We must now once more go back a little in our history and return to
Sir Guy de Coucy, who, on the morning of his friend's departure for
Auvergne, stood at the door of their common dwelling to see him set
out. In the hurry of such a moment there had been no time for many of
those arrangements between the two friends, which the Count d'Auvergne
much wished to have made. However, as he embraced De Coucy at parting,
according to the custom of the day, he whispered in his ear: "The
besants we brought from the Holy Land are in my chamber. If you love
me, De Coucy, remember that we are brothers, and have all things in
common. I shall find you here at my return. If I come not soon I will
send you a messenger." De Coucy nodded his head with a smile, and,
leaning on his large two-handed sword, saw the Count d'Auvergne mount
his horse and depart.
"Farewell, D'Auvergne!" said he, as he turned to re-enter the
house,--"perhaps we may never meet again; but De Coucy forgets not thy
generous kindness, though he will not use it. Our fortunes are far too
unequal for us longer to hold a common purse."
Be it remarked, however, that the scruples which affected De Coucy on
this occasion were rather singular in the age in which he lived; for
the companionship of arms, which, in their romantic spirit, the
knights of even a much later period often vowed to each other, were
frequently of a stricter and more generous nature than any of our most
solid engagements of life at present; involving not only community of
fortune and of fate, but of friendships and of enmities, of pleasures
and pains, and sometimes of life or death.[15] When once two knights
had exchanged arms, as was often the case, it became their duty to
assist each other on every occasion, with body and goods, during the
expedition in which they were engaged; and sometimes, even for life,
to share all wealth between them, both present and to come; and in
case of one dying, while under an engagement to do battle, (or under a
wager of battle, as it was called,) his companion, or brother in arms,
was bound to fill his place, and maintain his honour in the duel.
--------------------
[Footnote 15: Ducange cites the following formula from a work I cannot
meet with. The passage refers to a fraternity of arms between Majon,
high admiral of Sicily, and the archbishop of Palermo.
"Dictum est præterea quod ii, juxta consuetudinem Siculorum, fraternæ
f[oe]dus societatis contraxerint, seseque invicem jurejurando
astrinxerunt ut alter alterum modis omnibus promoveret, et tam in
prosperis quàm in adversis unius essent animi, unius voluntatis atque
consilii; quisquis alterum læderet, amborura incurreret offensam."
The same learned author cites a declaration of Louis XI. where he
constitutes Charles, Duke of Burgundy, his sole brother in arms,
thereby seeming to imply that this adoption of a brother in arms was
restricted to one.--_Ducange_, Dissert. xxi.]
--------------------
While in the Holy Land, cut off from frequent supplies, and in
imminent and continual dangers, De Coucy had found no inequality
between himself and Count Thibalt de Auvergne; but now, placed amidst
the ruinous expense of tournaments and courts, he resolved to break
off at once an engagement, where no parity of means existed between
himself and his companion.
Slowly, and somewhat sadly, De Coucy returned to his own chamber,
feeling a touch of care that his light heart had not often known
before. "Hugo de Barre," said he, "give me a flask of wine; I have not
tasted my morning's cup, and I am melancholy."
"Shall I put some comfits in it, beau sire?" demanded the squire. "I
have often known your worship get over a bad fit of love, by a
ladle-full of comfits in a cup of Cyprus."
"As thou wilt, Hugo," answered the knight; "but 'tis not love I want
to cure, now-a-day."
"Marry! I thought, sire Guy," replied Hugo de Barre, "that it was all
for love of the Lady Isadore; but then, again, I fancied it was
strange, if you loved her, that you should leave her at Senlis, and
not go on with her to her own castle, and strive to win her!"
"Her father was going to lodge with the sire de Montmorency, my cousin
Enguerand's sworn foe," replied De Coucy; "and even after that, he
goes not home, but speeds to Rouen, to mouth it with John, king of
England.--By my faith!" he added, speaking to himself, "that old man
will turn out a rebel from simple folly. He must needs be meddling
with treason, but to make himself important. Yet D'Auvergne says he
was a good warrior in his day. I wish I could keep his fingers from
the fire, were it but for his daughter's love--sweet girl!"
Had De Coucy been alone, he would probably have thought what he now
said, yet would not have spoken it; but having begun by addressing his
attendant, he went on aloud, though the latter part of what he said
was, in reality, merely a part of his commune with himself. Hugo de
Barre, however, who had, on more than one occasion been thus made, as
it were, a speaking-block by his master, understood the process of De
Coucy's mind, and stood silent till his lord had done.
