She wandered east, she wandered west,
She wandered out and in;
And at last into the very swine’s stythe
The queen brought forth a son.--Fause Foodrage
The morrow was Sunday, and in the old refectory, in the late afternoon,
a few Huguenots, warned by messages from the farm, met to profit by one
of their scanty secret opportunities for public worship. The hum of the
prayer, and discourse of the pastor, rose up through the broken vaulting
to Eustacie, still lying on her bed; for she had been much shaken by the
fatigues of the day and alarm of the night, and bitterly grieved, too,
by a message which Nanon conveyed to her, that poor Martin was in no
state to come for her in the next day; but he and his wife having been
seized upon by Narcisse and his men, and so savagely beaten in order to
force from them a confession of her hiding-place, that both were
lying helpless on their bed; and could only send an entreaty by the
trustworthy fool, that Rotrou would find means of conveying Madame into
Chollet in some cart of hay or corn, in which she could be taken past
the barriers.
But this was not to be. Good Nanon had sacrificed the sermon to creep up
to Eustacie, and when the congregation were dispersing in the dusk, she
stole down the stairs to her husband; and a few seconds after he was
hurrying as fast as _detours_ would allow him to Blaise’s farm. An hour
and a half later, Dame Perrine, closely blindfolded for the last mile,
was dragged up the spiral staircase, and ere the bandage was removed
heard Eustacie’s voice, with a certain cheeriness, say, ‘Oh! nurse; my
son will soon come!’
The full moon gave her light, and the woman durst not have any other,
save from the wood-fire that Nanon had cautiously lighted and screened.
The moonshine was still supreme, when some time later a certain ominous
silence and half-whisper between the two women at the hearth made
Eustacie, with a low cry of terror, exclaim, ‘Nurse, nurse, what means
this? Oh! He lives! I know he lives! Perrine, I command you tell me!’
‘Living! Oh, yes, my love, my Lady,’ answered Perrine, returning towards
her; ‘fair and perfect as the day. Be not disquieted for a moment.’
‘I will--I will disquiet myself,’ panted Eustacie, ‘unless you tell me
what is amiss.’
‘Nothing amiss,’ said Nanon, gruffly. ‘Madame will give thanks for this
fair gift of a daughter.’
It must be owned the words felt chill. She had never thought of this! It
was as if the being for whom she had dared and suffered so much, in the
trust that he would be Berenger’s representative and avenger, had failed
her and disappointed her. No defender, no paladin, no so to be proud of!
Her heart and courage sank down in her weakness as they had never done
before; and, without speaking, she turned her head away towards the
darkness, feeling as if had been for nothing, and she might as well
sink away in her exhaustion. Mere Perrine was more angry with Nanon than
conscious of her Lady’s weakness. ‘Woman, you speak as if you knew not
the blow to this family, and to all who hoped for better days. What,
that my Lady, the heiress, who ought to be in a bed of state, with
velvet curtains, lace pillows, gold caudle-cups, should be here in a
vile ruin, among owls and bats, like any beggar, and all for the sake,
not of a young Lord to raise up the family, but of a miserable little
girl! Had I known how it would turn out, I had never meddled in this mad
scheme.’
Before Nanon could express her indignation, Eustacie had turned her head
opened her eyes, and called out, ‘Miserable! Oh! what do you mean? Oh,
it is true, Nanon? is it well with her?
‘As well as heart could wish,’ answered Nanon, cheerily. ‘Small, but
a perfect little piece of sugar. There, Lady, she shall speak for
herself.’
And as Nanon laid the babe on the young mother’s bosom, the thrilling
touch at once put an end to all the repinings of the heiress, and awoke
far other instincts.
‘My child! my little one, my poor little orphan--all cruel to her! Oh,
no welcome even from thy mother! Babe, babe, pardon me, I will make it
up to thee; indeed I will! Oh! let me see her! Do not take her away,
dear good woman, only hold her in the moonlight!’
The full rays of the moon, shining through the gable window, streamed
down very near where Eustacie lay, and by a slight movement Dame Rotrou
was able to render the little face as distinctly visible to her as if
it had been daylight, save that the blanching light was somewhat
embellishing to the new-born complexion, and increased that curious
resemblance so often borne for the first few hours of life to the future
self. Eustacie’s cry at once was, ‘Himself, himself--his very face! Let
me have her, my own moonbeam--his child--my joy!’
