King Philip rode out of Paris attended like the monarch of a great
nation; but, pausing at the tower of Vincennes, he left his
men-at-arms behind; and, after throwing a brown mantle over his
shoulders, and drawing the _aumuce_,[12] or furred hood, round his
face, he proceeded through the park on foot, followed only by a single
page to open the gate, which led out into the vast forest of St.
Mandé. When this task was performed, the attendant, by order of the
monarch, suffered him to proceed alone, and waited on the outside of
the postern, to admit the king on his return.
--------------------
[Footnote 12: The difference between the chaperon, or hood, and the
aumuce was, that the first was formed of cloth or silk, and the latter
of fur.--_Dic. des Franc_.]
--------------------
Philip Augustus took a small path that, wandering about amidst the old
trees, led on into the heart of the forest. All was in thick leaf; and
the branches, meeting above, cast a green and solemn shadow over the
way. It was occasionally crossed, however, with breaks of yellow
sunshine where the trees parted; and there the eye might wander down
the long, deep glades, in which sun and shade, and green leaves, and
broad stems, and boughs, were all seen mingled together in the dim
forest air, with an aspect of wild, original solitude, such as wood
scenery alone can display.
One might have fancied oneself the first tenant of the world, in the
sad loneliness of that dark, old wood; so that, as he passed along,
deep thoughts of a solemn, and even melancholy character came thick
about the heart of the monarch. The littleness of human grandeur--the
evanescence of enjoyment--the emptiness of fame--the grand and awful
lessons that solitude teaches, and the world wipes out, found their
moment then: and, oh! for that brief instant, how he hated strife, and
cursed ambition, and despised the world, and wished himself the
solitary anchorite he went to visit!
At about half a league from the tower of Vincennes stood in those days
an antique tomb. The name and fame of him whose memory it had been
intended to perpetuate, had long passed away; and it remained in the
midst of the forest of St. Mandé, with its broken tablets and effaced
inscription, a trophy to oblivion. Near it, Bernard the hermit had
built his hut; and when the monarch approached, he was seated on one
of the large fragments of stone which had once formed part of the
monument. His head rested on one hand; while the other, fallen by his
side, held an open book; and at his feet lay the fragments of an urn
in sculptured marble. Over his head, an old oak spread its wide
branches; but through a vacant space amidst the foliage, where either
age or the lightning had riven away one of the great limbs of the
forest giant, the sunshine poured through, and touching on the coarse
folds of the Hermit's garments, passed on, and shone bright upon the
ruined tomb.
As Philip approached, the hermit raised his eyes, but dropped them
again immediately. He was known to have, as it were, fits of this sort
of abstraction, the repeated interruption of which had so irritated
him, that, for a time, he retired to the mountains of Auvergne, and
only returned at the express and repeated request of the king. He was
now, if one might judge by the morose heaviness of his brow, buried in
one of those bitter and misanthropical reveries into which he often
fell; and the monarch, knowing his cynical disposition, took care not
to disturb the course of his ideas, by suddenly presenting any fresh
subject to his mind. Neither, to say the truth, were the thoughts of
the king very discordant with those which probably occupied the person
he came to see. Sitting down, therefore, on the stone beside him,
without giving or receiving any salutation, he remained in silence,
while the hermit continued gazing upon the tomb.
"Beautiful nature!" said the old man at last. "How exquisitely fine is
every line thou hast chiseled in yon green ivy that twines amongst
those stones!--Whose tomb was that, my son?"
"In truth, know not, good father!" replied the king; "and I do not
think that in all France there is a man wise enough to tell you."
"You mock me!" said the hermit. "Look at the laurel--the never-dying
leaf--the ever, ever-green bay, which some curious hand has carved all
over the stone, well knowing that the prince or warrior who sleeps
there should be remembered till the world is not! I pray thee, tell me
whose is that tomb?"
