
again?"
Jean Charost walked on with a smile; but, after going some ten or
fifteen paces, he slackened his speed, and, with a light step, turned
in among the bushes, where there was a little sort of brake between
two enormous old beech-trees. Martin Grille watched him as he
advanced, and kept sight of him for some moments, while quietly and
slowly he took his way forward in the direction of the smoke, which
was still very plainly to be seen from the spot where the valet sat.
It is not to be denied that Martin's heart beat very fast, and very
unpleasantly, as much for his master as for himself perhaps; and
certainly, as the dry twigs and bramble stalks made a thicker and a
thicker sort of mist round Jean Charost's receding figure, the good
man both gave him up for lost, and felt that he had conceived a
greater affection for him than he had before imagined. He had a strong
inclination, notwithstanding his fears, to get a little nearer, and
was debating with himself whether he should do so or not, when all
doubt and hesitation was put to an end by a loud shout, and a fierce
volley of oaths from the wood. Nature would have her way; Martin
Grille turned sharp round, struck his spurs into the horse's sides,
and never stopped till he got to the gates of the château.
A party of armed men was instantly collected on his report, with good
Monsieur Blaize at their head, without waiting to seek casque or
corselet; and compelling Martin Grille, very unwillingly, to go with
them, they hurried on in the direction he pointed out, over the hill,
and down toward the verge of the wood. They had not reached it,
however, when, to the surprise of all, they beheld Jean Charost
walking quietly toward them, bearing something in his arms, and, on
approaching nearer, they perceived, with greater astonishment than
ever, that his burden was a young child, wrapped in somewhat costly
swaddling-clothes.