The tears, so long denied, rushed down like summer rain as she clasped
the child in her arms. Dame Perrine wandered to and fro, like one beside
herself, not only at her Lady’s wretched accommodations, but at the ill
omens of the moonlight illumination, of the owls who snapped and hissed
incessantly over the hay, and above all the tears over the babe’s face.
She tried to remonstrate with Eustacie, but was answered only, ‘Let me
weep! Oh, let me weep! It eases my heart! It cannot hurt my little one!
She cannot weep for her father herself, so I must weep for her.’
The weeping was gentle, not violent; and Dame Rotrou thought it did good
rather than harm. She was chiefly anxious to be quit of Perrine, who,
however faithful to the Lady of Ribaumont, must not be trusted to learn
the way to this Huguenot asylum, and must be escorted back by Rotrou ere
peep of dawn. The old woman knew that her own absence from home would be
suspicious, and with many grumblings submitted; but first she took the
child from Eustacie’s reluctant arms, promising to restore her in a few
moments, after finishing dressing her in the lace-edged swaddling bands
so carefully preserved ever since Eustacie’s own baby hood. In these
moments she had taken them all by surprise by, without asking any
questions, sprinkling the babe with water, and baptizing her by the
hereditary name of Berangere, the feminine of the only name Eustacie had
always declared her son should bear. Such baptisms were not unfrequently
performed by French nurses, but Eustacie exclaimed with a sound half
dismay, half indignation.
‘_Eh quoi_!’ said Perrine, ‘it is only _ondoyee_. You can have all the
ceremonies if ever time shall fit; but do you think I could leave my
Lady’s child--mere girl though it be--alone with owls, and _follets_,
and REVENANTS, and heretics, and she unbaptized? She would be a
changeling long ere morning, I trow.’
‘Come, good woman,’ said Rotrou, from between the trusses of hay at the
entrance; ‘you and I must begin our Colin-Mail-lard again, or it may be
the worse for us both.’
And with the promise of being conducted to Eustacie again in three
nights’ time, if she would meet her guide at the cross-roads after dark,
Perrine was forced to take her leave. She had never suspected that all
this time Maitre Gardon had been hidden in the refectory below, and
still less did she guess that soon after her departure the old man was
installed as her Lady’s chief attendant. It was impossible that Nanon
should stay with Eustacie; she had her day’s work to attend to, and her
absence would have excited suspicion. He, therefore, came partly up
the stairs, and calling to Nanon, proffered himself to sit with ‘_cette
pauvre_,’ and make a signal in case Nanon should be wanted. The good
woman was thus relieved of a great care. She would not have dared to
ask it of him, but with a low reverence, she owned that it was an act of
great charity towards the poor lady, who, she hoped, was falling into
a tranquil sleep, but who she would hardly have dared to leave. The
pastor, though hardships, battles, and persecutions had left him
childless, had been the father of a large family; and perhaps he was
drawn the more strongly towards the mother and child, because he almost
felt as if, in fulfilling the part of a father towards the widow of
Berenger de Ribaumont, he was taking her in the stead of the widow of
his own Theodore.
Had the little Baronne de Ribaumont been lodged in a tapes-tried
chamber, between curtains of velvet and gold, with a _beauffet_ by her
side glistening with gold and silver plate, as would have befitted her
station, instead of lying on a bed of straw, with no hangings to the
walls save cobwebs and hay, and wallflowers, no _beauffet_ but the old
rickety table, no attendants but Nanon and M. Gardon, no visitors but
the two white owls, no provisions save the homely fare that rustic
mothers lived upon--neither she nor her babe could have thriven better,
and probably not half so well. She had been used to a hardy, out-of-door
life, like the peasant women; and she was young and strong, so that she
recovered as they did. If the April shower beat in at the window, or the
hole in the roof, they made a screen of canvas, covered her with cloaks,
and heaped them with hay, and she took no harm; and the pure open
air that blew in was soft with all the southern sweetness of early
spring-tide, and the little one throve in it like the puff-ball owlets
in the hayloft, or the little ring-doves in the ivy, whose parent’s
cooing voice was Eustacie’s favourite music. Almost as good as these
her fellow-nestlings was the little Moonbeam, _la petite Rayonette_,
as Eustacie fondly called this light that had come back to her from the
sunshine she had lost. Had she cried or been heard, the sounds would
probably have passed for the wailings of the ghostly victims of the
Templars, but she exercised an exemplary forbearance in that respect,
for which Eustacie thought she could not be sufficiently admired.