"Then you do love the lady, beau sire?" said he at last, venturing
more than he usually did upon such occasions.
"Well, well! Hugo, what is it to thee?" demanded De Coucy. "I will not
keep thee out all night, as when I courted the princess of Syracuse."
"Nay, but I love the Lady Isadore better than ever I did the princess
of Syracuse," replied the squire; "and I would stay out willingly many
a night for her sake, so she would be my lord's true lady. Look ye, my
lord! You have seen her wear this bracelet of cloth of gold," he
continued, drawing forth a piece of fine linen, in which was wrapped a
broad band of cloth of gold, not at all unlike the bracelets of gilded
wire, lately so much the mode amongst the fair dames of London and
Paris. "I asked one of her maidens to steal it for me."
"You did not, surely, Hugo!" cried De Coucy. "How dare you be so bold
with any noble lady, sirrah?"
"Nay, then, I will give it back," replied the squire. "I had intended
the theft to have profited your lordship; but I will give it back. The
Lady Isadore, it is true, knew that her damsel took it; but still it
was a theft; and I will give it back again. She knew, too, that it was
I who asked it; and doubtless guessed it was you, beau sire, would
have it; but I had better give it back."
"Nay, nay! good Hugo," replied De Coucy; "give it me. I knew not you
were so skilful in such matters. I knew you were a good scout, but not
in sir Cupid's army.--Give it me!"
"Nay, beau sire, I had better give it back," replied the Squire; "and
then I will fall into my duty again, and look for nothing but
routiers, cotereaux, and the like. But there is something more I
wished to tell you, sir: old Giles, the squire of the good Count
Julian, told me, that if his lord keep his mind of going to Rouen, he
must needs in three weeks' time pass within sight of our own--that is
to say, your own--castle. Now, would it not be fair sport, to lay an
ambush for the whole party, and take them prisoners, and bring them to
the castle?"
"By my faith! it would," replied the knight. "But how is this,
Hugo?--thou art a changed man. Ever since I have known thee, which is
since I was not higher than my dagger, thou hast shown thyself as
stiff and sturdy a piece of old iron, as any of the corslets that hang
by the wall; and now thou art craving bracelets, and laying ambushes
for fair ladies, as if thou hadst been bred up in the very palace of
Love. Methinks that same damsel, who stole the bracelet for thee, must
have woke up some new spirit in thy heart of stone, to make thine
outward man so pliable. Why, compared to what thou wert, Hugo, thou
art as a deer-skin coat to a steel plastron. Art thou not in love,
man? Answer me!"
"Something like it, I fear me, beau sire," replied the squire. "And as
it is arranged between me and Alixe, that if you win the lady, I am to
have the maid, we are resolved to set our wits to work to help your
lordship on."
"By my life! a hopeful plot," replied De Coucy: "and well do I know,
Hugo, that the maid's good word is often as much gained as the
mistress's smile. But go, order to saddle; leave the bracelet with me;
and as soon as the horses be ready, De Coucy will spur on for the home
of his fathers."
The squire delivered the bracelet to his lord, and left the apartment;
and no sooner was he gone, than De Coucy carried the bracelet to his
lips, to his forehead, and his heart, with as much fervour of
devotion, as ever monk showed for the most sacred relic of his church.
"She knew that her damsel took it!--she knew that it was for me!"
exclaimed he in an ecstasy of delight, which every one who can feel,
may have felt on discovering some such unlooked-for source of
happiness. Stretching out his hand, De Coucy then took up the rote,
which, as a true trouvère, he made his inseparable companion. It was
an age when poetry was a language--the real, not the figurative
language of love--when song was in the heart of every one, ready to
break forth the moment that passion or enthusiasm called for
aid;--and, in the acme of his gladness, the young knight sang to the
instrument a ballad, composed, indeed, long before; but the concluding
verse of which he altered to suit his feelings at the moment.
SONG.
I.
"I rode my battle-horse afar--
A long, a long, and weary way;
Fading I saw night's latest star,
And morning's prime, and risen day,
But still the desert around me lay.
II.
On, on, o'er burning sands I rode,
Beneath a red and angry sky;
Burning, the air around me glow'd;
My tongue was parch'd, my lip was dry:--
I would have given worlds for the west-wind's sigh.
III.
With fever'd blood, and fiery eye,
And rent and aching brow, I go;
When, oh the rapture to descry
The palm-trees green, the fountain low,
Where welling waters sweetly flow!
IV.
