PART III.

“For there were seen in that dark wall,

Two niches, narrow, dark, and tall.

Who enters by such grisly door,

Shall ne’er, I ween, find exit more.”--WALTER SCOTT.

It would be wonderful, were it not of daily occurrence, and to be

observed by all who give attention to the characteristics of the human

mind, how quickly confidence, even when shaken to its very foundations,

and almost obliterated, springs up again, and recovers all its strength

in the bosoms of the young of either sex.

Let but a few more years pass over the heart, and when once broken,

if it be only by a slight suspicion, or a half unreal cause, it

will scarce revive again in a lifetime; nor then, unless proofs the

strongest and most unquestionable can be adduced to overpower the

doubts which have well-nigh annihilated it.

In early life, however, before long contact with the world has blunted

the susceptibilities, and hardened the sympathies of the soul, before

the constant experience of the treachery, the coldness, the ingratitude

of men has given birth to universal doubt and general distrust, the

shadow vanishes as soon as the cloud which cast it is withdrawn, and

the sufferer again believes, alas! too often, only to be again deceived.

Thus it was with St. Renan, who a few moments before had given up even

the last hope, who had ceased, as he thought, to believe even in the

possibility of faith or honor among men, of constancy, or purity, or

truth, in women, no sooner saw his Melanie, whom he knew to be the

wife of another, solitary and in tears, no sooner felt her inanimate

form reclining on his bosom, than he was prepared to believe anything,

rather than believe her false.

Indeed, her consternation at his appearance, her evident dismay, not

unnatural in an age wherein skepticism and infidelity were marvellously

mingled with credulity and superstition, her clear conviction that it

was not himself in mortal blood and being, did go far to establish the

fact, that she had been deceived either casually or--which was far

more probable--by foul artifice, into the belief that her beloved and

plighted husband was no longer with the living.

The very exclamation which she uttered last, ere she sunk senseless

into his arms, uttered, as she imagined, in the presence of the

immortal spirit of the injured dead, “I am true, Raoul--true to the

last, my beloved!” rang in his ears with a power and a meaning which

convinced him of her veracity.

“She could not lie!” he muttered to himself, “in the presence of the

living dead! God be praised! she is true, and we shall yet be happy!”

How beautiful she looked, as she lay there, unconscious and insensible

even of her own existence. If time and maturity had improved Raoul’s

person, and added the strength and majesty of manhood to the grace and

pliability of youth, infinitely more had it bestowed on the beauty of

his betrothed. He had left her a beautiful girl just blooming out of

girlhood, he found her a mature, full-blown woman, with all the flush

and flower of complete feminine perfection, before one charm has become

too luxuriant, or one drop of the youthful dew exhaled from the new

expanded blossom.

She had shot up, indeed, to a height above the ordinary stature of

women--straight, erect, and graceful as a young poplar, slender, yet

full withal, exquisitely and voluptuously rounded, and with every

sinuous line and swelling curve of her soft form full of the poetry and

beauty of both repose and motion.

Her complexion was pale as alabaster; even her cheeks, except when

some sudden tide of passion, or some strong emotion sent the impetuous

blood coursing thither more wildly than its wont, were colorless, but

there was nothing sallow or sickly, nothing of that which is ordinarily

understood by the word pallid, in their clear, warm, transparent

purity; nothing, in a word, of that lividness which the French, with

more accuracy than we, distinguish from the healthful paleness which is

so beautiful in southern women.

Her hair, profuse almost to redundance, was perfectly black, but of

that warm and lustrous blackness which is probably the hue expressed

by the ancient Greeks by the term hyacinthine, and which in certain

lights has a purplish metallic gloss playing over it, like the varying

reflections on the back of the raven. Her strongly defined, and nearly

straight eyebrows, were dark as night, as were the long, silky lashes

which were displayed in clear relief against the fair, smooth cheek, as

the lids lay closed languidly over the bright blue eyes.

It was a minute or two before Melanie moved or gave any symptoms of

recovering from her fainting fit, and during those minutes the lips

of Raoul had been pressed so often and so warmly to those of the fair

insensible, that had any spark of perception remained to her, the fond

and lingering pressure could not have failed to call the “purple light

of love,” to her ingenuous face.

At length a long, slow shiver ran through the form of the senseless

girl, and thrilled, like the touch of the electric wire, every nerve in

St. Renan’s body.

Then the soft rosy lips were unclosed, and forth rushed the ambrosial

breath in a long, gentle sigh, and the beautiful bust heaved and

undulated, like the bosom of the calm sea, when the first breathings of

the coming storm steal over it, and wake, as if by sympathy, its deep

pulsations.

He clasped her closer to his heart, half-fearful that when life and

perfect consciousness should be restored to that exquisite frame, it

would start from his embrace, if not in anger or alarm, at least as if

from a forbidden and illicit pleasure.

Gradually a faint rosy hue, slight as the earliest blushes of the

morning sky, crept over her white cheeks, and deepened into a rich

passionate flush; and at the same moment the azure-tinctured lids

were unclosed slowly, and the large, radiant, bright blue eyes beamed

up into his own, half languid still, but gleaming through their dewy

languor, with an expression which he must have been, indeed, blind

to mistake for aught but the strongest of unchanged, unchangeable

affection.

It was evident that she knew him now; that the momentary terror,

arising rather, perhaps, from fear than from superstition, which had

converted the young ardent soldier into a visitant from beyond those

gloomy portals through which no visitant returns, had passed from her

mind, and that she had already recognised, although she spoke not, her

living lover.

And though she recognised him, she sought not to withdraw herself from

the enclosure of his sheltering arms, but lay there on his bosom, with

her head reclined on his shoulder, and her eyes drinking long draughts

of love from his fascinated gaze, as if she were his own, and that her

appropriate place of refuge.

“Oh! Raoul,” she exclaimed, at length, in a low, soft whisper, “is it,

indeed, you--you, whom I have so long wept as dead--you, whom I was

even now weeping as one lost to me for ever, when you are thus restored

to me?”

“It is I, Melanie,” he answered mournfully, “it is I, alive, and in

health; but better far had I been in truth dead, as they have told you,

rather than thus a survivor of all happiness, of all hopes; spared only

from the grave to know _you_ false, and myself forgotten.”

“Oh, no, Raoul, not false!” she cried wildly, as she started from his

arms, “oh, not forgotten! think you,” she added, blushing crimson,

“that had I loved any but you, that had I not loved you with my whole

heart and being, I had lain thus on your bosom, thus endured your

caresses? Oh, no, no, never false! nor for one moment forgotten!

“But what avails it, if you do love no other--what profits it, if you

do love me? Are you not--are you not, false girl--alas! that these lips

should speak it--the wife of another--the promised mistress of the

king?”

“I--I--Raoul!” she exclaimed, with such a blending of wonder and

loathing in her face, such an expression of indignation on her

tongue, that her lover perceived at once, that, whatever might be the

infamy of her father, of her husband, of this climax of falsehood and

self-degradation, she, at least, was guiltless.

“The mistress of the king! what king? what mean you? are you

distraught?”

“Ha! you are ignorant, you are innocent of that, then. You are not yet

indoctrinated into the noble uses for which your honorable lord intends

you. It is the town’s talk, Melanie. How is it you, whom it most

concerns, alone have not heard it?”

“Raoul,” she said, earnestly, imploringly, “I know not if there be any

meaning in your words, except to punish me, to torture me, for what you

deem my faithlessness, but if there be, I implore you, I conjure you,

by your father’s noble name, by your mother’s honor, show me the worst;

but listen to me first, for by the God that made us both, and now hears

my words, I am not faithless.”

“Not faithless? Are you not the wife of another?”

“No!” she replied enthusiastically. “I am not. For I am yours, and

while you live I can not wed another. Whom God hath joined man can not

put asunder.”

“I fear me that plea will avail us little,” Raoul answered. “But say

on, dearest Melanie, and believe that there is nothing you can ask

which I will not give you gladly--even if it were my own life-blood.

Say on, so shall we best arrive at the truth of this intricate and

black affair.”

“Mark me, then, Raoul, for every word I shall speak is as true as

the sun in heaven. It is near two years now since we heard that you

had fallen in battle, and that your body had been carried off by the

barbarians. Long, long I hoped and prayed, but prayers and hopes were

alike in vain. I wrote to you often, as I promised, but no line from

you has reached me since the day when you sailed for India, and that

made me fear that the dread news was true. But at the last, to make

assurance doubly sure, all my own letters were returned to me six

months since, with their seals unbroken, and an endorsement from the

authorities in India that the person addressed was not to be found.

Then hope itself was over; and my father, who never from the first had

doubted that you were no more--”

“Out on him! out on him! the heartless villain!” the young man

interrupted her indignantly. “He knows, as well as I myself, that I am

living; although it is no fault of his or his coadjutors that I am so.

He knows not as yet, however, that I am _here_; but he shall know it

ere long to his cost, my Melanie.”

“At least,” she answered in a faltering voice, “at least he _swore_

to me that you were dead; and never having ceased to persecute me,

since the day that fatal tidings reached us, to become the wife of La

Rochederrien, now marquis de Ploermel, he now became doubly urgent--”

“And you Melanie! you yielded! I had thought you would have died

sooner.”

