Churl, upon thy eyes I throw
All the power this charm doth owe
MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
Her rival lived! The tidings could not but be communicated to Diane
de Selinville, when her father set out _en grande tenue_ to demand his
niece from the Duke de Quinet. This, however, was not till spring was
advancing; for the pedlar had not been able to take a direct route back
to Nid-de-Merle, since his first measure had necessarily been to
escape into a province where the abstraction of a Huguenot nobleman’s
despatches would be considered as a meritorious action. Winter weather,
and the practice of his profession likewise, delayed Ercole so much that
it was nearly Easter before he brought his certain intelligence to the
Chevalier, and to the lady an elixir of love, clear and coloured as
crystal, and infallible as an inspirer of affection.
Should she administer it, now that she knew her cousin not to be the
lawful object of affection she had so long esteemed him, but, as he
persisted in considering himself, a married man? Diane had more scruples
than she would have had a year before, for she had not so long watched
and loved one so true and conscientious as Berenger de Ribaumont without
having her perceptions elevated; but at the same time the passion of
love had become intensified, both by long continuance and by resistance.
She had attached herself, believing him free, and her affections could
not be disentangled by learning that he was bound--rather the contrary.
Besides, there was plenty of sophistry. Her father had always assured
her of the invalidity of the marriage, without thinking it necessary
to dwell on his own arrangements for making it invalid, so that was no
reasonable ground of objection; and a lady of Diane’s period, living in
the world where she had lived, would have had no notion of objecting
to her lover for a previous amour, and as such was she bidden to rank
Berenger’s relations with Eutacie. And there was the less scruple on
Eutacie’s account, because the Chevalier, knowing that the Duchess had
a son and two grandsons, had conceived a great terror that she meant to
give his niece to one of them; and this would be infinitely worse,
both for the interests of the family and of their party, than even
her reunion with the young Baron. Even Narcisse, who on his return had
written to Paris a grudging consent to the experiment of his father and
sister, had allowed that the preservation of Berenger’s life was needful
till Eutacie should be in their power so as to prevent such a marriage
as that! To Diane, the very suggestion became certainty: she already saw
Eutacie’s shallow little heart consoled and her vanity excited by these
magnificent prospects, and she looked forward to the triumph of her own
constancy, when Berenger should find the image so long enshrined in his
heart crumble in its sacred niche.
Yet a little while then would she be patient, even though nearly a
year had passed and still she saw no effect upon her prisoners, unless,
indeed, Philip had drunk of one of her potions by mistake and his clumsy
admiration was the consequence. The two youths went on exactly in
the same manner, without a complaint, without a request, occupying
themselves as best they might--Berenger courteously attentive recovered
his health, and the athletic powers displayed by the two brothers when
wrestling, fencing, or snow-balling in the courtyard, were the amazement
and envy of their guard. Twice in the course of the winter there had
been an alarm of wolves, and in their eagerness and excitement about
this new sport, they had accepted the Chevalier’s offer of taking their
parole for the hunt. They had then gone forth with a huge posse of
villagers, who beat the woods with their dogs till the beast was aroused
from its lair and driven into the alleys, where waited gentlemen,
gendarmes, and game keepers with their guns. These two chases were
chiefly memorable to Berenger, because in the universal intermingling
of shouting peasants he was able in the first to have some conversation
with Eutacie’s faithful protector Martin, who told him the incidents of
her wanderings, with tears in his eyes, and blessed him for his faith
that she was not dead; and in the second, he actually found himself
in the ravine of the Grange du Temple. No need to ask, every voice was
shouting the name, and though the gendarmes were round him and he durst
not speak to Rotrou, still he could reply with significative earnestness
to the low bow with which the farmer bent to evident certainty that here
was the imprisoned Protestant husband of the poor lady. Berenger wore
his black vizard mask as had been required of him, but the man’s eyes
followed him, as though learning by heart the outline of his tall
figure. The object of the Chevalier’s journey was, of course, a secret
from the prisoners, who merely felt its effects by having their meals
served to them in their own tower; and when he returned after about a
month’s absence though him looking harassed, aged, and so much out of
humour that he could scarcely preserve his usual politeness. In effect
he was greatly chagrined.
‘That she is in their hands is certain, the hypocrites!’ he said to his
daughter and sister; ‘and no less so that they have designs on her; but
I let them know that these could be easily traversed.’
