MAXIMILIAN DE BETHUNE, BARON DE ROSNY.
I looked to make the journey to Rosny in two days. But the heaviness
of the roads and the sorry condition of my hackney hindered me so
greatly that I lay the second night at Dreux, and, hearing the way was
still worse between that place and my destination, began to think that
I should be fortunate if I reached Rosny by the following noon. The
country in this part seemed devoted to the League, the feeling
increasing in violence as I approached the Seine. I heard nothing save
abuse of the King of France and praise of the Guise princes, and had
much ado, keeping a still tongue and riding modestly, to pass without
molestation or inquiry.
Drawing near to Rosny, on the third morning, through a low marshy
country covered with woods and alive with game of all kinds, I began
to occupy myself with thoughts of the reception I was likely to
encounter; which, I conjectured, would be none of the most pleasant.
The daring and vigour of the Baron de Rosny, who had at this time the
reputation of being in all parts of France at once, and the familiar
terms on which he was known to live with the King of Navarre, gave me
small reason to hope that he would listen with indulgence to such a
tale as I had to tell. The nearer I came to the hour of telling it,
indeed, the more improbable seemed some of its parts, and the more
glaring my own carelessness in losing the token, and in letting
mademoiselle out of my sight in such a place as Blois. I saw this so
clearly now, and more clearly as the morning advanced, that I do not
know that I ever anticipated anything with more fear than this
explanation; which it yet seemed my duty to offer with all reasonable
speed. The morning was warm, I remember; cloudy, yet not dark; the air
near at hand full of moisture and very clear, with a circle of mist
rising some way off, and filling the woods with blue distances. The
road was deep and foundrous, and as I was obliged to leave it from
time to time in order to pass the worst places, I presently began to
fear that I had strayed into a by-road. After advancing some distance,
in doubt whether I should persevere or turn back, I was glad to see
before me a small house placed at the junction of several woodland
paths. From the bush which hung over the door, and a water-trough
which stood beside it, I judged the place to be an inn; and
determining to get my horse fed before I went farther, I rode up to
the door and rapped on it with my riding-switch.
The position of the house was so remote that I was surprised to see
three or four heads thrust immediately out of a window. For a moment I
thought I should have done better to have passed by; but the landlord
coming out very civilly, and leading the way to a shed beside the
house, I reflected that I had little to lose, and followed him. I
found, as I expected, four horses tied up in the shed, the bits
hanging round their necks and their girths loosed; while my surprise
was not lessened by the arrival, before I had fastened up my own
horse, of a sixth rider, who, seeing us by the shed, rode up to us,
and saluted me as he dismounted.
He was a tall, strong man in the prime of youth, wearing a plain,
almost mean suit of dust-coloured leather, and carrying no weapons
except a hunting-knife, which hung in a sheath at his girdle. He rode
a powerful silver-roan horse, and was splashed to the top of his high
untanned boots, as if he had come by the worst of paths, if by any.
He cast a shrewd glance at the landlord as he led his horse into the
shed; and I judged from his brown complexion and quick eyes that he
had seen much weather and lived an out-of-door life.
He watched me somewhat curiously while I mixed the fodder for my
horse; and when I went into the house and sat down in the first room I
came to, to eat a little bread-and-cheese which I had in my pouch, he
joined me almost immediately. Apparently he could not stomach my poor
fare, however, for after watching me for a time in silence, switching
his boot with his whip the while, he called the landlord, and asked
him, in a masterful way, what fresh meat he had, and particularly if
he had any lean collops, or a fowl.
The fellow answered that there was nothing. His honour could have some
Lisieux cheese, he added, or some stewed lentils.
'His honour does not want cheese,' the stranger answered peevishly,
'nor lentil porridge. And what is this I smell, my friend?' he
continued, beginning suddenly to sniff with vigour. 'I swear I smell
cooking.'
'It is the hind-quarter of a buck, which is cooking for the four
gentlemen of the Robe; with a collop or two to follow,' the landlord
explained; and humbly excused himself on the ground that the gentlemen
had strictly engaged it for their own eating.
'What? A whole quarter! _and_ a collop or two to follow!' the stranger
retorted, smacking his lips. 'Who are they?'
'Two advocates and their clerks from the Parliament of Paris. They
have been viewing a boundary near here, and are returning this
afternoon,' the landlord answered.