Like the child she was, Eustacie seemed to have put care from her, and
to be solely taken up with the baby, and the amusement of watching the
owl family.
There was a lull in the search at this moment, for the Chevalier had
been recalled to Paris by the fatal illness of his son-in-law, M. de
Selinvine. The old soldier, after living half his life on bread and
salad, that he might keep up a grand appearance at Paris, had, on coming
into the wealth of the family, and marrying a beautiful wife, returned
to the luxuries he had been wont only to enjoy for a few weeks at a
time, with in military occupation of some Italian town. Three months of
festivities had been enough to cause his death; and the Chevalier was
summoned to assist his daughter in providing for his obsequies, and in
taking possession of the huge endowments which, as the last of his race,
he had been able to bequeath to her. Such was the news brought by the
old nurse Perrine, who took advantage of the slackening vigilance of the
enemy to come to see Eustacie. The old woman was highly satisfied;
for one of the peasants’ wives had--as if on purpose to oblige her
Lady--given birth to twins, one of whom had died almost immediately; and
the parents had consented to conceal their loss, and at once take the
little Demoiselle de Ribaumont as their own--guarding the secret till
her mother should be able to claim her. It was so entirely the practice,
under the most favourable circumstances, for French mothers to send
their infants to be nursed in cottages, that Perrine was amazed by the
cry of angry refusal that burst from Eustacie: ‘Part with my child!
leave her to her enemies!--never! never! Hold your tongue, Perrine! I
will not hear of such a thing!’
‘But, Madame, hear reason. She will pass for one of Simonette’s!’
‘She shall pass for none but mine!--I part with thee, indeed! All that
is left me of thy father!--the poor little orphaned innocent, that no
one loves but her mother!’
‘Madame--Mademoiselle, this is not common sense! Why, how can you hide
yourself? how travel with a baby on your neck, whose crying may betray
you?’
‘She never cries--never, never! And better I were betrayed than she.’
‘If it were a boy---’ began Perrine.
‘If it were a boy, there would be plenty to care for it. I should not
care for it half so much. As for my poor little lonely girl, whom
every one wishes away but her mother--ah! yes, baby, thy mother will go
through fire and water for thee yet. Never fear, thou shalt not leave
her!’
‘No nurse can go with Madame. Simonette could not leave her home.’
‘What needs a nurse when she has me?’
‘But, Madame,’ proceeded the old woman, out of patience, ‘you are beside
yourself! What noble lady ever nursed her babe?’
‘I don’t care noble ladies--I care for my child,’ said the vehement,
petulant little thing.
‘And how--what good will Madame’s caring for it do? What knows she of
infants? How can she take care of it?’
‘Our Lady will teach me,’ said Eustacie, still pressing the child
passionately to her heart; ‘and see--the owl--the ring-dove--can take
care of their little ones; the good God shows them how--He will tell me
how!’
Perrine regarded her Lady much as if she were in a naughty fit, refusing
unreasonably to part with a new toy, and Nanon Rotrou was much of the
same mind; but it was evident that if at the moment they attempted
to carry off the babe, the other would put herself into an agony of
passion, that they durst not call forth; and they found it needful to do
their best to soothe her out of the deluge of agitated tears that fell
from her eyes, as she grasped the child so convulsively that she might
almost have stifled it at once. They assured her that they would not
take it away now--not now, at any rate; and when the latent meaning
made her fiercely insist that it was to leave her neither now nor
ever, Perrine made pacifying declarations that it should be just as she
pleased--promises that she knew well, when in that coaxing voice, meant
nothing at all. Nothing calmed her till Perrine had been conducted away;
and even then Nanon could not hush her into anything like repose, and at
last called in the minister, in despair.
