It was a comfort to Marie, on reaching home, to find that no soldiers
were there. The guests of the preceding night had been summoned to
their duty, as the royal train might be certainly expected in the course
of the morning. The good-natured Jerome's heart had been touched by the
lamentations of the boys for their lost favourites; and he had told them
that, if they would leave off crying, so as to make their faces fit to
be seen by the train of nobles, they might look out for him on the
roadside, and he would try to place them where they might see the
Dauphiness. They had made every effort to look cheerful, and were
thinking more about the Princess than of pigeons and rabbits when their
sister returned; but when they witnessed her burst of weeping on her
mother's bosom--when they heard that Charles was to be carried off for a
soldier for three years, and that there was to be no hut in the wood,
and no new brother-in-law for them, they cried more bitterly than ever.
In the midst of this scene, Jerome came by on horseback. He could not
stop; but he called out that the band had been heard already, and
pointed to the place where the boys should go and take their stand.
They did not now care anything about the procession, or the coach with
six horses, or the handsome ladies, or the noble gentlemen that Jerome
had promised they should see. Their mother wished that they should not
miss such a sight: but they did not move as she said so. When, however,
Marie turned her face towards them, and said, "Go, dears: pray do," they
took their caps, and walked away; they thought it so kind of Marie to
care for their pleasure at such a time.
Jerome passed again, after they had gone a few yards, and nodded and
beckoned. They ran and kept up with his horse, till he stopped opposite
the post-house. He told them hastily that he was to be stationed here;
and he was glad of it, as it was expected that the party would halt at
the post-house. He desired the boys to keep close behind, at his
horse's tail, where nobody would meddle with them. They must not notice
him till spoken to, and must take care of his horse's tread: all the
rest they might leave to him. There was presently an opportunity for
him to speak a few words more to them; and he could not help saying how
sorry he was to see how they had been crying since he had left their
cottage. Of course, this brought out the story of Charles, and the new
misfortune threatened to the family. Jerome was not the only one who
heard the tale. His smoking comrade was by his side: and it was exactly
the kind of story to which his ears were most open. The two soldiers
conversed together in a low voice for a minute or two, and then sat bolt
upright and silent, as if they had been made of stone, and had not each
carried a pitying heart under his stiff uniform and steady countenance.
When the military music was heard coming nearer and nearer, and distant
cheers were borne on the breeze, the commanding officer rode by, and saw
nothing in the demeanour of these two soldiers to distinguish them from
all the rest of the line, who were thinking only of themselves or the
Dauphiness.
She came, preceded by so many attendants on horseback, and inferior
carriages, which passed without taking any notice of the post-house,
that Robin and Marc heard the people about them lamenting that there
would be no halt, and that they should barely see the Princess after
all. They were mistaken, however. It was one of the plans of the
journey that the royal carriage should stop for a few moments at every
post-house, whether fresh horses were wanted or not, in order that the
loyal feeling of the people should be cherished by a sight of her who
was to be their queen, and whose appearance was indeed likely to
captivate all eyes and hearts.
The six bay horses were checked precisely at the right spot: and all
which preceded the royal carriage halted at the same moment. The air
was rent by a cheer, such a cheer as convinced the Count and his family
how faint in comparison their welcome had been, when they had appeared
from the by-road to the chateau half an hour before. When his train had
taken their station at the entrance of Saint Menehould, there had been a
few cries of "Long live the Count our lord!" but they were a mere
whisper compared with the acclamation which greeted the Dauphiness.
The royal carriage was open almost all round, so that the Princess was
conspicuously visible. She was full as beautiful as any of the gazers
had expected. Her complexion was fresh and fair, her countenance
smiling, and her blue eyes full of spirit and feeling; and though she
looked no more than fifteen (her actual age), all thought, as she moved
her stately head in answer to their greeting, that they had never seen
so dignified a lady.
In about two minutes from the halting of her carriage, Jerome turned his
head round with a hasty smile to the boys; and before they knew what it
meant, his and his comrade's horses began scrambling and sliding.
Jerome's opened a way for the boys to escape into the road from the
danger of a kick; and as soon as they were safe there, the horses began
to prance, and make yet more confusion. The Dauphiness looked that way,
as Jerome intended that she should; and when her attention was fairly
fixed, he called to the boys to come back to their places.
As Jerome had hoped, their doleful faces, all swollen with crying,
attracted the notice of the Princess, who had hitherto met only smiling
countenances wherever she turned, since she had entered her new country.
These traces of tears carried back her thoughts to her own weeping,
some days before, on leaving Vienna; and she suddenly beckoned to the
children. In a moment a hundred voices bade them go forward to the
carriage; a hundred hands pointed and pushed, so that they were
presently within hearing of the kind questions of the young Princess.
She asked what made them so unhappy on this day, when every one else
looked pleased and joyful. They could scarcely help crying again at the
question; but they were old enough to know that everything might depend
on their behaviour at this moment; and they strove to speak, and to
speak plainly. Had they been ill? The Princess asked, observing to her
ladies that they looked sadly thin. No, they had not been ill, they
replied; they were only very unhappy to-day.
The bailiff, who was in attendance on the Count's family, now put
himself forward to explain, not to the Dauphiness herself (that would
have been too bold), but to one of her ladies, on the other side of the
carriage, about his having taken away the boys' rabbits and pigeons
according to law.
"'Tis not that," cried Marc, indignantly, as he heard this. "We left
off crying about the rabbits and pigeons long ago: did not we, Robin?
It is about Charles and Marie."
"Tell me about Charles and Marie," said the Princess, in broken French,
"and then all about your pigeons."
