Produced by Charlie Howard and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









Transcriber’s Note: Black Letter is indicated by =equals signs=;
italics text is indicated by _underscores_.




  LEGENDS
  OF
  LOVE AND CHIVALRY.


  Knights of England, France, and Scotland.




  THE
  KNIGHTS
  OF
  ENGLAND, FRANCE,
  AND
  SCOTLAND.


  BY
  HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT,

  AUTHOR OF “THE CAVALIERS OF ENGLAND”--“THE ROMAN TRAITOR”--“CROMWELL,”
  “THE BROTHERS”--“CAPTAINS OF THE OLD WORLD,” ETC.


  [Illustration]


  REDFIELD,
  CLINTON HALL, NEW YORK
  1852.




  Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852,
  BY J. S. REDFIELD,
  in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States,
  in and for the Southern District of New York.


  STEREOTYPED BY C. C. SAVAGE,
  13 Chambers Street, N. Y.




CONTENTS


                                                                    PAGE
  LEGENDS OF THE NORMAN CONQUERORS                                     7
    The Saxon’s Oath                                                   9
    The Norman’s Vengeance                                            22
    The Faith of Woman                                                37
    The Erring Arrow                                                  45
    The Saxon Prelate’s Doom                                          61
    The Fate of the Blanche Navire                                    73
    The Saxon’s Bridal                                                85

  LEGENDS OF THE CRUSADERS                                            99
    The Syrian Lady                                                  101
    The Templar’s Trials                                             115
    The Renegado                                                     128

  LEGENDS OF FEUDAL DAYS                                             143
    The False Ladye                                                  145
    The Vassal’s Wife                                                177
    True Love’s Devotion                                             221

  LEGENDS OF SCOTLAND                                                303
    Passages in the Life of Mary Stuart                              305
    Chastelar                                                        305
    Rizzio                                                           323
    The Kirk of Field                                                337
    Bothwell                                                         351
    The Captivity                                                    364
    The Closing Scene                                                378
    Elizabeth’s Remorse                                              393
    The Moorish Father                                               407




LEGENDS

OF

THE NORMAN CONQUERORS.




THE SAXON’S OATH.

    “My tongue hath sworn, but still my mind is free.”


The son of Godwin was the flower of the whole Saxon race. The
jealousies which had disturbed the mind of Edward the Confessor had
long since passed away; and Harold, whom he once had looked upon with
eyes of personal aversion, he now regarded almost as his own son. Yet
still the Saxon hostages--Ulfnoth, and the young son of Swerga, who in
the time of his mad predilection for the Normans, and his unnatural
distrust of his own countrymen, had been delivered for safe keeping
to William, duke of Normandy--still lingered, melancholy exiles, far
from the white cliffs of their native land. And now, for the first time
since their departure, did the aspect of affairs appear propitious for
their liberation; and Harold, brother of one, and uncle of the other,
full of proud confidence in his own intellect and valor, applied to
Edward for permission that he might cross the English channel, and,
personally visiting the Norman, bring back the hostages in honor and
security to the dear land of their forefathers. The countenance of the
Confessor fell at the request; and, conscious probably in his own heart
of some rash promise made in days long past, and long repented, to the
ambitious William, he manifested a degree of agitation amounting almost
to alarm.

“Harold,” he said, after a long pause of deliberation--“Harold, my son,
since you have made me this request, and that your noble heart seems
set on its accomplishment, it shall not be my part to do constraint
or violence to your affectionate and patriotic wishes. Go, then, if
such be your resolve, but go without _my_ leave, and contrary to _my_
advice. It is not that I would not have your brother and your kinsman
home, but that I do distrust the means of their deliverance; and sure I
am, that should you go in person, some terrible disaster shall befall
ourselves and this our country. Well do I know Duke William; well do I
know his spirit--brave, crafty, daring, deep, ambitious, and designing.
You, too, he hates especially, nor will he grant you anything, save at
a price that shall draw down an overwhelming ruin on you who pay it,
and on the throne of which you are the glory and the stay. If we would
have these hostages delivered at a less ransom than the downfall of our
Saxon dynasty--the misery of merry England--another messenger than thou
must seek the wily Norman. Be it, however, as thou wilt, my friend, my
kinsman, and my son.”

Oh, sage advice, and admirable counsel! advice how fatally
neglected--counsel how sadly frustrated! Gallant, and brave, and young;
fraught with a noble sense of his own powers, a full reliance on his
own honorable purposes; untaught as yet in that, the hardest lesson
of the world’s hardest school, distrust of others, suspicion of all
men--Harold set forth upon his journey, as it were, on an excursion
in pursuit of pleasure. Surrounded by a train of blithe companions,
gallantly mounted, gorgeously attired, with falcon upon fist, and
greyhounds bounding by his side, gayly and merrily he started, on
a serene autumnal morning, for the coast of Sussex. There he took
ship; and scarcely was he out of sight of land, when, as it were at
once to justify the words of Edward, the wind, which had been on
his embarkation the fairest that could blow from heaven, suddenly
shifted round, the sky was overcast with vast clouds of a leaden
hue, the waves tossed wildly with an ominous and hollow murmur; and,
ere the first day had elapsed, as fierce a tempest burst upon his
laboring barks as ever baffled mariner among the perilous shoals and
sandbanks of the narrow seas. Hopeless almost of safety, worn out
with unaccustomed toil and hard privations, for three days and as
many nights they battled with the stormy waters; and on the morning
of the fourth, when the skies lightened, and the abating violence of
the strong gales allowed them to put in, and come to anchor, where
the Somme pours its noble stream into the deep, through the rich
territories of the count of Ponthieu, they were at once made prisoners,
robbed of their personal effects, held to a heavy ransom, and cast as
prisoners-of-war into the dungeon-walls of Belram, to languish there
until the avarice of the count Guy should be appeased with gold.

Still Harold bore a high heart and a proud demeanor, bearding the
robber-count even to his teeth, set him at defiance, proclaiming
himself an embassador from England to the duke of Normandy, and
claiming as a right the means of making known to William his
unfortunate condition. This, deeming it perchance his interest so to
do, the count at once conceded; and before many days had passed, Harold
might see, from the barred windows of his turret-prison, a gallant band
of lancers, arrayed beneath the Norman banner, with a pursuivant and
trumpet at their head, wheeling around the walls of the grim fortress.
A haughty summons followed, denouncing “the extremities of fire and
of the sword against the count de Ponthieu, his friends, dependants,
and allies, should he not instantly set free, with all his goods and
chattels, his baggage and his horses, friends, followers, and slaves,
unransomed with all honor, Harold, the son of Godwin, the friend and
host of William, high and puissant duke of Normandy!” Little, however,
did mere menaces avail with the proud count de Ponthieu; nor did the
Saxon prince obtain his liberty till William had paid down a mighty
sum of silver, and invested Guy with a magnificent demesne on the rich
meadows of the Eaune.

Then once more did the son of Godwin ride forth a freeman, in the
bright light of heaven, escorted--such were the strange anomalies
of those old times--by a superb array of lances, furnished for his
defence by the same count de Ponthieu, who, having held him in vile
durance until his object was obtained, as soon as he was liberated on
full payment of the stipulated price, had thenceforth treated him as
a much-honored guest, holding his stirrup at his castle-gate when he
departed, and sending a strong guard of honor to see him in all safety
over the frontier of the duke’s demesne. Here, at the frontier town,
William’s high senechal attended his arrival; and gay and glorious was
his progress through the rich fields of Normandy, until he reached
Rouen. The glorious chase--whether by the green margin of some brimful
river they roused the hermit-tyrant of the waters, that noblest of the
birds of chase, to make sport for their long-winged falcons, or through
the sere trees of the forest pursued the stag or felon wolf with horn,
hound, and halloo--diversified the tedium of the journey; while every
night some feudal castle threw wide its hospitable gates to greet with
revelry and banqueting the guest of the grand duke. Arrived at Rouen,
that powerful prince himself, the mightiest warrior of the day, rode
forth beyond the gates to meet the Saxon; nor did two brothers long
estranged meet ever with more cordiality of outward show than these,
the chiefs of nations long destined to be rival and antagonistic, till
from their union should arise the mightiest, the wisest, the most
victorious, and enlightened, and free race of men, that ever peopled
empires, or spread their language and their laws through an admiring
world. On that first meeting, as he embraced his guest, the princely
Norman announced to him that his young brother and his nephew were
thenceforth at his absolute disposal.

“The hostages are yours,” he said--“yours, at your sole request; nor
would I be less blithe to render them, if Harold stood before me
himself a landless exile, than as I see him now, the first lord of a
powerful kingdom, the most trusty messenger of a right noble king. But,
of your courtesy, I pray you leave us not yet awhile; though if you
will do so, my troops shall convey you to the seashore, my ships shall
bear you home!--but, I beseech, do this honor to your host, to tarry
with him for a little space: and as you be the first--for so you are
reported to us--in all realities and sports of Saxon warfare, so let us
prove your prowess, and witness you our skill, in passages of Norman
chivalry.”

In answer to this fair request, what could the Saxon do but acquiesce?
Yet, even as he did so, the words of the gray-headed king came sensibly
upon his memory, and he began to feel as if in truth the net of the
deceiver were already round about him with its inevitable meshes.
Still, having once assented, nothing remained for him but to fulfil,
as gracefully as possible, his half-unwilling promise. So joyously,
however, were the days consumed--so gayly did the evenings pass, among
festivities far more refined and delicate than were the rude feasts of
the sturdy Saxons, wherein excess of drink and vulgar riot composed
the chief attractions--that, after one short week had flown, all the
anxieties and fears of Harold were lost in admiration of the polished
manners of his Norman hosts, and the high qualities of his chief
entertainer. From town to town they passed in gay cortége, visiting
castle after castle in their route, and ever and anon testing the valor
and the skill each of the other, in those superb encounters of mock
warfare--the free and gentle passage of arms--which in the education
of the warlike Normans were second only to the real shock of battle,
which was to them, not metaphorically, the very breath of life.

Nor in these jousts and tournaments, whether with headless lance or
blunted broadsword, or in the deadlier though still amicable strife
at _outrance_, did not the Saxon, though unused to the menêge of
the destrier and equestrian combat with the lance, win high renown
and credit with his martial hosts. The Saxon tribes had, from their
earliest existence as a people, been famed as infantry; their arms, a
huge and massive axe; a short, sharp, two-edged sword, framed like the
all-victorious weapon of the Romans; a target, and ponderous javelin,
used ever as a missile. Cavalry, properly so called, although their
leaders sometimes rode into the conflict, they had none; and by a
natural consequence, one of that people for the first time adopting
the complete panoply, mounting the barbed war-horse, and tilting with
the long lance of the Gallic chivalry, must have engaged with the
practised champions of the time at a fearful disadvantage. Still, even
at this odds, such was the force of emulation acting upon a spirit
elastic, vigorous, and fiery, backed by a powerful and agile frame,
inured to feats of strength and daring, that little time elapsed ere
Harold could abide the brunt of the best lance of William’s court, not
only without the risk of reputation, but often at advantage. After a
long and desperate encounter, wherein the Saxon prince had foiled all
comers, hurling three cavaliers to earth with one unsplintered lance,
William, in admiration of his bravery, insisted on bestowing on his
friend, with his own honored blade, the accolade of knighthood--buckled
the gilded spurs upon his heels; presented him with the complete
apparel of a knight--the lance, with its appropriate bandrol--the huge,
two-handed war-sword; and, above all, the finest charger of his royal
stables, which, constantly supplied from the best blood of Andalusia,
at that time were esteemed the choicest stud in Europe. It may now be
supposed that honors such as these, coming too from a Norman, for
the most part esteemed the scorner of the Saxon race--nor this alone,
but from the most renowned and famous warrior of the day--produced a
powerful effect on the enthusiastic and ambitious spirit of the young
Englishman; nor did the wily duke fail to observe the operation of his
deep-laid manœuvres, nor, when observed, did he neglect by every means
to strengthen the impression he had made. To this end, therefore, not
courtesies alone, nor the high-prized distinctions of military honor,
nor gorgeous gifts, nor personal deference, were deemed sufficient
instruments. To finish what he had himself so well begun, to complete
the ensnarement of the Saxon’s senses, the aid of woman was called
in--woman, all-powerful, perilous, fascinating woman! Nor did he lack
a fair and willing bait wherewith to give his prize. In his own court,
filled as it was with the most lovely, or at least--thanks to the
prowess of the Norman spear--the most renowned of Europe’s ladies,
there was not one that could compete in beauty, wit, or grace, with
Alice, his bright daughter. Too keen a player with the passions and the
characters of men--too wise a judge of that most wondrous compound,
that strange mass of inconsistencies, of evil and of good, of honor and
deceit, the human heart--too close a calculator of effects and causes,
was William, to divulge his purpose, or to hint his wishes, even to the
obedient ear of Alice. He cared not--he--whether she loved, or feigned
to love, so that his object was effected. Commanding ever his wildest
passions, using them but as instruments and tools to bend or break men
to his purposes, he never dreamed or recked of their ungovernable force
upon the minds of others. It was but a few days after the arrival of
his guest, that he discovered how he gazed after, and with signs of
evident and earnest admiration, on the young damsel, to whose intimacy
he had been studiously admitted as an especial and much-honored friend
of his host: and her father, to fan this flame on Harold’s part, it
needed little art from so consummate an intriguer as the duke; while as
to Alice, young as she was, and thoughtless, delighted with attention,
and attracted by the fine form and high repute of the young stranger,
and yet more by the raciness and trifling singularities of his foreign
though high-bred deportment--a fond, paternal smile, and an approving
glance, as she toyed with her young admirer, sufficed to give full
scope to her vivacious inclinations.

Daily the Norman’s game became more intricate, daily more certain; when
suddenly, just as the Saxon--flattered and half-enamored as he was,
began to feel that he had no excuse for lingering longer at a distance
from his country and his sovereign--began to speak of a return before
the setting-in of winter, an accident occurred, which, with his wonted
readiness of wit, William turned instantly to good account.

The ducal territories, which had descended to the Norman line from
their first champion, Rollo, were separated by the small stream of
Coësnor from the neighboring tract of Brittany, to which all the
succeeding princes had possessed a claim since Charles the Simple,
in the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, had ceded it to that great
duke, the founder of the Norman dynasty. The consequence of this
pretence--for such in fact it was--were endless bickerings, small
border wars, aggressions and reprisals, burnings, and massacres, and
vengeance! Some trivial skirmish had occurred upon this frontier, just
as the duke had perceived that he must either suffer Harold to depart
before his projects were accomplished, or force him to remain by open
violence. In such a crisis he resolved at once upon his line of action;
and, instantly proclaiming war, he raised the banner of his dukedom,
summoned his vassals, great and small, to render service for their
military tenures; and in announcing to his guest his march against the
forces of his hereditary foe, claimed his assistance in the field as
a true host from his well-proved guest, and a godfather-in-arms from
the son whom he had admitted to the distinguished honor of the knightly
accolade. Intoxicated with ambition and with love, madly desirous of
acquiring fame among the martial Normans, and fancying, with a vanity
not wholly inexcusable, that he was doing service to his country in
acquiring the respect of foreign powers, he met half-way the proffer.
And, in the parlance of the day, right nobly did he prove his gilded
spurs of knighthood. In passing the Coësnor, which, like the See,
the Seluna, and the other streams that cross the great Grêve of St.
Michel, is perilous from its spring-tide and awful quicksands, Harold
displayed, in recovering several soldiers, who, having quitted the
true line of march, were on the point of perishing, a noble union of
intrepidity and strength.

During the whole course of the war, the Norman and his guest had but
one tent and one table; side by side in the front of war they charged
the enemy, and side by side they rode upon the march, beguiling the
fatigue and labor with gay jests or graver conversation: and now so
intimate had they become, so perfect was the confidence reposed by
the frank Englishman in his frank-seeming friend, that the sagacious
tempter felt the game absolutely in his power, and waited but a fitting
opportunity for aiming his last blow. Nor was it long ere the occasion
he had sought, occurred. Some brilliant exploits, performed in the
last skirmish of the campaign, by the intended victim of his perfidy,
gave him a chance to descant on the national and well-proved hardihood
and valor of this Saxon race. Thence, by a stroke of masterly and
well-timed tact, he touched upon the beauties, the fertility, the noble
forests, and the rich fields of England--the happy days which he had
passed amid the hospitalities of that fair island. The praises of the
reigning monarch followed, a topic wherein Harold freely and eagerly
united with his host.

“You were but young in those days,” William continued, “and scarce,
I trow, can recollect the scenes which to my older memory are but as
things of yesterday. Then, then, indeed, our races were at variance,
and your good sire--peace to his soul!--worked me and mine sore scathe
and trouble. Yet was it natural, most natural! For in those times
your excellent and venerable king--long may he sway the sceptre he
so honors!--lived with me upon terms of the most close and cordial
friendship. Ay, in good sooth, we were as two brothers--living beneath
the same roof, eating of the same board, and drinking from one cup!
Not thou and I, my Harold, are more sure comrades. Ay! and he promised
me--this in thy private ear--if ever he should gain the throne of
England, to leave me by his will, in default of his own issue, heir to
that noble kingdom. I doubt not of his troth nor loyalty, though it is
years since we spoke of it. You have more lately been about him: hast
ever heard him speak of it? What thinkest thou of his plighted faith?
He is not one, I do believe, to register a vow in heaven, and fall from
it!”

Taken thus by surprise, annoyed and much embarrassed by the turn their
converse had thus taken, Harold turned pale, and actually stammered, as
he made reply:--

“He never had presumed to question his liege lord and king on matters
of such import. The king had never dropped the slightest hint to him
concerning the succession. If he had sworn, doubtless he would perform
his oath: he was famed, the world over, for his strict sanctity; how,
then, should he be perjured? He doubted not, had he so promised, the
duke would have no reason to complain of any breach of faith in good
King Edward’s testament.”

“Ay! it is so,” said William, musingly, as it appeared to Harold,
although in truth his every word had been premeditated long before. “I
had so hoped it would be; and, by my faith, right glad am I that you
confirm me in mine aspirations. By your aid, my good friend--with the
best Saxon on my side--all else is certain; and by my faith, whatever
you shall ask of me, were it my daughter’s hand in marriage, surely it
shall be yours when I am king of England!”

Again the words of the Confessor flashed on the mind of the ill-fated
Saxon, and he foresaw at once the terrible result of this unwilling
confidence. At the same time he saw no means of present extrication,
and, with an air of evident embarrassment, he answered in words
half-evasive, yet sufficiently conclusive, as he hoped, to stop,
for the time being, the unpleasing topic. But this was far from the
intent of William, who, having read with an intuitive and almost
supernatural sagacity the thought that flashed across the brain of
Harold, determined that he should commit himself in terms decisive, and
admitting of no dubious explanation. Taking it, then, for granted that
he had replied fully in the affirmative--

“Since, then,” he said, “you do engage so loyally to serve me, you
shall engage to fortify for me the castle on the heights of Dover; to
dig in it good wells of living water; and, at my summons, to surrender
it! You shall give me your sister, that she may be espoused unto the
noblest of my barons; and you shall have to wife my daughter Alice:
some passages, I trow, have gone between ye ere now. Moreover, as a
warrant of your faith, your brother Ulfnoth shall yet tarry with me;
and when I come to England to possess my crown, then will I yield him
to you!”

In all its force, the madness of his conduct now glared upon the very
soul of Harold. He saw the guilt he had incurred already; the peril he
had brought upon the kinsmen he had come to save; the wo that might
result to his loved country! But, seeing this, he saw no better means
than to feign acquiescence with this unworthy project, holding himself
at liberty to break thereafter an unwilling promise.

No more was said upon the subject. They rode onward as before, but the
light-hearted pleasure of the Saxon was destroyed; and though the great
duke feigned not to perceive the changed mood of his comrade, he had
resolved already that he should yet more publicly commit himself ere he
should leave the realm.

At Avranches, but three days after their discourse, William convoked a
grand assembly of his lords and barons--the mightiest and the noblest
of his vavasours and vassals--the pride of Normandy. There, in the
centre of the hall, he caused an immense chest to be deposited, filled
to the very brim with the most holy relics--bones of the martyred
saints--fragments of the true cross--all that was deemed most sacred
and most awful by the true-hearted catholic--and covered with a superb
cloth of gold, as though it were an ordinary slab or table. There,
seated in high state, upon his chair of dignity--a drawn sword in his
hand, wearing his cap of maintenance, circled by _fleurs-de-lis_,
upon his head, and clad in ermined robes of state--he held _cour
pleusêre_ of his nobles. The Saxon stood among them, honored among the
first at all times, and now the more especially distinguished, that
it was his farewell reception previous to his departure for England.
After presenting him with the most splendid gifts, and making the
most liberal professions of attachment, “Harold,” exclaimed the duke,
“before we part, I call on you, before this noble company, here to
confirm by oath your promise made to me three days since, ‘to aid me in
obtaining, after the death of Edward, the throne and crown of England;
to take my daughter Alice to wife; and to send me your sister hither,
that I may find for her a princely spouse among my vavasours!’”

Taken a second time at fault, and daring not thus openly to falsify
his word--but with a blank and troubled aspect, unsatisfied with his
internal reservation, and conscious of his perjury--Harold laid both
his hands on two small reliquaries which lay, as if by chance, upon
the cloth of gold; and swore, provided he should live, to make good
all those promises--“so might God aid him.” And with one deep, solemn
acclamation, the whole assembly echoed those last words: “So may God
aid him! may God aid! God aid!” At the same instant, on a signal
from the duke, the cloth of gold was drawn aside, and Harold saw the
sacrilege he must commit, so deeply sworn on things so holy, should he
repent, or falsify his oath! He saw, and shuddered visibly, as though
he had been stricken by an ague; yet presently, by a powerful effort,
rallying all his courage to his aid, he made his last farewells,
departed, loaded with gifts and honors, but with a melancholy heart;
and sailed immediately for England, leaving the brother, for whose
liberty he came a suitor, ten times more deeply forfeit than he had
been before. On his first interview with Edward, he related all that
had occurred--even his own involuntary oath. And the old sovereign
trembled, and grew pale, but manifested nothing of surprise or anger!

“I knew it,” he replied, in calm but hollow tones; “I knew it, and I
did forewarn you, how that your visit to the Norman should bring misery
on you, and ruin on our country! As I forewarned you, so has it come to
pass! So shall it come to pass hereafter, till all hath been fulfilled:
God only grant that I live not to see it!”




THE NORMAN’S VENGEANCE.

   “God and good angels fight on _William’s_ side,
    And _Harold_ fall in height of all his pride.”--SHAKSPERE.


Edward the Confessor was dead; and dying, had bequeathed the crown
of merry England to Harold, son of Godwin, destined, alas! to be the
last prince of the Saxon race who should possess the throne of the
fair island. The oath which he had sworn to William, duke of Normandy,
engaging to assist him in obtaining that same realm, which had now
fallen to himself, alike by testament of the late king, and by election
of the people, dwelt not in the new monarch’s bosom! Selfishness
and ambition, aided, perhaps, and strengthened by the suggestions
of a sincere patriotism, that whispered to his soul the baseness of
surrendering his countrymen, their lives, their liberties, their
fortunes, and his loved native land, into the stern hands of a foreign
ruler, determined him to brave the worst, rather than keep the oath,
which, with its wonted sophistry, self-interest was ready to represent
involuntary and of no avail. Not long, however, was he allowed to
flatter himself with hopes that the tempest, excited by his own weak
duplicity, might possibly blow over. The storm-clouds were already
charged with thunder destined to burst almost at once on his devoted
head. The cry of warfare had gone forth through Christendom; the pope
had launched the dreadful bolt of interdict and excommunication against
the perjured Saxon, and all who should adhere to him in his extremity;
nay, more, had actually granted to the Norman duke, by virtue of his
holy office as God’s vicegerent and dispenser of all dignities on
earth, the sovereignty of the disputed islands. In token of his perfect
approbation of the justice of his cause, the Roman pontiff had sent,
moreover, to the duke, a ring of gold, containing an inestimable relic,
a lock of hair from the thrice-mitred temples of St. Peter, the first
Roman bishop; a consecrated banner blest by himself--the same which had
been reared, in token of the greatness and supremacy of holy church, by
those bold Normans, Raoul and William of Montreuil, above the captured
battlements of every tower and castle through the bright kingdom of
Campania. Thus doubly armed, once by the justice of his cause, and yet
more strongly by the sanction of the church, the bold duke hesitated
not to strive by force of arms to gain that rich inheritance, which he
had hoped to win by the more easy agency of guile and of persuasion.

A herald, sent, with a most noble train, bore William’s terms to the
new monarch. “William, the duke of Normandy,” he said, boldly, but with
all reverence due to his birth and present station, “calls to your
memory the oath, which you swore to him by your hand and by your mouth,
on good and holy relics!”

“True it is,” answered Harold, “that I did so swear; but under force I
did so, not by free will of mine! Moreover, I did promise that which
’twas not mine to grant. My royalty belongs not to myself, but to my
people, in trust of whom I hold it. I may not yield it but at their
demand; let them but second William, and instantly the crown he seeks
for shall be his! Farther, without my people’s leave, I may not wed a
woman of a stranger race. My sister, whom he would have espoused unto
the noblest of his barons--she hath been dead a year. Will he, that I
should send her corpse?”

A little month elapsed, and during that brief interval, Harold
neglected nothing that might preserve the crown he had determined
never, except with life, to yield to his fierce rival. A powerful fleet
was instantly appointed to cruise upon the Downs, and intercept the
French invaders; a mighty army was collected on the coast, and each and
all the Saxon landholders, nobles, and thanes, and franklins, bound
themselves by strong oaths “never to entertain or truce, or treaty,
with the detested Normans, but to die freemen, or freemen to conquer.”

A second time the herald came in peace, demanding, in tones fair and
moderate, that Harold, if he might not keep _all_ the conditions of
his oath, would fulfil part, at least, and wed Alice, his betrothed
wife already, the daughter of the puissant duke, who, thereupon, would
yield to him, as being his daughter’s dower, all right and title to the
crown, which he now claimed as his by heritage.

Harold again returned a brief and stern refusal; resolved, that as
he would not yield the whole, he would not, by conceding part, risk
the alienation of the love--which he possessed in an extraordinary
degree--of the whole English people. Then burst the storm at once. From
every part of Europe, where the victorious banners of the Normans were
spread to the wind of heaven, adventurers flocked to the consecrated
standard of their kinsman.

Four hundred vessels of the largest class, and more than twice that
number of the transports of the day, were speedily assembled in the
frith of Dives, a stream which falls into the sea between the Seine
and Orne. There, for a month or better, by contrary winds and furious
storms, they were detained inactive. At length, a southern breeze rose
suddenly, and by its aid they made the harbor of Saint Valery; but
there, again, they were detained by times more stormy than before; and,
superstitious as all men of that period were, the soldiers soon began
to tremble and to murmur; strange tales of dreams, and prodigies were
circulated, and the spirit of that vast host, of late so confident and
proud, sank hourly. At length, whether at the instigation of their own
fanatical belief, or as a last resource, or hoping to distract the
minds of men from gloomier considerations, the Norman chiefs appointed
a procession round the harbor of Saint Valery; bearing the holiest
relics, and among them, the bones of the good saint himself, the patron
and nomenclator of the town; and ere the prayers were ended, lo! the
wind shifted once again, and now blew steadily and fair, swelling the
canvass with propitious breath, and driving out each vane and streamer
at full length, toward their destined port.

The same storm, which had held William on his Norman coast, windbound
and motionless, which he had cursed as unpropitious and disastrous,
fifty times every day, for the last month, had been, in truth--so
little is the foresight, and so ignorant the wisdom even of the most
sagacious among mortals--had been, in truth, the agent by which his
future conquest was to be effected. Those gales which pent the Norman
galleys in their harbors, had forced the English fleet, shattered and
storm-tossed, to put in for victuals and repairs, leaving the seas
unguarded to the approach of the invaders. Nor was this all! Those
self-same gales had wafted from the northward another fleet of foemen,
the Norwegian host of the bold sea-king, Harold Hardrada, and the
treacherous Tosti, the rebel brother of the Saxon monarch. Debarking in
the Humber, they had laid waste the fertile borders of Northumberland
and Yorkshire; had vanquished, in a pitched battle, Morcar and Edwin,
and the youthful Waltheof--who had made head against them with their
sudden levies, raised from the neighboring countries--had driven
them into the walls of York, and there were now besieging them with
little hope of rescue or relief. Meanwhile, the king, who had, for
months, been lying in the southern portion of the realm, in Essex,
Kent, or Sussex, awaiting, at the head of the best warriors of his
kingdom, the arrival of his most inveterate foeman--summoned by news
of this irruption, unexpected, yet, as it seemed most formidable, into
his northern provinces, lulled into temporary carelessness by the
long tarrying of his Norman enemy; and hoping, as it indeed seemed
probable, that the prevailing wind would not change so abruptly,
but that he might, by using some extraordinary diligence and speed,
attack and overpower the besieging force at York, and yet return to
Dover in time to oppose, with the united force of his whole nation,
the disembarkation of the duke--had left his post and travelled with
all speed toward York, leading the bravest and best-disciplined of
his army against the fierce Norwegians, while the shores of Sussex
remained comparatively naked and defenceless. A bloody and decisive
battle fought at the bridge of Staneford, over the river Derwent,
rewarded his activity and valor--a battle in which he displayed no
less his generalship and valor, than the kind generosity and mercy
of his nature. Riding, himself, in person, up to the hostile lines,
before the first encounter, sheathed in the complete armor of the
Norman chivalry--which, since his visit to the continent, he had
adopted--“Where,” he cried, in his loudest tones, “is Tosti, son of
Godwin?”

“Here stands he,” answered the rebel, from the centre of the Norwegian
phalanx, which, with lowered spears, awaited the attack.

“Thy brother,” replied Harold, concealed by the frontlet of his barred
helmet from all recognition, “sends thee his greeting--offers thee
peace, and friendship, and all thine ancient honors.”

“Good words!” cried Tosti, “mighty good, and widely different from the
insults he bestowed on me last year! But if I should accept the offer,
what will he grant to Harold, son of Sigurd?”

“Seven feet of English earth,” replied the king; “or, since he be
gigantic in his stature, he shall have somewhat more!”

“Let Harold, then address himself to battle,” answered Tosti. “None
but a liar ever shall declare that Tosti, son of Godwin, has played a
traitor’s part to Harold, son of Sigurd!”

There was no more of parley. With a shock, that was heard for leagues,
the hosts encountered; and in the very first encounter, pierced by an
arrow in the throat, Hardrada fell, and to his place succeeded that
false brother and rebellious subject, Tosti, the Saxon. Again the
generous Harold offered him peace and liberal conditions! again his
offers were insultingly rejected! and once again, with a more deadly
fury than before, the armies met, and, this time, fought it out, till
not a leader or a chief of the Norwegian host was left alive, save
Olaf, Harold’s son, and the prince bishop of the Orkneys--Tosti,
himself, having at length obtained the fate he merited so richly. A
third time peace and amity were offered, and now they were accepted;
and swearing friendship to the English king for ever, the Norsemen left
the fatal land, whereon yet weltered in their gore their king, the
noblest of their chiefs, and twice five thousand of the bravest men of
their brave nation. But glorious as that day was justly deemed--and
widely as it was sung and celebrated by the Saxon bards--perfect as was
the safety which it wrought to all the northern counties--and freely
as it suffered Harold to turn his undivided forces against whatever
foe might dare set hostile foot on English soil inviolate--still was
that day decisive of his fate!--decisive of the victory of William,
whose banners were already floating over the narrow seas in proud
anticipation of their coming triumph!

It was a bright and beauteous morning in September, when the great
fleet of William put to sea, the galley of the grand duke leading.
She was a tall ship, of the largest tonnage then in use, well manned,
and gallantly equipped; from the main-topmast streamed the consecrated
banner of the pope, and from her peak, a broad flag with a blood-red
cross. Her sails were, not as now, of plain white canvass, but
gorgeously adorned with various colors, and blazoned with the rude
incipient heraldry, which, though not then a science, was growing
gradually into esteem and use. In several places might be seen depicted
the three Lions, which were even then the arms of Normandy; and on her
prow was carved, with the best skill of the French artist, a young
child with a bended bow, and a shaft quivering on the string. Fair
blew the breeze, and free the gallant ship careered before it--before
the self-same wind which at the self-same moment was tossing on its
joyous pinions the victorious banners of the Saxon king. Fair blew
the breeze, and fast the ship of William sped through the curling
billows--so fast that, ere the sun set in the sea, the fleet was hull
down in the offing, though staggering along under all press of sail.
Night sank upon the sea; and faster flew the duke; and as the morning
broke, the chalky cliffs of Albion were in full view, at two or three
leagues distance. William, who had slept all that night as soundly and
as calmly as a child, stood on the deck ere it was light enough to see
the largest object on the sea, one mile away. His first glance was
toward the promised land, he was so swiftly nearing; his second, toward
the offing, where he hoped to see his gallant followers. Brighter and
brighter grew the morning, but not a speck was visible upon the clear
horizon. “Up to the topmast, mariners,” cried the bold duke; “up to the
topmast-head! And now what see ye?” he continued, as they sprang up in
rapid emulation to that giddy height.

“Naught,” cried the first--“naught but the sea and sky!”

“Anchor, then--anchor, presently; we will await their coming, and in
the meanwhile, Sir Seneschal, serve us a breakfast of your best, and
see there be no lack of wines, the strongest and the noblest!” and,
on the instant, the heavy plunge was heard of the huge anchor in the
deep; the sails were furled; and like a living creature endowed with
intellect, and moving by volition, the gallant ship swung round,
awaiting the arrival of her consorts.

The feast was spread, and, from the high duke on the poop to the most
humble mariner on the forecastle, the red wine flowed for all in
generous profusion. Again a lookout was sent up, and now he cried, “I
see far, far, to seaward, the topsails of four vessels.” A little pause
consumed in revelry and feasting, and once again the ship-boy climbed
the mast. “I see,” he said, the third time, “a forest on the deep, of
masts and sails!”

“God aid! God aid!” replied the armed crew--“God aid!” and, with the
word, again they weighed the anchor, and, ere three hours had passed,
the whole of that huge armament rode at their moorings off the beach at
Pevensey.

There was no sign of opposition or resistance; and on the third day
after Harold’s victory at Staneford, the Norman host set foot on
English soil. The archers were the first to disembark--armed with
the six-foot bows, and cloth-yard shafts, then, for the first time,
seen in England, soon destined to become the national weapon of its
stout yeomanry. Their faces closely shorn, and short-cut hair, their
light and succinct garments, were seen by the affrighted peasantry,
who looked upon their landing from a distance, with equal terror and
astonishment. Next came the men-at-arms, sheathed in their glittering
hauberks and bright hose-of-mail, with conical steel helmets on
their heads, long lances in their hands, and huge two-handed swords
transversely girt across their persons. After them landed the pioneers,
the laborers, and carpenters, who made the complement of that
immense army, bearing with them, piece after piece, three fortresses
of timber, arranged beforehand, and prepared to be erected on the
instant, wherever they should come to land. Last of the mighty host,
Duke William left his galley, and the long lines fell into orderly and
beautiful array, as he was rowed to land. In leaping to that wished-for
shore, the Norman’s right foot struck the gunwale of the shallop, and
he fell headlong on the sand, face downward. Instantly, through the
whole array, a deep and shuddering murmur rose--“God guard us--’tis a
sign of evil!”

But ere the sounds had passed away, he had sprung to his feet. “What
is it that you fear?” he shouted, in clear and joyous tones, “or what
dismays you? Lo! I have seized this earth in both mine hands, and, by
the splendor of our God, ’tis yours!”

Loud was the cheer of gratulation which peeled seaward far, and
far into the bosom of the invaded land, at that most brilliant and
successful repartee--and with alacrity and glee--confident of success,
and high in daring courage--the Norman host marched, unopposed, in
regular and terrible array, toward Hastings. Here on the well-known
heights, to this day known by the commemorative name of Battle,
the wooden fortresses were speedily erected; trenches were dug;
and William’s army sat down for the night upon the land, which was
thenceforth to be their heritage--thenceforth for evermore.

The news reached Harold as he lay at York, wounded and resting from his
labors, and on the instant, with his victorious army, he set forth,
publishing, as he marched along, his proclamation to all the chief of
provinces and shires, to arm their followers, and meet him with all
speed at London. The western levies came without delay; those from the
north, owing to distance, were some time behind; and yet, could Harold
have been brought by any means to moderate his fierce and desperate
impatience, he would, ere four days had elapsed, have found himself, at
least, in the command of twice two hundred men. But irritated to the
utmost by the sufferings of his countrymen, whose lands were pitilessly
ravaged, whose tenements were burned for miles around the Norman camp,
whose wives and daughters were subjected to every species of insult and
indignity, the Saxon king pressed onward. And though his forces did
not amount to one-fourth part of the great duke’s array, still, he was
resolved to encounter them, precipitate and furious as a madman.

On the eighteenth day after the defeat of Tosti and Hardrada, the
Saxon army was encamped over against the fortified position of the
invaders. On that same day, a monk, Sir Hugues Maigrot, came to find
Harold, with proposals from the foe, offering him peace on one of three
conditions--either that he should yield the kingdom presently--or leave
it to the arbitration of the pope--or, finally, decide the matter by
appeal to God in single combat.

To each and all of these proposals, the Saxon answered bluntly in the
negative. “I will not yield my kingdom! I will not leave it to the
pope! I will not meet the duke in single combat!”

Again the monk returned. “I come again,” he said, “from William. ‘Tell
Harold,’ said the duke, ‘if he will hold him to his ancient compact,
I yield him all the lands beyond the Humber; I give his brother Gurth
all the demesnes his father, Godwin, held. If he refuse these my last
proffers, tell him before his people, he is a perjured liar, accursed
of the pope, and excommunicated--he, and all those that hold to him!’”

But no effect had the bold words of William on the stern spirits
of the English. “Battle,” they cried--“no peace with the Normans.
Battle--immediate battle!” and with that answer did the priest return
to his employer; and either host prepared for the appeal to that great
arbiter, the sword.

Fairly the morning broke which was to look upon the slaughter of so
many thousands; broad and bright rose the sun before whose setting
one of those two magnificent and gallant armies must necessarily be
involved in utter ruin. As the first rays were visible upon the eastern
sky, Odo, the bishop of Bayeux, William’s maternal brother, performed
high mass before the marshalled troops, wearing his cope and rochet
over his iron harness. The holy rites performed, he leaped upon his
snow-white charger, and, with his truncheon in his hand, arrayed the
cavalry, which he commanded.

It was a glorious spectacle, that mighty host, arrayed in three long
columns of attack, marching with slow and orderly precision against
the palisaded trenches of the Saxons. The men-at-arms of the great
counts of Boulogne and Ponthieu composed the first; the second being
formed by the auxiliar bands of Brittany, Poitou, and Maine; and in the
third, commanded by the duke in person--mounted on a superb Andalusian
charger, wearing about his neck the reliquary on which his rival had
sworn falsely, and accompanied by a young noble, Tunstan the White,
bearing the banner of the pope--were marshalled all the flower and
strength of Normandy. Scattered along the front of the advance were
multitudes of archers, lightly equipped in quilted jerkins, with long
yew bows, and arrows of an ell in length, mingled with crossbow-men
with arbalasts of steel, and square, steel-headed quarrels.

Steadily they advanced, and in good order; while, in their entrenched
camp, guarded by palisades of oak morticed together in a long line of
ponderous trellis-work, the Englishmen awaited their approach, drawn up
around their standard, which--blazoned with the white dragon, long both
the ensign and the war-cry of their race--was planted firmly in the
earth, surrounded by the dense ranks of heavy infantry which formed the
strength of their array.

Just as the charge began, William rode out before the lines, and thus
addressed his soldiery: “Turn your hearts wholly to the combat! set
all upon the die, either to fall or conquer! For if we gain, we shall
be rich and glorious. That which I gain, shall be your gain; that
which I conquer, yours! If I shall win this land, ye shall possess it!
Know, too, and well remember this, that not to claim my right have I
come only, but to revenge--ay, to revenge our gentle nation on all the
felonies, the perjuries, the treasons of the English!--the English,
who, in profound peace, upon Saint Brice’s eve, ruthlessly slew the
unarmed and defenceless Danes; who decimated the bold followers of
Alfred, _my_ kinsman and _your_ countryman, and slew himself by
shameless treachery! On, then, with God’s aid, Normans! on, for revenge
and victory!”

Then out dashed from the lines the boldest of his vavasours, the Norman
Taillefer, singing aloud the famous song--well known through every
province of proud France--the song of Charlemagne and Rollo--tossing
aloft the while his long, two-handed war-sword, and catching it
adroitly as it fell; while at each close of that proud, spirit-stirring
chant, each warrior of that vast array thundered the burden of the
song--“God aid! God aid!”

Then, like a storm of hail, close, deadly, and incessant, went forth
the volleyed showers from arbalast and long-bow; while infantry and
horse charged in unbroken order against the gates and angles of the
fort. But with a cool and stubborn hardihood the Saxon infantry stood
firm. Protected by the massive palisades from the appalling volleys of
the archery, they hurled their short and heavy javelins with certain
aim and deadly execution over their stout defences; while their huge
axes, wherever they came hand to hand, shivered the Norman spears like
reeds, and cleft the heaviest mail, even at a single blow! Long, and
with all the hot, enthusiastic valor of their race, did the assailants
crowd around the ramparts; but it was all in vain--they could not scale
them in the face of that indomitable infantry; they could not force
one timber from its place; and they at length recoiled, weary and
half-subdued, toward the reserve of William.

After a short cessation, again the archery advanced; but, by the
orders of the duke, their volleys were no longer sent point-blank,
but shot at a great elevation, so that they fell in a thick, galling
shower, striking the heads and wounding the unguarded faces of
the bold defenders. Harold himself, who fought on foot beside his
standard, lost his right eye at the first flight; but not for that did
he desert his post, or play less valiantly the part of a determined
soldier and wise leader. Again with that tremendous shout of “Nôtre
Dame--God aid! God aid!” which had, in every realm of Europe, sounded
the harbinger of victory, the horse and foot rushed on to the attack;
while from their rear that heavy and incessant sleet of bolt, and
shaft, and bullet, fell fast and frequent into the dense ranks of
the still-undaunted English. At no point did they force their way,
however, even when fighting at this desperate advantage. At no point
did a single Norman penetrate a gate, or overtop a palisade; while at
one entrance so complete was the repulse of the attacking squadrons,
that they recoiled, hard pressed by the defenders, to a ravine at
some considerable distance from the trenches, deep, dangerous,
and filled with underwood and brambles; these, as they fell back
in confusion, their horses stumbling and unable to recover, were
overthrown and slain pell-mell, and half defeated. One charge of
cavalry, one shock of barbed horse, would have insured the total rout
of the invaders; but--wo for England on that day!--cavalry she had
none, nor barbed horse, to complete gloriously the work her sturdy
footmen had commenced so gallantly. Still, great was the disorder,
great was the disarray and peril, of the foreign soldiery. The cry
went through the host that the great duke was slain; and, though he
flung himself amid the flyers, with his head bare, that they might
recognise his features--threatening, cursing, striking at friend and
foe with undiscriminating violence--it was well nigh an hour before
he could restore the semblance of any discipline or order. This,
once accomplished, he advanced again; and yet a third time, though
he exerted every nerve, was he repulsed at every point in terrible
disorder, and with tremendous loss.

Evening was fast approaching; and well did William know that, if
the following morning should find the Saxons firm in their unforced
entrenchments, his hopes were vain and hopeless! The country, far
and near, was rousing to the Saxon war-cry; and to the Normans, not
to conquer, was to be conquered utterly; and to be conquered was to
perish, one and all! Valor or open force, it was too evident, could
effect nothing against men as valiant and as strong, posted with more
advantage. Guile was his last resource; and guile, as usual, prevailed!

A thousand of his cavaliers advanced, as though about to charge
the trenches at full speed, with lances lowered, and with their
wonted _ensenzie_, “God aid!” But as they neared the palisades, by
preconcerted stratagem, as if they had lost heart, they suddenly drew
bridle, all as a single man, and fled, as it appeared, in irretrievable
disorder, back, back to the main body! Meanwhile, throughout the
lines, the banners were waved to and fro disorderly, and the ranks
shifted, and spears rose and fell, and all betokened their complete
disorganization. The sight was too much even for the cool hardihood
of Saxon courage. With one tremendous shout they rushed from their
entrenchments--which, had they held to them, not forty-fold the force
of William could have successfully assailed--and, wielding with both
hands their bills and axes, plunged headlong in pursuit. That instant,
all was over! For, at a moment’s notice, at a concerted signal of a
single trumpet, the very men they deemed defeated wheeled into line;
and with their spears projecting ten feet, at the least, before their
chargers’ poitrels, their long plumes floating backward in the current
caused by their own quick motion, the chivalry of France bore down
on their pursuers, breathless, confused, and struggling. It was a
massacre, but not a rout; for not a man turned on his heel, or even
thought to fly: but back to back, in desperate groups, they fought
after their ranks were broken, hewing with their short weapons at
the mail-clad lancers, who securely speared them from the backs of
their barbed horses--asking not, nor receiving quarter--true sons of
England to the last, annihilated but not conquered! Night fell, and
Gurth, and Leofwyn, and Harold, lay dead around their standard--pierced
with innumerable wounds, gory, and not to be discerned, so were their
features and their forms defaced and mangled by friend or foeman. Yet
still, when all was lost, without array or order, standards, or chiefs,
or hopes, the Englishmen fought on--till total darkness sank down on
the field of slaughter, and utter inability to slay caused a brief
pause in the unsparing havoc. Such was the vengeance of the Norman!




THE FAITH OF WOMAN.

   “Two things there be on earth that ne’er forget--
    A woman, and a dog--where once their love is set!”--OLD MS.


It was the morning after the exterminating fight at Hastings. The
banner blessed of the Roman pontiff streamed on the tainted air,
from the same hillock whence the dragon standard of the Saxons had
shone unconquered to the sun of yester-even! Hard by was pitched the
proud pavilion of the conqueror, who, after the tremendous strife and
perilous labors of the preceding day, reposed himself in fearless
and untroubled confidence upon the field of his renown; secure in
the possession of the land, which he was destined to transmit to his
posterity for many a hundred years, by the red title of the sword.

To the defeated Saxons, morning, however, brought but a renewal of
those miseries which, having yesterday commenced with the first victory
of their Norman lords, were never to conclude, or even to relax, until
the complete amalgamation of the rival races should leave no Normans to
torment, no Saxons to endure; all being merged at last into one general
name of English, and by their union giving origin to the most powerful,
and brave, and intellectual people, the world has ever looked upon
since the extinction of Rome’s freedom.

At the time of which we are now speaking, nothing was thought of by the
victors save how to rivet most securely on the necks of the unhappy
natives their yoke of iron; nothing by the poor, subjugated Saxons, but
how to escape for the moment the unrelenting massacre which was urged
far and wide by the remorseless conquerors throughout the devastated
country. With the defeat of Harold’s host, all national hope of freedom
was at once lost to England. Though, to a man, the English population
were brave and loyal, and devoted to their country’s rights, the
want of leaders--all having perished side by side on that disastrous
field--of combination, without which myriads are but dust in the scale
against the force of one united handful--rendered them quite unworthy
of any serious fears, and even of consideration, to the bloodthirsty
barons of the invading army. Over the whole expanse of level country
which might be seen from the slight elevation whereon was pitched the
camp of William, on every side might be descried small parties of the
Norman horse, driving in with their bloody lances, as if they were mere
cattle, the unhappy captives; a few of whom they now began to spare,
not from the slightest sentiment of mercy, but literally that their
arms were weary with the task of slaying, although their hearts were
yet insatiate of blood.

It must be taken now into consideration by those who listen with
dismay and wonder to the accounts of pitiless barbarity--of ruthless,
indiscriminating slaughter on the part of men whom they have hitherto
been taught to look upon as brave indeed as lions in the field, but
not partaking of the lion’s nature after the field was won--not only
that the seeds of enmity had long been sown between those rival people,
but that the deadly crop of hatred had grown up, watered abundantly by
the tears and blood of either; and, lastly, that the fierce fanaticism
of religious persecution was added to the natural rancor of a war
waged for the ends of conquest or extermination. The Saxon nation,
from the king downward to the meanest serf who fought beneath his
banner, or buckled on the arms of liberty, were all involved under the
common ban of the pope’s interdict. They were accursed of God, and
handed over by his holy church to the kind mercies of the secular arm;
and therefore, though but yesterday they were a powerful and united
nation, to-day they were but a vile horde of scattered outlaws, whom
any man might slay wherever he should find them, whether in arms or
otherwise--amenable for blood neither to any mortal jurisdiction, nor
even to the ultimate tribunal to which all must submit hereafter,
unless deprived of their appeal like these poor fugitives, by
excommunication from the pale of Christianity. For thirty miles around
the Norman camp, pillars of smoke by day, continually streaming upward
to the polluted heaven, and the red glare of nightly conflagration,
told fatally the doom of many a happy home! Neither the castle nor the
cottage might preserve their male inhabitants from the sword’s edge,
their females from more barbarous persecution. Neither the sacred
hearth of hospitality nor the more sacred altars of God’s churches
might protect the miserable fugitives; neither the mail-shirt of the
man-at-arms nor the monk’s frock of serge availed against the thrust
of the fierce Norman spear. All was dismay and havoc, such as the land
wherein those horrors were enacted has never witnessed since, through
many a following age.

High noon approached, and in the conqueror’s tent a gorgeous feast
was spread. The red wine flowed profusely, and song and minstrelsy
arose with their heart-soothing tones, to which the feeble groans of
dying wretches bore a dread burden from the plain whereon they still
lay struggling in their great agonies, too sorely maimed to live, too
strong as yet to die. But, ever and anon, their wail waxed feebler
and less frequent; for many a plunderer was on foot, licensed to ply
his odious calling in the full light of day--reaping his first if not
his richest booty from the dead bodies of their slaughtered foemen.
Ill fared the wretches who lay there, untended by the hand of love
or mercy, “scorched by the death-thirst, and writhing in vain;” but
worse fared they who showed a sign of life to the relentless robbers of
the dead, for then the dagger--falsely called that of mercy--was the
dispenser of immediate immortality. The conqueror sat at his triumphant
board, and barons drank his health: “First English monarch, of the pure
blood of Normandy!”--“King by the right of the sword’s edge!”--“Great,
glorious, and sublime!” Yet was not his heart softened, nor was his
bitter hate toward the unhappy prince who had so often ridden by
his side in war, and feasted at the same board with him in peace,
relinquished or abated. Even while the feast was at the highest, while
every heart was jocund and sublime, a trembling messenger approached,
craving on bended knee permission to address the conqueror and
king--for so he was already schooled by brief but hard experience to
style the devastator of his country.

“Speak out, Dog Saxon!” cried the ferocious prince; “but since thou
must speak, see that thy speech be brief, an’ thou wouldst keep thy
tongue uncropped thereafter!”

“Great duke and mighty,” replied the trembling envoy, “I bear you
greeting from Elgitha, herewhile the noble wife of Godwin, the queenly
mother of our late monarch--now, as she bade me style her, the humblest
of your suppliants and slaves. Of your great nobleness and mercy,
mighty king, she sues you, that you will grant her the poor leave to
search amid the heaps of those our Saxon dead, that her three sons may
at least lie in consecrated earth--so may God send you peace and glory
here, and everlasting happiness hereafter!”

“Hear to the Saxon slave!” William exclaimed, turning as if in wonder
toward his nobles; “hear to the Saxon slave, that dares to speak of
consecrated earth, and of interment for the accursed body of that most
perjured, excommunicated liar! Hence! tell the mother of the dead dog,
whom you have dared to style your king, that for the interdicted and
accursed dead the sands of the seashore are but too good a sepulchre!”

“She bade me proffer humbly to your acceptance the weight of Harold’s
body in pure gold,” faintly gasped forth the terrified and cringing
messenger, “so you would grant her that permission.”

“Proffer us gold! what gold, or whose? Know, villain, all the gold
throughout this conquered realm _is_ ours. Hence, dog and outcast,
hence! nor presume e’er again to come, insulting us by proffering, as
a boon to our acceptance, that which we _own_ already, by the most
indefeasible and ancient right of conquest!--Said I not well, knights,
vavasours, and nobles?”

“Well! well and nobly!” answered they, one and all. “The land is ours,
and all that therein is: their dwellings, their demesnes, their wealth,
whether of gold, or silver, or of cattle--yea, they themselves are
ours! themselves, their sons, their daughters, and their wives--our
portion and inheritance, to be our slaves for ever!”

“Begone! you have our answer,” exclaimed the duke, spurning him with
his foot; “and hark ye, arbalast-men and archers, if any Saxon more
approach us on like errand, see if his coat of skin be proof against
the quarrel of the shaft!”

And once again the feast went on; and louder rang the revelry, and
faster flew the wine-cup, round the tumultuous board. All day the
banquet lasted, even till the dews of heaven fell on that fatal field,
watered sufficiently already by the rich gore of many a noble heart.
All day the banquet lasted, and far was it prolonged into the watches
of the night; when, rising with the wine-cup in his hand--“Nobles and
barons,” cried the duke, “friends, comrades, conquerors, bear witness
to my vow! Here, on these heights of Hastings, and more especially upon
yon mound and hillock, where God gave to us our high victory, and
where our last foe fell--there will I raise an abbey to his eternal
praise and glory. Richly endowed, it shall be, from the first fruits of
this our land. BATTLE, it shall be called, to send the memory of this,
the great and singular achievement of our race, to far posterity; and,
by the splendor of our God, wine shall be plentier among the monks of
Battle, than water in the noblest and richest cloister else, search the
world over! This do I swear: so may God aid, who hath thus far assisted
us for _our_ renown, and will not now deny his help, when it be asked
for _his own_ glory!”

The second day dawned on the place of horror, and not a Saxon had
presumed, since the intolerant message of the duke, to come to look
upon his dead. But now the ground was needed whereon to lay the first
stone of the abbey William had vowed to God. The ground was needed;
and, moreover, the foul steam from the human shambles was pestilential
on the winds of heaven. And now, by trumpet-sound, and proclamation
through the land, the Saxons were called forth, on pain of death, to
come and seek their dead, lest the health of the conquerors should
suffer from the pollution they themselves had wrought. Scarce had the
blast sounded, and the glad tidings been announced once only, ere from
their miserable shelters, where they had herded with the wild beasts of
the forest--from wood, morass, and cavern, happy if there they might
escape the Norman spear--forth crept the relics of that persecuted
race. Old men and matrons, with hoary heads, and steps that tottered
no less from the effect of terror than of age--maidens, and youths,
and infants--too happy to obtain permission to search amid those
festering heaps, dabbling their hands in the corrupt and pestilential
gore which filled each nook and hollow of the dinted soil, so they
might bear away, and water with their tears, and yield to consecrated
ground, the relics of those brave ones, once loved so fondly, and now
so bitterly lamented. It was toward the afternoon of that same day,
when a long train was seen approaching, with crucifix, and cross,
and censer--the monks of Waltham abbey, coming to offer homage for
themselves, and for their tenantry and vassals, to him whom they
acknowledged as their king; expressing their submission to the high
will of the Norman pontiff--justified, as they said, and proved by the
assertion of God’s judgment upon the hill of Hastings. Highly delighted
by this absolute submission, the first he had received from any English
tongue, the conqueror received the monks with courtesy and favor,
granting them high immunities, and promising them free protection, and
the unquestioned tenor of their broad demesnes for ever. Nay, after he
had answered their address, he detained two of their number--men of
intelligence, as with his wonted quickness of perception he instantly
discovered--from whom to derive information as to the nature of his
newly-acquired country and newly-conquered subjects. Osgad and Ailric,
the deputed messengers from the respected principal of their community,
had yet a further and higher object than to tender their submission
to the conqueror. Their orders were, at all and every risk, to gain
permission to consign the corpse of their late king and founder to the
earth previously denied to him. And soon, emboldened by the courtesy
and kindness of the much-dreaded Norman, they took courage to approach
the subject, knowing it interdicted, even on pain of death; and, to
their wonder and delight, it was unhesitatingly granted.

Throughout the whole of the third day succeeding that unparalleled
defeat and slaughter, those old men might be seen toiling among the
naked carcasses, disfigured, maimed, and festering in the sun, toiling
to find the object of their devoted veneration. But vain were all their
labors--vain was their search, even when they called in the aid of his
most intimate attendants, ay, of the mother that had borne him! The
corpses of his brethren, Leofwyn and Gurth, were soon discovered; but
not one eye, even of those who had most dearly loved him, could now
distinguish the maimed features of the king.

At last, when hope itself was now almost extinct, some one named
Edith--Edith the Swan-necked! She had been the mistress--years ere he
had been, or dreamed of being, king--to the brave son of Godwin. She
had beloved him in her youth with that one, single-minded, constant,
never-ending love, which but few, even of her devoted sex, can
feel, and they but once, and for one cherished object. Deserted and
dishonored when he she loved was elevated to the throne, she had not
ceased from her true adoration; but, quitting her now-joyless home, had
shared her heart between her memories and her God, in the sequestered
cloisters of the nunnery of Croyland. More days elapsed ere she could
reach the fatal spot, and the increased corruption denied the smallest
hope of his discovery: yet, from the moment when the mission was named
to her, she expressed her full and confident conviction that she could
recognise that loved one so long as but one hair remained on that head
she had once so cherished! It was night when she arrived on the fatal
field, and by the light of torches once more they set out on their
awful duty. “Show me the spot,” she said, “where the last warrior
fell;” and she was led to the place where had been found the corpses of
his gallant brethren: and, with an instinct that nothing could deceive,
she went straight to the corpse of Harold! It had been turned already
to and fro many times by those who sought it; his mother had looked on
it, and pronounced it not her son’s: but that devoted heart knew it at
once--and broke! Whom rank, and wealth, and honors had divided, defeat
and death made one!--and the same grave contained the cold remains of
Edith the Swan-necked and the last scion of the Saxon kings of England.




THE ERRING ARROW.

   “’Tis merry, ’tis merry, in good green-wood,
      When the navis and merle are singing,
    When the deer sweeps by, and the hounds are in cry,
      And the hunter’s horn is ringing.”--LADY OF THE LAKE.


As beautiful a summer’s morning as ever chased the stars from heaven,
was dawning over that wide tract of waste and woodland, which still,
though many a century has now mossed over the ancestral oaks which then
were in their lusty prime, retains the name by which it was at that
day styled appropriately--the “New Forest.” Few years had then elapsed
since the first Norman lord of England had quenched the fires that
burned in thirty hamlets; had desecrated God’s own altars, making the
roofless aisles of many a parish church the haunt of the grim wolf or
antlered red-deer; turning fair fields and cultured vales to barren and
desolate wastes--to gratify his furious passion for that sport which
has so justly been entitled the mimicry of warfare. Few years had then
elapsed, yet not a symptom of their old fertility could now be traced
in the wild plains waving with fern, and overrun with copsewood, broom,
and brambles; unless it might be found in the profuse luxuriance with
which this thriftless crop had overspread the champaign once smiling
like a goodly garden with every meet production for the sustenance of
man.

It was, as has been said, as beautiful a summer’s morning as ever eye
of man beheld. The sun, which had just raised the verge of his great
orb above the low horizon, was checkering the mossy greensward with
long, fantastic lines of light and shadow, and tinging the gnarled
limbs of the huge oaks with ruddy gold; the dew, which lay abundantly
on every blade of grass and every bending wild-flower, had not yet felt
his power, nor raised a single mist-wreath to veil the brightness of
the firmament; nor was the landscape, that lay there steeped in the
lustre of the glowing skies, less lovely than the dawn that waked above
it: long sylvan avenues sweeping for miles through every variation
of the wildest forest-scenery--here traversing in easy curves wide
undulations clothed with the purple heather; here sinking downward to
the brink of sheets of limpid water; now running straight through lines
of mighty trees, and now completely overbowered as they dived through
brakes and dingles, where the birch and holly grew so thickly mingled
with the prickly furze and creeping eglantine as to make twilight of
the hottest noontide. Such were the leading features of the country
which had most deeply felt, and has borne down to later days most
evident memorials of, the Norman’s tyranny.

Deeply embosomed in these delicious solitudes--surrounded by its
flanking walls, and moat brimmed from a neighboring streamlet, with
barbican and ballium, and all the elaborate defences that marked the
architecture of the conquering race--stood Malwood keep, the favorite
residence of Rufus, no less than it had been of his more famous sire.
Here, early as was the hour, all was already full of life, full of the
joyous and inspiriting confusion that still characterizes, though in
a less degree than in those days of feudal pomp, the preparations for
the chase. Tall yeomen hurried to and fro--some leading powerful and
blooded chargers, which reared, and pawed the earth, and neighed till
every turret echoed to the din; some struggling to restrain the mighty
bloodhounds which bayed and strove indignantly against the leash; while
others, lying in scattered groups upon the esplanade of level turf,
furbished their cloth-yard shafts, or strung the six-foot bows, which,
for the first time, had drawn blood in England upon the fatal field of
Hastings.

It might be seen, upon the instant, it was no private retinue that
mustered to the “mystery of forests,” as in the quaint phrase of the
day the noble sport was designated. A hundred horses, at the least,
of the most costly and admired breeds, were there paraded: the huge,
coal-black _destrier_ of Flanders, limbed like an elephant, but with
a coat that might have shamed the richest velvet by its sleekness;
the light and graceful Andalusian, with here and there a Spaniard,
springy, and fleet, and fearless--while dogs, in numbers infinitely
greater, and of races yet more various, made up the moving picture:
bloodhounds to track the wounded quarry by their unerring scent;
slowhounds to force him from his lair; gazehounds and lymmers to
outstrip him on the level plain; mastiffs to bay the boar, “crook-kneed
and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls;” with terriers to unkennel beasts
of earth, and spaniels to rouse the fowls of air. Nor were these all,
for birds themselves were there, trained to make war on their own
race: the long-winged hawks of Norway, with lanners from the isle of
Man; merlins, and jerfalcons, and gosshawks. No tongue could tell the
beauty of the creatures thus assembled: some scarcely half-reclaimed,
and showing their wild nature at every glance of their quick, flashing
eyes; some docile and affectionate, and in all things dependent upon
man, to whom, despite caprice, and cruelty, and coldness, they are
more faithful in his need than he, proud though he be, dare boast
himself toward his fellow. No fancy could imagine the superb and lavish
gorgeousness of their equipment.

A long, keen bugle-blast rang from the keep, and in an instant a
hundred bows were strung, a hundred ready feet were in the stirrup.
Again if rang, longer and keener than before, and every forester was in
his saddle; while from the low-browed arch, bending their stately heads
quite to their saddle-bows, over the echoing drawbridge a dozen knights
rode forth, the followers and comrades of their king.

Scarcely above the middle size, but moulded in most exquisite
proportion, thin-flanked, deep-chested, muscular, and lithe, and agile,
there was not one of all his train, noble, or squire, or yeoman, who
could display a form so fitted for the union of activity with strength,
of beauty with endurance, as could the second William. His hair, from
which he had derived his famous soubriquet, was not of that marked and
uncomely hue which we should now term red, but rather of a bright and
yellowish brown, curled closely to a classical and bust-like head;
his eye was quick and piercing; his features, severally, were well
formed and handsome; yet had the eye a wavering, and restless, and at
times even downcast expression; and the whole aspect of the face told
many a tale of pride, and jealousy, and passion--suspicion that might
be roused to cruelty, and wilfulness that surely would be lashed by
any opposition to violent and reckless fury. But now the furrows on
the brow were all relaxed, the harsh lines of the mouth smoothed into
temporary blandness. “Forward, messires!” he cried, in Norman-French;
“the morning finds us sluggards. What, ho! Sir Walter Tyrrel, shall we
two company to-day, and gage our luck against these gay gallants?”

“Right jovially, my liege,” returned the knight whom he addressed. A
tall, dark-featured soldier rode beside his bridle-rein, bearing a
bow which not an archer in the train could bend. “Right jovially will
we--an’ they dare cope with us! What sayest thou, De Beauchamp--darest
thou wager thy black boar-hound against a cast of merlins--thyself and
Vermandois against his grace and me?”

“Nay, thou shouldst gage him odds, my Walter,” Rufus interposed; “thy
shaft flies ever truest, nor yield I to any bow save thine!”

“To his, my liege?” cried Beauchamp, “thou yield to his! Never drew
Walter Tyrrel so true a string as thou; he lacks the sleight, I trow,
so ekes it out with strength! Tyrrel must hold him pleased if he rate
second i’ the field.”

“How now, Sir Walter?” shouted the king; “hearest thou this bold De
Beauchamp, and wilt thou yield the bucklers?--not thou, I warrant me,
though it be to thy king!”

“So please your highness,” Tyrrel answered; “’tis but a sleight to
’scape our wager--’scaping the shame beside of yielding! He deems us
over-strong for him, and so would part us!”

“Nay, by my halydom,” Rufus replied with a gay smile, “but we will have
it so. We two will ride in company, each shooting his own shaft for his
own hand. I dare uphold my arrow for twenty marks of gold, and my white
Alan, against thy Barbary bay. Darest thou, Sir Walter?”

“I know not _that_--I dare not!” answered Tyrrel; “but your grace
wagers high, nor will I lightly lose Bay Barbary: if so our wager
stand, I shoot no roving shaft.”

“Shoot as thou wilt, so stands it!”

“Amen!” cried Tyrrel, “and I doubt not to hear your grace confess
Tyrrel hath struck the lordlier quarry.”

“Away, then, all! away!” and, setting spurs to his curveting horse,
the monarch led the way at a hard gallop, followed by all his train--a
long and bright procession, their gay plumes and many-colored garments
offering a lively contrast to the deep, leafy verdure of July, and
their clear weapons glancing lifelike to the sunshine.

They had careered along, with merriment and music, perhaps three miles
into the forest, when the deep baying of a hound was heard, at some
short distance to the right, from a thick verge of coppice. Instantly
the king curbed in his fiery horse, and raised his hand on high, waving
a silent halt. “Ha! have we outlaws here?” he whispered close in the
ear of Tyrrel. “’Fore God, but they shall rue it!”

