Paris had never seemed to the eye more peaceful than on a certain
November evening in the year 1589: and this although many a one within
its walls resented the fineness of that night as a mockery, a scoff at
the pain of some and the fury of others.
The moonlight fell on roofs and towers, on the bare open space of the
Place de Greve and the dark mass of the Louvre, and only here and
there pierced, by chance, a narrow lane, to gleam on some foul secret
of the kennel. The Seine lay a silvery loop about the He de la Cite--a
loop cut on this side and that by the black shadows of the Pont au
Change, and the Petit Pont, and broken again westward by the outline
of the New Bridge, which was then in building.
The city itself lay in profound quiet in the depth of the shadow. From
time to time at one of the gales, or in the lodge of the Chatelet, a
sentinel challenged or an officer spoke. But the bell of St. Germain
l'Auxerrois, which had rung through hours of the past day was silent.
The tumult which had leaped like flame from street to street had
subsided. Peaceful men breathed again in their houses, and women, if
they still cowered by the hearth, no longer laid trembling fingers on
their ears. For a time the red fury was over: and in the narrow
channels, where at noon the mob had seethed, scarcely a stray wayfarer
could now be found.
A few however were abroad: and of these some who chanced to be
threading the network of streets between the Chatelet and the Louvre,
heard behind them the footsteps of a man in great haste, and saw pass
them a youth, white-faced and wearing a sword and a student's short
cloak and cap--apparently a member of the University. He for his part
looked neither to right nor left: saw not one of them, and seemed bent
only on getting forward.
He slackened his space however near the corner of the Rue de l'Arbre
Sec, where it shoots out of the Rue de Bethisy, and then turning it
with a rush, caught his foot in some obstacle, and plunging forward,
would have fallen violently, if he had not come against a man, who
seemed to be standing still in the shadow of the corner house.
"Hold up!" exclaimed this person, withstanding the shock better than
could have been expected. "You should have a pretty mistress, young
man, if you go to her at this pace!"
The student did not answer--did not seem to hear. He had staggered
against the wall, and still stood propping himself up by it. His face,
pale before, was ghastly now, as he glared, apparently horror-struck,
at something beyond the speaker. The latter, after muttering angrily,
"What the plague do you go dashing about the streets like a Shrove
Tuesday ox for?" turned also and glanced behind him.
But not at that to which the student's eyes were directed. The
stranger seemed constrained to look first and by preference at the
long, low casement of a house nearly opposite them. This window was on
the first floor, and projected somewhat over the roadway. There seemed
to be no light in the room; but the moonlight reached it, and showed a
woman's head bent on the sill--a girl's head, if one might judge from
its wealth of hair. One white wrist gleamed amid this, but her face
was hidden on her arms. In the whole scene--in the casement open at
this inclement time, in the girl's attitude of abandonment, there was
something which stirred the nerves. It was only after a long look that
the stranger averted his eyes, and cast a casual glance at a queer,
dark object, which a few paces away swung above the street, dimly
outlined against the sky. It was that which had fascinated his
companion.
"Umph!" he ejaculated in the tone of a man who should say "Is that
all?" And he turned to the other again. "You seem taken aback, young
man!" he said. "Surely that is no such strange sight in Paris
nowadays. What with Leaguers hanging Politiques, and Politiques
hanging Leaguers, and both burning Huguenots, I thought a dead man was
no longer a bogey to frighten children with!"
"Hush, sir, in Heaven's name!" exclaimed the young man, shuddering at
his words. "He was my father!"
The stranger whistled. "He was your father, was he!" he replied more
gently. "I dare swear too that he was an honest man, since the Sixteen
have done this. There, steady, friend. These are no times for weeping.
Be thankful that Le Clerc and his crew have spared your home, and
your--your sister. That is rare clemency in these days, and Heaven
only knows how long it may last. You wear a sword? Then shed no tears
to rust it. Time enough to weep, man, when there is blood to be washed
from the blade."
"You speak boldly," said the youth, checking his emotion somewhat,
"but had they hung your father before his own door----"
"Good man," said the stranger with a coolness that bordered on the
cynical, "he has been dead these twenty years."
"Then your mother?" suggested the student with the feeble persistence
by which weak minds show their consciousness of contact with stronger
ones, "you had then----"
"Hung them all as high as Haman!"
"Ay, but suppose there were among them," objected the youth, in a
lower tone, while he eyed his companion narrowly, "some of the clergy,
you understand?"
"They had swung--though they had all been Popes of Rome," was the
blunt answer.