"Nay, indeed, it is unknown," replied the king. "Heaven forbid that I
should mock you! The inscription has been long effaced--the name for
centuries forgot; and the living in their busy cares have taken little
heed to preserve the memory of the dead."
"So shall it be with thee," said the old man--"so shall it be with
thee. Thou shalt do great deeds; thou shalt know great joys, and taste
great sorrows! Magnified in thy selfishness, thy littleness shall seem
great. Thou shalt strive and conquer, till thou thinkest thyself
immortal; then die, and be forgot! Thy very tomb shall be commented
upon by idle speculation, and men shall come and wonder for whom it
was constructed. Do not men call thee Augustus?"[13]
--------------------
[Footnote 13: The name of Augustus was given to Philip the Second,
even in the earlier part of his lifetime, although Mézerai mistakingly
attributes it to many centuries afterwards. Rigord, the historian and
physician, who died in the twenty-eighth year of Philip's reign, and
the forty-second of his age, styles him Augustus, in the very title of
his manuscript.]
--------------------
"I have heard so," replied the king. "But I know not whether such a
title be general in the mouths of men, or whether it be the flattery
of some needy sycophant."
"It matters not, my son," said the hermit--"it matters not. Think you,
that if Augustus had been written on that tablet, the letters of that
word would have proved more durable than those that time has long
effaced? Think you, that it would have given one hour of immortality?"
"Good father, you mistake!" said Philip, "and read me a homily on that
where least I sin. None feels more than I the emptiness of fame. Those
that least seek it, very often win; and those that struggle for it
with every effort of their soul, die unremembered. 'Tis not fame I
seek: I live in the present."
"What!" cried the hermit, "and bound your hopes to half-a-dozen
morrows? The present! What is the present? Take away the hours of
sleep--of bodily, of mental pain--of regrets for the past--of fears
for the future--of all sorts of cares. And what is the present? One
short moment of transitory joy--a point in the wide eternity of
thought!--a drop of water to a thirsty man, tasted and then forgot!"
"'Tis but too true!" replied the king; "and even now, as I came
onward, I dreamed of casting off the load of sovereignty, and seeking
peace."'
The hermit gazed at him for a moment, and seeing that he spoke
gravely--"It cannot be," he replied. "It must not be!"
"And why not?" demanded the king. "All your reasoning has tended but
to that. Why should I not take the moral to myself?"
"It cannot be," replied the hermit; "because the life of your
resolution would be but half an hour. It must not be, because the
world has need of you.--Monarch! I am not wont to flatter, and you
have many a gross and hideous fault about you; but, according to the
common specimens of human kind, you are worthy to be king. It matters
little to the world, whether you do good for its sake or your own. If
your ambition bring about your fellow-creatures' welfare, your
ambition is a virtue: nourish it. You have done good, O king! and you
will do good; and therefore you must be king, till Heaven shall give
you your dismissal. Nor did my reasoning tend, as you say, to make you
quit the cares of the world; but only to make you justly estimate its
joys, and look to a better immortality than that of earth--that empty
dream of human vanity! Still you must bear the load of sovereignty you
speak of; and, by freeing the people from the yoke of their thousand
tyrants, accomplish the work you have begun. See you not that I, who
have a better right to fly from the affairs of men, have come back
from Auvergne at your call?"
"My good father," answered the king, "I would fain, as you say, take
the yoke from the neck of the people; but I have not means. Even now,
my finances are totally exhausted; and I sit upon my throne a beggar."
"Ha!" said the hermit; "and therefore 'tis you seek me? I knew of this
before. But say, are your exigencies so great as to touch the present,
or only to menace the future?"
"'Tis present--too truly present, my want!" replied the king. "Said I
not, I am a beggar? Can a king say more?"
"This must be remedied!" replied the hermit.--"Come into my cell, good
son! Strange! that the ascetic's frock should prove richer than the
monarch's gown!--but 'tis so!"