Scarcely had he spoken, when a buck burst from a thicket, and, ere it
made three bounds, leaped high into the air and fell, its heart pierced
through and through by the unerring shaft of an outlying ranger, who
the next instant stepped out of his covert, and, catching sight of
the gay cavalcade confronting him--the sounds of whose approach he
must have overlooked entirely in the excitement of his sport--turned
hastily as if to fly. But it was all too late: a dozen of the king’s
retainers had dashed their rowels into their horses’ flanks the instant
he appeared, and scarcely had he discovered their advance before he was
their prisoner.

“A Saxon, by my soul,” cried Rufus, with a savage scowl, “taken
red-hand, and in the fact! Out with thy wood-knife, Damian! By the most
holy Virgin, we will first mar his archery, and then present him with
such a taste of venison as shall, I warrant me, appease his hankering
for one while. Off with his thumb and finger! off with them speedily, I
say, an’ thou wouldst ’scape his doom! Ha! grinnest thou, villain?” he
continued, as a contortion writhed the bold visage of his victim, who,
certain of his fate, and hopeless of resistance or of rescue, yielded
with stubborn resolution to his torturers--“an’ this doth make thee
smile, thou shalt laugh outright shortly! Hence with him, now, Damian
and Hugonet; and thou, Raoul, away with thee--set toils enow, uncouple
half a score of brachs and slowhounds, and see thou take me a right
stag of ten ere vespers!--Barebacked shalt thou ride on him to the
forest, thou unhanged Saxon thief, and see how his horned kinsmen will
entreat thee! See that the dog escape ye not, or ye shall swing for it.
Bind him, and drag him hence to the old church of Lyme; hold him there,
on your lives, till sunset! And ye--lead thither his wild charger: we
will sup there upon the greensward, as we return to Malwood, and thou
shalt make us merry with thy untutored horsemanship. Now for our wager,
Walter! Forward--hurrah!” and on again they dashed, until they reached
the choicest hunting-ground of all that spacious woodland--the desolate
and desert spot where once had stood the fairest village of the land.

Unroofed and doorless, in different stages of decay, a score or two of
cottages, once hospitable, happy homes of a free peasantry, stood here
and there amid the brushwood which had encroached upon the precincts;
while in the midst the desecrated church of Lyme reared its gray
tower, now overgrown with ivy, and crumbling in silent ruin. Upon the
cross which crowned the lowly tower, there sat, as they approached, a
solitary raven--nor, though the whoop and horn rang close below his
perch, did he show any sign of wildness or of fear; but, rising slowly
on his wing, flapped round and round in two or three slow circles, and
then with a hoarse croak resumed his station. The raven was a favorite
bird with the old hunters; and when the deer was slain he had his
portion, thence named “the raven’s bone.” Indeed, so usual was the
practice, that this bird, the wildest by its nature of all the things
that fly, would rarely shun a company which its sagacity descried to be
pursuers of the sylvan game.

“What! sittest thou there, old black-frock, in our presence?” shouted
the king, bending his bow; “but we will teach thee manners!” Still,
the bird moved not, but again sent forth his ominous and sullen croak
above the jocund throng. The bow was raised--the cord was drawn back
to the monarch’s ear: it twanged, and the next moment the hermit-bird
came fluttering down, transfixed by the long shaft, with painful and
discordant cries, and fell close at the feet of Rufus’s charger.

There was a murmur in the crowd; and one, a page who waited on the
king, whispered with a pale face and agitated voice into his fellow’s
ear: “I have heard say--

    ‘Whose shaft ’gainst raven’s life is set,
    Shaft’s feather his heart-blood shall wet!’”

The red king caught the whisper, and turning with an inflamed
countenance and flashing eye on the unwitting wakener of his
wrath--“Dastard and fool!” he shouted; and, clinching his gloved
hand, he dealt the boy so fierce a blow upon the chest, that he fell
to the earth like a lifeless body, plunging so heavily upon the sod
head-foremost, that the blood gushed from nose, ears, mouth, and he lay
senseless and inanimate as the surrounding clay. With a low, sneering
laugh, the tyrant once more spurred his charger forward, amid the
smothered execrations of his Norman followers, boiling with indignation
for that one of their noble and victorious race should have endured the
foul wrong of a blow, though it were dealt him by a monarch’s hand. And
there were scowling brows, and teeth set hard, among the very noblest
of his train; and, as the glittering band swept on, the father of the
injured boy--a dark-browed, aged veteran, who had couched lance at
Hastings to win the throne of earth’s most lovely island for that base
tyrant’s sire--reined in his horse, and, leaping to the earth, upraised
the body from the gory turf, and wiped away the crimson stream from
the pale features, and dashed pure water, brought from a neighboring
brooklet in a comrade’s bacinet, upon the fair young brow--but it
was all in vain! The dying child rolled upward his faint eyes; they
rested on the anxious lineaments of that war-beaten sire, who, stern
and fiery to all else, had ever to that motherless boy been soft and
tender as a woman. “Father,” he gasped, while a brief, painful smile
illuminated with a transient gleam his ashy lips--“mercy, kind mother
Mary! Father--father”--the words died in the utterance; the dim eyes
wavered--closed; the head fell back upon the stalwart arm that had
supported it, and, with one long and quivering convulsion, the innocent
soul departed!

Some three or four--inferior barons of the train, yet each a gentleman
of lineage and prowess in the field, each one in his own estimate a
prince’s peer--had paused around the desolate father and his murdered
child; and now, as the old man gazed hopelessly upon the features of
his first-born and his only, the sympathy which had moistened their
hard eyes and relaxed their iron features was swallowed up in a fierce
glare of indignation, irradiating their scarred and war-seamed visages
with that sublime expression, from which, when glowing on the face of a
resolute and fearless man, the wildest savage of the forest will shrink
in mute dismay. The father, after a long and fearful struggle with his
more tender feelings--wringing his hard hands till the blood-drops
started redly from beneath every nail--lifted his face, more pale and
ashy in its hues than that of the inanimate form which he had loved so
tenderly; and as he lifted it he caught the fierce glow mantling on the
front of each well-tried companion, and his own features lightened with
the self-same blaze: his hand sank downward to the hilt of the long
poniard at his girdle, and the fingers worked with a convulsive tremor
as they griped the well-known pommel, and an exulting smile curled his
mustached lip, prophetic of revenge. Once more he bowed above the dead;
he laid his broad hand on the pulseless heart, and printed a long kiss
on the forehead; then lifting, with as much tenderness as though they
still had sense and feeling, the relics of the only thing he loved on
earth, he bore them from the roadside into the shelter of a tangled
coppice; unbuckled his long military mantle, and spreading it above
them, secured it at each corner by heavy stones, a temporary shelter
from insult or intrusion. This done, in total silence he rejoined his
friends, who had foreborne to offer aid where they perceived it would
be held superfluous. Without one word, he grasped the bridle of his
charger, tightened his girths, and then, setting no foot to stirrup,
vaulted almost without an effort into the steel-bound demipique.
Raising his arm aloft, he pointed into the long aisles of the forest,
wherein the followers of Rufus had long since disappeared.

“Our thoughts are one!” he hissed, in accents scarcely articulate,
between his grinded teeth; “what need of words? Are not we soldiers,
gentlemen, and Normans, and shall not deeds speak for us?”

_Truly_ he said, their thoughts were one!--for each had severally
steeled his heart as by a common impulse: and now, without a word, or
sign, or any interchange of sentiments, feeling that each understood
the other, they wheeled their horses on the tyrant’s track, and at a
hard trot rode away, resolved on instant vengeance.

Meanwhile, the hunters had arrived at their appointed ground. The
slowhounds were uncoupled and cast loose; varlets with hunting-poles,
and mounted grooms, pressed through the underwood; while, in each open
glade and riding of the forest, yeomen were stationed with relays of
tall and stately gazehounds, to slip upon the hart the instant he
should break from the thick covert. The knights and nobles galloped
off, each with his long-bow strung, and cloth-yard arrow notched and
ready, to posts assigned to them--some singly, some in pairs; all was
replete with animation and with fiery joy.

According to the monarch’s pleasure, Tyrrel rode at his bridle-hand,
for that day’s space admitted as his comrade and his rival. Two
splendid bloodhounds, coal-black, but tawny on the muzzle and the
breast, so accurately trained that they required no leash to check
their ardor, ran at the red king’s heel; but neither page nor squire,
such was his special mandate, accompanied their master. And now the
loud shouts of the foresters and the deep baying of the pack gave note
that the chase was on foot; and by the varied cadences and different
points whence pealed the soul-exciting clamors, Rufus, a skilful and
sagacious sportsman, immediately perceived that two if not three of
the noble animals they hunted must have been roused at once. For a few
seconds he stood upright in his stirrups, his hand raised to his ear,
lest the slight summer breeze should interrupt the welcome sounds.

“This way,” he said, in low and guarded tones, “this way they bend;
and with the choicest buck--hark to old Hubert’s holloa! and _there,
there_, Tyrrel, list to that burst--list to that long, sharp yell!
Beshrew my soul, if that be not stanch Palamon--that hound is worth
ten thousand. Ha! they are now at fault. Again! brave Palamon again!
and now they turn; hark how the echoes roar! Ay, they are crossing now
the Deer-leap dingle; and now, now, as their notes ring out distinct
and tuneful, they gain the open moorland. Spur, Tyrrel, for your life!
spur, spur! we see him not again till we reach Bolderwood”--and, with
the word, he raised his bugle to his lips, and wound it lustily and
well till every oak replied to the long flourish.

Away they flew, driving their foaming chargers, now through the tangled
underwood with tightened reins, now with free heads careering along
the level glades, now sweeping over the wide brooks that intersect
the forest as though their steeds were winged, and now, at distant
intervals, pausing to catch the fitful music of the pack. After a
furious chase of at least two hours, the sounds still swelling on their
right, nearer and nearer as they rode the farther, the avenue through
which they had been galloping for many minutes was intersected at
right angles by one yet wider though neglected, and, as it would seem,
disused, for many marshy pools might be seen glittering to the sun,
which was now fast descending to the westward, and many plants of ash
and tufted hazels had sprung up, marring the smoothness of its surface.
Here, by a simultaneous motion, and as it seemed obedient to a common
thought, both riders halted.

“He must cross, Tyrrel, he _must_ cross here,” cried the excited
monarch; “ay, by the life of Him who made us--and that before we
be ten minutes older. I will take stand even here, where I command
both alleys: ride thou some fifty yards or so, to the right; stand
by yon rowan sapling. And mark me--see’st thou yon scathed but giant
oak?--Now, if he pass on this side, mine is the first shot; if on the
other, thine. I will not balk thy fortunes; meddle not thou with mine!”

They parted--the king sitting like a statue on his well-trained but
fiery Andalusian, the rein thrown loosely on the horse’s neck, and the
bow already half bent in the vigorous right hand; the baron riding, as
he had been commanded, down the neglected avenue, till he had reached
the designated tree, when he wheeled round his courser and remained
likewise motionless, facing the king, at that brief interval.

Nearer and nearer came the baying of the pack, while ever and anon a
sharp and savage treble, mixed with the deeper notes, gave token to the
skilful foresters that they were running with the game in view. Nearer
it came, and nearer; and now it was so close, that not an echo could
be traced amid the stormy music: but with the crash no human shout
was blended, no bugle lent its thrilling voice to the blithe uproar,
no clang of hoofs announced the presence of pursuers. All, even the
best and boldest riders, saving those two who waited there in calm,
deliberate impatience, had long been foiled by the quick turns and
undiminished pace maintained by the stout quarry.

The crashing of the branches might now be heard distinctly, as they
were separated by some body in swift motion; and next the laboring
sobs of a beast overdone with toil and anguish; the waving of the
coppice followed in a long, sinuous line, resembling in some degree
the wake of a fleet ship among the rolling billows. Midway it furrowed
the dense thicket between the king and Tyrrel, but with an inclination
toward the former. His quick eye noted his advantage: his bow rose
slowly and with a steady motion to its level; it was drawn to its
full extent--the forked steel head pressing against the polished yew,
the silken string stretched home to the right ear. The brambles were
forced violently outward, and with a mighty but laborious effort the
hunted stag dashed into the more open space. Scarcely had he cleared
the thicket, before a sharp and ringing twang announced the shot of
Rufus. So true had been his aim, that the barbed arrow grazed the
withers of the game--a hart of grease, with ten tines on his noble
antlers--leaving a gory line where it had razed the skin; and so strong
was the arm that launched it, that the shaft, glancing downward, owing
to the king’s elevation and the short distance of the mark at which he
aimed, was buried nearly to the feathers in the soft, mossy greensward.
The wounded stag bounded at least six feet into the air; and Tyrrel,
deeming the work already done, lowered his weapon. But the king’s
sight was truer. Raising his bridle-hand to screen his eyes from the
rays, now nearly level, of the setting sun--“Ho!” he cried, “Tyrrel,
shoot--in the fiend’s name shoot!”

Before the words had reached his ear, the baron saw his error;
for, instantly recovering, the gallant deer dashed onward, passing
immediately beneath the oak-tree which Rufus had already mentioned.
Raising his bow with a rapidity which seemed incredible, Tyrrel
discharged his arrow. It struck, just at the correct elevation, against
the gnarled trunk of the giant tree; but, swift as was its flight, the
motion of the wounded deer was yet more rapid: he had already crossed
the open glade, and was lost in the thicket opposite. Diverted from
its course, but unabated in its force, the Norman shaft sped onward;
full, full and fairly it plunged into the left side of the hapless
monarch, unguarded by the arm which he had cast aloft. The keen point
actually drove clear through his body, and through his stout buff coat,
coming out over his right hip; while the goose-feather, which had
winged it to its royal mark, was literally dabbled in his life-blood!

Without a breath, a groan, a struggle, the Conqueror’s son dropped
lifeless from his saddle. His horse, freed from the pressure of the
master-limbs that had so well controlled him, reared upright as the
monarch fell, and, with a wild, quick snort of terror, rushed furiously
away into the forest. The bloodhounds had already, by the fierce
cunning of their race, discovered that their game was wounded, and had
joined freshly with his old pursuers; while he, who did the deed, gazed
for one moment horror-stricken on the work of his right hand, and then,
without so much as drawing nigh to see if anything of life remained to
his late master, casting his fatal bow into the bushes, put spurs to
his unwearied horse, and drew not bridle till he reached the coast;
whence, taking ship, he crossed the seas, and fell in Holy Land, hoping
by many deeds of wilful bloodshed--such is the inconsistency of man--to
win God’s pardon for one involuntary slaughter.

Hours rolled away. The sun had set already, and his last gleams were
rapidly departing from the skies, nor had the moon yet risen, when six
horsemen came slowly, searching as it were for traces on the earth, up
the same alley along which Tyrrel and the king had ridden with such
furious speed since noontide. The lingering twilight did not suffice to
show the features of the group, but the deep tones of the second rider
were those of the bereaved and vengeful father.

“How now?” he said, addressing his words to the man who led the way,
mounted upon a shaggy forest-pony; “how now, Sir Saxon!--is it for this
we saved thee from the tyrant’s hangmen, that thou shouldst prove a
blind guide in this matter?”

“Norman,” replied the other, still scanning, as he spoke, the ground
dinted and torn by the fresh hoof-tracks, “my heart thirsts for
vengeance not less than thine; nor is our English blood less stanch,
although it be less fiery, than the hottest stream that swells the
veins of your proud race! I tell you, Rufus hath passed here, and he
hath not turned back. You _shall_ have your revenge!”

Even as he spoke, the beast which he bestrode set his feet firm and
snuffed the air, staring as though his eyeballs would start from their
sockets, and uttering a tremulous, low neigh. “Blood hath been shed
here! and that, I trow, since sunset! Jesu! what have we now?” he
cried, as his eye fell upon the carcass that so lately had exulted in
the possession of health, and energy, and strength, and high dominion.
“By Thor the Thunderer, it is the tyrant’s corpse!”

“And slain,” replied the father, “slain by another’s hand than mine!
Curses, ten thousand curses, on him who shot this shaft!” While he was
speaking he dismounted, approached the body of his destined victim, and
gazed with an eye of hatred most insatiably savage upon the rigid face
and stiffening limbs; then drawing his broad dagger--“I have sworn!”
he muttered, as he besmeared its blade with the dark, curdled gore--“I
have sworn! Lie there and _rot_,” he added, spurning the body with his
foot. “And now we must away, for we are known and noted; and, whoso
did the deed, ’tis we shall bear the blame of it. We must see other
lands. I will but leave a brief word with the monks of Lymington, that
they commit my poor boy to a hallowed tomb, and then farewell, fair
England!” And they, too, rode away, nor were they ever seen again on
British soil; nor--though shrewd search was made for them until the
confessor of Tyrrel, when that bold spirit had departed, revealed the
real slayer of the king--did any rumor of their residence or fortunes
reach any mortal ear.

The moon rose over the New Forest broad and unclouded, and the dew
fell heavy over glade and woodland. The night wore onward, and the
bright planet set, and one by one the stars went out--and still the
king lay there untended and alone. The morning mists were rising,
when the rumbling sound of a rude cart awoke the echoes of that
fearful solitude. A charcoal-burner of the forest was returning
from his nocturnal labors, whistling cheerfully the burden of some
Saxon ballad, as he threaded the dark mazes of the green-wood. A
wiry-looking cur--maimed, in obedience to the forest-law, lest he
should chase the deer reserved to the proud conquerors alone--followed
the footsteps of his master, who had already passed the corpse, when
a half-startled yelp, followed upon the instant by a most melancholy
howl, attracted the attention of the peasant. After a moment’s
search he found, although he did not recognise, the cause of his
dog’s terror; and, casting it upon his loaded cart, bore it to the
same church whereat but a few hours before the living sovereign
had determined to glut his fierce eyes with the death-pangs of his
fellow-man. Strange are the ways of Providence. That destined man
lived after his intended torturer! And, stranger yet, freed from his
bonds, that he might minister unto the slaughter of that self-same
torturer, he found his purpose frustrate--frustrate, as it were, by its
accomplishment--his meditated deed anticipated, his desperate revenge
forestalled.--“Verily, vengeance is mine,” saith the Lord, “and I will
repay it.”




THE SAXON PRELATE’S DOOM.

    “Die, prophet, in thy speech!”--KING HENRY VI.


The mightiest monarch of his age, sovereign of England--as his proud
grandsire made his vaunt of yore--by right of the sword’s edge; grand
duke of Normandy, by privilege of blood; and liege lord of Guienne, by
marriage with its powerful heritress; the bravest, the most fortunate,
the wisest of the kings of Europe, Henry the Second, held his court
for the high festival of Christmas in the fair halls of Rouen. The
banquet was already over, the revelry was at the highest, still,
the gothic arches ringing with the merriment, the laughter, and the
blended cadences of many a minstrel’s harp, of many a trouvere’s lay.
Suddenly, while the din was at the loudest, piercing through all the
mingled sounds, a single trumpet’s note was heard--wailing, prolonged,
and ominous--as was the chill it struck to every heart in that bright
company--of coming evil. During the pause which followed, for at that
thrilling blast the mirth and song were hushed as if by instinct--a
bustle might be heard below, the tread of many feet, and the discordant
tones of many eager voices. The great doors were thrown open, not with
the stately ceremonial that befitted the occasion, but with a noisy
and irreverent haste that proved the urgency or the importance of the
new-comers. Then, to the wonder of all present, there entered--not in
their wonted pomp, with stole, and mitre, crozier dalmatique and ring,
but in soiled vestments, travel-worn and dusty, with features haggard
from fatigue, and sharpened by anxiety and fear--six of the noblest
of old England’s prelates, led by the second dignitary of the church,
York’s proud archbishop. Hurrying forward to the dais, where Henry
sat in state, they halted all together at the step, and in one voice
exclaimed:--

“Fair sir, and king, not for ourselves alone, but for the holy church,
for your own realm and crown, for your own honor, your own safety, we
beseech you--”

“What means this, holy fathers?” Henry cried, hastily, and half
alarmed, as it would seem, by the excited language of the churchmen.
“What means this vehemence--or who hath dared to wrong ye, and for why?”

“For that, at your behest, we dared to crown the youthful king, your
son! Such, sire, is our offence. Our wrong--that we your English
prelates are excommunicated, and--”

“Now, by the eyes of God!”[A] exclaimed the king, breaking abruptly in
upon the bishop’s speech, his noble features crimsoned by the indignant
blood, that rushed to them at mention of this foul affront, “Now, by
the eyes of God, if all who have consented to his consecration be
accursed, then am I so myself!”

    [A] For this strange but authentic oath, see Thierry’s “Norman
        Conquest,” whence most of these details are taken.

“Nor is this all,” replied the prelate, well pleased to note the
growing anger of the sovereign, “nor is this all the wrong. The same
bold man, who did you this affront, an’ you look not the sharper, will
light a blaze in England that shall consume right speedily your royal
crown itself. He marches to and fro, with troops of horse, and bands of
armed footmen, stirring the Saxon churls against the gentle blood of
Normandy, nay, seeking even to gain entrance into your garrisons and
castles.”

“Do I hear right,” shouted the fiery prince, striking his hand upon
the board with such fierce vehemence, that every flask and tankard
rang. “Do I hear right--and is it but a dream that I am England’s king?
What! _one_ base vassal; _one_ who has fattened on the bread of our
ill-wasted charity; _one_ beggar, who first came to our court with all
his fortunes on his back, bestriding a galled, spavined jade; _one_
wretch like this insult at once a line of sovereign princes--trample
a realm beneath his feet--and go unpunished and scathe-free? What!
was there not one man, one only, of the hordes of recreant knights
who feast around my board, to free his monarch from a shaveling who
dishonors and defies him? Break off the feast--break off, I say! no
time for revelry and wine!--To council, lords, to council! We must
indeed bestir us, an’ we would hold the crown our grandsire won, not
for himself alone, nor for his race--who, by God’s grace, will wear it,
spite priest, cardinal, or pope--but for the gentle blood of Norman
chivalry!”

Rising at once, he led the way to council; and, with wild haste and
disarray, the company dispersed. But as the hall grew thin, four
knights remained behind in close converse--so deep, so earnest, that
they were left alone, when all the rest, ladies, and cavaliers, and
chamberlains, and pages, had departed, and the vast gallery, which
had so lately rung with every various sound of human merriment, was
silent as the grave. There was a strange and almost awful contrast
between the strong and stately forms of the four barons--their deep
and energetic whispers, the fiery glances of their angry eyes, the
fierce gesticulations of their muscular and well-turned limbs--and the
deserted splendors of that royal hall: the vacant throne, the long
array of seats; the gorgeous plate, flagons, and cups, and urns of gold
and marquetry; the lights still glowing, as it were, in mockery over
the empty board; the wine unpoured--the harps untouched and voiceless.

“Be it so--be it so!” exclaimed, in louder tones than they had used
before, one, the most striking in appearance of the group; “be it
so--let us swear! Richard le Breton, Hugues de Morville, William de
Traci--even as I shall swear, swear ye--by God, and by our trusty
blades, and by our Norman honor!”

“We will,” cried all, “we swear! we be not recreant, nor craven, as our
good swords shall witness!”

“Thus, then,” continued the first speaker, drawing his sword, and
grasping a huge cup of wine, “thus, then, I, Reginald Fitz-Urse, for
mine own part, and for each one and all of ye, do swear--so help me
God and our good Lady!--never to touch the winecup; never to bend
before the shrine; never to close the eyes in sleep; never to quit the
saddle, or unbelt the brand; never to pray to God; never to hope for
heaven--until the wrong we reck of be redressed!--until the insult done
our sovereign be avenged!--until the life-blood of his foeman stream on
our battle-swords as streams this nobler wine!”

Then, with the words--for not he only, but each one of the four,
holding their long, two-handed blades extended at arms’ length before
them with all their points in contact, and in the other hand grasping
the brimming goblets, had gone through, in resolute, unflinching tones,
the fearful adjuration--then, with the words, they all dashed down the
generous liquor on the weapons, watched it in silence as it crimsoned
them from point to hilt, and sheathing them, all purple as they were,
hurried, not from the hall alone, but from the palace; mounted their
fleetest war-steeds, and, that same night, rode furiously away toward
the nearest sea.

The fifth day was in progress after King Henry’s banquet, when, at
the hour of noon, four Norman knights, followed by fifty men-at-arms,
sheathed cap-à-pie in mail, arrayed beneath the banner of Fitz-Urse,
entered the town of Canterbury at a hard gallop. The leaders of the
band alone were clad in garbs of peace, bearing no weapon but their
swords, and singularly ill-accoutred for horse-exercise, being attired
in doublets of rich velvet, with hose of cloth of gold or silver, as if
in preparation for some high and festive meeting. Yet was it evident
that they had ridden miles in that unsuitable apparel; for the rich
velvet was besmeared with many a miry stain, and the hose dashed with
blood, which had been drawn profusely by the long rowels of their
gilded spurs.

Halting in serried order at the market-cross, the leader of the party
summoned, by an equerry, the city mayor to hear the orders of the
king; and, when that officer appeared--having commanded him, “on his
allegiance, to call his men to arms, and take such steps as should
assuredly prevent the burghers of the town from raising any tumult on
that day, whate’er might come to pass”--with his three friends, and
twelve, the stoutest, of the men-at-arms who followed in their train,
rode instantly away to the archbishop’s palace.

The object of their deadly hatred, when the four knights arrived,
was in the act of finishing his noonday meal; and all his household
were assembled at the board, from which he had just risen. There was
no sign of trepidation, no symptom of surprise, much less of fear or
consternation, in his aspect or demeanor, as one by one his visitors
stalked unannounced into the long apartment. Yet was there much indeed
in the strange guise wherein they came--in their disordered habits,
in the excitement visibly depicted on their brows, haggard from want
of sleep, pale with fatigue and labor, yet resolute, and stern, and
terse, with the resolve of their dread purpose--to have astonished,
nay, dismayed the spirit of one less resolute in the defence of what
he deemed the right than Thomas à-Becket. Silently, one by one, they
entered, the leader halting opposite the prelate, with his arms
folded on his breast, and his three comrades forming as it were in a
half-circle around him. Not one of them removed the bonnet from his
brow, or bowed the knee on entering, or offered any greeting, whether
to the temporal rank or spiritual station of their intended victim; but
gazed on him with a fixed sternness that was far more awful than any
show of violence. This dumb-show, although it needs must occupy some
time in the description, had lasted perhaps a minute, when the bold
prelate broke the silence, addressing them in clear, harmonious tones,
and with an air as dignified and placid as though he had been bidding
them to share the friendly banquet.

“Fair sirs,” he said, “I bid ye welcome; although, in truth, the manner
of your entrance be not in all things courteous, nor savoring of that
respect which should be paid, if not to me--who am but as a worm, the
meanest of HIS creatures--yet to the dignity whereunto HE has raised
me! Natheless, I bid ye hail! Please ye disclose the business whereon
ye now have come to me.”

Still not a word did they reply--but seated themselves all unbidden,
still glaring on him with fixed eyes, ominous of evil. At length
Fitz-Urse addressed him, speaking abruptly, and in tones so hoarse and
hollow--the natural consequence of his extreme exertions, four days and
nights having been actually passed in almost constant travel--that his
most intimate associate could not have recognised his voice.

“We come,” he said, “on the king’s part, to take--and that, too,
on the instant--some order with your late proceedings: to have the
excommunicated presently absolved; to see the bishops, who have been
suspended, forthwith re-established; and to hear what _you_ may now
allege concerning your design against your sovereign lord and master!”

“It is not I,” Thomas replied, still calmer and more dignified than the
fierce spirits who addressed him, “it is not I who have done this. It
is the sovereign pontiff, God’s own supreme vicegerent, who, of his
own will, excommunicated my late brother of York. He alone, therefore,
can absolve him. I have no power in’t. As for the rest, let them but
make submission, and straightway shall they be restored!”

“From whom, then,” Reginald Fitz-Urse demanded, “from whom, then, hold
you your archbishopric--from England’s king, or from the pope of Rome?”

“My spiritual rights, of God and of the pope--my temporal privileges,
of the king,” was the prompt answer.

“The king, then, gave you _not_?” the baron asked again. “Beware, I
warn you, beware how you do answer me: the king, I say, gave you _not_
ALL that you enjoy?”

“He did not,” answered Becket, without moving a single muscle of his
composed but haughty countenance; although, at the reply, the fiery
temper of his unwelcome visiters was made more clearly manifest, as
a deep, angry murmur burst simultaneously from all their lips, and
they wrung with fierce gestures their gloved hands, as if it was with
difficulty they restrained themselves from violence more open in its
character.

“Ye threaten me, I well believe,” exclaimed the stately prelate, “but
it is vain and useless. Were all the swords in England brandished
against my head, ye should gain nothing, nothing from me.”

“We will do more than threaten,” answered Fitz-Urse; and rising from
his seat, rushed out of the apartment, followed by his companions,
crying aloud, even before they crossed the threshold, “To-arms,
Normans, to-arms!”

The doors were closed behind them, and barred instantly with the most
jealous care; while Reginald and the conspirators, meeting the guard
whom they had left without, armed themselves cap-à-pie in the courtyard
before the palace-gates, as if for instant battle, with helmet,
hood-of-mail, and hauberk; their triangular steel-plated shields
hanging about their necks; their legs protected by mail-hose, fitting
as closely and as flexible as modern stockings; their huge two-handed
swords belted about them in such fashion, that their cross-guarded
hilts came over their left shoulders, while their points clanked
against the spur on their right heels.

There was no pause; for, snatching instantly an axe from the hands
of a carpenter who chanced to be at work in the courtyard, Fitz-Urse
assailed the gate. Strong as it was, it creaked and groaned beneath
the furious blows, and the long corridors within rolled back the
threatening sounds in deep and hollow echoes. Within the palace all was
confusion and dismay, and every face was pale and ghastly, save his
alone who had the cause for fear.

“Fly! fly, my lord!” cried the assistants, breathless with terror; “fly
to the altar! There, there, at least, shall you be safe!”

“Never!” the prelate answered, his bold spirit as self-possessed and
calm in that most imminent peril as though he had been bred from
childhood upward to the performance of high deeds and daring; “never
will I turn back from that which I have set myself to do! God, if it be
his pleasure, shall preserve me from yet greater straits than these;
and if it be not so his will to do, then God forbid I should gainsay
him!” Nor would he stir one foot, until the vesper-bell, rung by the
sacristan, unwitting of his superior’s peril, began to chime from the
near walls of the cathedral. “It is the hour,” he quietly observed, on
hearing the sweet cadence of the bells, “it is the hour of prayer; my
duty calls me. Give me my vestments--carry my cross before me!” And,
attiring himself as though nothing of unusual moment were impending, he
traversed, with steps even slower than his wont, the cloister leading
from his dwelling to the abbey; though, ere he left the palace, the
din of blows had ceased, and the fierce shout of the assailants gave
token that the door had yielded. Chiding his servitors for their
excess of terror, as unworthy of their sacred calling, he still walked
slowly onward, while the steel-shod footsteps of his foemen might be
heard clashing on the pavement but a few yards behind him. He reached
the door of the cathedral; entered without casting so much as one
last glance behind; passed up the nave, and going up the steps of the
high altar, separated from the body of the church by a slight rail of
ornamental iron-work, commenced the service of the day.

Scarcely had he uttered the first words, when Reginald, sheathed, as
has been heretofore described, in complete panoply, with his two-handed
sword already naked, rushed into the cathedral.

“To me!” he cried, with a fierce shout, “to me, valiant and loyal
servants of the king!” while close behind him followed, in like array,
with flashing eyes, and inflamed visages, and brandished weapons, his
sworn confederates; and without the gates their banded men-at-arms
stood in a serried circle, defying all assistance from the town.
Again his servitors entreated Becket to preserve himself, by seeking
refuge in the dark crypts beneath the chancel, where he might rest
concealed in absolute security until the burghers should be aroused
to rescue; or by ascending the intricate and winding turret-stairs to
the cathedral-roof, whence he might summon aid ere he could possibly
be overtaken: but it was all in vain. Confiding in the goodness of his
cause, perhaps expecting supernatural assistance, the daring prelate
silenced their prayers by a contemptuous refusal; and even left the
altar, to prevent one of the monks from closing the weak, trellised
gates, which marked the holiest precincts. Meanwhile, unmoved in their
fell purpose, the Normans were at hand.

“Where is the traitor?” cried Fitz-Urse, but not a voice replied;
and the unwonted tones were vocal yet beneath the vaulted roof in
lingering echoes, when he again exclaimed, “Where--where is the
archbishop?”

“Here stands he,” Becket answered, drawing his lofty person up to its
full height, and spreading his arms forth with a gesture of perfect
majesty. “Here stands he, but no traitor! What do ye in God’s house in
such apparel? what is your will, or purpose?”

“That you die, presently!” was the reply, enforced by the uplifted
weapon and determined features of the savage baron.

“I am resigned,” returned the prelate, the calm patience of the martyr
blent with a noble daring that would have well become a warrior on the
battle-field. “Ye shall not see me fly before your swords! But in the
name of the all-powerful God, whom ye dishonor and defy, I do command
ye injure no one of my companions, layman or priest.” His words were
interrupted by a heavy blow across his shoulders, delivered, with the
flat of his huge sword, by Reginald.

“Fly!” he said, “fly, priest, or you are dead!” But the archbishop
moved not a step, spoke not a syllable. “Drag him hence, comrades,”
continued the last speaker; “away with him beyond the threshold--we may
not smite him here!”

“Here--here, or nowhere!” the archbishop answered--“here, in the very
presence, and before the altar, and the image, of our God!” And, as he
spoke, he seized the railings with both hands, set his feet firm, and,
being of a muscular and powerful frame, sustained by daring courage and
highly-wrought excitement, he succeeded in maintaining his position, in
spite of the united efforts of the four Norman warriors.

Meanwhile, all the companions of the prelate had escaped, by ways
known only to themselves--all but one faithful follower--the Saxon,
Edward Grim, his cross-bearer since his first elevation to the see of
Canterbury--the same who had so boldly spoken out after the conference
of Clarendon; and the conspirators began to be alarmed lest, if their
purpose were not speedily accomplished, the rescue should arrive and
frustrate their intentions. Their blood, moreover, was heated by the
struggle; and their fierce natures, never much restrained by awe or
reverence for things divine, burst through all bonds.

“Here, then, if it so please you!--here!” cried William de Traci,
striking, as he spoke, a blow with the full sweep of both his arms
wielding his ponderous weapon, at the defenceless victim’s head. But
the bold Saxon suddenly stretched out his arm to guard his beloved
master. Down came the mighty blow--but not for that did the true
servitor withdraw his naked limb--down came the mighty blow, and lopped
the unflinching hand, sheer as the woodman’s bill severs the hazel-twig!

Still, Becket stood unwounded. “Strike! strike, you others!” shouted
the Norman, as he grasped the maimed but still-resolved protector of
his master, and held him off by the exertion of his entire strength;
“strike! strike!” And they did strike, fearlessly--mercilessly! Hugues
de Morville smote him with a mace upon his temples, and he fell,
stunned, but still alive, face downward on the pavement; and Reginald
Fitz-Urse, whirling his espaldron around his head, brought it down with
such reckless fury upon the naked skull, that the point clove right
through it, down to the marble pavement, on which it yet alighted with
a degree of violence so undiminished, that it was shivered to the very
hilt, and the strong arms of him who wielded it were jarred up to the
shoulders, as if by an electric shock. One of the men-at-arms, who had
rushed in during the struggle, spurned with his foot the motionless and
senseless clay.

“Thus perish all,” he said, “all foemen of the king, and of the gentle
Normans--all who dare, henceforth, to arouse the base and slavish
Saxons against their free and princely masters!”

Thus fell the Saxon prelate, ruthlessly butchered at the very shrine
of God--not so much that he was a Romish priest, and an upholder
of the rights of Rome, as that he was a Saxon-man, a vindicator of
the liberties of England! Yet, though the pope absolved that king
whose cruel will had, in truth, done the deed, yet was that deed not
unavenged. If the revolt and treachery of all most dear to him, the
hatred of his very flesh and blood, the unceasing enmity of his own
sons, a miserable old age, and a heart-broken death-bed--if these
things may be deemed Heaven’s vengeance upon murder--then, of a surety,
that murder was avenged!




THE FATE OF THE BLANCHE NAVIRE.[B]

   “The bark that held a prince went down,
      The sweeping waves rolled on,
    And what was England’s glorious crown
      To him who wept a son?”--HEMANS.


The earliest dawning of a December’s morning had not yet tinged the
eastern sky, when in the port of Barfleur the stirring bustle which
precedes an embarkation broke loudly on the ear of all who were on
foot at that unseemly hour; nor were these few in number, for all
the population of that town--far more considerable than it appears
at present, when mightier cities, some rendered so by the gigantic
march of commerce, some by the puissant and creative hands of military
despotism, have sprung on every side into existence, and overshadowed
its antique renown--were hastening through the narrow streets toward
the water’s edge. The many-paned, stone-latticed casements gleamed with
a thousand lights, casting a cheerful glare over the motley multitude
which swarmed before them with all the frolic merriment of an unwonted
holyday. All classes and all ranks might there be seen, of every age
and sex: barons and lords of high degree, clad in the rich attires of
a half-barbarous yet gorgeous age, mounted on splendid horses, and
attended by long retinues of armed and liveried vassals; ladies and
demoiselles of birth and beauty curbing their Spanish jennets, and
casting sidelong looks of love toward the favored knights curveting in
the conscious state of proud humility beside their bridle-reins--as
clearly visible as at high noon, in the broad radiance of the torches
that accompanied their progress; while all around them and behind
crowded the humbler throng of mariners and artisans, with here a solemn
burgher, proud in his velvet pourpoint and his golden chain, and there
a barefoot monk, far prouder in his frock of sackcloth and his knotted
girdle; and ever and anon a group of merry maidens, with their high
Norman caps and short jupons of parti-colored serge, crowding around
the _jongleur_[C] with his ape and gittern--or pressing on to hear the
loftier professor[D] of the _gai-science_, girded with sword and dagger
in token of his gentle blood, and followed by his boy bearing the harp,
which then had power to win, not with the low-born and vulgar throng,
but with the noble and the fair, high favor for its wandering master!

    [B] The title given by the chroniclers to this ill-fated
        vessel is “The Blanche _Nef_,” the latter word being the
        old French for the modern term, which we have substituted.
        Singularly enough, the ancient word survives as the name
        of a piece of antique gold plate modelled like a ship, in
        which the napkins of the royal table are served in the high
        ceremonials of the court of France.

    [C] The juggler of the middle ages, who, like the
        street-musicians of the present time, were mostly Savoyards
        by birth, generally carried with them the ape or marmoset,
        even to this day their companion, and added to their feats
        of strength and sleight of hand both minstrelsey and music.

    [D] The _gai-science_, so early as the commencement of the
        century of which we write, had its degrees, its colleges,
        and its professors, who, though itinerants, and dependent
        for their subsistence on their instrument and voice,
        considered war no less their trade than song, esteeming
        themselves, and moreover admitted by others to be, in the
        fullest sense, gentlemen.

The courts and thoroughfares of the old town--for it was old even
then--by slow degrees grew silent and deserted; and, ere the sun was
well above the wave, the multitudes which thronged them had rolled
downward to the port, and stood in dense ranks gazing on its calm
and sheltered basin. Glorious indeed and lovely was the sight when
the first yellow rays streamed over the still waters: they waked the
distant summits of the hills behind the town into a sudden life;
they kissed the crest of every curling ripple that dimpled with its
“innumerable laughter” the azure face of ocean; but, more than all,
they seemed to dwell upon two noble barks, which lay, each riding at a
single anchor, at a short arrow-shot from the white sands that girt as
with a silver frame the liquid mirror of the harbor.

Fashioned by the best skill of that early day, and ornamented with
the most lavish splendor, though widely different from the floating
castles of modern times, those vessels--the picked cruisers of the
British navy--were in their structure no less picturesque than in their
decoration royally magnificent. Long, low, and buoyant, they floated
lightly as birds upon the surface; their open waists already bristling
with the long oars by which, after the fashion of the Roman galley,
they were propelled in serene weather; their masts clothed with the
wings which seemed in vain to woo the breeze; their elevated sterns
and forecastles blazing with tapestries of gold and silver, reflected
in long lines of light, scarcely broken by the dancing ripples. The
larger of the two bore on her foresail, blazoned in gorgeous heraldry,
the arms of England. The second, somewhat smaller, but if anything more
elegant in her proportions, and fitted with a nicer taste, although
less sumptuous, was painted white from stem to stern; her oars, fifty
in number, of the same spotless hue, were barred upon the blades with
silver; and on her foresail of white canvass, overlaid with figured
damask, were wrought, among a glittering profusion of devices, in
characters of silver, the words “La Blanche Navire.” Beyond them,
in the outer bay, a dozen ships or more were dimly seen through the
mist-wreaths which the wintry sun was gradually scattering--their
canvass hanging in festoons from their long yard-arms, and their decks
crowded, not with mariners alone, but with the steel-clad forms of
men-at-arms and archers, the gallant train of the third Norman who had
swayed the destinies of England.

The youngest son of the sagacious Conqueror, after the death of the
“Red king,” by a rare union of audacity and cunning, Henry, had seized
the sceptre of the fair island--the hereditary right of his romantic,
generous, and gallant brother, who with the feudatories of his Norman
duchy was waging war upon the Saracen, neglectful of his own and of his
subjects’ interests alike, beneath the burning sun of Syria. Already
firmly seated in his usurped dominion ere Robert returned homeward,
nor yet contented with his ill-gained supremacy, he had wrung from
the bold crusader, partly by force but more by fraud, his continental
realms; and adding cruelty which scarcely can be conceived to violence
and fraud, deprived him of Heaven’s choicest blessing, sight, and cast
him--of late the most renowned and glorious knight in Christendom--a
miserable, eyeless captive into the towers of Cardiff, his dungeon
while he lived, and after death his tomb!

No retributive justice had discharged its thunders upon the guilty
one; no gloom sat on his smooth and lordly brow, no thorns had lurked
beneath the circle of Henry’s blood-bought diadem. Fortune had
smiled on every effort; had granted every wish, however wild; had
sanctioned every enterprise, however dubious or desperate: he never
had known sorrow; and from his restless, energetic soul, remorse and
penitence were banished by the incessant turmoil of ambition and the
perpetual excitement of success. And now his dearest wish had been
accomplished--the most especial aim and object of his life perfected
with such absolute security, that his insatiate soul was satisfied.
Absolute lord of England, and undisputed ruler of the fair Cotentin,
he had of late disarmed the league which for a time had threatened
his security; detaching from the cause of France the powerful count
of Anjou, whose daughter--the most lovely lady and the most splendid
heiress of the time--he had seen wedded to his first-born and his
favorite, William. The previous day he had beheld the haughty barons
tender the kiss of homage and swear eternal loyalty to the young heir
of England, Normandy, and Anjou; the previous night he had sat glad
and glorious at the festive board, encompassed by all that was fair,
and noble, and high-born, in the great realms he governed, and among
all that proud and graceful circle his eye had looked on none so brave
and beautiful as that young, guiltless pair for whom he had imbrued,
not his hands only, but his very soul, in blood! He sat on the high
dais, beneath the gilded canopy; and as he quaffed the health of those
who had alone a kindly tenure of his cold and callous heart, a noble
knight approached with bended knee, and placing in his hand a mark
of gold--“Fair sir,” he said, “I, a good knight and loyal--Thomas
Fitz-Stephen--claim of your grace a boon. My father, Stephen
Fitz-Evrard, served faithfully and well, as long as he did live, your
father William--served him by sea, and steered the ship with his own
hand which bore him to that glorious crown which he right nobly won
at Hastings. I pray you, then, fair king, that you do sell to me, for
this gold mark, the fief I crave of you: that, as Fitz-Evrard served
the first King William, so may Fitz-Stephen serve the first King Henry.
I have right nobly fitted--ay, on mine honor, as beseems a mighty
monarch--here, in the bay of Barfleur, ‘the Blanche Navire.’ Receive it
at my hands, great sir, and suffer me to steer you homeward; and so may
the blessed Virgin and her Son send us the winds which we would have!”

“Good knight and loyal,” answered the prince, as he received the
proffered coin, “grieved am I, of a truth, and sorrowful, that
altogether I may not confer on you the fief which of good right you
claim: for lo! the bark is chosen--nay, more, apparelled for my
service--which must to-morrow, by Heaven’s mercy, bear me to that land
whither your sire so fortunately guided mine. But since it may not be
that I may sail myself, as would I could do so, in your good bark, to
your true care will I intrust what I hold dearer than my very soul--my
sons, my daughters--mine and my country’s hope; and as your father
steered the FIRST, so shall you steer the THIRD King William, that
shall be, to the white cliffs of England!”

“Well said, my liege!” cried Foulke, the count of Anjou, a
noble-looking baron of tall and stately presence, although far past the
noon of manhood, the father of the lovely bride; “to better mariner or
braver ship than stout Fitz-Stephen and La Blanche Navire, was never
freight intrusted! Quaff we a full carouse to their blithe voyage! How
sayest thou, daughter mine,” he added, turning to the blushing girl,
who sat attired in all the pomp of newly-wedded royalty beside her
youthful lover--“how sayest thou? wouldst desire a trustier pilot, or a
fleeter galley?”

“Why,” she replied, with a smile half-sweet, half-sorrowful, while
a bright tear-drop glittered in her eye--“why should I seek for
fleetness, when that same speed will but the sooner bear me from the
sight of our fair France, and of thee, too, my father?”

“Dost thou, then, rue thy choice?” whispered the ardent voice of
William in her ear; “and wouldst thou tarry here, when fate and duty
summon me hence for England?”

Her full blue eye met his, radiant with true affection, and her slight
fingers trembled in the clasp of her young husband with a quick thrill
of agitation, and her lips parted, but the words were heard by none
save him to whom they were addressed; for, with the clang of beakers,
and the loud swell of joyous music, and the glad merriment of all the
courtly revellers, the toast of the bride’s father passed round the
gleaming board: “A blithe and prosperous voyage--speed to the Blanche
Navire, and joy to all who sail in her!”

Thus closed the festive evening, and thus the seal of destiny was set
upon a hundred youthful brows, foredoomed, alas! to an untimely grave
beneath the ruthless billows.

The wintry day wore onward; and, wintry though it was, save for a
touch of keenness in the frosty air, and for the leafless aspect of
the country, it might have passed for a more lightsome season; the sky
was pure and cloudless as were the prospects and the hopes of the gay
throng who now embarked secure and confident beneath its favorable
omens. The sun shone gayly as in the height of summer, and the blue
waves lay sleeping in its lustre as quietly as though they ne’er had
howled despair into the ears of drowning wretches! There was no thought
of peril or of fear--how should there be? The ships were trustworthy;
the seamen skilful, numerous, and hardy; the breezes fair, though
faint; the voyage brief; the time propitious.

The day wore onward; and it was high noon before the happy king--his
every wish accomplished, secure as he conceived himself, and firm in
the fruition of his blood-bought majesty--rowed with his glittering
train on board the royal galley. Loud pealed the cheering clamors of
his Norman subjects, bidding their sovereign hail; but louder yet
they pealed, when, with its freight of ladies, the second barge shot
forth--William and his fair sister, and yet fairer bride, and all the
loveliest of the dames that graced the broad Cotentin.

Not yet, however, were the anchors weighed--not yet were the sails
sheeted home; for on the deck of the king’s vessel, beneath an awning
of pure cloth-of-gold, a gorgeous board was spread. Not in the regal
hall of Westminster could more of luxury have been brought together
than was displayed upon that galley’s poop. Spread with the softest
ermine--meet carpet for the gentle feet that trod it--cushioned with
seats of velvet, steaming with perfumes the most costly, it was a scene
resembling more some fairy palace than the wave-beaten fabric that
had braved many a gale, and borne the flag of England through many a
storm in triumph. And there they sat and feasted, and the red wine-cup
circled freely, and the song went round: their hearts were high and
happy, and they forgot the lapse of hours; and still the reveller’s
shout was frequent on the breeze, and still the melody of female tones,
blent with the clang of instrumental music, rang in the ears of those
who loitered on the shore, after the sun had bathed his lower limb in
the serene and peaceful waters.

Then, as it were, awaking from their trance of luxury, the banqueters
broke off. Skiff after skiff turned shoreward, till none remained on
board the royal ship except the monarch and his train, and that loved
son with his bright consort, whom, parting from them there, he never
was to look upon again! The courses were unfurled, topsails were
spread, and pennants floated seaward; and, as the good ship gathered
way, the father bade adieu--adieu, as he believed it, but for one
little night--to all he loved on earth; and their barge, manned by
a score of powerful and active rowers, wafted the bridal party to
the Blanche Navire, which, as her precious freight drew nigh, luffed
gracefully and swiftly up to meet them, as though she were a thing of
life, conscious and proud of the high honor she enjoyed in carrying the
united hopes of Normandy and England.

Delay--there was yet more delay! The night had settled down upon the
deep before the harbor of Barfleur was fairly left behind; and yet so
lovely was the night--with the moon, near her full, soaring superbly
through the cloudless sky, and myriads on myriads of clear stars
weaving their mystic dance around her--that the young voyagers walked
to and fro the deck, rejoicing in the happy chance that had secured to
them so fair time for their excursion: and William sat aloof, with his
sweet wife beside him, indulging in those bright anticipations, those
golden dreams of happiness, which indeed make futurity a paradise to
those who have not learned, by the sad schoolings of experience, that
human life is but another name for human sorrow.

Fairer--the breeze blew fairer; and every sail was set and drawing,
and the light ripples burst with a gurgling sound like laughter about
the snow-white stem; and, still to waft them the more swiftly to their
home, fifty long oars, pulled well and strongly by as many nervous
arms, glanced in the liquid swell. The bubbles on the surface were
scarcely seen as they flashed by, so rapid was their course; and a
long wake of boiling foam glanced in the moonshine, till it was lost
to sight in the far distance. The port was far behind them; and the
king’s ship, seen faintly on the glimmering horizon, loomed like a pile
of vapor far on their starboard bow. And still the music rang upon
the favorable wind, and still the rowers sang amid their toil, and
still the captain sent the deep bowl round. The helmsman dozed upon
the tiller--the watch upon the forecastle had long since stretched
themselves upon the deck--in the deep slumbers of exhaustion and
satiety.

“Give way! my merry men, give way!” such was the jovial captain’s cry;
“pull for the pride of Normandy--pull for your country’s fame, men of
the fair Cotentin. What! will ye let yon island-lubbers outstrip ye in
the race? More way! more way!”

And with unrivalled speed the Blanche Navire sped on. A long black line
stretches before her bow, dotting the silvery surface with ragged and
fantastic shades; but not one eye has marked it! On she goes, swifter
yet and swifter, and still the fatal shout is ringing from her decks:
“Give way, men of Cotentin! give more way!” Now they are close upon
it, and now the dashing of the surf about the broken ledges--for that
black line is the dread Raz de Gatteville, the most tremendous reef
of all that bar the iron coast of Normandy! The hoarse and hollow roar
must reach the ears even of those who sleep. But no! the clangor of the
exulting trumpets, and the deep booming of the Norman nakir, and that
ill-omened shout, “Give way--yet more--more way!” has drowned even the
all-pervading roar of the wild breakers. On, on she goes, fleet as the
gazehound darting upon its antlered prey; and now her bows are bathed
by the upflashing spray; and now--hark to that hollow shock, that long
and grinding crash!--hark to that wild and agonizing yell sent upward
by two hundred youthful voices, up to the glorious stars that smiled
as if in mockery of their ruin. There rang the voice of the strong,
fearless men; the knight who had spurred oft his destrier amid the
shivering of lances and the rending clash of blades, without a thought
unless of high excitement and fierce joy; the mariner who, undismayed,
had reefed his sail, and steered his bark aright, amid the wildest
storm that ever lashed the sea to fury--now utterly unnerved and
paralyzed by the appalling change from mirth and revelry to imminent
and instant death.

So furious was the rate at which the galley was propelled, that, when
she struck upon the sharp and jagged rocks, her prow was utterly
stove inward, and the strong tide rushed in, foaming and roaring like
a mill-stream! Ten seconds’ space she hung upon the perilous ledge,
while the waves made a clear breach over her, sweeping not only every
living being, but every fixture--spars, bulwarks, shrouds, and the tall
masts themselves--from her devoted decks. At the first shock, with the
instinctive readiness that characterizes, in whatever peril, the true
mariner, Fitz-Stephen, rallying to his aid a dozen of the bravest of
his men, had cleared away and launched a boat; and, even as the fated
bark went down, bodily sucked into the whirling surf, had seized the
prince and dragged him with a stalwart arm into the little skiff, which
had put off at once, to shun the drowning hundreds who must have
crowded in and sunk her on the instant.

“Pull back!--God’s death!--pull back!” cried the impetuous youth,
as he looked round and saw that he alone of all his race was there;
“pull back, ye dastard slaves, or by the Lord and Maker of us all,
though ye escape the waves, ye ’scape not my revenge!”--and, as he
spoke, he whirled his weapon from the scabbard and pressed the point
so closely to Fitz-Stephen’s throat, that its keen temper razed the
skin; and, terrified by his fierce menaces, and yet more by the
resolute expression that glanced forth from his whole countenance,
they turned her head once more toward the reef, and shot into the
vortex, agitated yet and boiling, wherein the hapless galley had been
swallowed. A female head, with long, fair hair, rose close beside the
shallop’s stern, above the turbulent foam. William bent forward: he had
already clutched those golden tresses--a moment, and she would have
been enfolded in his arms--another head rose suddenly! another--and
another--and another! Twenty strong hands grappled the gunwale of the
skiff with the tenacity of desperation. There was a struggle, a loud
shout, a heavy plunge, and the last remnant of the Blanche Navire went
down, actually dragged from beneath the few survivors by the despairing
hands of those whom she could not have saved or succored had she been
of ten times her burden.

All, all went down! There was a long and awful pause, and then a slight
splash broke the silence, a faint and gurgling sigh, and a strong
swimmer rose and shook the brine from his dark locks; and lo, he was
alone upon the deep! Something he saw at a brief distance, distinct and
dark, floating upon the surface, and with a vigorous stroke he neared
it--a fragment of a broken spar. Hope quickened at his heart, and love
of life, almost forgotten in the immediate agony and terror, returned
in all its natural strength. He seized a rope, and by its aid reared
himself out of the abyss; and now he sat, securely as he deemed it,
upon a floating fragment on which, one little hour before, he would
not have embarked for all the wealth of India. Scarcely had he reached
his temporary place of safety, before another of the sufferers swam
feebly up and joined him, and then a third, the last of the survivors.
The first who reached the spar--it was no other than Fitz-Stephen--had
perused with an anxiety the most sickening and painful the faces of
the new-comers: he knew them, but they were not the features he would
have given his own life to see in safety--Berault, a butcher of Rouen,
and Godfrey, a renowned and gallant youth, the son of Gilbert, count
de L’Aigle. “The prince--where is the prince?” Fitz-Stephen cried to
each, as he arrived; “hast thou not seen the prince?” And each, in
turn, replied: “He never rose again--he, nor his brothers, nor his
sister, nor his bride, nor one of all their company!”--“Wo be to me!”
Fitz-Stephen cried, and letting go his hold, deliberately sank into the
whirling waters; and, though a strong man and an active swimmer, chose
to die with the victims whom his rashness had destroyed, rather than
meet the indignation of their bereaved father, and bear the agonies of
his own lifelong remorse.

Three days elapsed before the tidings reached King Henry, who in the
fearful misery of hope deferred had lingered on the beach, trusting to
hear that, from some unknown cause, the galley of his son might have
put back to Barfleur. On the third day, Berault, the sole survivor
of that night of misery, was brought in by a fishing-boat which had
preserved him; and, when he had concluded his narration, Robert of
Normandy had been revenged, although his wrongs had been a hundred-fold
more flagrant than they were. Henry, though he lived years, NEVER
SMILED AGAIN!




THE SAXON’S BRIDAL.


There are times in England when the merry month of May is not, as it
would now appear, merely a poet’s fiction; when the air is indeed mild
and balmy, and the more conspicuously so, that it succeeds the furious
gusts and driving hailstorms of the boisterous March, the fickle
sunshine and capricious rains of April. One of these singular epochs in
the history of weather it was in which events occurred, which remained
unforgotten for many a day, in the green wilds of Charnwood forest.

If was upon a soft, sweet morning, toward the latter end of the month,
and surely nothing more delicious could have been conceived by the
fancy of the poet. The low west wind was fanning itself among the
tender leaves of the new-budded trees, and stealing over the deep
meadows, all redolent with dewy wild flowers, waving them with a
gentle motion, and borrowing a thousand perfumes from their bosoms.
The hedgerows were as white with the dense blossoms of the hawthorn
as though they had been powdered over by an untimely snowstorm; while
everywhere along the wooded banks the saffron primrose and its sweet
sister of the spring, the violet, were sunning their unnumbered
blossoms in the calm warmth of the vernal sunshine. The heavens, of a
pure, transparent blue, were laughing with a genial lustre, not flooded
by the dazzling glare of midsummer, but pouring over all beneath
their influence a lovely, gentle light, in perfect keeping with the
style of the young scenery; and all the air was literally vocal with
the notes of innumerable birds, from the proud lark, “rejoicing at
heaven’s gate,” to the thrush and blackbird, trilling their full, rich
chants from every dingle, and the poor linnet, piping on the spray.
Nothing--no, nothing--can be imagined that so delights the fancy with
sweet visions, that so enthrals the senses, shedding its influences
even upon the secret heart, as a soft, old-fashioned May morning.
Apart from the mere beauties of the scenery--from the mere enjoyment
of the bright skies, the dewy perfumes that float on every breeze, the
mild, unscorching warmth--apart from all these, there is something
of a deeper and a higher nature in the thoughts called forth by the
spirit of the time; a looking forward of the soul to fairer things to
come; an excitement of a quiet hope within, not very definite, perhaps,
nor easily explained, but one which almost every man has felt, and
contrasted with the languid and pallid satiety produced by the full
heat of summer, and yet more with the sober and reflective sadness that
steals upon the mind as we survey the russet hues and the sere leaves
of autumn. It is as if the newness, the fresh youth of the season, gave
birth to a corresponding youth of the soul. Such are the sentiments
which many men feel now-a-days, besides the painter, and the poet, and
the soul-rapt enthusiast of nature: but those were iron days of which
we write, and men spared little time in thought from action or from
strife, nor often paused to note their own sensations, much less to
ponder on their origin or to investigate their causes.

The morning was such as we have described--the scene a spot of singular
beauty within the precincts of the then-royal forest of Charnwood, in
Leicestershire. A deep but narrow stream wound in a hundred graceful
turns through the rich meadow-land that formed the bottom of a small,
sloping vale, which had been partially reclaimed, even at that day,
from the waste; though many a willow-bush fringing its margin, and many
a waving ash, fluttering its delicate tresses in the air, betrayed the
woodland origin of the soft meadow. A narrow road swept down the hill,
with a course little less serpentine than that of the river below,
and crossed it by a small, one-arched stone bridge, overshadowed by a
gigantic oak-tree, and scaled the opposite acclivity in two or three
sharp, sandy zigzags. Both the hillsides were clothed with forest, but
still the nature of the soil or some accidental causes had rendered
the wood as different as possible; for, on the farther side of the
stream, the ground was everywhere visibly covered by a short, mossy
turf, softer and more elastic to the foot than the most exquisite
carpet that ever issued from the looms of Persia, and overshadowed
by huge and scattered oaks, growing so far apart that the eye could
range far between their shadowy vistas; while on the nearer slope--the
foreground, as it might be called, of the picture--all was a dense
and confused mass of tangled shrubbery and verdure. Thickets of old,
gnarled thorn-bushes, completely overrun and matted with woodbines;
coppices of young ash, with hazel interspersed, and eglantine and
dog-roses thickly set between; clumps of the prickly gorse and
plumelike broom, all starry with their golden flowerets, and fern so
wildly luxuriant, that in many places it would have concealed the head
of the tallest man, covered the ground for many a mile through which
the narrow road meandered.

There was one object more in view--one which spoke of man even in that
solitude, and man in his better aspect. It was the slated roof and
belfry, all overgrown with moss and stone-crop, of a small wayside
chapel, in the old Saxon architecture, peering out from the shadows
of the tall oaks which overhung it in the far distance. It was, as
we have said, very small, in the old Saxon architecture, consisting,
in fact, merely of a vaulted roof supported upon four squat, massy
columns, whence sprung the four groined ribs which met in the centre of
the arch. Three sides alone of this primitive place of worship, which
would have contained with difficulty forty persons, were walled in, the
front presenting one wide, open arch, richly and quaintly sculptured
with the indented wolf’s teeth of the first Saxon style. Small as it
was, however, the little chapel had its high altar, with the crucifix
and candle, its reading-desk of old black oak, its font, and pix, and
chalices, and all the adjuncts of the Roman ritual. A little way to the
left might be discovered the low, thatched eaves of a rustic cottage,
framed of the unbarked stems of forest-trees--the abode, probably,
of the officiating priest; and close beside the walls of the little
church a consecrated well, protected from the sun by a stone vault, of
architecture corresponding to the chapel.

Upon the nearer slope, not far from the roadside, but entirely
concealed from passers by the nature of the ground and the dense
thickets, there were collected, at an early hour of the morning, five
men, with as many horses, who seemed to be awaiting, in a sort of
ambush, some persons whom they would attack at unawares. The leader
of the party, as he might be considered, as much from his appearance
as from the deference shown to him by the others, was a tall, active,
powerful man, of thirty-eight or forty years, with a bold and
expressive countenance--expressive, however, of no good quality, unless
it were the fiery, reckless daring which blazed from his broad, dark
eye, and that was almost obscured by the cloud of insufferable pride
which lowered upon his frowning brow, and by the deep, scar-like lines
of lust, and cruelty, and scorn, which ploughed his weather-beaten
features. His dress was a complete suit of linked chain-mail--hauberk,
and sleeves, and hose--with shoes of plaited steel, and gauntlets
wrought in scale, covering his person from his neck downward in
impenetrable armor. He had large gilded spurs buckled upon his heels,
and a long, two edged dagger, with a rich hilt and scabbard, in his
belt; but neither sword, nor lance, nor any other weapon of offence,
except a huge steel mace, heavy enough to fell an ox at a single blow,
which he grasped in his right hand; while from his left hung the bridle
of a tall, coal-black Norman charger, which was cropping the grass
quietly beside him. His head was covered by a conical steel cap, with
neither crest, nor plume, nor visor, and mail-hood falling down from it
to protect the neck and shoulders of the wearer.

The other four were men-at-arms, clad all in suits of armor, but less
completely than their lord: thus they had steel shirts only, with
stout buff breeches and heavy boots to guard their lower limbs, and
iron skullcaps only, without the hood, upon their heads, and leather
gauntlets upon their hands; but, as if to make up for this deficiency,
they were positively loaded with offensive weapons. They had the long,
two-handed sword of the period belted across their persons, three
or four knives and daggers of various size and strength at their
girdles, great battle-axes in their hands, and maces hanging at their
saddle-bows. They had been tarrying there already several hours, their
leader raising his eyes occasionally to mark the progress of the sun as
he climbed up the azure vault, and muttering a brief and bitter curse
as hour passed after hour, and those came not whom he expected.

“Danian,” he said at length, turning to the principal of his followers,
who stood nearer to his person, and a little way apart from the
others--“Danian, art sure this was the place and day? How the dog
Saxons tarry! Can they have learned our purpose?”

“Surely not, surely not, fair sir,” returned the squire, “seeing that I
have mentioned it to no one, not even to Raoul, or Americ, or Guy, who
know no more than their own battle-axes the object of their ambush.
And it was pitch-dark when we left the castle, and not a soul has seen
us here; so it is quite impossible they should suspect--and hark! there
goes the bell; and see, sir, see--there they come, trooping through the
oak-trees down the hill!”

And indeed, as he spoke, the single bell of the small chapel began
to chime with the merry notes that proclaim a bridal, and a gay
train of harmless, happy villagers might be seen, as they flocked
along, following the footsteps of the gray-headed Saxon monk, who,
in his frock and cowl, with corded waist and sandalled feet, led the
procession. Six young girls followed close behind him, dressed in
blue skirts and russet jerkins, but crowned with garlands of white
May-flowers, and May-wreaths wound like scarfs across their swelling
bosoms, and hawthorn-branches in their hands, singing the bridal carol
in the old Saxon tongue, in honor of the pride of the village, the
young and lovely Marian. She was indeed the very personification of all
the poet’s dreams of youthful beauty--tall and slender in her figure,
yet exquisitely, voluptuously rounded in every perfect outline, with a
waist of a span’s circumference, wide, sloping shoulders, and a bust
that, for its matchless swell, as it struggled and throbbed with a
thousand soft emotions, threatening to burst from the confinement of
her tight-fitting jacket, would have put to shame the bosom of the
Medicean Venus. Her complexion, wherever the sun had not too warmly
kissed her beauties, was pure as the driven snow; while her large,
bright-blue eyes, red, laughing lip, and the luxuriant flood of sunny,
golden hair, which streamed down in wild, artless ringlets to her
waist, made her a creature for a prince’s, or more, a poet’s adoration.

But neither prince nor poet was the god of that fair girl’s idolatry,
but one of her own class, a Saxon youth, a peasant--nay, a serf--from
his very cradle upward the born thrall of Hugh de Mortemar, lord of
the castle and the hamlet at its foot, named, from its situation in
the depths of Charnwood, Ashby in the Forest. But there was now no
graven collar about the sturdy neck of the young Saxon, telling of
a suffering servitude; no dark shade of gloom in his full, glancing
eye; no sullen doggedness upon his lip: for he was that day, that
glad day, a freeman--a slave no longer--but free, free, by the gift
of his noble master; free as the wild bird that sung so loudly in the
forest; free as the liberal air that bore the carol to his ears. His
frock of forest-green and buskins of the untanned deer-hide set off his
muscular, symmetrical proportions, and his close-curled, short auburn
hair showed a well-turned and shapely head. Behind this gay and happy
pair came several maids and young men, two-and-two; and after these, an
old, gray-headed man, the father of the bride--and leaning on his arm
an aged matron, the widowed mother of the enfranchised bridegroom.