‘Ah! sir, you are a wise man; can you find how to quiet the poor little
thing? Her nurse has nearly driven her distracted with talking of the
foster-parents she has found for the child.’
‘Not found!’ cried Eustacie. ‘No, for she shall never go!’
‘There!’ lamented Nanon--‘so she agitates herself, when it is but spoken
of. And surely she had better make up her mind, for there is no other
choice.’
‘Nay, Nanon,’ said M. Gardon, ‘wherefore should she part with the charge
that God has laid on her?’
Eustacie gave a little cry of grateful joy. ‘Oh, sir, come nearer! Do
you, indeed, say that they have no right to tear her from me?’
‘Surely not, Lady. It is you whose duty it is to shield and guard her.’
‘Oh, sir, tell me again! Yours is the right religion. Oh, you are the
minister for me! If you will tell me I ought to keep my child, then I
will believe everything else. I will do just as you tell me.’ And she
stretched out both hands to him, with vehement eagerness.
‘Poor thing! This is no matter of one religion or another,’ said the
minister; ‘it is rather the duty that the Almighty hath imposed, and
that He hath made an eternal joy.’
‘Truly,’ said Nanon, ashamed at having taken the other side: ‘the good
_pasteur_ says what is according to nature. It would have gone hard with
me if any one had wished to part me from Robin or Sara; but these fine
ladies, and, for that matter, BOURGEOISES too, always do put out their
babes; and it seemed to me that Madame would find it hard to contrive
for herself--let alone the little one.’
‘Ah! but what would be the use of contriving for myself, without her?’
said Eustacie.
If all had gone well and prosperously with Madame de Ribaumont, probably
she would have surrendered an infant born in purple and in pall to the
ordinary lot of its contemporaries; but the exertions and suffering
she had undergone on behalf of her child, its orphanhood, her own
loneliness, and even the general disappointment in its sex, had given it
a hold on her vehement, determined heart, that intensified to the utmost
the instincts of motherhood; and she listened as if to an angle’s voice
as Maitre Gardon replied to Nanon--
‘I say not that it is not the custom; nay, that my blessed wife and
myself have not followed it; but we have so oft had cause to repent
the necessity, that far be it from me ever to bid a woman forsake her
sucking child.’
‘Is that Scripture?’ asked Eustacie. ‘Ah! sir, sir, tell me more! You
are giving me all--all--my child! I will be--I am--a Huguenot like her
father! and, when my vassals come, I will make them ride with you to La
Rochelle, and fight in your cause!’
‘Nay,’ said Maitre Gardon, taken by surprise; ‘but, Lady, your vassals
are Catholic.’
‘What matters it? In my cause they shall fight!’ said the feudal Lady,
‘for me and my daughter!’
And as the pastor uttered a sound of interrogative astonishment, she
continued--
‘As soon as I am well enough, Blaise will send out messages, and they
will meet me at midnight at the cross-roads, Martin and all, for
dear good Martin is quite well now, and we shall ride across country,
avoiding towns, wherever I choose to lead them. I had thought of
Chantilly, for I know M. de Montmorency would stand my friend against a
Guisard; but now, now I know you, sir, let me escort you to La Rochelle,
and do your cause service worthy of Nid de Merle and Ribaumont!’ And as
she sat up on her bed, she held up her little proud head, and waved her
right hand with the grace and dignity of a queen offering an alliance of
her realm.
Maitre Gardon, who had hitherto seen her as a childish though cheerful
and patient sufferer, was greatly amazed, but he could not regard her
project as practicable, or in his conscience approve it; and after a
moment’s consideration he answered, ‘I am a man of peace, Lady, and
seldom side with armed men, nor would I lightly make one of those who
enroll themselves against the King.’
‘Not after all the Queen-mother had done!’ cried Eustacie.
‘Martyrdom is better than rebellion,’ quietly answered the old man,
folding his hands. Then he added ‘Far be it from me to blame those who
have drawn the sword for the faith; yet, Lady, it would not be even thus
with your peasants; they might not follow you.’
‘Then,’ said Eustacie, with flashing eyes, ‘they would be traitors.’
‘Not to the King,’ said the pastor, gently. ‘Also, Lady, how will it
be with their homes and families--the hearths that have given you such
faithful shelter?’