“I had no choice but to yield, Raoul. Or at least but the choice of

that old man’s hand, or an eternal dungeon. The _lettres de cachet_

were signed, and you dead, and on the conditions I extorted from the

marquis, I became in name, Raoul, only in name, by all my hopes of

heaven, the wife of the man whom you pronounce, wherefore, I can not

dream, the basest of mankind. Now tell me.”

“And did it never strike you as being wonderful and most unnatural that

this Ploermel, who is neither absolutely a dotard nor an old woman,

should accept your hand upon this condition?”

“I was too happy to succeed in extorting it to think much of that,” she

answered.

“_Extorted!_” replied Raoul bitterly; “and how, I pray you, is this

condition which you extorted ratified or made valid?”

“It is signed by himself, and witnessed by my own father, that, being I

regard myself the wife of the dead, he shall ask no more of familiarity

from me than if I were the bride of heaven!”

“The double villains!”

“But wherefore villains, Raoul?” exclaimed Melanie.

“I tell you, girl, it is a compact--a base, hellish compact--with the

foul despot, the disgrace of kings, the opprobrium of France, who sits

upon the throne, dishonoring it daily! A compact such as yet was never

entered into by a father and a husband, even of the lowest of mankind!

A compact to deliver you a spotless virgin-victim to the vile-hearted

and luxurious tyrant. Curses! a thousand curses on his soul! and on my

own soul! who have fought and bled for him, and all to meet with this,

as my reward of service!”

“Great God! can these things be,” she exclaimed, almost fainting with

horror and disgust. “Can these things indeed be? But speak, Raoul,

speak; how can you know all this?”

“I tell you, Melanie, it is the talk, the very daily, hourly gossip of

the streets, the alleys, nay, even the very kennels of Paris. Every one

knows it--every one believes it, from the monarch in the Louvre to the

lowest butcher of the Faubourg St. Antoine!

“And they believe it--of me, of _me_, they believe this infamy!”

“With this addition, if any addition were needed, that you are not a

deceived victim, but a willing and proud participator in the shame.”

“I will--that is--” she corrected herself, speaking very rapidly and

energetically--“I _would_ die sooner. But there is no need now to die.

You have come back to me, and all will yet go well with us!”

“It never can go well with us again,” St. Renan answered gloomily.

“The king never yields his purpose, he is as tenacious in his hold as

reckless in his promptitude to seize. And they are paid beforehand.”

“Paid!” exclaimed the girl, shuddering at the word. “What atrocity. How

paid?”

“How, think you, did your good father earn his title and the rich

governorship of Morlaix? What great deeds were rewarded to La

Rochederrien by his marquisate, and this captaincy of musquetaires. You

know not yet, young lady, what virtue there is now-a-days in being the

accommodating father, or the convenient husband of a beauty!”

“You speak harshly, St. Renan, and bitterly.”

“And if I do, have I not cause enough for bitterness and harshness?” he

replied almost angrily.

“Not against me, Raoul.”

“I am not bitter against you, Melanie. And yet--and yet--”

“And yet _what_, Raoul?”

“And yet had you resisted three days longer, we might have been

saved--you might have been mine--”

“I am yours, Raoul de St. Renan. Yours, ever and for ever! No one’s but

only yours.”

“You speak but madness--your vow--the sacrament!”

“To the winds with my vow--to the abyss with the fraudful sacrament!”

she cried, almost fiercely. “By sin it was obtained and sanctioned--in

sin let it perish. I say--I swear, Raoul, if you will take me, I am

yours.”

“Mine? Mine?” cried the young man, half bewildered. “How mine, and

when?”

“Thus,” she replied, casting herself upon his breast, and winding her

arms around his neck, and kissing his lips passionately and often.

“Thus, Raoul, thus, and now!”

He returned her embrace fondly once, but the next instant he removed

her almost forcibly from his breast, and held her at arm’s length.

“No, no!” he exclaimed, “not thus, not thus! If at all, honestly,

openly, holily, in the face of day! May my soul perish, ere cause come

through me why you should ever blush to show your front aloft among the

purest and the proudest. No, no, not thus, my own Melanie!”

The girl burst into a paroxysm of tears and sobbing, through which

she hardly could contrive to make her interrupted and faltering words

audible.

“If not now,” she said at length, “it will never be. For, hear me,

Raoul, and pity me, to-morrow they are about to drag me to Paris.”

The lover mused for several moments very deeply, and then replied,

“Listen to me, Melanie. If you are in earnest, if you are true, and

can be firm, there may yet be happiness in store for us, and that very

shortly.”

“Do you doubt me, Raoul?”

“I do not doubt you, Melanie. But ever as in my own wildest rapture,

even to gain my own extremest bliss, I would not do aught that could

possibly cast one shadow on your pure renown, so, mark me, would I not

take you to my heart were there one spot, though it were but as a speck

in the all-glorious sun, upon the brightness of your purity.”

“I believe you, Raoul. I feel, I know that my honor, that my purity is

all in all to you.”

“I would die a thousand deaths,” he made answer, “ere even a false

report should fall on it, to mar its virgin whiteness. Marvel not then

that I ask as much of you.”

“Ask anything, St. Renan. It _is_ granted.”

“In France we can hope for nothing. But there are other lands than

France. We must fly; and thanks to these documents which you have

wrung from them, and the proofs which I can easily obtain, this cursed

marriage can be set aside, and then, in honor and in truth you can be

mine, mine own Melanie.”

“God grant it so, Raoul.”

“It shall be so, beloved. Be you but firm, and it may be done right

speedily. I will sell the estates of St. Renan--by a good chance,

supposing me dead, the lord of Yrvilliac was in treaty for it with my

uncle. That can be arranged forthwith. Conduct yourself according to

your wont, cool and as distant as may be with this villain of Ploermel;

avoid above all things to let your father see that you are buoyed by

any hope, or moved by any passion. Treat the king with deliberate

scorn, if he approach you over-boldly. Beware how you eat or drink in

his company, for he is capable of all things, even of drugging you

into insensibility, and here,” he added, taking a small poniard, of

exquisite workmanship, with a gold hilt and scabbard, from his girdle,

and giving it to her, “wear _this_ at all times, and if he dare attempt

violence, were he thrice a king, _use it_!”

“I will--I will--trust me, Raoul! I _will_ use it, and that to his

sorrow! My heart is strong, and my hand brave _now_--now that I

know you to be living. Now that I have hope to nerve me, I will fear

nothing, but dare all things.”

“Do so, do so, my beloved, and you shall have no cause to fear, for

I will be ever near you. I will tarry here but one day; and ere you

reach Paris, I will be there, be certain. Within ten days, I doubt not

I can convert my acres into gold, and ship that gold across the narrow

straits; and that done, the speed of horses, and a swift ship will soon

have us safe in England; and if that land be not so fair, or so dear as

our own France, at least there are no tyrants there, like this Louis;

and there are laws, they say, which guard the meanest man as safely and

as surely as the proudest noble.”

“A happy land, Raoul. I would we were there even now.”

“We will be there ere long, fear nothing. But tell me, whom have you

near your person on whom we may rely. There must be some one through

whom we may communicate in Paris. It may be that I shall require to see

you.”

“Oh! you remember Rose, Raoul--little Rose Faverney, who has lived with

me ever since she was a child--a pretty little black-eyed damsel.”

“Surely I do remember her. Is she with you yet? That will do admirably,

then, if she be faithful, as I think she is; and unless I forget, what

will serve us better yet, she loves my page Jules de Marlien. He has

not forgotten her, I promise you.”

“Ah! Jules--we grow selfish, I believe, as we grow old, Raoul. I have

not thought to ask after one of your people. So Jules remembers little

Rose, and loves her yet; that will indeed, secure her, even had she

been doubtful, which she is not. She is as true as steel--truer, I

fear, than even I; for she reproached me bitterly four evenings since,

and swore she would be buried alive, much more willingly imprisoned,

than be married to the marquis de Ploermel, though she was only

plighted to the vicomte Raoul’s page! Oh! we may trust in her with all

certainty.”

“Send her, then, on the very same night that you reach Paris, so soon

as it is dark, to my uncle’s house in the place de St. Louis. I think

she knows it, and let her ask--not for me--but for Jules. Ere then I

will know something definite of our future; and fear nothing, love,

all shall go well with us. Love such as ours, with faith, and right,

and honesty, and honor to support it, can not fail to win, blow what

wind may. And now, sweet Melanie, the night is wearing onward, and I

fear that they may miss you. Kiss me, then, once more, sweet girl, and

farewell.”

“Not for the last, Raoul,” she cried, with a gay smile, casting herself

once again into her lover’s arms, and meeting his lips with a long,

rapturous kiss.

“Not by a thousand, and a thousand! But now, angel, farewell for a

little space. I hate to bid you leave me, but I dare not ask you to

stay; even now I tremble lest you should be missed and they should send

to seek you. For were they but to suspect that I am here and have seen

you, it would, at the best, double all our difficulties; fare you well,

sweetest Melanie.”

“Fare you well,” she replied; “fare you well, my own best beloved

Raoul,” and she put up the glittering dagger, as she spoke, into the

bosom of her dress; but as she did so, she paused and said, “I wish

_this_ had not been your first gift to me, Raoul, for they say that

such gifts are fatal, to love at least, if not to life.”