'No reason why they should cause a famine!' ejaculated the stranger
with energy. 'Go to them and say a gentleman, who has ridden far, and
fasted since seven this morning, requests permission to sit at their
table. A quarter of venison and a collop or two among four!' he
continued, in atone of extreme disgust. 'It is intolerable! And
advocates! Why, at that rate, the King of France should eat a whole
buck, and rise hungry! Don't you agree with me, sir?' he continued,
turning on me and putting the question abruptly.
He was so comically and yet so seriously angry, and looked so closely
at me as he spoke, that I hastened to say I agreed with him perfectly.
'Yet you eat cheese, sir!' he retorted irritably.
I saw that, not withstanding the simplicity of his dress, he was a
gentleman, and so, forbearing to take offence, I told him plainly that
my purse being light I travelled rather as I could than as I would.
'Is it so?' he answered hastily. 'Had I known that, I would have
joined you in the cheese! After all, I would rather fast with a
gentleman, than feast with a churl. But it is too late now. Seeing you
mix the fodder, I thought your pockets were full.'
'The nag is tired, and has done its best,' I answered.
He looked at me curiously, and as though he would say more. But the
landlord returning at that moment, he turned to him instead.
'Well!' he said briskly. 'Is it all right?'
'I am sorry, your honour,' the man answered, reluctantly, and with a
very downcast air, 'but the gentlemen beg to be excused.'
'Zounds!' cried my companion roundly. 'They do, do they?'
'They say they have no more, sir,' the landlord continued, faltering,
'than enough for themselves and a little dog they have with them.'
A shout of laughter which issued at that moment from the other room
seemed to show that the quartette were making merry over my
companion's request. I saw his cheek redden, and looked for an
explosion of anger on his part; but instead he stood a moment in
thought in the middle of the floor, and then, much to the innkeeper's
relief, pushed a stool towards me, and called for a bottle of the best
wine. He pleasantly begged leave to eat a little of my cheese, which
he said looked better than the Lisieux, and, filling my glass with
wine, fell to as merrily as if he had never heard of the party in the
other room.
I was more than a little surprised, I remember; for I had taken him to
be a passionate man, and not one to sit down under an affront. Still I
said nothing, and we conversed very well together. I noticed, however,
that he stopped speaking more than once, as though to listen; but
conceiving that he was merely reverting to the party in the other
room, who grew each moment more uproarious, I said nothing, and was
completely taken by surprise when he rose on a sudden, and, going to
the open window, leaned out, shading his eyes with his hand.
'What is it?' I said, preparing to follow him.
He answered by a quiet chuckle. 'You shall see,' he added the next
instant.
I rose, and going to the window looked out over his shoulder. Three
men were approaching the inn on horseback. The first, a great burly,
dark-complexioned man with fierce black eyes and a feathered cap, had
pistols in his holsters and a short sword by his side. The other two,
with the air of servants, were stout fellows, wearing green doublets
and leather breeches. All three rode good horses, while a footman led
two hounds after them in a leash. On seeing us they cantered forward,
the leader waving his bonnet.
'Halt, there!' cried my companion, lifting up his voice when they were
within a stone's throw of us. 'Maignan!'
'My lord?' answered he of the feather, pulling up on the instant.
'You will find six horses in the shed there,' the stranger cried in a
voice of command. 'Turn out the four to the left as you go in. Give
each a cut, and send it about its business!'
The man wheeled his horse before the words were well uttered, and
crying obsequiously 'that it was done,' flung his reins to one of the
other riders and disappeared in the shed, as if the order given him
were the most commonplace one in the world.
The party in the other room, however, by whom, all could be heard,
were not slow to take the alarm. They broke into a shout of
remonstrance, and one of their number, leaping from the window, asked
with a very fierce air what the devil we meant. The others thrust out
their faces, swollen and flushed with the wine they had drunk, and
with many oaths backed up his question. Not feeling myself called upon
to interfere, I prepared to see something diverting.
My companion, whose coolness surprised me, had all the air of being as
little concerned as myself. He even persisted for a time in ignoring
the angry lawyer, and, turning a deaf ear to all the threats and abuse
with which the others assailed him, continued to look calmly at the
prospect. Seeing this, and that nothing could move him, the man who
had jumped through the window, and who seemed the most enterprising of
the party, left us at last and ran towards the stalls. The aspect of
the two serving-men, however, who rode up grinning, and made as if
they would ride him down, determined him to return; which he did, pale
with fury, as the last of the four horses clattered out, and after a
puzzled look round trotted off at its leisure into the forest.