Through life, as o'er that Syrian plain,
Alone I've wander'd from a child,
Thirsting for love, yet all in vain,
'Till now, when sweet and undefiled,
I find Love's fountain in the wild."
De Coucy sang, and then again pressed the token which he had obtained
to his lips, and to his heart; when suddenly a loud "Haw, haw! haw,
haw!" startled him from his pleasing dreams, and he saw Gallon the
fool standing beside him.
"Haw, haw!" cried Gallon; "my master's turned juggler, and is playing
with scraps of gold ribbon, and singing songs to them. By my
dexterity! I'll give up the trade: the mystery is no longer
honourable--every fool can do it."
"Take care that one fool does not get his ears slit," answered De
Coucy.--"Tell me, sir, and tell me truly,--for I know thee, Gallon,
and that thou art no more fool than may serve thy turn,--where hast
thou been since daybreak, this morning?"
"I went out on the road to Compiègne," replied Gallon gravely, "to see
how the wolf looked in the sheepfold; and whether the falcon comported
himself sociably in the dove's nest. Farther, I sought to behold how
the shepherd enjoyed the sight of sir wolf toying with the lamb; and
still farther----"
"Villain!" cried De Coucy, "what mean you? Speak me no more apologues,
or your skin shall suffer for it! What mean you, I say?" and De Coucy
suddenly seized the juggler by the arm, so as to prevent him from
escaping by his agility, which he frequently did, from the blow which
he menaced to bestow on him with his other hand.
"Well! well!" cried Gallon, ever willing to say any thing that he
thought might alarm, or mortify, or pain his hearers. "I went first,
beau sire, to inquire of a dear friend of mine, at the palace--who
fell in love with me, because, and on account of, the simple beauty
and grace of my snout--whether it be true, that Philip the Magnificent
had taken actual possession of the lands of your aunt's husband, the
Count de Tankerville; and I find he has, and called in all the
revenues to the royal treasury. Oh! 'tis a great king and an
expeditious!--Haw, haw, haw!" and though within reach of the young
knight's arm. Gallon the fool could not repress his glee at the sight
of a slight shade of natural mortification that came over his lord's
countenance.
"Let him," cried De Coucy,--"let him take them all! I would rather
that he had them than the duke of Burgundy. Better they should go to
strengthen a good king, than to nourish a fat and overgrown
vassal.--But you escape me not so, sir Gallon! You said you went on
the road to Compiègne to see how the wolf looked, in the sheepfold!
Translate, sir fool! Translate! What meant you?"
"Simply to see Count Thibalt d'Auvergne and Queen Agnes de Meranie,"
replied the jongleur.--"Haw, haw!--Is there any harm in that?"
De Coucy started, as if some one had struck him, experiencing that
sort of astonishment which one feels, when suddenly some fact, to
which we have long shut our eyes, breaks upon us at once, in all the
sharpness of self-evidency--if one may use the word. "'Tis
impossible!" cried he. "It cannot be! 'Tis not to be believed!"
"Haw, haw, haw!" cried Gallon the fool. "Not to be doubted, beau sire
De Coucy!--Did he not join your good knighthood as blithe and merry as
a lark, after having spent some three months at the court of Istria
and Moravia?--Did he not go on well and gaily, till the news came that
Philip of France had wedded Agnes de Meranie?--Then did he not, in
your own tent, turn paler than the canvass that covered him?--And did
he not thenceforth wax wan and lack-witted, sick and sorrowful?--Ha,
haw? Ha, haw!"
"Cease thy grinning, knave!" cried De Coucy sharply, "and know, that
even if he does love the queen, 'tis in all honour and honesty; as one
may dedicate one's heart and soul, one's lance and song, to the
greatest princess on all the earth, without dreaming aught to her
dishonour."
"Haw, haw, haw! haw, haw!" was all the answer of Gallon the fool; and
darting away from the relaxed grasp of De Coucy, on whose brow he saw
clearly a gathering storm, he rushed down, shouting "Haw, haw! haw,
haw!" with as keen an accent of triumph, as if he had gained a
victory.
"Is it possible?" said the knight to himself, "that I have been blind
for nearly two years to what has been discovered by an idiot on the
instant? God bless us all, and the holy saints!--D'Auvergne!
D'Auvergne! I pity thee, from my soul! for where thou hast loved, and
loved so fair a creature, there wilt thou still love, till the
death. Nor art thou a man to seek to quench thy love in thy lady's
dishonour--to learn to gratify thy passion and to despise its object,
as some men would. Here thy very nobleness, like plumes to the
ostrich, is thy bane and not thy help. And Philip too. If e'er a king
was born to be jealous, he is the man. I would not for a dukedom love
so hopelessly. However, D'Auvergne, I will be near thee--near to thy
dangers, though not to thy wealth."