‘The women would take to the woods,’ readily answered she; ‘it is
summer-time, and they should be willing to bear something for my sake.
I should grieve indeed,’ she added, ‘if my uncle misused them. They have
been very good to me, but then they belong to me.’
‘Ah! Lady, put from you that hardening belief of seigneurs. Think what
their fidelity deserves from their Lady.’
‘I will be good to them! I do love them! I will be their very good
mistress,’ said Eustacie, her eyes filling.
‘The question is rather of forbearing than of doing,’ said the minister.
‘But what would you have me do?’ asked Eustacie, petulantly.
‘This, Lady. I gather that you would not return to your relations.’
‘Never! never! They would rend my babe from me; they would kill her, or
at least hide her for ever in a convent--they would force me into this
abhorrent marriage. No--no--no--my child and I would die a hundred
deaths together rather than fall into the hands of Narcisse.’
‘Calm yourself, Lady; there is no present fear, but I deem that the
safest course for the little one would be to place her in England. She
must be heiress to lands and estates there; is she not?’
‘Yes; and in Normandy.’
‘And your husband’s mother lives? Wherefore then should you not take me
for your guide, and make your way--more secretly than would be possible
with a peasant escort--to one of your Huguenot towns on the coast,
whence you could escape with the child to England?’
‘My _belle-mere_ has re-married! She has children! I would not bring
the daughter of Ribaumont as a suppliant to be scorned!’ said Eustacie,
pouting. ‘She has lands enough of her own.’
‘There is no need to discuss the question now,’ said M. Gardon, gravely;
for a most kind offer, involving much peril and inconvenience to
himself, was thus petulantly flouted. ‘Madame will think at her leisure
of what would have been the wishes of Monsieur le Baron for his child.’
He then held himself aloof, knowing that it was not well for her health,
mental or bodily, to talk any more, and a good deal perplexed himself by
the moods of his strange little impetuous convert, if convert she could
be termed. He himself was a deeply learned scholar, who had studied
all the bearings of the controversy; and, though bound to the French
Reformers who would gladly have come to terms with the Catholics at the
Conference of Plassy, and regretted the more decided Calvinism that
his party had since professed, and in which the Day of St. Bartholomew
confirmed them. He had a strong sense of the grievous losses they
suffered by their disunion from the Church. The Reformed were less and
less what his ardent youthful hopes had trusted to see them; and in his
old age he was a sorrow-stricken man, as much for the cause of religion
as for personal bereavements. He had little desire to win proselytes,
but rather laid his hand to build up true religion where he found it
suffering shocks in these unsettled, neglected times; and his present
wish was rather to form and guide this little willful warm-hearted
mother--whom he could not help regarding with as much affection as
pity--to find a home in the Church that had been her husband’s, than
to gain her to his own party. And most assuredly he would never let her
involve herself, as she was ready to do, in the civil war, without even
knowing the doctrine which grave and earnest men had preferred to their
loyalty.
He could hear her murmuring to her baby, ‘No, no, little one, we are not
fallen so low as to beg our bread among strangers.’ To live upon her own
vassals had seemed to her only claiming her just rights, but it galled
her to think of being beholden to stranger Huguenots; and England
and her mother-in-law, without Berenger, were utterly foreign and
distasteful to her.
Her mood was variable. Messages from Blaise and Martin came and went,
and it became known that her intended shelter at Chollet, together
with all the adjacent houses, had been closely searched by the younger
Ribaumont in conjunction with the governor; so that it was plain that
some treachery must exist, and that she only owed her present freedom to
her detention in the ruined temple; and it would be necessary to leave
that as soon as it was possible for her to attempt the journey.
The plan that seemed most feasible to the vassals was, that Rotrou
should convey her in a cart of fagots as far as possible on the road
to Paris; that there his men should meet her by different roads, riding
their farm-horses--and Martin even hoped to be able to convey her own
palfrey to her from the monastery stable, and thence, taking a long
stretch across country, they trusted to be able to reach the lands of a
dependant of the house of Montmorency, who would not readily yield her
up to a Guise’s man. But, whether instigated by Perrine, or by their own
judgment, the vassals declared that, though Madame should be conducted
wherever she desired, it was impossible to encumber themselves with the
infant. Concealment would be impossible; rough, hasty rides would be
retarded, her difficulties would be tenfold increased, and the little
one would become a means of tracing her. There was no choice but to
leave it with Simonette.
