ARTHUR BLANE;
OR,
THE HUNDRED CUIRASSIERS.
BY JAMES GRANT,
AUTHOR OF 'THE ROMANCE OF WAR,' ETC.
'He that would France win,
Must at Scotland first begin!'
_Old Proverb._
LONDON:
J. & C. BROWN & CO., AVE MARIA LANE.
1858
LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. The Pretty Mask
II. A Case of Rapiers
III. The Château
IV. The Bond of Makrent
V. The Countess's Boudoir
VI. Madame opens the Trenches
VII. Charenton
VIII. The Marechal de Logis
IX. We Dine at the Fleur-de-lis
X. The Scots in France
XI. My First Parade
XII. The Moth and the Candle
XIII. Louis the Thirteenth
XIV. The Oak Cabinet
XV. Nicola
XVI. War
XVII. The March from Paris
XVIII. The Two Abbés
XIX. Tue Campaign in Alsace
XX. The Decoy
XXI. A Charge of the Scottish Guard
XXII. A Dangerous Boast
XXIII. The Bastion de Louise
XXIV. Montjoie St. Denis
XXV. Letters for Paris
XXVI. The Castle of Versailles
XXVII. Clara's Miniature--and how it proved a talisman
XXVIII. Marion de l'Orme
XXIX. Arrested
XXX. The Bastille
XXXI. Number 32
XXXII. Happiness
XXXIII. In which I become an Abbé
XXXIV. My Pretty Penitent
XXXV. In Love with a Soubrette
XXXVI. Our Journey together
XXXVII. A Haunted Forest
XXXVIII. What happened there
XXXIX. What happened after
XL. The Daughter of Macbeth
XLI. Startling Tidings
XLII. Vaudemont
XLIII. L'Homme propose--Dieu dispose
XLIV. Taken Prisoner
XLV. Nanci
XLVI. Surprise and Grief
XLVII. The Palace
XLVIII. Charles IV.
XLIX. Defiance
L. Rather Political
LI. A Last Interview
LII. The Chapel in the Wood
LIII. The Tower of Phalsbourg
LIV. The Count de Bitche
LV. The Turret
LVI. A Letter to Marie Louise
LVII. The Random Shot
LVIII. The Sally
LIX. The Parole
LX. A Rescue
LXI. Isabel Douglas
LXII. A Midnight March
LXIII. The Ambush
LXIV. Madame la Duchesse
LXV. Appointed Captain of Lutzelstein
LXVI. The Castle of Lutzelstein
LXVII. Viscount Dundbrennan
LXVIII. The Surprise
LXIX. Husband and Wife
LXX. A Catastrophe
LXXI. The Viscount's Advice
LXXII. The King's Mandate
LXXIII. How we Obeyed it
Conclusion
Notes
PREFACE
In the following pages are narrated much of real life and adventure,
with much that is historically true; but these passages I leave to
the inquiring reader to discover or to separate. The localities are
all described from old works or other sources, as they existed in the
time of the hero.
Many of the characters are real, and belong to history, such as the
Vicomte de Turenne, De Toneins, Vaudemont, Raoul d'Ische, the
Marechal de la Force, the Marquis of Gordon, and others. The Count
de Bitche was also a veritable personage who disgraced those days,
and his abduction of the Countess of Lutzelstein was a real event.
The story of Tushielaw is an old Scottish legend.
So great was the French spirit for duelling in that age, that many of
the clergy wore swords. Thus, in 1617, we find the Cardinal de Guise
_drawing his rapier_ upon the Duke of Nevers Gonzaga, and it is
notorious that Cardinal de Retz fought a great many duels when, as an
abbé, he was soliciting the Archbishopric of Paris.
Some notes of interest, regarding the Scots and Scottish Guard in
France will be found at the end of this Romance, in which I have
endeavoured to portray something of the free and reckless character
of the French court and army during the reign of Louis XIII.,--a
state of morals gradually introduced by his more dissolute
predecessors, and which, under the Grand Monarque, increased,
together with tyranny and misgovernment, until the foundations of the
throne were sapped, the old dynasty of France expatriated, and her
nobility destroyed.
_Edinburgh, April_ 1858.
ARTHUR BLANE;
OR,
THE HUNDRED CUIRASSIERS.
CHAPTER I.
THE PRETTY MASK.
It was about the end of April, 1634--twelve had tolled from the huge
dark towers of Notre Dame, and the night was dark and gusty.
I found myself bewildered among the intricate and gloomy streets of
old Paris; having lost the way to my hotel, the _Golden Fleur de
Lys_, in the ancient Rue d'Ecosse. In my ignorance of the
thoroughfares and of their names, having been repeatedly misled by
wicked gamins and practical jokers, midnight found me completely
entangled among the narrow alleys that bordered on the terrible
locality of the Place de la Grève, the lofty, quaint and peculiar
mansions of which towered on three sides, while on the fourth, lay
the Seine, whose muddy waters have hidden the gashed corpse of many a
murdered man--have swept away the red débris of many a massacre, and
been the last refuge of many a desperate and despairing heart.
Against the dark sky, I could distinguish the darker outlines of the
steep sharp gables that overhung the Place, with their fronts covered
by grotesque sculptures in wood and stone. A few lights twinkled
feebly amid the masses of that great pillared edifice of the days of
Charles V., named from him. the Maison au Dauphin; and the
flickering oil lamps that swung mournfully to and fro, at the ends of
the dark alley, cast a sickly light upon the fantastic projections of
the houses, and on the whitewashed turret of the ancient pillory and
stone gibbet, whereon so many thousands of human beings, during ages
past, have died in agony and disgrace.
