This caitiff monk for gold did swear,
That by his drugs my rival fair
A saint in heaven should be.--SCOTT
A grand cavalcade bore the house of Quinet from Montauban--coaches,
wagons, outriders, gendarmes--it was a perfect court progress, and so
low and cumbrous that it was a whole week in reaching a grand old castle
standing on a hill-side among chestnut woods, with an avenue a mile long
leading up to it; and battlemented towers fit to stand a siege.
Eustacie was ranked among the Duchess’s gentlewomen. She was so far
acknowledged as a lady of birth, that she was usually called Madame
Esperance; and though no one was supposed to doubt her being Theodore
Gardon’s widow, she was regarded as being a person of rank who had made
a misalliance by marrying him. This Madame de Quinet had allowed the
household to infer, thinking that the whole bearing of her guest was
too unlike that of a Paris _bourgeoise_ not to excite suspicion, but
she deemed it wiser to refrain from treating her with either intimacy or
distinction that might excite jealousy or suspicion. Even as it was,
the consciousness of a secret, or the remnants of Montauban gossip,
prevented any familiarity between Eustacie and the good ladies who
surrounded her; they were very civil to each other, but their only
connecting link was the delight that every one took in petting
pretty little Rayonette, and the wonder that was made of her signs of
intelligence and attempts at talking. Even when she toddled fearlessly
up to the stately Duchess on her canopied throne, and held out her
entreating hands, and lisped the word ‘_nontre_,’ Madame would pause in
her avocations, take her on her knee, and display that wonderful
gold and enamel creature which cried tic-tic, and still remained
an unapproachable mystery to M. le Marquis and M. le Vicomte, her
grandsons.
Pale, formal stiff boys they looked, twelve and ten years old, and under
the dominion of a very learned tutor, who taught them Latin, Greek and
Hebrew, alternately with an equally precise, stiff old esquire, who
trained them in martial exercises, which seemed to be as much matters of
rote with them as their tasks, and to be quite as uninteresting. It did
not seem as if they ever played, or thought of playing; and if they were
ever to be gay, witty Frenchmen, a wonderful change must come over them.
The elder was already betrothed to a Bearnese damsel, of an
unimpeachably ancient and Calvinistic family; and the whole
establishment had for the last three years been employed on tapestry
hangings for a whole suite of rooms, that were to be fitted up and
hung with the histories of Ruth, of Abigail, of the Shunammite, and of
Esther, which their diligent needles might hope to complete by the time
the marriage should take place, three years later! The Duchess,
who really was not unlike ‘that great woman’ the Shunammite, in her
dignified content with ‘dwelling among her own people,’ and her desire
to ‘receive a prophet in the name of a prophet,’ generally sat presiding
over the work while some one, chaplain, grandson, or young maiden, read
aloud from carefully assorted books; religious treatises at certain
hours, and at others, history. Often, however, Madame was called away
into her cabinet, where she gave audience to intendants, notaries from
her estates, pastors from the villages, captains of little garrisons,
soldiers offering service, farmers, women, shepherds, foresters,
peasants, who came either on her business or with their own needs--for
all of which she was ready with the beneficence and decision of an
autocrat.
The chapel had been ‘purified,’ and made bare of all altar or image. It
was filled with benches and a desk, whence Isaac Gardon, the chaplain,
any pastor on a visit, or sometimes a candidate for his promotion,
would expound, and offer prayers, shortly in the week, more at length
on Sunday; and there, too, classes were held for the instruction of the
peasants.
There was a great garden full of medicinal plants, and decoctions and
distilleries were the chief variety enjoyed by the gentlewomen. The
Duchess had studied much in quaint Latin and French medical books, and,
having great experience and good sense, was probably as good a doctor
as any one in the kingdom except Ambroise Pare and his pupils; and she
required her ladies to practise under her upon the numerous ailments
that the peasants were continually bringing for her treatment. ‘No one
could tell,’ she said, ‘how soon they might be dealing with gun-shot
wounds, and all ought to know how to sew up a gash, or cure an argue.’
This department suited Eustacie much better than the stitching, and
best of all she liked to be sent with Maitre Isaac to some cottage where
solace for soul and body were needed, and the inmate was too ill to be
brought to Madame la Duchess. She was learning much and improving too
in the orderly household, but her wanderings had made her something of a
little gipsy. She now and then was intolerably weary, and felt as if
she had been entirely spoilt for her natural post. ‘What would become
of her,’ she said to Maitre Isaac, ‘if she were too grand to dress
Rayonette?’