Merrily rang the gay, glad bells, and blithely swelled up the bridal
chorus as they collected on the little green before the ancient
arch, and slowly filed into the precincts of the forest shrine; but
very speedily their merriment was changed into dismay and terror and
despair, for scarcely had they passed into the sacred building, before
the knight, with his dark followers, leaped into their saddles, and
thundering down the hill at a tremendous gallop, surrounded the chapel
before the inmates had even time to think of any danger. It was a
strange, wild contrast, the venerable priest within pronouncing even
then the nuptial blessing, and proclaiming over the bright young pair
the union made by God, which thenceforth no man should dissever--the
tearful happiness of the blushing bride, the serious gladness of the
stalwart husband, the kneeling peasantry, the wreaths of innocent
flowers; and at the gate, the stern, dark men-at-arms, with their
scarred savage features, and their gold-gleaming harness and raised
weapons. A loud shriek burst from the lips of the sweet girl, as,
lifting her eyes to the sudden clang and clatter that harbingered those
dread intruders, she saw and recognised upon the instant the fiercest
of the Norman tyrants--dreaded by all his neighbors far and near, but
most by the most virtuous and young and lovely--the bold, bad baron
of Maltravers. He bounded to the earth as he reached the door, and
three of his followers leaped from their horses likewise, one sitting
motionless in his war-saddle, and holding the four chargers. “Hold,
priest!” he shouted, as he entered, “forbear this mummery; and thou,
dog Saxon, think not that charms like these are destined to be clasped
in rapture by any arms of thy slow, slavish race!” and with these words
he strode up to the altar, seemingly fearless of the least resistance,
while his men kept the door with brandished weapons. Mute terror seized
on all, paralyzed utterly by the dread interruption--on all but the
bold priest and the stout bridegroom.

“Nay, rather forbear thou, Alberic de Maltravers! These two are one for
ever--wo be to those who part them!”

“Tush, priest--tush, fool!” sneered the fierce baron, as he seized him
by the arm, and swinging him back rudely, advanced upon the terrified
and weeping girl, who was now clinging to the very rails of the high
altar, trusting, poor wretch, that some respect for that sanctity of
place which in old times had awed even heathens, might now prevail with
one whom no respect for anything divine or human had ever yet deterred
from doing his unholy will.

“Ha! dog!” cried he, in fiercer tones, that filled the chapel as
it were a trumpet, seeing the Saxon bridegroom lift up a heavy
quarter-staff which lay beside him, and step in quietly but very
resolutely in defence of his lovely wife--“Ha! dog and slave, dare you
resist a Norman and a noble?--back, serf, or die the death!” and he
raised his huge mace to strike him.

“No serf, sir, nor slave either,” answered the Saxon, firmly, “but a
freeman, by my good master’s gift, and a landholder.”

“Well, master freeman and landholder,” replied the other, with a bitter
sneer, “if such names please you better, stand back--for Marian lies on
no bed but mine this night--stand back, before worse come of it!”

“I will die rather,” was the answer.--“Then die! fool! die!” shouted
the furious Norman, and with the words he struck full at the bare brow
of the dauntless Saxon with his tremendous mace--it fell, and with
dint that would have crushed the strongest helmet into a thousand
splinters--it fell, but by a dexterous slight the yeoman swung his
quarter-staff across the blow, and parried its direction, although
the tough ash-pole burst into fifty shivers--it fell upon the carved
rails of the altar and smashed them into atoms; but while the knight,
who had been somewhat staggered by the impetus of his own misdirected
blow, was striving to recover himself, the young man sprang upon him,
and grappling him by the throat, gained a short-lived advantage.
Short-lived it was indeed, and perilous to him that gained--for
although there were men enough in the chapel, all armed with quarter
staves, and one or two with the genuine brown bill, to have overpowered
the four Normans, despite their war array--yet so completely were they
overcome by consternation, that not one moved a step to aid him; the
priest, who had alone showed any spark of courage, being impeded by the
shrieking women, who, clinging to the hem of his vestments, implored
him for the love of God to save them.

In an instant that fierce grapple was at an end, for in the twinkling
of an eye, two of the men-at-arms had rushed upon him and dragged him
off their lord.

“Now by the splendor of God’s brow,” shouted the enraged knight,
“thou art a sweet dog thus to brave thy masters. Nay, harm him not.
Raoul”--he went on--“harm not the poor dog,”--as his follower had
raised his battle-axe to brain him--“harm him not, else we should
raise the ire of that fool, Mortemar! Drag him out--tie him to the
nearest tree, and this good priest beside him--before his eyes we will
console this fair one.” And with these words he seized the trembling
girl, forcing her from the altar, and encircling her slender waist in
the foul clasp of his licentious arms. “And ye,” he went on, lashing
himself into fury as he continued,--“and ye churl Saxons, hence!--hence
dogs and harlots to your kennels!”

No farther words were needed, for his orders were obeyed by his own
men with the speed of light, and the Saxons overjoyed to escape on any
terms, rushed in a confused mass out of the desecrated shrine, and fled
in all directions, fearful of farther outrage. Meanwhile, despite the
struggles of the youth, and the excommunicating anathemas which the
priest showered upon their heads, the men-at-arms bound them securely
to the oak-trees, and then mounting their horses, sat laughing at their
impotent resistance, while with a refinement of brutality worthy of
actual fiends, Alberic de Maltravers bore the sweet wife clasped to his
iron breast, up to the very face of her outraged, helpless husband, and
tearing open all her jerkin, displayed to the broad light the whole of
her white, panting bosom, and poured from his foul, fiery lips a flood
of lustful kisses on her mouth, neck, and bosom, under the very eyes of
his tortured victim. To what new outrage he might have next proceeded,
must remain ever doubtful, for at this very instant the long and mellow
blast of a clearly-winded bugle came swelling through the forest
succeeded by the bay of several bloodhounds, and the loud, ringing
gallop of many fast approaching.

“Ha!” shouted he, “ten thousand curses on him! here comes De Mortemar.
Quick--quick--away! Here, Raoul, take the girl, buckle her tight to
your back with the sword-belt, and give me your twohanded blade; I lost
my mace in the chapel!--That’s right! quick! man--that’s right--now,
then, be off--ride for your life--straight to the castle; we will stop
all pursuit. Fare thee well, sweet one, for a while--we will conclude
hereafter what we have now commenced so fairly!”

And as he spoke, he also mounted his strong charger, and while the man,
Raoul, dashed his spurs rowel-deep into his horse’s flanks, and went
off at a thundering gallop, the other four followed him at a slower
pace, leaving the Saxons in redoubled anguish--redoubled by the near
hope of rescue.

But for once villany was not permitted to escape due retribution,
for ere the men-at-arms, who led the flight, had crossed the little
bridge, a gallant train came up at a light canter from the wood, twenty
or thirty archers, all with their long bows bent, and their arrows
notched and ready, with twice as many foresters on foot, with hounds of
every kind, in slips and leashes, and at their head a man of as noble
presence as ever graced a court or reined a charger. He was clad in a
plain hunting-frock of forest-green, with a black velvet bonnet and a
heron’s plume, and wore no other weapon but a light hunting-sword--but
close behind him rode two pages, bearing his knightly lance with its
long pennon, his blazoned shield, and his two-handed broadsword. It
was that brave and noble Norman, Sir Hugh de Mortemar. His quick eye
in an instant took in the whole of the confused scene before him, and
understood it on the instant.

“Alberic de Maltravers!” he cried, in a voice clear and loud as the
call of a silver trumpet, “before God he shall rue it,” and with the
words he snatched his lance from the page, and dashing spurs into his
splendid Spanish charger, thundered his orders out with the rapid
rush of a winter’s torrent. “Bend your bows, archers,--draw home your
arrows to the head! stand, thou foul ravisher, dishonest Norman, false
gentleman, and recreant knight! Stand on the instant, or we shoot!
Cut loose the yeoman from the tree, ye varlets, and the good priest.
Randal, cast loose the bloodhounds down to the bridge across yon knoll,
and lay them on the track of that flying scoundrel. Ha! they will meet
us.”

And so in truth they did; for seeing that he could not escape the
deadly archery, Alberic de Maltravers wheeled short on his pursuers,
and shouted his war-cry--“Saint Paul for Alberic!--false knight and
liar in your throat. Saint Paul! Saint Paul! charge home,”--and with
the words the steel-clad men-at-arms drove on, expecting by the weight
of their harness to ride down and scatter the light archery like
chaff. Unarmed although he was, De Mortemar paused not--not for a
moment!--but galloped in his green doublet as gallantly upon his foe
as though he had been sheathed in steel. He had but one advantage--but
one hope!--to bear his iron-clad opponent down at the lance point,
without closing--on! they came, on!--Maltravers swinging his twohanded
sword aloft, and trusting in his mail to turn the lance’s point--De
Mortemar with his long spear in rest--“Saint Paul! Saint Paul!”--they
met! the dust surged up in a dense cloud! the very earth appeared to
shake beneath their feet!--but not a moment was the conflict doubtful.
Deep! deep! throughed his linked mail, and through his leathern jerkin,
and through his writhing flesh, the grinded spear-head shove into his
bosom, and came out at his back, the ash-staff breaking in the wound.
Down he went, horse and man!--and down, at one close volley of the
gray goose shafts, down went his three companions!--one shot clear
through the brain by an unerring shaft--the others stunned and bruised,
their horses both slain under them. “Secure them,” shouted Hugh, “bind
them both hand and foot, and follow,”--and he paused not to look upon
his slain assailant, but galloped down the hill, followed by half his
train, the bloodhounds giving tongue fiercely, and already gaining on
the fugitive. It was a fearful race, but quickly over!--for though the
man-at-arms spurred desperately on, his heavy Norman horse, oppressed,
moreover, by his double load, had not a chance in competing with the
proud Andalusian of De Mortemar. Desperately he spurred on--but now the
savage hounds were up with him--they rushed full at the horse’s throat
and bore him to the earth--another moment, Raoul was a bound captive,
and Marian, rescued by her liege lord, and wrapped in his own mantle,
was clasped in the fond arms of her husband!

“How now, good priest,” exclaimed Sir Hugh, “are these two now fast
wedded?”

“As fast, fair sire, as the holy rites may wed them.”

“Then ring me, thou knave, Ringan, a death-peal! Thou, Gilbert, and
thou, Launcelot, make me three halters, quick--nay! four--the dead
knight shall swing, as his villany well merits, beside the living
knaves!--Sing me a death-chant, priest, for these are judged to death,
unhouselled and unshriven!”

Not a word did the ruffians answer, they knew that prayer was useless,
and with dark frowning brows, and dauntless bearing, they met their
fate, impenitent and fearless. For Marian begged their lives in vain.
De Mortemar was pitiless in his just wrath! And the spurs were hacked
from the heels of the dead knight, and the base halter twisted round
his cold neck, and his dishonored corpse hung up upon the very tree
to which he had bade bind the Saxon bridegroom. And the death-peals
were sung, and the death-hymn was chanted; and ere the sounds of either
had died away in the forest echoes, the three marauders writhed out
their villain souls in the mild air, and swung three grim and ghastly
monuments of a foul crime and fearful retribution--and this dread rite
consummated the Saxon’s bridal!




LEGENDS

OF

THE CRUSADERS.




THE SYRIAN LADY;

A SKETCH OF THE CRUSADES.

   “Yes, love indeed is light from heaven;
      A spark of that immortal fire
    With angels shared, by Allah given,
      To lift from earth our low desire.
    Devotion wafts the mind above,
    But heaven itself descends in love.”--THE GIAOUR.


There is something in the first approach of spring--in the budding of
the young leaves, the freshness increasing warmth and lustre of the
sun--as contrasted with the gloomy winter which has just departed,
that can not fail to awaken ideas of a gay and lively character in
all hearts accessible to the influences of gratitude and love. In
compliance, as it were, with this feeling, a custom has more or less
generally prevailed among all nations, and in all ages, of celebrating
the arrival of this season by merriment, and song, and rural triumph.
Like many others, admirable practices of the olden time, the setting
apart to joy and innocent festivity of the first of May is now
gradually falling into neglect; but at the period of which we are about
to treat, not Christmas itself could be observed with more reverential
care than its inviting rival. On May-day, the evergreens which had
decked the cottage and the church, the castle and the cloister, gave
way to garlands of such flowers as the mellowing influences of the
season had already called into their existence of beauty and perfume;
troops of morris-dancers paraded the public way with their fantastic
dresses, glittering blades, and intricate evolutions; feasting and
wassail, without which even pleasure itself was then deemed incomplete,
prevailed on every side; in the crowded city, or in the secluded
valley; in the hut of the serf, or in the turreted keep of his warlike
lord; in the gloom of the convent, or in the glitter of the court,
the same feelings were excited, the same animation glowed in every
countenance, the same triumphant demonstrations of joy hailed the glad
harbinger of sunshine and of summer.

In England, above all other lands--the merry England of antiquity--was
this pleasing festival peculiarly dear to all classes of society; at
all times a period eagerly anticipated, and rapturously enjoyed, never
perhaps was its arrival celebrated by all men with wilder revelry, with
more enthusiastic happiness, than on the year which had accomplished
the deliverance of their lion-hearted monarch from the chains of
perfidious Austria. It seemed to the whole nation as though, not only
the actual winter of the year, with his dark accompaniments of snow
and storm, but the yet more oppressive winter of anarchy and misrule,
of usurpation and tyranny, were about to pass away from the people,
which had so long groaned under the griping sway of the bad John, or
been torn by the savage strife of his mercenary barons; while their
legitimate and honored sovereign was dragging his dreary hours along
in the dungeon, from which he had but now escaped, through the devoted
fidelity and unrivalled art of the minstrel Blondel.

Now, however, the king was on the throne of his fathers, girt with a
circle of three gallant spirits, who had shed their blood like water
on the thirsty deserts of Syria; earning not only earthly honor and
renown, but, as their imperfect faith had taught them to believe, the
far more lofty guerdon of eternal life. Now their national festival had
returned--they were called upon by the thousand voices of nature to
give the rein to Pleasure, and why should they turn a deaf ear to her
inspiring call?

The streets of London--widely different indeed from the vast
wilderness of walls, which has risen like a phœnix from the ashes of
its predecessor, but even at that early age a vast and flourishing
town--were thronged, from the earliest dawn, by a constant succession
of smiling faces: old and young, men and maidens, grave citizens and
stern soldiers, all yielding to the excitement of the moment, all
hurrying from the intricate lanes of the city to greet their king, who
had announced his intention of holding a court at Westminster, and
proceeding thence, at high noon, to feast with the city dignitaries
in Guild-hall. The open stalls, which then occupied the place of
shops, were adorned by a display of their richest wares, decorated
with wreaths of a thousand bright colors;--steel harness from the
forges of Milan; rich velvets from the looms of Genoa; drinking-cups
and ewers of embossed gold, glittered in every booth. The projecting
galleries, which thrust forward their irregular gables far across the
narrow streets, were hung with tapestries of price; while garlands of
flowers, stretched from side to side, and the profusion of hawthorn
boughs, with their light green leaves and snowy blossoms, lent a sylvan
appearance to the crowded haunts of the metropolis. From space to space
the streets were guarded by the city-watch in their white cassocks and
glittering head-pieces; while ever and anon the train of some great
lord came winding its way, with led horses in costly caparison, squires
and pages in the most gorgeous fashion of the day, the banner and
the knightly armor of the baron borne before him, from his lodgings
in the Minories, or the more notorious Chepe. The air was literally
alive with music and light laughter; even the shaven and cowled
monk, as he threaded his way through the motley concourse--suffered
the gravity of his brow to relax into a smile when he looked upon the
undisguised delight of some fair girl, escorted by her trusty bachelor;
now stopping to gaze on the foreign curiosities displayed in decorated
stalls; now starting in affected terror from the tramp and snort of the
proud war-horse, or mustering a frown of indignation at the unlicensed
salutation of its courtly rider; now laughing with unsuppressed glee
at the strange antics of the _mummers_ and _morricers_, who, in every
disguise that fancy could suggest, danced and tumbled through the
crowded ways--heedless of the disturbance they excited, or the danger
they incurred from the hoofs of chargers which were prancing along in
constant succession, to display the equestrian graces and firm seat of
some young aspirant for the honors of chivalry.

The whole scene was in the highest degree picturesque, and such as no
other age of the world could afford. The happiness which, although
fleeting and fictitious, threw its bright illumination over the whole
multitude, oblivious of the cares, the labors, and the sorrows of
to-morrow, afforded a subject for the harp of the poet, no less worthy
his inspired meditations than the gorgeous coloring and the rich
costume of the middle ages might lend to the pencil of a Leslie or a
Newton.

In a chamber overlooking with its Gothic casements this scene of
contagious mirth--alone, unmoved by the gay hum which told of happiness
in every passing breeze--borne down, as it would appear, by the weight
of some secret calamity--sat Sir Gilbert à-Becket, of glorious form
and unblemished fame. The bravest of the brave on the battle-plain,
unequalled for wisdom in the hall of council, he had been among the
first of those bold hearts who had buckled on their mighty armor to
fight the good fight of Christianity--to rear the cross above the
crescent--and to redeem the Savior’s sepulchre from the contaminating
sway of the unbeliever.

There was not one among the gallant thousands who had followed their
lion-hearted leader from the green vales of England to the sultry sands
of Palestine, whose high qualities had been more frequently tried, or
whose undaunted valor was more generally acknowledged, than the knight
à-Becket; there was not one to whose lance the chivalrous Richard
looked more confidently for support, nor one to whose counsel he more
willingly inclined his ear. In the last desperate effort before the
walls of Ascalon--when, with thirty knights alone, the English monarch
had defied the concentrated powers, and vainly sought an opponent
in the ranks of sixty thousand mussulmans--his crest had shone the
foremost in those fierce encounters which have rendered the name of the
Melec Ric a terror to the tribes of the desert that has endured even to
the present day. It was at the close of this bloody encounter, that,
conquered by his own previous exertions rather than by the prowess of
his foemen--his armor hacked and rent, his war-steed slain beneath
him--he had been overwhelmed by numbers while wielding his tremendous
blade beside the bridle-rein of his king, and borne away by the
Saracens into hopeless captivity.

Days and months had rolled onward, and the limbs of the champion were
wasted and his constitution sapped by the vile repose of the dungeon;
yet never for an instant had his proud demeanor altered, or his high
spirit quailed beneath the prospect of an endless slavery. All means
had been resorted to by his turbaned captors to induce him to adopt the
creed of Mohammed. Threat of torments such as was scarcely endured even
by the martyrs of old; promises of dominion, and wealth, and honor;
the agonies of thirst and hunger; the allurement of beauty almost
superhuman--had been brought to assail the faith of the despairing but
undaunted prisoner: and each temptation had been tried but to prove
how unflinching was his resolution, and how implicit his faith in that
Rock of Ages which he had ever served with enthusiastic, at least, if
erring zeal, and with a fervency of love which no peril could shake, no
pleasure could seduce from its serene fidelity.

At length, when hope itself was almost dead within his breast; when
ransom after ransom had been vainly offered; when the noblest moslem
captives had been tendered in exchange for his inestimable head; and,
to crown the whole, when the no-longer united powers of the crusading
league had departed from the shores on which they had lavished so much
of their best blood--his deliverance from the fetters of the infidel
was accomplished by one of those extraordinary circumstances which the
world calls chance, but which the Christian knows how to attribute to
the infinite mercies of an overruling Providence. The eagerness of the
politic sultan--whose name ranks as high among the tribes of Islam as
the glory of his opponents among the pale sons of Europe--to obtain
proselytes from the nations which he had the sagacity to perceive were
no less superior to the wandering hordes of the desert in arts than in
arms, had led him to break through those laws which are so intimately
connected with the religion of Mohammed--the laws of the harem! As
the pious faith of the western warrior appeared to gain fresh vigor
from every succeeding temptation, so did the anxiety of his conqueror
increase to gain over to his cause a spirit the value of which was
daily rendered more and more conspicuous. In order to bring about this
end, after every other device had failed, he commanded the admission to
the Briton’s cell of the fairest maiden of his harem--a maid whose pure
and spotless beauty went further to prove her unblemished descent than
even the titles which were assigned to the youthful Leila, of almost
royal birth.

Dazzled by her charms, and intoxicated by the fascination of her
manner, her artless wit, and her delicate timidity, so far removed from
the unbridled passion of such other eastern beauties as had visited
his solitude, the Christian soldier betrayed such evident delight in
listening to her soft words, and such keen anxiety for a repetition of
the interview, that the oriental monarch believed that he had in sooth
prevailed. Confidently, however, as he had calculated on the conversion
of the believing husband by the unbelieving wife, the bare possibility
of an opposite result had never once occurred to his distorted vision.
But truly has it been said, “_Magna est veritas et prævalebit!_” The
damsel who had been sent to create emotion in the breast of another,
was the first to become its victim herself: she whose tutored tongue
was to have won the prisoner from the faith of his fathers, was herself
the first to fall away from the creed of her race. Enamored, beyond the
reach of description, of the good knight, whose attractions of person
were no less superior to the boasted beauty of the oriental nobles,
than his rich and enthusiastic mind soared above their prejudiced
understandings, she had surrendered her whole soul to a passion as
intense as the heat of her native climate; she had lent a willing ear
to the fervid eloquence of her beloved, and had drank in fresh passion
from the very language which had won her reason from the debasing
superstitions of Islamism to the bright and everlasting splendors of
the Christian faith. From this moment the eastern maid became the bride
of his affections, the solace of his weary hours, the object of his
brightest hopes. He had discovered that she was worthy of his love;
he was sure that her whole being was devoted to his welfare; and he
struggled no longer against the spirit with which he had battled, as
unworthy his country, his name, and his religion.

It was not long ere the converted maiden had planned the escape, and
actually effected the deliverance, of her affianced lover. She had
sworn to join him in his flight; she had promised to accompany him to
his distant country, and to be the star of his ascendant destinies,
as she had been the sole illuminator to his hours of desolation and
despair.

Rescued from his fetters, he had lain in concealment on the rocky
shores of the Mediterranean, anxiously awaiting the vessel which was
to convey him to the land of his birth, and her whose society alone
could render his being supportable. The vessel arrived: but what was
the agony of his soul on learning that she whom he prized above light,
and life, and all save virtue, had fallen a sacrifice to the furious
disappointment of her indignant countrymen! Maddened with grief, and
careless of an existence which had now become a burden rather than
a treasure, he would have returned to avenge the wrongs of his lost
Leila, and perish on her grave, had not her emissaries--conscious
that in such a case the fate which had befallen the mistress must
undoubtedly be theirs likewise--compelled him to secure their common
safety by flight.

After weary wanderings, he had returned a heart-stricken wretch to his
native England, at that moment rejoicing with unfeigned delight at the
recovery of her heroic king. He sometimes mingled in the labors of the
council or the luxuries of the banquet, but it was evident to all that
his mind was far away! that for him there might indeed be the external
semblance of joy, but that all within was dark and miserable! It was
plain that, in the words of the poet--

   “That heavy chill had frozen o’er the fountains of the tears,
    And though the eye may sparkle still, ’tis where the ice appears.”

On this morning of universal joy--to him a period fraught with the
gloomiest recollections, for it was the anniversary of that sad day on
which he had parted from the idol of his heart, never to behold her
more!--on this morning he had secluded himself from the sight of men;
he was alone with his memory! His eyes indeed rested on the letters of
an illuminated missal which lay open before him; but the long, dark
lock of silky hair which was grasped in his feverish hand, showed too
plainly that his grief was still of that harrowing and fiery character
which prevents the mind from tasting as yet the consolations of Divine
truth. He had sat thus for hours, unconscious of the passing multitude,
whose every sound was borne to his unheeding ears by the fresh breeze
of spring. His courtly robe and plumed bonnet, his collar, spurs, and
sword, lay beside him, arranged for the approaching festival by his
officious page; but no effort could have strung his nerves or hardened
his heart on that day to bear with the frivolous ceremonies and false
glitter of a court. He recked not now whether his presence would lend
a zest to the festival, or whether his absence might be construed into
offence. The warrior, the politician, the man, were merged in the
lover! Utter despondency had fallen upon his spirit. Like the oak of
his native forests, he was proud and unchanged in appearance, but the
worm was busy at his heart. Even tears would have been a relief to the
dead weight of despair which had benumbed his very soul; but never,
since that fatal hour, had one drop relieved the aching of his brain,
or one smile gleamed across his haggard features. Mechanically he
fulfilled his part in society: he moved, he spoke, he acted, like his
fellow-men; but he was now become, from the most ardent and impetuous
of his kind, a mere creature of habit and circumstance.

So deeply was he now absorbed in his dark reveries, that the increasing
clamor of the multitude had escaped his attention, although the
character of the sounds was no longer that of unmingled pleasure. The
voices of men, harsh and pitched in an unnatural key, rude oaths,
and tumultuous confusion, proclaimed that, if not engaged in actual
violence, the mob was at least ripe for mischief. More than once,
during the continuance of these turbulent sounds, had the plaintive
accents of a female voice been distinctly audible--when on a sudden
a shriek arose of such fearful import, close beneath the casements of
the abstracted baron, that it thrilled to his very heart. It seemed to
his excited fancy that the notes of a well-remembered voice lent their
music to that long-drawn cry; nay, he almost imagined that his own name
was indistinctly blended in that yell of fear.

With the speed of light he had sprung to his feet, and hurried to
the lattice; but twice before he reached it, had the cry repeated,
calling on the name of “Gilbert!” with a plaintive energy that could
no longer be mistaken. He gained the embrasure, dashed the trellised
blinds apart, and there--struggling in the licentious grasp of the
retainers who ministered to the brutal will of some haughty noble--her
raven tresses scattered to the winds of heaven, her turbaned shawl
and flowing caftan rent and disordered by the rude hands of lawless
violence--he beheld a female form of unrivalled symmetry, clad in the
well-remembered garments of the East. Her face was turned from him,
and the dark masses of hair which had escaped from their confinement
entirely concealed her features; still there was an undefined
resemblance which acted so keenly upon his feelings, that the thunder
of heaven could scarcely burst with a more appalling crash above the
heads of the guilty than did the powerful tones of the crusader as he
bade them, “as they valued life, release the damsel!” With a rapid
shudder which ran through every limb at his clear summons, she turned
her head. It was--it was his own lost Leila! the high and polished
brow; the eyes that rivalled in languor the boasted organs of the wild
gazelle; the rapturous ecstasy that kindled every lineament as she
recognised her lover’s form--

    ----“the voice that clove through all the din,
    As a lute’s pierceth through the cymbal’s clash,
    Jarred but not drowned by the loud brattling”--

were all, all Leila’s! To snatch his sword from its scabbard, to vault
at a single bound from the lofty casement, to force his way through the
disordered press, to level her audacious assailants to the earth, was
but a moment’s work for the gigantic power of the knight, animated as
he now was by all those feelings which can minister valor to the most
timid, and give strength to the feeblest arm! He beheld her whom he had
believed to be snatched for ever from his heart, nor could hundreds of
mail-clad soldiers have withstood his furious onset! He had already
clasped his recovered treasure in one nervous arm, while with the other
he brandished aloft the trusty blade, which had so often carried havoc
and terror to the centre of the moslem lines; when the multitude,
enraged at the interference of a stranger with what to them appeared
the laudable occupation of persecuting a witch or infidel, seconded by
the bold ruffians who had first laid hand upon the lovely foreigner,
rushed bodily onward, threatening to overpower all resistance by the
weight of numbers.

Gallantly, however, and at the same time mercifully, did Sir Gilbert
à-Becket support his previous reputation. Dealing sweeping blows with
his huge falchion on every side, yet shunning to use the point or edge,
he had cleft his way in safety to the threshold of his own door. Yet
even then the final issue of the strife was far from certain; for so
sudden had been the exit of the baron, and from so unusual an outlet,
that none of his household were conscious of their lord’s absence,
and the massy portal was closed against the entrance of the lawful
owner. Stones and staves flew thick around him; and so fiercely did the
leaders of the furious mob press upon his retreat, that, yielding at
length to the dictates of his excited spirit, he dealt the foremost a
blow which would have cloven him to the teeth though he had been fenced
in triple steel; thundering at the same time with his booted heel
against the oaken leaves of his paternal gate, and shouting to page and
squire within till the vaulted passages rang forth in startled echoes.

At this critical moment the din of martial music, which had long been
approaching, heralded the royal procession; though so actively were
the rioters engaged in their desperate onset, and so totally engrossed
was the baron in the rescue of his recovered bride, that neither party
were aware of it until its clangor rang close at hand, and a dazzling
cavalcade of knights and nobles came slowly on the scene of action.

Of stature almost gigantic, noble features, and kingly bearing--his
garb glittering with gold and jewels till the dazzled eye could
scarcely brook its splendor; backing a steed which seemed as though its
strength and spirit might have borne Goliath to the field; and wielding
a blade which no other arm in Christendom could have poised even for a
second--the lion-hearted Richard, followed by every noble of his realm,
dashed with his native impetuosity into the centre.

“Ha! St. George!” he shouted, in a voice heard clearly above the
mingled clang of instruments and the tumult of the conflict; “have ye
no better way to keep our festival than thus to take base odds on one?
Shame on ye, vile recreants! What, ho!” he cried, as he recognised the
person of the knight, “our good comrade à-Becket thus hard bestead!
Hence to your kennels, ye curs of England!--dare ye match yourselves
against the Lion and his brood?”

Loud rang the acclamations of the throng, accustomed to the blunt
boldness of their warrior-king, and losing sight of his haughty
language in joy for his return and admiration of the additional glory
which had accrued to the whole nation from the prowess of its champion:
“God save thee, gallant lion-heart! Never was so brave a knight! never
so noble a king!”

Louder still was the wonder of the monarch and his assembled court when
they learned the strange adventure which had been brought to so fair a
conclusion by their unexpected succor. The lady threatened with the
lasting indignation of the royal Saladin, though never really in danger
of life, had devised the false report of her own death--knowing that it
were hopeless for her to dream of flight, so long as the eyes of all
were concentrated on her in dark and angry suspicion; and knowing also
that no dread of instant dissolution nor hope of liberty could have
induced her devoted lover to have quitted the land while she remained
in “durance vile.”

When the first excitement--caused by the escape of a prisoner so
highly esteemed as was the bold crusader--had ceased to agitate the
mussulman divan, and affairs had returned to their usual course--easily
escaping from the vigilance of the harem guard, she had made good her
flight to the seabathed towers of Venice, and thence to the classic
plains of Italy. Then it was that the loneliness of her situation, the
perils, the toils, the miseries which she must necessarily endure,
weighed no less heavily on her tender spirits, than the unwonted
labor of so toilsome a journey on her delicate and youthful frame.
Ignorant of any European language, save the name of her lover, and the
metropolis of his far-distant country, her sole reply to every query
was the repetition, in her musical, although imperfect accents, of
the words--“London,” “Gilbert.” Marvellous it is to relate--and were
it not, in good sooth, history too marvellous--that her talismanic
speech did at length convey her through nations hostile to her race,
through the almost uninhabited forest, and across the snowy barrier of
the Alps, through realms laid waste by relentless banditti, and cities
teeming with licentious and merciless adventurers, to the chalky cliffs
and verdant meadows of England! For weeks had she wandered through the
streets of the vast metropolis, jeered by the cruel, and pitied, but
unaided, by the merciful--tempted by the wicked, and shunned by the
virtuous--repeating ever and anon her simple exclamation, “Gilbert,
Gilbert!” till her strength was well nigh exhausted, and her spirits
were fast sinking into utter despondency and despair.

On the morning of the festival she had gone forth with hopes renewed,
when she perceived the concourse of nobles crowding to greet their
king--for she knew her Gilbert to be high in rank and favor--and
fervently did she trust that this day would be the termination of
her miseries. Again was she miserably deceived; so miserably that,
perchance, had not the very assault which had threatened her with
death or degradation restored her, as it were by magic, to the arms
of him whom she had so tenderly and truly loved, she had sunk that
night beneath the pressure of grief and anxiety, too poignant to be
long endured. But so it was not ordained by that perfect Providence,
which, though it may for a time suffer bold vice to triumph, and humble
innocence to mourn, can ever bring real good out of seeming evil; and
whose judgments are so inevitably, in the end, judgments of mercy and
of truth, that well might the minstrel king declare of old, in the
inspired language of holy writ--

“I have been young, and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous
forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.”




THE TRIALS OF A TEMPLAR;

A SKETCH OF THE CRUSADES.

    “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear what can man do unto me.”

            PSALM cxviii. 6.


A summer-day in Syria was rapidly drawing toward its close, as a
handful of European cavalry, easily recognised by their flat-topped
helmets, cumbrous hauberks, and chargers sheathed like their riders,
in plate and mail, were toiling their weary way through the deep sand
of the desert, scorched almost to the heat of molten lead by the
intolerable glare of an eastern sun. Insignificant in numbers, but high
of heart, confident from repeated success, elated with enthusiastic
valor, and inspiriting sense of a holy cause, they followed the
guidance of their leader, one of the best and most tried lances of the
temple, careless whither, and secure of triumph; their steel armor
glowing like burnished gold, their lance-heads flashing in the level
rays of the setting orb, and the party-colored banner of the Beauseant
hanging motionless in the still atmosphere.

Before them lay an interminable waste of bare and dusty plain, broken
into long swells succeeding each other in monotonous regularity,
though occasionally varied by stunted patches of thorny shrubs and
dwarf palm-trees. As they wheeled round one of these thickets, their
commander halted suddenly at the sight of some fifty horsemen, whose
fluttering garb and turbaned crowns, as well as the springy pace of
their Arab steeds, proclaimed them natives of the soil, winding along
the bottom of the valley beneath him, with the stealthy silence of
prowling tigers. Although the enemy nearly trebled his own force in
numerical power, without a moment’s hesitation Albert of Vermandois
arrayed his little band, and before the infidels had even discovered
his presence, much less drawn a blade, or concentrated their scattered
line, the dreaded war-cry rung upon their ears--“Ha! Beauseant! for the
temple! for the temple!” and down thundered the irresistible charge
of the western crusaders on their unguarded flank. Not an instant
did the Saracens withstand the brunt of the Norman lance; they broke
away on all sides, leaving a score of their companions stretched to
rise no more on the bloody plain. Scarcely, however, had the victors
checked their blown horses, or reorganized their phalanx, disordered
by the hot struggle, when the distant clang of cymbal, horn, and
kettle-drum mingled with the shrill _lelies_ of the heathen sounding
in every direction, announced that their march had been anticipated,
their route beset, themselves surrounded. Hastily taking possession
of the vantage-ground afforded by an abrupt hillock, and dismissing
the lightest of his party to ride for life to the Christian camp, and
demand immediate aid, Albert awaited the onset with the stern composure
which springs from self-possession. A few minutes sufficed to show
the Christians the extent of their embarrassment, and the imminence
of their peril. Three heavy masses of cavalry were approaching them
from as many different quarters; their gaudy turbans, gilded arms,
and waving pennons of a hundred hues, blazing in marked contrast to
the stern and martial simplicity of the iron soldiers of the west.
To the quick eye of Albert it was instantly evident that their hope
consisted in protracting the conflict till the arrival of succor; and
even this hope was diminished by the unwonted velocity with which the
Mohammedans hurried to the attack. It seemed as if they also were aware
that, in order to conquer, they must conquer quickly; for, contrary to
their usual mode of fighting, they charged resolutely upon the very
lances of the motionless Christians, who, in a solid circle, opposed
their mailed breasts in firm array to their volatile antagonists.
Fiercely, however, as they charged, their lighter coursers recoiled
before the bone and weight of the European war-steeds. The lances of
the crusaders were shivered in the onset; but to the thrust of these
succeeded the deadly sweep of the twohanded swords, flashing above
the cimeters of the infidel with the sway of some terrific engine.
Time after time the eastern warriors rushed on, time after time
they retreated, like the surf from some lonely rock on which it has
wasted its thunders in vain. At length they changed their plan, and
wheeling in rapid circles, poured their arrows in as fast, and for
a time as fruitlessly, as the snowstorm of a December day. On they
came again, right upon the point where Vermandois was posted, headed
by a tall chieftain, distinguished no less by his gorgeous arms than
by his gallant bearing. Rising in his stirrups, when at a few paces
distance, he hurled his long javelin full in the face of the crusader.
Bending his crest to the saddle-bow, as the dart passed harmlessly
over him, Albert cast his massive battle-axe in return. The tremendous
missile rustled past the chief at whom it was aimed, and smote his
shield-bearer to the earth, at the very moment when an arrow pierced
the templar’s charger through the eyeball to the brain. The animal,
frantic with the pain, bounded forward and rolled lifeless, bearing
his rider with him to the ground; yet even in that last struggle the
stern knight clave the turbaned leader down to the teeth before he
fell. Five hundred horse dashed over him--his array was broken--his
companions were hewn from their saddles, even before their commander
was snatched from beneath the trampling hoofs, disarmed, fettered,
and reserved for a doom to which the fate of his comrades had been a
boon of mercy. Satisfied with their success, and aware that a few hours
at the farthest must bring up the rescue from the Christian army, the
Saracens retreated as rapidly as they had advanced; all night long they
travelled with unabated speed toward their inaccessible fastnesses, in
the recesses of their wild mountains. Arrived at their encampment, the
prisoner was cast into a dungeon hewn from the living rock. Day after
day rolled heavily on, and Albert lay in utter darkness, ignorant of
his destiny, unvisited by any being except the swart and bearded savage
who brought the daily pittance, scarcely sufficient for the wants of
his wretched existence.

Albert of Vermandois, a Burgundian youth of high nobility, and yet more
exalted renown, had left his native land stung almost to madness by
the early death of her to whom he had vowed his affections, and whose
name he had already made “glorious by his sword,” from the banks of
the Danube to the pillars of Hercules. He had bound the cross upon his
breast, he had mortified all worldly desires, all earthly passions,
beneath the strict rule of his order. While yet in the flush and pride
of manhood, before a gray hair had streaked his dark locks, or a single
line wrinkled his lofty brow, he had changed his nature, his heart,
his very being; he had attained a height of dignity and fame scarcely
equalled by the best and noblest warriors of the temple. The vigor of
his arm, the vast scope of his political foresight, no less than the
unimpeached rigor of his morals, had long rendered him a glory to his
brotherhood, a cause of terror and an engine of defeat to the Saracen
lords of the Holy Land. Many a league had been formed to overpower,
many a dark plot hatched to inveigle him; but so invariably had he
borne down all odds in open warfare before his irresistible lance,
so certainly had he hurled back all secret treasons with redoubled
vengeance on the heads of the schemers, that he was almost deemed
the possessor of some cabalistic spell, framed for the downfall and
destruction of the sons of Islam.

Deep were the consultations of the infidel leaders concerning the
destiny of their formidable captive. The slaughter actually wrought by
his hand had been so fearful, the ravages produced among their armies
by his policy so unbounded, that a large majority were in favor of his
instant execution; nor could human ingenuity devise, or brute cruelty
perform, more hellish methods of torture than were calmly discussed in
that infuriate assembly.

It was late on the third day of his captivity, when the hinges of
his dungeon-grate creaked, and a broader glare streamed through the
aperture than had hitherto disclosed the secrets of his prisonhouse.
The red light streamed from a lamp in the grasp of a dark figure--an
imaum, known by his high cap of lambskin, his loose black robes, his
parchment cincture, figured with Arabic characters, and the long beard
that flowed even below his girdle in unrestrained luxuriance. A negro,
bearing food of a better quality, and the beverage abhorred by the
prophet, the forbidden juice of the grape, followed--his ivory teeth
and the livid circles of his eyes glittering with a ghastly whiteness
in the clear lamp-light. He arranged the unaccustomed dainties on the
rocky floor: the slave withdrew. The priest seated himself so that the
light should reveal every change of the templar’s features, while his
own were veiled in deep shadow.

“Arise, young Nazarene,” he said, “arise and eat, for to-morrow thou
shalt die. Eat, drink, and let thy soul be strengthened to bear thy
doom; for as surely as there is one God, and one prophet, which is
Mohammed, so surely is the black wing of Azrael outstretched above
thee!”

“It is well,” was the unmoved reply. “I am a consecrated knight, and
how should a templar tremble?--a Christian, and how should a follower
of Jesus fear to die?”

“My brother hath spoken wisely, yet is his wisdom but folly. Truly
hast thou said, ‘It is well to die;’ for is it not written that the
faithful and the yaoor must alike go hence? But is it the same thing
for a warrior to fall amid the flutter of banners and the flourish
of trumpets--which are to the strong man even as the breath of his
nostrils, or as the mild shower in seedtime to the thirsty plain--and
to perish by inches afar from his comrades, surrounded by tribes to
whom the very name of his race is a by-word and a scorn?”

“Now, by the blessed light of heaven!” cried the indignant soldier,
“rather shouldst thou say a terror and a ruin; for when have the dogs
endured the waving of our pennons or the flash of our armor? But it
skills not talking--leave me, priest, for I abhor thy creed, as I
despise thy loathsome impostor!”

For a short space the wise man of the tribes was silent; he gazed
intently on the countenance of his foeman, but not a sign of wavering
or dismay could his keen eye trace in the stern and haughty features.
“Allah Acbar,” he said at length; “to God all things are possible:
would the Christian live?”

“All men would live, and I am but a man,” returned the knight; “yet,
praise be to Him where all praise is due, I have never shrunk from
death in the field, nor can he fright me on the scaffold. If my Master
has need of his servant, he who had power to deliver Israel from
bondage, and Daniel from the jaws of the lion, surely he shall deliver
my soul from the power of the dog. And if he has appointed for me the
crown of martyrdom, it shall ne’er be said that Albert of Vermandois
was deaf to the will of the God of battles and the Lord of hosts.”

“The wise man hath said,” replied the slow, musical notes of the
priest, in strange contrast to the fiery zeal of the prisoner--“the
wise man hath said, ‘Better is the cottage that standeth firm than
the tower which tottereth to its fall.’ Will my brother hear reason?
Cast away the cross from thy breast, bind the turban upon thy brow, and
behold thou shalt be as a prince among our people!”

“Peace, blasphemer! I spit at thee--I despise, I defy thee! I, a
worshipper of the living Jehovah, shall I debase myself to the
camel-driver of Mecca? Peace! begone!” He turned his face to the wall,
folded his arms upon his chest, and was silent. No entreaties, no
threats of torment, no promises of mercy, could induce him again to
open his lips. His eyes were fixed as if they beheld some shape, unseen
by others; his brow was calm, and, but for a slight expression of scorn
about the muscles of the mouth, he might have passed for a visionary.

After a time, the imaum arose, quitted the cell, and the warrior was
again alone. But a harder trial was yet before him. The door of his
prison opened yet once more, and a form entered--a being whom the poets
in her own land of minstrelsey would have described under the types of
a young date-tree, bowing its graceful head to the breath of evening;
of a pure spring in the burning desert; of a gazelle, bounding over the
unshaken herbage; of a dove, gliding on the wings of the morning! And
of a truth she was lovely: her jetty hair braided above her transparent
brow, and floating in a veil of curls over her shoulders; her large
eyes swimming in liquid languor; and, above all, that indescribable
charm--

    “The mind, the music breathing from her face”--

her form slighter and more sylph-like than the maids of Europe can
boast, yet rounded into the fairest mould of female beauty--all
combined to make up a creature resembling rather a houri of Mohammed’s
paradise than

    “One of earth’s least earthly daughters.”

For a moment the templar gazed, as if he doubted whether he were not
looking upon one of those spirits which are said to have assailed and
almost shaken the sanctity of many a holy anchorite. His heart, for the
first time in many years, throbbed wildly. He bowed his head between
his knees, and prayed fervently; nor did he again raise his eyes, till
a voice, as harmonious as the breathing of a lute, addressed him in the
lingua-Franca:--

“If the sight of his hand-maiden is offensive to the eyes of the
Nazarene, she will depart as she came, in sorrow.”

The soldier lifted up his eyes, and saw her bending over him with so
sad an expression of tenderness, that, despite of himself, his heart
melted within him, and his answer was courteous and even kind: “I thank
thee, dear lady, I thank thee for thy good will, though it can avail me
nothing. But wherefore does one so fair, and it may well be so happy as
thou art, visit the cell of a condemned captive?”

“Say not condemned--oh, say not condemned! Thy servant is the bearer
of life, and freedom, and honor. She saw thy manly form, she looked
upon thine undaunted demeanor, and she loved thee--loved thee to
distraction--would follow thee to the ends of earth--would die to save
thee--has already saved thee, if thou wilt be saved! Rank, honor, life,
and love--”

“Lady,” he interrupted her, “listen! For ten long years I have not
lent my ear to the witchery of a woman’s voice. Ten years ago, I was
the betrothed lover of a maid, I had well-nigh said, as fair as thou
art. She died--died, and left me desolate! I have fled from my native
land; I have devoted to my God the feelings which I once cherished for
your sex. I could not give thee love in return for thy love; nor would
I stoop to feign that which I felt not, although it were to win, not
temporal, but eternal life.”

“Oh! dismiss me not,” she sobbed, as she threw her white arms around
his neck, and panted on his bosom; “oh! dismiss me not thus. I ask no
vows; I ask no love. Be but mine; let my country be your country, my
God yours--and you are safe and free!”

“My Master,” he replied coldly, as he disengaged her grasp, and removed
her from his arms, “hath said, ‘What would it profit a man, if he
should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ I have listened to
thee, lady, and I have answered thee; but my heart is heavy--for it is
mournful to see that so glorious a form should be the habitation of so
frail a spirit. I pray thee, leave me! To-morrow I shall meet my God,
and I would commune with him now in spirit and in truth!”

Slowly she turned away, wrapped her face in her veil, and moved with
faltering steps--wailing as if her heart were about to burst--through
the low portal. The gate clanged heavily as she departed; but the
sounds of her lamentation were audible long after the last being,
who would show a sign of pity for his woes, or of admiration for his
merits, had gone forth, never again to return!

All night long the devotions, the fervent and heartfelt prayers of the
crusader, ascended to the throne of his Master; and often, though he
struggled to suppress the feeling, a petition for his lovely though
deluded visiter was mingled with entreaties for strength to bear the
fate he anticipated.

Morning came at last, not as in frigid climates of the North--creeping
through its slow gradations of gray dawn and dappling twilight--but
bursting at once from night into perfect day. The prison-gates were
opened for the last time, the fetters were struck off from the limbs
of the undaunted captive, and himself led forth like a victim to the
sacrifice.

From leagues around, all the hordes of the desert had come together,
in swarms outnumbering the winged motes that stream like dusty atoms
in every sunbeam. It was a strange, and, under other circumstances,
would have been a glorious spectacle. In a vast sandy basin, surrounded
on every side by low but rugged eminences, were the swarthy sons of
Syria mustered, rank above rank, to feast their eyes on the unwonted
spectacle of a Christian’s sufferings. The rude tribes of the remotest
regions, Arab and Turcoman, mounted on the uncouth dromedary, or on
steeds of matchless symmetry and unstained pedigree, mingling their
dark baracans with the brilliant arms and gorgeous garbs of the
sultan’s court--even the unseen beauties of a hundred harems watched
from their canopied litters the preparations for the execution with
as much interest and as little concern as the belles of our own day
exhibit before the curtain has been drawn aside which is to disclose
the performances of a Pedrotti or a Malibran to the enraptured audience.

In the centre of this natural amphitheatre stood the scathed and
whitening trunk of a thunder-stricken palm. To this inartificial stake
was the captive led. One by one his garments were torn asunder, till
his muscular form and splendid proportions were revealed in naked
majesty to the wondering multitude. Once, before he was attached to the
fatal tree, a formal offer of life, and liberty, and high office in
the moslem court, was tendered to him, on condition of his embracing
the faith of the prophet--and refused by one contemptuous motion of
his hand. He was bound firmly to the stump, with his hands secured far
above his head. At some fifty paces distant, stood a group of dark and
fierce warriors, with bended bows and well-filled quivers, evidently
awaiting the signal to pour in their arrowy sleet upon his unguarded
limbs. He gazed upon them with a countenance unmoved and serene, though
somewhat paler than its usual tints. His eyes did not, however, long
dwell on the unattractive sight: he turned them upward, and his lips
moved at intervals, though no sound was conveyed to the ear of the
bystanders.

Some minutes had elapsed thus, when the shrill voice of the muezzin
was heard, proclaiming the hour of matin-prayer in his measured
chant: “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet!” In an
instant the whole multitude were prostrate in the dust, and motionless
as though the fatal blast of the simoom was careering through the
tainted atmosphere. A flash of contempt shot across the features of
the templar, but it quickly vanished in a more holy expression, as he
muttered to himself the words used on a far more memorable occasion, by
Divinity itself: “Forgive them, Lord; they know not what they do!”

The pause was of short duration. With a rustle like the voice of
the forest when the first breath of the rising tempest agitates its
shivering foliage, the multitude rose to their feet. A gallant horseman
dashed from the cavalcade which thronged around the person of their
sultan, checked his steed beside the archer-band, spoke a few hasty
words, and galloped back to his station.

Another minute--and arrow after arrow whistled from the Paynim bows,
piercing the limbs and even grazing the body of the templar; but not
a murmur escaped from the victim--scarcely did a frown contract his
brow. There was an irradiation, as if of celestial happiness, upon his
countenance; nor could a spectator have imagined for a moment that
his whole frame was almost convulsed with agony, but for the weapons
quivering even to their feathered extremities in every joint, and the
large blood-drops trickling like rain upon the thirsty soil!

Again there was a pause. Circled by his Nubian guard, and followed by
the bravest and the brightest of his court, the sultan himself rode up
to the bleeding crusader. Yet, even there, decked with all the pomp of
royalty and pride of war, goodly in person, and sublime in bearing,
the monarch of the East was shamed--shamed like a slave before his
master--by the native majesty of Christian virtue; nor could the prince
at first find words to address the tortured mortal who stood at his
feet with the serene deportment which would have beseemed the judge
upon his tribunal no less than the martyr at the stake.

“Has the Nazarene yet learned experience from the bitter sting of
adversity? The skill of the leech may yet assuage thy wounds, and
the honors which shall be poured upon thee may yet efface thine
injuries--even as the rich grain conceals in its luxuriance the furrows
of the ploughshare! Will the Nazarene live? or will he die the death of
a dog?”

“The Lord is on my side,” was the low but firm reply--“the Lord is on
my side: I will not fear what man doeth unto me!”

On swept the monarch’s train, and again the iron shower fell fast and
fatally--not as before, on the members, but on the broad chest and
manly trunk. The blood gushed forth in blacker streams; the warrior’s
life was ebbing fast away--when from the rear of the broken hills a
sudden trumpet blew a point of war in notes so thrilling, that it
pierced the ears like the thrust of some sharp weapon. Before the
astonishment of the crowd had time to vent itself in word or deed, the
eminences were crowded with the mail-clad myriads of the Christian
forces! Down they came, like the blast of the tornado on some frail
and scattered fleet, with war-cry, and the clang of instruments, and
the thick trampling of twice ten thousand hoofs. Wo to the sons of the
desert in that hour! They were swept away before the mettled steeds and
levelled lances of the templars like dust before the wind, or stubble
before the devouring flame!

The eye of the dying hero lightened as he saw the banners of his
countrymen. His whole form dilated with exultation and triumph. He tore
his arm from its fetters, waved it around his blood-stained forehead,
and for the last time shouted forth his cry of battle: “Ha! Beauseant!
A Vermandois for the temple!” Then, in a lower tone, he cried: “‘Lord,
now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word;
for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.’” He bowed his head, and his
undaunted spirit passed away.




THE RENEGADO;

A SKETCH OF THE CRUSADES.

    --------------“how faint and feebly dim
    The fame that could accrue to him
    Who cheered the band, and waved the sword,
    A traitor in a turbaned horde.”--SIEGE OF CORINTH.


For well nigh two long years had the walls of Acre rung to the
war-cries and clashing arms of the contending myriads of Christian
and Mohammedan forces, while no real advantage had resulted to either
army, from the fierce and sanguinary struggles that daily alarmed the
apprehensions, or excited the hopes of the besieged. The rocky heights
of Carmel now echoed to the flourish of the European trumpet, and now
sent back the wilder strains of the Arabian drum and cymbal. On the one
side were mustered the gigantic warriors of the western forests, from
the wild frontiers of Germany, and the shores of the Baltic; while on
the other were assembled the Moslems of Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, the
wandering tribes from the Tigris to the banks of the Indus, and the
swarthy hordes of the Mauritanian desert. Not a day passed unnoted by
some bloody skirmish or pitched battle;--at one time the sultan forced
his way into the beleaguered city, and the next moment the crusaders
plundered the camp of the Mohammedan. As often as by stress of weather
the European fleet was driven from its blockading station, so often
were fresh troops poured in to replace the exhausted garrison; and
as fast as the sword of the infidel, or the unsparing pestilence,
thinned the camp of the crusaders, so fast was it replenished by fresh
swarms of pilgrims, burning with enthusiastic ardor, and aspiring to
re-establish the dominion of the Latin kings within the precincts of
the holy city.

Suddenly, however, the aspect of affairs was altered; a change took
place in the tactics of the paynim leaders--a change which, in the
space of a few weeks, wrought more havoc in the lines of the invaders
than months of open warfare. The regular attacks of marshalled front
and steady fighting, wherein the light cavalry of the Turkish and
Saracen tribes invariably gave way before the tremendous charges of
the steel-clad knights, were exchanged for an incessant and harassing
war of outposts. Not a drop of water could be conveyed into the
Christian camp, unless purchased by a tenfold effusion of noble blood;
not a picket could be placed in advance of their position, but it was
inevitably surrounded and cut off; not a messenger could be despatched
to any Latin city, but he was intercepted, and his intelligence
rendered subservient to the detriment and destruction of the inventors.

Nor was it long before the author of this new system was discovered.
In every affair a chieftain was observed, no less remarkable for his
powerful make, far exceeding the stature and slight, though sinewy,
frame of his oriental followers, than for his skill in disposing his
irregular horsemen, so as to act with the greatest possible advantage
against his formidable, but cumbrous opponents. His arms and equipment,
moreover, distinguished him yet more clearly than his huge person
from his paynim coadjutors. His brows indeed were turbaned, but
beneath the embroidered shawl and glittering tiara he wore the massive
_cerveilliere_ and barred vizor of the European headpiece; instead of
the fluttering caftan and light hauberk, his whole form was sheathed
in solid mail; the steed which he bestrode showed more bone and muscle
than the swift but slender coursers of the desert, and was armed on
chest and croup with plates of tempered steel. Nor, though he avoided
to risk his light-armed troops against their invulnerable opponents,
did he himself shrink from the encounter; on the contrary, ever leading
the attack and covering the retreat, it seemed his especial delight to
mingle hand to hand with the best lances of the temple. Many a knight
had fallen beneath the sweep of his tremendous blade, and these not
of the unknown and unregarded multitude; for it was ever from among
the noblest and the best that he singled out his antagonists--his
victims--for of all who had gone against him, not one had been known to
return. So great was the annoyance wrought to the armies of the cross
by the policy, as well as by the valor of the moslem chief, that every
method had been contrived for overpowering him by numbers, or deceiving
him by stratagem; still the sagacity and foresight of the infidel had
penetrated their deep devices, with a certainty as unerring as that
with which his huge battle-axe had cloven their proudest crests.

To such a pitch had the terror of his prowess extended, that not
content with the reality, in itself sufficiently gloomy, the soldiers
had begun to invest him with the attributes of a superhuman avenger.
It was observed, that save the gold and crimson scarf which bound his
iron temples, he was black from head to heel-stirrup, and spur, and
crest, the trappings of his charger, and the animal itself, all dark
as the raven’s wing--that, more than once since he had fought in the
van of the mussulmans, strange shouts had been heard ringing above
the _lelies_ of the paynim, and repeating the hallowed war-cry of the
Christian in tones of hellish derision--once, too, when he had utterly
destroyed a little band of templars, a maimed and wounded wretch, who
had escaped from the carnage of his brethren, skulking beneath his
lifeless horse, averred that, while careering at his utmost speed, the
charger of the mysterious warrior had swerved in mad consternation from
the consecrated banner, which had been hurled to the earth, and that
the sullen head of the rider had involuntarily bowed to the saddle-bow
as he dashed onward in his course of blood and ruin; and in truth there
was enough of the marvellous--in the activity by which he avoided all
collision with a superior force, and in the victories which he bore
off day by day from the men who, till he had come upon the stage, had
only fought to conquer--to palliate, if not to justify, some vague and
shadowy terrors, in an age when the truth of supernatural interference,
whether of saints or demons, was believed as implicitly as the holy
writ. Men, who a few weeks before would have gone forth to battle
against a threefold array of enemies rejoicing as if to a banquet,
now fought faintly, and began to look for safety in a timely retreat,
rather than in the deeds of their own right hands, as soon as they
beheld the sable form of that adversary, whom all regarded as something
more than a mere human foe; while many believed, that if not a natural
incarnation of the evil principle, he was, at least, a mortal endowed
with power to work the mischief designed for his performance, by the
inveterate malignity of the arch-fiend himself. And it was a fact, very
characteristic of the period at which these events occurred, that the
most accomplished warriors of the time bestowed as much attention on
the framing of periapt, and spell, and all the arms of spiritual war,
as on their mere earthly weapons, the spear, the buckler, and the steed.

The middle watch of night was long passed, and the sky was overcast
with heavy clouds--what little air was stirring came in blasts as close
and scorching as though they issued from the mouth of an oven. The
camp of the crusaders was silent, and sleeping, all but the vigilant
guards, ever on the alert to catch the faintest sound, which might
portend a sally from the walls of the city, or a surprise of the
indefatigable Saladin from without.

In the pavilion of Lusignan, the nominal leader of the expedition,
all the chiefs of the crusade had met in deep consultation. But the
debate was ended; one by one they had retired to their respective
quarters, and the Latin monarch was left alone, to muse on the brighter
prospects which were opening to his ambition in the approach of Philip
Augustus and the lion-hearted Richard, at the head of such an array
of gallant spirits as might justify his most extravagant wishes.
Suddenly his musings were interrupted by sounds, remote at first,
but gradually thickening upon his ear. The faint blast of a distant
trumpet, and the challenge of sentries, was succeeded by the hurried
tramp of approaching footsteps; voices were heard in eager and exulting
conversation, and lights were seen marshalling the new-comers to the
royal tent. A few moments, and a knot of his most distinguished knights
stood before him, and, with fettered hands, and his black armor soiled
with dust and blood, the mysterious warrior of the desert, a captive in
the presence of his conquerors.

The narration of the victory was brief. A foraging-party had ridden
forth on the preceding morning, never to return!--for, instructed by
his scouts, the infidel had beset their march, had assaulted them at
nightfall, and destroyed them to a man. But his good fortune had at
last deserted him. A heavy body of knights, with their archers and
sergeants, returning from a distant excursion, had come suddenly upon
his rear when he was prosecuting his easy triumph. The moslems, finding
themselves abruptly compelled to act on the defensive, were seized by
one of those panics to which all night-attacks are so liable--were
thrown into confusion, routed, and cut to pieces. Their commander, on
the first appearance of the Christians, had charged with his wonted
fury, before he perceived that he was deserted by all, and surrounded
past the hope of escape. Heretofore he had fought for victory, now
he fought for revenge and for death; and never had he enacted such
prodigies of valor as now when that valor was about to be extinguished
for ever! Quarter was offered to him, and the tender answered by
redoubled blows of his weighty axe. Before he could be taken, he had
surrounded himself with a rampart of dead; and when at length numbers
prevailed, and he was a prisoner, so deep was the respect of the
victors toward so gallant a foe, that all former prejudices vanished:
and when he had opposed the first attempt to remove his vizor, he was
conveyed, unquestioned and in all honor, to the tent of the Latin king.

The time had arrived when further concealment was impracticable. The
captive stood before the commander of the crusading force; and the
rules of war, no less than the usages of that chivalrous courtesy
practised alike by the warriors of the West and their oriental foemen,
required that he should remove the vizor which still concealed his
features. Still, however, he stood motionless, with his arms folded
across his breast, resembling rather the empty panoply which adorns
some hero’s monument than a being instinct with life, and agitated
by all the passions to which the mortal heart is liable. Words were
addressed to him in the lingua-Franca, or mixed language, which had
obtained during those frequent intervals of truce which characterized
the nature of the holy wars--breaking into the bloody gloom of strife
as an occasional ray of sunshine illuminates the day of storm and
darkness--but no effect was produced by their sound on the proud or
perhaps uncomprehending prisoner.

For a moment, their former terrors, which had vanished on the fall of
their dreaded opponent, appeared to have regained their ascendency over
the superstitious hearts of the unenlightened warriors: many there
were who confidently expected that the removal of the iron mask would
disclose the swart and thunder-stricken brow, the fiery glance, and the
infernal aspect, of the prince of darkness! No resistance was offered
when the chamberlain of Guy de Lusignan stepped forward, and with all
courtesy unlaced the fastenings of the casque and gorget. The clasps
gave way, and scarcely could a deeper consternation or a more manifest
astonishment have fallen upon the beholders had the king of terrors
himself glared forth in awful revelation from that iron panoply. It was
no dark-complexioned Saracen--

    “In shadowed livery of the burnished sun,”

with whiskered lip and aquiline features, who struck such a chill by
his appearance on every heart. The pale skin, the full blue eye, the
fair curls that clustered round the lofty brow, bespoke an unmixed
descent from the tribes of some northern land of mountain and forest;
and that eye, that brow, those lineaments, were all familiar to the
shuddering circle as the reflexion of their own in the polished mirror.

One name burst at once from every lip in accents of the deepest scorn.
It was the name of one whose titles had stood highest upon their lists
of fame; whose deeds had been celebrated by many a wandering minstrel
even among the remote hills of Caledonia or the morasses of green
Erin; the valor of whose heart and the strength of whose arm had been
related far and near by many a pilgrim; whose untimely fall had been
mourned by many a maid beside the banks of his native Rhine!--“Arnold
of Falkenhorst!” The frame of the culprit was convulsed till the meshes
of his linked mail clattered from the nervous motion of the limbs
which they enclosed; a crimson flush passed across his countenance,
but not a word escaped from his lips, and he gazed straight before him
with a fixed, unmeaning stare--how sadly changed from the glance of
fire which would so short a time ago have quelled with its indignant
lightning the slightest opposition to his indomitable pride!

For an instant all remained petrified, as it were, by wonder and
vexation of spirit. The next moment a fierce rush toward the captive,
with naked weapons and bended brows, threatened immediate destruction
to the wretched renegado.

Scarcely, however, was this spirit manifested, before it was checked by
the grand-master of the temple, who stood beside the seat of Lusignan.
He threw his venerable person between the victim and the uplifted
weapons that thirsted for his blood.

“Forbear!” he cried, in the deep tones of determination--“forbear,
soldiers of the cross, and servants of the Most High! Will ye
contaminate your knightly swords with the base gore of a traitor to his
standard, a denier of his God? Fitter the axe of the headsman, or the
sordid gibbet, for the recreant and coward! Say forth, Beau Sire de
Lusignan--have I spoken well?”

“Well and nobly hast thou spoken, Amaury de Montleon,” replied the
monarch. “By to-morrow’s dawn shall the captive meet the verdict of his
peers; and if they condemn him--by the cross which I wear on my breast,
and the faith to which I trust for salvation, shall he die like a dog
on the gallows, and his name shall be infamous for ever! Lead him away,
Sir John de Crespigny, and answer for your prisoner with your head! And
you, fair sirs, meet me at sunrise in the tiltyard: there will we sit
in judgment before our assembled hosts, and all men shall behold our
doom. Till then, farewell!”

In the dogged silence of despair was the prisoner led away, and in the
silence of sorrow and dismay the barons of that proud array passed away
from the presence of the king: and the night was again solitary and
undisturbed.

It wanted a full hour of the appointed time for the trial, when the
swarming camp poured forth its many-tongued multitudes to the tiltyard.
The volatile Frenchman, the proud and taciturn Castilian, the resolute
Briton, and the less courtly knights of the German empire, crowded
to the spot. It was a vast enclosure, surrounded with palisades, and
levelled with the greatest care, for the exhibition of that martial
skill on which the crusaders set so high a value, and provided with
elevated seats for the judges of the games--now to be applied to a more
important and awful decision.

The vast multitude was silent, every feeling absorbed in breathless
expectation; every brow was knit, and every heart was quivering with
that sickening impatience which makes us long to know all that is
concealed from our vision by the dark clouds of futurity, even if that
all be the worst--

   “The dark and hideous close,
    Even to intolerable woes!”

This expectation had already reached its highest pitch, when, as the
sun reared his broad disk in a flood of radiance above the level
horizon of the desert, a mournful and wailing blast of trumpets
announced the approach of the judges. Arrayed in their robes of peace,
with their knightly belts and spurs, rode the whilome monarch of
Jerusalem, and the noblest chiefs of every different nation which had
united to form one army under the guidance of one commander. Prelates,
and peers, and knights--all who had raised themselves above the mass,
in which all were brave and noble, by distinguished talents of either
war or peace--had been convoked to sit in judgment on a cause which
concerned no less the welfare of the holy church and the interests
of religion than the discipline and laws of war. The peers of France
and England, and the dignitaries of the empire, many of whom were
present, although their respective kings had not yet reached the shores
of Palestine--were clad in their robes and caps of maintenance, the
knights in the surcoats and collars of their orders, and the prelates
in all the splendor of pontifical decoration. A strong body of knights,
whose rank did not as yet entitle them to seats in the council, were
marshalled like pillars of steel, in full caparison of battle, around
the listed field, to prevent the escape of the prisoner, no less than
to guard his person from premature violence, had such been attempted by
the enthusiastic and indignant concourse.

Arnold of Falkenhorst--stripped of his Moorish garb, and wearing in
its stead his discarded robes of knighthood, his collar and blazoned
shield about his neck, his golden spurs on his heel, and his swordless
scabbard belted to his side--was placed before his peers, to abide
their verdict. Beside him stood a page, displaying his crested burgonet
and the banner of his ancient house, and behind him a group of chosen
warders, keeping a vigilant watch on every motion. But the precaution
seemed needless: the spirits of the prisoner had sunk, and he seemed
deserted alike by the almost incredible courage which he had so often
displayed, and by the presence of mind for which he had been so widely
and so justly famous. His countenance, even to his lips, was as white
as sculptured marble, and his eyes had a dead and vacant glare; and
scarcely did he seem conscious of the purpose for which that multitude
was collected around him. Once, and once only, as his eye fell upon the
fatal tree, which cast its long shadow in terrible distinctness across
the field of judgment, with its accursed noose, and the ministers of
blood around it, a rapid and convulsive shudder ran through every
limb; it was but a momentary affection, and, when passed, no sign of
emotion could be traced in his person, unless it were a slight and
almost imperceptible rocking of his whole frame from side to side,
as he stood awaiting his doom. Utter despondency seemed to have taken
possession of his whole soul; and the soldier who had looked unmoved
into the very eye of death in the field, sunk like the veriest coward
under the apprehensions of that fate which he had no longer the
resolution to bear like a man.