‘But where is she, the unhappy apostate child?’ said the Abbess. ‘They
durst not refuse her to you.’
‘I tell you they denied all present knowledge of her. The Duke himself
had the face to make as though he never heard of her. He had no concern
with his mother’s household and guests forsooth! I do not believe he
has; the poor fellow stands in awe of that terrible old heretic dragon,
and keeps aloof from her as much as he can. But he is, after all, a
_beau jeune home_; nor should I be surprised if he were the girl’s gay
bridegroom by this time, though I gave him a hint that there was an
entanglement about the child’s first marriage which, by French law,
would invalidate any other without a dispensation from the Pope.’
‘A hard nut that for a heretic,’ laughed the Abbess.
‘He acted the ignorant--knew nothing about the young lady; but had the
civility to give me a guide and an escort to go to Quinet. _Ma foi_! I
believe they were given to hinder me--take me by indirect roads, make
me lose time at chateaux. When I arrived at the grim old chateau--a true
dungeon, precise as a convent--there was the dame, playing the Queen
Jeanne as well as she could, and having the insolence to tell me that it
was true that Madame la Baronne de Ribaumont, as she was pleased to call
her, had honoured her residence for some months, but that she had now
quitted it, and she flatly refused to answer any question whither she
was gone! The hag! she might at least have had the decorum to deny all
knowledge of her, but nothing is more impertinent that the hypocritical
sincerity of the heretics.’
‘But her people,’ exclaimed the Abbess; ‘surely some of them knew, and
could be brought to speak.’
‘All the servants I came in contact with played the incorruptible; but
still I have done something. There were some fellows in the village who
are not at their ease under that rule. I caused my people to inquire
them out. They knew nothing more than that the old heretic Gardon with
his family had gone away in Madame la Duchesse’s litter, but whither
they could not tell. But the _cabaretier_ there is furious secretly with
the Quinets for having spoilt his trade by destroying the shrine at the
holy well, and I have made him understand that it will be for his
profit to send me off intelligence so soon as there is any communication
between them and the lady. I made the same arrangement with a couple of
gendarmes of the escort the Duke gave me. So at least we are safe for
intelligence such as would hinder a marriage.’
‘But they will be off to England!’ said the Abbess.
‘I wager they will again write to make sure of a reception. Moreover,
I have set that fellow Ercole and others of his trade to keep a strict
watch on all the roads leading to the ports, and give me due notice of
their passing thither. We have law on our side, and, did I once claim
her, no one could resist my right. Or should the war break out, as is
probable, then could my son sweep their whole province with his troops.
This time she cannot escape us.
The scene that her father’s words and her own imagination conjured up,
of Eustacie attracting the handsome widower-duke, removed all remaining
scruples from Madame de Selinville. For his own sake, the Baron must be
made to fulfil the prophecy of the ink-pool, and allow his prison doors
to be opened by love. Many and many a tender art did Diane rehearse;
numerous were her sighs; wakeful, languishing, and restless her nights
and days; and yet, whatever her determination to practise upon her
cousin the witcheries that she had learnt in the _Escadron de la
Reine-mere_, and seen played off effectually where there was not one
grain of love to inspire them, her powers and her courage always failed
her in the presence of him whom she sought to attract. His quiet reserve
and simplicity always disconcerted her, and any attempt at blandishment
that he could not mistake was always treated by him as necessarily
an accidental error, as if any other supposition would render her
despicable; and yet there was now and then a something that made her
detect an effort in his restraint, as if it were less distaste
than self-command. Her brother had contemptuously acquiesced in the
experiment made by herself and her father, and allowed that so long as
there was any danger of the Quinet marriage, the Baron’s existence was
needful. He would not come to Nid-de-Merle, nor did they want him there,
knowing that he could hardly have kept his hands off his rival. But when
the war broke out again in the summer of 1575 he joined that detachment
of Guise’s army which hovered about the Loire, and kept watch on the
Huguenot cities and provinces of Western France. The Chevalier made
several expeditions to confer with his son, and to keep up his relations
with the network of spies whom he had spread over the Quinet provinces.