On this, the man grew more violent, as I have remarked frightened men
do; so that at last the stranger condescended to notice him. 'My good
sir,' he said coolly, looking at him through the window as if he had
not seen him before, 'you annoy me. What is the matter?'
The fellow retorted with a vast amount of bluster, asking what the
devil we meant by turning out his horses.
'Only to give you and the gentlemen with you a little exercise,' my
companion answered, with grim humour, and in a severe tone strange in
one so young--'than which, nothing is more wholesome after a full
meal. That, and a lesson in good manners. Maignan,' he continued,
raising his voice, 'if this person has anything more to say, answer
him. He is nearer your degree than mine.'
And leaving the man to slink away like a whipped dog--for the mean are
ever the first to cringe--my friend turned from the window. Meeting my
eyes as he went back to his seat, he laughed. 'Well,' he said, 'what
do you think?'
'That the ass in the lion's skin is very well till it meets the lion,'
I answered.
He laughed again, and seemed pleased, as I doubt not he was. 'Pooh,
pooh!' he said. 'It passed the time, and I think I am quits with my
gentlemen now. But I must be riding. Possibly our roads may lie for a
while in the same direction, sir?' And he looked at me irresolutely.
I answered cautiously that I was going to the town of Rosny.
'You are not from Paris?' he continued, still looking at me.
'No,' I answered. 'I am from the south.'
'From Blois, perhaps?'
I nodded.
'Ah!' he said, making no comment, which somewhat surprised me, all men
at this time desiring news, and looking to Blois for it. 'I am riding
towards Rosny also. Let us be going.'
But I noticed that as we got to horse, the man he called Maignan
holding his stirrup with much formality, he turned and looked at me
more than once with an expression in his eye which I could not
interpret; so that, being in an enemy's country, where curiosity was a
thing to be deprecated, I began to feel somewhat uneasy. However, as
he presently gave way to a fit of laughter, and seemed to be digesting
his late diversion at the inn, I thought no more of it, finding him
excellent company and a man of surprising information.
Notwithstanding this my spirits began to flag as I approached Rosny;
and as on such occasions nothing is more trying than the well-meant
rallying of a companion ignorant of our trouble, I felt rather relief
than regret when he drew rein at four cross-roads a mile or so short
of the town, and, announcing that here our paths separated, took a
civil leave of me, and went his way with his servants.
I dismounted at an inn at the extremity of the town, and, stopping
only to arrange my dress and drink a cup of wine, asked the way to the
Chateau, which was situate, I learned, no more than a third of a mile
away. I went thither on foot by way of an avenue of trees leading up
to a drawbridge and gateway. The former was down, but the gates were
closed, and all the formalities of a fortress in time of war were
observed on my admission, though the garrison appeared to consist only
of two or three serving-men and as many foresters. I had leisure after
sending in my name to observe that the house was old and partly
ruinous, but of great strength, covered in places with ivy, and
closely surrounded by woods. A staid-looking page came presently to
me, and led me up a narrow staircase to a parlour lighted by two
windows, looking, one into the courtyard, the other towards the town.
Here a tall man was waiting to receive me, who rose on my entrance and
came forward. Judge of my surprise when I recognised my acquaintance
of the afternoon! 'M. de Rosny?' I exclaimed, standing still and
looking at him in confusion.
'The same, sir,' he answered, with a quiet smile. 'You come from the
King of Navarre, I believe, and on an errand to me. You may speak
openly. The king has no secrets from me.'
There was something in the gravity of his demeanour as he waited for
me to speak which strongly impressed me; notwithstanding that he was
ten years younger than myself, and I had seen him so lately in a
lighter mood. I felt that his reputation had not belied him--that here
was a great man; and reflecting with despair on the inadequacy of the
tale I had to tell him, I paused to consider in what terms I should
begin. He soon put an end to this, however. 'Come, sir,' he said with
impatience. 'I have told you that you may speak out. You should have
been here four days ago, as I take it. Now you are here, where is the
lady?'
'Mademoiselle de la Vire?' I stammered, rather to gain time than with
any other object.
'Tut, tut!' he rejoined, frowning. 'Is there any other lady in the
question? Come, sir, speak out. Where have you left her? This is no
affair of gallantry,' he continued, the harshness of his demeanour
disagreeably surprising me, I that you need beat about the bush. The
king entrusted to you a lady, who, I have no hesitation in telling you
now, was in possession of certain State secrets. It is known that she
escaped safely from Chize and arrived safely at Blois. Where is she?'