“Fear not! fear not!” answered the young man, laughing gayly, “our love

is immortal. It may defy the best steel blade that was ever forged on

Milan stithy to cut it asunder. Fare you--but, hush! who comes here; it

is too late, yet fly--fly, Melanie!”

But she did not fly, for as he spoke, a tall, gayly-dressed cavalier

burst through the coppice on the side next the château d’Argenson,

exclaiming: “So, my fair cousin!--this is your faith to my good brother

of Ploermel is it?”

But, before he spoke, she had whispered to Raoul, “It is the chevalier

de Pontrein, de Ploermel’s half-brother. Alas! all is lost.”

“Not so! not so!” answered her lover, also in a whisper, “leave him

to me, I will detain him. Fly, by the upper pathway and through the

orchard to the château, and remember--you have not seen this dog. So

much deceit is pardonable. Fly, I say, Melanie. Look not behind for

your life, whatever you may hear, nor tarry. All rests now on your

steadiness and courage.”

“Then all is safe,” she answered firmly and aloud, and without casting

a glance toward the cavalier, who was now within ten paces of her side,

or taking the smallest notice of his words, she kissed her hand to

St. Renan, and bounded up the steep path, in the opposite direction,

with so fleet a step as soon carried her beyond the sound of all that

followed, though that was neither silent nor of small interest.

“Do you not hear me, madam. By Heaven! but you carry it off easily!”

cried the young cavalier, setting off at speed, as if to follow her.

“But you must run swifter than a roe if you look to ’scape me;” and

with the words he attempted to rush past Raoul, of whom he affected,

although he knew him well, to take no notice.

But in that intent he was quickly frustrated, for the young count

grasped him by the collar as he endeavored to pass, with a grasp of

iron, and said to him in an ironical tone of excessive courtesy.

“Sweet sir, I fear you have forgotten me, that you should give me the

go-by thus, when it is so long a time since we have met, and we such

dear friends, too.”

But the young man was in earnest, and very angry, and struggled to

release himself from St. Renan’s grasp, until, having no strong reasons

for forbearance, but many for the reverse, Raoul, too, lost his temper.

“By Heaven!” he exclaimed, “I believe that you do _not_ know me, or you

would not dare to suppose that I would suffer you to follow a lady who

seeks not your presence or society.”

“Let me go, St. Renan!” returned the other fiercely, laying his hand on

his dagger’s hilt. “Let me go, villain, or you shall rue it!”

“Villain!” Raoul repeated calmly, “villain! It is so you call me, hey?”

and he did instantly release him, drawing his sword as he did so.

“Draw, De Pontrien--that word has cost you your life!”

“Yes, villain!” repeated the other, “villain to your teeth! But you

lie! it is your life that is forfeit--forfeit to my brother’s honor!”

“Ha! ha!” laughed Raoul, savagely. “Ha-ha-ha-ha! your brother’s honor!

who the devil ever heard before of a pandar’s honor--even if he were

Sir Pandarus to a king? Sa! sa! have at you!”

Their blades crossed instantly, and they fought fiercely, and with

something like equality for some ten minutes. The chevalier de Pontrien

was far more than an ordinary swordsman, and he was in earnest, not

angry, but savage and determined, and full of bitter hatred, and a

fixed resolution to punish the familiarity of Raoul with his brother’s

wife. But that was a thing easier proposed than executed; for St.

Renan, who had left France as a boy already a perfect master of fence,

had learned the practice of the blade against the swordsmen of the

East, the finest swordsmen of the world, and had added to skill,

science, and experience, the iron nerves, the deep breath, and the

unwearied strength of a veteran.

If he fought slowly, it was that he fought carefully--that he meant

the first wound to be the last. He was resolved that De Pontrien never

should return home again to divulge what he had seen, and he had the

coolness, the skill, and the power to carry out his resolution.

At the end of ten minutes he attacked. Six times within as many

seconds he might have inflicted a severe, perhaps a deadly wound on

his antagonist; and he, too, perceived it, but it would not have been

surely mortal.

“Come, come!” cried De Pontrien, at last, growing impatient and angry

at the idea of being played with. “Come, sir, you are my master, it

seems; make an end of this.”

“Do not be in a hurry,” replied St. Renan, with a deadly smile, “it

will come soon enough. There! will that suit you?”

And with the word he made a treble feint and lounged home. So true

was the thrust that the point pierced the very cavity of his heart.

So strongly was it sent home that the hilt smote heavily on his

breast-bone. He did not speak or groan, but drew one short, broken

sigh, and fell dead on the instant.

“The fool!” muttered St. Renan. “Wherefore did he meddle where he had

no business? But what the devil shall I do with him? He must not be

found, or all will out--and that were ruin.”

As he spoke, a distant clap of thunder was heard to the eastward, and

a few heavy drops of rain began to fall, while a heavy mass of black

thunder-clouds began to rise rapidly against the wind.

“There will be a fierce storm in ten minutes, which will soon wash

out all this evidence,” he said, looking down at the trampled and

blood-stained greensward. “One hour hence, and there will not be a sign

of this, if I can but dispose of him. Ha!” he added, as a quick thought

struck him, “the Devil’s Drinking-Cup! Enough! it is done!”

Within a minute’s space he had swathed the corpse tightly in the cloak,

which had fallen from the wretched man’s shoulders as the fray began,

bound it about the waist by the scarf, to which he attached firmly an

immense block of stone, which lay at the brink of the fearful well,

which was now--for the tide was up--brimful of white boiling surf, and

holding his breath atween resolution and abhorrence, hurled it into the

abyss.

It sunk instantly, so well was the stone secured to it; and the fate

of the chevalier de Pontrien never was suspected, for that fatal pool

never gave up its dead, nor will until the judgment-day.

Meantime the flood-gates of heaven were opened, and a mimic torrent,

rushing down the dark glen, soon obliterated every trace of that stern,

short affray.

Calmly Raoul strode homeward, and untouched by any conscience, for

those were hard and ruthless times, and he had undergone so much wrong

at the hands of his victim’s nearest relatives, and dearest friends,

that it was no great marvel if his blood were heated, and his heart

pitiless.

“I will have masses said for his soul in Paris,” he muttered to

himself; and therewith, thinking that he had more than discharged all

a Christian’s duty, he dismissed all further thoughts of the matter,

and actually hummed a gay opera-tune as he strode homeward through the

pelting storm, thinking how soon he should be blessed by the possession

of his own Melanie.

No observation was made on his absence, by either the steward or any

of the servants, on his return, though he was well-nigh drenched with

rain, for they remembered his old half-boyish, half-romantic habits,

and it seemed natural to them that on his first return, after so many

years of wandering, to scenes endeared to him by innumerable fond

recollections, he should wander forth alone to muse with his own soul

in secret.

There was great joy, however, in the hearts of the old servitors and

tenants in consequence of his return, and on the following morning,

and still on the third day, that feeling of joy and security continued

to increase, for it soon got abroad that the young lord’s grief and

gloominess of mood were wearing hourly away, and that his lip, and

his whole countenance, were often lighted up with an expression which

showed, as they fondly augured, that days and years of happiness were

yet in store for him.

It was not long before the tidings reached him that the house

of D’Argenson was in great distress concerning the sudden and

unaccountable disappearance of the chevalier de Pontrien, who had

walked out, it was said, on the preceding afternoon, promising to be

back at supper-time, and who had not been heard of since.

Raoul smiled grimly at the intimation, but said nothing, and the

narrator judging that St. Renan was not likely to take offence at

the imputations against the family of Ploermel, proceeded to inform

him, that in the opinion of the neighborhood there was nothing very

mysterious, after all, in the disappearance of the chevalier, since he

was known to be very heavily in debt, and was threatened with deadly

feud by the old Sieur de Plouzurde, whose fair daughter he had deceived

to her undoing. Robinet the smuggler’s boat, had been seen off the

Penmarcks when the moon was setting, and no one doubted that the gay

gallant was by this time off the coast of Spain.

To all this, though he affected to pay little heed to it, Raoul

inclined an eager and attentive ear, and as a reward for his patient

listening, was soon informed, furthermore, that the bridegroom marquis

and the beautiful bride, being satisfied, it was supposed, of the

chevalier’s safety, had departed for Paris, their journey having

been postponed only in consequence of the research for the missing

gentleman, from the morning when it should have taken place, to the

afternoon of the same day.

For two days longer did Raoul tarry at St. Renan, apparently as free

from concern or care about the fair Melanie de Ploermel, as if he had

never heard her name. And on this point alone, for all men knew that he

once loved her, did his conduct excite any observation, or call forth

comment. His silence, however, and external nonchalance were attributed

at all hands to a proper sense of pride and self-respect; and as the

territorial vassals of those days held themselves in some degree

ennobled or disgraced by the high bearing or recreancy of their lords,

it was very soon determined by the men of St. Renan that it would have

been very disgraceful and humiliating had their lord, the lord of

Duarnenez and St. Renan, condescended to trouble his head about the

little demoiselle d’Argenson.

Meanwhile our lover, whose head was in truth occupied about no other

thing than that very same little demoiselle, for whom he was believed

to feel a contempt so supreme, had thoroughly investigated all his

affairs, thereby acquiring from his old steward the character of an

admirable man of business, had made himself perfectly master of the

real value of his estates, droits, dues, and all connected with the

same, and had packed up all his papers, and such of his valuables as

were movable, so as to be transported easily by means of pack-horses.