The listener shook his head, and drew off a pace. He scanned the
stranger curiously, keeping his back turned to the corpse the while,
but failed by that light to make out much one way or the other.
Scarcely a moment too was allowed him before the murmur of voices and
the clash of weapons at the far end of the street interrupted him.
"The watch are coming," he said roughly.
"You are right, and the sooner we are within doors the better," his
companion assented.
It was noticeable that throughout their talk which had lasted many
minutes no sign of life had appeared in any of the neighboring houses.
Scarce a light shone from a window though it was as yet but nine
o'clock. The fact was that fear of the Sixteen and of the mob they
guided was overpowering Paris--a terror crushing out men's lives.
While the provinces of France were divided at this time between two
opinions, and half of each as a rule owned the Huguenot Henry the
Fourth--now for six months the rightful sovereign--for king, Paris
would have none of him. The fierce bigotry of the lower classes, the
presence of some thousands of Spanish soldiers, and the ambition and
talents of the Guise family combined at once to keep the gates of
Paris closed to him, and to overawe such of the respectable citizens
as from religious sympathy in rare cases, and more often out of a
desire to see law and order re-established, would fain have adopted
his cause. The Politiques, or moderate party, who were indifferent
about religion as such, but believed that a strong government could
only be formed by a Romanist king, were almost non-existent in Paris.
And the events of the past day, the murder of three judges and several
lower officials--among them poor M. Portail whose body now decorated
the Rue de l'Arbre Sec--had not reassured the municipal mind. No
wonder that men put out their lights early, and were loth to go to
their windows, when they might see a few feet from the casement the
swollen features of a harmless, honest man, but yesterday going to and
from his work like other men.
Young Portail strode to the door of the house and knocked hurriedly.
As he did so, he looked up with something like a shiver of nervous
apprehension at the window above. But the girl neither moved nor
spoke, nor betrayed any consciousness of his presence. She might have
been dead. It was a young man, about his own age or a little older,
who, after reconnoitring him from above, cautiously drew back the
door. "Whom have you with you?" he whispered, holding it ajar, and
letting the end of a stout club be seen.
"No one," Portail replied in the same cautious tone. And he would have
entered without more ado, and closed the door behind him had not his
late companion, who had followed him across the street like his
shadow, set his foot against it. "Nay, but you are forgetting me," he
said good-humoredly.
"Go your way! we have enough to do to protect ourselves," cried
Portail brusquely.
"The more need of me," was the careless answer.
The watch were now but a few houses away, and the stranger seemed
determined. He could scarcely be kept out without a disturbance. With
an angry oath Felix Portail held the door for him to enter; and closed
it softly behind him. Then for a minute or so the three stood silent
in the darkness, while with a murmur of voices and clash of weapons,
and a ruddy glimmer piercing crack and keyhole, the guard swept by.
"Have you a light?" Felix murmured.
"In the back room," replied the young man who had admitted them. He
seemed to be a clerk or confidential servant. "But your sister," he
continued, "is distraught. She has sat at the window all day as you
see her now--sometimes looking at _it_. Oh Felix, this has been a
dreadful day for this house!"
The young Portail assented by a groan. "And Susanne?" he asked.
"Is with Mistress Marie, terrified almost to death, poor child. She
has been crouching all day by her, hiding her face in her gown. But
where were you?"
"At the Sorbonne," replied Felix in a whisper.
"Ah!" the other exclaimed, something of hidden meaning in his tone. "I
would not tell her that, if I were you. I feared it was so. But let us
go upstairs."
They went: with more than one stumble by the way. At the head of the
staircase the clerk opened a door and preceded them into a low-roofed
panelled room, plainly but solidly furnished, and lighted by a small
hanging lamp of silver. A round oak table on six curiously turned legs
stood in the middle, and on it some food was laid. A high-backed
chair, before which a sheep-skin rug was spread, and two or three
stools made up with a great oak chest the main furniture of the room.
The stranger turned from scrutinizing his surroundings, and started.
Another door had silently opened; and he saw framed in the doorway and
relieved by the lamplight against the darkness of the outer room the
face and figure of a tall girl. A moment she stood pointing at them
with her hand, her face white--and whiter in seeming by reason of the
black hair which fell around it--her eyes dilated, the neck-band of
her dark red gown torn open. "A Provencal!" the intruder murmured to
himself. "Beautiful and a tigress."
At any rate, for the moment, beside herself. "So you have come at
last!" she panted, glaring at Felix with passionate scorn in word and
gesture. "Where were you while these slaves of yours did your bidding?
At the Sorbonne with the black crows! Thinking out fresh work for
them? Or dallying with your Normandy sweetheart?"