The herald stepped forth, in his quartered tabard and crown of dignity,
and the trumpeter by his side blew a summons on his brazen instrument
that might have waked the dead. While the sounds were yet ringing in
the ears of all, the clear voice of the king-at-arms cried aloud:
“Arnold of Falkenhorst, count, banneret, and baron, hear! Thou standest
this day before thy peers, accused of heresy and treason; a forsworn
and perjured knight; a deserter from thy banner, and a denier of thy
God; leagued with the pagan dogs against the holy church; a recreant,
a traitor, and a renegado; with arms in thine hands wert thou taken,
battling against the cross which thou didst swear to maintain with the
best blood of thy veins! Speak! dost thou disavow the deed?”

The lips of Arnold moved, but no words came forth. It seemed as if
some swelling convulsion of his throat smothered his utterance. There
was a long pause, all expecting that the prisoner would seek to
justify his defection, or challenge--as his last resource--the trial
by the judgment of God. The rocking motion of his frame increased, and
it almost appeared as if he were about to fall upon the earth. The
trumpet’s din again broke the silence, and the herald’s voice again
made proclamation:

“Arnold of Falkenhorst, speak now, or hear thy doom!--and then for ever
hold thy peace!”

No answer was returned to the second summons; and, at the command of
Lusignan, the peers and princes of the crusade were called upon for
their award. Scarcely had he ceased, before the assembled judges rose
to their feet like a single man. In calm determination they laid each
one his extended hand upon his breast, and, like the distant mutterings
of thunder, was heard the fatal verdict--“Guilty, upon mine honor!”

The words were caught up by the myriads that were collected around, and
shouted till the welkin rang: “Guilty, guilty!--To the gibbet with the
traitor!”

As soon as the tumult was appeased, Guy de Lusignan arose from his
lofty seat, and--the herald making proclamation after him--pronounced
the judgment of the court:--

“Arnold of Falkenhorst, whilome count of the empire, belted knight,
and sworn soldier of the cross! by thy peers hast thou been
tried, and by thy peers art thou condemned! Traitor, recreant,
and heretic--discourteous gentleman, false knight, and fallen
Christian--hear thy doom! The crest shall be erased from thy burgonet;
the spurs shall be hewn from thine heels; the bearings of thy shield
shall be defaced; the name of thy house shall be forgotten! To the
holy church are thy lands and lordships forfeit! On the gibbet shalt
thou die like a dog, and thy body shall be food for the wolf and the
vulture!”

“It is the will of God,” shouted the assembled nations, “it is the will
of God!”

As soon as the sentence was pronounced--painful, degrading, abhorrent
as that sentence was--some portion of the prisoner’s anxiety was
relieved; at least, his demeanor was more firm. He raised his eyes,
and looked steadily upon the vast crowd which was exulting in his
approaching degradation. If there was no composure on his brow, neither
was there that appearance of abject depression by which his soul and
body had appeared to be alike prostrated. Nay, for an instant his eye
flashed and his lip curled, as he tore the collar of knighthood and
the shield from his neck, and cast them at the feet of the herald,
who was approaching to fulfil the decree. “I had discarded them
before,” he said, “nor does it grieve me now to behold them thus.”
Yet, notwithstanding the vaunt, his proud spirit was stung--stung more
deeply by the sense of degradation than by the fear of death. The spurs
which had so often goaded his charger to glory, amid the acclamations
and admiration of thousands, were hacked from his heels by the sordid
cleaver; the falcon-crest, which had once been a rallying-point and a
beacon amid the dust and confusion of the fight, was shorn from his
casque; the quarterings of many a noble family were erased from his
proud escutcheon, and the shield itself reversed and hung aloft upon
the ignominious tree. The pride which had burst into a momentary blaze
of indignation, had already ceased to act upon his flagging spirits;
and, when a confessor was tendered to him, and he was even offered the
privilege of readmission within the pale of the church, he trembled.

“The crime--if crime there be--is his,” he said, pointing toward Guy de
Lusignan. “I had served him, and served the cross, as never man did,
had he not spurned me with injury, and disgraced me before his court,
when I sought the hand of her whom I had rescued by my lance from
paynim slavery. Had I been the meanest soldier in the Christian army,
my deeds had won me a title to respect, at least, if not to favor. De
Lusignan and his haughty daughter drove me forth to seek those rights
and that honor from the gratitude of the infidel which were denied by
my brothers-in-arms. If I am a sinner, he made me what I am; and now
he slays me for it! I say not, ‘Let him give me the hand which he then
denied me;’ but let him spare my life, and I am again a Christian;
my sword shall again shine in the van of his array; the plots, the
stratagems, the secrets of the moslem, shall be his. I, even I, the
scorned and condemned renegado, can do more to replace De Lusignan on
the throne of Jerusalem than the lances of ten thousand crusaders--ay,
than the boasted prowess of Cœur de Lion, or the myriads of France
and Austria! All this will I do for him--all this, and more--if he
but grants me life. I cannot--I dare not die!--What said I?--I a
Falkenhorst, and dare not!”

“Thy life is forfeit,” replied the unmoved priest; “thy life is
forfeit, and thy words are folly. For who would trust a traitor to his
liege lord, a deserter of his banner, and a denier of his faith? Death
is before thee--death and immortality! Beware lest it be an immortality
of evil and despair--of the flame that is unquenchable--of the worm
that never dies! I say unto thee, ‘Put not thy trust in princes,’ but
turn thee to Him who alone can say, ‘Thy sins be forgiven!’ Bend thy
knee before the throne of grace; pluck out the bitterness from thine
heart, and the pride from thy soul; and ’though thy sins be redder than
scarlet, behold they shall be whiter than snow!’ Confess thy sins, and
repent thee of thy transgressions, and He who died upon the mount for
sinners, even he shall open unto thee the gates of everlasting life.”

“It is too late,” replied the wretched culprit, “it is too late! If I
die guilty, let the punishment light on those who shall have sent me to
my last account. Away, priest! give me life, or leave me!”

“Slave!” cried the indignant priest--“slave and coward, perish!--and be
thy blood, and the blood of Him whom thou hast denied, upon thine own
head!”

Not another word was spoken. He knew that all was hopeless--that he
must die, unpitied and despised; and in sullen silence he yielded
himself to his fate. The executioners led him to the fatal tree: his
arms were pinioned--the noose adjusted about his muscular neck. In
dark and gloomy despair he looked for the last time around him. He
gazed upon the lists, which had so often witnessed the display of his
unrivalled horsemanship, and echoed to the applauses which greeted
his appearance on the field of mimic war; he gazed on many a familiar
and once-friendly face, all scowling on him in hatred and disdain.
Heart-sick, hopeless, and dismayed, he closed his aching eyes; and,
as he closed them, the trumpets, to whose cheering sound he had so
often charged in glory, rang forth the signal of his doom! The pulleys
creaked hoarsely--the rope was tightened even to suffocation--and the
quivering frame struggled out its last agonies, amid the unheeded
execrations of the infuriate multitude!

   “Sigh, nor word, nor struggling breath,
    Heralded his way to death:
    Ere his very thought could pray,
    Unanealed he passed away,
    Without a hope from mercy’s aid--
    To the last, a renegade!”




LEGENDS

OF

FEUDAL DAYS.




THE FALSE LADYE.


CHAPTER I.

There were merriment and music in the Chateau des Tournelles--at that
time the abode of France’s royalty!--music and merriment, even from the
break of day! That was a singular age, an age of great transitions.
The splendid spirit-stirring soul of chivalry was alive yet among the
nations--_yet!_ although fast declining, and destined soon to meet its
death-blow in the spear-thrust that hurled the noble Henry, last victim
of its wondrous system, at once from saddle and from throne! In every
art, in every usage, new science had effected even then mighty changes;
yet it was the OLD WORLD STILL! Gunpowder, and the use of musketry and
ordnance, had introduced new topics; yet still knights spurred their
barbed chargers to the shock, still rode in complete steel--and tilts
and tournaments still mustered all the knightly and the noble; and
banquets at high noon, and balls in the broad daylight, assembled to
the board or to the dance, the young, the beautiful, and happy.

There were merriment and music in the court, the hall, the staircase,
the saloons of state! All that France held of beautiful, and bright,
and brave, and wise, and noble, were gathered to the presence of their
king. And there were many there, well-known and honored in those olden
days; well-known and honored ever after. The first, in person as in
place, was the great king! the proud, and chivalrous, and princely!
becoming his high station at all times and in every place; wearing his
state right gracefully and freely--the second Henry!--and at his side
young Francis, the king-dauphin; with her, the cynosure of every heart,
the star of that fair company--Scotland’s unrivalled Mary hanging upon
his manly arm, and gazing up with those soft, dovelike eyes, fraught
with unutterable soul, into her husband’s face--into her husband’s
spirit. Brissac was there, and Joyeuse, and Nevers; and Jarnac,
the renowned for skill in fence, and Vielleville; and the cardinal
Lorraine, and all the glorious Guises and Montmorenci, soon to be
famous as the slayer of his king, and every peer of France, and every
peerless lady.

Loud peeled the exulting symphonies; loud sang the chosen
minstrelsey--and as the gorgeous sunbeams rushed in a flood of tinted
lustre through the rich many-colored panes of the tall windows,
glancing on soft voluptuous forms and eyes that might outdazzle their
own radiance, arrayed in all the pomp and pride of that magnificent and
stately period--a more resplendent scene could scarcely be imagined.
That was a day of rich and graceful costumes, when men and warriors
thought it no shame to be adorned in silks and velvets, with chains of
goldsmith’s work about their necks, and jewels in their ears, and on
their hatbands, buttons, and buckles, and swordhilts; and if such were
the sumptuous attire of the sterner and more solid sex, what must have
been the ornature of the court ladies, under the gentle sway of such a
being as Diane de Poictiers, the lovely mistress of the monarch, and
arbitress of the soft follies of the court?

The palace halls were decked with every fanciful variety, some in the
pomp of blazoned tapestries, with banners rustling from the cornices
above the jocund dancers, some filled with fresh green branches,
wrought into silver arbors, sweet garlands perfuming the air, and the
light half excluded or tempered into a mild and emerald radiance by the
dense foliage of the rare exotics. Pages and ushers tripped it to and
fro, clad in the royal liveries, embroidered with the cognizance of
Henry, the fuigist salamander, bearing the choicest wines, the rarest
cates, in every interval of the surrounding dance. It would be tedious
to dwell longer on the scene; to multiply more instances of the strange
mixture, which might be witnessed everywhere, of artificial luxury
with semibarbarous rudeness--to specify the graces of the company,
the beauty of the demoiselles and dames, the stately bearing of the
warrior nobles, as they swept back and forth in the quaint mazes of
some antiquated measure, were a task to be undertaken only by some
old chronicler, with style as curious and as quaint as the manners he
portrays in living colors. Enough for us to catch a fleeting glimpse of
the grand pageantry! to sketch with a dashy pencil the groups which he
would designate with absolute and accurate minuteness!

But there was one among that gay assemblage, who must not be passed
over with so slight a regard, since she attracted on that festive day,
as much of wondering admiration for her unequalled beauties as she
excited sympathy, and fear, in after-days, for her sad fortunes--but
there was now no cloud upon her radiant beauty, no dimness prophetic of
approaching tears in her large laughing eyes, no touch of melancholy
thought upon one glorious feature--Marguerite de Vaudreuil, the heiress
of a ducal fortune, the heiress of charms so surpassing, that rank and
fortune were forgotten by all who gazed upon her pure, high brow, her
dazzling glances, her seductive smile, the perfect symmetry of her
whole shape and person! Her hair, of the darkest auburn shade, fell in
a thousand ringlets, glittering out like threads of virgin gold when a
stray sunbeam touched them, fell down her snowy neck over the shapely
shoulders and so much of a soft, heaving bosom--veined by unnumbered
azure channels, wherein the pure blood coursed so joyously--as was
displayed by the falling laces which decked her velvet boddice. Her
eyes, so quick and dazzling was their light, almost defied description,
possessing at one time the depth and brilliance of the black, melting
into the softer languor of the blue--yet they were of the latter hue,
and suited truly to the whole style and character of her voluptuous
beauty. Her form, as has been noticed, was symmetry itself; and every
movement, every step, was fraught with natural and unstudied grace.
In sooth, she seemed almost too beautiful for mere mortality--and so
thought many a one who gazed upon her, half drunk with that divine
delirium which steeps the souls of men who dwell too steadfastly upon
such wondrous charms, as she bounded through the labyrinth of the
dance, lighter and springier than the world-famed gazelle, or rested
from the exciting toil in panting abandonment upon some cushioned
settle! and many inquired of themselves, could it be possible that
an exterior so divine should be the tenement of a harsh, worldly
spirit--that a demeanor and an air so frank, so cordial, and so warm,
should be but the deceptive veil that hid a selfish, cold, bad heart.
Ay, many asked themselves that question on that day, but not one
answered his own question candidly or truly--no! not one man!--for in
her presence he had been more or less than mortal, who could pronounce
his sentence unmoved by the attractions of her outward seeming.

For Marguerite de Vaudreuil had been but three short months before
affianced as the bride of the young Baron de La-Hirè--the bravest and
best of Henry’s youthful nobles. It had been a love-treaty--no matter
of shrewd bartering of hearts--no cold and worldly convenance--but the
outpouring, as it seemed, of two young spirits, each warm and worthy
of the other!--and men had envied him, and ladies had held her more
fortunate in her high conquest, than in her rank, her riches, or her
beauties; and the world had forgotten to calumniate, or to sneer, in
admiration of the young glorious pair, that seemed so fitly mated.
Three little months had passed--three more, and they had been made
one!--but in the interval Charles de La-Hirè, obedient to his king’s
behest, had buckled on his sword, and led the followers of his house to
the Italian wars. With him, scarcely less brave, and, as some thought,
yet handsomer than he, forth rode upon his first campaign, Armand de
Laguy, his own orphaned cousin, bred like a brother on his father’s
hearth; and, as Charles well believed, a brother in affection. Three
little months had passed, and, in a temporary truce, Armand de Laguy
had returned alone, leading the relics of his cousin’s force, and
laden with the doleful tidings of that cousin’s fall upon the field of
honor. None else had seen him die, none else had pierced so deeply into
the hostile ranks; but Armand had rushed madly on to save his noble
kinsman, and failing in the desperate attempt, had borne off his reward
in many a perilous wound. Another month, and it was whispered far and
near, that Marguerite had dried her tears already; and that Armand
de Laguy had, by his cousin’s death, succeeded, not to lands and to
lordships only, but to the winning of that dead cousin’s bride. It had
been whispered far and near, and now the whisper was proved true. For
on this festive day young Armand, still pale from the effects of his
exhausting wounds, and languid from loss of blood, appeared in public
for the first time, not in the sable weeds of decent and accustomed wo,
but in the gayest garb of a successful bridegroom--his pourpoint of
rose-colored velvet strewn thickly with seed-pearl and broideries of
silver, his hose of rich white silk, all slashed and lined with cloth
of silver, his injured arm suspended in a rare scarf of the lady’s
colors, and, above all, the air of quiet confident success with which
he offered, and that lovely girl received, his intimate attentions,
showed that for once, at least, the tongue of rumor had told truth.

Therefore men gazed in wonder--and marvelled as they gazed, and
half condemned!--yet they who had been loudest in their censure
when the first whisper reached their ears of so disloyal love, of
so bold-fronted an inconstancy, now found themselves devising many
an excuse within their secret hearts for this sad lapse of one so
exquisitely fair. Henry himself had frowned, when Armand de Laguy
led forth the fair betrothed, radiant in festive garb and decked
with joyous smiles--but the stern brow of the offended prince had
smoothed itself into a softer aspect, and the rebuff which he had
determined--but a second’s space before--to give to the untimely
lovers, was frittered down into a jest before it left the lips of the
repentant speaker.

The day was well-nigh spent--the evening banquet had been spread,
and had been honored duly--and now the lamps were lit in hall, and
corridor, and bower; and merrier waxed the mirth, and faster wheeled
the dance. The company were scattered to and fro, some wandering in
the royal gardens, which overspread at that day most of the Isle de
Paris; some played with cards or dice; some drank and revelled in the
halls; some danced unwearied in the grand saloons; some whispered
love in ladies’ ears in dark sequestered bowers--and of these last
were Marguerite and Armand--a long alcove of thick green boughs, with
orange-trees between, flowering in marble vases, and myrtles, and a
thousand odorous trees, mingling their perfumed shadows, led to a
lonely bower, and there alone, in the dim starlight--alone indeed! for
they might now be deemed as one, sat the two lovers. One fair hand of
the frail lady was clasped in the bold suitor’s right, while his left
arm, unconscious of its wound, was twined about her slender waist;
her head reclined upon his shoulder, with all its rich redundancy of
ringlets floating about his neck and bosom, and her eyes, languid
and suffused, fondly turned up to meet his passionate glances. “And
can it be,” he said, in the thick broken tones that tell of vehement
passion, “and can it be that you indeed love Armand? I fear, I fear,
sweet beauty, that I, like Charles, should be forgotten, were I, like
Charles, removed: for him thou didst love dearly, while on me never
didst thou waste thought or word.”

“Him--never, Armand, never!--by the bright stars above us--by the great
gods that hear us--I never--never _did_ love Charles de La-Hirè--never
did love man, save thee, my noble Armand. False girlish vanity and
pique led me to toy with him at first; now to my sorrow I confess
it--and when thou didst look coldly upon me, and seemedst to woo dark
Adeline de Courcy, a woman’s vengeance stirred up my very soul, and
therefore to punish thee, whom only did I love, I well nigh yielded up
myself to torture by wedding one whom I esteemed indeed and honored,
but never thought of for one moment with affection; wilt thou believe
me, Armand?”

“Sweet angel, Marguerite!” and he clasped her to his hot, heaving
breast, and her white arms were flung about his neck, and their lips
met in a long fiery kiss.

Just in that point of time--in that soft melting moment--a heavy hand
was laid quietly on Armand’s shoulder--he started, as the fiend sprang
up, revealed before the temper of Ithuriel’s angel weapon--he started
like a guilty thing from that forbidden kiss.

A tall form stood beside him, shrouded from head to heel in a dark
riding-cloak of the Italian fashion; but there was no hat on the
stately head, nor any covering to the cold stern impassive features.
The high broad forehead as pale as sculptured marble, with the dark
chestnut curls falling off parted evenly upon the crown--the full,
fixed, steady eye, which he could no more meet than he could gaze
unscathed on the meridian sun, the noble features, sharpened by want
and suffering and wo--were all! all those of his good cousin.

For a moment’s space the three stood there in silence--Charles de
La-Hirè reaping rich vengeance from the unconquerable consternation
of the traitor! Armand de Laguy bent almost to the earth with shame
and conscious terror! and Marguerite half dead with fear, and scarcely
certain if indeed he who stood before her were the man in his living
presence, whom she had vowed to love for ever; or if it were but the
visioned form of an indignant friend returned from the dark grave to
thunderstrike the false disturbers of his eternal rest.

“I am in time”--he said at length, in accents slow and unfaltering
as his whole air was cold and tranquil--“in time to break off this
monstrous union!--Thy perjuries have been in vain, weak man; thy
lies are open to the day. He whom thou didst betray to the Italian’s
dungeon--to the Italian’s dagger--as thou didst then believe and
hope--stands bodily before thee.”

A long heart-piercing shriek burst from the lips of Marguerite, as
the dread import of his speech fell on her sharpened fears--the man
whom she _had_ loved--_first_ loved!--for all her previous words were
false and fickle--stood at her side in all his power and glory--and she
affianced to a liar, a base traitor--a foul murderer in his heart!--a
scorn and byword to her own sex--an object of contempt and hatred to
every noble spirit!

But at that instant Armand de Laguy’s pride awoke--for he _was_ proud,
and brave, and daring!--and he gave back the lie, and hurled defiance
in his accuser’s teeth.

“Death to thy soul!” he cried; “’tis thou that liest, Charles! Did
I not see thee stretched on the bloody plain? did I not sink beside
thee, hewed down and trampled under foot, in striving to preserve thee?
And when my vassals found me, wert thou not beside me--with thy face
scarred, indeed, and mangled beyond recognition--but with the surcoat
and the arms upon the lifeless corpse, and the sword in the cold hand?
’Tis thou that liest, man!--’tis thou that, for some base end, didst
conceal thy life, and now wouldst charge thy felonies on me; but ’twill
not do, fair cousin! The king shall judge between us! Come, lady”--and
he would have taken her by the hand, but she sprang back as though a
viper would have stung her.

“Back, traitor!” she exclaimed, in tones of the deepest loathing; “I
hate thee--spit on thee--defy thee! Base have I been myself, and frail,
and fickle; but, as I live, Charles de La-Hirè--but as I live now, and
will die right shortly--I knew not of this villany! I did believe thee
dead, as that false murtherer swore--and--God be good to me!--I did
betray thee dead; and now have lost thee living! But for thee, Armand
de Laguy--dog! traitor! villain! knave!--dare not to look upon me any
more; dare not address me with one accent of thy serpent-tongue! for
Marguerite de Vaudreuil, fallen although she be, and lost for ever, is
not so all abandoned as, knowing thee for what thou art, to bear with
thee one second longer--no! not though that second could redeem all the
past, and wipe out all the sin--”

“Fine words, fine words, fair mistress! but on with me thou
shalt!”--and he stretched out his arm to seize her, when, with a
perfect majesty, Charles de La-Hirè stepped in and grasped him by the
wrist, and held him for a moment there, gazing into his eye as though
he would have read his soul; then threw him off with a force that
made him stagger back ten paces before he could regain his footing.
Then, then, with all the fury of the fiend depicted on his working
lineaments, Armand unsheathed his rapier and made a full longe,
bounding forward as he did so, right at his cousin’s heart; but he
was foiled again--for with a single, and, as it seemed, slight motion
of the sheathed broadsword which he held under his cloak, Charles de
La-Hirè struck up the weapon, and sent it whirling through the air to
twenty paces’ distance.

Just then there came a shout, “The king! the king!”--and, with the
words, a glare of many torches, and with his courtiers and his guard
about him, the monarch stood forth in offended majesty.

“Ha! what means this insolent broil? What men be these who dare draw
swords within the palace precincts?”

“_My_ sword is sheathed, sire,” answered De La-Hirè, kneeling before
the king, and laying the good weapon at his feet--“nor has been ever
drawn, save at your highness’ bidding, against your highness’ foes. But
I beseech you, sire, as you love honesty and honor, and hate deceit and
treason, grant me your royal license to prove Armand de Laguy recreant,
base, traitorous, a liar, and a felon, and a murtherer, hand to hand,
in the presence of the ladies of your court, according to the law of
arms and honor!”

“Something of this we have heard already,” replied the king, “Baron de
La-Hirè. But say out, now: of what accuse you Armand de Laguy? Show but
good cause, and thy request is granted; for I have not forgot your good
deeds in my cause against our rebel Savoyards and our Italian foemen.
Of what accuse you Armand de Laguy?”

“That he betrayed me, wounded, into the hands of the duke of Parma;
that he dealt with Italian bravos to compass my assassination; that by
foul lies and treacherous devices he has trained from me my affianced
bride; and last, not least, deprived her of fair name and honor. This
will I prove upon his body, so help me God and my good sword!”

“Stand forth and answer to his charge, De Laguy--speak out! what sayest
thou?”

“I say,” answered Armand, boldly--“I say that he lies! that he did
feign his own death, for some evil ends, and did deceive me, who would
have died to succor him; that I, believing him dead, have won from him
the love of this fair lady, I admit--but I assert that I did win it
fairly, and of good right; and, for the rest, I say he lies doubly when
he asserts that she has lost fair name or honor! This is _my_ answer,
sire; and I beseech you grant _his_ prayer, and let us prove our words,
as gentlemen of France, and soldiers, forthwith, by singular battle!”

“Amen!” replied the king. “The third day hence, at noon, in the
tiltyard, before our court, we do adjudge the combat--and this fair
lady be the prize of the victor!--”

“No, sire!” interposed Charles de La-Hirè, again kneeling; but before
he had the time to add a second word, Marguerite de Vaudreuil, who had
stood all the while with her hands clasped, and her eyes riveted upon
the ground, sprang forth with a great cry.

“No! no! for God’s sake! no! no! sire--great king--good
gentleman--brave knight! doom me not to a fate so dreadful. Charles
de La-Hirè is all that man can be of good, or great, or noble; but I
betrayed him, whom I deemed dead, and he can never trust me living!
Moreover, if he would take me to his arms, base as I am and most
false-hearted, he should not; for God forbid that my dishonor should
blight his noble fame. As for the slave De Laguy--the traitor and low
liar--doom me, great monarch, to the convent or the block, but curse me
not with such contamination! for, by the heavens I swear, and by the
God that rules them, that I will die by my own hand before I wed that
serpent!”

“Be it so, fair one,” answered the king, very coldly, “be it so; we
permit thy choice--a convent or the victor’s bridal bed shall be thy
doom, at thine own option! Meanwhile, your swords, sirs: until the hour
of battle ye are both under our arrest. Jarnac, be thou godfather to
Charles de La-Hirè; Nevers, do thou like office for De Laguy.”

“By God, not I, sire!” answered the proud duke. “I hold this man’s
offence so rank, his guilt so palpable, that, on my conscience, I think
your royal hangman were his best godfather!”

“Nevertheless, De Nevers, it shall be as I say! This bold protest of
thine is all-sufficient for thine honor; and it is but a form! No
words, duke! it must be as I have said! Joyeuse, escort this lady to
thy duchess; pray her accept of her as the king’s guest, until this
matter be decided. The third day hence at noon, on foot, with sword and
dagger, with no arms of defence or vantage; the principals to fight
alone, until one die or yield--and so God shield the right!”


CHAPTER II.

It was a clear, bright day in the early autumn, when the royal
tiltyard, on the Isle de Paris, was prepared for a deadly conflict.
The tilt-yard was a regular, oblong space, enclosed with stout,
squared palisades, and galleries for the accommodation of spectators,
immediately in the vicinity of the royal residence of the Tournelles,
a splendid Gothic structure, adorned with all the rare and fanciful
devices of that rich style of architecture. At a short distance thence
rose the tall, gray towers of Nôtre Dame, the bells of which were
tolling minutely the dirge for a passing soul.

From one of the windows of the palace a gallery had been constructed,
hung with rich crimson tapestry, leading to a long range of seats,
cushioned and decked with arras, and guarded by a strong party of
gentlemen in the royal livery, with partisans in their hands, and
sword and dagger at the belt. At either end of the list was a tent
pitched: that at the right of the royal gallery a plain marquee of
canvass, of small size, which had apparently seen much service,
and been used in real warfare. The curtain which formed the door
of this was lowered, so that no part of the interior could be seen
from without; but a parti-colored pennon was pitched into the ground
beside it, and a shield suspended from the palisades, emblazoned with
bearings, which all men knew to be those of Charles Baron de La-Hirè,
a renowned soldier in the late Italian wars, and the challenger in the
present conflict. The pavilion at the left, or lower end, was of a
widely-different kind--of the very largest sort then in use, completely
framed of crimson cloth, lined with white silk, festooned and fringed
with gold, and all the curtains looped up to display a range of massive
tables, covered with snow-white damask, and loaded with two hundred
covers of pure silver! Vases of flowers and flasks of crystal were
intermixed upon the board with tankards, flagons, and cups and urns of
gold, embossed and jewelled; and behind every seat a page was placed,
clad in the colors of the counts de Laguy. A silken curtain concealed
the entrance of an inner tent, wherein the count awaited the signal
that should call him to the lists.

Strange and indecent as such an accompaniment would be deemed
now-a-days to a solemn, mortal conflict, it was then deemed neither
singular nor monstrous; and in this gay pavilion Armand de Laguy, the
challenged in the coming duel, had summoned all the nobles of the court
to feast with him, after he should have slain--so confident was he of
victory--his cousin and accuser, Charles Baron de La-Hirè.

The entrances of the tiltyard were guarded by a detachment of the
king’s sergeants, sheathed cap-à-pie in steel, with shouldered
arquebuses and matches ready lighted. The lists were strewn with
sawdust, and hung completely with black serge, save where the royal
gallery afforded a strange contrast by its rich decorations to the
ghastly draperies of the battle-ground. One other object only remains
to be noticed: it was a huge block of black oak, dinted in many places
as if by the edge of a sharp weapon, and stained with plashes of dark
gore. Beside this frightful emblem stood a tall, muscular, gray-headed
man, dressed in a leathern frock and apron, stained like the block
with many a gout of blood, bare-headed and bare-armed, leaning upon a
huge two-handed axe, with a blade of three feet in breadth. A little
way aloof from these was placed a chair, wherein a monk was seated--a
very aged man, with a bald head and beard as white as snow--telling his
beads in silence until his ministry should be required.

The space around the lists and all the seats were crowded well-nigh to
suffocation by thousands of anxious and attentive spectators; and many
an eye was turned to watch the royal seats, which were yet vacant, but
which it was well known would be occupied before the trumpet should
sound for the onset. The sun was now nearly at the meridian, and the
expectation of the crowd was at its height, when the passing-bell
ceased ringing, and was immediately succeeded by the accustomed peal
announcing the hour of high noon. Within a moment or two, a bustle was
observed among the gentlemen-pensioners; then a page or two entered the
royal seats, and, after looking about them for a moment, again retired.
Another pause of profound expectation, and then a long, loud blast of
trumpets followed from the interior of the royal residence; nearer it
rang and nearer, till the loud symphonies filled every ear and thrilled
to the core of every heart: and then the king--the dignified and noble
Henry--entered with all his glittering court, princes, and dukes,
and peers, and ladies of high birth and matchless beauty, and took
their seats amid the thundering acclamations of the people, to witness
the dread scene that was about to follow, of wounds, and blood, and
butchery!

All were arrayed in the most gorgeous splendor--all except one, a
girl of charms unrivalled (although she seemed plunged in the deepest
agony of grief) by the seductive beauties of the gayest. Her bright,
redundant auburn hair was all dishevelled; her long, dark eyelashes
were pencilled in distinct relief against the marble pallor of her
colorless cheeks; her rich and rounded form was veiled, but not
concealed, by a dress of the coarsest serge, black as the robes of
night, and thereby contrasting more the exquisite fairness of her
complexion. On her all eyes were fixed--some with disgust, some with
contempt, others with pity, sympathy, and even admiration. That girl
was Marguerite de Vaudreuil--betrothed to either combatant; the
betrayed herself, and the betrayer; rejected by the man whose memory,
when she believed him dead, she had herself deserted; rejecting, in her
turn, and absolutely loathing him whose falsehood had betrayed her into
the commission of a yet deeper treason--Marguerite de Vaudreuil, lately
the admired of all beholders, now the prize of two kindred swordsmen,
without an option save that between the bed of a man she hated and the
lifelong seclusion of the convent.

The king was seated; the trumpets flourished once again, and at the
signal the curtain was withdrawn from the tent-door of the challenger,
and Charles de La-Hirè stepped calmly out on the arena, followed by his
godfather, De Jarnac, bearing two double-edged swords of great length
and weight, and two broad-bladed poniards. Charles de La-Hirè was
very pale and sallow, as if from ill health or from long confinement,
but his step was firm and elastic, and his air perfectly unmoved and
tranquil. A slight flush rose to his pale cheek as he was greeted by
an enthusiastic cheer from the people, to whom his fame in the wars
of Italy had much endeared him; but the flush was transient, and in a
moment he was as pale and cold as before the shout which hailed his
entrance. He was clad very plainly in a dark, morone-colored pourpoint,
with vest, trunk-hose, and nether socks of black-silk netting,
displaying to admiration the outlines of his lithe and sinewy frame. De
Jarnac, his godfather, on the contrary, was very foppishly attired with
an abundance of fluttering tags, and ruffles of rich lace, and feathers
in his velvet cap.

These two had scarcely stood a moment in the lists, before, from the
opposite pavilion, De Laguy and the duke de Nevers issued, the latter
bearing, like De Jarnac, a pair of swords and daggers. It was observed,
however, that the weapons of De Laguy were narrow, three-cornered
rapier-blades and Italian stilettoes; and it was well understood
that on the choice of the weapons depended much the result of the
encounter--De Laguy being renowned above any gentleman in the French
court for his skill in the science of defence, as practised by the
Italian masters; while his antagonist was known to excel in strength
and skill in the management of all downright soldierly weapons, in
coolness, in decision, presence of mind, and calm, self-sustained
valor, rather than in sleight and dexterity. Armand de Laguy was
dressed sumptuously--in the same garb, indeed, which he had worn at the
festival whereon the strife arose which now was on the point of being
terminated, and for ever!

A few moments were spent in deliberation between the godfathers of the
combatants, and then it was proclaimed by De Jarnac that “the wind
and sun having been equally divided between the two swordsmen, their
places were assigned, and that it remained only to decide upon the
choice of the weapons: that the choice should be regulated by a throw
of the dice, and that with the weapons so chosen they should fight
until one or other should be _hors de combat_; but that in case that
either weapon should be bent or broken, the seconds should cry, ‘Hold!’
and recourse be had to the other swords; the use of the poniard to be
optional, as it was to be used only for parrying, and not for striking;
that either combatant striking a blow or thrusting after the utterance
of the word ‘hold,’ or using the dagger to inflict a wound, should be
dragged to the block and die the death of a felon!”

This proclamation made, dice were produced, and De Nevers winning the
throw for Armand, the rapiers and stilettoes which he had selected
were produced, examined carefully, and measured, and delivered to the
kindred foemen.

It was a stern and fearful sight; for there was no bravery nor show
in their attire, nor aught chivalrous in the way of battle. They had
thrown off their coats and hats, and remained in their shirt-sleeves
and under-garments only, with napkins bound about their brows, and
their eyes fixed each on the other’s with intense and terrible
malignity.

The signal was now given, and the blades were crossed, and on the
instant it was seen how fearful was the advantage which De Laguy had
gained by the choice of weapons; for it was with the utmost difficulty
that Charles de La-Hirè avoided the incessant longes of his enemy,
who, springing to and fro, stamping, and writhing his body in every
direction, never ceased for a moment with every trick of feint, and
pass, and flourish, to thrust at limb, face, and body, easily parrying
himself with the poniard, which he held in his left hand, the less
skilful assaults of his enemy. Within five minutes the blood had
been drawn in as many different places, though the wounds were but
superficial, from the sword-arm, the face, and thigh of De La-Hirè,
while he had not as yet pricked ever so lightly his formidable enemy.
His quick eye, however, and firm, active hand, stood him in stead, and
he contrived in every instance to turn the thrusts of Armand so far at
least aside as to render them innocuous to life. As his blood, however,
ebbed away, and as he knew that he must soon become weak from the loss
of it, De Jarnac evidently grew uneasy, and many bets were offered that
Armand would kill him without receiving so much as a scratch himself.

And now Charles saw his peril, and determined on a fresh line of
action. Flinging away his dagger, he altered his position rapidly,
so as to bring his left hand toward De Laguy, and made a motion with
it as if to grasp his sword-hilt. He was immediately rewarded by a
longe, which drove clear through his left arm close to the elbow-joint,
but just above it. De Jarnac turned on the instant deadly pale, for
he thought all was over; but he erred widely, for De La-Hirè had
calculated well his action and his time, and that which threatened to
destroy him proved, as he meant it, his salvation: for as quick as
light, when he felt the wound, he dropped his own rapier, and grasping
Armand’s guard with his right hand, he snapped the blade short off in
his own mangled flesh, and bounded five feet backward, with the broken
fragment still sticking in his arm.

“Hold!” shouted each godfather on the instant; and at the same time De
La-Hirè exclaimed, “Give us the other swords, give us the other swords,
De Jarnac!”

The exchange was made in a moment: the stilettoes and the broken
weapons were gathered up, and the heavy horse-swords given to the
combatants, who again faced each other with equal resolution, though
now with altered fortunes. “Now, De La-Hirè,” exclaimed De Jarnac, as
he put the well-poised blade into his friend’s hand, “you managed that
right gallantly and well: now fight the quick fight, ere you shall
faint from pain and bleeding!”

And it was instantly apparent that such was indeed his intention. His
eye lightened, and he looked like an eagle about to pounce upon his
foe, as he drew up his form to its utmost height, and whirled the
long new blade about his head as though it had been but a feather.
Far less sublime and striking was the attitude and swordmanship of
De Laguy, though he too fought gallantly and well. But at the fifth
pass, feinting at his head, Charles fetched a long and sweeping blow
at his right leg, and, striking him below the ham, divided all the
tendons with the back of the double-edged blade; then, springing in
before he fell, plunged his sword into his body, that the hilt knocked
heavily at his breast-bone, and the point came out glittering between
his shoulders! The blood flashed out from the deep wound, from nose,
and ears, and mouth, as he fell prostrate; and Charles stood over him,
leaning on his avenging weapon, and gazing sadly into his stiffening
features. “Fetch him a priest,” exclaimed De Nevers, “for by my halydom
he will not live ten minutes!”

“If he live five,” cried the king, rising from his seat, “if he live
five, he will live long enough to die upon the block; for he lies there
a felon and convicted traitor, and by my soul he shall die a felon’s
doom! But bring him a priest quickly.”

The old monk ran across the lists, and raised the head of the dying
man, and held the crucifix aloft before his glazing eyes, and called
upon him to repent and to confess, as he would have salvation.

Faint and half-choked with blood, he faltered forth the words--“I
do--I do confess guilty--oh! doubly guilty!--Pardon, O God!--Charles!
Marguerite!”--and as the words died on his quivering lips, he sank
down, fainting with the excess of agony.

“Ho, there!--guards, headsman!” shouted Henry; “off with him--off with
the villain to the block, before he die an honorable death by the sword
of as good a knight as ever fought for glory!”

Then De La-Hirè knelt down beside the dying man, and took his hand in
his own and raised it tenderly, while a faint gleam of consciousness
kindled the pallid features--“May God as freely pardon thee as I do, O
my cousin!” Then turning to the king--

“You have admitted, sire, that I have served you faithfully and
well. Never yet have I sought reward at your hand: let this now be
my guerdon. Much have I suffered: even thus let me not feel that my
king has increased my sufferings by consigning one of my blood to the
headsman’s blow. Pardon him, sire, as I do, who have the most cause of
offence; pardon him, gracious king, as we will hope that a King higher
yet shall pardon him and us, who be all sinners in the sight of his
all-seeing eye!”

“Be it so,” answered Henry; “it never shall be said of me that a French
king refused his bravest soldier’s first claim upon his justice! Bear
him to his pavilion.”

And they did bear him to his pavilion, decked as it was for revelry and
feasting; and they laid him there, ghastly, and gashed, and gory, upon
the festive board, and his blood streamed among the choice wines, and
the scent of death chilled the rich fragrance of the flowers! An hour,
and he was dead who had invited others to triumph over his cousin’s
slaughter; an hour, and the court-lackeys shamefully spoiled and
plundered the repast which had been spread for nobles!

“And now,” continued Henry, taking the hand of Marguerite, “here is
the victor’s prize! Wilt have him, Marguerite?--’fore Heaven, but he
has won thee nobly! Wilt have her, De La-Hirè?--methinks her tears and
beauty may yet atone for fickleness produced by treasons such as his
who now shall never more betray, nor lie, nor sin, for ever!--”

“Sire,” replied De La-Hirè, very firmly, “I pardon her; I love her
yet!--but I wed not dishonor!”

“He is right,” said the pale girl, “he is right, ever right and
noble; for what have such as I to do with wedlock? Fare thee well,
Charles--dear, honored Charles! The mists of this world are clearing
away from mine eyes, and I see now that I loved thee best--thee only!
Fare thee well, noble one! forget the wretch who has so deeply wronged
thee--forget me, and be happy. For me, I shall right soon be free!”

“Not so, not so,” replied King Henry, misunderstanding her meaning;
“not so, for I have sworn it, and though I may pity thee, I may not be
forsworn. To-morrow thou must to a convent, there to abide for ever!”

“And that will not be long,” answered the girl, a gleam of her old
pride and impetuosity lighting up her fair features.

“By Heaven, I say for ever!” cried Henry, stamping his foot on the
ground angrily.

“And I reply, not long!”


CHAPTER III.

A cold and dark northeaster, had swept together a host of straggling
vapors and thin lowering clouds over the French metropolis--the course
of the Seine might be traced easily among the grotesque roofs and
Gothic towers which at that day adorned its banks, by the gray ghostly
mist which seethed up from its sluggish waters--a small fine rain was
falling noiselessly, and almost imperceptibly, by its own weight as it
were, from the surcharged and watery atmosphere--the air was keenly
cold and piercing, although the seasons had not crept far as yet
beyond the confines of the summer. The trees, for there were many in
the streets of Paris, and still more in the fauxbourgs and gardens of
the haute noblesse, were thickly covered with white rime, as were the
manes and frontlets of the horses, the clothes, and hair, and eyebrows
of the human beings who ventured forth in spite of the inclement
weather. A sadder and more gloomy scene can scarcely be conceived than
is presented by the streets of a large city in such a time as that I
have attempted to describe. But this peculiar sadness was, on the day
of which I write, augmented and exaggerated by the continual tolling
of the great bell of St. Germains Auxerrois, replying to the iron din
which arose from the gray towers of Nôtre Dame. From an early hour
of the day the people had been congregating in the streets and about
the bridges leading to the precincts of the royal palace, the Chateau
des Tournelles, which then stood--long since obliterated almost from
the memory of men--upon the Isle de Paris, the greater part of which
was covered then with the courts, and terraces, and gardens of that
princely pile.

Strong bodies of the household troops were posted here and there
about the avenues and gates of the royal demesne, and several large
detachments of the archers of the prevôt’s guard--still called so from
the arms which they had long since ceased to carry--might be seen
everywhere on duty. Yet there were no symptoms of an émeute among
the populace, nor any signs of angry feeling or excitement in the
features of the loitering crowd, which was increasing every moment
as the day waxed toward noon. Some feeling certainly there was--some
dark and earnest interest, as might be judged from the knit brows,
clinched hands, and anxious whispers which everywhere attended the
exchange of thought throughout the concourse--but it was by no means
of an alarming or an angry character. Grief, wonder, expectation, and
a sort of half-doubtful pity, as far as might be gathered from the
words of the passing speakers, were the more prominent ingredients of
the common feeling, which had called out so large a portion of the
city’s population on a day so unsuited to any spectacle of interest.
For several hours this mob, increasing as it has been described from
hour to hour, varied but little in its character, save that as the
day wore it became more and more respectable in the appearance of
its members. At first it had been composed almost without exception
of artisans and shop-boys, and mechanics of the lowest order, with
not a few of the cheats, bravoes, pickpockets, and similar ruffians,
who then as now formed a fraternity of no mean size in the Parisian
world. As the morning advanced, however, many of the burghers of the
city, and respectable craftsmen, might be seen among the crowd; and a
little later many of the secondary gentry and petite noblesse, with
well-dressed women and even children, all showing the same symptoms
of sad yet eager expectation. Now, when it lacked but a few minutes
of noon, long trains of courtiers with their retinues and armed
attendants, many a head of a renowned and ancient house, many a warrior
famous for valor and for conduct might be seen threading the mazes of
the crowded thoroughfares toward the royal palace.

A double ceremony of singular and solemn nature was soon to be enacted
there--the interment of a noble soldier, slain lately in an unjust
quarrel, and the investiture of an unwilling woman with the robes
of a holy sisterhood preparatory to her lifelong interment in that
sepulchre of the living body--sepulchre of the pining soul--the convent
cloisters. Armand de Laguy!--Marguerite de Vaudreuil!

Many circumstances had united in this matter to call forth much
excitement, much grave interest in the minds of all who had heard
tell of it!--the singular and wild romance of the story, the furious
and cruel combat which had resulted from it--and last not least, the
violent, and, as it was generally considered, unnatural resentment
of the king toward the guilty victim who survived the ruin she had
wrought.

The story was, in truth, then, but little understood. A thousand rumors
were abroad, and of course no one accurately true; yet in each there
was a share of truth, and the amount of the whole was perhaps less wide
of the mark than is usual in matters of the kind. And thus they ran:
Marguerite de Vaudreuil had been betrothed to the youngest of France’s
famous warriors, Charles de La-Hirè, who after a time fell--as it
was related by his young friend and kinsman Armand de Laguy--covered
with wounds and honor. The body had been found outstretched beneath
the survivor, who, himself desperately hurt, had alone witnessed and
in vain endeavored to prevent his cousin’s slaughter. The face of
Charles de La-Hirè, as all men deemed the corpse to be, was mangled
and defaced so frightfully as to render recognition by the features
utterly hopeless; yet, from the emblazoned surcoat which it bore, the
well-known armor on the limbs, the signet-ring upon the finger, and
the accustomed sword clinched in the dead right hand, none doubted the
identity of the body, or questioned the truth of Armand’s story.

Armand de Laguy, succeeding by his cousin’s death to all his lands
and lordships, returned to the metropolis, and mixed in the gayeties
of that gay period, when all the court of France was revelling in the
celebration of the union of the dauphin with the lovely Mary Stuart, in
after-days the hapless queen of Scotland.

He wore no decent and accustomed garb of mourning. He suffered no
interval, however brief--due to decorum at least, if not to kindly
feeling--to elapse, before it was announced that Marguerite de
Vaudreuil, the dead man’s late betrothed, was instantly to wed his
living cousin! Her wondrous beauty, her all-seductive manners, her
extreme youth, had in vain pleaded against the general censure of the
court--the world. Men had frowned on her for a while, and women sneered
and slandered; but after a little while, as the novelty of the story
wore away, the indignation against her inconstancy ceased, and she was
once again installed the leader of the court’s unwedded beauties.

Suddenly, on the very eve of her intended nuptials, Charles de La-Hirè
returned!--ransomed, as it turned out, by Brissac, from the Italian
dungeons of the prince of Parma, and making fearful charges of treason
and intended murder against Armand de Laguy. The king had commanded
that the truth should be proved by a solemn combat; had sworn to
execute upon the felon’s block whichever of the two should yield or
confess falsehood; had sworn that the inconstant Marguerite--who,
on the return of De La-Hirè, had returned instantly to her former
feelings, asserting her perfect confidence in the truth of Charles, the
treachery of Armand--should either wed the victor, or live and die the
inmate of the most rigorous convent in his realm.

The battle had been fought yesterday! Armand de Laguy fell, mortally
wounded by his wronged cousin’s hand, and with his latest breath
declared his treasons, and implored pardon from his king, his kinsman,
and his God--happy to perish by a brave man’s sword, not by a headman’s
axe. And Marguerite, the victor’s prize--rejected by the man she had
betrayed--herself refusing, even if he were willing, to wed with him
whom she could but dishonor--had now no option save death or the
detested cloister.

And now men pitied--women wept--all frowned, and wondered, and kept
silence. That a young, vain, capricious beauty--the pet and spoiled
child from her very cradle of a gay and luxurious court, worshipped
for her charms like a second Aphrodite, intoxicated with the love of
admiration--that such a one should be inconstant, fickle--should swerve
from her fealty to the dead--a questionable fealty always--and be won
to a rash second love by the falsehood and treasons of a man young,
and brave, and handsome--falsehood which had deceived wise men--that
such should be the course of events, men said, was neither strange nor
monstrous! It was a fault, a lapse, of which she had been guilty--which
might indeed make her future faith suspected, which would surely
justify Charles de La-Hirè in casting back her proffered hand--but
which at the worst was venial, and deserving no such doom as the
soul-chilling cloister.

She had, they said, in no respect participated in the guilt or shared
the treacheries of Armand. On the contrary, she, the victim of his
fraud, had been the first to denounce, to spit at, to defy him.

Moreover, it was understood that, although De La-Hirè had refused
her hand, several of equal and even higher birth than he had offered
to redeem her from the cloister by taking her to wife of their free
choice. Jarnac had claimed the beauty, and it was whispered that the
duke de Nevers had sued to Henry vainly for the fair hand of the
unwilling novice.

But the king was relentless. “Either the wife of De La-Hirè, or the
bride of God in the cloister!” was his unvarying reply. No further
answer would he give--no disclosure of his motives would he make,
even to his wisest councillors. Some, indeed, augured that the good
monarch’s anger was but feigned, and that, deeming her sufficiently
punished already, he was desirous still of forcing her to be the bride
of him to whom she had been destined, and whom she still, despite her
brief inconstancy, unquestionably worshipped in her heart; for all men
still supposed that at the last Charles would forgive the hapless girl,
and so relieve her from the living tomb that even now seemed yawning to
enclose her. But others--and they were those who understood the best
mood of France’s second Henry--vowed that the wrath was real; and felt
that, though no man could fathom the cause of his stern ire, he never
would forgive the guilty girl, whose frailty, as he swore, had caused
such strife and bloodshed.

But now it was high noon; and forth filed from the palace-gates a
long and glittering train--Henry and all his court, with all the rank
and beauty of the realm, knights, nobles, peers and princes, damsels
and dames--the pride of France and Europe. But at the monarch’s
right walked one, clad in no gay attire--pale, languid, wounded, and
warworn--Charles de La-Hirè, the victor. A sad, deep gloom o’ercast his
large dark eye, and threw a shadow over his massy forehead. His lip
had forgot to smile, his glance to lighten; yet was there no remorse,
no doubt, no wavering in his calm, noble features--only fixed, settled
sorrow. His long and waving hair of the darkest chestnut, evenly parted
on his crown, fell down on either cheek, and flowed over the broad,
plain collar of his shirt, which, decked with no embroidery-lace, was
folded back over the cape of a plain black pourpoint, made of fine
cloth indeed, but neither laced nor passemented, nor even slashed
with velvet; a broad scarf of black taffeta supported his weapon--a
heavy, double-edged, straight broadsword--and served at the same time
to support his left arm, the sleeve of which hung open, tied in with
points of riband; his trunk-hose and nether stocks of plain black
silk, black velvet shoes, and a slouched hat, with neither feather nor
cockade, completed the suit of melancholy mourning which he wore.

In the midst of the train was a yet sadder sight--Marguerite de
Vaudreuil, robed in the snow-white vestments of a novice, with all her
glorious ringlets flowing in loose redundance over her shoulders and
her bosom, soon to be cut close by the fatal scissors--pale as the
monumental stone, and only not as rigid. A hard-featured, gray-headed
monk supported her on either hand; and a long train of priests swept
after, with crucifix, and rosary, and censer.

Scarcely had this strange procession issued from the great gates of
Les Tournelles--the death-bells tolling still from every tower and
steeple--before another train, gloomier yet and sadder, filed out from
the gate of the royal tiltyard, at the farther end of which stood
a superb pavilion. Sixteen black Benedictine monks led the array,
chanting the mournful _Miserere_. Next behind these (strange contrast!)
strode on the grim, gaunt form, clad in his blood-stained tabard, and
bearing full displayed his broad, two-handed axe--fell emblem of his
odious calling--the public executioner of Paris. Immediately in the
rear of this dark functionary, not borne by his bold captains, nor
followed by his gallant vassals with arms reversed and signs of martial
sorrow, but ignominiously supported by the grim-visaged ministers of
the law, came on the bier of Armand, the last count de Laguy.

Stretched in a coffin of the rudest material and construction, with his
pale visage bare, displaying still in its distorted lines and sharpened
features the agonies of mind and body which had preceded his untimely
dissolution, the bad but haughty noble was borne to his long home in
the graveyard of Nôtre Dame. His sword, broken in twain, was laid
across his breast, his spurs had been hacked from his heels by the base
cleaver of the scullion, and his reversed escutcheon was hung above his
head.

Narrowly saved by his wronged kinsman’s intercession from dying by the
headman’s weapon ere yet his mortal wounds should have let out his
spirit, he was yet destined to the shame of a dishonored sepulchre.
Such was the king’s decree--alas! inexorable.

The funeral-train proceeded; the king and his court followed. They
reached the graveyard, hard beneath those superb gray towers!--they
reached the grave, in a remote and gloomy corner, where, in
unconsecrated earth, reposed the executed felon. The priests attended
not the corpse beyond the precincts of that unholy spot; their solemn
chant died mournfully away; no rites were done, no prayers were said
above the senseless clay, but in silence was it lowered into the ready
pit--silence disturbed only by the deep, hollow sound of the clods that
fell fast and heavy on the breast of the guilty noble! For many a day
a headstone might be seen--not raised by the kind hands of sorrowing
friends, nor watered by the tears of kinsmen, but planted there to tell
of his disgraceful doom--amid the nameless graves of the self-slain,
and the recorded resting-places of well-known thieves and felons. It
was of dark-gray freestone, and it bore these brief words--brief words,
but in that situation speaking the voice of volumes:--

          “Ci git Armand,
    Le dernier Comte de Laguy.”

Three forms stood by the grave--stood till the last clod had been
heaped upon its kindred clay, and the dark headstone planted: Henry the
king; and Charles the baron de La-Hirè; and Marguerite de Vaudreuil.

And as the last clod was flattened down upon the dead--after the stone
was fixed--De La-Hirè crossed the grave to the despairing girl, where
she had stood gazing with a fixed, rayless eye on the sad ceremony, and
took her by the hand, and spoke so loud that all might hear his words,
while Henry looked on calmly, but not without an air of wondering
excitement:--

“Not that I did not love thee,” he said, “Marguerite! Not that I did
not pardon thee thy brief inconstancy, caused as it was by evil arts of
which we will say nothing now--since he who plotted them hath suffered
even above his merits, and is, we trust, now pardoned! Not for these
causes, nor for any of them, have I declined thine hand thus far; but
that the king commanded, judging it in his wisdom best for both of us.
Now Armand is gone hence; and let all doubt and sorrow go hence with
him! Let all your tears, all my suspicions, be buried in his grave for
ever! I take your hand, dear Marguerite--I take you as mine honored and
loved bride--I claim you mine for ever!”

Thus far the girl had listened to him, not blushingly, nor with a
melting eye, nor with any sign of renewed hope or rekindled happiness
in her pale features--but with cold, resolute attention. But now she
put away his hand very steadily, and spoke with a firm, unfaltering
voice.

“Be not so weak!” she said; “be not so weak, Charles de La-Hirè--nor
fancy me so vain! The weight and wisdom of years have passed above
my head since yester morning: then was I a vain, thoughtless girl;
now am I a stern, wise woman! That I have sinned, is very true--that
I have betrayed thee, wronged thee! It may be, had you spoke pardon
yesterday--it might have been all well! It may be it had been
dishonor in you to take me to your arms; but if to do so had been
dishonor yesterday, by what is it made honor now? No! no! Charles de
La-Hirè--no! no! I had refused thee yesterday, hadst thou been willing
to redeem me, by self-sacrifice, then, from the convent-walls; I had
refused thee then, with love warming my heart toward thee--in all
honor! Force me not to reject thee _now_ with scorn and hatred. Nor
dare to think that Marguerite de Vaudreuil will owe to man’s compassion
what she owes not to love! Peace, Charles de La-Hirè!--I say, peace! my
last words to thee have been spoken, and never will I hear more from
thee! And now, Sir King, hear thou--may God judge between thee and me,
as thou hast judged! If I _was_ frail and fickle, nature and God made
woman weak and credulous--but made man _not_ wise, to deceive and ruin
her. If I sinned deeply against this baron de La-Hirè, I sinned not
knowingly, nor of premeditation! If I sinned deeply, more deeply was
I sinned against--more deeply was I left to suffer--even hadst thou
heaped no more brands upon the burning! If to bear hopeless love--to
pine with unavailing sorrow--to repent with continual remorse--to
writhe with trampled pride!--if these things be to suffer, then, Sir
King, had I enough suffered without thy _just_ interposition!” As she
spoke, a bitter sneer curled her lip for a moment; but as she saw Henry
again about to speak, a wilder and higher expression flashed over all
her features: her form appeared to distend, her bosom heaved, her eye
glared, her ringlets seemed to stiffen, as if instinct with life.

“Nay!” she cried, in a voice clear as the strain of a silver
trumpet--“nay, thou shalt hear me out! And thou didst swear yesterday
I should live in a cloister-cell for ever! and I replied to thy words
then, ‘Not long!’ I have thought better now; and now I answer, ‘NEVER!’
Lo here! lo here! ye who have marked the doom of Armand--mark now the
doom of Marguerite! Ye who have judged the treason, mark the doom of
the traitress!”

And with the words, before any one could interfere, even had they
suspected her intentions, she raised her right hand on high--and all
then saw the quick twinkle of a weapon--and struck herself, as it
seemed, a quick, slight blow immediately under the left bosom! It
seemed a quick, slight blow! but it had been so accurately studied--so
steadily aimed and fatally--that the keen blade, scarcely three inches
long and very slender, of the best of Milan steel, with nearly a third
of the hilt, was driven home into her very heart. She spoke no syllable
again, nor uttered any cry!--nor did a single spasm contract her pallid
features, a single convulsion distort her shapely limbs; but she
leaped forward, and fell upon her face, quite dead, at the king’s feet!

Henry smiled not again for many a day thereafter. Charles de La-Hirè
died very old, a Carthusian monk of the strictest order, having mourned
sixty years and prayed in silence for the sorrows and the sins of that
most hapless being.




THE VASSAL’S WIFE.


CHAPTER I.

The early sun was shining on as beautiful a morning of the merry month
of May as ever lover dreamed or poet sang, over a gentle pastoral scene
in the sunny land of France. It was a little winding dale between
soft, sloping hills, covered with the tenderest spring verdure, and
dotted with small brakes and thickets of hawthorn and sweet-brier; the
former all powdered over, as if by a snowstorm, with their sweet, white
blossoms, and the others exhaling their aromatic perfume from every
dew-spangled bud and leaflet.

To the right hand the narrow dale widened gradually as it took its
way--worn, doubtless, in past days by the waters of the noisy brooklet
which flowed along its bottom over a bed of many-colored pebbles, among
thickets of willow, alder, and hazel--toward a broad and beautiful
valley, through which flowed the majestic volume of a great, navigable
river. To the left it decreased in width, and ascended rapidly between
steep banks to the spring-head of the rivulet, a clear, cold well,
covered by a canopy of Gothic architecture rudely chiselled in red
sandstone.

Above this the gorge of the ravine--for into such the dell here
degenerated--was thickly overshadowed by a grove of old tufted
oak-trees, which might well have rung to the brazen trumpets of the
Roman legions, and echoed the wild war-whoops of the barbarous Gauls
in the days of the first Cæsar. Sheltered and half-concealed by these,
there stood a very small, old-fashioned chapel, in the earliest and
rudest style of Norman architecture, exhibiting the short, massive,
clustered columns and round-headed arches of that antique style. It
had never spire or tower; but on the summit of the steep, peaked roof
there was a little crypt or vaulted canopy, supported by four columns,
and containing a bell proportioned to the dimensions of the humble
village-chapel.

The larger valley presented all the usual beauties of rural landscape
scenery at that remote and unscientific day, when lands were
principally laid down in pasture, and husbandry consisted mainly in the
tending of flocks and herds. There were wide expanses of common ground,
dotted here and there with few arable fields now green as the pastures
with their young crops of wheat and rye; there were woodlands bright
in their new greenery, and apple-orchards, glowing with their fragrant
blossoms. There were scattered farmhouses among the orchards; and an
irregular hamlet scattered along a yellow road in the foreground,
among shadowy elm-trees, all festooned with vines; and far off, on the
farthest slope on the verge of the horizon, the towers and pinnacles of
a tall, castellated building towered above the grand and solemn woods,
which probably composed the chase of some feudal seigneur.

The little dale which I have described was traversed by two separate
ways: one, a regular road, so far as any roads of the fourteenth
century could be called regular, and adapted for horses and such rude
vehicles as the age and the country required; the other, a narrow,
winding foot-path, following the bends of the rivulet, which the other
crossed by a picturesque wooden bridge, at about five hundred yards
below the well-head and the chapel.

At the moment when my tale commences, the doors of the chapel were
thrown wide open, and the little bell was tinkling with a merry chime
that harmonized well with the gay aspect of nature--the music of the
rejoicing birds which were filling the air with their glee, and the
lively ripple of the stream fretting over its pebbly bed.

As if summoned by the joyous cadence of the bells, a numerous party was
now seen coming up the foot-path by the edge of the rivulet, apparently
from the hamlet in the larger valley, wending their way toward the
chapel. It needed but a glance to discover the occasion. It was a
bridal-procession, headed by the gray-haired village priest in full
canonicals, and some of the elders of the village.

Behind these, lightly tripped six young girls, dressed in white,
with crowns of May-flowers on their heads, and garlands of the same
woven like scarfs across their bosoms. They were all singularly
pretty, having been chosen probably for their beauty from among their
playmates: they had all the rich, dark hair, flowing in loose ringlets
down their backs; the fine, expressive, dark eyes; the peach-like
bloom on the sunny cheeks, and the ripe, red lips, which constitute
the peculiar beauty which is almost characteristic of the south of
France. Each of these fair young beings carried on her arm a light
wicker basket, filled with the bright field-flowers of that sunny land
and season--the purple violet, the rich jonquil, and pale narcissus,
the many-colored crocuses from the mead, the primrose from the
hedgerow-bank, the lily of the valley from the cool, shadowy grove--and
strewed them, as they passed along, before the footsteps of the bride;
chanting, as they did so, in the quaint old Gascon tongue, the bridal
strain:--

   “The roads should blossom, the roads should bloom,
    So fair a bride shall leave her home,
    Should blossom, should bloom with garlands gay,
    So fair a bride shall pass to-day!”

After these, followed by her bridesmaids, the bride stepped daintily
and demurely along, the acknowledged beauty of the village, happy, and
bright, and innocent--the young bride Marguerite.

Her hair was of the very deepest shade of brown--so dark, that at
first thought you would have deemed it black; but when you looked
again, you discovered, by the absence of the cold, metallic gloss
upon its wavy surface, and by the rich, warm hue with which it glowed
under the sunlight, what was its true color. Her forehead was not very
high, but broad and beautifully formed, and as smooth as ivory; while
her arched eyebrows showed as black as night, and as soft and smooth
as though they had been stripes of sable Genoa velvet. Her nose, if
not absolutely faultless--for it had the slight upward turn which
was so charming in Roxabara--added an arch and sprightly expression
to features which were otherwise passive and voluptuous rather than
mirthful; but her eyes, her eyes were wonderful--like to no eyes on
earth that have ever met my gaze, save thine, incomparable----, which
still shine upon my soul, though long unseen, and far away, never,
never to be forgotten!--not star-like, but like wells of living,
loving, languid lustrousness--brown of the deepest shade, filled with a
humid, rapturous tenderness, yet brighter than the brightest, but with
a soft, voluptuous, luminous brightness; not flashing, not sparkling,
but penetrating and imbuing the beholder with love at once and magic
light. They were fringed, too, with lashes so long and dark, that,
when her lids were lowered, they showed like fringes of raven-hued
silk against the delicate blush of her round cheek. Her mouth, though
perhaps rather wide, was exquisitely shaped, with the arched upper lip
and full, pouting lower lip, of the color of the ripe clove-carnation,
that woos the kiss so irresistibly; with teeth as bright as
mother-of-pearl, and a breath sighing forth sweeter than Indian summer.

Such was the face of Marguerite, the bride of that May morning; nor was
her form inferior to it. Modelled in the fullest and roundest mould
that is consistent with symmetry and grace, her figure was the very
perfection, the beau-ideal of voluptuous, full-blown, yet youthful
womanhood. The broad, falling shoulders; the fully-developed, glowing
bust, swelling into twin hills of panting snow; the round, shapely
arms, bare to the shoulder; the graceful and elastic waist; the rich
curve of the arched hips, and the wavy outlines of her lower limbs,
suggesting, by the rustling folds of her draperies as she walked the
dewy greensward like a queen, the beauty of their unseen symmetry:
these, combined with the exquisite features, the singular expression
uniting, what would appear to be incongruous and contradictory, much
roguish archness, something that was almost sensual in the wreathed
smile, and yet withal the most perfect modesty and innocence,
rendered Marguerite, the May-bride of Castel de Roche d’or, one of
the loveliest, if not the very loveliest creature that ever walked to
church with her affianced lover in that fair land of France.

She wore, like her bridesmaids--who, all pretty girls, were utterly
eclipsed by her radiant beauty--a May-wreath on her head, and a large
bouquet of fresh violets on the bosom of her low-cut white dress, which
was looped up at one side with bunches of narcissus and violets, to
show an under-skirt of pale peach-colored silk, the tints of which
showed faintly through the thin draperies of her tunic; but, unlike
them, she wore a long gauze veil, intertwined with silver threads,
floating down among her luxuriant tresses, below her shapely waist.

Never was there seen in that region a lovelier, a purer, or a happier
bride. Immediately behind the bridesmaids, supported in his turn by
an equal number of tall, sinewy, well-formed youths, dressed in their
best attire, half-agricultural, half-martial, as feudal vassals of
their lord, bound to man-service in the field, came on the stalwart
bridegroom. He was a tall, athletic, well-made man of twenty-nine or
thirty years, erect as a quarter-staff, yet showing in every motion
an elastic pliability and grace, which, although in reality the mere
result of nature, appeared to be the consequence either of innate
gentility or of long usance to the habits of the upper classes.

His complexion was that of the south--rich, sunny olive, without a
tinge of color in the clear, dark cheek; his hair black as the raven’s
wing, and his eyes of that wild, fiery shade of black which perhaps
indicates a taint of Moorish blood. His features were very regular, and
very calm in their regularity, though there was nothing pensive nor
anything very grave in their expression. It was the calmness of latent
passions, not the calmness of controlling principles--the stillness
which precedes the thunderburst, not the stillness of the subsident and
overmastered storm: for the firmly-compressed lips, the square outlines
of the hard, massive jaw, the immense muscular development of the neck,
and the deeply-indented frown between the eyebrows, intersecting a
furrow crossing the forehead from brow to brow, would have indicated
at once to the physiognomist that Maurice Champrèst was a man of
the fiercest and most fiery energy and passions, concealed but not
controlled--existing perhaps unsuspected, but utterly unchecked by any
principle--and certain to start into a blaze at the first spark that
should enkindle them.