This done, leaving orders for a retinue of some twenty of his best and

most trusty servants to follow him as soon as the train and relays of

horses could be prepared, he set off with two followers only to return

riding post, as he had come from Paris.

He was three days behind the lady of his love at starting; but the

journey from the western extremity of Bretagne to the metropolis is at

all times a long and tedious undertaking; and as the roads and means of

conveyance were in those days, he found it no difficult task to catch

up with the carriages of the marquis, and to pass them on the road long

enough before they reached Paris.

Indeed, though he had set out three days behind them, he succeeded in

anticipating their arrival by as many, and had succeeded in transacting

more than half the business on which his heart was bent, before he

received the promised visit from the pretty Rose Faverney, who,

prompted by her desire to renew her intimacy with the handsome page,

came punctual to her appointment. He had not, of course, admitted the

good old churchman, his uncle, into all his secrets; he had not even

told him that he had seen the lady, much less what were his hopes and

views concerning her.

But he did tell him that he was so deeply mortified and wounded by her

desertion, that he had determined to sell his estates, to leave France

for ever, and to betake himself to the new American colonies on the St.

Lawrence.

There was not in the state of France in those days much to admire,

or much to induce wise men to exert their influence over the young

and noble, to induce them to linger in the neighborhood of a court

which was in itself a very sink of corruption. It was with no great

difficulty, therefore, that Raoul obtained the concurrence of his

uncle, who was naturally a friend to gallant and adventurous daring.

The estates of St. Renan, the old castle and the home park, with a few

hundred acres in its immediate vicinity only excepted, were converted

into gold with almost unexampled rapidity.

A part of the gold was in its turn converted into a gallant brigantine

of some two hundred tons, which was despatched at once along the coast

of Douarnenez bay, there to take in a crew of the hardy fishermen and

smugglers of that stormy shore, all men well known to Raoul de St.

Renan, and well content to follow their young lord to the world’s end,

should such be his will.

Here, indeed, I have anticipated something the progress of events, for

hurry it as much as he could in those days, St. Renan could not, of

course, work miracles; and though the brigantine was purchased, where

she lay ready to sail, at Calais, the instant the sale of St. Renan was

determined, without awaiting the completion of the transfer, or the

payment of the purchase-money, many days had elapsed before the news

could be sent from the capital to the coast, and the vessel despatched

to Brittany.

Everything was, however, determined; nay, everything was in process

of accomplishment before the arrival of the fair lady and her nominal

husband, so that at the first interview with Rose, Raoul was enabled to

lay all his plans before her, and to promise that within a month at the

farthest, everything would be ready for their certain and safe evasion.

He did not fail, however, on that account to impress upon the pretty

maiden--who, as Jules was to accompany his lord, though not a hint of

whither had been breathed to any one, was doubly devoted to the success

of the scheme--that a method must be arranged by which he could have

daily interviews with the lovely Melanie; and this she promised that

she would use all her powers to induce her mistress to permit, saying,

with a gay laugh, that her permission gained, all the rest was easy.

The next day, the better to avoid suspicion, Raoul was presented to the

king, in full court, by his uncle, on the double event of his return

from India, and of his approaching departure for the colony of Acadie,

for which it was his present purpose to sue for his majesty’s consent

and approbation.

The king was in great good humor, and nothing could have been more

flattering or more gracious than Raoul de St. Renan’s reception. Louis

had heard that very morning of the fair Melanie’s arrival in the city,

and nothing could have fallen out more _apropos_ than the intention of

her quondam lover to depart at this very juncture, and that, too, for

an indefinite period, from the land of his birth.

Rejoicing inwardly at his good fortune, and of course, ascribing the

conduct of the young man to pique and disappointment, the king, while

he loaded him with honors and attentions, did not neglect to encourage

him in his intention of departing on a very early day, and even offered

to facilitate his departure by making some remissions in his behalf

from the strict regulations of the Douane.

All this was perfectly comprehensible to Raoul; but he was far too wise

to suffer any one, even his uncle, to perceive that he understood it;

and while he profited to the utmost by the readiness which he found

in high places to smooth away all the difficulties from his path, he

laughed in his sleeve as he thought what would be the fury of the

licentious and despotic sovereign when he should discover that the very

steps which he had taken to remove a dangerous rival, had actually cast

the lady into that rival’s arms.

Nor had this measure of Raoul’s been less effectual in sparing Melanie

much grief and vexation, than it had proved in facilitating his own

schemes of escape; for on that very day, within an hour after his

reception of St. Renan, the king caused information to be conveyed

to the marquis de Ploermel that the presentation of madame should be

deferred until such time as the vicomte de St. Renan should have set

sail for Acadie, which it was expected would take place within a month

at the furthest.

That evening when Rose Faverney was admitted to the young lord’s

presence, through the agency of the enamored Jules, she brought him

permission to visit her lady at midnight in her own chamber; and she

brought with her a plan, sketched by Melanie’s own hand, of the garden,

through which, by the aid of a master-key and a rope-ladder, he was to

gain access to her presence.

“My lady says, Monsieur Raoul,” added the merry girl, with a light

laugh, “that she admits you only on the faith that you will keep the

word which you plighted to her, when last you met, and on the condition

that I shall be present at all your interviews with her.”

“Her honor were safe in my hands,” replied the young man, “without that

precaution. But I appreciate the motive, and accept the condition.”

“You will remember, then, my lord--at midnight. There will be one light

burning in the window, when that is extinguished, all will be safe, and

you may enter fearless? Will you remember?”

“Nothing but death will prevent me. Nor that, if the spirits of the

dead may visit what they love best on earth. So tell her, Rose.

Farewell!”

Four hours afterward St. Renan stood in the shadow of a dense trellice

in the garden, watching the moment when that love-beacon should expire.

The clock of St. Germain l’Auxerre struck twelve, and on the instant

all was darkness. Another minute and the lofty wall was scaled, and

Melanie was in the arms of Raoul.

It was a strange, grim, gloomy, gothic chamber, full of queer niches

and recesses of old stone-work. The walls were hung with gilded

tapestries of Spanish leather, but were interrupted in many places by

the antique stone groinings of alcoves and cupboards, one of which,

close beside the mantlepiece, was closed by a curiously carved door of

heavy oak-work, itself sunk above a foot within the embrasure of the

wall.

Lighted as it was only by the flickering of the wood-fire on the

hearth, for the thickness of the walls, and the damp of the old vaulted

room, rendered a fire acceptable, even at midsummer, that antique

chamber appeared doubly grim and ghostly; but little cared the young

lovers for its dismal seeming; and if they noticed it at all, it was

but to jest at the contrast of its appearance with the happy hours

which they passed within it.

Happy, indeed, they were--almost too happy--though as pure and

guiltless as if they had been hours spent within a nunnery of the

strictest rule, and in the presence of a sainted abbess.

Happy, indeed, they were; and, although brief, oft repeated. For,

henceforth, not a night passed but Raoul visited his Melanie, and

tarried there enjoying her sweet converse, and bearing to her every

day glad tidings of the process of his schemes, and the certainty of

their escape, until the approach of morning warned him to make good his

retreat ere envious eyes should be abroad to make espials.

And ever the page, Jules, kept watch at the ladder-foot in the garden:

and the true maiden, Rose, who ever sate within the chamber with the

lovers during their stolen interviews, guarded the door, with ears as

keen as those of Cerberus.

A month had passed, and the last night had come, and all was

successful--all was ready. The brigantine lay manned and armed, and

at all points prepared for her brief voyage at an instant’s notice at

Calais. Relays of horses were at each post on the road. Raoul had taken

formal leave of the delighted monarch. His passport was signed--his

treasures were on board his good ship--his pistols were loaded--his

horses were harnessed for the journey.

For the last time he scaled the ladder--for the last time he stood

within the chamber.

Too happy! ay, they were too happy on that night, for all was done, all

was won; and nothing but the last step remained, and that step so easy.

The next morning Melanie was to go forth, as if to early mass, with

Rose and a single valet. The valet was to be mastered and overthrown

as if in a street broil, the lady, with her damsel, was to step into a

light caleche, which should await her, with her lover mounted at its

side, and hie! for Calais--England--without the risk--the possibility

of failure.

That night he would not tarry. He told his happy tidings, clasped her

to his heart, bid her farewell till to-morrow, and in another moment

would have been safe--a step sounded close to the door. Rose sprang to

her feet, with her finger to her lip, pointing with her left hand to

the deep cupboard-door.

She was right--there was not time to reach the window--at the same

instant, as Melanie relighted the lamp, not to be taken in mysterious

and suspicious darkness, the one door closed upon the lover just as the

other opened to the husband.

But rapid and light as were the motions of Raoul, the treacherous door

by which he had passed into his concealment, trembled still as Ploermel

entered. And Rose’s quick eye saw that he marked it.

But if he saw it, he gave no token, made no allusion to the least doubt

or suspicion; on the contrary, he spoke more gayly and kindly than his

wont. He apologized for his untimely intrusion, saying that her father

had come suddenly to speak with them, concerning her presentation at

court, which the king had appointed for the next day, and wished, late

as it was, to see her in the saloon below.

