JOY IN THE MORNING.
I was too weary with riding to go entirely without sleep. And moreover
it is anxiety and the tremor of excitement which make the pillow
sleepless, not, heaven be thanked, sorrow. God made man to lie awake
and hope: but never to lie awake and grieve. An hour or two before
daybreak I fell asleep, utterly worn out. When I awoke, the sun was
high, and shining slantwise on our window. The room was gay with the
morning rays, and soft with the morning freshness, and I lay a while,
my cheek on my hand, drinking in the cheerful influence as I had done
many and many a day in our room at Caylus. It was the touch of Marie's
hand, laid timidly on my arm, which roused me with a shock to
consciousness. The truth broke upon me. I remembered where we were,
and what was before us. "Will you get up, Anne?" Croisette said. "The
Vidame has sent for us."
I got to my feet, and buckled on my sword. Croisette was leaning
against the wall, pale and downcast. Bure filled the open doorway, his
feathered cap in his hand, a queer smile on his face. "You are a good
sleeper, young gentleman," he said. "You should have a good
conscience."
"Better than yours, no doubt!" I retorted, "or your master's."
He shrugged his shoulders, and, bidding us by a sign to follow him, led
the way through several gloomy passages. At the end of these, a flight
of stone steps leading upwards seemed to promise something better; and
true enough, the door at the top being opened, the murmur of a crowd
reached our ears, with a burst of sunlight and warmth. We were in a
lofty room, with walls in some places painted, and elsewhere hung with
tapestry; well lighted by three old pointed windows reaching to the
rush-covered floor. The room was large, set here and there with stands
of arms, and had a dais with a raised carved chair at one end. The
ceiling was of blue, with gold stars set about it. Seeing this, I
remembered the place. I had been in it once, years ago, when I had
attended the Vicomte on a state visit to the governor. Ah! that the
Vicomte were here now!
I advanced to the middle window, which was open. Then I started back,
for outside was the scaffold built level with the floor, and
rush-covered like it! Two or three people were lounging on it. My
eyes sought Louis among the group, but in vain. He was not there: and
while I looked for him, I heard a noise behind me, and he came in,
guarded by four soldiers with pikes.
His face was pale and grave, but perfectly composed. There was a
wistful look in his eyes indeed, as if he were thinking of something or
some one far away--Kit's face on the sunny hills of Quercy where he had
ridden with her, perhaps; a look which seemed to say that the doings
here were nothing to him, and the parting was yonder where she was.
But his bearing was calm and collected, his step firm and fearless.
When he saw us, indeed his face lightened a moment and he greeted us
cheerfully, even acknowledging Bure's salutation with dignity and good
temper. Croisette sprang towards him impulsively, and cried his
name--Croisette ever the first to speak. But before Louis could grasp
his hand, the door at the bottom of the hall was swung open, and the
Vidame came hurriedly in.
He was alone. He glanced round, his forbidding face, which was
somewhat flushed as if by haste, wearing a scowl. Then he saw us, and,
nodding haughtily, strode up the floor, his spurs clanking heavily on
the boards. We gave us no greeting, but by a short word dismissed Bure
and the soldiers to the lower end of the room. And then he stood and
looked at us four, but principally at his rival; and looked, and looked
with eyes of smouldering hate. And there was a silence, a long
silence, while the murmur of the crowd came almost cheerfully through
the window, and the sparrows under the eaves chirped and twittered, and
the heart that throbbed least painfully was, I do believe, Louis de
Pavannes'!
At last Bezers broke the silence.
"M. de Pavannes!" he began, speaking hoarsely, yet concealing all
passion under a cynical smile and a mock politeness, "M. de Pavannes, I
hold the king's commission to put to death all the Huguenots within my
province of Quercy. Have you anything to say, I beg, why I should not
begin with you? Or do you wish to return to the Church?"
Louis shrugged his shoulders as in contempt, and held his peace, I saw
his captor's great hands twitch convulsively at this, but still the
Vidame mastered himself, and when he spoke again he spoke slowly.
"Very well," he continued, taking no heed of us, the silent witnesses
of this strange struggle between the two men, but eyeing Louis only.