At this point, the contemplations of De Coucy were interrupted by the
return of Hugo de Barre, his squire, informing him that the horses
were ready; and at the same time laying down on the table before his
lord a small leathern bag, apparently full of money.
"What is that?" demanded De Coucy.
"The ransom of the two knights' horses and armour, overthrown by your
lance in the yesterday's tournament," replied the squire.
"Well, then, pay the two hireling grooms," said De Coucy, "whom we
engaged to lead the two Arabians from Auvergne, since we discharged
the Lombards who brought them thither."
"They will not be paid, beau sire," replied the squire. "They both
pray you to employ the hire which is their due in furnishing them with
each a horse and arms, and then to let them serve under your banner."
"Well, be it so, good Hugo," replied the knight. "Where--God knows
where I shall find food to cram their mouths withal! 'Twill add too,
however, to my poor following. Then, with thee and the page, and my
own two varlets, we shall make seven:--eight with Gallon the fool. By
my faith! I forgot the juggler, who is as stout a man-at-arms as any
amongst us. But, as I said, get thee gone with the men to the Rue St.
Victor, where the Haubergers dwell. Give them each a sword, a shield,
a corslet, and a steel bonnet: but make them cast away those long
knives hanging by their thighs which I love not;--they always make me
think of that one wherewith the villain slave of Mahound ripped up my
good battle-horse Hero; and would have slain me with it too, if I had
not dashed him to atoms with my mace. Ride quick, and overtake me and
the rest on the road: we go at a foot-pace." So saying, Guy de Coucy
descended the narrow staircase of his dwelling; and, after having
spoken for a few moments with one of the attendants of the Count
d'Auvergne, who had remained behind, he mounted his horse, and rode
slowly out of the city of Paris.
There is no possible mode of progression, that I know of, more
engendering of melancholy than the foot-pace of a horse when one is
alone. It is so like the slow and retarded pace which, whether we will
or not, we are obliged to pursue on the high-road of life; and each
object, as it rises on our view, seems such a long age in its
approach, that one feels an almost irresistible desire, at every other
step, to give the whip or spur, and accelerate the heart's slow
beatings by some more rapid movement of the body. Did one wish to
cultivate their stupidity, let them ride their horse, at a walk, over
one of the long, straight roads of France.
The face of the country, however, was in those days very different
from what it is at present; and the narrow, earthy road over which De
Coucy travelled, wound in and out over hills and through forests: now
plunging into the deep wood; now emerging by the bright stream; now
passing, for a short space, through vineyards and fields, with a
hamlet or a village by the road-side; now losing itself in wilds and
solitudes, where one might well suppose that Adam's likeness had been
never seen.
The continual changing of the objects around relieved, of course, the
monotony of the slow pace at which De Coucy had condemned himself to
proceed, while expecting of his squire's return; and a calm sort of
melancholy was all he felt, as he revolved in his mind the various
points of his own situation and that of his friend the Count
d'Auvergne.
In regard to himself, new feelings had sprung up in his
bosom--feelings that he had heard of, but never known before. He
loved, and he fancied he was beloved; and dreams, and hopes, and
expectations, softer, calmer, more profound than ever had reached him
in camps or courts, flowed in upon his heart, like the stream of some
deep, pure river, and washed away all that was rude and light, or
unworthy in his bosom. Yet, at the same time, all the tormenting
contentions of hope and fear--the fine hair balancings of doubt and
anxiety--the soul torturings of that light and malicious imp, Love,
took possession of the heart of De Coucy; and he calculated, within
the hundred thousandth part of a line, how much chance there existed
of Isadore of the Mount not loving him,--and of her loving some one
else,--and of her father, who was rich, rejecting him, who was
poor,--and of his having promised her to some one else;--and so on to
infinity. At length, weary of his own reasonings thereupon, and
laughing at himself for combating the chimeras of his own imagination,
he endeavoured to turn his thoughts to other things, humming as he
went--
"'The man's a fool--the man's a fool
That lets Love use him for a tool:
But is that man the gods above,
Himself unused, who uses love.'
"--And so will I," continued De Coucy mentally. "It shall prompt me to
great deeds, and to mighty efforts. I will go to every court in
Europe, and challenge them all to do battle with me upon the question.