She was not greatly distressed that the Montauban pursuivant turned out
to have only the records of the Provencal nobility, and was forced to
communicate with his brethren at Bordeaux before he could bring down
the Ribaumont genealogy to the actual generation; and so slow was
communication, so tardy the mode of doing everything, that the chestnut
leaves were falling and autumn becoming winter before the blazoned
letter showed Ribaumont, de Picardie--‘Gules, fretty or, a canton of
the last, a leopard, sable. Eustacie Berangere, m. Annora, daughter
and heiress of Villiam, Baron of Valvem, in the county of Dorisette,
England, who beareth, azure, a siren regardant in a mirror proper.’ The
siren was drawn in all her propriety impaled with the leopard, and she
was so much more comprehensible than the names, to both Madame de Quinet
and Eustacie, that it was a pity they could not direct their letters to
her rather than to ‘Le Baron de Valvem,’ whose cruel W’s perplexed them
so much. However, the address was the least of Eustacie’s troubles; she
should be only too glad when she got to that, and she was sitting in
Maitre Isaac’s room, trying to make him dictate her sentences and asking
him how to spell every third word, when the dinner-bell rang, and the
whole household dropped down from _salon_, library, study, or chamber to
the huge hall, with its pavement of black and white marble, and its
long tables, for Madame de Quinet was no woman to discard wholesome old
practices.
Then, as Eustacie, with Rayonette trotting at her side, and Maitre Isaac
leaning on her arm, slowly made her way to that high table where dined
Madame la Duchess, her grandsons, the ministers, the gentlemen in
waiting, and some three or four women besides herself, she saw that
the lower end of the great hall was full of silks, cloths, and ribbons
heaped together; and, passing by the lengthy rank of retainers, she
received a bow and look of recognition from a dark, acute-looking visage
which she remembered to belong to the pedlar she had met at Charente.
The Duchess, at the head of her table, was not in the best of humours.
Her son had sent home letters by a courier whom he had picked up for
himself and she never liked nor trusted, and he required an immediate
reply when she particularly resented being hurried. It was a
_galimafre_, literally a hash, she said; for indeed most matters where
she was not consulted did become a _galimafre_ with her. Moreover, under
favour of the courier, her porters had admitted this pedlar, and the
Duchess greatly disliked pedlars. All her household stores were
bought at shops of good repute in Montauban, and no one ought to be so
improvident as to require dealings with these mountebank vagabonds, who
dangled vanities before the eyes of silly girls, and filled their heads
with Paris fashion, if they did not do still worse, and excite them to
the purchase of cosmetics and love-charms.
Yet the excitement caused by the approach of a pedlar was invincible,
even by Madame la Duchess. It was inevitable that the crying need of
glove, kerchief, needle, or the like, should be discovered as soon as
he came within ken, and, once in the hall, there was no being rid of
him except by a flagrant act of inhospitality. This time it was worst of
all, for M. le Marquis himself must needs be the first to spy him, bring
him in, and be in want of a silver chain for his hawk; and his brother
the Vicomte must follow him up with all manner of wants inspired by the
mere sight of the pack.
Every one with the smallest sum of money must buy, every one without
inspect and assist in bargaining; and all dinner-time, eyes, thoughts,
and words were wandering to the gay pile in the corner, or reckoning up
needs and means. The pedlar, too, knew what a Calvinist household was,
and had been extremely discreet, producing nothing that could reasonably
be objected to; and the Duchess, seeing that the stream was too strong
for her, wisely tried to steer her bark through it safely instead of
directly opposing it.
As soon as grace was over, she called her maitre d’hotel, and bade
him look after that _galimafre_, and see that none of these fools were
unreasonably cheated, and that there was no attempt at gulling the young
ones with charms or fortune-telling, as well as to conclude the matter
so as to give no excuse for the Italian fellow lingering to sup and
sleep. She then retired to her cabinet to prepare her dispatches, which
were to include a letter to Lord Walwyn. Though a nominal friendship
subsisted between Elisabeth and the French court, the Huguenot chiefs
always maintained a correspondence with England, and there was little
danger but that the Duke de Quinet would be able to get a letter, sooner
or later, conveyed to any man of mark. In the course of her letter,
Madame de Quinet found it necessary to refer to Eustacie. She rang her
little silver handbell for the hall. There, of course, Master Page had
been engulfed in the _galimafre_, and not only forming one of the swarm
around the pedlar, but was actually aping courtly grimaces as he tried
a delicate lace ruffle on the hand of a silly little smirking maiden,
no older than himself! But this little episode was, like many others,
overlooked by Madame de Quinet, as her eye fell upon the little figure
of Rayonette standing on the table, with her mother and two or three
ladies besides coaxing her to open her mouth, and show the swollen gums
that had of late been troubling her, while the pedlar was evidently
expending his blandishments upon her.