"You have wronged me more than any man alive. Alive or dead! or dead!
You have thwarted me, M. de Pavannes, and taken from me the woman I
loved. Six days ago I might have killed you. I had it in my power. I
had but to leave you to the rabble, remember, and you would have been
rotting at Montfaucon to-day, M. de Pavannes."
"That is true," said Louis quietly. "Why so many words?"
But the Vidame went on as if he had not heard. "I did not leave you to
them," he resumed, "and yet I hate you--more than I ever hated any man
yet, and I am not apt to forgive. But now the time has come, sir, for
my revenge! The oath I swore to your mistress a fortnight ago I will
keep to the letter. I--Silence, babe!" he thundered, turning suddenly,
"or I will keep my word with you too!"
Croisette had muttered something, and this had drawn on him the glare
of Bezers' eyes. But the threat was effectual. Croisette was silent.
The two were left henceforth to one another.
Yet the Vidame seemed to be put out by the interruption. Muttering a
string of oaths he strode from us to the window and back again. The
cool cynicism, with which he was wont to veil his anger and impose on
other men, while it heightened the effect of his ruthless deeds, in
part fell from him. He showed himself as he was--masterful, and
violent, hating, with all the strength of a turbulent nature which had
never known a check. I quailed before him myself. I confess it.
"Listen!" he continued harshly, coming back and taking his place in
front of us at last, his manner more violent than before the
interruption. "I might have left you to die in that hell yonder! And I
did not leave you. I had but to hold my hand and you would have been
torn to pieces! The wolf, however, does not hunt with the rats, and a
Bezers wants no help in his vengeance from king or CANAILLE! When I
hunt my enemy down I will hunt him alone, do you hear? And as there is
a heaven above me"--he paused a moment--"if I ever meet you face to
face again, M. de Pavannes, I will kill you where you stand!"
He paused, and the murmur of the crowd without came to my ears; but
mingled with and heightened by some confusion in my thoughts. I
struggled feebly with this, seeing a rush of colour to Croisette's
face, a lightening in his eyes as if a veil had been raised from before
them. Some confusion--for I thought I grasped the Vidame's meaning;
yet there he was still glowering on his victim with the same grim
visage, still speaking in the same rough tone. "Listen, M. de
Pavannes," he continued, rising to his full height and waving his hand
with a certain majesty towards the window--no one had spoken. "The
doors are open! Your mistress is at Caylus. The road is clear, go to
her; go to her, and tell her that I have saved your life, and that I
give it to you not out of love, but out of hate! If you had flinched I
would have killed you, for so you would have suffered most, M. de
Pavannes. As it is, take your life--a gift! and suffer as I should if
I were saved and spared by my enemy!"
Slowly the full sense of his words came home to me. Slowly; not in its
full completeness indeed until I heard Louis in broken phrases, phrases
half proud and half humble, thanking him for his generosity. Even then
I almost lost the true and wondrous meaning of the thing when I heard
his answer. For he cut Pavannes short with bitter caustic gibes,
spurned his proffered gratitude with insults, and replied to his
acknowledgments with threats.
"Go! go!" he continued to cry violently. "Have I brought you so far
safely that you will cheat me of my vengeance at the last, and provoke
me to kill you? Away! and take these blind puppies with you! Reckon
me as much your enemy now as ever! And if I meet you, be sure you will
meet a foe! Begone, M. de Pavannes, begone!"
"But, M. de Bezers," Louis persisted, "hear me. It takes two to--"
"Begone! begone! before we do one another a mischief!" cried the
Vidame furiously. "Every word you say in that strain is an injury to
me. It robs me of my vengeance. Go! in God's name!"
And we went; for there was no change, no promise of softening in his
malignant aspect as he spoke; nor any as he stood and watched us draw
off slowly from him. We went one by one, each lingering after the
other, striving, out of a natural desire to thank him, to break through
that stern reserve. But grim and unrelenting, a picture of scorn to
the last, he saw us go.
My latest memory of that strange man--still fresh after a lapse of two
and fifty years--is of a huge form towering in the gloom below the
state canopy, the sunlight which poured in through the windows and
flooded us, falling short of him; of a pair of fierce cross eyes, that
seemed to glow as they covered us; of a lip that curled as in the
enjoyment of some cruel jest. And so I--and I think each of us four
saw the last of Raoul de Mar, Vidame de Bezers, in this life.