"Hush!" he said quailing visibly. "There is a stranger here."
"There have been many strangers here today!" she retorted bitterly.
"Hush, you say? Nay, I will not be silent. They may tear me limb from
limb, but I will accuse them of this murder before God's throne.
Coward! Do you think I will ask mercy from them? Come, look on your
work! See what the League have done--your holy League!--while you sat
plotting with the black crows!"
She pointed into the dark room behind her, and the movement disclosed
a younger girl clinging to her skirts, and weeping silently. "Come
here, Susanne," said Felix, who had turned pale and red under the lash
of the other's scorn. "Your sister is not herself. You do no good,
Marie, staying in there. See, you are both trembling with cold."
"With cold? Then do you warm yourselves! Sit down and eat and drink
and be comfortable and forget him! But I will not eat or drink while
he hangs there! Shame, Felix Portail! Have you arms and hands, and
will you let your father hang before his own door?"
Her voice rang shrilly to the last word; and then an awkward silence
fell on the room. The stranger nodded, almost as if he had said,
"Bravo!" The two men of the house cast doubtful glances at one
another. At length the clerk spoke. "It is impossible, mistress,"
he said gently. "Were he touched, the mob would wreck the house
to-morrow."
"A little bird whispered to me as I came through the streets,"--it was
the stranger who spoke--"that Mayenne and his riders would be in town
to-morrow. Then it seems to me that our friends of the Sorbonne will
not have matters altogether their own way."
The Sorbonne was the Theological College of Paris; at this time the
headquarters of the extreme Leaguers and the Sixteen. Mayenne and
D'Aumale, the Guise princes, more than once found it necessary to
check the excesses of this party.
Marie Portail looked at the last speaker. He sat on the edge of the
chest, carelessly swinging one knee over the other; a man of middle
height, rather tall than short, with well bronzed cheeks, a forehead
broad and white, and an aquiline nose. He wore a beard and moustaches,
and his chin jutted out. His eyes were keen, but good-humored. Though
spare he had broad shoulders, and an iron-hilted sword propped against
his thigh seemed made for use rather than show. The upper part of his
dress was of brown cloth, the lower of leather. A weather-stained
cloak which he had taken off lay on the chest beside him.
"You are a man!" cried Marie fiercely. "But as for these----"
"Stay, mistress!" the clerk broke in "Your brother does but collect
himself. If the Duke of Mayenne comes back to-morrow, as our friend
here says is likely--and I have heard the same myself--he will keep
his men in better order. That is true. And we might risk it if the
watch would give us a wide berth."
Felix nodded sullenly. "Shut the door," he said to his sister, the
deep gloom on his countenance contrasting with the excitement she
betrayed. "There is no need to let the neighbors see us."
This time she obeyed him. Susanne too crept from her skirts, and threw
herself on her knees, hiding her face on the chair. "Ay!" said Marie
looking down at her with the first expression of tenderness the
stranger had noted in her. "Let her weep. Let children weep. But let
men work."
"We want a ladder," said the clerk in a low voice. "And the longest we
have is full three feet short."
"That is just half a man," remarked he who sat on the chest.
"What do you mean?" asked Felix wonderingly.
"What I said."
"But there is nothing on which we can rest the ladder," urged the
clerk.
"Then that is a whole man," quoth the stranger curtly. "Perhaps two. I
told you you would have need of me." He looked from one to the other
with a smile; a careless, self-contented smile.
"You are a soldier," said Marie suddenly.
"At times," he replied, shrugging his shoulders.
"For which side?"
He shook his head. "For my own," he answered naively.
"A soldier of fortune?"
"At your service, mistress; now and ever."
The clerk struck in impatiently. "If we are to do this," he said, "we
had better see about it. I will fetch the ladder."
He went out and the other men followed more slowly, leaving Marie
still standing gazing into the darkness of the outer room--she had
opened the door again--like one in a trance. Some odd trait in the
soldier led him, as he passed out, to lay his hand on the hair of the
kneeling child with a movement infinitely tender; infinitely at
variance with the harsh clatter with which his sword next moment rang
against the stairs as he descended.
The three men were going to do that which two certainly, and perhaps
all, knew to be perilous. One went to it in gloom, anger as well as
sorrow at his heart. One bustled about nervously, and looked often
behind him as if to see Marie's pale face at the window. And one
strode out as to a ball, glancing up and down the dark lane with an
air of enjoyment, which not even the grim nature of his task could
suppress. The body was hanging from a bar which crossed the street at
a considerable height, serving as a stay between the gables of two
opposite houses, of which one was two doors only from the unhappy
Portails'. The mob, with a barbarity very common in those days, had
hung him on his own threshold.