Philip followed the hermit into the rude thatched hut, on the cold
earthen floor of which was laid the anchorite's bed of straw. It had
no other furniture whatever. The mud walls were bare and rough. The
window was but an opening to the free air of heaven; and the thatch
seemed scarcely sufficient to keep off the inclemency of the weather.
The king glanced his eye round the miserable dwelling, and then to the
ashy and withered cheek of the hermit! as if he would have asked, Is
it possible for humanity to bear such privation?
The anchorite remarked his look, and pointing to a crucifix of ebony
hanging against the wall, "There," cried he, "is my reward!--there is
the reward of fasting, and penitence, and prayer, and maceration, and
all that has made this body the withered and blighted thing it
is:--withered indeed! so that those who loved me best would not know a
line in my countenance. But there is the reward!" And casting himself
on his knees before the crucifix, he poured forth a long, wild,
rhapsodical prayer, which, indeed, well accorded with the character of
the times, but which was so very unlike the usual calm, rational, and
even bitter manner of the anchorite, that Philip gazed on him, in
doubt whether his judgment had not suddenly given way under the
severity of his ascetic discipline.
At length the hermit rose, and, without noting the king's look of
astonishment, turned abruptly from his address to heaven, to far more
mundane thoughts. Pushing back the straw and moss which formed his
bed, from the spot where it joined the wall, he discovered, to the
king's no small surprise, two large leathern sacks or bags, the
citizen-like rotundity of which evinced their fulness in some kind.
"In each of those bags," said the hermit, "is the sum of one thousand
marks of silver. One of them shall be yours, my son; the other is
destined for another purpose."
It would be looking too curiously into the human heart to ask whether
Philip, who, the moment before, would have thought one of the bags a
most blessed relief from his very unkingly distresses, did not, on the
sight of two, feel unsatisfied that one only was to be his portion.
However, he was really of too noble a disposition not to feel grateful
for the gift, even as it was; and he was proceeding gracefully to
thank the hermit, when the old man stopped him.
"Vanity, vanity! my son," cried he. "What need of thanks, for giving
you a thing that is valueless to me?--ay, more worthless than the moss
amongst which it lies. My vow forbids me either to buy or sell; and
though I may use gold, as the beast of burden bears it--but to
transfer it to another,--to me, it is more worthless than the dust of
the earth, for it neither bears the herbs that give me food, nor the
leaves that form my bed. Send for it, sir king, and it is yours.--But
now, to speak of the future. I heard by the way that the Count de
Tankerville is dead, and that the Duke of Burgundy claims all his
broad lands. Is it so?"
"Nay," replied the king, "not so. The Count de Tankerville is
wandering in the Holy Land. I have not heard of him since I went
thither myself some ten years since: but he is there. At least, no
tidings have reached me of his death. Even were he dead," continued
the King, "which is not likely,--for he went but as one of the
palmers, to whom, you know, the Soldan shows much favour; and he was a
strong and vigorous man, fitted to resist all climates:--but even were
he dead, the Duke of Burgundy has no claim upon his lands; for, before
he went, he drew a charter and stamped it with his ring, whereby, in
case of his death, he gives his whole and entire lands, with our royal
consent, to Guy de Coucy, then a page warring with the men I left to
Richard of England, but now a famous knight, who has done feats of
great prowess in all parts of the world. The charter is in our royal
treasury, sent by him to our safe keeping about ten years agone."
"Well, my son," replied the hermit, "the report goes that he is
dead.--Now, follow my counsel. Lay your hand upon those lands; call in
all the sums that for many years are due from all the count's prévôts
and sénéchals; employ the revenues in raising the dignity of your
crown, repressing the wars and plunderings of your barons, and----"
"But," interrupted the King, "my good father, will not what you advise
itself be plundering? Will it not be a notable injustice?"