He was a man whom we cannot judge by to-day's standard; for he was such
an one in his vices and his virtues as the present day does not know;
one who in his time did immense evil--and if his friends be believed,
little good. But the evil is forgotten; the good lives. And if all
that good save one act were buried with him, this one act alone, the
act of a French gentleman, would be told of him--ay! and will be
told--as long as the kingdom of France, and the gracious memory of the
late king, shall endure.
* * * * *
I see again by the simple process of shutting my eyes, the little party
of five--for Jean, our servant, had rejoined us--who on that summer day
rode over the hills to Caylus, threading the mazes of the holm-oaks,
and galloping down the rides, and hallooing the hare from her form, but
never pursuing her; arousing the nestling farmhouses from their sleepy
stillness by joyous shout and laugh, and sniffing, as we climbed the
hill-side again, the scent of the ferns that died crushed under our
horses' hoofs--died only that they might add one little pleasure more
to the happiness God had given us. Rare and sweet indeed are those few
days in life, when it seems that all creation lives only that we may
have pleasure in it, and thank God for it. It is well that we should
make the most of them, as we surely did of that day.
It was nightfall when we reached the edge of the uplands, and looked
down on Caylus. The last rays of the sun lingered with us, but the
valley below was dark; so dark that even the rock about which our homes
clustered would have been invisible save for the half-dozen lights that
were beginning to twinkle into being on its summit. A silence fell
upon us as we slowly wended our way down the well-known path.
All day long we had ridden in great joy; if thoughtless, yet innocent;
if selfish, yet thankful; and always blithely, with a great exultation
and relief at heart, a great rejoicing for our own sakes and for Kit's.
Now with the nightfall and the darkness, now when we were near our
home, and on the eve of giving joy to another, we grew silent. There
arose other thoughts--thoughts of all that had happened since we had
last ascended that track; and so our minds turned naturally back to him
to whom we owed our happiness--to the giant left behind in his pride
and power and his loneliness. The others could think of him with full
hearts, yet without shame. But I reddened, reflecting how it would
have been with us if I had had my way; if I had resorted in my
shortsightedness to one last violent, cowardly deed, and killed him, as
I had twice wished to do.
Pavannes would then have been lost almost certainly. Only the Vidame
with his powerful troop--we never knew whether he had gathered them for
that purpose or merely with an eye to his government--could have saved
him. And few men however powerful--perhaps Bezers only of all men in
Paris would have dared to snatch him from the mob when once it had
sighted him. I dwell on this now that my grandchildren may take
warning by it, though never will they see such days as I have seen.
And so we clattered up the steep street of Caylus with a pleasant
melancholy upon us, and passed, not without a more serious thought, the
gloomy, frowning portals, all barred and shuttered, of the House of the
Wolf, and under the very window, sombre and vacant, from which Bezers
had incited the rabble in their attack on Pavannes' courier. We had
gone by day, and we came back by night. But we had gone trembling, and
we came back in joy.
We did not need to ring the great bell. Jean's cry, "Ho! Gate there!
Open for my lords!" had scarcely passed his lips before we were
admitted. And ere we could mount the ramp, one person outran those who
came forth to see what the matter was; one outran Madame Claude, outran
old Gil, outran the hurrying servants, and the welcome of the house. I
saw a slender figure all in white break away from the little crowd and
dart towards us, disclosing as it reached me a face that seemed still
whiter than its robes, and yet a face that seemed all eyes--eyes that
asked the question the lips could not frame.
I stood aside with a low bow, my hat in my hand; and said simply--it
was the great effect of my life--"VOILA Monsieur!"
And then I saw the sun rise in a woman's face.
* * * * *
The Vidame de Bezers died as he had lived. He was still Governor of
Cahors when Henry the Great attacked it on the night of the 17th of
June, 1580. Taken by surprise and wounded in the first confusion of
the assault, he still defended himself and his charge with desperate
courage, fighting from street to street, and house to house for five
nights and as many days. While he lived Henry's destiny and the fate
of France trembled in the balance. But he fell at length, his brain
pierced by the ball of an arquebuse, and died an hour before sunset on
the 22nd of June. The garrison immediately surrendered.