Nothing doubting the truth of his statement, which Raoul’s intended

departure rendered probable, Melanie started from her chair, and

telling Rose to wait, for she would be back in an instant, hurried out

of the room, and took her way toward the great staircase.

The marquis ordered Rose to light her mistress, for the corridor was

dark; and as the girl went out to do so, a suppressed shriek, and the

faint sounds of a momentary scuffle followed, and then all was still.

A hideous smile flitted across the face of De Ploermel, as he cast

himself heavily into an arm-chair, opposite the door of the cupboard

in which St. Renan was concealed, and taking up a silver bell which

stood on the table, rung it repeatedly and loudly for a servant.

“Bring wine,” he said, as the man entered. “And, hark you, the masons

are at work in the great hall, and have left their tools and materials

for building. Let half a dozen of the grooms come up hither, and bring

with them brick and mortar. I hate the sight of that cupboard, and

before I sleep this night, it shall be built up solid with a good wall

of mason-work; and so here’s a health to the rats within it, and a long

life to them!” and he quaffed off the wine in fiendish triumph.

He spoke so loud, and that intentionally that Raoul heard every word

that he uttered.

But if he hoped thereby to terrify the lover into discovering himself,

and so convicting his fair and innocent wife, the villain was deceived.

Raoul heard every word--knew his fate--knew that one word, one motion

would have saved him; but that one word, one motion would have

destroyed the fair fame of his Melanie.

The memory of the death of that unhappy Lord of Kerguelen came palpably

upon his mind in that dread moment, and the comments of his dead father.

“I, at least,” he muttered between his hard set teeth, “I at least

will not be evidence against her. I will die silent--_fiel hasta, la

muerte!_”

And when the brick and mortar were piled by the hands of the

unconscious grooms, and when the fatal trowels clanged and jarred

around him, he spake not--stirred not--gave no sign.

Even the savage wretch, De Ploermel, unable to believe in the existence

of such chivalry, such honor, half doubted if he were not deceived, and

the cupboard were not untenanted by the true victim.

Higher and higher rose the wall before the oaken door; and by the

exclusion of the light of the many torches by which the men were

working, the victim must have marked, inch by inch, the progress of

his living immurement. The page, Jules, had climbed in silence to the

window’s ledge, and was looking in, an unseen spectator, for he had

heard all that passed from without, and suspected his lord’s presence

within the fatal precinct.

But as he saw the wall rise higher--higher--as he saw the last brick

fastened in its place solid, immovable from within, and that without

strife or opposition, he doubted not but that there was some concealed

exit by which St. Renan had escaped, and he descended hastily and

hurried homeward.

Now came the lady’s trial--the trial that shall prove to De Ploermel

whether his vengeance was complete. She was led in with Rose, a

prisoner. _Lettres de cachet_ had been obtained, when the treason of

some wretched subordinate had revealed the secret of her intended

flight with Raoul; and the officers had seized the wife by the

connivance of the shameless husband.

“See!” he said, as she entered, “see, the fool suffered himself to be

walled up there in silence. There let him die in agony. You, madam, may

live as long as you please in the Bastile, _au secret_.”

She saw that all was lost--her lover’s sacrifice was made--she could

not save him! Should she, by a weak divulging of the truth, render his

grand devotion fruitless? Never!

Her pale cheek did not turn one shade the paler, but her keen eye

flashed living fire, and her beautiful lip writhed with loathing and

scorn irrepressible.

“It is thou who art the fool!” she said, “who hast made all this coil,

to wall up a poor cat in a cupboard, as it is thou who art the base

knave and shameless pandar, who has attempted to do murther, and all to

sell thine own wife to a corrupt and loathsome tyrant!”

All stood aghast at her fierce words, uttered with all the eloquence

and vehemence of real passion, but none so much as Rose, who had never

beheld her other than the gentlest of the gentle. Now she wore the

expression, and spoke with the tone of a young Pythoness, full of the

fury of the god.

She sprang forward as she uttered the last words, extricating herself

from the slight hold of the astonished officers, and rushed toward her

cowed and craven husband.

“But in all things, mean wretch,” she continued, in tones of fiery

scorn, “in all things thou art frustrate--thy vengeance is naught,

thy vile ambition naught, thyself and thy king, fools, knaves, and

frustrate equally, and now,” she added snatching the dagger which Raoul

had given her from the scabbard, “now die, infamous, accursed pandar!”

and with the word she buried the keen weapon at one quick and steady

stroke to the very hilt in his base and brutal heart.

Then, ere the corpse had fallen to the earth, or one hand of all those

that were stretched out to seize her had touched her person, she smote

herself mortally with the same reeking weapon, and only crying out in a

dear, high voice, “Bear witness, Rose, bear witness to my honor! Bear

witness all that I die spotless!” fell down beside the body of her

husband, and expired without a struggle or a groan.

Awfully was she tried, and awfully she died. Rest to her soul, if it be

possible.

The caitiff marquis de Ploermel perished, as she had said in all things

frustrated; for though his vengeance was in very deed complete, he

believed that it had failed, and in his very agony that failure was his

latest and his worst regret.

On the morrow, when St. Renan returned not to his home, the page gave

the alarm, and the fatal wall was torn down, but too late.

The gallant victim of love’s honor was no more. Doomed to a lingering

death he had died speedily, though by no act of his own. A blood vessel

had burst within, through the violence of his own emotions. Ignorant

of the fate of his sweet Melanie, he had died as he had lived, the

very soul of honor; and when they buried him, in the old chapel of his

Breton castle, beside his famous ancestors, none nobler lay around him;

and the brief epitaph they carved upon his stone was true, at least, if

it were short and simple, for it ran only thus--

=Raoul de St. Renan.

Fiel hasta la Muerte.=

LEGENDS

OF

SCOTLAND.

PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF MARY STUART.

CHASTELAR.

“Fired by an object so sublime,

What could I choose but strive to climb?

And as I strove I fell.

At least ’tis love, when hope is gone,

Through shame and ruin to love on.”--ANON.

The last flush of day had not yet faded from the west, although the

summer moon was riding above the verge of the eastern horizon, in a

flood of mellow glory, with the diamond-spark of Lucifer glittering

in solitary brightness at her side. It was one of those enchanting

evenings which, peculiar to the southern lands of Europe, visit, but at

far and fleeting intervals, the sterner clime of Britain. Not Italy,

however, could herself have boasted a more delicious twilight than

this, which now was waning into night, above the rude magnificence of

Scotland’s capital. The fantastic dwellings of the city, ridge above

ridge, loomed broadly to the left, partially veiled by those wreaths

of vapor, which have been the origin of its provincial name; while,

far above the misty indistinctness of the town, the glorious castle

towered aloft upon its craggy throne, displaying a hundred fronts

of massive shadow, and as many salient angles jutting abruptly into

sight. The lovely vale of the King’s park, with its velvet turf and

shadowy foliage, shone out in quiet lustre from beneath the dark-gray

buttresses of Arthur’s seat; while from the trim alleys and pleached

evergreens, which at that day formed a belt of lawn, and shrubbery, and

royal garden, around the venerable pile of Holyrood, the rich song of

the throstle--the nightingale of Scotland--came in repeated bursts upon

the ear.

Delightful as such an evening must naturally be to all who have

hearts awake to the influence of sweet sounds and lovely sights, how

inexpressibly soothing must it seem to one who, languishing beneath the

ungenial atmosphere of a northern region, and sighing for the bluer

skies and softer breezes of his fatherland, feels himself at once

transported, by the unusual aspect of the heavens, to the distant home

of his regrets! It was, perhaps, some fancied similarity to the nights

in which he had been wont to court the favor of the high-born dames

of France with voice and instrument, that had awakened the melody of

some foreign cavalier, more suitable perchance to the light murmurs of

the Seine than to the distant booming of the seas that lash the coasts

of Scotland. Such, however, was the illusion produced by the unwonted

softness of the hour, that the tinkling of a lute and the full, manly

voice of the singer did not at the moment seem so inconsistent to

the spirit of the country and of the times as in truth it was. The

words were French, and the air, though sweet, so melancholy, that

it left a vague sensation of pain upon the listener--as though none

but a heart diseased could give birth to notes so plaintive. “Pensez

à moi! pensez à moi!--noble dame--Pensez à moi!”--the burden of the

strain swelled clearly audible in the deepest tones of feeling,

although the intermediate words were lost amid the accompaniment of

the silver strings. Never, perhaps, since the unfortunate Chatelain

de Concy first chanted his extemporaneous farewell to the lady of his

heart, had his simple words been sung with taste or execution more

appropriate to their subject. In truth, it was impossible to listen

to the lay without feeling a conviction that the heart of the minstrel

was in his song. There were, moreover, moments in which a practised

ear might have discovered variations, not in the tune only, but in the

words, as the singer exerted his unrivalled powers to adapt the text,

which he had chosen, to his own peculiar circumstances; nor would

it have required more than a common degree of fancy to have traced

the sounds, “O Reine Marie!” mingling with the proper refrain of the

chant, although it would have been less easy to distinguish whether the

fervent expression with which the words were invested was applied to

an object of mortal idolatry or of immortal adoration. It would seem,

however, that there were listeners near, to whom this doubt had not so

much as once occurred; for in a shadowy bower, not far distant from the

spot where the concealed musician sang, there stood a group of ladies,

drinking with breathless eagerness every note that issued from his

lips. Foremost in place, as first in rank, was one whose charms have

been said and sung, not by the poet and the romancer only, but by the

muse of history herself, who almost seems to have dipped her graver

pencil in the hues of fiction when describing Mary Stuart of Scotland.

