There are some things, not shameful in themselves, which it shames
one to remember, and among these I count the succeeding hurry and
perturbation of that night: the vain search, without hope or clue, to
which passion impelled me, and the stubborn persistence with which
I rushed frantically from place to place long after the soberness of
reason would have had me desist. There was not, it seems to me, looking
back now, one street or alley, lane or court, in Blois which I did not
visit again and again in my frantic wanderings; not a beggar skulking
on foot that night whom I did not hunt down and question; not a wretched
woman sleeping in arch or doorway whom I did not see and scrutinise. I
returned to my mother’s lodging again and again, always fruitlessly. I
rushed to the stables and rushed away again, or stood and listened
in the dark, empty stalls, wondering what had happened, and torturing
myself with suggestions of this or that. And everywhere, not only at
the North-gate, where I interrogated the porters and found that no party
resembling that which I sought had passed out, but on the PARVIS of the
Cathedral, where a guard was drawn up, and in the common streets, where
I burst in on one group and another with my queries, I ran the risk of
suspicion and arrest, and all that might follow thereon.
It was strange indeed that I escaped arrest. The wound in my chin still
bled at intervals, staining my doublet; and as I was without my cloak,
which I had left in the house in the Rue Valois, I had nothing to cover
my disordered dress. I was keenly, fiercely anxious. Stray passers
meeting me in the glare of a torch, or seeing me hurry by the great
braziers which burned where four streets met, looked askance at me and
gave me the wall; while men in authority cried to me to stay and answer
their questions. I ran from the one and the other with the same savage
impatience, disregarding everything in the feverish anxiety which
spurred me on and impelled me to a hundred imprudences, such as at my
age I should have blushed to commit. Much of this feeling was due, no
doubt, to the glimpse I had had of mademoiselle, and the fiery words she
had spoken; more, I fancy, to chagrin and anger at the manner in which
the cup of success had been dashed at the last moment from my lips.
For four hours I wandered through the streets, now hot with purpose,
now seeking aimlessly. It was ten o’clock when at length I gave up the
search, and, worn out both in body and mind, climbed the stairs at my
mother’s lodgings and entered her room. An old woman sat by the fire,
crooning softly to herself, while she stirred something in a black pot.
My mother lay in the same heavy, deep sleep in which I had left her. I
sat down opposite the nurse (who cried out at my appearance) and asked
her dully for some food. When I had eaten it, sitting in a kind of
stupor the while, the result partly of my late exertions, and partly of
the silence which prevailed round me, I bade the woman call me if any
change took place; and then going heavily across to the garret Simon
had occupied, I lay down on his pallet, and fell into a sound, dreamless
sleep.
The next day and the next night I spent beside my mother, watching the
life ebb fast away, and thinking with grave sorrow of her past and my
future. It pained me beyond measure to see her die thus, in a garret,
without proper attendance or any but bare comforts; the existence which
had once been bright and prosperous ending in penury and gloom, such as
my mother’s love and hope and self-sacrifice little deserved. Her state
grieved me sharply on my own account too, seeing that I had formed none
of those familiar relations which men of my age have commonly formed,
and which console them for the loss of parents and forbears; Nature so
ordering it, as I have taken note, that men look forward rather
than backward, and find in the ties they form with the future full
compensation for the parting strands behind them. I was alone,
poverty-stricken, and in middle life, seeing nothing before me except
danger and hardship, and these unrelieved by hope or affection. This
last adventure, too, despite all my efforts, had sunk me deeper in the
mire; by increasing my enemies and alienating from me some to whom I
might have turned at the worst. In one other respect also it had added
to my troubles not a little; for the image of mademoiselle wandering
alone and unguarded through the streets, or vainly calling on me for
help, persisted in thrusting itself on my imagination when I least
wanted it, and came even between my mother’s patient face and me.
I was sitting beside Madame de Bonne a little after sunset on the
second day, the woman who attended her being absent on an errand, when
I remarked that the lamp, which had been recently lit, and stood on a
stool in the middle of the room, was burning low and needed snuffing.
I went to it softly, and while stooping over it, trying to improve the
light, heard a slow, heavy step ascending the stairs. The house was
quiet, and the sound attracted my full attention. I raised myself and
stood listening, hoping that this might be the doctor, who had not been
that day.