"Are you one of those, sir king," asked the hermit, "who come for
advice, resolved to follow their own: and who hear the counsels of
others, but to strengthen their own determination? Do as I tell you,
and you shall prosper; and, by my faith in yon blessed emblem, I
pledge myself that, if the Count de Tankerville be alive, I will meet
his indignation; and he shall wreak his vengeance on my old head, if
he agree not that the necessity of the case compelled you. If he be a
good and loyal baron, he will not hesitate to say you did well, when
his revenues were lying unemployed, or only fattening his idle
servants. If he be dead, on the other hand, this mad-brained De Coucy,
who owes me his life, shall willingly acquit you of the sums you have
taken."
The temptation was too strong for the king to resist; and determining
inwardly, merely to employ the large revenues of the Count de
Tankerville for the exigencies of the state, and to repay them, if he
or de Coucy did not willingly acquiesce in the necessity of the
case,--without however remembering that repayment might not be in his
power,--Philip Augustus consented to what the hermit proposed. It was
also farther agreed between them, that in case of the young knight
presenting himself at court, the question of his rights should be
avoided, till such time as the death of the Count de Tankerville was
positively ascertained; while, as some compensation, Philip resolved
to give him, in case of war, the leading of all the knights and
soldiers furnished by the lands which would ultimately fall to him.
The hermit was arranging all these matters with Philip, with as much
worldly policy as if he never dreamed of nobler themes, when they were
startled by the sound of a horn, which, though at some distance, was
evidently in the forest. It seemed the blast of a huntsman; and a
flush of indignation came over the countenance of the king, at the
very thought of any one daring to hunt in one of the royal forests,
almost within sight of the walls of Paris.
The hermit saw the angry spot, and giving way to the cynicism which
mingled so strangely with many very opposite qualities in his
character--"O God!" cried he, "what strange creatures thou hast made
us! That a great, wise king should hold the right of slaughtering
unoffending beasts as one of the best privileges of his crown!--to be
sole and exclusive butcher of God's forests in France! I tell thee,
monarch, that when those velvet brutes, that fly panting at thy very
tread heard afar, come and lick my hand, because I feed them and hurt
them not, I hold my staff as much above thy sceptre, as doing good is
above doing evil! But hie thee away quick, and send thy men to search
the forest; for, hark! the saucy fool blows his horn again, and knows
not royal ears are listening to his tell-tale notes!"
Philip was offended: but the vast reputation for sanctity which the
hermit had acquired; the fasts, the vigils, and the privations, which
he himself knew to be unfeigned,--had, in that age of superstition, no
small effect even upon the mind of Philip Augustus:--he submitted,
therefore, to the anchorite's rebuke with seeming patience, but taking
care not to reply upon a subject whereon he knew himself to be
peculiarly susceptible, and which might urge him into anger, he took
leave of the hermit, fully resolved to follow his advice so far as to
send out some of his men-at-arms, to see who was bold enough to hunt
in the royal chase.
This trouble, however, was spared him; for, as he walked back with a
rapid pace, along the path that conducted to Vincennes, the sound of
the horn came nearer and nearer; and suddenly the king was startled by
an apparition in one of the glades, which was very difficult to
comprehend. It consisted of a strong grey mare, galloping at full
speed, with no apparent rider, but with two human legs, clothed in
crimson silk, sticking far out before, one on each side of the
animal's neck. As it approached, however, Philip began to perceive the
body of the horseman, lying flat on his back, with his head resting on
the saddle, and not at all discomposed by his strange position, nor
the quick pace of his steed, blowing all sorts of _mots_ upon his
horn, which was, in truth, the sound that had disturbed the monarch in
his conference with the hermit.
We must still remember, that the profound superstition of that age
held, as a part of the true faith, the existence and continual
appearance, in corporeal shape, of all sorts of spirits. It was also
the peculiar province of huntsmen, and other persons frequenting large
forests, to meet with these spirits; so that not a wood in France, of
any extent, but had its appropriate fiend; and never did a chase
terminate without some of the hunters separating from the rest, and
having some evil communication of the kind with the peculiar demon of
the place.