Her form, rather below than above the middle stature of the female

form, was fashioned with such perfect elegance, that it was equally

calculated to exhibit the extremes of grace and majesty. Her ringlets

of the deepest auburn, glancing in the light with a glossy, golden

lustre, and melting into shadows of dark chestnut; the statue-like

contour of her Grecian head; her eyes, on which no man had ever gazed

with impunity to his heart--more languid and at the same time far more

brilliant than those of created beauty; her mouth, whose wreathed smile

might have almost tempted angels to descend and worship; her swan-like

neck of dazzling whiteness; and, above all, the glorious blending of

feminine ease with regal dignity--of condescension and affability

toward the meanest of her fellow-men, with the exalted consciousness of

all that was due, not to her rank, but to herself--combined to render

her perhaps the loveliest, as after-events proved her beyond a doubt

the most unfortunate, of queens or women. Sorrow at this time had

scarcely cast a shadow on that transparent brow; or, if an occasional

recollection of the ill-fated Francis did leave a trace behind, it

was a sadness of that gentle and spiritualized description which is,

perhaps, a more attractive expression to be marked in the features of

a lovely woman, than the full blaze of happiness and self-enjoyment.

Simple almost to plainness in her attire, the queen of Scotland moved

before her four attendant Maries, ten thousand times more lovely from

the contrast of her unadornment to the gorgeous dresses of those noble

dames, who had been selected to be near her person, with especial

regard, not to exalted rank alone, or to the distinctive name, which

they bore in common with their royal mistress, but to intellect, and

beauty, and all those accomplishments which, general as they are in

our day, were then at least as highly valued for their rarity, as for

their intrinsic merits. A robe of sable velvet, with the closely-fitted

_corsage_ peculiar to the age in which she lived, a falling ruff from

the fairest looms of Flanders, and the picturesque head-gear which has

ever borne her name, with its double tressure of pearls, and a single

string of the same precious jewels around her neck, completed Mary’s

dress, while rustling trains of many-colored satin, guarded with costly

laces and stomachers studded with gems, bracelets, and carcanets, and

chains of goldsmith’s work, gleamed on the persons of her ladies.

Still the demeanor of the little group was more in accordance to the

simplicity of the mistress than to the splendor of the others. No rigid

etiquette was there; none of that high and haughty ceremonial which,

in the courtly festivals of the rival queen of England, froze up the

feelings even of those trusted few who bore with the caprices, in

seeking for the favors, of Elizabeth. The titles of grace and majesty

were lisped indeed by the lips of the fair damsels, but the character

of their remarks, the polished raillery, the light laugh, and the

freedom of intercourse, were rather those of the younger members of a

family toward an elder sister, than of a court-circle toward a powerful

queen. As the last notes of the song died away, she who was nearest to

Mary’s person whispered in a sportive tone, “Your grace has heard that

lute before--”

“In France, Carmichael,” answered Mary, with a breath so deeply drawn

as almost to resemble a sigh, “in our beautiful France; when, when

shall I look upon that lovely land again.”

While she was yet speaking the music recommenced. A dash of impatience

was mingled with the plaintive sweetness of the strain, and the

words “_pensez à moi_” swept past their ears with all the energy of

disappointed feelings.

“It is the voice--”

“Of the sieur de Chastelar,” interrupted the queen; “we would thank the

gentleman for his minstrelsey. Seyton, _ma mignonne_, hie thee across

yon woodbine-maze, and summon this night-warbler to our presence.”

With an arch smile the lively girl bounded forward, and was for an

instant lost among the foliage of the garden.

“Dost thou remember, Carmichael,” said the queen, whose thoughts had

been reflected by the well-remembered strains--“dost thou remember our

sylvan festivals in the lovely groves of Versailles, with hound and

hawk for noonday pastime, and the lute, the song, and the unfettered

dance upon the green sward, beneath moons unclouded by the hazy gloom

of this dark Scotland’s?”

“And does your grace remember,” laughed the other in reply, “a certain

_fête_ in which the palm of minstrelsey was awarded by your royal hand

to a masked hunter of the forest? Yet was his bearing somewhat gentle

for a ranger of the green-wood, and his hand was passing white to have

handled the tough bow-string? Does your grace’s memory serve to recall

the air whose executions gained that prize of harmony? Methinks it did

run somewhat thus,”--and she warbled the same notes which had formed

the burthen of the serenade.

Whether some distant recollections conjured up the mantling color to

the cheeks of Mary, or whether she dreaded the misconstruction of the

serenader, on his hearing his own tender words repeated in a voice of

female melody, it was with brow, neck and bosom of the deepest crimson

that she turned to Mary Carmichael--

“Peace, silly minion!” she said, with momentary dignity; “wouldst

have it said that Mary of Scotland is so light of bearing as to trill

love-ditties in reply to unseen ballad-mongers? Nay, weep not neither,

Marie; if I spoke somewhat shortly, ’twas that the gentleman was even

then approaching. Cheer up, my girl; thou hast, we know it well, a

kind, a gentle, and a trusty heart, though nature has coupled the gift

to that of a thoughtless head and random tongue. Take not on thus, or I

shall blame myself in that I checked thee, though surely not unkindly.

Mary of Stuart loves better far to look upon a smiling lip than a

wet eye, even if it be a stranger’s--much less that of one whom she

loves--as I love thee, Carmichael.”

There was, perhaps, no circumstance more remarkable than the power

which, at every period of her momentous life, Mary appears to have

possessed of winning, as it were at a glance, the affections of all

who came in contact with her. The deep devotion, not of the barons and

the military chiefs alone, who bled in defence of her cause, but of

the ladies, the pages, the chamberlains of her court, nay, of the very

grooms and servitors, with whom she could have held no intercourse

beyond a smile or inclination of the head, in return for their lowly

obeisance, was ever ready for the proof, when circumstances might

demand its exercise. Not shown by outward acts of heroism only, or by

those deeds which men are wont to perform, no less at the instigation

of their wishes for renown, or of rivalry with some more famed

competitor, this devotion was constantly manifested in the eagerness

of all around her to execute even the most menial duties to Mary’s

satisfaction; in the promptness to anticipate her slightest wish; in

the lively joy which one kind word from her could awaken, as if by

magic, on every brow; and, above all, in the utter despondency which

seemed to sink down upon those whom she might deem it necessary to

check, even with the slightest remonstrance. In the present instance

the sensitive girl, to whom the queen had uttered her commands in

the nervous quickness of excitement, rather than with any feeling of

harshness or offended pride, felt, it was evident, more bitterness of

grief at the rebuke of one whom she loved no less than she revered,

than she would have experienced beneath the pressure of some real

calamity. As quickly, however, as the sense of sorrow had been excited,

did it pass away, before the returning smiles, the soft caresses, and

the winning manners of the most fascinating of women the most amiable

of superiors.

Scarcely had the tears of Mary Carmichael ceased to flow, when

the footsteps, which for some moments previously had been heard

approaching, sounded close at hand; the branches of the embowering

shrubbery were gently put asunder, and the lady Seyton stood again

before the queen, attended by a gentleman of noble aspect, and whose

very gesture was fraught with that easy and graceful politeness which,

perhaps, showed even more to advantage in that iron age and warlike

country, displayed, as it often was, in contrast to the rude demeanor

and stern simplicity of the warrior lords of Scotland, than in his

native France.

The sieur de Chastelar was at this time in the very prime of youthful

manhood, and might have been some few years, and but few, the senior

of the lovely being before whose presence he bent in adoration

humbler, and more fervently expressed, than the reverence due from a

mere subject to a mortal queen. Tall and fairly-proportioned, with

a countenance in which almost feminine softness of expression was

blended, with an aspect of the eye and lip, which proved the vicinity

of bolder and more manly qualities, slumbering but not extinct, he

seemed at the first glance a man most eminently qualified to win a

female heart. And who, that looked upon the broad and massive brow, and

the quick glance of that eye, fraught with intelligence, could doubt

but that the mind within was equal to the more perishable beauties of

the form in which it was encompassed? And when to all this was added,

that the sieur de Chastelar had already won a name in his green youth

that ranked with those of gray-haired veterans in the lists of glory;

that in all manly exercises, as in all softer accomplishments, he owned

no superior; that the most skilful master of defence, the far-famed

_Vicentio Saviola_, confessed De Chastelar his equal in the quickness

of eye, the readiness of hand and foot which had combined to render

him the most distinguished swordsman of the day; that the wildest

and most untameable chargers that ever were compelled to undergo

the _manége_, might as well have striven to shake off a portion of

themselves, as to dismount De Chasteler by any display of violence

and power; that his hand could draw the cloth-yard arrow to the head,

and speed it to its aim as truly as the fleetest archer that ever

twanged a bow in Sherwood; that he moved in the stately measure of the

pavon, or the livelier _galliarde_, with that grace peculiar to his

nation; that, in the richness of his voice, his execution and taste on

lute or guitar, he might have vied with the sons of Italy herself;

in short, that all perfections which were deemed most requisite to

form a gentleman were united in De Chastelar, what female heart, that

was not proof to all the allurements of love or fancy, could hope to

make an adequate resistance? Young, handsome, romantic, ardent in his

hopes, enthusiastic almost to madness in his affections, he had been

captivated years before in the gay salons of the French capitol, by the

beauty and irresistible fascinations of the princess.