The street as the three moved up it, seemed empty and still. But it
was impossible to say how long it would remain so. Yet the soldier
loitered, staring about him, as one remembering things. "Did not the
Admiral live in this neighborhood?" he inquired.
"De Coligny? Yes. Round the corner in the Rue de Bethisy," replied the
clerk brusquely. "But see! The ladder will not reach the bar--no, not
by four feet."
"Set it against the wall then--thus," said the soldier, and having
done it himself he mounted a few steps. But then he seemed to bethink
himself. He jumped down again. "No," he exclaimed, peering sharply
into the faces of one and the other, "I do not know you. If any one
comes, my friends, and you leave the foot of the ladder I shall be
taken like a bird on a limed twig. Do you ascend, Monsieur Felix."
The young man drew back. He was not without courage, or experience of
rough scenes. But the Louvre was close at hand, almost within earshot
on one side, the Chatelet was scarcely farther off on the other; and
both swarmed with soldiers and brutal camp-followers. At any moment a
troop of them might pass; and should they detect any one interfering
with King Mob's handiwork, he would certainly dangle in a very few
minutes from some handy lamp-iron. Felix knew this, and stood at gaze.
"I do not know you either," he muttered irresolutely, his hand still
on the ladder.
A smile of surprising humor played on the soldier's face. "Nay, but
you knew _him!_" he retorted, pointing upwards with his hand. "Trust
me, young sir," he added significantly, "I am less inclined to mount
now than I was before."
The clerk intervened before Felix could resent the insult. "Steady,"
he said; "I will go up and do it."
"Not so!" Felix rejoined, pushing him aside in turn. And he ran up the
ladder. But near the top he paused, and began to descend again. "I
have no knife," he said shamefacedly.
"Pshaw! Let me come!" cried the stranger. "I see you are both good
comrades. I trust you. Besides, I am more used to this ladder work
than you are, and time is everything."
He ran up as he spoke, and standing on the highest round but one he
grasped the bar above his head, and swung himself lightly up, so as to
gain a seat on it. With more caution he wormed himself along it until
he reached the rope. Fortunately there was a long coil of it about the
bar; and warning his companions in a whisper, he carefully, and with
such reverence as the time and place allowed, let down the body to
them. They received it in their arms; and were loosening the noose
from the neck when an outburst of voices and the noise of footsteps at
the nearer end of the street surprised them. For an instant the two
stood in the gloom, breathless, stricken, still, confounded. Then with
a single impulse they lifted the body between them, and huddled
blindly to the door. It opened at their touch, they stumbled in, and
it fell to behind them. The foremost of the party outside had been
within ten paces of them. A narrow escape!
Yet they had escaped. But what next? What of their companion? The
moment the door shut behind them they would have rushed out again, ay,
to certain death, so strongly had the soldier's trust appealed to
their confidence. But they had the body in their arms; and by the time
it was laid on the stairs, a score of men had passed. The opportunity
was over. They could do nothing but listen. "Heaven help him!" fell
from the clerk's quivering lips. Pulling the door ajar, they stood,
looking each moment to hear a challenge, a shot, the clash of swords.
But no. They did hear the party halt under the gallows, and pass some
brutal jest, and go on. And that was all.
They could scarcely believe their ears; no, nor even their eyes, when
a few minutes later the street being now quiet, they passed out, and
stood in it shuddering. For there still swung the corpse dimly
outlined above them! There! Certainly there! The clerk seized his
companion's arm and drew him back. "It was the fiend!" he stammered.
"See, your father is still there! It was the fiend who helped us!"
But suddenly the figure they were watching became agitated; another
instant and it slid gently to the ground. It was the soldier. "O ye
gods!" he cried, bent double with silent laughter. "Saw you ever such
a trick? How I longed to kick if it were but my toe at them, and I
forbore! Fools that they were! Did man ever see a body hung in its
sword? But it was a good trick, eh?" appealing to them with a simple
pride in his invention. "I had the rope loose in my hand when they
came, and I drew it twice round my neck--and one arm trust me--and
swung off gently. It is not every one who would have thought of that,
my children."
It was odd. They still shook with fear, and he with laughter. He did
not seem to give a thought to the danger he had escaped. Pride in his
readiness and a keen sense of the humorous side of the incident
entirely possessed him. At the very door of the house he still
chuckled from time to time; muttering between the ebullitions, "Ah, I
must tell Diane! Diane will be pleased!"