The maitre d’hotel was the first to perceive his mistress, and, as he
approached, received a sharp rebuke from her for allowing the fellow to
produce his quack medicines; and, at the same time, she desired him
to request Madame Esperance to come to her immediately on business.
Eustacie, who always had a certain self-willed sense of opposition when
the Duchess showed herself peremptory towards her, at first began to
make answer that she would come as soon as her business was concluded;
but the steward made a gesture towards the great lady sailing up and
down as she paced the _dais_ in stately impatience. ‘Good fellow,’
she said, ‘I will return quickly, and see you again, though I am now
interrupted. Stay there, little one, with good Mademoiselle Perrot;
mother will soon be back.’
Rayonette, in her tooth-fretfulnes, was far from enduring to be forsaken
so near a strange man, and her cry made it necessary for Eustacie to
take her in arms, and carry her to the _dais_ where the Duchess was
waiting.
‘So!’ said the lady, ‘I suspected that the fellow was a quack as well as
a cheat.’
‘Madame,’ said Eustacie, with spirit, ‘he sold me unguents that greatly
relieved my father last spring.’
‘And because rubbing relieved an old man’s rheumatics, you would let a
vagabond cheat drug and sicken this poor child for what is not ailment
at all--and the teeth will relieve in a few days. Or, if she were
feverish, have not we decoctions brewed from Heaven’s own pure herbs in
the garden, with no unknown ingredient?’
‘Madame,’ said Eustacie, ruffling into fierceness, ‘you are very good to
me; but I must keep the management of my daughter to myself.’
The Duchess looked at her from head to foot. Perhaps it was with an
impulse to treat her impertinence as she would have done that of a
dependant; but the old lady never forgot herself: she only shrugged
her shoulders and said, with studied politeness, ‘When I unfortunately
interrupted your consultation with this eminent physician, it was to ask
you a question regarding this English family. Will you do me the honour
to enter my cabinet?’
And whereas no one was looking, the old lady showed her displeasure by
ushering Madame de Ribaumont into her cabinet like a true noble stranger
guest; so that Eustacie felt disconcerted.
The Duchess then began to read aloud her own letter to Lord Walwyn,
pausing at every clause, so that Eustacie felt the delay and discussion
growing interminable, and the Duchess then requested to have Madame de
Ribaumont’s own letter at once, as she wished to inclose it, make up her
packet, and send it without delay. Opening a secret door in her cabinet,
she showed Eustacie stair by which she might reach Maitre Gardon’s room
without crossing the hall. Eustacie hoped to find him there and tell him
how intolerable was the Duchess; but, though she found him, it was in
company with the tutor, who was spending an afternoon on Plato with him.
She could only take up her letter and retreat to Madame’s cabinet, where
she had left her child. She finished it as best she might, addressed
it after the herald’s spelling of the title, bound it with some of the
Duchess’s black floss silk--wondering meanwhile, but little guessing
that the pedlar knew, where was the tress that had bound her last
attempt at correspondence, guessing least of all that that tress lay
on a heart still living and throbbing for her. All this had made her a
little forget her haste to assert her liberty of action by returning to
the pedlar; but, behold, when she came back to the hall, it had resumed
its pristine soberness, and merely a few lingering figures were to be
seen, packing up their purchases.
While she was still looking round in dismay, Mademoiselle Perrot came
up to her and said, ‘Ah! Madame, you may well wonder! I never saw Maitre
Benoit there so cross; the poor man did but offer to sell little Fanchon
the elizir that secures a good husband, and old Benoit descended on
him like a griffin enraged, would scarce give him time to compute his
charges or pack his wares, but hustled him forth like a mere thief! And
I missed my bargain for that muffler that had so taken my fancy. But,
Madame, he spoke to me apart, and said you were an old customer of his,
and that rather than the little angel should suffer with her teeth,
which surely threaten convulsions, he would leave with you this
sovereign remedy of sweet syrup--a spoonful to be given each night.’