'I would to Heaven I knew, sir!' I exclaimed in despair, feeling the
painfulness of my position increased a hundredfold by his manner. 'I
wish to God I did.'
'What is this?' he cried in a raised voice. 'You do not know where she
is? You jest, M. de Marsac.'
'It were a sorry jest,' I answered, summoning up a rueful smile. And
on that, plunging desperately into the story which I have here set
down, I narrated the difficulties under which I had raised my escort,
the manner in which I came to be robbed of the gold token, how
mademoiselle was trepanned, the lucky chance by which I found her
again, and the final disappointment. He listened, but listened
throughout with no word of sympathy--rather with impatience, which
grew at last into derisive incredulity. When I had done he asked me
bluntly what I called myself.
Scarcely understanding what he meant, I repeated my name.
He answered, rudely and flatly, that it was impossible. 'I do not
believe it, sir!' he repeated, his brow dark. 'You are not the man.
You bring neither the lady nor the token, nor anything else by which I
can test your story. Nay, sir, do not scowl at me,' he continued
sharply. 'I am the mouthpiece of the King of Navarre, to whom this
matter is of the highest importance. I cannot believe that the man
whom he would choose would act so. This house you prate of in Blois,
for instance, and the room with the two doors? What were you doing
while mademoiselle was being removed?'
'I was engaged with the men of the house,' I answered, striving to
swallow the anger which all but choked me. 'I did what I could. Had
the door given way, all would have been well.'
He looked at me darkly. 'That is fine talking!' he said with a sneer.
Then he dropped his eyes and seemed for a time to fall into a brown
study, while I stood before him, confounded by this new view of the
case, furious, yet not knowing how to vent my fury, cut to the heart
by his insults, yet without hope or prospect of redress.
'Come!' he said harshly, after two or three minutes of gloomy
reflection on his part and burning humiliation on mine, 'is there
anyone here who can identify you, or in any other way confirm your
story, sir? Until I know how the matter stands I can do nothing.'
I shook my head in sullen shame. I might protest against his brutality
and this judgment of me, but to what purpose while he sheltered
himself behind his master?
'Stay!' he said presently, with an abrupt gesture of remembrance. 'I
had nearly forgotten. I have some here who have been lately at the
King of Navarre's Court at St. Jean d'Angely. If you still maintain
that you are the M. de Marsac to whom this commission was entrusted,
you will doubtless have no objection to seeing them?'
On this I felt myself placed in a most cruel dilemma. If I refused to
submit my case to the proposed ordeal, I stood an impostor confessed.
If I consented to see these strangers, it was probable they would not
recognise me, and possible that they might deny me in terms calculated
to make my position even worse, if that might be. I hesitated; but,
Rosny standing inexorable before me awaiting an answer, I finally
consented.
'Good!' he said curtly. 'This way, if you please. They are here. The
latch is tricky. Nay, sir, it is my house.'
Obeying the stern motion of his hand, I passed before him into the
next room, feeling myself more humiliated than I can tell by this
reference to strangers. For a moment I could see no one. The day was
waning, the room I entered was long and narrow, and illuminated only
by a glowing fire. Besides I was myself, perhaps, in some
embarrassment. I believed that my conductor had made a mistake, or
that his guests had departed, and I turned towards him to ask for an
explanation. He merely pointed onwards, however, and I advanced;
whereupon a young and handsome lady, who had been seated in the shadow
of the great fireplace, rose suddenly, as if startled, and stood
looking at me, the glow of the burning wood falling on one side of her
face and turning her hair to gold.
'Well!' M. de Rosny said, in a voice which sounded a little odd in my
ears. 'You do not know madame, I think?'
I saw that she was a complete stranger to me, and bowed to her without
speaking. The lady saluted me in turn ceremoniously and in silence.
'Is there no one else here who should know you?' M. de Rosny
continued, in a tone almost of persiflage, and with the same change in
his voice which had struck me before; but now it was more marked. 'If
not, M. de Marsac, I am afraid---- But first look round, look round,
sir; I would not judge any man hastily.'
He laid his hand on my shoulder as he finished in a manner so familiar
and so utterly at variance with his former bearing that I doubted if I
heard or felt aright. Yet I looked mechanically at the lady, and
seeing that her eyes glistened in the firelight, and that she gazed at
me very kindly, I wondered still more; falling, indeed, into a very
confusion of amazement. This was not lessened but augmented a
hundredfold when, turning in obedience to the pressure of de Rosny's
hand, I saw beside me, as if she had risen from the floor, another
lady--no other than Mademoiselle de la Vire herself! She had that
moment stepped out of the shadow of the great fireplace, which had
hitherto hidden her, and stood before me curtseying prettily, with the
same look on her face and in her eyes which madame's wore.