I will fight in every combat and every skirmish that can be met with,
till they cannot refuse her to me, out of pure shame."
Such were the determinations of De Coucy in the age of chivalry, and
he was one more likely than most men to keep such determinations.
They, however, like all resolutions, were of course modified by
circumstances; and in the mean while, his squire, Hugo, rejoined him
with the two varlets, who had been hired in Auvergne to lead his
horses, but who were now fitted to make a figure in the train of so
warlike a knight.
Still the prospect of his cold and vacant home, with no smile to give
him welcome, and, as he well knew, nothing but poverty for his
entertainment, sat somewhat heavily upon the young knight's heart. To
lodge upon the battle plain, under a covering that scarce excluded the
weather; to feed on the coarsest and most scanty food; to endure all
perils and privations, for chivalry's, religion's, or his country's
sake, was nothing to the bold and hardy soldier, whose task and pride
it was so to suffer: but, for the châtelain, De Coucy, to return to
the castle where his fathers had lived in splendour,--to the bowers
and halls where his infancy had been nursed with tenderness,--and to
find all empty and desolate; the wealth and magnificence wasted in the
thousand fruitless enterprises of the crusades, and the loved and
familiar laid low in the melancholy dwellings of the gone, was bitter,
sadly bitter, even for a young, light heart, and unquenchable spirit
like his.
One of his ancestors, who, in the reign of Henry the First, had
founded the younger branch of the De Coucy's, of which he was now the
sole representative, had done important services to the crown, and had
been rewarded by the hand of Aleonore de Magny, on the Seine, heiress
of the last _terre libre_, or free land, in France; and this his race
had maintained, in its original freedom, against all the surrounding
barons, and even against the repeated efforts of every successive
king, who, on all occasions, attempted to exact homage by force, or to
win it by policy. His father, indeed, before taking the cross, which
he did at the persuasion of Louis the Seventh, had put his lands under
the protection of the king, who, on his part, promised to guard its
inviolability against all and every one; and acknowledged by charter
under his hand and seal, that it was free and independent of the
crown.
The _manoir_, or _castel_, of every baron of the time, was always a
building of more or less strength; but it is to be supposed, of
course, that the château attached to lands in continual dispute, was
fortified with an additional degree of precaution and care. Nor was
this wanting in the château of De Coucy Magny, as it was called: wall,
and battlement, tower, turret, and bartizan, overhung every angle of
the hill on which it was placed, and rendered it almost impregnable,
according to the mode of warfare of those days.
When De Coucy had left it, with his father's men-at-arms, though age
had blackened it, not one stone was less in the castle-walls,--not a
weed was on the battlements; and even the green ivy, that true
parasite which sucks the vital strength of that which supports it, was
carefully removed from the masonry.
But, oh! how fast decay speeds on, even by the neglect of ten short
years! When De Coucy returned, the evening sun was setting behind the
hill on which the castle stood; and, as he led his scanty band of
horsemen up the winding and difficult path, he could see, by the
rough, uneven outline of the dark mass before him, what ravages time
had already made. High above the rest, the donjon, which used to seem
proud of its square regularity, now towered with one entire angle of
its battlements given way, and with many a bush and shrub waving its
long feathery foliage from window and from loophole; while the
neglected state of the road, and even the tameness of the wild animals
in the woods near the château; the hares and the deer, which stood and
gazed with their large round eyes for many moments at De Coucy and his
followers before they started away, told, with a sad moral, that man
was seldom seen there.
De Coucy sighed as he rode on; and, stopping at the gates of the
barbican, which, thickly plated and studded with iron, opposed all
entrance, wound a long blast upon his horn. A moment after, the noise
of bolts and bars was heard, as if the doors were about to be thrown
open; but then again came the sound of an old man's voice, exclaiming
in a tone of querulous anger--"Hold, hold! Villain Calord! Will you
give up the castle to the cotereaux? Hold, I say! or I will break thy
pate! I saw them from the beffroy. They are a band of cotereaux. Go
round to the serfs' sheds, and bid them come and take their bows to
the walls. Up you, and ring the bancloche, that we may have the
soldiers from Magny!"
"Onfroy! Onfroy!" shouted De Coucy. "Open your gates! 'Tis I, Guy de
Coucy!"
"Your voice I know not!" roared the old man in reply. "My young lord
had a soft, sweet voice; and yours is as deep as a bell. I know not
your voice, fair sir.--Man the walls, I say, Calord! 'Tis all a
trick," he continued, speaking to his companion. "Sound the
bancloche!"