Eustacie took the little flask. She was much inclined to give the syrup
by way of precaution, as well as to assure herself that she was not
under the Duchess’s dominion; but some strong instinct of the truth of
the lady’s words that the child was safer and healthier undoctored,
made her resolve at least to defer it until the little one showed any
perilous symptom. And as happily Rayonette only showed two little white
teeth, and much greater good-humour, the syrup was nearly forgotten,
when, a fortnight after, the Duchess received a dispatch from her son
which filled her with the utmost indignation. The courier had
indeed arrived, but the packet had proved to be filled with hay and
waste-paper. And upon close examination, under the lash, the courier had
been forced to confess to having allowed himself to be overtaken by the
pedlar, and treated by him to a supper at a _cabaret_. No doubt,
while he was afterwards asleep, the contents of his packet had been
abstracted. There had been important documents for the Duke besides
Eustacie’s letters, and the affair greatly annoyed the Duchess, though
she had the compensation of having been proved perfectly right in her
prejudice against pedlars, and her dislike of her son’s courier. She
sent for Eustacie to tell her privately of the loss, and of course the
young mother at once turned pale and exclaimed, ‘The wicked one! Ah!
what a blessing that I gave my little darling none of his dose!’
‘_Hein_? You had some from him then!’ demanded the Duchess with
displeasure.
‘No, Madame, thanks, thanks to you. Oh! I never will be self-willed and
naughty again. Forgive me, Madame.’ And down she dropped on her knee,
with clasped hands and glistening eyes.
‘Forgive you, silly child, for what?’ said Madame de Quinet, nearly
laughing.
‘Ah! for the angry, passionate thoughts I had! Ah! Madame, I was all
but giving the stuff to my little angel in very spite--and then---’
Eutacie’s voice was drowned in passion of tears, and she devoured the
old lady’s hand with her kisses.
‘Come, come,’ said the Duchess, ‘let us be reasonable. A man may be a
thief, but it does not follow that he is a poisoner.’
‘Nay, that will we see,’ cried Eutacie. ‘He was resolved that the little
lamb should not escape, and he left a flask for her with Mademoiselle
Perrot. I will fetch it, if Madame will give me leave. Oh, the great
mercy of Heaven that made her so well that I gave her none!’
Madame de Quinet’s analytic powers did not go very far; and would
probably have decided against the syrup if it had been nothing but
virgin honey. She was one who fully believed that her dear Queen Jeanne
had been poisoned with a pair of gloves, and she had unlimited faith in
the powers of evil possessed by Rene of Milan. Of course, she detected
the presence of a slow poison, whose effects would have been attributed
to the ailment it was meant to cure; and though her evidence was
insufficient, she probably did Ercole no injustice. She declined testing
the compound on any unfortunate dog or cat, but sealed it up in the
presence of Gardon, Eutacie, and Mademoiselle Perrot, to be produced
against the pedlar if ever he should be caught.
Then she asked Eutacie if there was any reason to suspect that he
recognized her. Eutacie related the former dealings with him, when she
had sold him her jewels and her hair, but she had no notion of his being
the same person whom she had seen when at Montpipeau. Indeed, he had
altered his appearance so much that he had been only discovered at
Nid-de-Merle by eyes sharpened by distrust of his pretensions to magic
arts.
Madame de Quinet, however, concluded that Eutacie had been known, or
else that her jewels had betrayed her, and that the man must have been
employed by her enemies. If it had not been the depth of winter, she
would have provided for the persecuted lady’s immediate transmission
to England; but he storms of the Bay of Biscay would have made this
impossible in the state of French navigation, even if Isaac Gardon had
been in a condition to move; for the first return of cold had brought
back severe rheumatic pains, and with them came a shortness of breath
which even the Duchess did not know to be the token of heart complaint.
He was confined to his room, and it was kneeling by his bedside that
Eutacie poured out her thankfulness for her child’s preservation, and
her own repentance for the passing fit of self-will and petulance. The
thought of Rayonette’s safety seemed absolutely to extinguish the fresh
anxiety that had arisen since it had become evident that her enemies no
longer supposed her dead, but were probably upon her traces. Somehow,
danger had become almost a natural element to her, and having once
expressed her firm resolution that nothing should separate her from
her adopted father, to whom indeed her care became constantly more
necessary, she seemed to occupy herself very little with the matter; she
nursed him as merrily as ever, and left to him and Madame de Quinet the
grave consultations as to what was to be done for her security. There
was a sort of natural buoyancy about her that never realized a danger
till it came, and then her spirit was roused to meet it.