Here then, in this place of pleasant associations, I--who had arrived
in Paris but the night before--found myself alone, wandering in
ignorance of the way, at midnight--I, a Scot and stranger, with my
whole worldly possessions about me, to wit, ten of those gay louis
d'ors (first coined by Louis XIII.), a good suit of black velvet, a
fair cloak of serge de Berri, worth about ten pistoles; but having a
good sword, that had notched more than one crown in its time, with a
pair of steel Scottish pistols in my girdle engraved with my coat of
arms and the significant legend,
"He who gives _quickly_, gives _twice_."
Moreover I was only twenty years of age--active, determined even to
recklessness, and at all times master of my weapons, if not of my
temper.
In a secret pocket of my doublet, I carried a letter of
recommendation from Esme Stuart, who was Lord of Aubigne, Duke of
Lennox, Lord High Admiral and Great Chamberlain of Scotland, to
Madame Clara, the mistress of Louis XIII., who had created her
Comtesse d'Amboise. In wit and beauty she was the rival of Ninon de
l'Enclos, and the superior of the lovely Marion de l'Orme, being one
of those bold, artful, and beautiful women who in all ages have
entangled the politics and swayed the destinies of France; and on
this missive from the duke, who had known Madame Clara in her girlish
days, when she was a dame d'honneur, and he a gay captain of the
Scottish archers--and had known her more intimately, perhaps, than
the most Christian king could have relished--all my hope of success
in the French service depended; for by the ruin and misfortunes which
their own patriotism had brought upon my family, I was landless,
homeless, all but penniless and an outcast from my country--a country
where it is ever the doom and curse of patriotism and purity of
spirit to be stifled and crushed under the heels of envy, calumny,
avarice, and sectarianism.
The last note of the vast bell of Notre Dame de Paris, had pealed
away over the darkened city, when I paused and looked about me.
The ends of the streets and alleys were closed by iron chains, over
which I had fallen more than once. None of the city watch were
visible, and save myself no one seemed abroad, for I heard no sound
save the mournful creaking of the oil lamps, which swung, few and far
between, in the centre of the way, or the murmur of the river as it
chafed against the wooden abutments of the quay and poured through
the arches of the Pont de Notre Dame.
While surveying the river on one side, and the pillared recesses of
the Maison au Dauphin on the other, espying a fancied lurker in every
shadowy depth, all the old stories I had heard of Paris floated
through my mind; for I had been told that there were quarters of the
city, such as the infamous Cour des Miracles, into which neither the
sergeants of the Provost, nor the officers of the Chatelet dared to
venture--strongholds of vice and villany, where mohawks, midnight
assassins, house-breakers, cloak-snatchers, cut-purses, Spanish
gypsies, Italian musicians, German mountebanks, Jew vendors of quack
medicine, and women whose fall, like that of angels, had brought them
far from heaven, repaired by day; and from whence, like a living and
pestilent flood, they issued by night to ensnare, and waylay the
unwary and the wandering.
Then there were lacqueys, pages, nobles, and gallants, who went about
masked, muffled, and armed to the teeth, fighting the watch,
insulting the peaceful, carrying off pretty girls, _sabre à la main_,
and committing such outrages that in 1607 it was computed that since
the accession of Henry IV the number of French gentlemen slain in
duels alone amounted to _four thousand_.*
* Lomenie--Mém. Hist. de France.
I thought of these things, and keeping my cloak well about me with
one hand, kept the other on the pommel of my sword.
Turning to quit the Place de la Grève (I have learned all the local
names since that eventful night), I stood a moment irresolute whether
to take the alley which leads into the Rue Coutellerie and from
thence towards the Faubourg St. Martin, when a cry arrested my steps.
It seemed to come from the shadow of Rolande's Tower, an old building
half Roman and half Gothic, in a cell of which Madame de Rolande, the
daughter of a French crusader, died of grief in the days of St.
Louis, and which stands at the corner of the Place, near the Rue de
la Tannerie and close to the river.
Then a woman rushed towards me exclaiming,
'Monsieur, if you are a gentleman you will protect me!'
'With my life, madame,' I replied.
'With your sword would be more to the purpose,' said she, as I took
her hand; 'by your voice you are a Scottish archer?'
'Would to heaven I were! I am but a poor gentleman, forced to leave
his own country and seek military service in France.'
'Your name--'
'Arthur Blane, of Blanerne,--but who are they that pursue you?' I
asked, while endeavouring to make out her features, which were partly
concealed by a black velvet mask, through the holes of which her eyes
sparkled with no common animation. By her voice she seemed young; by
her bearing noble; and by her gloveless hands, which were small,
white, and soft, I was assured that she was beautiful. 'Lady,' I
resumed; 'to where shall I conduct you?'
'On your honour, I charge you neither to conduct nor follow me.'
'But you were molested--'
'By two tipsy gallants who, deeming me a grisette, I presume, have
pursued me all the way from the Logis de Lorraine; but hark! you hear
them,--I must leave you--'
'Alone--alone and here!'
'Yes.'
'Oh, madame, think of the hour, the place--your beauty--'
'Enough; a carriage waits me at the Pont de Notre Dame.'
''Tis well,' said I, unsheathing my sword; 'your molesters shall not
pass this way if I can prevent them.'
'Oh! a thousand thanks brave sir,' said she with a shudder on seeing
the shining steel, and holding out her ungloved hand.
'Madame, I risk my life for you, and you give me but your hand to
kiss!'
'What! do you too take me for a grisette?' she asked with a haughty
smile as she lifted her little mask. I kissed her cheek, and in a
moment she slipped from my arm and was gone! Her face was more than
beautiful; but I had no time to think upon it, and stood sword in
hand in the centre of the Quai de la Grève, barring the passage of
two men, cloaked, masked, and armed, who came boldly up to me,
singing with the brusque air of tipsy roisterers.