Angrily and haughtily did Eustacie always reject this alternative, and
send fresh commands back by her messenger, to meet the same reply in
another form. The strong will and practical resolution of the stout
farmers, who were about to make a terrible venture for her, and might
reasonably think they had a right to prescribe the terms that they
thought best. All this time Maitre Gardon felt it impossible to leave
her, still weak and convalescent, alone in the desolate ruin with her
young child; though still her pride would not bend again to seek the
counsel that she had so much detested, nor to ask for the instruction
that was to make her ‘believe like her husband.’ If she might not fight
for the Reformed, it seemed as if she would none of their doctrine!
But, true lady that she was, she sunk the differences in her intercourse
with him. She was always prettily and affectionately grateful for every
service that he rendered her, and as graciously polite as though she had
been keeping house in the halls of Ribaumont. Then her intense love
for her child was so beautiful, and there was so much sweetness in
the cheerful patience with which she endured the many hardships of
her situation, that he could not help being strongly interested in the
willful, spirited little being.
And thus time passed, until one night, when Martin ventured over the
farm with a report so serious that Rotrou, at all risks, brought him
up to communicate his own tidings. Some one had given information,
Veronique he suspected, and the two Chevaliers were certainly coming
the next day to search with fire the old buildings of the temple. It was
already dawning towards morning, and it would be impossible to do more
at present than to let Rotrou build up the lady in a vault, some little
way off, whence, after the search was over, she could be released, and
join her vassals the next night according to the original design. As
to the child, her presence in the vault was impossible, and Martin had
actually brought her intended nurse, Simonette, to Rotrou’s cottage to
receive her.
‘Never!’ was all Eustacie answered. ‘Save both of us, or neither.’
‘Lady,’ said M. Gardon as she looked towards him, ‘I go my way with my
staff.’
‘And you--you more faithful than her vassals--will let me take her?’
‘Assuredly.’
‘Then, sir, even to the world’s end will I go with you’
Martin would have argued, have asked, but she would not listen to him.
It was Maitre Gardon who made him understand the project. There was
what in later times has been termed an underground railway amid the
persecuted Calvinists, and M. Gardon knew his ground well enough to have
little doubt of being able to conduct the lady safely to some town
on the coast, whence she might reach her friends in England. The plan
highly satisfied Martin. It relieved him and his neighbours from the
necessity of provoking perilous wrath, and it was far safer for her
herself than endeavouing to force her way with an escort too large not
to attract notice, yet not warlike enough for efficient defence. He
offered no further opposition, but augured that after all she would come
back a fine lady, and right them all.
Eustacie, recovering from her anger, and recollecting his services, gave
him her hand to kiss, and bade him farewell with a sudden effusion of
gratitude and affection that warmed the honest fellow’s heart. Rewards
could not be given, lest they should become a clue for her uncle; and
perhaps they would have wounded both him and their kind hosts, who did
their best to assist her in their departure. A hasty meal was provided
by Nanon, and a basket so stored as to obviate the need of entering a
village, on that day at least, to purchase provisions; Eustacie’s money
and jewels again formed the nucleus of the bundle of clothes and spare
swaddling-banks of her babe; her peasant dress was carefully arranged--a
stout striped cloth skit and black bodice, the latter covered by a
scarlet Chollet kerchief. The winged white cap entirely hid her hair; a
gray cloak with a hood could either fold round her and her child or be
strapped on her shoulders. Her _sabots_ were hung on her shoulder, for
she had learnt to go barefoot, and walked much more lightly thus; and
her little bundle was slung on a staff on the back of Maitre Gardon,
who in his great peasant’s hat and coat looked so like a picture of St.
Joseph, that Eustacie, as the light of the rising sun fell on his white
beard and hair, was reminded of the Flight into Egypt, and came close
to him, saying shyly, ‘Our Blessed Lady will bless and feel for my baby.
She knows what this journey is.’
‘The Son of the Blessed Mary assuredly knows and blesses,’ he answered.