"Charles and our sister were just going to be married, and we had begun
a house in the wood for them; and we have had to pull it to pieces
again; and this morning the Count says Charles must go for a soldier for
three years; and Marie is crying at home so--"
Marc could not go on for his own tears.
The Count's sons had, by this time, made their way through the closing
crowd, to hear what was going on.
"Casimir," said his brother, "your bad work of this morning must be
undone, you see. Do your part with a good grace. Bring my father to
receive the commands of the Dauphiness."
Casimir yielded. While he was gone, his brother explained to the
Princess the rights which the Count had over this family, as over the
other peasants of the neighbourhood. He ventured to answer for his
father, that he would see the hardship of this particular case, and
would permit some arrangement to be made, by which Charles might be
spared the threatened misfortune, and restored to his hopes of a speedy
marriage.
"Where is this Charles?" asked the Princess. "I will not ask to see the
tearful Marie before so many eyes."
Robin had seen Charles, just before, near the spot; for Charles was
desperate, and would neither hide nor attempt to escape. He roamed
about, half-mad with the suffering of his mind, among the holiday groups
of Saint Menehould; and when called, was not long in presenting himself.
"Alas! Is this the bridegroom?" asked the Princess, shrugging her
shoulders, with an expression of pity.
"He looks better than that sometimes, when he plays with us," said Marc,
zealous for his friend Charles.
"But his dress!" said a lady, who had seldom before seen a peasant, and
was not familiarised with the coarse woollen garment and leathern belt,
so common among the country people.
"It is just what father wears, and everybody," maintained Marc.
By this time the Count was waiting the pleasure of the Princess, ready
to assure her of his patronage of any persons she might please to
favour. The Dauphiness asked whether such poverty as she witnessed was
not a thing hitherto unheard of,--whether such misery could be common in
the country she had just entered? The bridling of some of her ladies,
and the annoyance in the faces of some gentlemen of her suite, showed
her that she had asked an imprudent question. Yet she was only fifteen,
and was to be hereafter the queen of this country; and if she had never
done worse things than asking such questions, she might have lived
beloved, and died lamented, in a good old age.
She saw another thing in the countenances of her attendants,--that it
was time to be gone. She therefore requested of the Count, as a favour
to herself, that he would settle Charles advantageously on his lands;
and smiling at the young man, she declared that she would answer for
Charles's fidelity to his lord. Charles was on his knees at the word,
too much overpowered to speak, but promising all by his clasped hands
and heaving breast. The Count declared he should have a cottage and a
field that very day, and his hearty consent to take Marie home as soon
as the priest could marry them.
The Dauphiness asked one of her attendant gentlemen for her purse, and
gave the boys gold for Marie. They were to tell her to make her cottage
comfortable with it.
"As for yourselves," said she, "what did I hear just now that you
wanted? Canary-birds, was it?"
"Pigeons,"--"rabbits," said the boys; "but never mind them now."
"O, but I do mind; you shall have some money for that too."
The bailiff explained that it was not poverty, but the law which
interfered with the boys' pleasures. Pigeons abounded in the wood, and
could feed themselves; but it was against the law for any under the rank
of a noble to keep them. The Dauphiness supposed this was all as it
should be; for she was apt, through life, to believe that the nobles
were by nature entitled to all things, and might give only such leavings
as they did not wish for, to inferior people: yet she was pleased, and
repaid the bailiff with a gracious smile, when he said that all laws
melted away before the wishes of a royal bride, and that these peasant
boys should have their rabbit-hutch and dove-cot henceforth, by special
permission.
None waved their caps more vehemently, none shouted "Long live the
Dauphiness!" more vigorously, as the cavalcade set forth again, than
Robin and Marc. When the last horseman vanished in the dust of the
road, the attention of the crowd turned upon the favoured family of
Randolphe. The poor man himself had retired overpowered, and no one
could tell where he was. Charles was with Marie already. But the boys
remained in the road; they were hoisted on the shoulders of their
neighbours, having first delivered the precious gold pieces into the
hands of the curd, lest they should lose Marie's treasure in the bustle.
Robin would not be carried a step towards home till he had been allowed
to speak to Jerome. He threw his arms round the neck of the
good-natured soldier, and said that it was he who had made Marie's
fortune. Then Jerome had to shake hands with every person in the crowd;
and every man who had a house or cottage begged Jerome to be his guest.
Jerome laughed, and said, that among so many he should not have known
what to reply, and how to choose his host; but that he and his comrades
were at Saint Menehould only for the occasion which was now passed, and
before night they would be twenty miles off.
Before sunset, accordingly, Jerome and the smoker were riding side by
side on the road to fresh quarters, each with a fine bouquet of spring
flowers at his breast, sent by Marie. They were talking of the events
of the morning, of the sudden rescue of a worthy family from the depths
of misery. The smoker could not be cheered even by what he had
witnessed; and he spoke as gloomily and sententiously as if the pipe
were now between his lips, and his words coming forth in a cloud of
smoke. Jerome could not but own, however, that there was much truth in
what he said, when he declared, "It is all very well, and I am glad this
one family is saved. But it is only one of many hundred thousand
miserable families. What is to become of all the rest, who may not have
the luck to see a royal bride pass their way? It is not a few royal
smiles and gold pieces, here and there, that will save the royal, or the
noble, or the poor, while the law and the customs of the great oppress
and destroy a hundred to pamper one. If this young Dauphiness were to
do this deed over again every hour of the year, she could not do more
than put off for a little while the storm that will burst upon her and
all of us, when the poor can endure no more."