His dress was the usual attire of a man in his station at the period,
though of finer materials than was ordinary, consisting of a dark
forest-green gambison, or short tunic of fine cloth, not very different
in form from the blouse of the modern Frenchman, gathered about his
waist by a broad belt of black leather, fastened in front by a brazen
buckle, and supporting on one side a heavy, buckhorn-hilted wood-knife,
and on the other a large pouch or purse of black cordovan, bound
with silver; his hose were of the same color with the tunic, fitting
close to the shapely thigh, and above these he wore long boots of
russet-tawny leather. His black hair fell in two heavy clubs or masses
over each ear, nearly to the collar of his doublet, from beneath the
cover of a small cap of black velvet, set jauntily on one side, and
adorned with a single white-cock’s feather.

His appearance on the whole, though he was very far inferior in regard
of personal beauty to the exquisite creature whom he was so soon to
call his wife, was manly and imposing; while the character of his
dress and equipments, as well as the decorations of Marguerite and her
attendant maidens, showed at once that they were all of a quality and
station to the serfs employed in the cultivation of the lands of the
great seigneurs, and indeed to that of the ordinary armed vassals and
feudal tenants of the day.

In truth, Maurice Champrèst was not only the richest farmer, but the
highest military vassal under the fief of Raoul de Canillac, the
marquis of Roche d’or, his ancestor having been banner-bearer to the
first lord of the name, and his people having held and cultivated the
same farm for many a century, bound only to homage and free man-service
in the field under the banner of his lord, to which in war he was held
to bring five spearsmen and as many archers in full bodynge, as it was
then technically termed, and effeyre-of-war. He was, in short, though
not noble, nor what could be exactly termed a gentleman, of the very
highest of feudal territorial vassals, not far removed from the class
which were in England designated as franklins, although with fewer
privileges and smaller real freedom, France having always been more
rigidly feudal than the neighboring island, owing to the absence of
the large admixture of Saxon blood and Saxon liberty, the latter of
which soon began to preponderate in the white-rocked isle of ocean.
His beautiful bride Marguerite, though not his equal in birth--for her
grandfather and grandmother, nay, her father himself, in his early
youth, had been serfs--was a free-born and a gently-nurtured woman;
the old people having been manumitted and presented with a few acres
of land, in consequence of the gallantry with which he had rescued
the then seigneur of Roche d’or, when unhorsed and at the mercy of
the German communes at the bloody battle of Bovines, stricken between
Philip the August and his rebellious barons.

This event had taken place years before the birth of Marguerite, and
in fact when her father was a mere stripling; and, as her mother was a
woman of free lineage, neither serf nor villeyn, she was, of course,
beyond the reach of cavil. Nay, more than this, the unusual courage
of the old man on that dreadful day, and the consideration always
manifested toward him by the then marquis and his immediate successor,
had won for him a far higher standing than was usually accorded to
manumitted serfs by the class next above them. Her family, moreover, in
both the last generations, had prospered in worldly wealth, for the old
serf was shrewd and wary, had hoarded money, and increased the extent
of his rural demesne, till Marguerite, who was an only daughter, was
not only a beauty but an heiress; and probably, with the exception of
her husband, would be, on the death of her parents, the richest person
in the hamlet. She had received, moreover, advantages at that period
very unusual indeed; for having, when a mere child, attracted the
attention of the late marchioness de Canillac by her grace, her beauty,
and the artless _naïveté_ of her manners, she had been selected to
attend, rather as a companion than a servant, on Mademoiselle de Roche
d’or, a girl a few years her senior.

The young lady had become much attached to Marguerite, and on being
sent to a convent in the principal town of the department for her
education, as was usual, had obtained permission that Marguerite
might attend her still; so that the young peasant had enjoyed all
the advantages of mental culture granted to the high-born damsel;
had profited by them to the utmost; and had parted from her orphaned
mistress only when, after the death of her parents, she was removed
with her brother, the present marquis, to the guardianship of their
next relative, the prince of Auvergne. In the meantime, while the
marquis and his sister had breathed the atmosphere of courts and large
cities, far away from their native province, Marguerite had returned
to the humble home of her parents which she had filled with happiness
by the light of her loving eyes, and the harmonies of her soft, low
voice; had expanded from the bud into the full-blown flower, admired
and beloved of all; had burst from the frail and graceful girl into the
exquisite and complete woman; and, having long been loved of Maurice
Champrèst, and bestowed upon him all the tenderness and truth of her
maiden affections, was now about to surrender her hand also to him unto
whom she had been during the whole of the last year affianced.

And now, with pipe and tabor, with the old, time-honored bridal-chorus,
with flowers scattered along the way, and garlands swinging from the
hedgerows by which she was to pass, and decorating the rude pillars and
stern arches of the old Gothic church in which she was to wed, with all
the village in her train, carolling and rejoicing at so suitable, so
sweet a bridal, Marguerite, the bride of May, was led to the ceremony
that should of the twain make one for ever and for ever, of which the
word of God himself declared that whom he hath united no man shall put
asunder.

Merrily, with louder strains and blither minstrelsey, they wound up the
little dell among the oaks, paused for a moment at the rustic fount to
cross their brows with its holy waters, and entered the low portals of
the village-chapel. The bells ceased tinkling; the brief ceremony was
performed by the old priest who had baptized them both; the hand of the
down-eyed, blushing bride, still sparkling and smiling amid her happy,
soft confusion, was placed in the ardent grasp of Maurice, and she was
now her own no longer, but a wedded wife.

She was wept over, blessed, caressed, and kissed, by half the company,
and many a fervent prayer was breathed for the happiness, the complete
and perfect bliss of Marguerite, the bride of May--alas for human hopes
and the vain prayers of mortals!--and then, while the bells struck up
a livelier, louder chiming, and the bride-maidens trolled the chorus
forth more cheerily--

   “The roads should blossom, the roads should bloom,
    So fair a bride shall leave her home,
    Should blossom, should bloom with garlands gay,
    So fair a bride shall pass to-day!”--

with many a manly voice swelling more lustily the nuptial cadence,
they passed the little green descending to the horse-road, Marguerite
clinging now to his supporting arm and looking tenderly up into his
with eyes suffused with happy tears and cheeks radiant with dimpled
smiles and rosy blushes.

But at the moment when the bridal-train was wheeling down toward the
road, and had now nearly reached the point of its intersection with
the foot-path, the loud and noisy trampling of many horses, and the
jingling clash of the harness of armed riders, was distinctly heard
above the swelling chorus of the hymenean, above the chiming of the
wedding-bells; and within a few seconds, two or three horsemen crossed
the brow of the eastern hill, at a gentle trot, and were followed by
a company of some fifty men-at-arms, under the guidance of an old
officer, whose beard and hair, as white as snow, fell down over his
gorget from beneath the small, black-velvet cap, which alone covered
his head, for his helmet hung at his saddle-bow. The troopers were all
armed point-device, in perfect steel, with long, pennoned lances in
their hands, two-handed broadswords slung across their shoulders from
the left to the right, and battle-axe and mace depending on this side
or that from the pommels of their steel-plated saddles. Their horses,
too--strong, powerful brutes of the Norman stock, crossed with some
lighter strain of higher blood--were barded, as it was termed, with
chamfronts and neck-plates, poitrels on the breast, and the bards
proper covering the loins and croup; and all were arrayed under a
broad, square banner, blazoned, as if every eye of the bridal-party
could at once distinguish, with the bearings of the lords of Castel de
Roche d’or.

No sooner had they discovered this, than they halted, and formed a line
along the edge of the road, anxious to testify their respect to their
young lord--who now, recently of age, was returning, after years of
absence, from the château of his guardian--and eager to observe the
passage of the cavalcade.

The persons who led the approaching band were three in number, two
of whom rode a few horse-lengths in advance of the third, and were
evidently of rank superior to the rest; while something seemed to
indicate, though it was indefinite, and not very obvious how far it did
so, that even between these two there subsisted no perfect equality.

He to the left was the elder by many years; a finely-formed and not
ill-favored man, of some forty-five or fifty years; magnificently
apparelled in a suit of rich half-armor, with russet-leather boots
meeting the taslets or thigh-pieces at the knee; accoutred with heavy
gilded spurs, and wearing on his head a crimson-velvet mortier, adorned
by a massive gold chain, and a lofty plume of white feathers.

And he it was, who, although in his outward show he was the more
splendid--though he bestrode his steed with an air of pride so
manifest, that you might have fancied he bestrode the universe--though
he addressed all his inferiors with intolerable haughtiness, and
appeared to look upon all his equals as inferiors--yet, by his demeanor
toward the youth who reined his Arab courser by his side, and by his
almost servile watching of his every motion, and lowering his voice at
his every word, appeared to be oppressed in his presence by a sense of
the utmost unworthiness, and scarcely to hold himself entitled to have
an opinion of his own until sanctioned by that of the young marquis de
Roche d’or.

The features of this man were certainly well-favored rather than the
reverse--for the brow, the eyes, the outlines, were all good; and yet
the expressions they assumed, as he was moved by varying passions,
were so odious and detestable, that on a nearer view, a close observer
would probably have styled him hideous, and avoided his advances.
Pride, of the haughtiest and most intolerant form, would at one time
writhe his lip and deform his every lineament; at another, it would
yield to the basest, the most abject servility. Cruelty alone sat fixed
and permanent in the thick, massive, animal jaw, the low and somewhat
receding forehead, and the oblique glances of the cold, clear, gray
eye; but sensuality, and sneering sarcasm, and utter want of veneration
or belief for anything high or holy, had left their hateful traces
in the lines about his mouth and nostrils: nor were these odious,
ineradicable signs of an atrocious character redeemed by the evident
presence of high intellect and pervading talents, for that intellect
was of a shrewd, keen, cunning caste, and was in no wise akin to
anything of an imaginative, a noble, or a virtuous type.

Such was the appearance, such the aspect, of a man renowned in his
day far and wide through France, but renowned for evil only. Such
was _Canillac le fou_--a soubriquet which he had won throughout his
province, for the insane, frantic, and unnatural vice and crime which
had marked his whole career from boyhood. Canillac the madman!--and
with good reason did the vassals of the old house of Roche d’or
shrink upon themselves, and draw instinctively one toward the other,
like wild-fowl when they see the shadow of the soaring falcon, with
a foreboding of peril near at hand, when they beheld this fierce,
voluptuous, pitiless monster--whose favorite boast it was that he had
never spared a woman in his passion, nor a man in his hatred--riding
at the bridle-rein of their young lord, as his chosen friend and
companion, and probably as the arbiter of his pleasures, instigator of
his vices!

And of a truth they had good cause to shrink and tremble, an’ had they
but then known that which was even now impending, to curse the very
hour in which he or they were born--he to inflict, they to endure the
last, worst outrages of feudal tyranny and wrong!

But they as yet knew nothing, nor, save instinctively, foreboded
anything; but he, with his keen, furtive, ever-roving glances, noted
(what none less sly, suspicious, and acute, would have suspected) the
secret and intuitive horror with which the peasantry of Castel de Roche
d’or regarded him, and vowed at once within his secret soul that they
should have good cause to curse him, and that speedily.

His comrade, the young marquis, was, to the outward eye, a very
different personage. Having barely reached his twenty-first year, he
was as graceful and finely-framed a youth as ever sat a charger. His
face, too, was very fine and regular, with the large, liquid, dark
eyes, and deep, clear, olive tint, which are so common in the south of
France. His hair was black as the raven’s wing, with the same purplish,
metallic lustre gleaming over its glossy surface, and fell in long,
wavy, uncurled masses over the collar of the quilted gambison of
rose-colored silk, which he wore under a shirt of flexible chain-mail,
polished so brilliantly, that it flashed and sparkled in the morning
sunbeams like a network of diamonds.

The ordinary expression of his countenance was grave, calm, and
melancholy; yet it was impassive and cold, rather than thoughtful and
imaginative, while there was an occasional flashing light in the sleepy
eye, and a gleam of almost fierce intelligence in all the features,
and a strange, animal curl of the pale lips, which seemed to tell that
there lurked beneath that cold exterior a volcano of fierce and fiery
passions, ready at any instant to leap into life, and consume whosoever
should oppose his will.

The keen observer of humanity would have pronounced him one cold,
rather than collected; selfish at once, and careless of the rights
and happiness of others; sluggish, perhaps, and difficult to arouse,
but, once aroused, impetuous, and of indomitable will--truly a fearful
combination!

When the company had arrived within thirty or forty paces of the
bridal-party, the villagers threw up their caps into the air, and
raised a loud and joyous exclamation--“Vive Canillac! vive Canillac!
Vive le beau marquis de Roche d’or!”--and, for the moment, the boy’s
face lighted up with a gleam of warm and honest feeling--gratification
at the welcome of his people, and something of real sympathy with their
condition.

But just as he had determined to ride forward and return their kindly
greeting with words of cheer and promise of protection, the young and
fiery Arab on which he was mounted, terrified by the shoutings, and the
caps tossed into the air, reared bolt upright, made a prodigious bound
forward, and then, wheeling round, yerked out his heels violently, and
dashed away with such fury, that before the young rider, who sat as
firmly in his saddle as though he had been a portion of the animal,
could arrest him, they were almost among the men-at-arms.

The whole passed in a minute; but that minute was of fearful import
to many there assembled, many both innocent and guilty. Even in
the point of time when the wild horse was plunging forward to the
bridal-party, the young lord’s eye, undiverted by the sense of his own
keen peril, had fallen upon the lovely face and exquisite symmetry of
the fair bride, who, moved by a timid apprehension for the safety of
the handsome cavalier, leaned forward a little way in front of her
young companions, with clasped hands and cheeks blanched somewhat by
sympathetic fear and pity.

The blood rushed in a torrent to his cheek, and remained settled
there in a red, hectic spot; a fierce, unnatural light gleamed from
his glassy eye, and his lip curled with an odious smile. A volume of
fierce passions rushed over his soul, overpowering in an instant all
his better characteristics. He was determined, in that instant, by that
one glance, to possess her, reckless what misery and madness he might
cause--reckless of all things, human or Divine!

And, whether the disembodied fiend, who, we are taught to believe, is
ever ready at such moments of temptation to urge the incipient sinner
on to deeper crime and ruin, did spur his wicked will or not--there was
a human, sneering, tempting fiend, who, as he rode beside him, read his
inmost soul in every look and gesture, and spared nothing of allurement
to excite him onward on that fell road of evil passions which should
insure his subjugation to his own sins and their readiest minister.

“Ha! what is this?” exclaimed the young man, almost angrily, as he
pulled up his violent horse, at length, beside the aged seneschal;
“what is this, Michael Rubempré--or who am I, that my villeyns and
serfs wed at their will, without my consent, or consideration of my
droits and dues?”

“So please you, beau seigneur, these be no serfs,” replied the old man,
bowing low, “but vassals of the highest class, in this your lordship
of Roche d’or--free vassals, beau sire, of the highest class. Your
consent was applied for duly, and granted, in all form, by me, as, in
your absence, by letters of instruction, your representative and agent.
The dues were all paid, and a large present above them, as a donation
to mademoiselle, your sister, on whom the young bride attended, when
she dwelt in the house of the Ursulines, in Clermont.”

Darker and darker grew the brow of the young lord, as he listened; for
he could not fail to perceive the obstacles which were opposed to the
atrocious wrong he meditated. Yet he listened sullenly to the end.

“Ha!” he replied, moodily, “no droits, only dues, and those satisfied!
The worse for them, by heaven and hell, and all who dwell therein!”

He paused a moment, with his hands clinched, and the veins upon his
brow swollen into thick, azure cords, by the rush of the hot blood; and
then resumed, in a low, hissing tone, widely different from his usually
slow and modulated voice:--

“Who be they, Michael Rubempré? I would give half my lands, they could
be proved _serfs_. Can not this be done, Michael?”

“Impossible, beau sire!” replied the old man, firmly, though there was
much of anxiety, and even of alarm, in his eye; “utterly impossible.
The forefathers of Maurice Champrèst came into the lands of Roche d’or
with the first Canillac, and he holds the same farm still, under the
first grant, by tenure of man-service, only on the field of battle. He
is your lordship’s greatest vassal, and brings five spears and as many
crossbows to the banner of Roche d’or, serving himself on horseback.”

“Ha! curses on it! curses on it! And she--who is she! By heaven, she is
the loveliest creature I ever looked upon! Who is she? ha!”

“Her grandfather, beau sire, then a serf--permitted, through the
exigency of the times, to bear arms in the field--saved the life of
your lordship’s grandsire, by taking in his breast the pike-thrust
intended for his lord. For this good deed, he was manumitted, with his
wife and son, who is now a free vassal and a large tenant of Roche
d’or, bringing six crossbows to your banner. Marguerite was selected by
the marquise to wait on Mademoiselle de Canillac de Roche d’or, and was
educated with her, almost as a friend. She is the best girl, too, in
all the village.”

“Ha! so much the worse! Curses on it--twenty thousand curses!”

And he had turned his horse’s head again, to ride on his way,
apparently convinced that for this time, at least, his wicked will
must be balked of its fulfilment; but at this moment, the voice of the
tempter, Canillac the madman--mad in his crimes alone, for his wily and
diverse intellect was clear as that of Catiline, whom he in some sort
resembled--addressed him, calm, yet cutting and sarcastic:--

“What is it that has moved you so much, beau cousin? Methinks your
people’s greeting should enliven, not depress you.”

“Tush!” the young man replied, almost savagely; “tush! You are no fool,
Canillac!”

“Not much, I think; though they do call me _Canillac le fou_! But what
then, what then, beau cousin?”

“Did you not see her? did you not see her, Canillac? As I hope to live
before God, she is the loveliest piece of woman’s flesh I ever looked
upon! I would give--I would give half my lands, half my life, that I
had droits seignorial over her; but I have dues, dues only, and they
are satisfied. She is free--a free woman of her own right, and can not
be mine.”

“Were I you, cousin, and I so desired her as you do, she _should_ be
mine, ere nightfall!”

“How so? how so?” asked the young man, sharply. “Did I not tell you she
is free--free--that I have no droits over her, and do you tell me I can
make her mine?”

“What if she be? She is but a peasant-wench--one of the mere
_canaille_. I would regard her squalling no more than a kitten’s
mewing; nay, rather I would glory in it, for I am sick to death of your
complaisant beauties. Besides, she is _not_ free, if she was born while
her father was a serf, unless she was named in the deed of manumission.”

“But she must have been born years afterward. Look at her, man: she
could not have been born in my grandfather’s time.”

“Deny that she is free. Have her up with us to the castle, now. Hold
her there as a hostage, till she be proven free. If you be not aweary
of her, ere the week is ended, I will find twenty men who shall swear
she was born in the days of Sir Noah in the ark, if it be needful.” And
he laughed scornfully.

“By Heaven, I will not weary of her in a week of years! But it is well
advised. I will essay it.”

“Essay nothing: do it! Promise to hold her in all honor. Promises cost
no man anything, nor oaths either, for that matter, which is fortunate;
for, by mine honor, she is fitter to be a prince’s paramour than a
_Jacque’s_ wife. So forward!”

And, with the word, they galloped forward, and pausing exactly in front
of the bride, who stood between her husband and the priest--shrinking
with modesty and terror from the ardent and licentious gaze which he
riveted on her glowing charms--he began to rate the latter for daring
to wed a serf-girl to a free vassal without his lord’s consent, and the
former for presuming to defraud his seigneur of his droits.

In vain the good curate explained and expostulated; in vain twenty
oaths were proffered by contemporaries of the girl’s grandsire, that
she was free; in vain the husband tendered security, and offered rich
donations; in vain the village-maidens grovelled before the young
lord’s charger’s hoofs, and clasped his knees in an agony of fruitless
supplication! The wrong was predetermined; the wronger was a strong
man, armed; and how should humble innocence prevail against the might
which makes the right, where violence is masterful, and law its abject
servitor?

To make a sad tale short, Raoul de Canillac announced his determination
to carry her up to the castle presently, and hold her there in trust,
until such time as a “court-baron” could be held to decide on the
question of her manumission. He plighted his knightly word, however,
his honor, as a peer of France, that she should be treated with all
tenderness, as one who had waited on his sister; and returned to her
husband, in all honor, should she be pronounced free: but this on the
condition only that she should render herself freely up and gently,
and go without resistance or complaint. To this he added, that, as an
act of grace and favor, and to prove that he would deal with them in
all faithfulness of honor, he would himself hold court at high noon
to-morrow, at which he cited all his vassals to appear, and enjoined
it on the priest, the parents, and the bridegroom, then and there to
produce the testimonials of her birth or manumission; or, failing that,
to remain for ever mute. Lovely as ever, if not lovelier, paler than
the white lily, and like it drooping when its fair head is surcharged
with dewdrops, and deluged with soft, silent tears, the miserable
Marguerite sank on her husband’s breast in one last, long embrace.

Fire flashed from the dark eyes of Raoul de Canillac, and the blood
literally boiled in his veins, as he saw that lovely form clasped close
by arms other than his own--those lips polluted, as he termed it, by
the kiss of a peasant!

“Enough of this!” he cried. “Set her upon the palfrey--the gray palfrey
we brought down for my sister. You, Amelot de l’Aigle, guide it,” he
continued, “but keep her in the middle of the lances.”

But the wretched girl had fainted; and they were forced to place her on
a cloak, doubled upon the bows of the demipique, in front of the page,
to whose waist she was bound by a silken scarf, to prevent her falling
to the ground. The tears stood in the eyes of the good old seneschal;
and the faces of many of the men-at-arms, who were all of the same
class with the bridegroom, and many of them his comrades and friends,
were dark and sullen. None, however, dared to remonstrate, much less to
resist the authoritative mandate of the feudal tyrant.

No words, however, can express the scene which ensued as the
cavalcade swept onward at a rapid pace, leaving behind them agony,
and desolation, and despair, where all, before their coming, had been
happiness, and innocent, quiet bliss, and hopeful peace! The stifled
wailing of the girls, the silent agony of the hopeless bridegroom,
the deep, scarcely-smothered execrations of the men--it was a scene
as terrible and heart-rending as that which preceded it had been
delightful and cheering to the soul.

At length the priest, raising his arms toward heaven, cried in a low
and plaintive voice--

“My children, let us pray; let us pray to the most high God, that he
will keep our sweet sister Marguerite in innocence and honor, and give
her back to us in happiness and peace. Let us pray!”

And every voice responded of all who heard his words; every voice, save
one, responded, “Let us pray!” and every knee was bent as they bowed
them in a sorrowing circle around their monitor and friend--every knee,
save that of Maurice Champrèst; but he stood erect, and pulled his hat
over his brows, and folded his arms across his chest, and exclaimed, as
the ravishers of his sweet wife wound through the dale into the larger
valley: “Earth has no justice, Heaven no pity! Man has no honor, God
no vengeance!”

But on rode the tyrants, onward--careless of the ruin they had wrought,
ruthless toward the innocence they had determined to destroy; confident
in the puissance of their prowess, and almost defying the thunders of
Heaven, which were even then rolling and muttering far away among the
volcanic peaks of the Mont d’or. Were these the omens of a coming storm?

They reached the esplanade before the castle-gates, and Marguerite was
still unconscious. Happy had she nevermore regained her consciousness!
But as the horses’ hoofs thundered over the echoing drawbridge, the
clang roused her from her swoon. She raised herself up, drew her hand
across her brow, as if to clear away some imaginary mist obscuring her
mental vision, and gazed wildly and hurriedly around her on the strange
objects which met her eyes, as if she had not as yet realized to
herself her condition, nor altogether knew her destination. As she was
carried, however, through the dim, resounding vault of the barbacan,
and heard the grating clang of the portcullis when it thundered down
behind her, a sense of her lost condition flashed upon her soul, and a
voice seemed to whisper in her ear those words of horrible import which
Danté, in after-days, inscribed upon the gates of hell; “On entering
here, leave every hope behind!”

Still she shrieked not, nor wept, nor craved or sympathy or pity; for
too well did she know that the hearts of those to whom she should
appeal were harder, colder than their own iron breastplates; her only
confidence was in her own strenuous virtue, her only hope in Him who
alone can save.

She was lifted from the horse, not only with some show of gentleness,
but even of respect, without receiving word or sign of intelligence
from the young lord of Roche d’or, who strode away, accompanied by
his ill-counsellor, Canillac the madman, toward the banqueting-room,
wherein the noontide meal was prepared already, and where the flower
of the knights and nobles of the province were assembled to welcome the
new-comer. Then she was conducted by the page through several long,
winding passages, to a sort of withdrawing-room, in which she found
several female-servants of the higher class, to the care of one of
whom she was consigned, with a few words of whispered orders, by her
conductor, who bowed low and retired. The girls looked at her for a
moment or two earnestly, inquiringly--eying her gay bridal-dress, so
ill-suited to the mode of her arrival, with an air between suspicion
and sympathy--until, at length, one of them seemed to recognise her,
and exclaimed: “Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! if it be not the fair Marguerite!”

And then, as pity seemed to prevail over all other feelings,
they crowded round her kindly and respectfully; and after a few
kindly-intended but little-meaning words, one of them offered
to conduct her to her appointed chamber, promising to bring her
refreshments shortly, and saying that doubtless she would prefer to
take some repose, and be alone.

Through dark, circuitous passages, vaulted with solid stone, and
ribbed as though they had been hewn out of the living rock, and up
interminable winding stairs, she led her, until her brain whirled
round and round, and her senses were almost bewildered. At length they
reached the topmost story of the huge, square tower, and, opening
a low, arched door, the hapless bride was ushered into a room so
sumptuously furnished as Marguerite had never seen or dreamed of;
and then, with a deep reverence, and a half-compassionate air, the
attendant maiden left her, a prisoner; for she heard the lock turned
from without, and her heart fell at the sound.

The sun, which had turned already toward the westward, was pouring a
rich stream of light through the oriel window, over the tapestried
walls and floor; over the velvet bed in a deep alcove; over the soft
arm-chairs, and central table covered with a splendid carpet, and
strewn with illuminated books, and rich, sculptured cups and vases. But
it was on none of these that the eyes of Marguerite dwelt meaningly;
for, as they wandered over these, half-marvelling amid her terrors at
their beauty, she discerned an oaken _prie-Dieu_, in a small niche
beside the window, with a missal on its embroidered cushion, and a
crucifix with the sacrificed Redeemer looking down from it on the
repentant sinner.

In an instant, she was on her knees before the image of her God,
pouring forth the whole of her innocent and spotless soul, in the
holiest of supplications. She prayed for aid from on high to preserve
her unstained virtue; she prayed for strength from on high to resist
temptation; she prayed for pardon from on high for her sins and errors
past, for grace that she might err no more in future; she prayed that
HE, who alone could pity human suffering--for that he had suffered as
no man suffereth--would touch the hearts of her ruthless persecutors,
through his Virgin Mother; she prayed that he would console her
sorrowing parents, and him whom she scarcely dared think of, so
terrible she knew must be his anguish; lastly, she prayed for pardon
to her persecutor, and that, if she were doomed that night to perish,
her soul might be received to grace, through the intercession of the
saints, and her, the ever-blessed, the Virgin Mother Mary!

Her prayer, if in form it were erroneous, in spirit was sincere and
fervent; and, as sincere and fervent prayers _will_ ever, surely _must_
hers have found a hearing at the throne of mercy, for she arose from
her knees confirmed, if not consoled, and strengthened in her virtuous
principles, and calm by the very strength of her resolves.

Then, opening the oriel window, she stepped out into the little
balcony, or bartizan, which projected out beyond the face of the
wall--perhaps in the hope of finding some means of escape; but, alas!
if such a hope had flattered her, it was delusive; for there was no
egress from it, nor any method of descending; and it impended far over
the broad, deep moat, a hundred feet or more above its dark, clear
waters--which, she remembered to have heard men say, were fifty feet in
depth to the bottom of their rock-hewn channel. Long, long she gazed
over the lovely sunlit valley of her birth, which all lay mapped out
in the glorious glow before her eyes; the happy home among the limes,
beneath which she was born; the happier home of promise, into which she
had hoped that day to be led by him whom she loved the best; the little
chapel in the dell, among the oaks, in which she had plighted, that
very morn, her faith for ever, until death, and death alone, should
dissolve the bonds.

“And death alone,” she exclaimed, as the thoughts swelled upon her
soul, “and death alone shall dissolve them! But I must not look upon
these things--I must not think of him--or my spirit will sink into
utter weakness!” Then she paused, and, leaning over the low breastwork
of the bartizan, looked down with a steady eye into the abyss, and
crossing herself as she rose--“May God assoil my soul, if I be driven
to do this thing, as do it of a surety I will, if otherwise I may not
save my honor!”

Then she returned into the chamber, leaving both lattices of the oriel
open; and seated herself calmly near the window, with her eyes fixed
on the effigy of her dying God, expecting that which should ensue, in
trembling and shuddering of the spirit, it is true, yet in earnest
resignation and fixed purpose.

Ere long, a step approached the door, but it was light and gentle; and,
when the lock was turned, it was the girl who had led her thither,
bearing wine and refreshments on a silver salver: but, though the
attendant pressed her kindly to take comfort and to eat, that she
might be strengthened, she refused all consolation, and only drank a
deep draught of the cold spring-water, to quench the feverish thirst
which parched her very vitals. Seeing at once that the prisoner would
not be consoled, nor enter into any conversation, the maiden bade her
“Good-night, and God speed her!” and added that she believed she would
not be disturbed that night, for the gentles were revelling furiously
in the great hall: and the feast, she believed, would efface all
thought of her.

“God grant that it may be so,” she replied, fervently; “for if I live
scatheless until to-morrow morn, I am free and happy! No court on earth
can dare decide against the testimony we shall show to-morrow.”

But, in His wisdom--we, blind wretches, can not discern, may not
conjecture wherefore--HE did not grant it.

The sunlight faded from the sky, as the great orb went down; and the
stars came out, one by one; and then the moon arose, nigh to the
full, and filled the skies with glory, and the maiden May-bride’s
heart with increasing hope on earth, and gratitude toward Heaven. But
little did she dream that he, she had that morning wedded, lay, even
now, at the verge of the moat, watching her oriel window, with agony
and desperation at his heart; yet so it was. When she stepped on the
bartizan, he had been observing the castle with an angry and jealous
eye from the skirts of the nearest woodland; and, though it was nearly
a mile distant, the lover’s glance of instinct had at once detected the
loved and lovely figure. As the shades of evening closed, and night
fell thick before the moon arose, he had crept up, pace by pace, till
he had reached the brink of the moat, unseen of the warders on the
keep and the flanking walls; and now he lay couched in the rank grass,
almost within reach of his beloved, able to hear every sound--should
sound come forth--from her gentle lips, yet powerless to succor,
impotent to save!

It was now nigh midnight, and Marguerite had begun to frame to herself
a hope that she was indeed forgotten; when suddenly the sound of feet,
coming up the winding stair, aroused her. The sounds were of the feet
of two men: the one, heavy and uncertain, as of a person who had drunk
too deeply; the other light and agile.

She rose to her feet, with her heart throbbing as though it would have
burst her boddice. “The time of my trial hath come! My God, my God, now
aid, or, if need be, forgive thy servant!”

The door flew open, and at the sight hope fled her bosom, if any hope
had so long dwelt within it.

Flushed with wine--inebriate, almost--with his doublet unbraced, and
his points unfastened--with a glowing cheek, a sparkling eye, and an
unsteady gait, Raoul de Canillac stood before her--the page Amelot
bearing a waxen torch before him, which he placed in a candelabrum near
the bed, and that done, retiring.

As the door closed, the young lord moved toward her, while she stood
gazing at him like a deer at bay, with a sad, liquid eye, and the tears
rolling down her cheeks, yet motionless and dauntless.

“Dry thy tears, sweet one,” he exclaimed, “or rather weep on, till
I kiss them from thy cheeks, and replace them by smiles of rapture.
Girl, I adore thee. Be but mine, and I will change thine every bunch of
silly-flowers for gems worth an earl’s ransom; better to be--”

“Seigneur Raoul de Canillac,” she interrupted him, in tones so calm,
that he was compelled to pause and listen--“marquis of Roche d’or,
knight of the Holy Ghost, as you are prince and noble, as you are peer
of France and belted knight, hear me, and spare me! By the soul of your
mother, who was chaste wife to your lordly father! by the honor of your
sister, who is spotless demoiselle! spare _me_, who am at once chaste
wife and spotless maiden! Conquer me you may, perchance, by brute
force; win me, by words, you never can! Nor would I yield to thee one
favor, were death itself the alternative!”

“Brute force, then, be it!” he replied, though, half-awed by her
manner, he advanced no farther; “for, conquer thee I will, if I may
not win thee, though my mother’s soul stood palpable between us, and
my sister’s honor were trampled underneath my feet, as I spring on to
seize thee!”

“False knight, your plighted honor! bad lord, your promised faith!” she
cried, so loud and clear, that her every accent reached the ear and
tore the heart of Maurice Champrèst below.

“Honor!” he shouted, sneeringly; “to the wild winds with honor! Faith!
who kept faith with a woman ever?”

And he dashed at her with a bound so sudden and unexpected, that he
cleared the space between them, and had his arms around her, in an
instant.

She thought that she was lost, and uttered one wild shriek, so long,
so shivering, so thrilling, that not one ear that heard it but felt as
if a lance had pierced it. But virtue gave her strength, as vice and
excess had robbed him of it; and, with a perfect majesty, she thrust
him from her, that he staggered and fell headlong.

One spring, and she had cleared the oriel window; another, and she
stood upon the dizzy brink. “My God, forgive mine enemy! Jesus, receive
my soul!”

She veiled her head with her bridal-veil, and, with her white arms
clasped above it, stooped herself, and plunged headlong!

For one second, there was seen by every eye, within eye-shot, a long,
white gleam, glancing downward through the misty moonlight--

For one second, there was heard by every ear, within ear-shot, a
dreadful, hurtling sound--

And then a sudden plash, and the waters of the moat flashed upward in
the serene moonlight, and closed over the head of chaste, unspotted
Marguerite!

But another plunge followed instantly; and, within one second, she was
drawn forth and clasped in her husband’s arms, shattered and stunned,
and beyond all hope of life, yet still not wholly dead.

A few long minutes passed--minutes as long as years--and then, warmed
into life by the pressure of that fond breast, she revived; her dying
eyes looked into his; she knew him--she was blest!--

“Maurice--I am thine--in death, as in life--thine own, thine own, pure
Marguerite--kiss--kiss me! I am gone--hus-husband!”

And she died, happy--died, may we not trust, forgiven!--

And he howled out a hideous curse against the castle, and against
its lord, and against all whom its guilty walls protected; and then,
bearing his dead bride in his arms, away through the darkness of the
night--away, with a speed mocking the fleet pursuit of horses!

The sunrise of the morrow shone down upon the corpse of Marguerite,
clad in her bridal-veil and marriage-garments, dripping and soiled with
moisture, outstretched upon the very altar before which the preceding
dawn had seen her wedded.

But years elapsed ere Maurice Champrèst was seen again in the hamlet of
Castel de Roche d’or; and, when he was seen there, it was a sorry sight
to many a noble eye, and the very stones cried “Wo!” when the Vassal’s
Wife was avenged on her destroyer.


CHAPTER II.

They were dark and dismal days in the fair land of France. Foreign
invasion was triumphant, domestic insurrection was rife.

The terrible and fatal field of Poictiers, the field of the Black
Prince, had stricken down at a single stroke the might of a great, a
glorious nation; her king a captive in a foreign dungeon; one third of
the best and bravest nobles dead on the field of honor, or languishing
in English fetters; a weak and nerveless regent on her throne; and
Charles, the bad king of Navarre, the counsellor, the nearest to his
ear.

Half of the realm at least was held directly under English sway, with
garrisons of English archers in the towns, and the red-cross banner of
St. George floating above her vanquished towers; and in the provinces,
still nominally French, armies of free companions sweeping the fields
of their harvests far and near, plundering the cottage, pillaging
the castle, levying contributions on open towns, storming by force
strongholds--English, Gascons, and Normans--led for the most part by
men of name and renown--bastards, in many cases, of great and noble
houses, such as the bourg de Maulion, and the bourg de Keranlouet, and
a hundred others of scarcely inferior fame--had subjected the country
scarcely less effectually than it had been done elsewhere by open,
honorable warfare.

To this appalling state of things a fresh horror was now added, where
horror was least needed--and that the most tremendous of all horrors,
a servile insurrection--the sudden, and spontaneous, and victorious
outbreak of ignorant, down-trodden, vicious, cruel, frenzied, and
brutal slaves!

The nobles themselves--who, had they been combined, and acted promptly
and in unison, could have crushed the life out of the insurrection
in a week--divided into hostile parties, dispirited by the wonderful
successes of the victorious English, intimidated and crest-fallen--held
themselves aloof the one from the other; and, attempting to defend
their isolated fortresses singly, without either concert or system,
allowed themselves to be surprised in detail, and butchered upon their
own hearth-stones, by the infuriated serfs.

All horrors, all atrocities that can be conceived, were perpetrated
by the victors, maddened by long years of servitude and suffering, by
deprivation of all the rights and decencies which belong of nature
to every living man, and by the enforcement of droits so infamous
and unnatural, that it is only wonderful how men should have so
long endured them! Not the least galling of these was that feudal
right which permitted the seigneur to compel the virgin bride on her
wedding-day to his own bed, and then return her dishonored to the arms
of her impassive husband--a right which not merely existed in abeyance,
or, as in latter days, was compounded by a fine, but which was an
every-day occurrence, a usage of the land--to enforce which was no
more considered cruel or tyrannical than to collect rents, or tithes,
or any other feudal dues--and which was not finally abolished until
the reign of Louis XIV., when it was at length suppressed in those
memorable assizes, known as the _grands jours d’Auvergne_, when many of
the noblest of the land died by the hands of the common executioner for
tyranny and persecution.

When, therefore, crimes like these, and worse, were perpetrated
daily under the sanction and authority of feudal law; when they had
been endured for years--not, indeed, without feelings of the direst
bitterness and rage, but without loud complaint or general resistance,
by all the serfs and villeyns of the land--what wonder was it that
these miserable, trampled wretches, scarcely human, save in form, from
the squalid wretchedness of their condition, and the studious care
of their oppressors to prevent their progress or improvement--what
wonder, I say, was it, that, seeing at length their opportunity, when
their lords were distracted by foreign conquests, by the devastations
of robber-bands, and by their own political dissensions or social
feuds, they should have sprung to arms everywhere--their cry, “War to
the castle, peace to the cottage!”--seeking redress or revenge, and
braving death willingly, as less intolerable than the wrongs they had
been so long enduring in sullen desperation? What wonder was it, that,
when victorious, they, who never had been spared, should have shown
themselves unsparing; that they, whose hearths had been to them no
safeguards for any sanctity of domestic life, no asylums for any age or
sex, should have wreaked upon the dwellers of the castles the wrongs
which for ages had been the inheritance of the inmates of the cottages;
that they, whose wives and daughters had never found protection from
worse than brutish violence in tender years, in innocence of unstained
virtue, in the weakness of imploring beauty, should have requited,
on the wives and daughters of their tyrants, pollution by pollution,
infamy, and death?

Such, such, alas! is human nature; and rare it is indeed that suffering
at the hands of man teaches man moderation to the sufferers when it
becomes his turn to suffer. Injustice hardens, not melts, the heart;
and we have it, from no less an authority than the word of Him who can
not lie, that “persecution maketh wise men mad”--but, of a surety, the
wretched serfs and _Jacquerie_ were far enough removed from wisdom,
however they might be deemed mad, nor were many of their actions very
far removed from madness. Knights crucified above the altars of their
own castle-chapels, while their wives were dishonored, tortured, and
slain, with all extremities of cruelty, before their eyes; infants
tossed upon pikes, or burnt alive, in the presence of their frantic
mothers; women compelled to eat the flesh of their own husbands,
roasted at their own kitchen-grates ere yet life was extinct; the whole
land filled with blood and ruin, and the smoke of conflagration going
up night and day to the indignant and polluted heavens--these were the
signs of those dark and awful times, these were the first fruits of the
conquered liberty of the emancipated helots of the feudal system!

And when, nerved at length by the very extremity of peril, the nobles
took up arms to make common cause against the common enemy, they
found themselves isolated and hemmed in on all sides, unable to draw
together so as to make head against the countless numbers of the enemy,
which, like the waters of an inundation, increased hourly, and waxed
wider, deeper, stronger, as it rolled onward. Large bodies could not
be collected; small bodies were cut off; till at length so completely
were the proud and warlike nobles of the most warlike land in Europe
cowed and disheartened by the triumph of their despised and degraded
slaves, that fifty men, armed cap-à-pie, and mounted on their puissant
destriers, who would, six months before, have couched their lances
confidently, and ridden scatheless through thousands of the skinclad
Jacquery--trampling them at leisure under the hoofs of their barded
horses, and, invulnerable themselves, spearing them at their will from
their lofty demipiques--now felt their proud hearts tremble at the mere
blast of a peasant’s horn, and fled ingloriously before an equal number
of undisciplined and half-armed serfs!

About the period, however, of which I write, several encounters had
taken place, especially in Touraine, in the Beauvoisis, and the country
about the Seine, between the chivalry and their insurgent villeyns, in
which the former had been worsted, not so much by superior forces as by
superior courage, discipline, and skill. And it came to be rumored far
and near that there was one band, and that the fiercest and most cruel
of all--consisting of above a thousand foot, spears, and crossbow-men,
and led by a powerful man-at-arms, before whose lance everything was
said to go down--at the head of nearly a hundred fully equipped lances,
which was in no respect unequal to the best arrays of the nobility with
their feudal vassals.

What was at first mere rumor, soon came to be accredited--soon came to
be undoubted truth; for, emboldened by their successes from attacking
the parties of chivalry in detail, as they fell upon them traversing
the country in the vain hope of combinations, this great band now began
to sit down before strong towns and fortified holds, to besiege them in
due form of war, and were in every instance successful.

Their numbers, too, increased with their success, for every knight
or man-at-arms who fell, or was taken prisoner, mounted and armed a
peasant; and it was singular to observe with what skill and judgment
the leader apportioned his best spoils to his best men: so that,
developing his resources slowly--never admitting any man to enter his
cavalry who had not approved himself a soldier, who could not ride
well, and charge a lance fearlessly, nor enrolling any one among his
footmen who was not well armed with a corslet or shirt-of-mail, and
steel cap or sallet, with sword, dagger, and pike, or crossbow--he
was soon at the head of two thousand excellent foot, and above three
hundred lances, admirably mounted, who fought under his own immediate
orders.

Who he was, no one knew, or conjectured. It was reported that his own
men were unacquainted with his name, and that his face, when the vizor
of his helmet was raised, was covered by a sable mask. How much of
truth or falsehood there might be in these vague rumors, no man seemed
to know; but it is certain that a mysterious and almost supernatural
terror attached to the “Black Rider,” as he was universally termed,
whenever he was spoken of--a terror which perhaps he took a secret
pleasure in augmenting, either from motives of policy or of pride.

The strong suit of knight’s armor which he wore, of the best Milan
steel, was black as night from the crest to the spur, without relief of
any kind, or device on the shield, or heraldric crest on the burgonet.
The plume which he wore on his casque was similar to those affixed in
modern days to hearses; and another, its counterpart, towered between
the ears of his charger, which was a coal-black barb, without one white
hair in its glossy hide, barded with chamfront, poitrel, neck-plates,
and bard proper, all of black steel, with funeral-housings of black
cloth.

Such was the man who alone of the leaders of the Jacquerie seemed
to make war on a system, acting according to the dictates of the
soundest judgment rather than, like the others, by wantonness or whim;
permitting no license, nor promiscuous individual pillaging, but
causing all plunder to be brought together for the common weal--thus
making war support war, according to the prescribed plan of the
greatest of modern conquerors--and subsisting his men on the spoils of
the powerful and rich, without trespassing in any wise on the property
of the poor, whose favor it was his object to conciliate.

It came, too, to be understood, ere long, that his cruelty was no less
systematic than his plundering. No wanton barbarity, no torturing,
roast, crucifying, or the like, was ever perpetrated by his band; and
of himself, it was notorious that, except in open warfare or in the
heat of battle, he had never dealt a blow against a man, or laid a rude
hand on a woman, of the hated caste of nobles. Still, neither man nor
woman ever escaped his rancorous and premeditated vengeance.

Every male noble, of whatever age--gray-haired, or full-grown man,
stripling, or child, or infant in the cradle--no sooner was he taken
than he was hanged on the next tree if in the open field, or from the
pinnacles of his own castle if within stone walls.

Every female of noble birth--and to these, though he never looked
on them himself, nor was tempted by the charms of the fairest--was
delivered at once to the mercies of his men, subjected to the last
dishonor; and then, when life was intolerable to them, and death
welcome, they were drowned in the nearest stream or lake, if in the
open country, or cast from the battlements into the moat, if captured
within the precincts of a fortalice.

So rigidly did he adhere to this last mode of execution, often carrying
his victims along with the band for several days until he could find
a suitable place for drowning them, that it was soon determined that
he must have some secret motive, or strong vow, binding him to this
strange course--the rather that there were many reasons for believing
him to be a man naturally of a feeling and generous temper, hardened by
circumstances into this vein of cold and adamantine cruelty.

Though he had never been known to relent, tears had been known to
fall fast through the bars of his avantaille, as he repulsed the
outstretched arms and rejected the passionate entreaties of some
lovely, innocent maiden, imploring death itself as a boon, so she might
save her honor.

At such times, it was affirmed--and they were of no unusual
occurrence--when he seemed on the point of relenting, he needed only to
clasp in his mailed fingers a long, heavy tress of female hair--once
of the loveliest shade of dark brown, verging almost upon black, but
now bleached by exposure to the summer sun and the wintry storm--which
he wore among the black plumes of his casque, when he became on the
instant cold, iron, and impenetrable, as the proof-harness which he
wore; and the words would come from his lips slow, stern, irrevocable,
speaking the miserable creature’s doom, so that even she would plead
no longer!--

“Away with her! away! For _she_, too, was beautiful, and innocent, and
good; and which of these availed her, that she should not perish? Away
with her, I say, and do your will with her; but let me not look on her
any more!”

Up to this time, the insurrection had been confined to the northeast of
France, and more especially to the Beauvoisis and the regions adjacent
to the capital, the armed commons of which appeared ready to encourage
and assist, if not openly to join them; but, at the period when my
tale commences, it began to spread like a conflagration, and rapidly
extended itself in all directions.

Auvergne still continued, however, free from disturbance, and the
knights and nobles whose demesnes lay within that fair province
went about their ordinary avocations and amusements, unmolested and
unsuspicious of danger, without any more display of military force than
was usual in those dark and dangerous times, and with no more than
ordinary trains of feudal dependants and retainers.

This, however, was now brought to a sudden and alarming conclusion by
the occurrence of an incident so terrible and hideous in its character,
that it struck a panic-terror into every heart that heard tell of it,
and that it still survives, though centuries have elapsed, as clear
and distinct as if it had but just occurred, in the memories of the
peasantry of Auvergne.

It was a beautiful morning in the latter part of June, when the whole
face of the country was overspread by a garb of the richest summer
greenery, when the skies were glowing with perfect and cloudless azure,
and when the atmosphere was perfumed with the breath of flowers and
vocal with the melody of birds. It was a morning when all nature seemed
to be at peace, the bridal, as are old pock-words of the earth and
sky--when even the angry passions of man, the great destroyer, seem to
be at rest, and when it is difficult to believe in the existence or
commission of any violence or wrong.

It was on such a morning that a gay cavalcade of knights and ladies
issued from the gates of the castle of Roche d’or, with a numerous
train of half-armed retainers; with grooms, and foresters, and
falconers; with hounds, gazehounds, and spaniels, fretting in their
leashes; and goss-hawks, jer-falcons, peregrines, and marlins, horded
upon their wrists, or cast upon frames suspended by thongs about the
waists of the varlets who carried them.

At the head of this gallant company rode a finely-formed man of
stately presence, and apparelled in the rich garments of a person of
distinction in an age when every station and rank of life had its
distinctive garb, and when the sumptuary laws were enforced with
much strictness, rendering it highly penal for one class to assume
the dress of the station next above it. Velvet, and rich furs, and
ostrich-plumes, rustled and waved in the garb of this puissant noble,
and many a gem of rare price flashed from the hilts of his weapons,
and even from the accoutrements of his splendid Andalusian charger.
On either hand of him rode a lady, beautiful both of them, and young,
but in styles of beauty utterly dissimilar: for one was dark-browed
and black-haired, with the complexion of a clear-skinned brunette,
suffused with a rich, sunny color, and large, languid black eyes; while
the other had a skin as white as snow, with the slightest possible
tinge of rose on the soft, rounded cheeks--eyes of the hues of the dewy
violet--and long, streaming tresses of warm, golden brown.

In the dark-haired lady it was easy to trace a resemblance, of both
outline and complexion, to the gentleman who rode between them, and
it would not have needed a very keen observer to discover at a glance
that they were brother and sister. And such was the truth: for the
personages were Raoul de Canillac, the marquis of Roche d’or; Louise
de Canillac, his lovely sister; and Clemente, his late-wedded wife,
formerly Clemente Isaure de Saint Angely, who was the wonder of the
country for beauty, and its idol for her charity and goodness.

Next this lady, on the outer side, there rode one who was as much
and as deservedly detested by the neighborhood as she was admired
and beloved--a strange compound of all the foul and hideous vices
which can render humanity detestable, unredeemed by one solitary
virtue, if bravery be excepted, which was a quality so general and
necessary--being, in fact, almost unavoidable, from the peculiar
nature of chivalrous institutions--that it must be regarded rather
as a virtue of the age and military caste of nobles, than of this or
that individual. He had earned himself a fearful reputation, and how
well he had deserved no one could doubt who looked upon his face, all
scathed and furrowed by the lines stamped on it by habitual indulgence
in every hateful vice, habitual surrender to every fiery passion. A
cousin of the marquis, and his nearest male relative, he had done much
to deprave and corrupt his mind; and though an accomplished and gallant
gentleman, honorable, and affable, and companionable to his own caste,
a fond husband, a kind brother, and a warm friend, he had succeeded in
rendering him as cruel and unmerciful an oppressor of all beneath him
as a feudal seigneur in those days could be, if his power was equalled
by his will to do evil. He also was Canillac, the reproach and disgrace
of an old and noble name, and was known far and wide, for his furious
and frantic crimes--which seemed, so perfectly unprovoked were they
at times and devoid of meaning, to arise from actual insanity--by
the soubriquet of _Canillac le fou_, the madman--a title of which,
so shameless was he in his infamous renown, he actually appeared to
glory, signing it as a portion of his name, or an honorable title of
distinction.

On the other side, next to Louise de Roche d’or, rode a tall and
handsome youth, wearing the belt and spurs of knighthood, and gazing
at times into the face of the beautiful girl with eyes full of deep,
ardent affection, and speaking to her in those low, earnest tones which
denote so certainly the existence of strong and pervading interest
and affection. The knight, already famous far beyond his years, for
deeds of dauntless daring, was Sir Louis de Montfauçon, a puissant
baron of Auvergne, whose bands marched with those of Castel de Roche
d’or, and the affianced husband of the young and fair Louise. Pages
and equerries, with the usual attendants, followed, and the courtyard
rang and re-echoed with the clang of hoofs, the neighing of coursers,
the deep baying of the bloodhounds, and the screams of the frightened
falcons.

They issued from the castle-gates; wound through the open park, and the
dense woodland chase beyond it; swept down a steep descent into a broad
and fertile valley, watered by a great, clear river, which they crossed
by a wooden bridge: traversed the narrow, sandy street of the village
of Castel de Roche d’or, and, turning off short to the right, entered
a little dell, through which a bright, clear rivulet murmured over its
pebbly bed, on its way to join the larger river in the valley.

The lower part of this little dell was principally open pasturage,
dotted here and there with brakes and solitary bushes of hawthorn; and
along the margin of the rivulet there ran a fringe of willow and alder
thickets, but a little higher up it degenerated into a mere gorge or
ravine, thickly overshadowed by the gnarled arms and dense, verduous
umbrage of huge, immemorial oaks, the outskirts and advanced guard,
as it were, of a vast oak-forest, which covered leagues on leagues of
rough and broken country, to which this dell formed the readiest means
of access.

Just in the jaws of this pass, overhung by the oaks, stood a small,
gray, rustic chapel, supported on four clustered columns, with groined
arches intersecting each other resting upon them, a small, arched
canopy containing a bell on the summit of its steep, slated roof, and
a low-browed door, with a round arch, decorated with the wolf-toothed
carvings of the earliest Norman style. Immediately in front of the
door, the little rivulet which watered the dell burst out of the other
in a strong, gushing spring, which had been blessed by some saint
of old, and, being surmounted by a vaulted canopy, was held to be
peculiarly holy by the superstitious rustics of the region.

This lovely spot, however, peaceful as it showed, and calm in its
tranquil and sequestered security, had been the scene, some two or
three years before, of a fearful and cruel crime: had witnessed the
violent seizure of a sweet, innocent, and rarely lovely bride, fresh
from the marriage benediction, by this very Raoul de Canillac; and the
girl had escaped pollution only by self-immolation.

It was a cursed deed--and cursed was the vengeance it provoked!

Just as the company I have described wheeled into the lower end of
the little dell, conversing joyously together, and enjoying the sweet
influences of the season and the place, they were saluted by the long,
keen blast of a bugle, well and clearly winded, in that peculiarly
note known at that period as the _mort_, being the call that announced
the death of the game, whatever it was, which might be the object of
pursuit.

This call came from the oaks above the chapel, although no performer
was seen, nor was there any baying of hounds or clamor of hunters, such
as usually accompanies the termination of a chase.

There was no privilege at that time more highly regarded by the nobles
than the rights of the chase, nor was there any crime more jealously
pursued and punished more vindictively than the infraction of the
forest-laws; so much so, indeed, that the death of a stag or wild-boar
by unlicensed hands was visited with a far deeper meed of vengeance
than the murder of a man!

It was with a face, therefore, inflamed by the fiercest ire, a flashing
eye, and a knitted brow, that Raoul de Canillac unsheathed his sword,
and spurred his horse into a gallop, calling upon his men with a
vehement and angry oath to follow him, for there were of a surety
villeyns in the wood slaughtering the deer.

The ladies of the party checked their horses on the instant in
affright, while the men rushed forward in confusion, drawing their
weapons, and casting loose the hounds and hawks which they had led or
carried, in order to wield their arms with more advantage; and between
the shouts of the feudal retainers, the deep baying of the released
bloodhounds, and the wild screams of the hawks, all that calm and
peaceful solitude was transformed on the instant into a scene of the
wildest turmoil and confusion. At this moment, just as the lord of
Roche d’or spurred his horse up the slight eminence toward the little
church, a man of great height and powerful frame stepped slowly forward
from among the oaks, clad in a full suit of knightly armor, of plain,
unornamented black steel, with no device or bearing on his shield, and
no crest on his casque, which was overshadowed by an immense plume of
black ostrich-feathers. He had a two-handed sword slung across his
shoulders, and carried a ponderous battle-axe in his right hand.

Startled by this unexpected apparition, Raoul de Canillac checked his
horse suddenly, exclaiming: “Treason! fy! treason! Ride, ladies, for
your lives!--ride! ride!”

But this warning came too late: for, simultaneously with the appearance
of the leader, above five hundred crossbow-men and lancers poured out
from the wood on either flank, with their weapons ready; and a body
of fifty or sixty mounted men-atarms drew out from behind a spur of
the hills at the entrance of the gorge, and effectually cut off their
retreat. Entirely surrounded, escape was impossible, and resistance
hopeless, so great was the numerical superiority of the enemy, and
so perfectly were they armed and accoutred for offence and defence,
while the retainers of the lords had no defensive arms whatever, nor
any weapons except their swords and hunting-staves, and a few bows and
arbalasts.

The leader of the Jacquerie--for it needed not a second glance to
inform Raoul de Canillac into whose hands he had fallen--waved his axe
on high as a signal, and instantly a single crossbow was discharged;
and the bolt, striking the horse of the seigneur full in the centre of
the chest, he went down on the instant: and before he could recover his
feet, the marquis was seized by a dozen stout hands, and bound securely
hand and foot with stout hempen cords.

On perceiving this, the elder nobleman, Canillac the madman, with the
desperate and reckless fury for which he was so conspicuous, dashed
forward, sword in hand, with his paternal war-cry, followed by a dozen
or two of the armed servitors, as if to rescue his kinsman. Perhaps he
perceived the hopelessness of their condition, and preferred selling
his life dearly to surrendering only to be slaughtered in cold blood:
and if such was his notion, he was not all unwise.

Again the battle-axe was waved, and this time a close and well-aimed
volley followed, the bolts taking effect fatally on the bodies of the
old lord and several of his followers, three of whom with their chief
were slain outright, while several others staggered back more or less
severely wounded.

With this, all resistance ended, the men throwing down their arms,
and crying for quarter, which--as they were all, with the exception
of two pages and an esquire, men of low birth--was granted, and they
were discharged without further condition. To those of gentle origin,
however, no such clemency was extended. The pages and esquire were
stripped of their costly garb, and immediately hanged up by the necks
from the oak-trees, together with the young knight affianced to
Mademoiselle Roche d’or, in spite of the entreaties and supplications
of his beautiful betrothed.

The ladies were then compelled to dismount, and their arms being bound
behind their backs, were tied with ropes to the tails of their captors’
horses; and, together with Raoul de Canillac, whose feet were now
released from their fetters, were dragged in painful and disgraceful
procession back to the gates of the feudal fortalice from which they
had so lately issued free and happy!

On the first summons of the leader of the Jacques--seeing their lord
and the ladies captive, weak in numbers, dispirited, and without a
leader--the garrison immediately surrendered: the portcullis was drawn
up, the pontlevis lowered, and, with their wretched prisoners, the
fierce marauders entered the walls, which, by their massive strength,
might otherwise have long defied them.

Meantime, not one word had been uttered by the leader of the party, who
indicated his demands to his men merely by the wafture of his hand or
the gesture of his head, which were promptly understood and implicitly
obeyed. In compliance with a sign, the prisoners were now led after him
into their own magnificent abode, and carried through long, winding
passages, and up an almost interminable stairway, to an apartment in
the summit of a huge, square tower, overlooking the castle-moat, from
a battlemented balcony, at the height of above a hundred feet. A dread
foreboding shook the breast of Raoul de Canillac, as he was brought
into that chamber, the scene of his outrageous cruelty to the lovely
Marguerite in past years, and now to be the scene of its as cruel
retribution.

The black warrior raised the vizor of his helmet, and gazed into the
face of his former lord with the fixed, resolute, determined scowl
of Maurice Champrèst, while the bad, bold oppressor shook before his
captor with a visible, convulsive air.

“Ay! tremble, murderer and tyrant--tremble!” thundered the fierce
avenger; “tremble! for thy time is at hand: and, Marguerite--lovely and
beloved Marguerite--right royally shalt thou be now avenged! Away with
these! away with them! their doom is spoken!”

And a scene of more than fiendish cruelty and violence ensued. Those
innocent and lovely women, subjected to the last dishonor before the
eyes of the husband and brother--tortured with merciless ingenuity when
their violators were satiate of their beauties--and then cast headlong
from the bartizan into the moat which had received the corpse of the
Vassal’s Wife! Raoul de Canillac, scourged till the flesh was literally
torn from his bones, was plunged headlong after them!

Such was the Vassal’s Vengeance!--and when he fell, shortly
afterward, before the walls of Meaux, by the lance of the renowned
Captal de Buch, his last words were: “I care not--I care not to live
longer. My task was ended, my race won, when thou wert avenged,
Marguerite--Marguerite!” and he perished with her name on his tongue.
His crimes were great, but was not his temptation greater? Pray we,
that we be not tempted!




TRUE LOVE’S DEVOTION:

A TALE OF THE TIMES OF LOUIS QUINZE.


PART I.

There was a mighty stir in the streets of Paris, as Paris’s streets
were in the olden time. A dense and eager mob had taken possession, at
an early hour of the day, of all the environs of the Bastile, and lined
the way which led thence to the Place de Grève in solid and almost
impenetrable masses.

People of all conditions were there, except the very highest; but the
great majority of the concourse was composed of the low populace, and
the smaller bourgeoisie. Multitudes of women were there, too, from the
girl of sixteen to the beldam of sixty, nor had mothers been ashamed
to bring their infants in their arms into that loud and tumultuous
assemblage.

Loud it was and tumultuous, as all great multitudes are, unless they
are convened by purposes too resolutely dark and solemn to find any
vent in noise. When that is the case, let rulers beware, for peril is
at hand--perhaps the beginning of the end.

But this Parisian mob, although long before this period it had learned
the use of barricades, though noisy, turbulent, and sometimes even
violent in the demonstrations of its impatience, was anything but angry
or excited.

On the contrary, it seemed to be on the very tip-toe of pleasurable
expectation, and from the somewhat frequent allusions to _notre bon
roi_, which circulated among the better order of spectators, it would
appear that the government of the Fifteenth Louis was for the moment in
unusually good odor with the good folks of the metropolis.

What was the spectacle to which they were looking forward with so much
glee--which had brought forth young delicate girls, and tender mothers,
into the streets at so early an hour--which, as the day advanced toward
ten o’clock of the morning, was tempting forth laced cloaks, and
rapiers, and plumed hats, and here and there, in the cumbrous carriages
of the day, the proud and luxurious ladies of the gay metropolis?

One glance toward the centre of the Place de Grève was sufficient to
inform the dullest, for there uprose, black, grisly, horrible, a tall
stout pile of some thirty feet in height, with a huge wheel affixed
horizontally to the summit.

Around this hideous instrument of torture was raised a scaffold hung
with black cloth, and strewd with saw-dust, for the convenience of the
executioners, about three feet lower than the wheel which surmounted it.

Around this frightful apparatus were drawn up two companies of the
French guard, forming a large hollow-square facing outward, with
muskets loaded, and bayonets fixed, as if they apprehended an attempt
at rescue, although from the demeanor of the people, nothing appeared
at that time to be further from their thoughts than anything of the
kind.

Above was the executioner-in-chief, with two grim, truculent-looking
assistants, making preparations for the fearful operation they were
about to perform, or leaning indolently on the instruments of slaughter.

By and by, as the day wore onward, and the concourse kept still
increasing both in numbers and in the respectability of those who
composed it, something of irritation began to show itself, mingled
with the eagerness and expectation of the populace, and from some
murmurs, which ran from time to time through their ranks, it would seem
that they apprehended the escape of their victim.

By this time the windows of all the houses which overlooked the
precincts of that fatal square on which so much of noble blood has been
shed through so many ages, were occupied by persons of both sexes, all
of the middle, and some even of the upper classes, as eager to behold
the frightful and disgusting scene, which was about to ensue, as the
mere rabble in the open streets below.

The same thing was manifest along the whole line of the thoroughfare by
which the fatal procession would advance, with this difference alone,
that many of the houses in that quarter belonging to the high nobility,
and all with few exceptions being the dwellings of opulent persons, the
windows, instead of being let like seats at the opera, to any who would
pay the price, were occupied by the inhabitants, coming and going from
their ordinary avocations to look out upon the noisy throng, when any
louder outbreak of voices called their attention to the busy scene.

Among the latter, in a large and splendid mansion, not far from the
Porte St. Antoine, and commanding a direct view of the Place de la
Bastille, with its esplanade, drawbridge, and principal entrance, a
group was collected at one of the windows, nearly overlooking the gate
itself, which seemed to take the liveliest interest in the proceedings
of the day, although that interest was entirely unmixed with anything
like the brutal expectation, and morbid love of horrible excitement
which characterized the temper of the multitude.

The most prominent persons of this group was a singularly noble-looking
man, fast verging to his fiftieth year, if he had not yet attained it.
His countenance, though resolute and firm, with a clear, piercing eye,
lighted up at times, for a moment, by a quick, fiery flash, was calm,
benevolent, and pensive in its ordinary mood, rather than energetical
or active. Yet it was easy to perceive that the mind, which informed
it, was of the highest capacity both of intellect and imagination.

The figure and carriage of this gentleman would have sufficiently
indicated that, at some period of his life he had borne arms and led
the life of a camp--which, indeed, at that day was only to say that he
was a nobleman of France--but a long scar on his right brow, a little
way above the eye, losing itself among the thick locks of his fine
waving hair, and a small round cicatrix in the centre of his cheek,
showing where a pistol ball had found entrance, proved that he had been
where blows were falling thickest, and that he had not spared his own
person in the _melée_.

His dress was very rich, according to the fashion of the day, though
perhaps a fastidious eye might have objected that it partook somewhat
of the past mode of the regency, which had just been brought to a
conclusion as my tale commences, by the resignation of the witty and
licentious Philip of Orleans.

If, however, this fine-looking gentleman was the most prominent, he
certainly was not the most interesting person of the company, which
consisted, besides himself, of an ecclesiastic of high rank in the
French church, a lady, now somewhat advanced in years, but showing the
remains of beauty which, in its prime, must have been extraordinary,
and of a boy in his fifteenth or sixteenth year.

For notwithstanding the eminent distinction, and high intellect of the
elder nobleman, the dignity of the abbé, not unsupported by all which
men look for as the outward and visible signs of that dignity, and the
grace and beauty of the lady, it was upon the boy alone that the eye
of every spectator would have dwelt, from the instant of its first
discovering him.

He was tall of his age, and very finely made, of proportions which
gave promise of exceeding strength when he should arrive at maturity,
but strength uncoupled to anything of weight or clumsiness. He was
unusually free, even at this early period, from that heavy and
ungraceful redundance of flesh which not unfrequently is the forerunner
of athletic power in boys just bursting into manhood; for he was
already as conspicuous for the thinness of his flanks, and the shapely
hollow of his back, as for the depth and roundness of his chest, the
breadth of his shoulders, and the symmetry of his limbs.

His head was well set on, and his whole bearing was that of one who
had learned ease, and grace, and freedom, combined with dignity of
carriage, in no school of practice and mannerism, but from the example
of those with whom he had been brought up, and by familiar intercourse
from his cradle upward with the high-born and gently nurtured of the
land.

His long rich chestnut hair fell down in natural masses undisfigured as
yet by the hideous art of the court hair-dresser, on either side his
fine broad forehead, and curled, untortured by the crisping-irons, over
the collar of his velvet jerkin. His eyes were large and very clear,
of the deepest shade of blue, with dark lashes, yet full of strong,
tranquil light. All his features were regular and shapely, but it was
not so much in the beauty of their form, or in the harmony of their
coloring, that the attractiveness of his aspect consisted, as in the
peculiarity and power of his expression.