Once inside, however, he acted with more delicacy than might have been
expected. He stood aside while the other two carried the body
upstairs; and himself waited patiently in the bare room below, which
showed signs of occasional use as a stable. Here the clerk Adrian
presently found him, and murmured some apology. Mistress Marie, he
said, had fainted.
"A matter which afflicts you, my friend," the soldier replied with a
grimace, "about as much as your master's death. Pooh, man, do not look
fierce! Good luck to you. Only if--but this is no house for gallantry
to-night--I had spruced myself, you had had to look to your ewe lamb!"
The clerk turned pale and red by turns. This man seemed to read his
thoughts as if he had indeed been the fiend. "What do you wish?" he
stammered.
"Only shelter until the early morning when the streets are most quiet;
and a direction to the Rue des Lombards."
"The Rue des Lombards?"
"Yes, why not?" But though the soldier still smiled, the lines of his
mouth hardened suddenly. "Why not to the Rue des Lombards?"
"I know no reason why you should not be going there," replied the
clerk boldly. "It was only that the street is near; and a friend of my
late master's lives in it."
"His name?"
The clerk started; the question was put so abruptly, and in a tone so
imperious. "Nicholas Toussaint," he answered involuntarily.
"Ay?" replied the other, raising his hand to his chin meditatively and
glancing at Adrian with a look that for all the world reminded him of
an old print of the eleventh Louis, which hung in a room at the Hotel
de Ville. "Your master, young man, was of the moderate party--a
Politique?"
"He was."
"A good man and a Catholic? one who loved France? A Leaguer only in
name?" he continued with vividness.
"Yes, that is so."
"But his son? He is a Leaguer out and out--one who would rise to
fortune on the flood tide of the mob? A Sorbonnist? The priests have
got hold of him? He would do to others as they have done to his
father? A friend of Le Clerc and Boucher?"
Adrian nodded reluctantly. This strange man confounded and yet
fascinated him: this man so reckless and gay one moment, so wary the
next: exchanging in an instant the hail of a boon companion for the
tone of a noble.
"And is your young master also a friend of this Nicholas Toussaint?"
was the next question.
"No," said Adrian, "he has been forbidden the house. M. Toussaint does
not approve of his opinions."
"Ha! That is so, is it," rejoined the stranger with his former gayety.
"And now enough: where will you lodge me until morning?"
"If my closet will serve you," Felix answered with a hesitation he
would not have felt a few minutes before, "it is at your will. I will
bring some food there at once, and will let you out if you please at
five." And Adrian added some simple directions, by following which his
guest might reach the Rue des Lombards without difficulty.
An hour later if the thoughts of those who lay sleepless under that
roof could have been traced, some strange contrasts would have
appeared. Was Felix Portail thinking of his dead father, or of his
sweetheart in the Rue des Lombards, or of his schemes of ambition? Was
he blaming the crew of whom until to-day he had been one, or sullenly
cursing those factious Huguenots as the root of the mischief? Was
Adrian thinking of his kind master, or of his master's daughter? Was
the guest dreaming of his narrow escape? or revolving plans beside
which Felix's were but the schemes of a rat in a drain? Perhaps Marie
alone--for Susanne slept a child's sleep of exhaustion--had her
thoughts fixed on him, who so few hours before had been the centre of
the household.
But such is life in troubled times. Pleasure and pain come mingled
together, and men snatch the former even from the midst of the latter
with a trembling joy; knowing that if they wait to go a pleasuring
until the sky be clear, they may wait until nightfall.
When Adrian called his guest at cock-crow the latter rose briskly and
followed him down to the door. "Well, young sir," he said on the
threshold, as he wrapped his cloak round him and took his sheathed
sword in his hand, "I am obliged to you. When I can do you a service,
I will."
"You can do me one now," replied the clerk bluntly, "It is ill work
having to do with strangers in these days. You can tell me who you
are, and to which side you belong."
"Which side? I have told you--my own. And for the rest," continued the
soldier, "I will give you a hint." He brought his lips near the
other's ear, and whispered, "Kiss Marie--for me!"
The clerk looked up aflame with anger, but the other was already gone
striding down the street. Yet Adrian received an answer to his
question. For as the stranger disappeared in the gloom, he broke
out with an audacity that took the listener's breath away into a
well-known air,
"Hau! Hau! Papegots!
Faites place aux Huguenots!"
and trilled it as if he had been in the streets of Rochelle.
"Death!" exclaimed the clerk, getting back into the house, and barring
the door, "I thought so. He is a Huguenot. But if he takes his neck
out of Paris unstretched, he will have the fiend's own luck, and the
Bearnais' to boot!"