The prisoners were so much separated from all intercourse with the
dependants that they were entirely ignorant of the object of his absence
from home. On these occasions they never left their tower and its court,
and had no enlivenment save an occasional gift of dainties or message
of inquiry from the ladies at Bellaise. These were brought by a handsome
but slight, pale lad called Aime de Selinville, a relative of the late
Count, as he told them, who had come to act as a gentleman attendant
upon the widowed countess. The brothers rather wondered how he was
disposed of at the convent, but all there was so contrary to their
preconceived notions that they acquiesced. The first time he arrived
it was on a long, hot summer day, and he then brought them a cool iced
sherbet in two separate flasks, that for Philip being mixed with wine,
which was omitted for Berenger; and the youth stood lingering and
watching, anxious, he said, to be able to tell his lady how the drinks
were approved. Both were excellent, and to that effect the prisoners
replied; but no sooner was the messenger gone than Berenger said
smilingly, ‘That was a love potion, Phil.’
‘And you drank it!’ cried Philip, in horror.
‘I did not think of it till I saw how the boy’s eyes were gazing
curiously at me as I swallowed it. You look at me as curiously, Phil.
Are you expecting it to work? Shall I be at the fair lady’s feet next
time we meet?’
‘How can you defy it, Berry?’
‘Nay, Phil; holy wedded love is not to be dispelled by a mountebank’s
decoction.’
‘But suppose it were poisonous, Berry, what can be done?’ cried Philip,
starting up in dismay.
‘Then you would go home, Phil, and this would be over. But’--seeing his
brother’s terror--‘there is no fear of that. She is not like to wish to
poison me.’
And the potion proved equally ineffective on mind and body, as indeed
did all the manipulations exercised upon a little waxen image that was
supposed to represent M. le Baron. Another figure was offered to Diane,
in feminine form, with black beads for eyes and a black plaster for
hair, which, when stuck full of pins and roasted before the fire, was to
cause Eustacie to peak and pine correspondingly. But from this measure
Diane shrank. If aught was done against her rival it must be by her
father and brother, not by herself; and she would not feel herself
directly injuring her little cousin, nor sinking herself below him whom
she loved. Once his wife, she would be good for ever, held up by his
strength.
Meantime Berenger had received a greater shock than she or her father
understood in the looking over of some of the family parchments kept in
store at the castle. The Chevalier, in showing them to him, had chiefly
desired to glorify the family by demonstrating how its honours had been
won, but Berenger was startled at finding that Nid-de-Merle had been, as
it appeared to him, arbitrarily and unjustly declared to be forfeited by
the Sieur de Bellaise, who had been thrown into prison by Louis XI. for
some demonstration in favour of the poor Duke de Berri, and granted
to the favourite Ribaumont. The original grant was there, and to his
surprise he found it was to male heirs--the male heirs alone of the
direct line of the Ribaumont--to whom the grant was made. How, then,
came it to Eustacie? The disposal had, with almost equal injustice, been
changed by King Henry II. and the late Count de Ribaumont in favour of
the little daughter whose union with the heir of the elder line was to
conclude all family feuds. Only now did Berenger understand what his
father had said on his death-bed of flagrant injustice committed in his
days of darkness. He felt that he was reaping the reward of the injuries
committed against the Chevalier and his son on behalf of the two
unconscious children. He would willingly at once have given up all claim
to the Nid-de-Merle estate--and he was now of age; two birthdays had
passed in his captivity and brought him to years of discretion--but he
had no more power than before to dispose of what was the property of
Eustacie and her child; and the whole question of the validity of his
marriage would be given up by his yielding even the posthumous claim
that might have devolved on him in case of Eustacie’s death. This would
be giving up her honour, a thing impossible.
‘Alas!’ he sighed, ‘my poor father might well say he had bound a heavy
burthen round my neck.’
And from that time his hopes sank lower as the sense of the justice of
his cause left him. He could neither deny his religion nor his marriage,
and therefore could do nothing for his own deliverance; and he knew
himself to be suffering in the cause of a great injustice; indeed, to be
bringing suffering on the still more innocent Philip.
The once proudly indifferent youth was flagging now; was losing
appetite, flesh, and colour; was unwilling to talk or to take exercise;
and had a wan and drooping air that was most painful to watch. It seemed
as if the return of summer brought a sense of the length and weariness
of the captivity, and that the sunshine and gaiety of the landscape had
become such a contrast to the captives’ deadness of spirit that they
could hardly bear to behold them, and felt the dull prison walls more
congenial to their feelings than the gaiety of the summer hay and
harvest-fields.