For a boy of his age, the pensiveness and composure of that expression
were indeed almost unnatural, and they combined with a calm firmness
and immobility of feature, which promised, I know not what of
resolution and tenacity of purpose. It was not gravity, much less
sternness, or sadness, that lent so powerful an expression to that
young face; nor was there a single line which indicated coldness or
hardness of heart, or which would have led to a suspicion that he had
been schooled by those hard monitors, suffering and sorrow. No, it was
pure thoughtfulness, and that of the highest and most intellectual
order, which characterized the boy’s expression.

Yet, though it was so thoughtful, there was nothing in the aspect
whence to forebode a want of the more masculine qualifications. It was
the thoughtfulness of a worker, not of a dreamer--the thoughtfulness
which prepares, not unfits a man for action. If the powers portrayed
in that boy’s countenance were not deceptive to the last degree, high
qualities were within and a high destiny before him.

But who, from the foreshowing and the bloom of sixteen years, may augur
of the finish and the fruit of the threescore-and-ten, which are the
sum of human toil and sorrow?

It was now nearly noon, when the outer drawbridge of the Bastile was
lowered, and its gate opened; and forth rode, two abreast, a troop
of the musquetaires or lifeguard, in the bright steel casques and
cuirases, with the musquetoons, from which they derived their name,
unslung and ready for action. As they issued into the wider space
beyond the bridge, the troopers formed themselves rapidly into a sort
of hollow column, the front of which, some eight file deep, occupied
the whole width of the street, two files in close order composing each
flank, and leaving an open space in the centre completely surrounded by
the horsemen.

Into this space, without a moment’s delay, there was driven a low,
black cart, or hurdle as it was technically called, of the rudest
construction, drawn by four powerful black horses--a savage-faced
official guiding them by the ropes which supplied the place of reins.
On this ill-omened vehicle there stood three persons--the prisoner,
and two of the armed wardens of the Bastile--the former ironed very
heavily, and the latter bristling with offensive weapons.

Immediately in the rear of this car followed another troop of the
lifeguard, which closed up in the densest and most serried order around
and behind the victim of the law, so as to render any attempt at rescue
useless.

The person, to secure whose punishment so strong a military force had
been produced, and to witness whose execution so vast a multitude
was collected, was a tall, noble-looking man of forty or forty-five
years, dressed in a rich mourning-habit of the day, but wearing neither
hat nor mantle. His dark hair, mixed at intervals with thin lines of
silver, was cut short behind, contrary to the usage of the times, and
his neck was bare, the collar of his superbly-laced shirt being folded
broadly back over the cape of his pourpoint.

His face was very pale, and his complexion being naturally of the
darkest, the hue of his flesh, from which all the healthful blood had
receded, was strangely livid and unnatural in its appearance. Still
it did not seem that it was fear which had blanched his cheeks, and
stolen all the color from his compressed lip, for his eye was full of a
fierce, scornful light, and all his features were set and steady with
an expression of the calmest and most iron resolution.

As the fatal vehicle which bore him made its appearance on the
esplanade without the gates of the prison, a deep hum of satisfaction
ran through the assembled concourse, rising and deepening gradually
into a savage howl like that of a hungry tiger.

Then, then blazed out the haughty spirit, the indomitable pride of the
French noble! Then shame, and fear, and death itself, which he was
looking even now full in the face, were all forgotten, all absorbed, in
his overwhelming scorn of the people!

The blood rushed in a torrent to his brow, his eye seemed to lighten
forth actual fire, as he raised his right hand aloft--loaded although
it was with such a mass of iron as a Greek athlete might have shunned
to lift--and shook it at the clamorous mob, with a glare of scorn and
fury that showed how, had he been at liberty, he would have dealt with
the revilers of his fallen state.

“_Sacré canaille!_” he hissed through his hard-set teeth--“back to your
gutters and your garbage; or follow, if you can, in silence, and learn,
if ye lack not courage to look on, how a man should die!”

The reproof told: for, though at the contemptuous tone and fell insult
of the first words, the clamor of the rabble-rout waxed wilder, there
was so much true dignity in the last sentiment he uttered, and the fate
to which he was going was so hideous, that a key was struck in the
popular heart, and thenceforth the tone of the spectators was changed
altogether.

It was the exultation of the people over the downfall and disgrace of
a noble, that had found tongue in that savage conclamation; it was the
apprehension that his dignity, and the interest of his great name,
would win him pardon from the partial justice of the king, that had
rendered them pitiless and savage: and now that their own cruel will
was about to be gratified, as they beheld how dauntlessly the proud
lord went to a death of torture, they were stricken with a sort of
secret shame, and followed the dread train in sullen silence.

As the black car rolled onward, the haughty criminal turned his eyes
upward--perchance from a sentiment of pride, which rendered it painful
to him to meet the gaze, whether pitiful or triumphant, of the Parisian
populace; and as he did so, it chanced that his glance fell on the
group which I have described as assembled at the windows of a mansion
which he knew well, and in which, in happier days, he had passed gay
and pleasant hours. Every eye of that group, with but one exception,
was fixed upon himself, as he perceived on the instant; the lady alone
having turned her head away, as unable to look upon one in such a
strait, whom she had known under circumstances so widely different.
There was nothing, however, in the gaze of all these earnest eyes
that seemed to embarrass, much less to offend, the prisoner. Deep
interest, earnestness, perhaps horror, was expressed by one and all;
but that horror was not, nor in anywise partook of, the abhorrence
which appeared to be the leading sentiment of the populace below.
As he encountered their gaze, therefore, he drew himself up to his
full height, and, laying his right hand upon his heart, bowed low
and gracefully to the windows at which his friends of past days were
assembled.

The boy turned his eye quickly toward his father, as if to note what
return he should make to that strange salutation. If it were so, he did
not remain in doubt a moment, for that nobleman bowed low and solemnly
to his brother-peer with a very grave and sad aspect; and even the
ecclesiastic inclined his head courteously to the condemned criminal.

The boy perhaps marvelled, for a look of bewilderment crossed his
ingenuous features; but it passed away in an instant, and, following
the example of his seniors, he bent his ingenuous brow and sunny locks
before the unhappy man, who never was again to interchange a salute
with living mortal.

It would seem that the recipient of that last act of courtesy was
gratified beyond the expectation of those who offered it, for a faint
flush stole over his livid features, from which the momentary glow of
indignation had now entirely faded, and a slight smile played upon his
pallid lip, while a tear--the last he should ever shed--twinkled for an
instant on his dark lashes. “True,” he muttered to himself approvingly;
“the nobles are true ever to their order!”

The eyes of the mob likewise had been attracted to the group above, by
what had passed, and at first it appeared as if they had taken umbrage
at the sympathy showed to the criminal by his equals in rank; for there
was manifested a little inclination to break out again into a murmured
shout, and some angry words were bandied about, reflecting on the pride
and party spirit of the proud lords.

But the inclination was checked instantly, before it had time to render
itself audible, by a word which was circulated, no one knew whence or
by whom, through the crowded ranks--“Hush! hush! it is the good lord
of St. Renan!” And therewith every voice was hushed--so fickle is the
fancy of a crowd--although it is very certain that four fifths of those
present knew not nor had ever heard the name of St. Renan, nor had the
slightest suspicion what claims he who bore it had on either their
respect or forbearance.

The death-train passed on its way, however, unmolested by any further
show of temper on the part of the crowd; and the crowd itself,
following the progress of the hurdle to the place of execution, was
soon out of sight of the windows occupied by the family of the count de
St. Renan.

“Alas! unhappy Kerguelen!” exclaimed the count, with a deep and painful
sigh, as the fearful procession was lost to sight in the distance. “He
knows not yet half the bitterness of that which he has to undergo.”

The boy looked up into his father’s face with an inquiring glance,
which he answered at once, still in the same subdued and solemn voice
which he had used from the first.

“By the arrangement of his hair and dress I can see that he imagines
he is to die as a nobleman, by the axe. May Heaven support him when he
sees the disgraceful wheel.”

“You seem to pity the wretch, Louis,” cried the lady, who had not
hitherto spoken, nor even looked toward the criminal as he was passing
by the windows--“and yet he was assuredly a most atrocious criminal. A
cool, deliberate, cold-blooded poisoner! Out upon it! out upon it! The
wheel is fifty times too good for him!”

“He was all that you say, Marie,” replied her husband gravely; “and
yet I do pity him with all my heart, and grieve for him. I knew him
well, though we have not met for many years, when we were both young,
and there was no braver, nobler, better man within the limits of fair
France. I know, too, how he loved that woman, how he trusted that
man--and then to be so betrayed! It seems to me but yesterday that he
led her to the altar, all tears of happiness, and soft maiden blushes.
Poor Kerguelen! he was sorely tried.”

“But still, my son, he was found wanting. Had he submitted him as a
Christian to the punishment the good God laid upon him--”

“The world would have pronounced him a spiritless, dishonored slave,
father,” said the count, answering the ecclesiastic’s speech before it
was yet finished, “and gentlemen would have refused him the hand of
fellowship.”

“Was he justified then, my father?” asked the boy eagerly, who had been
listening with eager attention to every word that had yet been spoken.
“Do you think, then, that he was in the right; that he could not do
otherwise than to slay her? I can understand that he was bound to kill
the man who had basely wronged his honor--but a woman!--a woman whom
he had once loved too!--that seems to me most horrible; and the mode,
by a slow poison! living with her while it took effect! eating at the
same board with her! sleeping by her side! that seems even more than
horrible, it was cowardly!”

“God forbid, my son,” replied the elder nobleman, “that I should
say any man was justified who had murdered another in cold blood;
especially, as you have said, a woman, and by a method so terrible
as poison. I only mean exactly what I said, that he was tried very
fearfully, and that under such trial the best and wisest of us here
below can not say how he would act himself. Moreover, it would seem,
that mistaken as he was perhaps in the course which he seems to have
imagined that honor demanded at his hands, he was more mistaken in the
mode which he took of accomplishing his scheme of vengeance. It was
made very evident upon his trial that he did nothing, even to that
wretched traitress, in rage or revenge, but all as he thought in honor.
He chose a drug which consumed her by a mild and gradual decay, without
suffering or spasm; he gave her time for repentance, nay, it is clearly
proved that he convinced her of her sin, reconciled her to the part
he had taken in her death, and exchanged forgiveness with her before
she passed away. I do not think myself that to commit a crime himself
can clear one from dishonor cast upon him by another’s act, but at
the same time I can not look upon Kerguelen’s guilt as of that brutal
and felonious nature which calls for such a punishment as this--to be
broken alive on the wheel, like a hired stabber--much less can I assent
to the stigma which is attached to him on all sides, while that base,
low-lived, treacherous, cogging miscreant, who fell too honorably by
his honorable sword, meets pity--God defend us from such justice and
sympathy!--and is entombed with tears and honors, while the avenger is
crushed, living, out of the very shape of humanity by the hands of the
common hangman.”

The churchman’s lips moved for a moment, as if he were about to speak
in reply to the false doctrines which he heard enunciated by that
upright and honorable man, and good father, but, ere he spoke, he
reflected that those doctrines were held at that time, throughout
Christian Europe, unquestioned, and confirmed by prejudice and pride
beyond all the power of argument or of religion to set them aside, or
invalidate them. The law of chivalry, sterner and more inflexible than
that Mosaic code requiring an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,
which demanded a human life as the sacrifice for every rash word, for
every wrongful action, was the law paramount of every civilized land in
that day, and in France perhaps most of all lands, as standing foremost
in what was then deemed civilization. And the abbé well knew that
discussion of this point would only tend to bring out the opinions of
the count de St. Renan, in favor of the sanguinary code of honor, more
decidedly, and consequently to confirm the mind of the young man more
effectually in what he believed himself to be a fatal error.

The young man, who was evidently very deeply interested in the matter
of the conversation, had devoured every word of his father, as if he
had been listening to the oracles of a God; and, when he ceased, after
a pause of some seconds, during which he was pondering very deeply on
that which he had heard, he raised his intelligent face and said in an
earnest voice--

“I see, my father, all that you have alleged in palliation of the
count’s crime, and I fully understand you--though I still think it the
most terrible thing I ever have heard tell of. But I do not perfectly
comprehend wherefore you ransack our language of all the deepest
terms of contempt which to heap upon the head of the chevalier de la
Rochederrien? He was the count’s sworn friend, she was the count’s
wedded wife; they both were forsworn and false, and both betrayed him.
But in what was the chevalier’s fault the greater or the viler?”

Those were strange days, in which such a subject could have been
discussed between two wise and virtuous parents and a son, whom it
was their chiefest aim in life to bring up to be a good and honorable
man--that son, too, barely more than a boy in years and understanding.
But the morality of those times was coarser and harder, and, if there
was no more real vice, there was far less superficial delicacy in the
manners of society, and the relations between men and women, than there
is now-a-days.

Perhaps the course lies midway; for certainly if there was much
coarseness then, there is much cant and much squeamishness now, which
could be excellently well dispensed with.

Beside this, boys were brought into the great world much earlier at
that period, and were made men of at an age when they would have been
learning Greek and Latin, had their birth been postponed by a single
century.

Then, at fifteen, they held commissions, and carried colors in the
battle’s front, and were initiated into all the license of the court,
the camp, and the forum.

So it came that the discussion of a subject such as that which I
have described, was very naturally introduced even between parents
and a beloved and only son by the circumstances of the day. Morals,
as regards the matrimonial contract, and the intercourse between the
sexes, have at all times been lower and far less rigid among the
French, than in nations of northern origin; and never at any period of
the world was the morality of any country, in this respect, at so low
an ebb as was France under the reign of the Fifteenth Louis.

The count de St. Renan replied, therefore, to his son with as little
restraint as if he had been his equal in age, and equally acquainted
with the customs and vices of the world, although intrigue and crime
were the topics of which he had to treat.

“It is quite true, Raoul,” replied the count, “that so far as the
unhappy lord of Kerguelen was concerned, the guilt of the chevalier de
la Rochederrien was, as you say, no deeper, perhaps less deep than that
of the miserable lady. He was, indeed, bound to Kerguelen by every tie
of friendship and honor; he had been aided by his purse, backed by his
sword, nay, I have heard and believe, that he owed his life to him. Yet
for all that he seduced his wife; and to make it worse, if worse it
could be, Kerguelen had married her from the strongest affection, and
till the chevalier brought misery, and dishonor, and death upon them,
there was no wedded couple in all France so virtuous or so happy.”

“Indeed, sir!” replied Raoul, in tones of great emotion, staring with
his large, dark eyes as if some strange sight had presented itself to
him on a sudden.

“I know well, Raoul, and if you have not heard it yet, you will soon do
so, when you begin to mingle with men, that there are those in society,
_those_ whom the world regards, moreover, as honorable men, who affect
to say that he who loves a woman, whether lawfully or sinfully, is
at once absolved from all considerations except how he most easily
may win--or in other words--ruin her; and consequently such men would
speak slightly of the chevalier’s conduct toward his friend, Kerguelen,
and affect to regard it as a matter of course, and a mere affair of
gallantry! But I trust you will remember this, my son, that there is
nothing _gallant_, nor can be, in lying, or deceit, or treachery of any
kind. And further, that to look with eyes of passion on the wife of a
friend, is in itself both a crime, and an act of deliberate dishonor.”

“I should not have supposed, sir,” replied the boy, blushing very
deeply, partly it might be from the nature of the subject under
discussion, and partly from the strength of his emotions, “that any
cavalier could have regarded it otherwise. It seems to me that to
betray a friend’s honor is a far blacker thing than to betray his
life--and surely no man with one pretension to honor would attempt to
justify that.”

“I am happy to see, Raoul, that you think so correctly on this point.
Hold to your creed, my dear boy, for there are who shall try ere long
to shake it. But be sure that it is the creed of honor. But, although I
think La Rochederrien disgraced himself even in this, it was not for
this only that I termed him, as I deem him, the very vilest and most
infamous of mankind. For when he had led that poor lady into sin; when
she had surrendered herself up wholly to his honor; when she had placed
the greatest trust--although a guilty trust, I admit--in his faith
and integrity that one human being can place in another, the base dog
betrayed her. He boasted of her weakness, of Kerguelen’s dishonor, of
his own infamy.”

“And did not they to whom he boasted of it,” exclaimed the noble boy,
his face flushing fiery red with excitement and indignation, “spurn him
at once from their presence, as a thing unworthy and beyond the pale of
law.”

“No, Raoul, they laughed at him, applauded his gallant success, and
jeered at the lord of Kerguelen.”

“Great heaven! and these were gentlemen!”

“They were called such, at least; gentlemen by name and descent they
were assuredly, but as surely not right gentlemen at heart. Many of
them, however, in cooler moments, spoke of the traitor and the braggart
with the contempt and disgust he merited. Some friend of Kerguelen’s
heard what had passed, and deemed it his duty to inform him. The most
unhappy husband called the seducer to the field, wounded him mortally,
and--to increase yet more his infamy--even in the agony of death the
slave confessed the whole, and craved forgiveness like a dog. Confessed
the _woman’s crime_--you mark me, Raoul!--had he died mute, or died
even with a falsehood in his mouth, as I think he was bound to do in
such extremity, affirming her innocence with his last breath, he had
saved her, and perhaps spared her wretched lord the misery of knowing
certainly the depth of his dishonor.”

The boy pondered for a moment or two without making any answer; and
although he was evidently not altogether satisfied, probably would not
have again spoken, had not his father, who read what was passing in
his mind, asked him what it was that he desired to know further.

Raoul smiled at perceiving how completely his father understood him,
and then said at once, without pause or hesitation:--

“I understand you to say, sir, that you thought the wretched man of
whom we spoke was bound, under the extremity in which he stood, to die
with a falsehood in his mouth. Can a gentleman ever be justified in
saying the thing that is not? Much more, can it be his bounden duty to
do so?”

“Unquestionably, as a rule of general conduct, he can not. Truth is
the soul of honor; and without truth, honor can not exist. But this
is a most intricate and tangled question. It never can arise without
presupposing the commission of one guilty act--one act which no good
or truly moral man would commit at all. It is, therefore, scarcely
worth our while to examine it. But I do say, on my deliberate and grave
opinion, that if a woman, previously innocent and pure, have sacrificed
her honor to a man, that man is bound to sacrifice everything--his life
without a question, and I think his truth also--in order to preserve
her character, so far as he can, unscathed. But we will speak no more
of this; it is an odious subject, and one of which I trust you, Raoul,
will never have the sad occasion to consider.”

“Oh, never, father, never I!” cried the ingenuous boy; “I must first
lose my senses, and become a madman.”

“All men are madmen, Raoul,” said the churchman--who stood in the
relation of maternal uncle to the youth--“who suffer their passions
to have the mastery of them. You must learn, therefore, to be their
tyrant; for if you be not, be well assured that they will be yours--and
merciless tyrants they are to the wretches who become their subjects.”

“I will remember what you say, sir,” answered the boy, “and, indeed,
I am not like to forget it, for altogether this is the saddest day I
ever have passed; and this is the most horrible and appalling story
that I have ever heard told. It was but just that the lord of Kerguelen
should die, for he did a murder; and since the law punishes that in a
peasant, it must do so likewise with a noble. But to break him upon the
wheel!--it is atrocious! I should have thought all the nobles of the
land would have applied to the king to spare him that horror.”

“Many of them did apply, Raoul; but the king, or his ministers in his
name, made answer that during the regency the count Horn was broken
on the wheel for murder, and therefore that to behead the lord of
Kerguelen for the same offence, would be to admit that the count was
wrongfully condemned.”

“Out on it! out on it! what sophistry! Count Horn murdered a banker,
like a common thief, for his gold; and this unhappy lord hath done the
deed for which he must suffer in a mistaken sense of honor, and with
all tenderness compatible with such a deed. There is nothing similar
or parallel in the two cases; and if there were, what signifies it now
to Count Horn, whether he were condemned rightfully or not? Are these
men heathen, that they would offer a victim to the offended manes of
the dead? But is there no hope, my father, that his sentence may be
commuted?”

“None whatever. Let us trust, therefore, that he has died penitent, and
that his sufferings are already over; and let us pray, ere we lay us
down to sleep, that his sins may be forgiven to him, and that his soul
may have rest.”

“Amen!” replied the boy, solemnly, at the same moment that the
ecclesiastic repeated the same word--though he did so, as it would
seem, less from the heart, and more as a matter of course.

Nothing further was said on that subject, and in truth the conversation
ceased altogether. A gloom was cast over the spirits of all present,
both by the imagination of the horrors which were in progress at that
very moment, and by the recollection of the preceding enormities of
which this was but the consummation; but the young viscount Raoul was
so completely engrossed by the deep thoughts which that conversation
had awakened in his mind, that his father, who was a very close
observer, and correct judge of human nature, almost regretted that he
had spoken, and determined, if possible, to divert him from the gloomy
revery into which he had fallen.

“Viscount,” said he, after a silence which had endured now for many
minutes, “when did you last wait upon Mademoiselle Melanie d’Argenson?”

Raoul’s eyes brightened at the name, and again the bright blush, which
I noticed before, crossed his ingenuous features; but this time it was
pleasure, not embarrassment, which colored his young face so vividly.

“I called yesterday, sir,” he answered, “but she was abroad with the
countess, her mother. In truth, I have not seen her since Friday last.”

“Why, that is an age, Raoul! Are you not dying to see her again by this
time? At your age, I was far more gallant.”

“With your permission, sir, I will go now and make my compliments to
her.”

“Not only my permission, Raoul, but my advice to make your best haste
thither. If you go straightways, you will be sure to find her at home,
for the ladies are sure not to have ventured abroad with all this
uproar in the streets. Take Martin the equerry with you, and three of
the grooms. What will you ride--the new Barb I bought for you last
week! Yes! as well him as any; and, hark you, boy, tell them to send
Martin to me first: I will speak to him while you are beautifying
yourself to please the _beaux yeux_ of Mademoiselle Melanie.”

“I am not sure that you are doing wisely, Louis,” said the lady--as her
son left the saloon, her eye following him wistfully--“in bringing
Raoul up as you are doing.”

“Nor I, Marie,” replied her husband, gravely; “we poor, blind mortals
can not be sure of anything, least of all of anything the ends of which
are incalculably distant. But in what particular do you doubt the
wisdom of my method?”

“In talking to him as you do, as though he were a man already; in
opening his eyes so widely to the sins and vices of the world; in
discussing questions with him such as those you spoke of with him but
now. He is a mere boy, you will remember, to hear tell of such things!”

“Boys hear of such things early enough, I assure you--far earlier than
you ladies would deem possible. For the rest, he must hear of them one
day; and I think it quite as well that he should hear of them, since
hear he must, with the comments of an old man, and that old man his
best friend, than find them out by the teachings and judge of them
according to the light views of his young and excitable associates.
He who is forewarned is fore-weaponed. I was kept pure, as it is
termed--or, in other words, kept ignorant of myself and of the world I
was destined to live in--until one fine day I was cut loose from the
apron-strings of my lady-mother, and the tether of my abbé-tutor, and
launched head-foremost into that vortex of temptation and iniquity,
the world of Paris, like a ship without a chart or a compass. A
precious race I ran in consequence, for a time; and if I had not been
so fortunate as to meet you, Marie--whose bright eyes brought me out,
like a blessed beacon, safe from that perilous ocean--I know not but I
should have suffered shipwreck, both in fortune, which is a trifle, and
in character, which is everything. No, no; if that is all in which you
doubt, your fears are causeless.”

“But that is not all. In this you may be right--I know not; at all
events, you are a fitter judge than I! But are you wise in encouraging
so very strongly his fancy for Melanie d’Argenson?”

“I’ faith, it is something more than a fancy, I think: the boy loves
her!”

“I see that, Louis, clearly; and you encourage it.”

“And wherefore should I not? She is a good girl--as good as she is
beautiful!”

“She is an angel!”

“And her mother, Marie, was your most intimate, your bosom friend.”

“And now a saint in heaven!”

“Well, what more? She is as noble as a De Rohan or a Montmorency; she
is an heiress with superb estates adjoining our own lands of St. Renan;
she is, like our Raoul, an only child; and what is the most of all,
I think, although it is not the mode in this dear France of ours to
attach much weight to that, it is no made-up match, no cradle-plighting
between babes--to be made good, perhaps, by the breaking of hearts--but
a genuine, natural, mutual affection between two young, sincere,
innocent, artless persons; and a splendid couple they will make. What
can you see to alarm you in that prospect?”

“Her father.”

“The sieur d’Argenson! Well, I confess, he is not a very charming
person; but we all have our own faults or weaknesses: and, after all,
it is not he whom Raoul is about to marry.”

“I doubt his good faith, very sorely.”

“I should doubt it too, Marie, did I see any cause which should lead
him to break it. But the match is in all respects more desirable for
him than it is for us; for, though Mademoiselle d’Argenson is noble,
rich, and handsome, the viscount de Douarnenez might be well justified
in looking for a wife far higher than the daughter of a simple sieur of
Bretagne. Besides, although the children loved before any one spoke of
it--before any one saw it, indeed, save I--it was D’Argenson himself
who broke the subject. What, then, should induce him to play false?”

“I do not know; yet I doubt--I fear him.”

“But that, Marie, is unworthy of your character--of your mind.”

“Louis, she is _too_ beautiful!”

“I do not think Raoul will find fault with her on that score.”

“Nor would one greater than Raoul.”

“Whom do you mean?” cried the count, now for the first time startled.

“I have seen eyes fixed upon her in deadly admiration, which never
admire but they pollute the object of their admiration.”

“The king’s, Marie?”

“The king’s!”

“And then--?”

“And then I have heard it whispered that the baron de Beaulieu has
asked her hand of the sieur d’Argenson.”

“The baron de Beaulieu! and who the devil is the baron de Beaulieu,
that the sieur d’Argenson should doubt for the nine hundredth part of
a minute between him and the viscount de Douarnenez for the husband of
his daughter?”

“The baron de Beaulieu, count, is the very particular friend, the
right-hand man, and most private minister, of his most Christian
majesty King Louis XV.”

“Ha! is it possible? Do you mean that--”

“I mean even _that_--if, by that, you mean all that is most infamous
and loathsome on the part of Beaulieu, all that is most licentious on
the part of the king. I believe--nay, I am well-nigh sure--that there
is such a scheme of villany on foot against that sweet, unhappy child;
and therefore would I pause ere I urged too far my child’s love toward
her, lest it prove most unhappy and disastrous.”

“And do you think D’Argenson capable--” exclaimed her husband--

“Of anything,” she answered, interrupting him, “of anything that may
serve his avarice or his ambition.”

“Ah! it may be so. I will look to it, Marie; I will look to it
narrowly. But I fear that, if it be as you fancy, it is too late
already; that our boy’s heart is devoted to her entirely; that any
break now, in one word, would be a heart-break!”

“He loves her very dearly, beyond doubt,” replied the lady; “and she
deserves it all, and is, I think, very fond of him likewise.”

“And can you suppose for a moment that she will lend herself to such a
scheme of infamy?”

“Never! She would die sooner.”

“I do not apprehend, then, that there will be so much difficulty as
you seem to fear. This business which brought all of us Bretons up
to Paris, as claimants of justice for our province, or courters of
the king’s grace, as they phrase it, is finished happily; and there
is nothing to detain any of us in this great wilderness of stone and
mortar any longer. D’Argenson told me yesterday that he should set out
homeward on Wednesday next; and it is but hurrying our own preparations
a little to travel with them in one party. I will see him this evening,
and arrange it.”

“Have you ever spoken with him concerning the contract, Louis?”

“Never, directly, or in the form of a solemn proposal. But we have
spoken oftentimes of the evident attachment of the children, and he has
ever expressed himself gratified, and seemed to regard it as a matter
of course. But hush! here comes the boy: leave us a while, and I will
speak with him.”

Almost before his words were ended the door was thrown open, and young
Raoul entered, splendidly dressed, with his rapier at his side, and his
plumed hat in his hand--as likely a youth to win a fair maid’s heart as
ever wore the weapon of a gentleman.

“Martin is absent, sir. He went out soon after breakfast, they tell me,
to look after a pair of fine English carriage-horses for the countess
my mother, and has not yet returned. I ordered old Jean François to
attend me, with the four other grooms.”

“Very well, Raoul. But look you--your head is young, and your blood
hot. You will meet, it is very like, all this canaille returning from
the slaughter of poor Kerguelen. Now mark me, boy, there must be no
vaporing on your part, or interfering with the populace; and even if
they should, as very probably they may, be insolent, and utter outcries
and abuse against the nobility, even bear with them. On no account
strike any person, nor let your servants do so, nor encroach upon their
order; unless, indeed, they should so far forget themselves as to throw
stones, or to strike the first blow.”

“And then, my father?”

“Oh, then, Raoul, you are at liberty to let your good sword feel the
fresh air, and to give your horse a taste of those fine spurs you wear.
But even in that case, I should advise you to use your edge rather
than your point. There is not much harm done in wiping a saucy burgher
across the face to mend his manners, but to pink him through the body
makes it an awkward matter. And I need not tell you by no means to
fire, unless you should be so beset and maltreated that you can not
otherwise extricate yourself; yet you must have your pistols loaded. In
these times it is necessary always to be provided against all things. I
do not, however, tell you these things now because you are likely to be
attacked; but such events are always possible, and one can not provide
against such too early.”

“I will observe what you say, my father. Have I your permission now to
depart?”

“Not yet, Raoul; I would speak with you first a few words. This
Mademoiselle Melanie is very pretty, is she not?”

“She is the most beautiful lady I have ever seen,” replied the youth,
not without some embarrassment.

“And as amiable and gentle as she is beautiful?”

“Oh, yes, indeed, sir. She is all gentleness and sweetness, yet is full
of mirth, too, and graceful merriment.”

“In one word, then, she seems to you a very sweet and lovely creature.”

“Doubtless she does, my father.”

“And I beseech you tell me, viscount, in what light do you appear in
the eyes of this very admirable young lady?”

“Oh, sir!” replied the youth, now very much embarrassed, and blushing
actually from shame.

“Nay, Raoul, I did not ask the question lightly, I assure you, or in
the least degree as a jest. It becomes very important that I should
know on what terms you and this fair lady stand together. You have been
visiting her now almost daily, I think, during these three months last
past. Do you conceive that you are very disagreeable to her?”

“Oh! I hope not, sir. It would grieve me much if I thought so!”

“Well, I am to understand, then, that you think she is not blind to
your merits, sir?”

“I am not aware, my dear father, that I have any merits which she
should be called to observe.”

“Oh, yes, viscount! That is an excess of modesty which touches a
little, I am afraid, on hypocrisy. You are not altogether without
merits. You are young, not ill-looking, nobly born, and will, in God’s
good time, be rich. Then you can ride well, and dance gracefully, and
are not generally ill-educated or unpolished. It is quite as necessary,
my dear son, that a young man should not undervalue himself, as that
he should not think of his deserts too highly. Now, that you have some
merits, is certain--for the rest, I desire frankness of you just now,
and beg that you will speak out plainly. I think you love this young
girl: is it not so, Raoul?”

“I do love her sir, very dearly--with my whole heart and spirit!”

“And do you feel sure that this is not a mere transient liking--that it
will last, Raoul?”

“So long as life lasts in my heart, so long will my love for her last,
my father!”

“And you would wish to marry her?”

“Beyond all things in this world, my dear father.”

“And do you think that, were her tastes and views on the subject
consulted, she would say likewise?”

“I hope she would, sir. But I have never asked her.”

“And her father--is he gracious when you meet him?”

“Most gracious, sir, and most kind; indeed, he distinguishes me above
all the other young gentlemen who visit there.”

“You would not, then, despair of obtaining his consent.”

“By no means, my father, if you would be so kind as to ask it.”

“And you desire that I should do so?”

“You will make me the happiest man in all France, if you will!”

“Then go your way, sir, and make the best you can of it with the young
lady. I will speak myself with the sieur d’Argenson to-night; and I
do not despair any more than you do, Raoul. But look you, boy, you do
not fancy, I hope, that you are going to church with your lady-love
to-morrow or the next day! Two or three years hence, at the earliest,
will be all in very good time. You must serve a campaign or two first,
in order to show that you know how to use your sword.”

“In all things, my dear father, I shall endeavor to fulfil your wishes,
knowing them to be as kindly as they are wise and prudent. I owe you
gratitude for every hour since I was born, but for none so much as for
this, for indeed you are going to make me the happiest of men.”

“Away with you then, Sir Happiness! Betake yourself on the wings of
love to your bright lady; and mind the advice of your favorite, Horace,
to pluck the pleasures of the passing hour, mindful how short is the
sum of mortal life!”

The young man embraced his father gayly, and left the room with a quick
step and a joyous heart; and the jingling of his spurs, and the quick,
merry clash of his scabbard on the marble staircase, told how joyously
he descended its steps.

A moment afterward his father heard the clear, sonorous tones of his
fine voice calling to his attendants, and yet a few seconds later the
lively clatter of his horse’s hoofs on the resounding pavement.

“Alas for the happy days of youth, which are so quickly flown!”
exclaimed the father, as he participated in the hopeful and exulting
mood of his noble boy; “and alas for the promise of mortal happiness,
which is so oft deceitful and a traitress!” He paused for a few
moments, and seemed to ponder, and then added, with a confident and
proud expression: “But I see not why one should forebode aught but
success and happiness to this noble boy of mine. Thus far, everything
has worked toward the end as I would wish it. They have fallen in
love naturally and of their own accord, and D’Argenson, whether he
like it or not, can not help himself. He must needs accede proudly
and joyfully, to my proposal; he knows his estates to be in my power
far too deeply to resist. Nay, more--though he be somewhat selfish,
and ambitious, and avaricious, I know nothing of him that should
justify me in believing that he would sell his daughter’s honor, even
to a king, for wealth or title! My good wife is all too doubtful
and suspicious.--But, hark! here comes the mob, returning from that
unfortunate man’s execution! I wonder how he bore it?”

And with the words he moved toward the window, and, throwing it open,
stepped out upon the spacious balcony. Here he learned speedily, from
the conversation of the passing crowd, that, although dreadfully
shocked and startled by the first intimation of the death he was to
undergo, which he received from the sight of the fatal wheel, the lord
of Kerguelen had died as becomes a proud, brave man, reconciled to the
church, forgiving his enemies, without a groan or a murmur, under the
protracted agonies of that most horrible of deaths, the breaking on the
wheel!

Meanwhile the day passed onward; and when evening came, and the last
and most social meal of the day was laid on the domestic board, young
Raoul had returned from his visit to the lady of his love, full of high
hopes and happy anticipations. Afterward, according to his promise, the
count de St. Renan went forth and held debate until a late hour of the
night with the sieur d’Argenson. Raoul had not retired when he came
home, too restless in his youthful ardor even to think of sleep. His
father brought good tidings: the father of the lady had consented, and
on their arrival in Bretagne the marriage-contract was to be signed in
form.

That was to Raoul an eventful day; and never did he forget it, or the
teachings he drew from it. That day was his fate.


PART II.

The castle of St. Renan, like the dwellings of many of the nobles of
Bretagne and Gascony, was a superb old pile of solid masonry towering
above the huge cliffs which guard the whole of that iron coast with its
gigantic masses of rude masonry. So close did it stand to the verge
of these precipitous crags on its seaward face, that whenever the
wind from the westward blew angrily and in earnest, the spray of the
tremendous billows which rolled in from the wide Atlantic, and burst
in thunder at the foot of those stern ramparts, was dashed so high by
the collision that it would often fall in salt, bitter rain, upon the
esplanade above, and dim the diamond-paned casements with its cold
mists.

For leagues on either side, as the spectator stood upon the terrace
above and gazed out on the expanse of the everlasting ocean, nothing
was to be seen but the salient angles or deep recesses formed by the
dark, gray cliffs, unrelieved by any spot of verdure, or even by that
line of silver sand at their base, which often intervenes between the
rocks of an iron coast and the sea. Here, however, there was no such
intermediate step visible; the black face of the rocks sunk sheer and
abrupt into the water, which, by its dark-green hue, indicated to the
practised eye, that it was deep and scarcely fathomable to the very
shore.

In places, indeed, where huge caverns opening in front to the vast
ocean, which had probably hollowed them out of the earth-fast rock in
the course of succeeding ages, yawned in the mimicry of Gothic arches,
the entering tide would rush, as it were, into the bowels of the land,
roaring and groaning in those strange subterranean dungeons like some
strong prisoner, Typhon, Enceladus, or Ephialtes, in his immortal
agony. One of these singular vaults opened right in the base of the
rock on the summit of which stood the castle of St. Renan, and into
this the billows rushed with rapidity so tumultuous and terrible that
the fishers of that stormy coast avowed that a vortex was created in
the bay by their influx or return seaward, which could be perceived
sensibly at a league’s distance; and that to be caught in it, unless
the wind blew strong and steadily off land, was sure destruction.
However that might be, it is certain that this great subterranean
tunnel extended far beneath the rocks into the interior of the land,
for at the distance of nearly two miles from the castle, directly
eastward, in the bottom of a dark, wooded glen, which runs for many
miles nearly parallel to the coast, there is a deep, rocky well, or
natural cavity, of a form nearly circular, which, when the tide is up,
is filled to overflowing with bitter sea-water, on which the bubbles
and foam-flakes show the obstacles against which it must have striven
in its landward journey. At low water, on the contrary, “the Devil’s
Drinking-Cup,” for so it is named by the superstitious peasantry of
the neighborhood, presents nothing to the eye but a deep, black abyss,
which the countryfolks, of course, assert to be bottomless. But, in
truth, its depth is immense, as can easily be perceived, if you cast
a stone into it, by the length of time during which it may be heard
thundering from side to side, until the reverberated roar of its
descent appears to die away, not because it has ceased, but because the
sound is too distant to be conveyed to human ears.

On this side of the castle everything differs as much as it is possible
to conceive from the view to the seaward, which is grim and desolate
as any ocean scenery the world over. Few sails are ever seen on those
dangerous coasts; all vessels bound to the mouth of the Garonne, or
southward to the shores of Spain, giving as wide a berth as possible to
its frightful reefs and inaccessible crags, which to all their other
terrors add that, from the extraordinary prevalence of the west wind on
that part of the ocean, of being, during at least three parts of the
year, a _lee_ shore.

Inland, however, instead of the bleak and barren surface of the
ever-stormy sea, indented into long rolling ridges and dark tempestuous
hollows, all was varied and smiling, and gratifying to every sense
given by nature for his good to man. Immediately from the brink of the
cliffs the land sloped downward southwardly and to the eastward, so
that it was bathed during all the day, except a few late evening hours,
in the fullest radiance of the sunbeams. Over this immense sloping
descent the eye could range from the castle battlements for miles and
miles, until the rich green champaign was lost in the blue haze of
distance. And it was green and gay over the whole of that vast expanse,
here with the dense and unpruned foliage of immemorial forests, well
stocked with every species of game, from the gaunt wolf and the tusky
boar, to the fleet roebuck and the timid hare; here with the trim and
smiling verdure of rich orchards, in which nestled around their old,
gray shrines the humble hamlets of the happy peasantry; and everywhere
with the long intersecting curves, and sinuous irregular lines of the
old hawthorn hedges, thick set with pollard trees and hedgerow timber,
which make the whole country, when viewed from a height, resemble a
continuous tract of intermingled glades and coppices, and which have
procured for an adjoining district the well-known, and in after-days
far celebrated name of the Bocage.

Immediately around the castle, on the edge as it were of this beautiful
and almost boundless slope, there lay a large and well-kept garden in
the old French style, laid out in a succession of terraces, bordered
by balustrades of marble, adorned at frequent intervals by urns and
statues, and rendered accessible each from the next below by flights
of ornamented steps of regular and easy elevation; pleached bowery
walks, and high clipped hedges of holly, yew, and hornbeam, were the
usual decorations of such a garden, and here they abounded to an extent
that would have gladdened the heart of an admirer of the tastes and
habits of the olden time. In addition to these, however, there were
a profusion of flowers of the choicest kinds known or cultivated in
those days--roses and lilies without number, and honeysuckles, and
the sweet-scented clematis, climbing in bountiful luxuriance over the
numberless seats and bowers which everywhere tempted to repose.

Below this beautiful garden a wide expanse of smooth, green turf,
dotted here and there with majestic trees, and at rarer intervals
diversified with tall groves and verdant coppices, covered the whole
descent of the first hill to the dim wooded dell which has been
mentioned as containing the singular cavity known throughout the
country as the “Devil’s Drinking-Cup.” This dell, which was the limit
of count de St. Renan’s demesnes in that direction, was divided from
the park by a ragged paling many feet in height, and of considerable
strength, framed of rough timber from the woods, the space within being
appropriated to a singular and choice breed of deer, imported from
the East by one of the former counts, who, being of an adventurous
and roving disposition, had sojourned for some time in the French
settlements of Hindostan. Beyond this dell again, which was defended on
the outer side by a strong and lofty wall of brick, all overrun with
luxuriant ivy, the ground rose in a small rounded knoll, or hillock of
small extent, richly wooded, and crowned by the gray turrets and steep
flagged roof of the old château d’Argenson.

This building, however, was as much inferior in size and stateliness
to the grand feudal fortalice of St. Renan, as the little round-topped
hill on which it stood, so slightly elevated above the face of the
surrounding country as to detract nothing, at least in appearance,
from its general slope to the southeastward, was lower than the great
rock-bound ridge from which it overlooked the territories, all of which
had in distant times obeyed the rules of its almost princely dwellers.

The sun of a lovely evening in the latter part of July had already sunk
so far down in the west that only one half of its great golden disk
was visible above the well-defined, dark outline of the seaward-crags,
which, relieved by the glowing radiance of the whole western sky, stood
out massive and solid like a huge purple wall, and seemed so close at
hand that the spectator could almost persuade himself that he had but
to stretch out his arm, in order to touch the great barrier, which was
in truth several miles distant.

Over the crest, and through the gaps of this continuous line of
highland, the long level rays streamed down in the slope in one vast
flood of golden glory, which was checkered only by the interminable
length of shadows which were projected from every single tree, or
scattered clump, from every petty elevation of the soil, down the soft
glimmering declivity.

Three years had elapsed since the frightful fate of the unhappy lord
of Kerguelen, and the various incidents, which in some sort took their
origin from the nature of his crime and its consequence, affecting
in the highest degree the happiness of the families of St. Renan and
D’Argenson.

Three years had elapsed--three years! That is a little space in the
annals of the world, in the life of nations, nay, in the narrow records
of humanity. Three years of careless happiness, three years of indolent
and tranquil ease, unmarked by any great event, pass over our heads
unnoted, and, save in the gray hairs which they scatter, leave no
memorial of their transit, more than the sunshine of a happy summer
day. They are, they are gone, they are forgotten.

Even three years of gloom and sorrow, of that deep anguish which at
the time the sufferer believes to be indelible and everlasting, lag on
their weary, desolate course, and when they too are over-passed, and he
looks back upon their transit, which seemed so painfully protracted,
and, lo! all is changed, and _their_ flight also is now but as an ended
minute.

And yet, what strange and sudden changes altering the affairs of
men, changing the hearts of mortals, yea, revolutionizing their
whole intellects, and overturning their very natures--more than the
devastating earthquake or the destroying lava transforms the face of
the everlasting earth--have not been wrought, and again well nigh
forgotten within that little period.

Three years had passed, I say, over the head of Raoul de
Douarnenez--the three most marked and memorable years in the life of
every young man--and from the ingenuous and promising stripling, he
had now become in every respect a man, and a bold and enterprising
man, moreover, who had seen much and struggled much, and suffered
somewhat--without which there is no gain of his wisdom here below--in
his transit, even thus far, over the billows and among the reefs and
quicksands of the world.

His father had kept his promise to that loved son in all things, nor
had the sieur d’Argenson failed of his plighted faith. The autumn of
that year, the spring of which saw Kerguelen die in unutterable agony,
saw Raoul de Douarnenez the contracted and affianced husband of the
lovely and beloved Melanie.

All that was wanted now to render them actually man and wife, to
create between them that bond which, alone of mortal ties, man can not
sunder, was the ministration of the church’s holiest rite, and that,
in wise consideration of their tender years, was postponed until the
termination of the third summer.

During the interval it was decided that Raoul, as was the custom of
the world in those days, especially among the nobility, and most
especially among the nobility of France, should bear arms in active
service, and see something of the world abroad, before settling down
into the easier duties of domestic life. The family of St. Renan, since
the days of that ancestor who has been already mentioned as having
sojourned in Pondicherry, had never ceased to maintain some relations
with the East Indian possessions of France, and a relation of the house
in no very remote degree was at this time military governor of the
French East Indies, which were then, previous to the unexampled growth
of the British empire in the East, important, flourishing, and full of
future promise.

Thither, then, it was determined that Raoul should go in search of
adventures, if not of fortune, in the spring following the signature
of his marriage contract with the young demoiselle d’Argenson. And,
consequently, after a winter passed in quiet domestic happiness on the
noble estates, whereon the gentry of Brittany were wont to reside in
almost patriarchal state--a winter, every day of which the young lovers
spent in company, and at every eve of which they separated more in love
than they were at meeting in the morning--Raoul set sail in a fine
frigate, carrying several companies of the line, invested with the rank
of ensign, and proud to bear the colors of his king, for the shores of
the still half-fabulous oriental world.

Three years had passed, and the boy had returned a man, the ensign
had returned a colonel, so rapid was the promotion of the nobility of
the sword in the French army, under the ancient regime; and--greatest
change of all, ay, and saddest--the viscount of Douarnenez had returned
count de St. Renan. An infectious fever, ere he had been one year
absent from the land of his birth, and had cut off his noble father in
the very pride and maturity of his intellectual manhood; nor had his
mother lingered long behind him whom she had ever loved so fondly.
A low, slow fever, caught from that beloved patient whom she had so
affectionately nurtured, was as fatal to her, though not so suddenly,
as it had proved to her good lord; and when their son returned to
France full of honors achieved, and gay anticipations for the future,
he found himself an orphan, the lord in lonely and unwilling state of
the superb demesnes which had so long called his family their owners.

There never in the world was a kinder heart than that which beat in the
breast of the young soldier, and never was a family more strictly bound
together by all the kindly influences which breed love and confidence,
and domestic happiness among all the members of it, than that of St.
Renan. There had been nothing austere or rigid in the bringing up of
the gallant boy; the father, who had at one hour been the tutor and
the monitor, was at the next the comrade and the playmate, and at all
times the true and trusted friend, while the mother had been ever the
idolized and adored protectress, and the confidante of all the innocent
schemes and artless joys of boyhood.

Bitter, then, was the blow stricken to the very heart of the young
soldier, when the first tidings which he received, on landing in his
loved France, was the intelligence that those--all those, with but one
exception--whom he most tenderly and truly loved, all those to whom he
looked up with affectionate trust for advice and guidance, all those on
whom he relied for support in his first trials of young manhood, were
cold and silent in the all-absorbing tomb.

To him there was no hot, feverish ambition prompting him to grasp
joyously the absolute command of his great heritage. In his heart there
was none of that fierce yet sordid avarice which finds compensation for
the loss of the scarce-lamented dead in the severance of the dearest
natural bonds, in the possession of wealth, or the promise of power.
Nor was this all, for, in truth, so well had Raoul de Douarnenez been
brought up, and so completely had wisdom grown up with his growth,
that when, at the age of nineteen years, he found himself endowed
with the rank and revenues of one of the highest and wealthiest
peers of France, and in all but mere name his own master--for the
abbé de Chastellar, his mother’s brother, who had been appointed his
guardian by his father’s will, scarcely attempted to exercise even a
nominal jurisdiction over him--he felt himself more than ever at a
loss, deprived as he was, when he most needed it, of his best natural
counsellor; and instead of rejoicing, was more than half inclined
to lament over the almost absolute self-control with which he found
himself invested.

Young hearts are naturally true themselves, and prone to put trust in
others; and it is rarely, except in a few dark and morose and gloomy
natures, which are exceptions to the rule and standard of human nature,
that man learns to be distrustful and suspicious of his kind, even
after experience of fickleness and falsehood may have in some sort
justified suspicions, until his head has grown gray.

And this in an eminent degree was the case with Raoul de St. Renan, for
henceforth he must be called by the title which his altered state had
conferred upon him.

His natural disposition was as trustful and unsuspicious as it was
artless and ingenuous; and from his early youth all the lessons
which had been taught him by his parents tended to preserve in him
unblemished and unbroken that bright gem, which once shattered never
can be restored, confidence in the truth, the probity, the goodness of
mankind.

Some ruder schooling he had met in the course of his service in the
eastern world--he had already learned that men, and--harder knowledge
yet to gain--women also, can feign friendship, ay, and love, where
neither have the least root in the heart, for purposes the vilest,
ends the most sordid. He had learned that bosom friends can be secret
foes; that false loves can betray; and yet he was not disenchanted with
humanity, he had not even dreamed of doubting, because he had fallen
among worldly-minded flatterers and fickle-hearted coquettes, that
absolute friendship and unchangeable love may exist, even in this evil
world, stainless and incorruptible among all the changes and chances of
this mortal life.

If he had been deceived, he had attributed the failure of his hopes
hitherto to the right cause--the fallacy of his own judgment, and the
error of his own choice; and the more he had been disappointed the more
firmly had he relied on what he felt certain could not change, the
affection of his parents, the love of his betrothed bride.

On the very instant of his landing he found himself shipwrecked in his
first hope; and on his earliest interview with his uncle, in Paris, he
had the agony--the utter and appalling agony to undergo--of hearing
that in the only promise which he had flattered himself was yet left to
him, he was destined in all probability to undergo a deeper, deadlier
disappointment.

If Melanie d’Argenson had been a lovely girl, the good abbé said,
when she was budding out of childhood into youth, so utterly had she
outstripped all the promise of her girlhood, that no words could
describe, nor imagination suggest to itself the charms of the mature
yet youthful woman. There was no other beauty named, when loveliness
was the theme, throughout all France, than that of the young betrothed
of Raoul de Douarnenez. And that which was so loudly and so widely
bruited abroad, could not fail to reach the ever open, ever greedy ears
of the vile and sensual tyrant who sat on the throne of France, at that
time heaping upon his people that load of suffering and anguish which
was in after-times to be avenged so bitterly and bloodily upon the
innocent heads of his unhappy descendants.

Louis had, moreover, heard years before, nay, looked upon the nascent
loveliness of Melanie d’Argenson, and, with that cold-blooded
voluptuary, to look on beauty was to lust after it, to lust after it
was to devote all the powers his despotism could command to win it.

Hence as the abbé de Chastellar soon made his unfortunate nephew and
pupil comprehend, a settled determination had arisen on the part of the
odious despot to break off the marriage of the lovely girl with the
young soldier whom it was well known that she fondly loved, and to have
her the wife of one who would be less tender of his honor, and less
reluctant to surrender, or less difficult to be deprived of a bride,
too transcendently beautiful to bless the arms of a subject, even if he
were the noblest of the noble.

All this was easily arranged, the base father of Melanie was willing
enough to sell his exquisite and virtuous child to the splendid infamy
of becoming a king’s paramour, and the yet baser chevalier de la
Rochederrien was eager to make the shameful negotiation easy, and to
sanction it to the eyes of the willingly hoodwinked world, by giving
his name and rank to a woman, who was to be his wife but in name, and
whose charms and virtue he had precontracted to make over to another.

The infamous contract had been agreed upon by the principal actors;
nay, the wages of the iniquity had been paid in advance. The sieur
d’Argenson had grown into the comte of the same, with the governorship
of the town of Morlaix added, by the revenues of which to support his
new dignities; while the chevalier de la Rochederrien had become no
less a personage than the marquis de Ploermel, with a captaincy in
the musquetaires, and Heaven knows what beside of honorary title and
highly-gilded sinecure, whereby to reconcile him to such depth of
sordid infamy as the meanest galley-slave could have scarce undertaken
as the price of exchange between his fetters and his oars, and the
great noble’s splendor.

Such were the tidings which greeted Raoul on his return from honorable
service to his king--service for which he was thus repaid; and, before
he had even time to reflect on the consequences, or to comprehend the
anguish thus entailed upon him, his eyes were opened instantly to
comprehension of two or three occurrences which previously he had been
unable to explain to himself, or even to guess at their meaning by any
exercise of ingenuity. The first of these was the singular ignorance in
which he had been kept of the death of his parents by the government
officials in the East, and the very evident suppression of the letters
which, as his uncle informed him, had been despatched to summon him
with all speed homeward.

The second was the pertinacity with which he had been thrust forward,
time after time, on the most desperate and deadly duty--a pertinacity
so striking, that, eager as the young soldier was, and greedy of any
chance of winning honor, it had not failed to strike him that _he_
was frequently _ordered_ on duty of a nature which, under ordinary
circumstances, is performed by volunteers.

Occurrences of this kind are soon remarked in armies, and it had early
become a current remark in the camp that to serve in Raoul’s company
was a sure passport either to promotion or to the other world. But
to such an extent was this carried, that when time after time that
company had been decimated, even the bravest of the brave experienced
an involuntary sinking of the heart when informed that they were
transferred or even promoted into those fatal ranks.

Nor was this all, for twice it had occurred, once when he was a captain
in command of a company, and again when he had a whole regiment under
his orders as its colonel, that his superiors, after detaching him on
duty so desperate that it might almost be regarded as a forlorn hope,
had entirely neglected either to support or recall him, but had left
him exposed to almost inevitable destruction.

In the first instance, not a man whether officer or private of his
company had escaped, with the exception of himself. And he was found,
when all was supposed to be over, in the last ditch of the redoubt
which he had been ordered to defend to the uttermost, after it had
been retaken, with his colors wrapped around his breast, still
breathing a little, although so cruelly wounded that his life was long
despaired of, and was only saved at last by the vigor and purity of
an unblemished and unbroken constitution. On the second occasion, he
had been suffered to contend alone for three entire days with but a
single battalion against a whole oriental army; but then, that which
had been intended to destroy him had won him deathless fame, for by a
degree of skill in handling his little force, which had by no means
been looked for in so young an officer, although his courage and his
conduct were both well known, he had succeeded in giving a bloody
repulse to the overwhelming masses of the enemy, and when at length he
was supported--doubtless when support was deemed too late to avail him
aught--by a few hundred native horse and a few guns, he had converted
that check into a total and disastrous route.

So palpable was the case that although Raoul suspected nothing of the
reasons which had led to that disgraceful affair, he had demanded
an inquiry into the conduct of his superior; and that unfortunate
personage being clearly convicted of unmilitary conduct, and having
failed in the end which would have justified the means in the eyes
of the voluptuous tyrant, was ruthlessly abandoned to his fate, and
actually died on the scaffold with a gag in his mouth, as did the
gallant Lally a few years afterward to prevent his revelation of the
orders which he had received and for obeying which he perished.

All this, though strange and even extraordinary, had failed up to this
moment to awaken any suspicion of undue or treasonable agency in the
mind of Raoul.

But now as his uncle spoke the scales fell from his eyes, and he saw
all the baseness, all the villany of the monarch and his satellites, in
its true light.

“Is it so? Is it, indeed, so?” he said mournfully. And it really
appeared that grief at detecting such a dereliction on the part of
his king, had a greater share in the feelings of the noble youth than
indignation or resentment. “Is it indeed so?” he said; “and could
neither my father’s long and glorious services, nor my poor conduct,
avail aught to turn him from such infamy? But tell me,” he continued,
the blood now mounting fiery red to his pale face, “tell me this,
uncle, is she true to me? is she pure and good? Forgive, me, Heaven,
that I doubt her; but in such a mass of infamy where may a man look for
faith or virtue? Is Melanie true to me, or is she, too, consenting to
this scheme of infamous and loathsome guilt?”

“She was true, my son, when I last saw her,” replied the good
clergyman; “and you may well believe that I spared no argument to urge
her to hold fast to her loyalty and faith, and she vowed then, by all
that was most dear and holy, that nothing should induce her ever to
become the wife of Rochederrien. But they carried her off into the
province, and have immured her, I have heard men say, almost in a
dungeon, in her father’s castle, for now above a twelvemonth. What has
fallen out no one as yet knows certainly; but it is whispered now that
she has yielded, and the court scandal goes that she has either wedded
him already, or is to do so now within a few days. It is said that they
are looked for ere the month is out in Paris.”

“Then I will to horse, uncle,” replied Raoul, “before this night is two
hours older for St. Renan.”

“Great Heaven! to what end, Raoul? For the sake of all that is good--by
your father’s memory--I implore you, do nothing rashly!”

“To know of my own knowledge if she be true or false, uncle.”

“And what matters it, Raoul? My boy, my unhappy boy! False or true, she
is lost to you alike, for ever! You have that against which to contend,
which no human energy can conquer.”

“I know not the thing which human energy can not conquer, uncle! It
is years now ago that my good father taught me this--that there is no
such word as _cannot_! I have proved it before now, uncle-abbé: I may,
should I find it worth the while, prove it again, and that shortly. If
so, let the guilty and the traitors look to themselves--they were best,
for they shall need it!”

Such was the state of St. Renan’s affections and his hopes when he
left the gay capital of France, within a few hours after his arrival,
and hurried down at the utmost speed of man and horse into Bretagne,
whither he made his way so rapidly, that the first intimation his
people received of his return from the East was his presence at the
gates of the castle.

Great, as may be imagined, was the real joy of the old, true-hearted
servitors of the house, at finding their lord thus unexpectedly
restored to them, at a time when they had in fact almost abandoned
every hope of seeing him again. The same infernal policy which had
thrust him so often, as it were, into the very jaws of death--which had
intercepted all the letters sent to him from home, and taken, in one
word, every step that ingenuity could suggest to isolate him altogether
in that distant world--had taken measures as deep and iniquitous at
home to cause him to be regarded as one dead, and to obliterate all
memory of his existence.

Three different times reports so circumstantial, and accompanied
by such minute details of time and place, as to render it almost
impossible for men to doubt their authenticity, had been circulated
with regard to the death of the young soldier; and as no tidings had
been received of him from any more direct source, the last news of his
fall had been generally received as true, no motive appearing why it
should be discredited.

His appearance, therefore, at the castle of St. Renan, was hailed as
that of one who had been lost and was now found--of one who had been
dead, and lo! he was alive. The banc-loche of the old feudal pile rang
forth its blithest and most jovial notes of greeting; the banner, with
the old armorial bearings of St. Renan, was displayed upon the keep;
and a few light pieces of antique artillery--falcons, and culverins,
and demi-cannon, which had kept their places on the battlements since
the days of the leagues--sent forth their thunders far and wide over
the astonished country.

So generally, however, had the belief of Raoul’s death been circulated,
and so absolute had been the credence given to the rumor, that when
those unwonted sounds of rejoicing were heard to proceed from the
long-silent walls of St. Renan, men never suspected that the lost heir
had returned to enjoy his own again, but fancied that some new master
had established his claim to the succession, and was thus celebrating
his investiture with the rights of the counts of St. Renan.

Nor was this wonderful, for ocular proof was scarcely enough to satisfy
the oldest retainers of the family of the young lord’s identity; and
indeed ocular proof was rendered in some sort dubious by the great
alteration which had taken place in the appearance of the personage in
question.

Between the handsome stripling of sixteen and the grown man of twenty
summers there is a greater difference than the same lapse of time
will produce at any other period of human life. And this change had
been rendered even greater than usual by the burning climate to which
Raoul had been exposed, by the stout endurance of fatigues which had
prematurely enlarged and hardened his youthful frame, and above all by
the dark experience which had spread something of the thoughtful cast
of age over the smooth and gracious lineaments of boyhood.

When he left home, the viscount de Douarnenez was a slight, slender,
graceful stripling, with a fair, delicate complexion, a profusion of
light hair waving in soft curls over his shoulders, a light, elastic
step, and a frame which, though it showed the promise already of
strength to be attained with maturity, was conspicuous as yet for ease,
and agility, and pliability, rather than for power or robustness.

On his return, he had lost, it is true, no jot of his gracefulness
or ease of demeanor, but he had shot up and expanded into a tall,
broad-shouldered, round-chested, thin-flanked man, with a complexion
burned to the darkest hue of which a European skin is susceptible, and
which perhaps required the aid of the full, soft blue eye to prove it
to be European--with a glance as quick, as penetrating, and at the same
time as calm and steady, as that of the eagle when he gazes undazzled
at the noontide splendor.

His hair had been cut short to wear beneath the casque, which was
still carried by cavaliers, and had grown so much darker, that this
alteration alone would have gone far to defy the recognition of his
friends. He wore a thick, dark mustache on his upper lip, and a large
“royal,” which we should now-a-days call an “imperial,” on his chin.

The whole aspect and expression of face, moreover, was altered,
even in a greater degree than his complexion or his person. All the
quick, sparkling play and mobility of feature, the sharp flash of
rapidly-succeeding sentiments and strong emotions, expressed on the
ingenuous face as soon as they were conceived within the brain--all
these had disappeared completely--disappeared, never to return.

The grave composure of the thoughtful, self-possessed, experienced
soldier, sufficient in himself to meet every emergency, every
alternation of fortune, had succeeded the imaginative, impulsive ardor
of the impetuous, gallant boy.

There was a shadow, too, a heavy shadow of something more than thought;
for it was, in truth, deep, real, heartfelt melancholy, which lent an
added gloom to the cold fixity of eye and lip--which had obliterated
all the gay and gleeful flashes which used, from moment to moment, to
light up the countenance so speaking and so frank in its disclosures.

Yet it would have been difficult to say whether Raoul de St.
Renan--grave, dark, and sorrowful, as he now showed--was not both a
handsomer and more attractive person than he had been in his earlier
days, as the gay and thoughtless viscount de Douarnenez.

There was a depth of feeling as well as of thought now perceptible
in the pensive brow and calm eye; and if the ordinary expression of
those fine and placid lineaments was fixed and cold, that coldness and
rigidity vanished when his face was lighted up by a smile, as quickly
as the thin ice of an April morning melts away before the first glitter
of the joyous sunbeams. Nor were these smiles rare or forced, though
not now as habitual as in those days of youth unalloyed by calamity,
and unsunned by passion, which, once departed, never can return in this
world!

The morning of the young lord’s arrival passed gloomily enough. It was
the very height of summer, it is true, and the sun was shining his
brightest over field, and tree, and tower, and everything appeared to
partake of the delicious influence of the charming weather, and to put
on its blithest and most radiant apparel.

Never perhaps had the fine grounds with their soft, mossy, sloping
lawns, tranquil, brimful waters, and shadowy groves of oak and
elm--great, immemorial trees--looked lovelier than they did that day to
greet their long-absent master.

But, inasmuch as nothing in this world is more delightful, nothing
more unmixed in its means of conveying pleasure, than the return,
after long wanderings in foreign climes, among vicissitudes, and
cares, and sorrows, to an unchanged and happy home, where the same
faces are assembled to smile on your late return which wept at your
departure--so nothing can be imagined sadder or more depressing to the
spirit than, so returning, to find all things inanimate unchanged, or
if changed, more beautiful and brighter for the alteration, but all the
living, breathing, sentient creatures--the creatures whose memory has
cheered our darkest days of sorrow, whose love we desire most to find
unaltered--gone, never to return, swallowed by the cold grave, deaf,
silent, unresponsive to our fond affection!

Such was St. Renan’s return to the house of his fathers. Until a few
short days before, he had pictured to himself his father’s moderate
and manly pleasure, his mother’s holy kiss and chastened rapture at
beholding once again, at clasping to her happy bosom, the son, whom she
sent forth a boy, returned a man worthy the pride of the most ambitious
parent.

All this Raoul de St. Renan had anticipated, and bitter, bitter was the
pang when he perceived all this gay and glad anticipation thrown to the
winds irreparably.

There was not a room in the old house, not a view from a single window,
not a tree in the noble park, not a winding curve of a trout-stream
glimmering through the coppices, but was in some way connected with his
tenderest and most sacred recollections--but had a memory of pleasant
hours attached to it--but recalled the sound of the kindliest and
dearest words, couched in the sweetest tones--the sight of persons but
to think of whom made his heart thrill and quiver to its inmost core.

And for hours he had wandered through the long, echoing corridors, the
stately and superb saloons, feeling their solitude as if it had been
actual presence weighing upon his soul, and peopling every apartment
with the phantoms of the loved and lost.

Thus had the day lagged onward; and, as the sun stooped toward the
west, darker and sadder had become the young man’s fancies, and he felt
as if his last hope were about to fade out with the fading light of the
declining day-god. So gloomy, indeed, were his thoughts--so sadly had
he become inured to wo within the last few days--so certainly had the
reply to every question he had asked been the very bitterest and most
painful he could have met--that he had, in truth, lacked the courage to
assure himself of that on which he could not deny to himself that his
last hope of happiness depended. He had not ventured yet to ask even of
his own most faithful servants whether Melanie d’Argenson--who was, he
well knew, living scarcely three bow-shots distant from the spot where
he stood--was true to him--was a maiden or a wedded wife!

And the old servitors, well aware of the earnest love which had existed
between the young people, and of the contract which had been entered
into with the consent of all parties, knew not how their young master
now stood affected toward the lady, and consequently feared to speak on
the subject.

At length, when he had dined some hours, while he was sitting with the
old bailiff, who had been endeavoring to seduce him into an examination
of I know not what of rents and leases, dues and droits, seignorial and
manorial--while the bottles of ruby-colored Bordeaux wine stood almost
untouched before them--the young man made an effort, and raising his
head suddenly after a long and thoughtful silence, asked his companion
whether the comte d’Argenson was at that time resident at the château.

“Oh, yes, monseigneur,” the old man returned immediately, “he has been
here all the summer, and the château has been full of gay company from
Paris. Never such times have been known in my days: hawking-parties one
day, and hunting-matches the next, and music and balls every night,
and cavalcades of bright ladies, and cavaliers all ostrich-plumes and
cloth of gold and tissue, that you would think our old woods here were
converted into fairy-land. The young lady Melanie was wedded only
three days since to the marquis de Ploermel; but you will not know him
by that name, I trow: he was the chevalier only--the chevalier de la
Rochederrien--when you were here before.”

“Ah, they _are_ wedded, then,” replied the youth, mastering his
passions by a terrible exertion, and speaking of what rent his very
heartstrings asunder, as if it had been a matter which concerned him
not so much even as a thought; “I heard it was about to be so shortly,
but knew not that it had yet taken place.”

“Yes, monseigneur, three days since; and it is very strangely thought
of in the country, and very strange things are said on all sides
concerning it.”

“As what, Matthieu?”