The footsteps passed the landing below, but at the first stair of
the next flight the person, whoever it was, stumbled, and made a
considerable noise. At that, or it might be a moment later, the step
still ascending, I heard a sudden rustling behind me, and, turning
quickly with a start, saw my mother sitting up in bed. Her eyes were
open, and she seemed fully conscious; which she had not been for days,
nor indeed since the last conversation I have recorded. But her face,
though it was now sensible, was pinched and white, and so drawn with
mortal fear that I believed her dying, and sprang to her, unable to
construe otherwise the pitiful look in her straining eyes.
‘Madame,’ I said, hastily passing my arm round her, and speaking with as
much encouragement as I could infuse into my voice, ‘take comfort. I am
here. Your son.’
‘Hush!’ she muttered in answer, laying her feeble hand on my wrist and
continuing to look, not at me, but at the door. ‘Listen, Gaston! Don’t
you hear? There it is again. Again!’
For a moment I thought her mind still wandered, and I shivered, having
no fondness for hearing such things. Then I saw she was listening
intently to the sound which had attracted my notice. The step had
reached the landing by this time. The visitor, whoever it was, paused
there a moment, being in darkness, and uncertain, perhaps, of the
position of the door; but in a little while I heard him move forward
again, my mother’s fragile form, clasped as it was in my embrace,
quivering with each step he took, as though his weight stirred the
house. He tapped at the door.
I had thought, while I listened and wondered, of more than one whom this
might be: the leech, Simon Fleix, Madame Bruhl, Fresnoy even. But as the
tap came, and I felt my mother tremble in my arms, enlightenment came
with it, and I pondered no more, I knew as well as if she hail spoken
and told me. There could be only one man whose presence had such power
to terrify her, only one whose mere step, sounding through the veil,
could drag her back to consciousness and fear! And that was the man who
had beggared her, who had traded so long on her terrors.
I moved a little, intending to cross the floor softly, that when he
opened the door he might find me face to face with him; but she detected
the movement, and, love giving her strength, she clung to my wrist so
fiercely that I had not the heart, knowing how slender was her hold on
life and how near the brink she stood, to break from her. I constrained
myself to stand still, though every muscle grew tense as a drawn
bowstring, and I felt the strong rage rising in my throat and choking me
as I waited for him to enter.
A log on the hearth gave way with a dull sound startling in the silence.
The man tapped again, and getting no answer, for neither of us spoke,
pushed the door slowly open, uttering before he showed himself the
words, ‘Dieu vous benisse!’ in a voice so low and smooth I shuddered at
the sound. The next moment he came in and saw me, and, starting, stood
at gaze, his head thrust slightly forward, his shoulders bent, his hand
still on the latch, amazement and frowning spite in turn distorting
his lean face. He had looked to find a weak, defenceless woman, whom he
could torture and rob at his will; he saw instead a strong man armed,
whose righteous anger he must have been blind indeed had he failed to
read.
Strangest thing of all, we had met before! I knew him at once--he me. He
was the same Jacobin monk whom I had seen at the inn on the Claine, and
who had told me the news of Guise’s death!
I uttered an exclamation of surprise on making this discovery, and my
mother, freed suddenly, as it seemed, from the spell of fear, which had
given her unnatural strength, sank back on the bed. Her grasp relaxed,
and her breath came and went with so loud a rattle that I removed my
gaze from him, and bent over her, full of concern and solicitude. Our
eyes met. She tried to speak, and at last gasped, ‘Not now, Gaston! Let
him--let him--’
Her lips framed the word ‘go,’ but she could not give it sound. I
understood, however, and in impotent wrath I waved my hand to him to
begone. When I looked up he had already obeyed me. He had seized the
first opportunity to escape. The door was closed, the lamp burned
steadily, and we were alone.
I gave her a little Armagnac, which stood beside the bed for such an
occasion, and she revived, and presently opened her eyes. But I saw at
once a great change in her. The look of fear had passed altogether from
her face, and one of sorrow, yet content, had taken its place. She laid
her hand in mine, and looked up at me, being too weak, as I thought,
to speak. But by-and-by, when the strong spirit had done its work, she
signed to me to lower my head to her mouth.
‘The King of Navarre,’ she murmured-you are sure, Gaston--he will retain
you is your--employments?’
Her pleading eyes were so close to mine, I felt no scruples such as some
might have felt, seeing her so near death; but I answered firmly and
cheerfully, ‘Madame, I am assured of it. There is no prince in Europe so
trustworthy or so good to his servants.’