Now, though the reader may have before met with the personage who, in
the present case, approached the king at full gallop, yet as Philip
Augustus had never done so,--and as no mind, however strong, is ever
without some touch of the spirit of its age, it was not unnatural for
the monarch to lay his hand upon his sword, that being the most
infallible way he had ever found of exorcising all kinds of spirits
whatever. The mare, however, aware that she was in the presence of
something more awful than trees and rocks, suddenly stopped, and, in a
moment, our friend Gallon the fool sat bolt upright before the king,
with his long and extraordinary nose wriggling in all sorts of ways on
the blank flat of his countenance, as if it were the only part of his
face that was surprised.
"Who the devil are you?" exclaimed the monarch; "and what do you,
sounding your horn in this forest?"
"I, the devil, am nobody," replied the jongleur; "and if you ask what
I do here, I am losing my way as hard as I can--Haw, haw!"
"Nobody! How mean you?" demanded Philip. "You cannot be nobody."
"Yes, I am," answered the juggler. "I have often heard the sage Count
Thibalt d'Auvergne say to my master, the valiant Sir Guy de Coucy,
that the intellect is the man. Now, I lack intellect; and therefore am
I nobody.--Haw, haw! Haw, haw!"
"So thou art but a buffoon," said the king,
"No, not so either," replied Gallon. "I am, indeed. Sir Guy de Coucy's
tame juggler; running wild in this forest, for want of instruction."
"And where is now Sir Guy de Coucy," demanded the king, "and the Count
Thibalt d'Auvergne you speak of? They were both in the Holy Land when
last I heard of them."
"As for the Count d'Auvergne," replied Gallon the fool,--"he parted
from us three days since to go to Paris, to make love to the king's
wife, who, they say, has a pretty foot. God help me!"
"Ha, villain!" cried the king. "'Tis well the king hears you not, or
your ears would be slit!"
"So should his hearing spoil my hearing," cried the juggler; "but I
would keep my ears out of his way. I have practice enough, in saving
them from my Lord Sir Guy; but no man has reached them yet, and shall
not.--Haw, haw!"
"And where is Sir Guy?" demanded the king. "How happen you to have
parted from him?"
"He is but now sitting a mile hence, singing very doleful ballads
under an oak," replied the juggler. "All about the old man and his
daughter.--Haw, haw! Sir Julian of the Mount and the fair
Isadore.--Haw, haw, haw!--You know?"
"No, 'faith, fool! I know not," replied Philip. "What do you mean?"
"Why, have you not heard," said the juggler, "how my good lord and my
better self, and five or six varlets and squires, conducted old Sir
Julian and the young Lady Isadore all the way from Vic le Comte to
Senlis----and how we lost our way in this cursed forest--and how lord
sent me to seek it? Oh, 'tis a fine tale, and my lord will write it in
verse--Haw, haw, haw!--and sing it to an old rattling harp; and make
all the folks weep to hear how he has sworn treason against the king,
all for the sake of the Lady Isadore.--Haw, haw, haw! Haw, haw!" And
placing his hand against his cheek, the juggler poured forth a mixture
of all sorts of noises, in which that of sharpening a saw was alone
predominant.
Philip called, and entreated, and commanded him to cease, and to tell
him more; but the malicious juggler only burst out into one of his
long shrill laughs, and throwing himself back on his horse, set it off
into a gallop, without at all asking his way; at the same time putting
the horn to his mouth, and blowing a blast quite sufficient to drown
all the monarch's objurgations.
Philip turned upon his heel, and pursued his way to Vincennes,
and--oh, strange human nature!--though he saw that his informant was a
fool--though he easily guessed him to be a malicious one, he repeated
again and again the words that Gallon had made use of--"Gone to make
love to the king's wife!--sworn treason against the king! But the
man's a fool--an idiot," added the monarch. "'Tis not worth a
thought;" and yet Philip thought of it.