'Mademoiselle!' I muttered, unable to take my eyes from her.
'Mais oui, monsieur, mademoiselle,' she answered, curtseying lower,
with the air of a child rather than a woman.
'Here?' I stammered, my mouth open, my eyes staring.
'Here, sir--thanks to the valour of a brave man,' she answered,
speaking in a voice so low I scarcely heard her. And then, dropping
her eyes, she stepped back into the shadow, as if either she had said
too much already, or doubted her composure were she to say more. She
was so radiantly dressed, she looked in the firelight more like a
fairy than a woman, being of small and delicate proportions; and she
seemed in my eyes so different a person, particularly in respect of
the softened expression of her features, from the Mademoiselle de la
Vire whom I had known and seen plunged in sloughs and bent to the
saddle with fatigue, that I doubted still if I had seen aright, and
was as far from enlightenment as before.
It was M. de Rosny himself who relieved me from the embarrassment I
was suffering. He embraced me in the most kind and obliging manner,
and this more than once; begging me to pardon the deception he had
practised upon me, and to which he had been impelled partly by the odd
nature of our introduction at the inn, and partly by his desire to
enhance the joyful surprise he had in store for me. 'Come,' he said
presently, drawing me to the window, 'let me show you some more of
your old friends.'
I looked out, and saw below me in the courtyard my three horses drawn
up in a row, the Cid being bestridden by Simon Fleix, who, seeing me,
waved a triumphant greeting. A groom stood at the head of each horse,
and on either side was a man with a torch. My companion laughed
gleefully. 'It was Maignan's arrangement,' he said. 'He has a quaint
taste in such things.'
After greeting Simon Fleix a hundred times, I turned back into the
room, and, my heart overflowing with gratitude and wonder, I begged M.
de Rosny to acquaint me with the details of mademoiselle's escape.
'It was the most simple thing in the world,' he said, taking me by the
hand and leading me back to the hearth. 'While you were engaged with
the rascals, the old woman who daily brought mademoiselle's food grew
alarmed at the uproar, and came into the room to learn what it was.
Mademoiselle, unable to help you, and uncertain of your success,
thought the opportunity too good to be lost. She forced the old woman
to show her and her maid the way out through the garden. This done,
they ran down a lane, as I understand, and came immediately upon the
lad with the horses, who recognised them and helped them to mount.
They waited some minutes for you, and then rode off.'
'But I inquired at the gate,' I said.
'At which gate?' inquired M. de Rosny, smiling.
'The North-gate, of course,' I answered.
'Just so,' he rejoined with a nod. 'But they went out through the
West-gate and made a circuit. He is a strange lad, that of yours below
there. He has a head on his shoulder, M. de Marsac. Well, two leagues
outside the town they halted, scarcely knowing how to proceed. By good
fortune, however, a horse-dealer of my acquaintance was at the inn. He
knew Mademoiselle de la Vire, and, hearing whither she was bound,
brought her hither without let or hindrance.'
'Was he a Norman?' I asked.
M. de Rosny nodded, smiling at me shrewdly. 'Yes,' he said, 'he told
me much about you. And now let me introduce you to my wife, Madame de
Rosny.'
He led me up to the lady who had risen at my entrance, and who now
welcomed me as kindly as she had before looked on me, paying me many
pleasant compliments. I gazed at her with interest, having heard much
of her beauty and of the strange manner in which M. de Rosny, being
enamoured of two young ladies, and chancing upon both while lodging in
different apartments at an inn, had decided which he should visit and
make his wife. He appeared to read what was in my mind, for as I bowed
before her, thanking her for the obliging things which she had
uttered, and which for ever bound me to her service, he gaily pinched
her ear, and said, 'When you want a good wife, M. de Marsac, be sure
you turn to the right.'
He spoke in jest, and having his own case only in his mind. But I,
looking mechanically in the direction he indicated, saw mademoiselle
standing a pace or two to my right in the shadow of the great
chimney-piece. I know not whether she frowned more or blushed more;
but this for certain, that she answered my look with one of sharp
displeasure, and, turning her back on me, swept quickly from the room,
with no trace in her bearing of that late tenderness and gratitude
which I had remarked.