She sighed with infinite content, and blessed him in a feeble whisper.
‘And if you live,’ she went on, ‘you will rebuild the old house, Gaston.
The walls are sound yet. And the oak in the hall was not burned. There
is a chest of linen at Gil’s, and a chest with your father’s gold
lace--but that is pledged,’ she added dreamily. ‘I forgot.’
‘Madame,’ I answered solemnly, ‘it shall be done--it shall be done as
you wish, if the power lie with me.’
She lay for some time after that murmuring prayers, her head supported
on my shoulder. I longed impatiently for the nurse to return, that I
might despatch her for the leech; not that I thought anything could be
done, but for my own comfort and greater satisfaction afterwards, and
that my mother might not die without some fitting attendance. The house
remained quiet, however, with that impressive quietness which sobers the
heart at such times, and I could not do this. And about six o’clock my
mother opened her eyes again.
‘This is not Marsac,’ she murmured abruptly, her eyes roving from the
ceiling to the wall at the foot of the bed.
No, Madame,’ I answered, leaning over her, ‘you are in Blois. But I am
here--Gaston, your son.’
She looked at me, a faint smile of pleasure stealing over her pinched
face. ‘Twelve thousand livres a year,’ she whispered, rather to herself
than to me, ‘and an establishment, reduced a little, yet creditable,
very creditable.’ For a moment she seemed to be dying in my arms, but
again opened her eyes quickly and looked me in the face. ‘Gaston?’ she
said, suddenly and strangely. ‘Who said Gaston? He is with the King--I
have blessed him; and his days shall be long in the land!’ Then, raising
herself in my arms with a last effort of strength, she cried loudly,
‘Way there! Way for my son, the Sieur de Marsac!’
They were her last words. When I laid her down on the bed a moment
later, she was dead, and I was alone.
Madame de Bonne, my mother, was seventy at the time of her death, having
survived my father eighteen years. She was Marie de Loche de Loheac,
third daughter of Raoul, Sieur de Loheac, on the Vilaine, and by her
great-grandmother, a daughter of Jean de Laval, was descended from the
ducal family of Rohan, a relationship which in after-times, and under
greatly altered circumstances, Henry Duke of Rohan condescended to
acknowledge, honouring me with his friendship on more occasions than
one. Her death, which I have here recorded, took place on the fourth
of January, the Queen-Mother of France, Catherine de Medicis, dying a
little after noon on the following day.
In Blois, as in every other town, even Paris itself, the Huguenots
possessed at this time a powerful organisation; and with the aid of the
surgeon, who showed me much respect in my bereavement, and exercised in
my behalf all the influence which skilful and honest; men of his craft
invariably possess, I was able to arrange for my mother’s burial in a
private ground about a league beyond the walls and near the village
of Chaverny. At the time of her death I had only thirty crowns in gold
remaining, Simon Fleix, to whose fate I could obtain no clue, having
carried off thirty-five with the horses. The whole of this residue,
however, with the exception of a handsome gratuity to the nurse and a
trifle spent on my clothes, I expended on the funeral, desiring that
no stain should rest on my mother’s birth or my affection. Accordingly,
though the ceremony was of necessity private, and indeed secret, and
the mourners were few, it lacked nothing, I think, of the decency and
propriety which my mother loved; and which she preferred, I have often
heard her say, to the vulgar show that is equally at the command of the
noble and the farmer of taxes.
Until she was laid in her quiet resting-place I stood in constant fear
of some interruption on the part either of Bruhl, whose connection with
Fresnoy and the abduction I did not doubt, or of the Jacobin monk.
But none came; and nothing happening to enlighten me as to the fate of
Mademoiselle de la Vire, I saw my duty clear before me. I disposed of
the furniture of my mother’s room, and indeed of everything which
was saleable, and raised in this way enough money to buy myself a new
cloak--without which I could not travel in the wintry weather--and to
hire a horse. Sorry as the animal was, the dealer required security, and
I had none to offer. It was only at the last moment, I bethought me of
the fragment of gold chain which mademoiselle had left behind her, and
which, as well as my mother’s rings and vinaigrette, I had kept back
from the sale. This I was forced to lodge with him. Having thus, with
some pain and more humiliation, provided means for the journey, I lost
not an hour in beginning it. On the eighth of January I set oat for
Rosny, to carry the news of my ill-success and of mademoiselle’s
position whither I had looked a week before to carry herself.