In the intercourse of French society, which even in the times of

the _Medici_, as it has been in all succeeding ages, was far more

liberal in its distinctions, and less restricted by the formalities

of etiquette, than in any other court, a thousand opportunities had

occurred, by which the youthful cavalier had profited to rivet the

attention of the princess; at every _carousel_ he bore her colors; in

every masque he introduced some delicate allusion, some soft flattery,

palpable to her alone; in every contest of musical skill, which yet

survived in Paris, the sole remnant of the troubadours, some covert

traces of his passion might be discovered, if not by every ear, at

least by that of Mary. Intoxicated as she was, at this stage of her

life, by the adulation of all, by the consciousness of beauty, power,

and rank, far above all her fellows, the queen of Scotland owed much

of her misery in after-years to the unclouded brilliancy of her

youthful prospects, and to the wide distinction between the manners

of that court, in which her happiest hours were spent; and of her

northern subjects, by whom her _gaieté de cour_, her love for society

less formal than the routine of courts, and her predilections for

all innocent amusements, were ever looked upon in the light of grave

derelictions from decorum and morality.

That she had regarded the gallant boy, whose accomplishments were so

constantly before her eyes, with favorable inclinations was not to be

doubted; and that at times she had lavished upon him marks of her good

will in rather too profuse a degree, was no less true; but whether

this line of conduct was dictated merely by a natural impulse, which

ever leads us to distinguish those whom we approve from the common

herd of our acquaintance, or by a warmer feeling, can never now be

ascertained. It mattered not, however, to the youth, from which cause

the conduct of the lovely princess was derived; it was enough for him

that she had marked his attentions, that she had deigned to look upon

him with favorable eyes, that she might at some future period learn to

love.

Not long, however, was it permitted to him to indulge in those fair

but fallacious dreams; the marriage of the Scottish princess with the

royal Francis was ere long publicly announced, the ceremonies of the

betrothal, and lastly of the wedding itself, were solemnized with

all the pomp and splendor of the mightiest realm in Europe, and the

aspirations of the united nations ascended in behalf of Francis and his

lovely bride.

It was then, for the first time, that Mary was rendered fully aware

of the misery which her unthinking freedom had entailed upon the

ardent nature of De Chastelar; it was then, for the first time,

that she learned how deep and powerful had been the passion which

he had nourished in his heart of hearts--that she was awakened to a

consciousness that she was loved, not wisely, but too well. Heretofore

she had believed, that the eagerness of the gay and gallant Frenchman

to display his equestrian skill, his musical accomplishments, before

her presence, and as it were in her behalf, and the devotedness with

which he turned all his powers to a single object, were rather to be

attributed to a desire of gaining general approbation as a gentle

cavalier, a slave to beauty, and a favored servant of earth’s loveliest

lady, than to a passion, the romance of which, considering the wide

distinction of their sphere, would have amounted to actual insanity.

Now she perceived, to her deep regret, that the arrow had been shot

home, and that the barb had taken hold too firmly to be disengaged

by a sudden effort, how vehement soever. She saw, in the pale cheek

and hollow eye, that he had cherished hopes which reason and reality

must bid him discard, at once and for ever; but which he yet had not

the fortitude to tear up by the roots, and cast into oblivion. For

a time he had wandered about, a spectre of his former person, among

the festivities and happiness of all around him, paler every day, and

more abstracted in his mien; then he had exiled himself at once from

rejoicings in which he could have no share, and had buried his hopes,

his anxieties, his misery, in the loneliness of his own secluded

chamber.

Thus had passed weeks and months; and when at length he had come forth

again to join the world and all its vanities, he was, as it seemed to

all, a wiser and a sadder man. The queen, ever kind and affectionate in

her disposition, imagining that he had struggled with the demon which

possessed him, and cast his hopeless love behind him, met his return

to the courtly circle with her wonted condescension. On his preferring

his request to be installed her chamberlain, willing to mark her high

sense of his imagined integrity, in thus manfully shaking off his

weakness, she granted his request; and trusting that his own acuteness

would readily perceive the distinction between royal favor to a trusted

servant and feminine affections to a preferred lover, assumed nothing

of formality or etiquette, more than had characterized their former

days of unrestricted intercourse. Her own first trial followed; the

first year of her nuptials had not yet flown, when the gallant Francis,

the earliest, the worthy object of her young love, sickened with a

disease which from its very commencement permitted but slight hopes of

his recovery. Then came the wretchedness of anxiety, hoping all things,

yet too well aware that all was hopeless; the watchings by his feverish

bed, when watching, it was too obvious, could be of no avail; the

agony when the announcement that all was over, long foreseen, but never

to be endured, burst on her mind; the long, heart-rending sorrow, the

repinings after pleasures that were never to return; and, last of all,

the cold, stern carelessness of despair. She awoke at length from her

lethargy of wo; awoke to leave the lovely climate which she had learned

almost to deem her own; to be torn from the friends whom she had loved,

and the society of which she had been the brightest gem, to return to

a country which, though it was the country of her birth, had never

conjured up to her imagination any pictures save of a gloomy hue and

melancholy nature.

A few who had served her in the sunny land of France adhered to her

with unshaken resolution, despising all inconveniences, setting at

naught all dangers, save that separation from a mistress, whom, to have

attended once, was to love for ever. Among those few was De Chastelar.

The alteration in her condition had undoubtedly suggested to the

widowed queen the necessity of an alteration in her conduct toward De

Chastelar, particularly when it was added, that familiarity between a

creature so young and lovely as herself and a gentleman so noble, even

in his melancholy, as the chamberlain, would have at once excited the

indignation of her stern and rigid subjects. In these circumstances it

would perhaps have been a wiser, though not a more considerate plan,

to have confided the cause of her embarrassment to the causer of it,

and to have requested his absence from her court. It was not, however,

in Mary’s nature to give pain, if she could possibly avoid it, to the

meanest animal, much less to a friend valued and esteemed, as he who

was the innocent cause of her anxiety. She adopted, therefore, what,

being always the most easy, is ever the most dangerous, an intermediate

course. In public De Chastelar received no marks of approbation from

the queen, much less of regard from the woman; but in her hours of

retirement, when surrounded by the ladies of her court, the most of

whom had followed her footsteps northward from gay Paris, she delighted

to efface from his mind the recollections of neglect before the eyes

of the censorious Scots, by a delicacy of attention, and a warmth of

friendship, which, while it fully answered her end of soothing his

wounded feelings, led him to cherish ideas most fatal in the end to

his own happiness, and to that of the fair being whom he so adored. It

was with a heightened color and throbbing breast that Mary turned to

address her unconfessed lover, yet there was no flutter in the clear,

soft voice with which she spoke.

“We would thank,” she said, “the sieur de Chastelar for the delightful

sounds by which he has rendered our walk on this sweet evening even

more agreeable than the mild air and cloudless heaven could have done

without his minstrelsey. Yet ’twas a mournful strain, De Chastelar,”

she continued, “and one which, if we err not, flows from a wounded

heart. Would that we knew the object of so true a servant’s worship,

that we might whisper our royal pleasure in her ear, that she should

list the suit of one whom we regard so highly. Is she in truth so

obdurate, this fair of thine, De Chastelar? she must be hard of heart

to slight so gallant a cavalier.”

“Not so, your grace,” replied the astonished lover, in a voice scarcely

less sonorous than the music he had made so lately. “She to whom all my

vows are paid, she who has ever owned the passionate aspirations of a

devoted heart, is as pre-eminently raised in all the sweet and amiable

sentiments of the mind as is unrivalled beauty above all mortal beings.”

For an instant the queen was dumb; she had hoped, by affecting

ignorance of his sentiments, that she should have been enabled to make

him comprehend the madness, the utter inutility of his passion, and

she felt that she had failed; that words had been addressed to her,

which, however she might feign to others that she had not perceived

their bearing, he must be well aware she could not possibly have failed

to understand. It was with an altered mien and with an air of cold and

haughty dignity, that she again addressed him as she passed onward

toward the palace.

“We wish thee, then, fair sir, a better fortune hereafter, and until

then good night.” Without uttering a syllable in reply, he bowed

himself almost to the earth; nor did he raise his head again until

the form he loved to look upon had vanished from his sight: then

slowly lifting his eyes he gazed wistfully after her, dashed his hand

violently upon his brow, and turning aside rushed hastily from the spot.

An hour had scarcely elapsed before the lights were extinguished

throughout the vaulted halls of Holyrood; the guards were posted for

the night, the officers had gone their rounds, the ladies of the

royal circle were dismissed, and all was darkness and silence. In

Mary’s chamber a single lamp was burning in a small recess, before

a beautifully-executed painting of the virgin, but light was not

sufficient to penetrate the obscurity which reigned in the many angles

and alcoves of that irregular apartment, although the moonbeams were

admitted through the open casement.