"If you know not my voice," cried De Coucy, "surely you should know
the blast I have sounded on my horn!"
"Sound again, beau sire!--sound again!" cried the old man. "I will
know your blast among ten thousand, if you be a De Coucy; and if you
be my young lord, I will know it in all the world."
De Coucy put his horn to his lips and reiterated his blast, when
instantly the old man exclaimed--"'Tis he!--'tis he, Calord!--Open the
gates--open the gates, quick! lest I die of joy before I see his face
again! 'Tis he himself! The blessed Virgin, queen of heaven, be
praised for all things--Give me the keys--give me the keys, Calord!"
and no sooner were the doors pushed back, than casting himself on his
knees before his lord's horse, with the tears of joy coursing each
other rapidly down his withered face, the old seneschal exclaimed,
"Enter, noble châtelain! and take your own; and God be praised, my
dear boy! and the holy Virgin, and St. John, and St. Peter, but more
especially St. Martin of Tours! for having brought you safe back again
from the dangers of Palestine, where your noble father has left his
valiant bones! Here are the keys, which I offer into your hand, beau
sire," he continued, looking earnestly at De Coucy, and wiping the
salt rheum that obscured his sight. "And yet I can scarce believe," he
added, "that young Guy, the last of the three fair youths--he who was
not up to my shoulder when he went, whom I first taught to draw a bow,
or wheel a horse--that young Guy, the page--and a saucy stripling he
was too--my blessing on his waggish head!--that young Guy the page
should have grown into so tall and strong a man as you, beau
sire!--Are you not putting upon me? Was it truly you that blew that
blast?" and his eye ran over the persons who followed behind his
lord.--"But no!" he added, "it must be he! I know his blue eye, and
the curl of his lip; and I have heard how he is a great knight
now-a-days, and slays Saracens, and bears away the prizes at
tournays:--I have heard it all!"
De Coucy calmly let the old man finish his speech, without offering to
take the keys, which from time to time he proffered, as a sort of
interjection between the various parts of his disjointed discourse.
"It is even I, good Onfroy," replied he at last: "keep the keys!--keep
the keys, good old man!--they cannot be in worthier hands than yours.
But now let us in. I bring you, as you see, no great reinforcement;
but I hope your garrison is not so straitened for provisions, that you
cannot give us some supper, for we are hungry, though we be few."
"We will kill a hog--we will kill a hog, beau sire!" replied the old
man. "I have kept chiefly to the hogs, beau sire, since you were
gone, for they cost nothing to keep--the acorns of the forest serve
them--and they have increased wonderfully! Oh, we have plenty of hogs;
but as to cows, and sheep, and things of that kind, that eat much and
profit little, I was obliged to abandon them when I sent you the last
silver I could get, as you commanded."
De Coucy signified his perfect indifference as to whether his supper
consisted of mutton, beef, or pork; and riding through the barbican,
into the enclosure of the walls, he crossed the court and alighted at
the great gates of the hall, which were thrown open to receive him.
Calord, the servant or varlet of the seneschal, had run on before, to
light a torch; for the day was beginning to fail, and the immense
apartment was of its own nature dark and gloomy; but still, all within
was dim. The rays of the torch, though held high, and waved round and
round, scarcely served to show some dark lustreless suits of armour
hung against the walls; and the figures of some of the serfs, who had
stolen into the farther extremity of the hall, to catch a glimpse of
their returned lord, seemed like spirits moving about on the dark
confines of another world; while more than one bat, startled even by
the feeble light, took wing and fluttered amongst the old banners
overhead. At the same time, as if dreary sounds were wanting to
complete the gloominess of the young knight's return, the clanging of
his footsteps upon the pavement of the empty hall, awoke a long, wild
echo, which, prolonged through the open doors communicating with
untenanted halls and galleries beyond, seemed the very voice of
solitude bewailing her disturbed repose.
It all fell cold upon De Coucy's heart; and, laying his hand on the
old seneschal's shoulder, as he was about to begin one of his long
discourses:--"Do not speak to me just now, good Onfroy!" said the
young knight; "I am not in a vein to listen to any thing. But throw on
a fire in yon empty hearth; for, though it be July, this hall has a
touch of January. Thou hast the key of the books too:--bring them
all down, good Onfroy; I will seek some moral that may teach
contentment.--Set down my harp beside me, good page." And having given
these directions, De Coucy cast himself into the justice-chair of his
ancestors, and, covering his eyes with his hands, gave himself up to
no very sweet contemplations.