“Why, the marquis is old enough to be her father, or some say her
grandfather, for that matter; and little Rosalie, her fille-de-chambre,
has been telling all the neighborhood that Mademoiselle Melanie hated
him with all her heart and soul, and would far rather die than go to
the altar as his bride.”

“Pshaw! is that all, good Matthieu?” answered the youth, very
bitterly--“is that all? Why, there is nothing strange in that; that is
an every-day event. A pretty lady changes her mind, breaks her faith,
and weds a man she hates and despises! Well! that is perfectly in
rule; that is precisely what is done every day at court! If you could
tell just the converse of this tale--that a beautiful woman had kept
her inclinations unchanged, her faith unbroken, her honor pure and
bright--that she had rejected a rich man or a powerful man because he
was base or bad, and wedded a poor and honorable one because she loved
him--then, indeed, my good Matthieu, you would be telling something
that would make men open their eyes wide enough, and marvel what should
follow. Is this all that you call strange?”

“You are jesting at me, monseigneur, for that I am country bred,”
replied the steward, staring at his youthful master with big eyes of
astonishment; “you can not mean that which you say!”

“I do mean precisely what I say, my good friend; and I never felt less
like jesting in the whole course of my life. I know that you good
folk down here in the quiet country judge of these things as you have
spoken; but that is entirely on account of your ignorance of court
life, and what is now termed nobility. What I tell you is strictly
true: that falsehood, and intrigue, and lying--that daily sales of
honor--that adultery and infamy of all kinds--are every-day occurrences
in Paris; and that the wonders of the time are truth and sincerity, and
keeping faith and honor! This, I doubt not, seems strange to you, but
it in true for all that.”

“At least, it is not our custom down here in Bretagne,” returned the
old man, “and that, I suppose, is the reason why it appears to be so
extraordinary to us here. But you will not say, I think, monsieur le
comte, that what else I shall tell you is nothing strange or new.”

“What else will you tell me, Matthieu? Let us hear it, and then I shall
be better able to decide.”

“Why, they say, monseigneur, that she is no more the marquis de
Ploermel’s wife than she is yours or mine, except in name alone;
and that he does not dare to kiss her hand, much less her lips; and
that they have separate apartments, and are, as it were, strangers
altogether; and that the reason of all this is, that Ma’mselle Melanie
is never to be his wife at all, but that she is to go to Paris in a few
days, and to become the king’s mistress! Will you tell me that this is
not strange--and more than strange, infamous--and dishonoring to the
very name of man and woman?”

“Even in this, were it true, there would be nothing, I am grieved to
say, very wondrous now-a-days--for there have been several base and
terrible examples of such things, I am told, of late; for the rest, I
must sympathize with you in your disgust and horror of such doings,
even if I prove myself thereby a mere country hobereau, and no man of
the world, or of fashion. But you must not believe all these things to
be true which you hear from the country gossips,” he added, desirous
still of shielding Melanie, so long as her guilt should be in the
slightest possible degree doubtful, from the reproach which seemed
already to attach to her. “I hardly can believe such things possible
of so fair and modest a demoiselle as the young lady of D’Argenson:
nor is it easy to me to believe that the count would consent to any
arrangement so disgraceful, or that the chevalier de la Rocheder--I
beg his pardon, the marquis de Ploermel, would marry a lady for such
an infamous object. I think, therefore, good Matthieu, that, although
there would not even in this be anything very wonderful, it is yet
neither probable nor true.”

“Oh, yes, it is true! I am well assured that it is true, monseigneur,”
replied the old man, shaking his head obstinately; “I do not believe
that there is much truth or honor in this lady either, or she would not
so easily have broken one contract, or forgotten one lover!”

“Hush, hush, Matthieu!” cried Raoul, “you forget that we were mere
children at that time; such early troth plightings are foolish
ceremonials at the best; besides, do you not see that you are
condemning me also as well as the lady?”

“Oh, that is different--that is quite different!” replied the old
steward, “gentlemen may be permitted to take some little liberties
which with ladies are not allowable. But that a young demoiselle should
break her contract in such wise is disgraceful.”

“Well, well, we will not argue it to-night, Matthieu,” said the young
soldier, rising and looking out of the great oriel window over the
sunshiny park; “I believe I will go and walk out for an hour or two and
refresh my recollections of old times. It is a lovely afternoon as I
ever beheld in France or elsewhere.”

And with the word he took up his rapier which lay on a slab near the
table at which he had been sitting, and hung it to his belt, and then
throwing on his plumed hat carelessly, without putting on his cloak,
strolled leisurely out into the glorious summer evening.

For a little while he loitered on the esplanade, gazing out toward
the sea, the ridgy waves of which were sparkling like emeralds tipped
with diamonds in the grand glow of the setting sun. But ere long he
turned thence with a sigh, called up perhaps by some fancied similitude
between that bright and boundless ocean, desolate and unadorned even
by a single passing sail, and his own course of life so desert,
friendless, and uncompanioned.

Thence he strolled listlessly through the fine garden, inhaling the
rare odors of the roses, hundreds of which bloomed on every side of
him, there in low bushes, there in trim standards, and not a few
climbing over tall trellices and bowery alcoves in one mass of living
bloom. He saw the happy swallows darting and wheeling to and fro
through the pellucid azure, in pursuit of their insect prey. He heard
the rich mellow notes of the blackbirds and thrushes, thousands and
thousands of which were warbling incessantly in the cool shadow of
the yew and holly hedges. But his diseased and unhappy spirit took no
delight in the animated sounds, or summer-teeming sights of rejoicing
nature. No, the very joy and merriment, which seemed to pervade all
nature, animate or inanimate around him, while he himself had no
present joys to elevate, no future promises to cheer him, rendered him,
if that were possible, darker and gloomier, and more mournful.

The spirits of the departed seemed to hover about him, forbidding him
ever again to admit hope or joy as an inmate to his desolate heart;
and, wrapt in these dark phantasies, with his brow bent, and his eyes
downcast, he wandered from terrace to terrace through the garden, until
he reached its farthest boundary, and then passed out into the park,
through which he strolled, almost unconscious whither, until he came
to the great deer-fence of the utmost glen, through a wicket of which,
just as the sun was setting, he entered into the shadowy woodland.

Then a whole flood of wild and whirling thoughts rushed over his brain
at once. He had strolled without a thought into the very scene of
his happy rambles with the beloved, the faithless, the lost Melanie.
Carried away by a rush of inexplicable feelings, he walked swiftly
onward through the dim wildwood path toward the Devil’s Drinking-Cup.
He came in sight of it--a woman sat by its brink, who started to her
feet at the sound of his approaching footsteps.

It was Melanie--alone--and if his eyes deceived him not, weeping
bitterly.

She gazed at him, at the first, with an earnest, half-alarmed,
half-inquiring glance, as if she did not recognise his face, and,
perhaps, apprehended rudeness, if not danger, from the approach of a
stranger.

Gradually, however, she seemed in part to recognise him. The look of
inquiry and alarm gave place to a fixed, glaring, icy stare of unmixed
dread and horror; and when he had now come to within six or eight paces
of her, still without speaking, she cried, in a wild, low voice--

“Great God! great God! has he come up from the grave to reproach me! I
am true, Raoul; true to the last, my beloved!”

And with a long, shivering, low shriek, she staggered, and would have
fallen to the earth had he not caught her in his arms.

But she had fainted in the excess of superstitious awe, and perceived
not that it was no phantom’s hand, but a most stalwart arm of human
mould that clasped her to the heart of the living Raoul de St. Renan.


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.

“_Madre di Dio_,” he exclaimed at length, “what a night is here; a
thousand curses on this learned fool, that he must dwell in such a
den of thieves as this; or rather a thousand curses on the blind and
heretical Scots, that drive a man of wisdom, beyond their shallow
comprehension, to bed with the very outcasts of society. Pietro, what
ho!” and he raised his voice above the key in which he had pitched
his soliloquy, “knowest thou the dwelling of this sage--this Johan
Damietta? methought that I had noted the spot, yet have these sordid
lanes banished the recollection. _Presto_, time fails already.”

Without uttering a syllable in reply, the page sprung from his horse,
and pointed to the doorway of a mansion, dilapidated even more than
those in its vicinity, yet bearing in its site the marks of having
been constructed in former days for the residence of some proud baron.
Nor even now--although all the appliances of comfort were utterly
neglected, although the casements were void of glass, and the chimneys
sent up no volumes from a cheerful hearth--were the external defences
of the pile forgotten; heavy bars of iron crossed and recrossed the
deep-set embrasure which once had held the windows, and the oaken
gate was clenched with many a massive nail and plate of rusted iron.
The cavalier alighted, cast the rein to his servitor, and with the
single word “Prudence,” ascended the stone steps, and struck thrice at
measured intervals upon the wicket with his rapier’s hilt. The door
flew open, but without the agency, as it appeared, of any living being,
and, as the visiter entered, was closed again behind him with a heavy
crash.

A narrow passage was before him, scarcely rendered visible by the
flickering light of a cresset suspended from the ceiling, and
nourished, as it seemed, with spirit, rather than with the richer
food of oil. Uncertain, however, as was the illumination, it served
to show a second door, even more strongly constructed than the first,
fronting the intruder at the distance of some ten paces; while the
wall, perforated with loops for musketry, or more probably, if the
remote antiquity of the building were considered, for arrows, proved
that the hostile intruder had effected but little in forcing his way
through the outward entrance. It would be wrong, in the description
of this difficult passage, to omit the mention of certain orifices, or
slits, extending in length from the floor even to the ceiling of the
side-walls, but not exceeding a single inch in width, as they may tend
perhaps to cast some light upon an invention of the darkest ages of
Scottish history, the reality of which has been considered doubtful by
acute antiquarians. From the upper extremity of these slits protruded
on either side the blades of six enormous swords, which, being placed
alternately, and worked by some concealed machinery, must inevitably
hew to atoms, when once set in motion, any obstacle to their appalling
sway. This was the dreaded swordmill first discovered by the wizard
baron Soulis, and thence invested with superstitious error, which was
needless, at the least, when the actual horrors of the engine were
considered. It is, however, probable, that these gigantic relics of an
earlier age were no longer capable of being rendered available at the
period of which we write; at all events they hung in rusty blackness,
suspended like the sword of Damocles above the head of the intruder,
rendering his position awful, at least, if not in reality insecure.

Notwithstanding the warlike and turbulent character of Scotland during
the reign of Mary, there was nevertheless enough of the uncommon in
the defences of this dark and dangerous entrance to have riveted
the attention of a man less anxiously engaged than was the foreign
cavalier. Apparently undismayed by the wild contrivances around him,
the gallant strode forward to repeat his signal on the inner wicket,
when a broad glare of crimson light, produced by some chemical
preparation, considered in that dark age supernatural, was shot into
his very face from an aperture above, clearly displaying to some
concealed observer the form and features of his visiter.

“Ha!” cried a voice so shrill and grating as to produce a painful
impression on the nerves of the hearer. “Thou art come hither, Sir
Italian; enter, then--enter in the name of Albunazar!--enter, the hour
is propitious, and thou art waited for!”

The door revolved noiselessly on its hinges, and a few steps brought
the Italian to the chamber of the sage. It was a small and central
cell, without the slightest visible communication with the outward
air. Books of strange characters and instruments of singular device
were scattered on the floor, the tables, and the seats; astrolabes,
globes of the terrestrial and celestial world, crucibles, and vials
of rare and potent mixtures, lay beside discolored bones, reptiles,
and loathsome things from tropical climes, some stuffed, and others
carefully preserved in spirit. A huge furnace glimmered in the corner,
covered with vessels containing, doubtless, alembics of unearthly
power; a large black cat--to which inoffensive animal wild notions
of infernal origin were then attached--and a gigantic owl, perched
on a fleshless skull, completed the ornaments of this receptacle of
superstitious quackery, which was rendered as light as day by the aid
of some composition, burning in a lamp so brilliantly as to dazzle
the firmest eye. In the midst of this confused assemblage of things,
useless and revolting alike to reason and humanity, the master-spirit
of his tribe was seated--a small old man, whose massive forehead,
pencilled with the deep lines of thought, would have betokened a
profound and powerful mind, had not the quick flash of the small and
deeply-seated eye belied, by its crafty and malignant glances, all
symptoms of a noble nature.

“Hail, Signor David!” he said, but without raising his eyes from the
retort over which he was poring. “Hail! methought that thou didst hold
the wisdom of the sage mere quackery! Ha! out upon such changeful,
feather-pated knaves, who scoff before men at that which they
respect--ay, which they tremble at in private!--tremble! well mayst
thou tremble--for thy doom is fixed! See,” he cried, in a fearfully
unnatural tone, as he raised the metallic rod with which he had been
stirring the contents of the glass vessel, and exhibited it dripping
with some crimson-colored liquid--“see! it is gore--thy gore, Signor
David!--ha, ha, ha!” and he laughed with fiendish glee at the evident
discomposure of his guest.

“Nay, nay, good father--” he began, when the other cut him off
abruptly--

“‘Good father!’--ha, ha, ha! Good devil! Fool, dost think that thou
canst change the destinies that were eternal, before so vain a thing as
thou wast in existence, by thine unmeaning flatteries? I spit upon such
courtesies! ‘Good father!’ listen to my words, and mark if I be good.
Thou hast risen by meanness, and flattery, and cringing, and vice;
thou hast disgraced thy rise by insolence and folly--weak, drivelling
folly; and thou shalt fall--ha, ha, ha!--fall like a dog! Look to
thyself!--‘Good father!’ Begone, or thou shalt hear more, and that
which thou wilt like even less than this--begone!”

“I meant not to offend thee,” replied the astonished courtier, “and I
pray thee be not distempered. I have broken in on thy retirement to
witness that unearthly skill of which men speak, and I would ask of
thee in courtesy mine horoscope, that I may so report thee--”

“Thou! thou report me, David Rizzio! the wire-pinching,
sonned-jingling, base-born scullion, report of Johan Damietta! Get thee
away! I know thee! Begone--nay, if thou wilt have it, listen: bloody
shall be thine end, and base. A bastard foeman is in thy house of life.
Tremble at the name--”

“Rather,” interrupted the Italian, enraged at the language of the
conjurer, “rather let that bastard tremble at the name of Rizzio; and
thou, old man, I leave thee as I came, undaunted by thy threats, and
unconvinced by thy jugglery.”

“To-night! to-night!” hissed the old man, in notes of horrible
malignity--“to-night shalt thou know if Damietta be a juggler! If thou
wouldst live--for I would have thee live, poor worm--fly from the
hatred of the Scottish nobles!--away!”

“Know’st thou,” asked Rizzio, tauntingly, “a Scottish proverb--if not,
I will instruct thee--framed, if I read it rightly, to express the
character of their own factious brawlers? ‘The bark is aye waur than
the bite.’ Adieu, old man! to-morrow thou shalt learn if Rizzio fears
or thee or thy most doughty brawlers.”

“Ha, ha, ha!--to-morrow! mark that--to-morrow!” and a yell of laughter
burst from every corner of the chamber; the mixture in the retort
exploded with a stunning crash, the lights were extinguished, and,
without being aware of the manner of his exit, the royal secretary
found himself beyond the outer gate of the wizard’s dwelling, with
a throbbing pulse and swimming brain, but still, to do him justice,
undismayed by that which his naturally incredulous and sneering turn
of mind, rather than any clear conviction of the truth, led him to
consider as a mere imposture.

Without replying a syllable to the inquiries of the terrified page,
who had heard the frightful sounds within, he flung himself into his
saddle, plunged the rowels into the flanks of the jennet until she
reared and plunged with terror, and dashed homeward at a fearful rate
through alleys now as dark as midnight. Nor did he draw his bridle till
he had passed the guarded portals of the palace, and galloped into the
inmost court of Holyrood: there indeed he checked his courser with a
violence which almost hurled her on her haunches, sprang from her back,
and, without looking round, hurried into the most private entrance, and
disappeared.

Scarcely had he passed through the gateway, and ere yet the page
had left the courtyard with the horses, when the sentinel, who had
permitted the well-known secretary of the queen to pass unquestioned,
brought down his partisan to the charge, and challenged, as a tall
figure, whose clanging step announced him to be sheathed in armor
cap-à-pie, muffled in a dark mantle, with a hood like that worn by the
Romish priesthood drawn close around his head, approached him.

“Stand, ho! the word--”

“Another word, and thou never speakest more!” replied the other, in a
hoarse, rapid whisper, offering a petronel, cocked, and his finger on
the trigger, at the very throat of the astonished soldier; “the king
requires no password!”

“The king?” replied the sentinel, doubtfully, “the king?--I know not,
nor would I willingly offend; but thou art not, methinks, his majesty.”

“Take that, thou fool, to settle all thy doubts!” cried the other,
in the same deep whisper as before; while, casting his weapon into
the air, he caught it by the muzzle as it turned over, and sunk the
loaded butt deep into the forehead of the unwary sentinel. The whole
was scarcely the work of an instant; and ere the heavy body could fall
to earth, the ready hand of the assailant had caught it, and suffered
it to drop so gently as to create no sound. In another moment he was
joined by three or four other persons similarly disguised, and followed
by a powerful guard of spearmen. A heavy watch of these was posted
at the principal gateway, and knots of others were disposed around
the court at every private entrance, with orders to let none pass on
any pretext whatsoever. “Warn them to stand back twice! the third
time kill!” was the muttered order of the chief actor in the previous
tragedy. “So far, my liege, all’s well!” he continued, turning with
an air of some respect to another of the muffled figures, of a port
somewhat less commanding than his own huge proportions; “and Morton
must, ere this, have seized all the remaining avenues.” While he
was yet speaking, a slight bustle was heard at a distance, and in a
second’s space they were joined by him of whom they spoke.

“How goes the business, Morton?” said the first speaker.

“All well!--the gates are ours, and not a soul disturbed; the villain
sentinels laid down their arms at once, and are even now in ward! Let
us be doing: a deed like this permits of no delay!”

“On, friends! Be silent, and be certain!”

And one by one they filed through the same portal by which the Italian
had, so short a time before, sped to the presence of his royal mistress.

In the meantime, unconscious of the fearful tragedy that was even then
in preparation, the lovely queen, with her most trusted servants, the
devoted David, and the noble countess of Argyle, had retired from
the strict ceremonies of the court circle to the privacy of her own
apartments.

In a small ante-chamber, scarcely twelve feet in width, communicating
with the solitary chamber of the queen--solitary, for the notorious
profligacy and insolent neglect of Darnley had left her an almost
widowed wife--the board was spread, glittering with gold and crystal,
and covered with the delicacies of the evening meal.

The beautiful queen, freed from the galling chains of ceremony, her
robes of state thrown by, and attired in the elegant simplicity of a
private lady, sat there--her lovely features beaming with condescension
and with unaffected pleasure, conversing joyously with those whom
she had selected from her court as worthiest of her especial favor.
Bitterly, cruelly had she been deceived in the character of him whom
she had in truth made a king; for whose gratification she had almost
exceeded the rights of her prerogative, and given deep offence to her
haughty and suspicious nobles; having discovered, when too late, that,
while possessed of all the graces and accomplishments that constitute
an elegant and agreeable admirer, Henry Darnley was deficient,
miserably deficient, in all that can render a man eligible as a friend
and husband. Deserted, neglected, outraged in a woman’s tenderest
point, almost before the first month of her nuptials had elapsed, the
flattering dream had passed away which had promised years of happy,
peaceful communion with one loved and loving partner. Ever preferring
the society of any other fair one to that of the lovely being to whom
he should have been bound by every tie of love and gratitude, the king
had early left his disconsolate bride to pine in total seclusion, or to
seek for recreation in the society of those whose qualities of mind,
if not their rank, might render them fit companions for her solitude;
and she, poor victim of a brutal husband, and unhappy mistress of a
turbulent and warlike nation, fell blindly but most innocently into the
snare of her unrelenting enemies.

Of all who were around her person, Rizzio alone was such by habits,
education, and accomplishments, as could lend attraction to the circle
of a gay and youthful queen. Accustomed, from her earliest youth, to
the elegant and polished manners of the French nobility, the rude and
illiterate barons--with whom the highest grade of knowledge was the
marshalling of a host for the battle-field, and the highest merit
the fighting in the front rank when marshalled--could appear to her
in no other light than that of brutal and uneducated savages. What
wonder, then, that a youth well skilled as David Rizzio in all the
arts and elegances most suitable to a noble cavalier, handsome withal
and courteous, attentive even to adoration to her slightest wish, and
ever contrasting his cultivated mind with the untutored rudeness of
the warrior-lords of Scotland, should have been admitted to a degree
of intimacy by his forsaken mistress, innocent, undoubtedly, and
pardonable, even should we be disposed to admit that it was imprudent?

Two menials in the royal livery waited upon that noble company, but
without the servile reverence which was exacted at the public festivals
of royalty. The fair Argyle, who, in any other presence than that of
her unrivalled mistress, would have been second to none in loveliness,
jested and smiled with Mary more in the manner of a beloved companion
than that of an attendant to a queen. But on the brow of David there
was a deep and heavy gloom; and when he answered to the persiflage and
polished railleries of the queen or that young countess, although his
words were gay, and at times almost tender, the tones of his voice were
grave almost to sadness.

“What has befallen our worthy secretary?” said Mary, after many
fruitless efforts to inspire him with livelier feelings. “Thou art
no more the gay and gallant Signor David of other days than thou
resemblest the stern and steel-clad--”

Even as she spoke, it seemed as though her words had conjured up an
apparition: for a figure, sheathed in steel from crest to spur, strode,
with a step that faltered even amid its pride, from out the shadows of
her private chamber into the full glare of the lamps. The vizor was
raised, and the pale brow and haggard eye, the uncombed beard, and the
corpse-like hue of the whole visage, better beseemed the character of
some foul spirit released from its peculiar place, than of a noble
baron in the presence of his queen. A loud shriek from the terrified
Argyle first called the attention of Mary to the strange intruder.
But David sat with his eye glaring, in a horrible mixture of personal
apprehension and superstitious dread, upon the person of his deadliest
foeman.

“Arise, David, thou minion! arise, and quit the presence to which thou
art a foul and plague-like blot!” cried the deep voice of Ruthven, ere
a word had yet found its way to the lips of the indignant queen.

“Sir Patrick Ruthven--if our eyes deceive us not,” she said at length,
erecting her noble figure to its utmost, and bending upon him a glance
which, hardened as he was in crime and cruelty, he could no more have
met with his than the vile raven have gazed upon the noonday sun--“Sir
Patrick Ruthven, we would learn what means this insolent intrusion?”

“It means, fair madam,” replied Darnley--who now followed his savage
instrument, accompanied by his no less fierce accomplices, the
base-born Douglas, the brutal Ker of Fawdonside, in bearing and in
manners fitted rather for the guardhouse than the court, and the most
thorough ruffian of the party, Patrick de Balantyne--“it means that
your vile minion’s race is run!”

“Ha! comes the blow from thee?--I might indeed have deemed it so,” she
replied, calmly but scornfully. “What is your grace’s pleasure?” and
she smiled in beautiful contempt.

“My pleasure is that he--yon base Italian, yon destroyer of my honor,
and of yours--of your honor, madam, if you know such a word--shall
perish!”

“Never, Henry Darnley! mine own life sooner!” And she confronted him
with flashing eyes and heightened color, her whole frame quivering with
resolve and indignation. “Thinkst thou to put a stain like this upon
the honor of a queen, and that queen, too, thine own much-injured wife?
Out, out upon thee, for a heartless, coward thing! A man, a brute,
hath some affection, hath some touch of love for those who have loved
him, as I have once loved thee; of gratitude toward those who have
elevated him--not, no! not as I have elevated thee--for never yet did
woman lavish honor, power, kingdom, upon mortal man, as I have lavished
them on thee! Away, insolent and ungrateful, hence! Thinkst thou to
do murder, foul murder, in the presence of a woman, of a wife--a wife
soon, wretch that she is, to be the mother of a child--of thy child,
Henry? Hence, and I will forgive thee all--even this last offence!
Banish these murderous ruffians from my presence; spare an honest and a
noble servant--one who hath never, never wronged thee or thine! spare
him, and I will take thee yet again unto my heart, and love thee, as I
have loved thee ever, even when thou hast been most cruel--ever, Henry
Darnley, ever!”

The king was moved, his lips quivered, and he would have spoken: all
might still have been explained, all might have been forgiven; but it
was not so decreed.

“Tush, we but dally,” cried the brutal Ruthven, “we but dally! On,
gentlemen, and drag the villain from the presence!”

Foremost himself, he strode to seize the unarmed wretch, who, broken in
spirits, and appalled more perhaps by the recollection of the wizard’s
doom than by the sordid fear of death, clung to the robe of his adored
mistress, poor wretch, as though the altar itself would have been to
him a sanctuary against his ruthless murderers.

“Mercy!” shrieked the miserable queen; “mercy, for the love of Him
that made you! mercy, Henry--mercy, for my sake, or, if not for mine,
mercy for thine unborn infant’s sake! Ruthven--villain, false knight,
uncourteous traitor--forego thy hold!” and she struggled madly with the
assassins. “To arms!” she screamed in shriller tones, “to arms!--O God!
O God! have I no guards, no friends, no husband? Oh, that I had been
born a man, and ye should rue this day--ay, and ye shall rue it!”

Ruthven had clutched his victim with a grasp of iron, and, whirling
him from his frail tenure, cast him to the attendant murderers. “Spare
him!” she shrieked once more; “spare him, and I will bless you! Ay,
strike!” she continued in calmer tones, as the ruffian Ker brandished
his naked dagger at her throat; “and thou, too, fire--fire upon thy
mistress and thy queen!” Maddened by her resistance, and fearful that
the citizens might rise in her behalf, Balantyne cocked his petronel.
“Fire, thou coward! why dost thou pause? I am a woman, true--a queen, a
wife--about to be a mother; but what is that to such as thee? Fire, and
make your butchery complete!”

But, as the words passed from her lips, the bloody deed was over.
Even in the presence of the queen, dirk after dirk was plunged
into the unresisting wretch. Long after life was extinguished, the
maddened assassins continued to mangle the senseless clay with their
bloodthirsty weapons. So long as life remained, and so long as the
horrid strife was doubtful, did Mary’s fearful cries for mercy ring
upon the ears of those who neither heard nor heeded her. The massacre
was ended, and, with a degree of unmanly insensibility that would alone
have stamped him the worst and fiercest of his race, Ruthven seated
himself before the outraged woman, the insulted queen, and calmly wiped
his brow, still reeking with her favorite’s life-blood. “My sickness,”
he said, “must pardon me for sitting in your presence. I had arisen
from my bed to do this deed, and am now somewhat weary and o’erspent. I
pray your highness command your minions to bear yon winecup hither.”

Without regarding for an instant this fresh insult, she dried her
streaming eyes. “We have demeaned ourselves to pray for mercy from
butchers. Tears are for men! I have one duty left me, and I will fulfil
it--one aim to my existence, one study for my ingenuity, and one prayer
to my God: my duty, mine aim, my study, and my prayer, shall be, to be
avenged!”




THE KIRK OF FIELD.

   “It is the curse of kings to be attended
    By slaves, that take their humors for a warrant
    To break within the bloody house of life;
    And, on the winking of authority,
    To understand a law; to know the meaning
    Of dangerous majesty, when, perchance, it frowns
    More upon humor than advised respect.”--KING JOHN.


It was a dark and stormy night without, such as is not unfrequent even
during the height of summer, under the changeable influences of the
Scottish climate. The west wind, charged with moisture collected from
the vast expanse of ocean it had traversed since last it had visited
the habitations of man, rose and sank in wild and melancholy cadences;
now howling violently, as it dashed the rain in torrents against the
rattling casements; now lulling till its presence could be traced alone
in the small, shrill murmur, which has been compared so aptly to the
voice of a spirit. The whole vault of heaven was wrapped in blackness,
of that dense and smothering character which strikes the mind as
pertaining rather to the gloom of a closed chamber than to that of a
midnight sky.

Yet within the halls of Holyrood neither storm nor darkness had any
influence on the excited spirits of the guests who were collected there
to celebrate, with minstrelsey and dance, the marriage of Sebastian.
Hundreds of lights flashed from the tapestried walls; wreaths of the
choicest flowers were twined around the columns; rich odors floated on
the air; and the voluptuous swell of music entranced a hundred young
and happy hearts with its intoxicating sympathies. All that there was
of beautiful and chivalrous in old Dunedin thronged to the court of its
enchanting queen on that eventful evening; and it appeared for once as
though the hate of party and the fierce zeal of clashing creeds had for
a time agreed to sink their differences in the gay whirl of merriment.
The stern and solemn leaders of the covenant relaxed the austerity
of their frown; the enthusiastic chieftains of the Romish faith were
content to mingle in the dance with those whom they would have met as
gladly in the fray.

With even more than her accustomed grace, brightest and most
bewitching where all were bright and lovely, did Mary glide among her
high-born visiters; no shade of sorrow dimmed that transparent brow,
or clouded the effulgence of that dazzling smile; it was an evening
of conciliation and rejoicing--of forgiveness for the past, and hope
rekindled for the future. There was no distinction of manner as she
passed from one to another of the animated groups that conversed,
or danced, or hung in silent rapture on the musicians’ strains, on
every side. Her tone was no less bland, as she addressed the gloomy
Morton, or the dark-browed Lindesay, but now returned from exile in
the sister-kingdom, than as she turned to her gayer and more fitting
associates. Never was the influence of Mary’s beauty more effective
than on that occasion; never did her unaffected grace, her sweet
address, her courtesy bestowed alike on all, exert a mightier influence
over the minds of men than on the very evening when her hopes were
about to be for ever blighted, her happiness extinguished, her very
reputation blasted, by the villany of false friends, and the violence
of open foes.

The weak and vicious Darnley yet lingered on his bed of sickness, but
with the vigor of health many of the darker shades of his character had
passed away; and Mary had again watched beside the bed of him whose
foul suspicions and unmanly violence--no less than his scandalous
neglect of her unrivalled charms, his low and infamous amours, his
studied hatred of all whom she delighted to honor--had almost alienated
the affections of that warm heart which once had beat so tenderly,
so devotedly, and, had he but deserved its constancy, so constantly
for him. Oh, how exquisite a thing is woman’s love! how beautiful, how
strange a mystery, is woman’s heart! ’Twas but a little month ago that
she had almost hated. Neglect had chilled the stream of her affections:
that he whom she had made a king, whom she had loved with such total
devotion of heart and mind--that he should repay her benefits with
outrage, her affections with cold, chilling, insolent disdain--these
were the thoughts that had worked her brain to the very verge of
madness and of crime.

The “glorious, rash, and hazardous”[F] young earl of Orkney had
ever in these hours of bitter anguish been summoned, she knew not
how, to her imagination: the warm yet delicate attentions, the
reverential deference to her slightest wish, the dignified and
chaste demeanor, through which gleamed ever and anon some flash of
chivalrous affection--some token that in the recesses of his heart he
worshipped the woman as fervently as he served the sovereign truly; the
overmastering passion always apparent, but so apparent that it seemed
involuntarily present; the eye dwelling for ever on her features, yet
sinking modestly to earth, as shamed by his own boldness, if haply
it met hers; the hand that trembled as it performed its office; the
voice that faltered as it answered to the voice he seemed to love so
dearly--all these, all these, had they been multiplied a hundred-fold,
and aided by the deepest magic, had effected nothing to wean her
heart from Darnley, had not his own infatuated cruelty furnished the
strongest argument in favor of the young and noble Bothwell. As it was,
harassed by the deepest wrongs from him who was most bound to cherish
and support her, and assailed by the allurements of one who coupled to
a beauty equal to that of angels a depth of purpose and dissimulation
worthy of the fiend, Mary had tottered on the precipice’s verge!
Darnley fell sick, and she was saved! Him whom she had almost learned
to hate while he had rioted in all the insolence of manly strength and
beauty, she now adored when he was stretched languid and helpless on
the bed of anguish. She had rushed to his envenomed chamber, she had
braved the perils of his contagious malady; her hand had soothed his
burning brow, her lip had tasted the potion which his feverish palate
had refused; day and night she had watched over him as a mother watches
over her sick infant, in mingled agonies of hope and terror; she had
marked the black sweat gathering on his brow, and the film veiling
his bright eye, and she had felt that her very being was wound up in
the weal or wo of him whose death, one little month before, she would
have hailed as a release from misery. She had noted the dawn of his
recovery, she had fainted from excess of happiness; she had pardoned
all, all his past misdoings; she was again the doting, faithful,
single-hearted wife of her repentant Henry.[G]

    [F] Throgmorton’s letter to Elizabeth.

    [G] Knox and Buchanan would make it appear that his
        reconciliation was insincere. But Knox and Buchanan wrote
        under the influence of political and religious hostility,
        and could never allow a single merit to Mary. It is a sound
        rule that every mortal is innocent till proved guilty.

Now in the midst of song, and revelry, and mirth, while the gay
masquers passed in gorgeous procession before her eyes, her mind was
far away in the chamber of her recovered lord, within the solitary
kirk of Field. The masque had ended, and the hall was cleared; the
wedding-posset passed around, beakers were brimmed, and amid the clang
of music the toast went round--“Health to Sebastian and his bride!” The
hall was cleared for the dance: a hundred brilliant couples arose to
lead the Branle; the minstrels tuned their prelude; when the fair young
bride, blushing at the boldness of her own request, entreated that her
grace would make her condescension yet more perfect by joining in that
graceful measure which none could lead so gracefully.

If there was one failing in the character of Mary, which tended above
all others to render her an object for unjust suspicions, and a mark
for cruel reverses, it was an inability to refuse aught that might
confer pleasure on any individual, however low in station--a gentle
failing, if it indeed be one, but not the less pernicious to the
fortunes of all, and above all of kings. With that ineffable smile
beaming upon her face, she rose; and as she rose, Bothwell sprang
forth, and in words of deep humility, but tones of deeper passion,
besought the queen to make her slave the most happy, the most exalted
of mankind, by yielding to him her inestimable hand, even for the space
of one short dance.

For a single moment Mary paused; but it was destined that she should
be the victim of her confidence, and she yielded. Never, never did a
more perfect pair stand forth in lordly hall, or on the emerald turf,
than Mary Stuart and her destroyer. Both in the flush and flower of
gorgeous youth: she invested with beauty such as few before or since
have ever had to show, with grace, and symmetry, and all that nameless
something which goes yet further to excite the admiration, and call
forth the love of men, than loveliness itself; he strong, yet elegant
in strength--proud, yet with that high and spiritual pride which had
nothing offensive in his display--taller and more stately than the
noblest barons of the court--they were indeed a pair unmatched amid
ten thousand; so rich in natural advantages, so exquisite in personal
attractions, that the tasteful splendor of their habits was as little
marked as is the golden halo which encompasses but adds no glory to the
sainted heads of that delightful painter whose name so aptly chimes
with the peculiar sweetness of his sublime creations.

Even the iron brow of Ruthven--for he, too, was there--relaxed as,
leaning on her partner’s extended hand, she passed him with a smile
of pardon, and he muttered to his dark comrade, Lindesay of the
Byres--“She were in sooth a most fair creature, if that her mind might
match the beauties of its mansion.” As he spoke, the measured symphony
rang out, and in slow order the dancers moved forward; anon the measure
quickened, and the motions of the young and beautiful obeyed its
impulses. It was a scene more like some fairy dream than aught of hard,
terrestrial reality: the waving plumes, the glittering jewels, the
gorgeous robes, and, above all, the lovely forms, which rather imparted
their own brilliancy to these adornments than borrowed anything from
them, combined to form a picture such as imagination can scarcely
depict, much less experience suggest, from aught beheld in ballrooms
of the present day, wherein the stiff and graceless costume of modern
times is but a poor apology for the majestic bravery of the sixteenth
century.

Suddenly, while all were glancing round in the swiftest mazes of the
dance, those who stood by observed the blood flash with startling
splendor over brow, neck, and bosom of the youthful queen; nay, her
very arms, white in their wonted hue as the snow upon Shehallion,
crimsoned with the violence of her emotions. Her eyes sparkled, her
bosom rose and fell almost convulsively, her lips parted, but it seemed
as though her words were choked by agitation. For a single instant
she stood still; then bursting through the throng, she sank nearly
insensible upon one of the many cushioned seats that girded the hall;
but, rallying her spirits, she murmured something of the heat and the
unusual exercise, drained the goblet of pure water presented by the
hand of Orkney, and again resumed her station in the dance.

“Pardon, pardon, I beseech you,” whispered the impassioned tones of the
tempter--“pardon, sweet sovereign, the boldness that was born but of a
moment’s madness. Believe me--I would tear my heart from out my bosom,
did it cherish one thought that could offend my mistress--my honored,
my adored--

“Hush! oh, hush! for my sake, Bothwell--for my sake, if for naught
else, be silent! I do believe that you mean honestly and well; but
words like these ’tis madness in you to utter, and sin in me to hear
them! Bethink you, sir,” she continued, gaining strength as she
proceeded, and speaking so low that no ear but his might catch a
solitary sound amid the quick rustle of the “many twinkling feet,” and
the full concert--“bethink you! you address a wife--a wedded, loyal
wife--the wife of your lord, your king. I know that you are my most
faithful servant, my most trusted friend; I know that these words,
which sound so wildly, are not to be weighed in their full sense, but
as a servant’s homage to his liege-lady: yet think what yon stern Knox
would deem, think of the wrath of Darnley--”

“If there were naught more powerful than Darnley’s wrath,” he muttered,
in the notes of deep determination, “to bar me from my towering hopes,
then were I blest beyond all hopes of earth, of heaven--supremely
blest!”

“What mean you, sir? We understand you not! What should there be more
powerful than the wrath of thy lawful sovereign? Speak; I would not
doubt you, yet methinks your words sound strangely. What be these
towering hopes of thine? Pray God they tower not too high for honesty
or honor! Say on, we do command thee!”

“I will say on, fair queen,” he replied, in a voice trembling as it
were with the fear of offending and the anxiety of love--“I will say
on, so you will hear me to the end, nor doubt the most devoted of your
slaves!”

“Hear you?” she replied, considerably softened by his humility, “when
did ever Mary Stuart refuse to hear the meanest of her subjects, much
less a trusted and a valued friend, as thou hast ever been to her, as
thou wilt ever be to her--wilt thou not, Bothwell?”

There was a heavenly purity, a confidence in his integrity, and a firm
and full reliance on her own dignity, in every word she uttered, that
might have converted the wildest libertine from his career of sin; that
might have confirmed the wariest and most subtle spirit that its guilty
craft could never prevail against a heart fortified against its attacks
by purity and by the stronger and more holy influences of wedded love;
but on the fixed purpose, on the interminable pride, the desperate
passion, and the unscrupulous will of Bothwell, every warning was lost.

“I have adored you,” he said, slowly and impressively--“adored you, not
as a queen, but as a woman. Mary, angelic Mary, pardon--pity--and oh,
love me! You do, you do already love me! I have read it in your eye, I
have marked it in your flushing cheek, in your heaving bosom! If this
night you were free, would you not, sweet lady, lovely queen, would
you not reward the adoration, the honest adoration of your devoted
Bothwell?”

“Stand back, my lord of Bothwell!” cried the now indignant queen,
“stand back! your words are madness! Nay, but we will be heard,”
she continued, with increasing impetuosity, as he endeavored again
to speak. “Thinkest thou, vain lord, that I--I, Mary of France and
Scotland--because I have favored and distinguished a subject, who, God
aid me, merited not favor nor distinction--thinkest thou that I, a
queen anointed--a mother and a wife--that I could love so wantonly as
to descend to thee? Back, sir, I say! and if I punish not at once thy
daring insolence, ’tis that thy past services, in some sort, nullify
thy present boldness. Oh, my lord!” she proceeded, in a softer tone,
and a big tear-drop trembled in her bright eye as she spoke, “Mary
has miseries enough, that thou shouldst spare to add thy quota to
the general ingratitude. If thou didst love me, as thou sayest, thy
love would be displayed as that of a zealous votary to the shrine at
which he worships; as that of the magi bending before their particular
star--not as that of a wild and wicked wanton to a frail, fickle woman!”

It may be that the words with which Mary concluded her reproof kindled
again the hope which had well nigh passed away from Bothwell’s breast.

“Nay, Mary, say not thus. Do I not know thy trials? have I not marked
thy miseries? and will I not avenge them? If thou wert free--did I
say, if? By Heaven, fair queen, those locks of thine, that flow so
unrestrained down that most glorious neck, are not more free than
thou art! Did I not hear thy cry for vengeance on the slaughterers of
hapless Rizzio? did I not hear, and have I not achieved the deed that
secures at once thy freedom and thy vengeance?”

The spell was broken on the instant: the soft, the tender-hearted, the
most gentle of women, was aroused almost to frenzy. The blood rushed in
torrents to her princely brow, and left it again pale as the sculptured
marble, but to return once more in deeper hues of crimson. Her eyes
flashed with unnatural brightness; her bosom heaved and fell like that
of a young priestess laboring with the throes of prophetic inspiration;
she shook the tresses, he had dared to praise, back from her lovely
face, and stamping her delicate foot in the passion of the moment on
the oaken floor--

“A guard!” she cried, in notes that might have vied with the clangor of
a trumpet, so shrilly did they pierce the ears of all; “a guard for my
lord of Bothwell!”

Had the thunder of heaven darted its sulphurous and scathing bolt into
the midst of that assembly, a greater change its terrors could not
have effected than did that thrilling cry. A hundred rapiers flashed
in the bright torchlight, as with bent brows and angry voices the
barons of the realm rushed to the aid of their liege-lady. An air of
cool defiance sat on the massive forehead of the culprit; his eye
was fixed upon the queen in sorrow, as it would seem, rather than in
anger; his sword lay quietly in his scabbard, although there were a
hundred there with weapons thirsting for his blood, and hearts burning
with the insatiable hate of ancient feuds. Murray and Morton, speaking
eagerly and even sternly to the queen, urged his immediate seizure; and
the gray-haired duke of Lennox, clutching his poniard’s hilt with the
palsied gripe of eighty years, awaited but a sign to slay, he knew not
and he recked not why, the ancient foeman of his race.

But so it was not fated! Before a word was spoken, the deep and sullen
roar as of an earthquake burst upon their ears, and stunned their very
hearts; a second din, as of some mighty tower rushing from its base,
succeeded, ere the casements had ceased to rattle with the shock of the
first.

“God of my fathers!” shouted Murray, “what means that din? Treason,
my lords, treason! Look to the queen--secure the traitor! Thou, duke
of Lennox, with thy followers, haste straight to the kirk of Field!
Without, there--let my trumpets sound to horse! By Him that made me,”
he continued, “the populace are rising!”--for the deep swell of voices,
that rose without, announced the presence of a mighty multitude.

In an instant the vaulted arches of the palace echoed with the
flourished cadences of the royal trumpets, the ringing steps of
steel-clad men, the tramp of hoofs in the courtyard, the gathering
cries of the followers of each fierce baron, succeeding wildly to the
soft breathings of minstrelsey and song. At this instant Murray had
resolved himself to act, and, with his hand upon the pommel of his
sword, slowly but resolutely stepped forward. “Yield thee!” he said, in
stern, low tones; “yield thee, my lord of Bothwell! Hence from this
presence thou canst not pass until all this night’s strange occurrences
be fully manifested; ay, and if there be guilt--as I misdoubt me much
there is--till it be fearfully avenged!”

The touch of Murray on his shoulder, lightly as it fell, and grave as
were the words of that high baron, aroused the reckless disposition
of Bothwell almost to madness. “Thou liest, lord!” he shouted, in the
fierce impulse of the moment--“thou liest, if thou dare to couple the
name of guilt with Bothwell! Forego thy hold, or perish!”--and his
dagger’s blade was seen slowly emerging from its sheath, while his
clinched teeth and the starting veins of his broad forehead spoke
volumes of the bitterness of his wrath. Another second, and blood, the
blood of Scotland’s noblest, would have been poured forth like water,
and in the presence of the queen; the destinies of a great kingdom
would have perchance been altered, and the history of ages changed, all
by the madness of a single moment. In the fearful crisis, a wild shriek
was heard from the upper end of the hall, to which the ladies of the
court had congregated, round the queen, like the songsters of spring
when the dark pinions of the hawk are casting down a shadow of terror
on their peaceful groves.

“Help! help!--her grace is dying!” And, in truth, it did seem as though
she were about to pass away. Better, a thousand times better, and
happier, had it been for her, to have then died quietly in the palace
of her forefathers, with the nobles of her land around her, than to
have borne, for many an after-year, the chilling miseries which were
showered by pitiless fortune on her head, till that most fatal hour of
her tragic life arrived, and Mary was at length at rest!

Murray relaxed his hold, turned on his heel, and strode abruptly to
the elevated dais, on which the queen had sunk in worn-out nature’s
weariness. For a minute’s space Bothwell glared on him as he strode
away, like a tiger balked of his dear revenge. It was most evident he
doubted--doubted whether he should set all, even now, upon a cast,
strike down a foeman in the very fortress of his power, and if he must
die, like the crushed wasp, sting home in dying. Prudence, however,
conquered: he also turned upon his heel, and with a glance of the
deepest scorn and hatred on the baffled lords, who, in the absence of
their master-spirit, had lost all unison, stalked slowly through the
portal of the hall, and disappeared.

Before ten seconds had elapsed, the rapid clatter of hoofs, the
jingling of mail, and the war-cry--“A Bothwell! ho! a Bothwell!”
proclaimed that he had escaped the toils, and was surrounded by his
faithful followers.

When Murray reached the couch on which the queen was extended, gasping
as though in the last extremity, her case indeed was pitiable. Her long
locks had burst from their confinement, and flowed over her person
like a veil; her corsage had been cut asunder by the damsels of her
court, and her bosom, bare in its unspeakable beauty, was disclosed to
the licentious gaze of the haughty nobles. An angle of the couch, as
she had fallen, had grazed her temple, and the blood streamed down her
cheek and neck, giving, by the contrast of its dark crimson, an ashy,
deathlike whiteness to her whole complexion.

“Ha!” he whispered, with deep emotions, “what means this? Back,
back, my lords, for shame, if not for pity! would ye gaze upon your
sovereign, in the abandonment of utter grief, as though she were a
peasant-quean? Stand back, I say, and let the halls be cleared; and
hark thee, Paris,” he continued, as a cringing, terrified-looking
Frenchman entered the apartment, “bid some one call Galozzi hither:
the poison-vending, cozening Tuscan hath skill at least, and it shall
go hardly with him so he exert it not! But ha! what ails the man?
St. Andrew, he will faint! What ails thee, craven? Speak, speak,
or I shake the coward soul from out thy carcass!”--and he shook the
trembling servitor fiercely by the throat.

“The king--the king--” he faltered forth at length, terrified yet more
by the wrath of Murray than by the scene which he had witnessed.

“What of the king, thou dastard? Speak--I say, what of Henry Darnley?”

“Murdered, your highness--murdered!”

“Nay, thou art made to say it!”

“He speaks too truly, Murray,” cried Morton, entering, with his bold
visage blanched, and his dark locks bristling with unwonted terror;
“the king is murdered--foully, most foully murdered!”

“By the villain Bothwell!” muttered Murray, between his hard-set teeth;
“but he shall rue the deed! But say on, Morton, say on: how knowest
thou this? Say on--and you, ladies, attend the queen.”

“I saw it, Murray--with these eyes I saw it--the cold, naked, strangled
corpse--flung, like a carrion-carcass, on the garden-path; and the kirk
of Field a pile of smoking and steaming ruins--blown up with gunpowder,
to give an air of accident to this accursed treason. I tell you, man,”
he continued, as he saw Murray about to speak, “I tell you that I saw,
in that drear garden, cast like a murrained sheep upon a dike, all that
remained of Henry Darnley!”

“’Tis false!” shrieked the wretched Mary, starting to her feet, with
the wild glare of actual insanity in her eye; “who saith I slew him?
Henry Darnley! ’Sdeath, lords!--the king, I say--the king! Now, by
my halydom, he shall be king of Scotland! Dead--dead! who said the
earl of Orkney was no more? Faugh! how the sulphur steams around us!
It chokes--it smothers! Traitor, false traitor! know, earl, I will
arraign thee. What! kill a king? whisper soft, low words to a queen?
Hoa! this is practice, my lord duke, foul practice; and deeply shall
you rue it if you but hurt a hair of Darnley!--Nay, Henry, sweet Henry,
frown not on me! Oh! never woman loved as I love thee, my Darnley!
Rizzio--ha! what traitor spoke of Rizzio? But think not of it, Henry:
the faithful servant is lost, but ’twas not thou that did it. Lo! how
dark Morton glares on me! Back, Ruthven, fiend! wouldst slay me? But
I forgive thee all--all--Henry Darnley, all! Live--only live to bless
my longing sight! No! no!” she shrieked more wildly, “he is not dead!
to arms! what, ho!--to arms! a king, and none to rescue him! To arms,
I say! I will myself to arms! Fetch forth my Milan harness; saddle me
Rosabelle! French--Paris, aho! my petronels! And ye, why do ye linger,
wenches--Seyton, Carmichael, Fleming?--my head-gear and my robes! The
queen goes forth to-day! To horse, and to the rescue!”

She made a violent effort to rush forward, but staggered, and if her
brother had not received her in his arms, she would have fallen again
to the earth. “Bear her hence, ladies; bear her to her chamber!--thou
hast a heavy weird--poor sister!--What ponder you so, Morton? you would
not mark her words: ’tis sheer distraction--the distraction of most
utter sorrow!”

“Distraction! I say ay! but sorrow, no! Sorrow takes it not on thus
wildly. It savors more of guilt, Lord Murray--dark, damning, bloody
guilt! Heard ye not what she said of Orkney? Distraction, but no
sorrow: guilt, believe me, guilt!”

“Not for my life would I believe it, nor must thou: if Morton and
Murray hunt henceforth in couples--hark in thine ear!”--and he
whispered, glancing his eyes uneasily around, as though the very stones
might bear his words to other listeners. A grim smile passed athwart
Morton’s visage; he bowed his head in token of assent. They passed
forth from the banquet-hall together, and Mary was left to her misery.




BOTHWELL.

   “Marshal, demand of yonder champion
    The cause of his arrival here in arms:
    Ask him his name, and orderly proceed
    To swear him in the justice of his cause.”--KING RICHARD II.


The summer sun was pouring down a flood of lustre over wood and
moorland, tangled glen, and heathery fells, with the broad and blue
expanse of the German ocean sparkling in ten thousand ripples far away
in the distance. But the radiance of high noon fell not upon the forest
and the plain in their solitary loveliness, but on the marshalled
multitudes of two vast hosts, arrayed in all the pomp and circumstance
of antique warfare, glittering with helms and actons, harquebuss and
pike, and waving with a thousand banners, of every brilliant hue and
proud device. On a gentle eminence, the very eminence on which, a
few short years before, the English Somerset had posted his gallant
forces, lay the army of the queen, its long front bristling with rows
of the formidable Scottish spear, its wings protected by chosen corps
of cavalry, the firm and true adherents of the house of Stuart, or the
daring, though licentious vassals of the duke of Orkney, and the royal
banner, with its rich embroidery, floating in loud supremacy. Yet, gay
and glorious as it showed upon its ground of vantage, and gallantly as
it might have contested that field against even superior numbers, that
array was but in name an army. Thousands were there who, though they
had flocked with bow and arrow to the call of their sovereign, felt not
distaste alone, but actual disgust to the services on which they were
about to be employed; and not a few were among them who knew too well
how little was the probability that they, a raw, tumultuary force, led
on by men of gallantry indeed, but not of that well-proved experience
which, to a leader, is more than the truncheon of his command, should
come off with victory, or even without defeat, from an encounter with
veteran troops, retainers of the most warlike lords in Scotland,
marshalled by soldiers with whose fame the air of every European
kingdom was already rife--soldiers such as Lyndesay of the Byres,
Kirkaldy of the Grange, Murray of Tullibardin, and a hundred others
of reputation, if second, second to none but these. Nor was this all;
voices were not wanting, even in the army of the queen, to exclaim,
that if the royal banner were displayed, its purity was sullied by the
presence of a murderer; and that success could never be hoped for, so
long as Bothwell rode by the right hand of Mary. One exception there
was, however, to this general feeling of dissatisfaction, if not of
despair. A band of determined men, whose scar-seamed visages and stern
demeanor, no less than the splendid accuracy of their equipments, and
the admirable discipline with which they maintained their post, far
in advance of the main body, and exposed to inevitable destruction
on the advance of the confederated forces, should they be suffered,
as it appeared too probable that they would, to remain unsupported
against such desperate odds. But these were men to whom the most deadly
conflict was but a game of chance; inured from their youth upward to
deeds of blood and danger--lawless and licentious in time of peace,
even as they were cruel, brave, and fearless in the fight--the picked
retainers, the desperate, of the duke of Orkney.

Dark glances of contempt, if not of hatred, were shot ever and anon
from beneath the scowling brows of these wild desperadoes toward the
wavering ranks of the main army, as, unrestrained by the exhortations
or menaces of their officers--unmoved by the eloquent beauty of Mary
herself, who rode among the trembling ranks, praying them, as they
loved their country, as they valued honor, as they would not see their
wives, their mothers, and their daughters, delivered to the malice of
unrelenting foemen, to strike one blow for Scotland’s crown--to give
once, once only, their voices to the exulting clamor, “God and the
queen”--troop after troop broke away from the rear, and scattering
themselves, singly, or in parties of two or three, over the open
country, sought for that safety in mean and dastard flight, which they
should have asked from their own bold hearts and strong right hands.

It was at this moment that the heads of the confederated columns were
seen advancing, in dark and dense masses, at three different points,
against the front, which was still preserved in Mary’s army by the
strenuous exertions of the leaders, rather than by any soldierly
feelings on the part of the common herd. So nearly had they advanced to
the royal lines that the stern and solemn countenances of the leaders,
as they rode in complete steel, but with their vizors raised, each
at the head of his own leading, were visible, feature for feature.
The matches of the arquebusses might be clearly distinguished, blown
already into a bright flame, while the pieces themselves were evidently
grasped by ready and impatient hands, and the long spears of the
vanguard were already lowered; but not a movement of eagerness, not a
murmur, or a shout, was heard throughout the thousands, whose approach
was ushered to the ears alone by the incessant trampling sound, borne
steadily onward, like the flow of some great river, occasionally broken
by the shrill neighing of a charger, or the jingling clash of arms.

The borderers of Bothwell, on the contrary, as they noted the advance,
raised, from time to time, the wild and fearful yells with which it was
their custom to engage, brandishing their long lances, and giving the
spur to their horses, till they sprang and bolted like hunted deer;
and it required all the influence of hereditary chiefs to restrain
these savage moss-troopers from rushing headlong with their handful
of men against the unbroken line of the confederate pikes, which
swept onward, sullen and steady as the tide when it comes in six feet
abreast. The effect of such a movement would have been at once fatal
to their wretched mistress. It was too evident that, for a wavering,
coward multitude, like that arrayed beneath the banner of the queen,
there could be no hope to fight against men such as those who were
marching, in determined resolution, up that gentle eminence; and all
that now remained was an attempt at negotiation.

It was at this moment, when the advanced guard of the two armies
were scarcely ten spear’s-lengths asunder, when the determination or
wavering of every individual might be read by the opposite party in his
features as clearly as in the pages of a book, that a single trumpet
from the centre of the queen’s army broke the silence with a wild and
prolonged flourish. It was no point of war, however, that issued from
its brazen mouth, no martial appeal to the spirits and courage of
either host, but the prelude to a pacific parley--and straightway the
banners throughout the host were lowered, and a white flag was waved
aloft, in place of Scotland’s blazonry. The ranks were slowly opened,
and from their centre, with trumpeter and pursuivant, and king-at-arms,
rode forth Le Croc, the French embassador. This movement, as it seemed,
was wholly unexpected by the confederate lords; at least, the ranks
continued their deliberate advance unchecked by the symbols of peace
that glittered above the weapons of the rival host, till suddenly a
foaming horse and panting rider furiously galloped from the rear. A
single word was uttered, in a low, impressive whisper; it passed from
mouth to mouth like an electric spark; and, as though it were but a
single man, that mighty column halted on the instant. There was no
confusion in the manœuvre, no hurry, nor apparent effort: the long
lines of lances, so beautifully regular in their advance, sank as
regularly to their rest; and, but for the fluttering of their plumage
in the summer air, those beings, strangely composed of every vehement
and stirring passion, might have passed for images of molten steel. But
a few seconds had elapsed, and the flourish of the peaceful trumpets
was yet ringing in the ears of all, when a dozen horsemen proceeded
slowly forward, to meet the royal cavalcade.

It was a singular and most impressive spectacle, that meeting. It was,
as it were, the fearful pause between life and death--the moment of
breathless silence that precedes the first crash of the thunderstorm.
Every eye was riveted in either army on those two groups; every
heart beat thick, and every ear tingled with excitement. And, even
independent of the appalling interest of the crisis, there was much to
mark, much to admire, in the handful that had come together to speak
the doom of thousands; to decide whether hundreds and tens of hundreds
of those living creatures, who stood around them now, so glorious in
the pride, the beauty, and the strength of manhood, should, ere the
sun might sink, be as the clods of the valley; to decree, with their
ephemeral breath, whether the soft west wind, that wafted now the
perfumes of a thousand hills to their invigorated senses, should, ere
the morrow, be tainted like the vapor from some foul charnel-house!

On the one side, on his light and graceful Arab, champing its gilded
bits and shaking its velvet housings, sat the gay and gallant
Frenchman--his long, dark locks uncovered, and his fair proportions
displayed to the best advantage in his rich garb of peace. No weapon
did he bear--not even the rapier, without which no gentleman of that
period ever went abroad--but which, the more fully to manifest the
candor and sincerity of his instructions, a handsome page held by his
master’s stirrup. Behind him, with pale visages and anxious mien,
Marchmont, and Bute, and Islay, and the lion King, awaited the result
of this their last resource.

On the other hand, distinguished from their followers only by the
beauty of their powerful chargers, and their own knightly bearing,
halted the rebel chiefs. Plain almost to meanness in his attire, with
his armor stained and rusty, and his embroidered baldrick frayed and
rent, Lord Lyndesay of the Byres was foremost in the group. Morton was
there, and Murray, all steel from crest to spur; the best warrior,
where all were good, the noblest spirit, the most upright man, Kirkaldy
of the Grange.

“Nobles and knights of Scotland,” said the proud envoy, in a tone
so calm and yet so clear that every accent could be noted far and
wide, “I come to ye--a gentleman of France--the servant of a mighty
monarch, unbought by friendship and unprejudiced by favor. For myself,
or for my royal master, it recks us little whether or not ye choose
to turn those swords, which should be the bulwarks of your country,
against her vitals. Yet should it not be said that Scottishmen, like
ill-trained dogs of chase, prefer to turn their fangs against each
other, than to chase a nobler quarry. Ye are in arms against your
queen--nay, interrupt me not, my lords--against your queen, I say! or,
as perchance ye word it, against her counsellors. That ye complain of
grievances I know, and, for aught I know, justly complain. Yet pause,
brave gentlemen, pause and reflect which is the greater grievance--a
country torn with civil factions, internal war with all its dread
accompaniments of massacre and conflagration, or those ills which now
have stung you to exchange your loyalty for rebel arms? Bethink ye,
that in such a cause as this it matters not who wins--to vanquish
countrymen and brothers is but a worse and deadlier evil than defeat
by foreign foemen. Think ye this fatal field of Pinkie, whereon ye are
arrayed, hath not already drunk enough of Scottish blood, that ye we
would deluge it again?--or that its name is not yet terrible enough
to Scottish ears, that ye would now bestow a deeper blazonry of sin
and shame? Brave warriors, noble gentlemen, forbear! Let the sword of
civil discord, I beseech you, enter its scabbard for once bloodless;
let amicable parley gain the terms which bloodless news purchased!
Strive ye for your country’s glory?--lo, it calls on you to pause!
For your own peculiar fame?--it bids ye halt while there is yet the
time, lest neither birth, nor rank, nor valor, nor high deeds, nor
haughty virtues, preserve ye from the blot which lies even yet, though
ages have passed, on those who have warred against their country! Is
it terms, fair terms, for which ye crowd in arms around yon awful
banner?”--pointing to the colors of the rebel lords, emblazoned with
the corpse of the murdered Darnley, and his orphan infant praying for
judgment and revenge--“lo, terms are here! Peace, then, my lords; give
peace to Scotland, and eternal credit to yourselves. Her majesty bears
not the wonted temper, the stern resentment of offended kings: even now
she offers peace and amity, pardon for all offences--ay, and the hand
of friendship, to all who will at once retire from this sacrilegious
field. Subjects, your queen commands you; nobles and knights, a lady,
the fairest lady of her sex, appeals to your chivalry and honor. Hear,
and be forgiven!--”

“Forgiven!” shouted Glencairn, in tones of deep feeling and yet
deeper scorn--“forgiven! we came not here to ask for pardon, but for
vengeance, and vengeance will we have! The blood of Darnley craves for
punishment upon his murderers! We are come to punish; not to sue for
pardon, not to return in peace, until our end is gained, and Scotland’s
slaughtered king avenged!”

“Fair sir,” cried Morton--calmer, and for that very reason more to be
dreaded, than his impetuous comrades--“fair sir, we rear no banner and
we lift no blade against her grace of Scotland! Against her husband’s
murderer have we marched, nor will we turn a face, or draw a bridle,
till that murderer lies in his blood, or flies for ever from the land
he has polluted by his unnatural homicide! Thou hast thine answer,
sir. Yet thus much for our ancient friendship, and to testify our high
esteem for the noble monarch whom thy services here represent: here
will we pause an hour. That passed, our word is, ‘Forward! forward!’
and may the God of battles judge between us! Brothers in arms, and
leaders of our host, say, have I spoken fairly?”

“Fairly hast thou spoken, noble Morton; and as thou hast spoken, we
will it so to be. An hour we pause, and then forward!” The voices
of the barons, as they replied, gave no signs of hesitation; there
was no faltering in their tones, no wavering in their fixed and
steady glances. At once the gallant mediator saw that he had failed
in his appeal, and that all further words were needless. Slowly and
disconsolately he bent his way back to the royal armament, where the
miserable Mary awaited, in an agony of shame and anguish, the doom, for
such in truth it was, of her rebellious subjects.

On the summit of a little knoll she sat, girt by the few undaunted
spirits who clung to the last to Mary’s cause, and who were ready at
her least word to perish, if by perishing they might preserve her.
Lovely as she had seemed in the gay halls of Holyrood, her brow beaming
with rapture, innocence, majesty, far lovelier was she now in pale and
hopeless sorrow. In the vain hope of inspiring ardor to her dispirited
and coward forces, she had girt her slender form in glittering steel. A
light, polished cavinet reflected the bright sunshine above her auburn
tresses, and a cuirass of inlaid and jewelled metal flashed on her
bosom. Not a warrior in either host sat firmer or more gracefully upon
his destrier than Mary upon Rosabelle. A demipique of steel and loaded
petronels, with the butt of which her fingers played in thoughtless
nervousness, had replaced the rich housings of that favored jennet;
but though arrayed in all the pride and pomp of war, there was neither
pride nor pomp in the expression of that pallid cheek and quivering lip.

“Noble Le Croc,” she cried, breathless with eagerness as he approached
her presence, “what tidings from our misguided subjects? will
they depart in peace? Speak out, speak fully: this is no time for
well-turned sentences or courteous etiquette. Say, is it peace or war?”

With deep feeling painted on his dark lineaments, the Frenchman
answered: “War, your grace, war to the knife; or peace on terms such as
I dare not name to you.”

“Then be it war!” cried she, the eloquent blood mantling to her cheeks
in glorious indignation, her eyes flashing, and her bosom heaving with
emotion; “then be it war! We have stooped low enough in suing thus
for peace from those whom we are born to govern, and we will stoop no
longer. Better to die, to fall as our gallant father fell, leading
his faithful countrymen, devoted subjects, against enemies not half
so fierce as these, who should be brothers. Sound trumpets, advance
our guards! Seyton, Fleming, Huntley, to your leadings, and advance!
ourselves will see the tourney.”

“Your grace forgets,” replied the experienced leader to whom she
first addressed herself, “your grace forgets that not one dastard of
this fair army, as it shows upon this ground of vantage, will advance
one lance’s length against the foe. Some scores there are, in truth,
followers oft tried and ever-faithful of mine own, and some if I
mistake not of the earl of Orkney, who will fight well when shaft and
steel-point hold together; but ’twere but butchery to lead the rugged
vassals upon certain death! for what are scores to thousands such as
stand thirsting for the battle yonder--thousands led on, too, by the
first martialists of Europe? Nevertheless, say but the word, and it is
done. Seyton hath ever lived for Stuart--it rests but now to die!” He
paused--but in an instant, taking his cue from Mary’s extended nostril
and still-flashing eye, he shouted, in a voice of thunder: “Mount,
mount, and make ready! A Seyton, a Seyton for the Stuart!” Already
had he dashed the rowels into his steed, and another instant would
have precipitated his little band upon the inevitable destruction that
awaited them in the crowded ranks which, at the well-known sound of
that wild slogan, had brought their lances to the charge, and waited
but a word to bear down all opposition.

Happily, so miserable a consummation was warded off. The earl of
Orkney, who had stood silent and thunder-stricken by the side of his
lovely bride, sprang forward, and grasping with impetuous vehemence the
bridle-rein of Seyton--

“Not so!” he hissed through his set teeth, “not so, brave baron;
this is my quarrel now, mine only; and dost think that I will veil
my crest to mortal man? Lo! in yonder lines the haughty rebels have
drawn their weapons, and against me only shall they wield them! What,
ho there, heralds! take pursuivant and trumpet, and bear my gauntlet,
the earl of Orkney’s gauntlet, to yonder misproud caitiffs: say that
Bothwell defies them--defies them to the mortal combat, here before
this company, here in the presence of men and angels, to prove his
innocence, their bold and overweening treason!”--and he hurled his
ponderous glove to earth.

“Well said and nobly, gallant earl!” cried Seyton; “so shall this foul
calumny be stayed, and floods of Scottish blood be spared. On to thy
devoir, and God will shield the right.”

And at the word the heralds rode forth again, the foremost bearing the
glove of the challenger high on a lance’s point. Again the trumpets
flourished, but not now as before, in peaceful strains. At the loud
clangor of defiance, the confederate chiefs again strode to the front,
their horses led behind them by page or squire; and as the menace of
the challenger was proclaimed loudly and clearly by the king-at-arms,
a smile of fierce delight flashed over every brow.