Her garb of ceremony laid aside, her lovely shape scantily veiled

by a single robe of spotless linen, her auburn tresses flowing

in unrestrained luxuriance almost to her feet, if she had been a

creature of perfect human beauty, when viewed in all the pomp of royal

pageantry, she now appeared a being of supernatural loveliness. Her

small white feet, unsandalled, glided over the rich carpet with a grace

which a slight degree of fancy might have deemed the motion peculiar

to the inhabitants of another world. For an instant, ere she turned

to her repose, she leaned against the carved mullions of the window,

and gazed pensively, and it might be sadly, upon the garden, where

she had so lately parted from the unhappy youth, whose life was thus

embittered by that very feeling which, above all others, should have

been its consolation. Withdrawing her eyes from the moonlit scene, she

knelt before the lamp and the shrine which it illuminated, and her

whispered orisons arose pure as the source from which they flowed; the

prayers of a weak and humble mortal, penitent for every trivial error,

breathing all confidence to Him who alone can protect or pardon; the

prayers of a queen for her numerous children, and last, and holiest of

all, a woman’s prayers for her unfortunate admirer. Yes, she prayed for

Chastelar, that strength might be given to him from on high, to bear

the crosses of a miserable life, and that by Divine mercy the hopeless

love might be uprooted from his breast. The words burst passionately

from her lips, her whole frame quivered with the excess of her emotion,

and the big tears fell like rain from her uplifted eyes. While she

was yet in the very flood of passion a sigh was breathed, so clearly

audible, that the conviction flashed like lightning on her soul, that

this most secret prayer was listened to by other ears than those of

heavenly ministers. Terror, acute terror took possession of her mind,

banishing, by its superior violence, every less engrossing idea. She

snatched the lamp from its niche, waved it slowly around the chamber,

and there, in the most hallowed spot of her widowed chamber, a spy

upon her unguarded moments, stood a dark figure. Even in that moment

of astonishment and fear, as if by instinct, the beautiful instinct of

purely female modesty, she snatched a velvet mantle from the seat on

which it had been cast aside, and veiled her person even before she

spoke--“O God! it is De Chastelar!”

“Sweet queen,” replied the intruder, “bright, beautiful ruler of my

destinies, pardon--”

“What ho!” she screamed, in notes of dread intensity, “_à moi, à moi

mes Français_. My guards! Seyton! Carmichael! Fleming! will ye leave

your queen alone! alone with treachery and black dishonor! Villain!

slave!” she cried, turning her flashing eyes upon him, her whole form

swelling as it were with all the fury of injured innocence, “didst thou

dare to think that Mary--Mary, the wife of Francis--the anointed queen

of Scotland, would brook thine infamous addresses? Nay, kneel not, or I

spurn thee! What ho! will no one aid in mine extremity?”

“Fear naught from me,” faltered the wretched Chastelar, but with a

voice like that of some inspired Pythoness she broke in--“Fear! thinkst

thou that I could fear a thing, an abject coward thing like thee? a

wretch that would exult in the infamy of one whom he pretends to love?

Fear thee! by heavens! if I could have feared, contempt must have

forbidden it.”

“Nay, Mary, hear me! hear me but one word, if that word cost my life--”

“Thy life! hadst thou ten thousand lives, they would be but a feather

in the scale against thy monstrous villany. What ho!” again she cried,

stamping with impotent anger at the delay of her attendants, “treason!

my guards! treason!”

At length the passages rang with the hurried footsteps of the startled

inmates of the palace; with torch and spear, and brandished blades,

they rushed into the apartment; page, sentinel, and chamberlain, ladies

with dishevelled hair, and faces blanched with terror. The queen stood

erect in the centre of the room, pointing, with one white arm bare

to the shoulder, toward the wretched culprit, who, with folded arms,

and head erect, awaited his doom in unresisting silence. His naked

rapier, with which alone he might have foiled the united efforts of his

enemies, lay at his feet; his brow was white as sculptured marble, and

no less rigid, but his eyes glared wildly, and his lips quivered as

though he would have spoken.

The queen, still furious at the wrong which he had done her fame,

marked the expression. “Silence!” she cried--“degraded! wouldst thou

meanly beg thy forfeit life? Wert thou my father, thou shouldst die

to-morrow! Hence with the villain! Bid Maitland execute the warrant.

Ourself--ourself will sign it--away! Chastelar dies at daybreak!”

“’Tis well,” replied he, calmly, “it is well--the lips I love the best

pronounce my doom, and I die happy, since I die for Mary. Wouldst thou

but pity the offender, while thou dost doom the offence, De Chastelar

would not exchange his shortened span of life, and violent death, for

the brightest crown in Christendom. My limbs may die--my love will live

for ever! Lead on, minions; I am more glad to die than ye to slay!

Mary, beautiful Mary, think--think hereafter upon Chastelar!”

The guards passed onward; last of the group, unfettered and unmoved,

De Chastelar stalked after them. Once, ere he stooped beneath the

low-browed portal, he paused, placed both hands on his heart, bowed

lowly, and then pointed upward, as he chanted once again the words,

“_Pensez à moi, noble dame, pensez à moi_.” As he vanished from her

presence she waved her hand impatiently to be left alone--and all

night long she traversed and re-traversed the floor of her chamber,

in paroxysms of the fiercest despair. The warrant was brought to

her--silently, sternly, she traced her signature beneath it; not a

sign of sympathy was on her pallid features, not a tremor shook her

frame; she was passionless, majestic, and unmoved. The secretary left

the chamber on his fatal errand, and Mary was again a woman. Prostrate

upon her couch she lay, sobbing and weeping as though her very soul was

bursting from her bosom, defying all consolation, spurning every offer

at remedy. “’Tis done!” she would say, “’tis done! I have preserved my

fame, and murdered mine only friend!”

The morning dawned slowly, and the heavy bells of all the churches

clanged the death-peal of De Chastelar. The tramp of the cavalry

defiling from the palace-gates struck on her heart as though each

hoof dashed on her bosom. An hour passed away, the minute-bells still

tolling; the roar of a culverin swept heavily downward from the castle,

and all was over. He had died as he had lived, undaunted--as he had

lived, devoted! “Mary, divine Mary,” were his latest words, “I love

in death, as I loved in life, thee, and thee only.” The axe drank his

blood, and the queen of Scotland had not a truer servant left behind

than he, whom, for a moment’s frenzy, she was compelled to slay. Yet

was his last wish satisfied; for though the queen might not relent,

the woman did forgive; and in many a mournful hour did Mary think on

Chastelar.

RIZZIO.

_Bru._ Do you know them?

_Luc._ No, sir; their hats are plucked about their brows,

And half their faces buried in their cloaks,

That by no means I may discover them

By any marks of favor.--JULIUS CÆSAR.

The shadows of an early evening, in the ungenial month of March,

were already gathering among the narrow streets and _wynds_ of the

Scottish metropolis. There was a melancholy air of solitude about the

grim and dusky edifices, which towered to the height of twelve or

thirteen stories against the gray horizon. No lights streamed from the

casements, no voices sounded in loud revelry or chastened merriment

from the dwellings of the gloomy quarter in which the scene of our

narrative is laid. The cheerless aspect of the night, together with the

drizzling rain, which fell in silent copiousness, had banished every

human being from the streets; and, except the smoke which eddied from

the dilapidated chimneys, and was instantly beat down to earth by the

violence of the shower, there was no sign of any other inhabitants,

than the famished dogs which were snarling over the relics of some

thrice-picked bone. Suddenly the sharp clatter of hoofs, in rapid

motion over the broken pavement, rose above the splashing of the

flooded gutters, betokening the approach of men; and ere a minute had

elapsed two horsemen, gallantly mounted, rode hotly up the street. The

foremost bestriding, with the careless ease of an accomplished rider,

a jennet, whose thin jaws, expanded nostril, and flashing eye, no less

than the deerlike springiness of its gait, and its unrivalled symmetry,

proclaimed it sprung from the best blood of the desert, was of a figure

that could not be looked upon, however slightly, without awakening a

sense of interest, perhaps of admiration, in all beholders.

His countenance, of an oval form, and of a darker hue than the

blue-eyed sons of northern latitudes are wont to exhibit--the full

and somewhat wild expression of his dark eye, the melancholy smile

which played upon his curling lip, pencilled mustache, and the peaked

beard--contributing to form a face that Antonio Vandyke would have

loved to paint, and after ages to admire, when invested with the life

of his rich coloring. His dress of russet velvet slashed with satin,

his feathered cap, with its gay fanfarona[E] and enamelled medal, his

jeweled rapier, and the bright spurs in his falling buskins, were well

adapted to the agile limbs and slender, though symmetrical proportions

of the horseman.

[E] The _Fanfarona_ was a richly-fashioned chain of goldsmith’s

work, not worn about the neck, but twisted in two or

more circuits around the rim of the cap, or bonnet, and

terminating in a heavy medal. It was probably of Spanish

origin, but was much in vogue in the courts of Mary and

Elizabeth.

The second rider was a boy, whose black and scarlet liveries--the

well-known colors of all servitors of the Scottish crown--were but

imperfectly hidden by the frieze cloak which had been cast over them,

evidently for the purposes of concealment, rather than of comfort; yet

he, too, like the gallant whom he followed--if any faith was to be

placed in the evidence of raven hair and olive complexion--owed his

birth to some more southern clime.

After winding rapidly through several dim and unfrequented lanes, the

leading horseman, checking his speed, gazed around him with a doubtful

and bewildered eye.