Marie and I were present in this action on the side of the King of
Navarre, and at the request of that prince hastened to pay such honours
to the body of the Vidame as were due to his renown and might serve to
evince our gratitude. A year later his remains were removed from
Cahors, and laid where they now rest in his own Abbey Church of Bezers,
under a monument which very briefly tells of his stormy life and his
valour. No matter. He has small need of a monument whose name lives
in the history of his country, and whose epitaph is written in the
lives of men.
NOTE.--THE CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF VIDAME DE BEZERS, AS THEY APPEAR IN
THE ABOVE MEMOIR FIND A PARALLEL IN AN ACCOUNT GIVEN BY DE THOU OF ONE
OF THE MOST REMARKABLE INCIDENTS IN THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW:
"AMID SUCH EXAMPLES," HE WRITES, "OF THE FEROCITY OF THE CITY, A THING
HAPPENED WORTHY TO BE RELATED, AND WHICH MAY PERHAPS IN SOME DEGREE
WEIGH AGAINST THESE ATROCITIES. THERE WAS A DEADLY HATRED, WHICH UP TO
THIS TIME THE INTERVENTION OF THEIR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS HAD FAILED
TO APPEASE, BETWEEN TWO MEN--VEZINS, THE LIEUTENANT OF HONORATUS OF
SAVOY, MARSHAL VILLARS, A MAN NOTABLE AMONG THE NOBILITY OF THE
PROVINCE FOR HIS VALOUR, BUT OBNOXIOUS TO MANY OWING TO HIS BRUTAL
DISPOSITION (ferina natura), AND REGNIER, A YOUNG MAN OF LIKE RANK AND
VIGOUR, BUT OF MILDER CHARACTER. WHEN REGNIER THEN, IN THE MIDDLE OF
THAT GREAT UPROAR, DEATH MEETING HIS EYE EVERYWHERE, WAS MAKING UP HIS
MIND TO THE WORST, HIS DOOR WAS SUDDENLY BURST OPEN, AND VEZINS, WITH
TWO OTHER MEN, STOOD BEFORE HIM SWORD IN HAND. UPON THIS REGNIER,
ASSURED OF DEATH, KNELT DOWN AND ASKED MERCY OF HEAVEN: BUT VEZINS IN
A HARSH VOICE BID HIM RISE FROM HIS PRAYERS AND MOUNT A PALFREY ALREADY
STANDING READY IN THE STREET FOR HIM. SO HE LED REGNIER--UNCERTAIN FOR
THE TIME WHITHER HE WAS BEING TAKEN--OUT OF THE CITY, AND PUT HIM ON
HIS HONOUR TO GO WITH HIM WITHOUT TRYING TO ESCAPE. AND TOGETHER,
WITHOUT PAUSING IN THEIR JOURNEY, THE TWO TRAVELLED ALL THE WAY TO
GUIENNE. DURING THIS TIME VEZINS HONOURED REGNIER WITH VERY LITTLE
CONVERSATION; BUT SO FAR CARED FOR HIM THAT FOOD WAS PREPARED FOR HIM
AT THE INNS BY HIS SERVANTS: AND SO THEY CAME TO QUERCY AND THE CASTLE
OF REGNIER. THERE VEZINS TURNED TO HIM AND SAID, "YOU KNOW HOW I HAVE
FOR A LONG TIME BACK SOUGHT TO AVENGE MYSELF ON YOU, AND HOW EASILY I
MIGHT NOW HAVE DONE IT TO THE FULL, HAD I BEEN WILLING TO USE THIS
OPPORTUNITY. BUT SHAME WOULD NOT SUFFER IT; AND BESIDES, YOUR COURAGE
SEEMED WORTHY TO BE SET AGAINST MINE ON EVEN TERMS. TAKE THEREFORE THE
LIFE WHICH YOU OWE TO MY KINDNESS." WITH MUCH MORE WHICH THE CURIOUS
WILL FIND IN THE 2ND (FOLIO) VOLUME OF DE THOU.