“I claim the privilege of battle!” shouted the impetuous Glencairn.

“And I!”--“And I!”--“And I!” rose hoarsely into air the mingled tones
of Morton, Lyndesay, and Kirkaldy, as each sprang forth to seize the
proffered gauntlet. “I am the senior baron!” shouted one. “And I the
leader of the van!” cried another; and for a minute’s space all was
confusion, verging fast toward strife, among those chiefs of late so
closely linked together--till the deep, sonorous voice of Murray, in
after-days the regent of the realm, was heard above the tumult.

“For shame, my lords, for shame! Seems it so much of honor to do the
hangman’s office on a murderer, that ye would mar our fair array with
this disgraceful bruit for the base privilege? By Heaven, should the
duty fall on me, I should perform it, doubtless, even as I would prefer
the meanest work that came before me under the name of duty; but, trust
me, I should hold the deed a blot upon mine ancient escutcheon, rather
than honor! But to the deed, my lords; the herald awaits our answer.
Lord Lyndesay, thine is the strongest claim: if thou wilt undertake the
deed, thou hast my voice.”

“As joyfully,” muttered Lyndesay beneath his grizzly mustache, “as
joyfully as to the banquet do I go forth against the craven traitor!
Morton, lend me thy falchion for the trial--the two-handed espaldron
which slew Spens of Kilspindie, at the brook of Fala, in the hands
of Archibald of Douglas, thy renowned forefather. God give me grace
to wield it, and it shall do as trusty service on the carcass of yon
miscreant!”

“It is decided, then,” cried Murray; and not a voice replied, for none
had the presumption to dispute the fitness of the choice which thus had
fallen on a leader so renowned for strength and valor. “Herald,” he
continued, “go bear our greeting to her majesty of Scotland, and say
to her, we do accept the challenge. An hour’s truce we grant--an equal
field here, on this hill of Carbury. The noble earl of Lyndesay will
here prove, upon the crest and limbs of that false recreant, James,
some time the earl of Bothwell, the justice of our cause: and so may
God defend the right!”

The shout which rang from earth to heaven, at the noble confidence
of Murray, bore to the ears of Mary and her trembling followers the
assurance that the challenge was accepted; an assurance that sounded
joyfully in every ear but that of his who uttered the bravado. Many a
time and oft had Bothwell’s crest shone foremost in the tide of battle;
many a time had he confronted deadliest odds with an undaunted visage
and a victorious blade. Yet now he faltered; his bold brow blanched
with sudden apprehension; his frame, muscular and lofty as a giant’s,
actually shook with terror; and his quivering lip paled, ere he heard
the name of his antagonist. Whether it was that guilt sat heavy on his
heart, and weighed his strong arm down, or that his soul was cowed
by the consciousness that he was unsupported and forsaken by all his
friends, he turned upon his heel, and, muttering some inarticulate
sounds, half lost within the hollows of his beaver, he strode to his
pavilion, and thence sent his squire forth, to say that he was ill at
ease, and could not fight until the morrow! Mary herself--the fond,
confiding, deceived Mary--burst on the instant into loud contempt at
this hardly-credible baseness.

“What! James of Bothwell false!” she cried; “then perish hope! I yield
me to the malice of my foes; I will resist no longer. O man, man--base,
coward, miserable man!--is it for this we give our hearts, our lives,
ourselves, to your vile guidance? is it for this that I have given
thee mine all--mine honor, and, perchance, my soul? that thou shouldst
cowardly desert me at mine utmost need! Little, oh how little, doth
the cold world know of woman’s heart and woman’s courage! For thee
would I have perished, oh, how joyfully!--and thou, O God! O God! it is
a bitter, bitter punishment for my credulity and love: but if I have
deserved to suffer, I deserved it not at thy hands, James of Bothwell!
Seyton, true friend, to thee I trust mine all. Go summon Kirkaldy to a
parley: say Mary, queen of Scotland, rather than look upon the blood of
Scottishmen, will grant to her rebellious lords those terms which they
desire! Nay, interrupt us not, Lord Seyton. We care not what befall
that frozen viper whom we warmed within our bosom till he stung us!
Away!--let Orkney quit our camp; for, by the glorious light of heaven,
we never will behold him more!”

She spoke with an elevated voice, and features glowing with contending
passions, till the faithful baron had departed on his mission; but
then, then the false strength yielded to despair, and in an agony of
unfettered grief she sank into the arms of her attendants, murmuring
amid her tears, “O God, how I did adore that man!” and was borne,
almost a corpse, into her tent.

An hour passed heavily away, and at its close Mary came forth, with a
brow from which, though pale as the first dawning, every trace of grief
had vanished. The terms had been accepted. Without a tear she saw the
man for whom she had sacrificed all--all, to her very reputation--mount
and depart for ever! Without a tear she backed her own brave palfrey,
and rode, attended by a dozen servitors, faithful amid her sorrows as
they had been in brighter days, into the rebel host. Little was there
of courtesy, of that demeanor which becomes a subject in presence of
his queen, a true knight before a lady. Amid the taunts and jeers of
the vile soldiery, covered with dust and humiliation, she entered upon
that fatal progress which, commencing in a conditional surrender, ended
only when she was immured, beyond a hope of rescue or redemption,
within the dungeon-towers of Loch Leven!




THE CAPTIVITY.

   “Long years!--It tries the thrilling frame to bear,
    And eagle-spirit of a child of song--
    Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong;
    And the mind’s canker in its savage mood,
    When the impatient thirst of light and air
    Scorches the heart; and the abhorred grate,
    Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,
    Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain
    With a hot sense of heaviness and pain!”--LAMENT OF TASSO.


Eighteen long years of solitary grief--of that most wretched sickness
that arises, even to a proverb, from hope too long deferred--had
already passed away since, in the fatal action of Langside, the
wretched Mary had for the last time seen her banner fall, and her
adherents scattered like chaff before the wind by the determined valor
of her foes. All, all was lost! It had been the work of months to draw
that gallant army to a head, of which so many now lay stark in their
curdled gore; while the miserable remnant were hunted like beasts of
chase, to perish, when taken, upon the ignominious scaffold. And now,
of all the noble gentlemen who had thronged to her bridle-rein on that
fatal morning, high in hope as in valor, the merest had escaped to
guard the person of that sovereign whom they loved so truly, and in
behalf of whom they had endured so deeply. Her crown was lost for ever;
nor her crown only, but her country.

Of all the glorious gifts which, at an earlier period of her eventful
life, nature appeared to shower upon her head, freedom alone remained.
The palfrey which bore her from the battle-field was now the sole
possession of the titular monarch of three fair domains; the wild
moors, over which she fled in desperate haste, her only refuge from
persecutors the most unrelenting that ever joined sagacity to hatred
in the performance of their plans; the dozen gallant hearts who rallied
yet around their queen, beneath the guiding of the stout and loyal
Herries, her only court, her only subjects. Still she was free; and to
one who for months before had never seen the blessed light of heaven
but its lustre was sullied by the dim panes through which it forced its
way, to lend no solace to her captivity, the fresh breeze which eddied
across the purple moorlands of her native land had still the power to
impart a sense of pleasure, fleeting, it is true, and doubtful, but
still, in all its forms and essentials, absolute and real pleasure.

At the full distance of sixty Scottish miles from the accursed field
which had witnessed the downfall of all her hopes, worn out in body and
depressed in spirit, she paused to take, in the abbey of Dundrennan,
a few hours of that repose without which, even in the most trying
circumstances, the mind can not exist in its undiminished powers. At
this juncture, it appeared to those about her person that Mary was
utterly deserted by that wonderful sagacity, that clear insight into
the motives of others, which had ever constituted one of the strongest
points of her character. The chief object of the faithful few, who
had clung to her with unblenching steadiness through this her last
misfortune, had been to bear her in security to some point whence she
might effect her escape to the sunny shores of that land wherein she
had passed the happiest, the only truly happy, hours of her checkered
existence. Queen-dowager herself of France, knit by the closest ties of
interest and friendship to the court of Versailles--to which, moreover,
Scotland had ever been considered an auxiliar and well-affected state,
no less than an easy pretext for hostilities against its natural
antagonist--she had been there secure, not of safety only, but of
the full enjoyment of rank, and wealth, and dignity, and pleasure,
if indeed pleasure were yet within the reach of one who had herself
suffered, and who had beheld all those that loved her suffer, as Mary
the last queen of Scotland. Inclination, it would have seemed, no less
than policy, should have urged the hapless sovereign to the measure
advocated by each and all of her devoted train; for but a few years
had flown since she had felt all those pangs which render exile to
a delicate and sensitive mind the heaviest of human punishments, on
parting from the fair shores of that land, which even then perhaps
some prophetic spirit whispered, she must behold no more! Herries, the
bold and loyal Herries, bent his knee, stiffened with years of toil
and exposure, to sue of his adored mistress the only boon of all his
labors, all his sufferings, that she would avoid the fatal soil of
England.

“Remember,” he had cried, in tones which seemed in after-days of more
than human foresight--“remember how the false and wily woman, who sways
the sceptre of England with absolute and undisputed sway--remember, I
say, with what unflinching determination she has thwarted you in every
wish of your heart; with what depth of secret enmity she has at all
times, and in all places, cherished your foes, and injured all who were
most dear to you! and wherefore, oh wherefore, my beloved mistress,
wherefore should her course of action now be altered, when she has no
longer a powerful queen with whom to strive, but rather a fugitive
rival to oppress? Elizabeth of England--believe me, noble lady--has
marked this crisis as it drew nigh, with that unerring instinct which
directs the blood-raven to its destined victim while life yet revels in
its veins; and surely, so surely as you enter her accursed eyry, shall
you feel her vulture-talons busy about your heartstrings! For years,
my noble mistress, has Herries been your servant; at council or in
field, with ready hand and true word, has he ever served the Stuart. It
becomes me not to boast, yet will I speak: when Seyton, and Ogilvy, and
Huntley, were dismayed--when Hamilton himself hung back--Herries was
ever nigh.”

“Ever, ever true and loyal!” cried the hapless queen, touched even
beyond the consideration of her own calamities by the speech of the
brave veteran--“my noble, noble Herries, and bitter, most bitter has
been the reward of truth and valor; but so has it ever been with Mary.
I tell thee, baron, for me to love a bird, a tree, a flower, much less
a creature such as thou art, an honorable, upright, and devoted friend,
was but that creature’s doom: all whom I have loved have I destroyed!
Alas, alas for the undaunted spirits that were severed from the forms
they filled so nobly, on that dark battle-field!”

“Think not of them, my liege--mourn not for them,” interrupted the
baron. “Knightly, and in their duty, have they fallen. Their last blow
was stricken, and their last slogan shouted, in a cause the fairest
that ever hallowed warrior’s blade. They are at rest, and they are
happy. But think of those who, having lost their earthly all to save
thee, would yet esteem themselves pre-eminently happy so they might see
thee free and in security. Oh! hear me, Mary--hear for the first, last
time--hear the prayer of Herries! Go not, go not--as you love life, and
dignity, and liberty--as you would prove your faith to those who have
never been faithless to you--go not to this accursed England!”

But it had all been vain. The fiat had gone forth, and reason had
deserted, as it would seem, the destined victim. No arguments,
however lucid--no fears, however natural, could divert her from this
fatal project. With the choice of good and evil fairly set before
her--honor, and rank, and liberty, in France, a prison and an axe in
England--deliberately and resolutely she rushed upon her fate! And
when she might have found a willing asylum in the arms of kindred
monarchs, she yielded herself to the tender mercies of a rival queen,
a rival beauty; a fierce, unforgiving, unfeminine foe; a being who,
as she aped the name, so also displayed the attributes and nature of
the lion! How could Mary--a professed foe, a claimant of her crown, a
woman fairer, and of brighter parts even than her own--a mother, while
she was but a barren stake--how could Mary, with so many causes to
awaken her deathless hostility, hope for generosity or for mercy from a
queen who could even sacrifice without a pang her inclinations to her
interest; whose favors but marshalled those on whom they fell to the
scaffold and the block; whose dearest favorites, whose most faithful
servants had fallen, one by one, beneath the headsman’s axe; who had
proved herself, in short, a worthy heiress to the soulless tyrant from
whom she had sprung, by the violence of her uncurbed passions, and by
the hereditary pleasure with which, through all her long and glorious
reign (glorious, as it is termed, for with the multitude the ends will
ever justify the means, and foreign conquest hallow domestic tyranny),
she rioted in innocent and noble blood!

The Rubicon had been passed--and scarcely passed, before Mary had
discovered the entire justice, no less than the deep love, manifested
by the parting words of Herries. As her last sovereignty, she had
stepped aboard the barge that was to waft her from her discontented and
ungrateful subjects to a free and happy home, as she too fondly hoped,
in merry England. Girt with the bills and bows which had battened so
deeply and so often in the gore of Scottishmen, gallantly dressed,
and himself of gallant bearing, Lowther, the sheriff of the marches,
received the royal fugitive. With every mark of deference that manly
strength is bound to show to female weakness, with all the chivalrous
respect a good knight is compelled by his order to display to innocence
and beauty--nay, more, with all the profound humility of a subject
before his queen--did he conduct the hapless lady aboard his bark.
Yet, while the words of welcome were upon his tongue, while he dwelt
with loyal eagerness on the sincerity and love of England’s Elizabeth
toward her sister-queen--by his refusal to admit above a limited and
trifling portion of her train to share the asylum of their mistress,
he had already drawn the distinction between the royal captive and the
royal guest.

And so it afterward appeared. In vain did Mary petition as a favor,
or claim as a right, an interview with her relentless persecutor. She
should have known that even if Elizabeth could, by her constitution,
have pardoned her assumption of the style or titles of the English
monarchy, she could yet never overlook, never forgive her surpassing
loveliness, her elegant accomplishments, her brilliant wit, her more
than mortal grace! She might have condescended to despise the rival
queen--she could only stoop to hate the rival beauty. From castle
to castle had she been transferred, with no regard for either her
rank or convenience. From prison to prison, from warder to warder,
had she been conveyed, as each abode seemed in turn insecure to the
lynx-eyed jealousy of her tormentor, or every jailer in turn sickened
at the loathsome weariness of his hateful and degrading employment. No
better proof--if proof were needed--could be adduced of Elizabeth’s
tyrannical and cruel despotism, than the unconstitutional authority by
which she forced noble after noble, the very pride and flower of the
English aristocracy, to change their castles into prisonhouses, their
households into warders and turnkeys, their very lives into a state of
anxious misery, which could only be surpassed by that of the unhappy
prisoner they were, so contrary to their will, compelled to guard.

After the base mockery of the trial instituted at York, but a few
months after her arrival--that trial wherein a brother was brought
forward to convict his sister of adultery and murder--that trial
which, though it pronounced the prisoner unconvicted, yet inflicted
on her all the penalties of conviction--it scarcely appears that
Mary ever entertained a hope of obtaining her liberty, much less the
station which was her right, from either the justice or the generosity
of the lion-queen. In vain had every course been tried, in vain had
every human means been employed. In vain had Scotland sued; in vain
had France and Spain threatened, and even prepared to act upon their
threats. For Mary there was no amelioration, no change!

From day to day, from year to year, her hopes had fallen away one by
one. Her spirits, so buoyant and elastic once, had now subsided into
a heavy, settled gloom; her very charms were but a wreck and shadow
of their former glory. For a time she had endeavored, by all those
beautiful occupations of the pencil, the needle, or the lyre, in which
none had equalled her in her young days of happiness, to while away
the deep and engrossing weariness which by long endurance becomes
even worse than pain. For a time she had been permitted to vary the
monotony of her domestic labors by her favorite exercises in the field
and forest. Surrounded by a train of mail-clad horsemen, warders with
bended bows and loaded arquebuses, she had a few times been allowed to
ride forth into the free woodland, and to forget, amid the gay sights
and heart-stirring sounds of the chase, the cares that were heavy at
her heart. But how should that heart forget, when at every turn it
encountered the haggard eye of the anxious keeper--anxious, for the
slightest relaxation of his duty were certain death! How should the ear
thrill to the enlivening music of the pack, or to the wild flourish of
the bugles, when the clash of steel announced on every side the minions
of her oppressor? How should the gallop over the velvet turf, beneath
the luxuriant shadow of the immemorial oaks, convey aught of freshness
to the spirit that was about to return thence to chambers no less a
dungeon for being decked with the mockeries of state, than though they
had presented to the eye those common accessories of bar, and grate,
and chain, which they failed not to set before the mind? After a while,
even these liberties were curtailed! It seemed too much of freedom,
that the titular sovereign of three realms--the cynosure of every eye,
the beauty at whose very name every heart thrilled and every pulse
bounded--should be permitted to taste the common air of heaven, even
when hemmed in, without the possibility of escape, by guards armed to
the teeth, and sworn to exercise those arms, not only against all who
should attempt the rescue, but against the miserable captive herself,
should she attempt to profit by any efforts made for her release!

And efforts were made--efforts by the best and noblest of the British
peerage--by men whose names were almost sufficient to turn defeat to
victory and shame to glory. Norfolk and Westmoreland, and a hundred
others, of birth scarcely less distinguished, and of virtues no less
brilliant, revolted from the soul-debasing despotism of Elizabeth, and
attempted, now by secret stratagem, and now by open warfare, to force
the victim from the clutches of the lion. With the deepest regret did
Mary witness the destruction of so many noble spirits, and with yet
deeper fury did Elizabeth behold star after star of her boasted galaxy
of nobles shoot madly from their spheres in pursuit of a meteor. Bitter
were her feelings, and deadly was her vengeance. The bloody reign of
Mary might almost have been deemed to have returned, as day by day the
death-bells tolled, as the traitor’s gate admitted another and another
occupant to that above, whence the only egress was by the axe and
scaffold. Nor was this all. A thousand wild and fearful rumors began
to float among the multitude. The perils of a catholic insurrection,
the intended assassination of the queen, the establishment of a
papistical dynasty upon the throne of England, were topics of ordinary
conversation, but of no ordinary excitement. At one time it was
reported that a Spanish fleet was actually in the channel; at another
that the duke of Guise, with a vast army, had effected a landing on
the Kentish coast, and might hourly be expected in the capital. Nor
is it uncharitable to suppose that these reports were designedly
spread abroad, this excitement purposely kept alive, by the wily
ministers of Elizabeth. That the despot-queen had long ago determined
on the slaughter of her rival, is certain; nor have we any just cause
for doubting that Bacon and Walsingham were men as fully capable of
goading the terrors of a multitude into fury as was their mistress of
recommending the private murder of her hapless victim!

It was at this period that popular madness was raised to its utmost
height by the detection of Babington’s conspiracy. Rich, young,
brave, and romantic; stimulated by the hope of gaining the hand of
Mary, forgetful that the personal loveliness for which she had once
been conspicuous must long have yielded to the joint influence of
misery and time; and deceived by the fatal maxim, then too much in
vogue, that means are justified by ends--this gentleman resolved on
bringing about the liberation of the Scottish by the murder of the
English queen. The affair was not looked upon as so atrocious, but
that twelve associates were easily found for the execution of the
plot; and it is barely possible that, had they proceeded at once to
action, their desperate effort might have been crowned with success.
They delayed--they talked--they were discovered! Beneath the protracted
agonies of the question, one was found of these convicted traitors
who asserted the privity of Mary to the whole affair; and at once, as
though a torch had been applied to some train long prepared, the whole
of England burst forth into a perfect frenzy of terror. A people are
never so terrible, never so barbarous, as when they are thoroughly and
needlessly terrified. From every quarter of the kingdom the cry was at
once for blood; and Elizabeth, looking in cool delight upon the tumult,
perceived that the moment had arrived when she might gratify, without
fear, her jealous thirst for her hated guest’s destruction. Addresses
showered into either house of parliament, beseeching the queen and her
ministers to awaken themselves at once to the perils of the people; to
provide against the impended dangers of a catholic succession; and to
remove at once all possibility of future conspiracies by the immediate
removal of her who was, as they asserted, not the cause only, but the
principal mover of every successive plot.

It is not to be supposed that, after pining so long in secret for
an opportunity of gratifying her malice, Elizabeth doubted an
instant. It is true indeed that, with a loathsome affectation of
tender-heartedness, she pretended to regret the stern necessity;
that she whined forth doleful remonstrances to her trusty ministers,
entreating them to discover some mode by which she might herself be
preserved from the risk of assassination, without undergoing the misery
of seeing her well-beloved cousin of Scotland suffer in her stead!
Well, however, did those ministers know the meaning of the motives of
their odious mistress; well were they aware that there was no more of
pity or reluctance in the bosom of Elizabeth than there is of mirth in
that of the hyena when he sends forth his yells of laughter above his
mangled prey!

It was a lovely morning in the autumn; the sun was shedding a mellow
light upon the long glades and velvet turf of a park-like lawn before
the feudal towers of the earl of Shrewsbury. Before the gate were
assembled a group of liveried domestics, with many a noble steed
pawing the earth and champing its foamy bits; hounds clamored in their
couples, and falcons shook themselves and clapped their restless
wings in vain impatience. It was evident that the attendants were but
awaiting the approach of some distinguished personage, to commence
their sports; and by their whispered conversation it appeared that
this personage was no other than the wretched Mary. The castle-gates
were thrown open; a heavy guard, with arquebuss, and pike, and bow,
filed through the gloomy gateway; and then, leaning upon the arm of the
still stately Shrewsbury, the poor victim of inveterate persecution
came slowly forward. Several gentlemen in rich attire, and among them
Sir Thomas Georges, blazing in the royal liveries of England, yet
bearing on his soiled buskins and the bloody spurs that graced them
tokens of a long and hasty journey, followed; and another band of
warders brought up the rear.

The charms which had once rendered Mary the loveliest of her sex, had
faded, it is true; the dimpled cheek was sunken, and its hues, that
once had vied with the carnation, had fled for ever; her tresses were
no longer of that rich and golden brown that had furnished subjects
for a thousand sonnets, for many a line of gray marked the premature
and wintry blight which had been cast upon her beauties by the
sternness and misery of her latter years. Still, there was an air of
such sweet resignation in every feature, such a dignity in the port
of her person--still symmetrical, though it had lost something of its
roundness--such a majesty in her still-brilliant eyes--that even the
wretches who had determined on her destruction dared not meet the
glance of her whom they so foully wronged.

She was already seated in the saddle, and the reins just grasped in a
delicate but masterly hand, when Georges, stepping forward and bending
a knee--almost, as it would seem, in mockery--informed her that her
confederates in the meditated slaughter of Elizabeth were convicted;
that it was the pleasure of the queen that her grace of Scotland should
proceed at once to the sure castle of Fotheringay, and that it was
resolved that she should set forth upon the instant. For a moment,
but for a single moment, did Mary gaze into the eyes of the courtly
speaker, with a gaze of incredulity, almost of terror; a quick shudder
ran through every limb; and once she wrung her hands bitterly--but not
a word escaped her pallid lips, not a tear disgraced her noble race.

“It is well, sir,” she said, “it is well. We thank you, no less for
your pleasant tidings, than the knightly considerations which prompted
you to choose so well your opportunity for conveying them to our ear
when we were about to set forth in search of such brief pleasure as
might for a moment gild the monotony of a prisoner’s life! We thank
you, sir, most warmly, and we doubt not your own noble heart will
reward you by that best of gifts, a happy and approving conscience! For
the rest--lead on! it matters little to the wretched and the captive
by what title the prison-bars, which shut them out from light, and
liberty, and hope, are dignified; and well do we know that for us there
is but one exit from our dungeon, or rest from our calamities--the
grave!”

She had commenced her speech in that tone of calm and polished raillery
for which she had in her earlier days been so renowned, and which even
pierced deeper into the feelings of those who writhed beneath it than
the most bitter sarcasm; but her concluding sentences were uttered
with deep feeling: and, as she turned her liquid eyes toward heaven,
it seemed most wonderful that men should exist capable of exciting a
single pang in the heart of such a creature.

The gates of Fotheringay received her; and, as she rode beneath the
gloomy archway, a prophetic chill fell upon her soul, and she felt
that here her wanderings and her sorrows would shortly be brought to a
close! Scarcely had she reached the miserable privacy of her chamber,
when steps were heard without. Mildmay, Paulet, and Barker, entered,
and delivering a letter full of hypocritical regrets and feigned
affection, informed her that the queen’s commissioners were even then
assembled in the castle-hall, and prayed the lady Mary to descend and
refute the foul charges preferred against her name.

Enfeebled as she had been by sufferings and sorrows, wearied by
her long and rapid journey, and, above all things, crushed by this
last blow, it little seemed that so frail and delicate a form could
have contained a soul so mighty as flashed forth in one blaze of
indignation. Her pale cheek crimsoned, her sunken eye glared with
unwonted fire; she started upon her feet, her limbs trembling, not with
terror or debility, but with strong and terrible excitement.

“Knows not your mistress,” she cried, in clear, high tones, “that I,
too, am a queen? or would she knowingly debase the dignity which is
common to her with me? Away! I will not deign to plead! I--I, the
queen of Scotland, the mother and the wife of kings--I plead to mine
inferiors? Go tell your mistress that neither eighteen years of vile
captivity, nor dread, nor misery, has sunk the soul of Mary Stuart so
low, that she will speak one syllable to guard her life, save in the
presence of her peers! Let her assemble her high courts of parliament,
if she so will it: to them, and to them only, will I plead. Here she
may slay me, it is true; but she must slay me by the assassin’s knife,
not by the prostituted sword of justice. I have spoken!”--and she
threw herself at once into a seat, immoveable alike in position and in
resolve.

Well had it been for her had she continued firm in that determination;
but what could a weak woman’s unassisted intellect avail against
the united force of talents such as those of Hatton and Burleigh? A
thousand specious arguments were summoned to overcome her scruples,
but summoned all in vain, till the last hint--that her unwillingness
to plead could arise only from a consciousness of guilt--aroused
her. Pride, fatal pride, determined the debate, and she descended.
Eloquently, sorrowfully, manfully, did she plead her cause, combating
the vile chicaneries, the extorted evidences, the absence or the want
of legal witnesses, with the native powers of a clear and vigorous
mind. Once during that judicial mockery did her passions burst the
control of her judgment, and she openly, in full court, charged the
secretary, Walsingham--and, as many now believe, most justly charged
him--with the forgery of the only documents that bore upon her
character, or on the case in point. But all was fruitless! For what
eloquence should convince men resolved in any circumstances to convict?
what facts should clear away the imputed guilt of one whom it was fully
determined to destroy?

The trial was concluded. With the air of a queen she stood erect, with
a calm brow and serene eye, as the commissioners departed, one by one.
No doom had been pronounced against her, but she read it in the eyes
of all; and as she saw her misnamed judges quit her presence, she
muttered, in the low notes of a determined spirit: “The tragedy is well
nigh closed--the last act is at hand! Peace--peace--I soon shall find
thee in the grave.”




THE CLOSING SCENE.

   “Still as the lips that’s closed in death,
    Each gazer’s bosom held his breath;
    But yet afar, from man to man,
    A cold, electric shiver ran,
    As down the deadly blow descended,
    On her whose love and life thus ended.”--PARISINA.


It was a dark, but lovely night; moonless, but liquid and transparent;
the stars which gemmed the firmament glittered more brightly from the
absence of the mightier planet, and from the influence of a slight
degree of frost upon the atmosphere, although it was indeed so slight,
that its presence could be traced only in the crispness of the herbage,
and in the uncommon purity of the heavens. Beneath a sky such as I have
vainly endeavored to portray, the towers of Fotheringay rose black and
dismal above the ancestral oaks and sweeping glades of its demesne.
It would have appeared to a casual observer that all were at rest,
buried in utter forgetfulness of all their hopes and sorrows, within
that massive pile, save the lonely sentinel, whose progress round the
battlements, although invisible, might be traced by the clatter of
his harness, and the sullen echoes of his steel-shod stride. But to
a nearer and more accurate survey, a single light, feebly twinkling
through a casement of the dungeon-keep, told a far different tale.
At times that solitary ray streamed in unbroken lines far into the
bosom of the darkness; at times it was momentarily obscured, as if by
the passage of some opaque body, though the transit, if such it were,
was too brief to reveal the form or motions of the obstacle. Once,
however, the shadow paused, and then, as its outlines stood forth in
strong relief against the illumination of the chamber, the delicate
proportions and musing attitude of a female might be discerned with
certainty. It was the queen of Scotland. Her earthly sorrows were
drawing to their close; the peace, for which she had long ceased to
look, save in the silence of the tomb, was now within her grasp. Mary’s
last sun had set.

Of life she had taken her farewell long, long ago; and death--the
bugbear of the happy, the terror of the dastard--dark, mysterious,
unknown death--had become to her an intimate, and, as it were, familiar
friend. It was not that she had lessoned her shrinking spirit to endure
with calmness that which it had shuddered to encounter; it was not that
she had weaned her heart, yet clinging to the vanities of a heartless
world, with difficulty and trembling, to their abandonment; least of
all was it that she had been taught to regard that final separation
with the stoic’s apathy, or to look for that dull and sunless rest,
that absence of all feelings, whether of good or evil; that total
annihilation of mind, in the great hereafter, which, to a sensitive
temperament, and soul not rendered wholly callous by the debasing
contact with this world’s idols, must seem a punishment secondary, if
secondary, only to an eternity of wo. Born to a station lofty as the
most vaulting ambition could desire, nurtured in gentleness and luxury,
gifted with a mind such as rarely dwells within a mortal form, and
having that mind invested in a frame, by its resplendent beauty fitted
to be the door of immortality, she had felt, in a succession of sorrows
almost unexampled, that the very qualities which should have ministered
to her for bliss, had been converted into the instruments of misery
and pain. Attached to her native land with the Switzer’s patriotism,
she had endured from it the extremities of scorn and hatred. Full
of the warmest sympathies even for the meanest of mankind, she had
never loved a single being but he had recompensed that love with
coals of fire heaped upon her head; or if a few had passed unscathed
through the trying ordeal of benefits received, they had themselves
miserably perished for their gratitude toward one whose love seemed
fated to blight the virtues, or destroy the being of all on whom it
was bestowed. If the sun of her morning had ridden gloriously forth
in a serene heaven, with the promise of a splendid noontide and an
unclouded setting, yet scarcely had it scaled one half of its meridian
height, ere it had been compassed about with gloom and darkness; and
ere its setting the thunders had rolled and the deadly lightnings
flashed between the daygod and its scattered worshippers. She had been
led step by step from the keenest enjoyment to the utmost disregard
of the pleasures of the earth; she had drained the cup, and knew its
bitterness too well to languish for a second draught. Yet there was
nothing of resentment, nothing of hard-heartedness or scorn, in the
feelings with which she looked back on the world and its adorers. She
did not despise the many for that they still lingered in pursuit of
a star which she had found, by sad experience, to be but a delusive
meteor; much less did she hate the happy few to whom that valley, which
had been to her indeed a vale of tears and of the shadow of death, had
been a region of perpetual sunshine and unclouded happiness.

From Mary’s earliest years there had been a deep spring of piety in
her heart which, never utterly dried up, though choked at times, and
turned from its true course by the thorny cares and troubles of life,
had burst from the briers which so long concealed it in redoubled
purity as it flowed nearer to the close. There was an innate tenderness
in all her sentiments toward all men and all things which could never
degenerate into hatred, much less into misanthropy. She looked then
upon life in its true light; as a mingled landscape, now obscured by
clouds, now called into glory by the sunshine; as a region, tangled
here with forests, and cumbered with barren rocks, there swelling into
hills of vintage, or subsiding into glens of verdure. And if to her
the landscape had been most viewed beneath the influence of a dark and
threatening sky--if to her life’s path had lain, for the most part,
through the wilderness and over the mountains--she knew that such was
the result of her own misfortune, perhaps of her own misconduct, not
of defect in the wonderful contrivance, or of improvidence in the
all-glorious contriver.

In proportion as she had learned to dwell on the insufficiency of
earthly good to satiate that deep thirst for happiness which is not the
least among the proofs of the soul’s immortality, she had come to look
upon the void of futurity as the unexplored region of bliss; upon death
as the portal through which we must pass from the desert of toil and
sorrow to the Eden of hope and happiness. That she was drawing rapidly
near to this portal she had for a long time been aware; and, during the
latter years of her captivity, she had longed to see the leaves of that
gate unfolded for her exit, with a sense of pining sickness, similar to
that of the imprisoned eagle. The mockery of her trial she had beheld
as the avenue through which she should arrive, and that right shortly,
at the desired end; and although she knew that the scaffold and the
axe, or the secret knife of the assassin, must need be the key to that
gate, she recked but little of the means, so that the way of escape was
left open to her.

She had pleaded, it is true, with brilliant eloquence and earnestness,
in behalf, not of life, but of her honor. She wished for death, and she
cared not for the vulgar ignominy of the scaffold; but she did care,
she did shrink from the ignominy of a condemnation--a condemnation not
by the suborned commissioners, not by the jealous rival, not by the
perjured and terror-stricken populace of the day, but by Time and by
Eternity. This was the condemnation from which she shrank; this was the
ignominy which she combated; this was the doom which, by the masterly
and dauntless efforts of her unassisted woman heart, she turned not
only from herself, but back upon her murderers.

From the departure of the commissioners, she had been convinced that
she was hovering as it were on the confines of life and immortality.
Happy and calm herself, she had labored to render calm and happy the
little group of friends--for domestics when faithful, are friends--who
still preserved their allegiance. She craved no more the wanderings in
the green-wood; she had even refused to join in her once-loved sports
of field and forest, which, denied to her when she would have grasped
the boon, were freely proffered now, as though her enemies, with a
far-reaching malignity that would stretch its arm beyond the grave,
had wished to reawaken in her bosom that love for things of this life
which had sunk to sleep, and to sharpen the bitterness of death by the
added tortures of regret. If such, indeed, were their intentions--and
who shall presume to judge?--their barbarity was frustrated; and if
they indeed envied their poor victim the miserable consolation of
passing cheerfully and in peace from the sphere of her sorrows, we may
be assured that the frustration of their wicked views was sufficient
punishment to them while here, and none can even dare to conjecture
what will be their doom hereafter.

This night had brought at length the balm to all her cares--the
restless eagerness to be assured of that which was to come was
over--the goal was reached, the gates were half-unclosed, and, to
her enthusiastic and poetical imagination, the hymns and harpings of
expectant seraphs seemed to pour in their soothing chimes, whispering
of peace, pardon, and beatitude for evermore between the parted
portals. With a bigotry, which in these days of universal toleration
it is equally difficult to conceive or to condemn sufficiently, it was
denied to the departing sinner--for who that is most perfect here is
other than a sinner--to enjoy the consolations of a priest of her own
persuasion. A firm and conscientious, though not a bigoted catholic, it
was a cruelty of the worst and most outrageous nature, to deny her that
which she deemed of the highest importance to her eternal welfare, and
which they could not deem prejudicial, without being themselves victims
of a superstition so slavish as to disprove their participation in a
faith which boasts itself no less a religion of freedom than of truth.

Steadily refusing the aid of the protestant divines, who harassed her
with an assiduity that spoke more of polemical pride than of Christian
sincerity, she had performed her orisons with deep devotion, and had
arisen from their performance assured of forgiveness, confident in her
own repentance, and in the mercy of Him who alone is perfect; in peace
and charity even with her direst foes, and happy in the anticipation of
the morrow. She had sat down to her last earthly meal with an appetite
unimpaired by the knowledge that it was to be her last; she had
conversed cheerfully, gayly, with her weeping friends; she had drunk
one cup of wine to their health and happiness, and, in token of her
own gratitude, to each she had distributed some little pledge of her
affectionate regard; and then--amid the notes of dreadful preparation,
the creaking of saws and the clang of hammers, busily converting the
castle-hall into a place of slaughter, as it had been not long before
a place of misnamed justice--she had sunk to sleep so calmly, and
slumbered on with a countenance so moveless in its innocent repose, and
with a bosom so regular in its healthful pulsations, that her admiring
ladies began to look on her as one about to start upon a pleasant
voyage to the harbor of all her wishes, rather than as one about to
perish by a cruel and ignominious death on the scaffold. Hours flew
over the lovely sleeper, and the eyes of her watchers waxed heavier,
till they wept themselves to sleep; and one--an aged woman, who had
watched her infancy and gloried in the promise of her youth--after her
eyes were sealed in sleep, yet continued, by the heavy sobs which burst
from the lips of the slumberer, to manifest the extent of that misery
which abode in all its vividness within the mind, although the body was
wrapt in that state which men have called oblivion.

Such had been the state of things in Mary’s chamber from the first
close of evening to the dead hour of midnight; but ere the east had
begun again to redden with the returning glories of its luminary,
sleep, which still sat leadlike on the eyelids of her attendants,
forsook the hapless sovereign. Silently she arose, and, throwing
a single garment carelessly about her person, passed from her
sleeping-apartment into a little oratory adjoining, without disturbing
from her painful slumbers one of those faithful beings to whom the
distinct consciousness of waking sorrow must have been yet more
painfully acute.

Here, as with a quick but regular step she traversed the narrow turret,
she viewed as it were in the space of a single hour the crowded
events of a life which, unnaturally shortened as it was about to be,
yet contained naught of remote and rare occurrence, but in rapid and
complete succession--those events which make an epoch and an era of
every hour, and lengthen years of time into ages of the mind.

Calmly, piously, without a shade of sorrow for the past or of
solicitude for the future, save that mysterious and yet natural anxiety
which must haunt every mind, however well prepared to endure its final
separation from the body, as the hour of dissolution approaches, did
she expect the morning. This anxiety and this alone was blended with
the various feelings which coursed through the soul of Mary during this
the last night of her existence.

It was in such a frame of mind that Mary, in the solitude of that last
earthly night, diverting her attention entirely from the terrible shock
she was about to undergo on the morrow, thought upon her native land,
still dear though still ungrateful, a prey to the fierce contentions
of her own factious offspring--of her son, torn at the earliest dawn
of his affections from the arms of a mother, nurtured among those who
would teach him to eradicate every warmer recollection--to pluck forth,
as if it were an offending eye, every lingering tenderness for that
being, who, amid all her sins and all her sorrows, had never ceased to
love him with an entire and perfect love. There is, in truth, something
more evidently divine, partaking more nearly of that which we believe
to be the very essence of Divinity, in a mother’s love, than in any
other pang or passion--for every passion, how sweet soever it may be,
has something of a pang mingled with it--in the human soul. All other
love is liable to diminution, to change, or to extinction; all other
love may be alienated by the neglect, chilled by the coldness, frozen
to the core by the worthlessness, of the object once beloved. All
other affections are influenced by a thousand trivial circumstances of
time and place: absence may weaken their influence, time obscure their
vividness, and, above all, custom may rob them of their value. But on
the love of a mother--commencing as it does before the object of her
solicitude possesses form or being; springing from agony and sorrow;
ripening in anxiety and care, and reaping too often the bitter harvest
of ingratitude--all incidental causes, all external influences, are
powerless and vain. Time but excites her admiration, but increases her
solicitude, but redoubles her affections. Absence but causes her to
dwell with a more engrossing memory on him from whom her heart is never
absent. Custom but hallows the sentiment to which nature has given
birth. Neglect and coldness but cause her to strain every nerve to
merit more and more the poor return of filial love--the solitary aim of
her existence, if heartlessly denied to her. Nay, worthlessness itself
but binds her more closely to him whom the hard world has cast aside,
to find a refuge in the only bosom which will not perceive his errors
or credit his utter destitution.

Thus it was with Mary! She knew that the child of her affections
regarded those affections as vile and worthless weeds! She knew that
he was selfish, vain, and heartless! She knew that a single word from
that child whom she still adored--if conveyed to her persecutor in
the strong language of sincerity and earnestness--if borne, not by
a fawning courtier, but by one of those high spirits which Scotland
has found ever ready to her need--if enforced by threats of instant
war--would have broken her fetters in a moment, and conveyed her from
the dungeons of Fotheringay to the courts of Holyrood! All this she
knew, yet her heart would not know it! And when all Europe rang with
curses on the unnatural vacillation of that son; when every Scottish
heart, whatever might be its policy or its party, despised his abject
cringing; while Elizabeth herself, while she flattered his vanity,
and affected to honor and esteem his virtue, scoffed in her royal
privacy at the tool she designed to use in public--Mary alone, Mary,
the only sufferer and victim of his baseness, still clung to the idea
of his worth, still adored the child who was driving her out, as the
scape-goat of the Jews, to expiate the sins of himself and his people
by her own destruction! But it was not on James alone that her wayward
memory was fixed. At a time when any soul less dauntless, any spirit
less exalted, would have failed beneath its load of sorrows, Mary had a
fond regret, a tear of sorrow, a sigh of sincere gratitude, for every
gallant life that had devoted itself to ward from her that fate which
their united loyalty had availed only to defer, not to avert. Chastelar
passed before her, with his tones of sweetest melancholy, and that
unutterable love, which made him invoke blessings on her who had doomed
him to the block: and Darnley, as he had seemed in the few short hours
when he had been, when he had deserved to be, the idol of her heart:
and Bothwell, the eloquent, the glorious, but guilty Bothwell, her ruin
and her betrayer: and Douglas, the noble, hapless Douglas, he who had
riven the bolts of Loch Leven, and sent her forth to a short freedom
and worse captivity: Huntley, and Hamilton, and Seyton, and Kirkaldy,
the most formidable of her foes until he became the firmest of her
friends--all passed in sad review before the eyes of her entranced
imagination.

Thus it was that the last queen of Scotland passed the latest night
of her existence. With no consciousness of time, with no care for the
present, no apprehension for the future, she had paced the narrow floor
of her apartment during the still hours of midnight. Unperceived by
her had the stars paled, then vanished from the brightening firmament;
unseen had the first dappling of the east gone into the clear, cold
light of a wintry morning; unheeded had the castle clock sent forth
its giant echoes hour after hour, to be heard by every watcher over
leagues of field and forest. Another sound rose heavily, and she was at
once collected--time, place, and circumstances, flashed fully on her
mind--she was prepared to meet them: it was the roar of the morning
culverin; and scarcely had its deafening voice passed over, before a
single bell, hoarse, slow, and solemn, pealed minute after minute, the
signal of her approaching dissolution.

Calmly, as if she were about to prepare for some gay festival, she
turned to the apartment where her ladies, overdone by wo and watching,
yet slumbered, forgetful of the dread occasion.

“Arise,” she said, in sweet, low tones; “arise, my girls, and do your
last of duties for the mistress ye have served so well! Nay, start not
up so wildly, nor blush that ye have slept while we were watching.
Dear girls, the time has come--the time for which my soul so long has
thirsted. Array me, then, as to a banquet, a glorious banquet of
immortality! See,” she continued, scattering her long locks over her
shoulders--“see, they were bright of yore as the last sunbeam of a
summer day, yet I am prouder of them now, with their long streaks of
untimely snow--for they now tell a tale of sorrows, borne as it becomes
a queen to bear them. Braid them with all your skill, and place yon
pearls around my velvet head-gear. We will go forth to die, clad as a
bride; and now methinks the queen of France and Scotland owns but a
single robe of fair device. Bring forth our royal train and broidered
farthingale: it fits us not to die with our limbs clad in the garb of
mourning, when Heaven knows that our heart is clothed in gladness!”

Tearless, while all around were drowned in lamentations, she strove to
cheer them to the performance of this last sad office--not with the
commonplace assurances, the miserable resources of earthly consolation,
much less with aught of heartless levity, or of that unfeeling parade
which has so often adorned the scaffold with a jest, and concealed
the anxiety of a heart ill at ease beneath the semblance of ill-timed
merriment--but by suffering them to read her inmost soul; by showing
them the true position of her existence; by pointing out to them the
actual hardships of the body, and the yet deeper humiliations of the
soul, from which the door of her escape was even now unclosing.

Scarcely had she completed her attire, and tasted of the consecrated
wafer--long ago procured from the holy Pius, and preserved for this
extremity--when the tread of many feet without, and a slight clash of
weapons at the door of the ante-chamber, announced that the hour had
arrived.

Once and again, ere she gave the signal to unclose the door, she
embraced each one of her attendants. “Dear, faithful friends, adieu,
adieu,” she said, “for ever; and now remember, remember the last
words of Mary. Weep not for me, and, if ye love me, shake not my
steadfastness, which, thanks to Him who is the Father and the Friend
of the afflicted, the fear of death can not shake, by useless fear or
lamentation. We would die as a martyr cheerfully, as a queen nobly!
Fare ye well, and remember!” With an air of royal dignity she seated
herself, and, with her maidens standing around her chair, she bore the
mien of a high sovereign awaiting the arrival of some proud legation,
rather than that of a captive awaiting a summons to the block. “And
now,” she said, as she arranged her draperies with dignified serenity,
“admit their envoy.”

The doors were instantly thrown open as she spoke, the sheriff uttered
his ordinary summons, and without a shudder she rose. “Lead on,”
she said; “we follow thee more joyously than thou, methinks, canst
marshal us. Sir Amias Paulet, lend us thine arm; it fits us not that
we proceed, even to the death, without some show of courtesy. Maidens,
bear up our train; and now, sir, we are ready.”

But a heavier trial than the axe awaited the unhappy sovereign; for
as she set her foot on the first step of the stairs, Melville, her
faithful steward, flung himself at her feet, with almost girlish
wailings. Friendly and familiarly she raised him from the ground.
“Nay, sorrow not for me,” she said, “true friend. Subject for sorrow
there is none, unless thou grievest that Mary is set free--that for
the captive’s weeds she shall put on a robe of immortality, and, for a
crown of earthly misery, the glory of beatitude.”

“Alas! alas! God grant that I may die, rather than look upon this
damned deed.”

“Nay, live, good Melville, for my sake live; commend me to my son, and
say to him, Mary’s last thoughts on earth were given to France and
Scotland, her last but these to him: say, that she died unshaken in
her faith to God, unswerving in her courage, confident in her reward.
Farewell, true servant, take from the lips of Mary the last kiss that
mortal e’er shall take of them, and fare thee well for ever.”

At this moment the earl of Kent stepped forward, and roughly bade her
dismiss her women also, “for the present matter tasked other ministers
than such as these.” For a moment she condescended to plead that they
might be suffered to attend her to the last; but when she was again
refused, her ancient spirit flashed out in every tone, as she cried,
trumpet-like and clear, “Proud lord, beware! I too am cousin to your
queen--I too am sprung from the high-blood of England’s royalty--I too
am an anointed queen. I say thou shalt obey, and these shall follow
their mistress to the death, or with foul violence shall they force me
thither. Beware! beware, I say, how thou shalt answer doing me this
dishonor!”

Her words prevailed. Without a shudder she descended, entered the
fatal hall, looked with an air of smiling condescension, almost of
pity, on the spectators crowded almost to suffocation, and, mounting
the scaffold, stood in proud and abstracted unconcern, while, in the
measured sounds of a proclamation, the warrant for her death was read
beside her elbow.

The bishop of Peterborough then drew nigh, and, in a loud voice and
inflated style, harassed her ears with an oration, which, whatever
might have been its merits, was at that time but a barbarous and
useless outrage.

“Trouble not yourself,” she broke in at length, disgusted with his
intemperate eloquence, “trouble not yourself any more about this
matter, for I was born in this religion, I have lived in this religion,
and in this religion I am resolved to die.” Turning suddenly aside,
as if determined to hear no further, she knelt apart, fervently
prayed, and repeatedly kissed the sculptured image which she bore
of Him who died to save. As she arose from her orisons, the earl of
Kent, her constant and unrelenting persecutor, with heartless cruelty
burst into loud revilings against “that popish trumpery” which she
adored. “Suffer me now,” she said, gazing on him with an expression of
beautiful resignation, that might have disarmed the malice of a fiend,
“suffer me now to depart in peace. I have come hither, not to dispute
on points of doctrine, but to die.”

Without another word she began to disrobe herself; but once, as her
maidens hung weeping about her person, she laid her finger on her lips,
and repeated emphatically the word “Remember.” And once again, as the
executioner would have lent his aid to remove her upper garments,
“Good friend,” she said, with a smile of ineffable sweetness, “we will
dispense with thine assistance. The queen of Scotland is not wont to be
disrobed before so many eyes, nor yet by varlets such as thou.”

All now was ready. The lovely neck was bared. The wretch who was to
perform the deed of blood stood grasping the fatal axe, and the fierce
earl of Kent beat the ground with his heel in savage eagerness. Without
a sigh she knelt; without a sign of trepidation, a quicker heave of
her bosom, or a brighter flush on her brow, she laid down her innocent
head, and without a struggle, or convulsion of her limbs, as the axe
flashed, and the life-blood spouted, did her spirit pass away.

A general burst of lamentation broke the silence; but amidst that burst
the heavy stride of Kent was heard, as he sprang upon the scaffold,
and raised the ghastly visage, the eyes yet twinkling, and the lips
quivering in the death-struggle. A single voice, that of the zealot
bishop, cried aloud, “Thus perish all the foes of Queen Elizabeth.”
But ere the response had passed the lips of Kent, a shriller cry
rang through the hall--the sharp yell of a small greyhound, the fond
companion of the queen’s captivity. Bursting from the attendants, who
vainly strove to hold her back, with a short, sharp cry she dashed full
at the throat of the astonished earl; but ere he could move a limb the
danger, if danger there were, was passed. The spirit was too mighty for
the little frame. The energies of the faithful animal were exhausted,
its heart broken, in that death-spring. It struck the headless body of
its mistress as it fell, and in an agony of tenderness, died licking
the hand that had fed and cherished it so long. Wonderful, that when
all men had deserted her, a brute should be found so constant in its
pure allegiance! And yet more wonderful, that the same blow should have
completed the destiny of the two rival sovereigns! and yet so it was!
The same axe gave the death-blow to the body of the Scottish, and to
the fame of the English queen! The same stroke completed the sorrows of
Mary, and the infamy of Elizabeth.




ELIZABETH’S REMORSE.

                    ----“Guilty! guilty!
    I shall despair! There is no creature loves me:
    And, if I die, no soul will pity me!
    Nay, wherefore should they? since I myself
    Find in myself no mercy to myself!”--KING RICHARD III.


The twelfth hour of the night had already been announced from half the
steeples of England’s metropolis, and the echoes of its last stroke
lingered in mournful cadences among the vaulted aisles of Westminster.
It was not then, as now, the season of festivity, the high-tides of
the banquet and the ball, that witching time of night. No din of
carriages or glare of torches disturbed the sober silence of the
streets, illuminated only by the waning light of an uncertain moon; no
music streamed upon the night-wind from the latticed casements of the
great, who were contented, in the days of their lion-queen, to portion
out their hours for toil or merriment, for action or repose, according
to the ministration of those great lights which rule the heavens with
an indifferent and impartial sway, and register their brief career of
moments to the peer as to the peasant by one unvarying standard.

A solitary lamp burned dim and cheerlessly before a low-browed portal
in St. Stephen’s; and a solitary warder, in the rich garb still
preserved by the yeomen of the guard, walked to and fro with almost
noiseless steps--his corslet and the broad head of his shouldered
partisan flashing momentarily out from the shadow of the arch, as
he passed and repassed beneath the light which indicated the royal
residence--distinguished by no prouder decorations--of her before whose
wrath the mightiest of Europe’s sovereigns shuddered. A pile of the
clumsy fire-arms then in use, stacked beneath the eye of the sentinel,
and the dark outlines of several bulky figures outstretched in slumber
upon the pavement, seemed to prove that some occurrences of late had
called for more than common vigilance in the guarding of the place.

The prolonged cry of the watcher, telling at each successive hour
that all was well, had scarcely passed his lips, before the distant
tramp of a horse, and the challenge of a sentry from the bridge, came
heavily up the wind. For a moment the yeoman listened with all his
senses; then, as it became evident that the rider was approaching, he
stirred the nearest sleeper with the butt of his heavy halbert. “Up,
Gilbert! up, man, and to your tools, ere they be wanted. What though
the earl’s proud head lie low?--he hath friends and fautors enough in
the city, I trow, to raise a coil whene’er it lists them!” The slumbers
of the yeomen were exchanged on the instant for the guarded bustle of
preparations; and, before the horseman, whose approach had caused so
much excitement, drew bridle at the palace-gate, a dozen bright sparks
glimmering under the dark portal, like glow-worms beneath some bushy
coppice, announced the readiness of as many levelled matchlocks.

“Stand, ho! the word--”

“A post to her grace of England!” was the irregular reply, as the
rider, hastily throwing himself from off his jaded hackney, advanced
toward the yeoman.

“Stand there, I say!--no nearer, on your life! Shoot, Gilbert, shoot,
an’ he stir but a hand-breadth!”

“Tush! friend, delay me not,” replied the intruder, halting, however,
as he was required to do; “my haste is urgent, and that which I bear
with me passeth ceremony--a letter to the queen! On your heads be it,
if I meet impediment! See that ye pass it to her grace forthwith.”

“A letter? ha! There may be some device in this; yet pass it
hitherward.” A broad parchment, secured by a fold of floss silk, with
its deeply-sealed wax attached, was placed in his hand. A light was
obtained from the hatch of a caliver, and the superscription, evidently
too important for delay, hurried the guards to action. “The earl of
Nottingham”--it ran--“to his most high and sovereign lady, Elizabeth
of England. For life! for life! for life!--Ride and run--haste, haste,
post-haste, till this be delivered!”

After a moment’s conference among the warders, the bearer was directed
to advance; a yeoman led the panting horse away to the royal meuf; and
the corporal of the guard, striking the wicket with his dagger-hilt,
shortly obtained a hearing and admission from the gentleman-pensioner
on duty. Within the palace no result was immediately perceived from
the occurrence which had caused so much bustle outside the gates;
the soldiers on duty conversed for a while in stifled whispers, then
relapsed into their customary silence; the night wore on without
further interruption to their watch, and ere they were relieved they
had well nigh forgotten the messenger’s arrival.

Not so, however, was the letter received by the inmates of the royal
residence. Ushers and pages were awakened, lights glanced, and
hurried steps and whispering voices echoed through the corridors. The
chamberlain, so great was considered the urgency of the matter, was
summoned from his pillow; and he with no small trepidation proceeded at
once to the apartment of Elizabeth. His hesitating tap at the door of
the ante-chamber--occupied by the ladies whose duty it was to watch the
person of their imperious mistress by night--failed indeed to excite
the attention of the sleeping maidens, but caught at once the ear of
the extraordinary woman whom they served.

“Without there!” she cried, in a clear, unbroken tone, although full
sixty winters had passed over her head.

“Hunsdon, so please your grace, with a despatch of import from the earl
of Nottingham.”

“God’s death! ye lazy wenches! hear ye not the man without, that I must
rive my throat with clamoring? Up, hussies, up--or, by the soul of my
father, ye shall sleep for ever!” The frightened girls sprang from
their couches at the raised voice of their angry queen, like a covey
of partridges at the yelp of the springer, and for a moment all was
confusion.

“What now, ye fools!” she cried again, in harsh and excited accents,
that reached the ears of the old earl without--“hear ye not that my
chamberlain awaits an audience? Fling yonder robe of velvet o’er our
person, and rid us of this night-gear--so!--the mirror now! my ruff and
curch! and now--admit him!”

“Admit him! an’ it list your grace, it were scarce seemly in ladies to
appear thus disarrayed--”

“Heard ye, or heard ye not? I say, admit him! Think ye old Hunsdon
cares to look upon such trumpery as ye, or must I wait upon my wenches’
pleasure? God’s head, but ye grow malapert!”

The old queen’s voice had not yet ceased, before the door was opened;
and although the ladies had taken the precaution of extinguishing
the light, and seeking such concealment as the angles of the
chamber afforded, the sturdy old earl--who, notwithstanding the
queen’s assertion, had as quick an eye for beauty as many a younger
gallant--could easily discover that the modesty which had demurred
to the admission of a man was not by any means uncalled for or even
squeamish. Had he been, however, much more inclined to linger by the
way than his old-fashioned courtesy permitted, he must have been a
bold man to delay; for twice, ere he could cross the floor to her
chamber, did his name reach his ears in the impatient accents of
Elizabeth: “Hunsdon! I say--Hunsdon! ’s death! art thou crippled, man?”

There was little of the neatness or taste of modern days displayed in
the decorations of the royal chamber. Tapestries there were, and velvet
hangings, carpets from Turkey, and huge mirrors of Venetian steel; but
a plentiful lack of linen, and of those thousand nameless comforts,
which a peasant’s dame would miss to-day, uncared for in those rude
times by princesses. Huge waxen torches flared in the wind, which found
its way through the ill-constructed lattice; and a greater proportion
of the smoke, from the logs smouldering in the jams of a chimney wider
than that of a modern kitchen, reeked upward to the blackened rafters
of the unceiled roof.

Rigid and haughty, in the midst of this strange medley of negligence
and splendor, sat the dreaded monarch, approached by none even of
her most favored ministers save with fear and trembling. Her person,
tall and slender from her earliest years, and now emaciated to almost
superhuman leanness by the workings of her own restless spirit, even
more than by her years, presented an aspect terrible, yet magnificent
withal. It seemed as though the dauntless firmness of a more than
masculine soul had won the power to support and animate a frame which
it had rescued from the grave; it seemed as though the years which had
blighted had failed in their efforts to destroy; it seemed as though
that faded tenement of clay might yet endure, like the blasted oak,
for countless years, although the summer foliage, which rendered it so
beautiful of yore, had long since been scattered by the wild autumnal
hurricane, or seared by the nipping frosts of winter. Her eye alone,
in the general decay of her person, retained its wonted brilliancy,
shining forth from her pale and withered features with a lustre so
remarkable as to appear almost supernatural.

“So! give us the letter--there! Pause not for thy knee, man; give
us the letter!”--and tearing the frail band by which it was secured
asunder, she was in a moment entirely engrossed, as it would seem, in
its contents. Her countenance waxed paler and paler as she read; and
the shadows of an autumn morning flit not more changefully across the
landscape, as cloud after cloud is driven over the sun’s disk, than
did the varying expressions of anxiety, doubt, and sorrow, chase one
another from the speaking lineaments of Elizabeth.

“Ha!” she exclaimed, after a long pause, “this must be looked to.
See that our barge be manned forthwith, and tarry not for aught of
state or ceremony. Thyself will go with us, and stop not thou to
don thy newest-fashioned doublet: this is no matter that brooks
ruffling!--’Sdeath, man! ’tis life or death! And now begone, sir! we
lack our tirewoman’s service!”

An hour had not elapsed before a barge--easily distinguished as one
belonging to the royal household, by its decorations, and the garb of
the rowers--shot through a side arch of Westminster bridge, and passed
rapidly, under sail and oar, down the swift current of the river,
now almost at ebb tide. It was not, however, the barge of state, in
which the progresses of the sovereign were usually made; nor was it
followed by the long train of vessels, freighted with ladies of the
court, guards, and musicians, which were wont to follow in its wake.
In the stern-sheets sat two persons: a man advanced in years, and
remarkable for an air of nobility, which could not be disguised even
by the thick boat-cloak he had wrapped about him, as much perhaps to
afford protection against the eyes of the inquisitive as against the
dense mists of the Thames; and a lady, whose tall person was folded in
wrappings so voluminous as to defy the closest scrutiny. At a short
distance in the rear, another boat came sweeping along, in the crew
and passengers of which it would have required a penetrating glance to
discover a dozen or two of the yeomen of the guard, in their undress
liveries of gray and black, without either badge or cognizance, and
their carbines concealed beneath a pile of cloaks.

It was Elizabeth herself, who, in compliance with the mysterious
despatch she had so lately received, was braving the cold damps of
the river at an hour so unusual, and in a guise so far short of her
accustomed state. The moon had already set, and the stars were feebly
twinkling through the haze that rose in massive volumes from the
steaming surface of the water, but no symptoms of approaching day were
as yet visible in the east; the buildings on the shore were entirely
shrouded from view by the fog, and the few lighters and smaller craft,
moored here and there between the bridges, could scarcely be discovered
in time to suffer the barge to be sheered clear of their moorings. It
was perhaps on account of these obstacles that their progress was less
rapid than might reasonably have been expected from the rate at which
they cut the water.

Of the six stately piles which may now be seen spanning the noble
stream, but two were standing at the period of which we write; and
several long reaches were to be passed before the fantastic mass of
London bridge, with its dwelling-houses and stalls for merchandise
towering above the irregular thoroughfares of the city, loomed darkly
up against the horizon. Scarcely had they threaded its narrow and
cavern-like arches, before a pale and sickly light, of a faint yellow
hue, more resembling the glare of torches than the blessed radiance
of the sun, gilded the decreasing fog-wreaths, and glanced upon the
level water. The sun had risen, and for a time hung blinking on the
misty horizon, and shorn of half his beams, till a fresh breeze from
the westward brushed the vapors aloft, and hurried them seaward with
a velocity which shortly left the scenery to be viewed in unobscured
beauty. Just as this change was wrought upon the face of nature, the
royal barge was darting, with a speed that increased every instant,
before the esplanade and frowning artillery of the Tower; the short
waves were squabbling and splashing beneath the dark jaws and lowered
portcullis of the “Traitor’s Gate,” that fatal passage through which so
many of the best and bravest of England’s nobility had entered, never
to return!

Brief as was the moment of their transit in front of that sad portal,
Hunsdon had yet time to mark the terrible expression of misery, almost
of despair, that gleamed across the features of the queen. She spoke
not, but she wrung her hands with a sigh, that uttered volumes of
repentance and regret, too late to be availing; and the stern old
chamberlain, who felt his heart yearn at the sorrows of a mistress
whom he loved no less than he revered, knew that the mute gesture and
the painful sigh were extorted from that masculine bosom only by the
extremity of anguish. She had not looked upon that “den of drunkards
with the blood of princes” since it had been glutted with its last and
noblest victim. Essex, the princely, the valiant, the generous, and
the noble Essex--the favorite of the people, the admired of men, the
idol, the cherished idol of Elizabeth--had gone, a few short moons
before, through that abhorred gateway--had gone to die--had died by
her unwilling mandate! Bitter and long had been the struggle between
her wounded pride and her sincere affection; between her love for
the man and her wrath against the rebel: thrice had she signed the
fatal warrant, and as often consigned it to the flames; and when at
length her indignation prevailed, and she affixed her name to the fell
scroll--which, once executed, she never smiled again--that indignation
was excited, not so much by the violence of his proceedings against her
crown, as by his obstinate delay in claiming pity and pardon from an
offended but indulgent mistress.

Onward, onward they went, the light boat dancing over the waves that
added to its speed, the canvass fluttering merrily, and the swell
which their own velocity excited laughing in their wake. It was a
time and a scene to enliven every bosom, to make every English heart
bound happily and proudly. Vessels-of-war, and traders, galliot, and
caravel, and bark, and ship, lay moored in the centre of the pool and
along the wharves, the thousand dwellings of a floating city. All this
Elizabeth herself had done: the commerce of England was the fruit of
her fostering; the power of her courage and sagacity; the mighty navy
of her creation.

They passed below the dark broadsides and massive armaments of forty
ships-of-war, some of the unwonted bulk of a thousand tons, with the
victorious flags of Howard, Hawkins, Frobisher, and Drake, streaming
from mast and yard; but not a smile chased the dull expression of fixed
grief from the brow of her who had “marred the Armada’s pride;” nor
did the slightest symptom on board her three most chosen vessels--the
Speedwell, the Tryeright, or the Blak-Galley, the very models of the
world for naval architecture--show that the queen and mistress of them
all was gliding in such humble trim below their victorious batteries.

The limits of the city were already left far behind; green meadows
and noble trees now filled the place of the crowded haunts of wealth
and industry, while here and there a lordly dwelling, with its trim
avenues, and terraced gardens sloping to the water’s edge, adorned the
prospect. The turrets of Nottingham house, the suburban palace of that
powerful peer, were soon in view; when a pageant swept along the river,
stemming the ebb tide with a proud and stately motion--a pageant which,
at any other period, would have been calculated, above all things
else, to wake the lion-like exultation of the queen, though now it was
passed in silence, and unheeded. The rover Cavendish[H]--who, a few
years before, a gentleman of wealth and worship, had dissipated his
paternal fortunes, and in the southern seas and on the Spanish main had
become a famous free-booter--was entering the river with his prizes in
goodly triumph. The flag-ship, a caravel of a hundred and twenty tons
only, led the van, close-hauled and laden almost gunwale-deep with the
precious spoils of Spain. Her distended topsail flashed in the sunlight
like a royal banner, a single sheet of the richest cloth of gold; her
courses were of crimson damask, her mariners clad in garments of the
finest silk; banners flaunted from every part of the rigging; and over
all the “meteor flag of England,” the red cross of St. George, streamed
rearward, as if pointing to the long train of prizes which followed.
Nineteen vessels, of every size and description then in use--carracks
of the western Indies, galleons of Castile and Leon, with the flag of
Spain, so late the mistress of the sea, disgracefully reversed beneath
the captor’s ensign--sailed on in long and even array; while in the
rear of all, the remainder of the predatory squadron, two little
sea-wasps of forty and sixty tons burden, presented themselves in proud
contrast to their bulky prizes, the hardy crews filling the air with
clamors, and the light cannon booming in feeble but proud exultation.
Time was when such a sight had roused her enthusiastic spirit almost
to frenzy, but now that spirit was occupied, engrossed by cares
peculiarly its own. The coxswain of the royal barge, his eye kindling
with patriotic pride, and presuming a little on his long and faithful
services, put up the helm, as if about to run alongside of the leading
galley; but a cold frown and a forward wafture of the hand repelled
his ardor; and the men their oars bending to the work, the barge was
at her moorings ere many minutes had elapsed, by the water-gate of
Nottingham-house--and the queen made her way, unannounced and almost
unattended, to the chamber of the aged countess.

    [H] This incident, which is strictly historical, even to the
        smallest details, did in fact occur several years earlier;
        as the death of Elizabeth did not take place until the year
        1603, whereas the triumphant return of Thomas Cavendish is
        related by Hume as having happened A. D. 1587. It is hoped
        that the anachronism will be pardoned, in behalf of the
        picture of the times afforded by its introduction.

The sick woman had been for weeks wasting away beneath a slow and
painful malady; her strength had failed her, and for days her end had
been almost hourly expected. Still, with that strange and unnatural
tenacity through which the dying sometimes cling to earth, even
after every rational hope of a day’s prolonged existence has been
extinguished--she had hovered as it were on the confines of life and
death, the vital flame flickering like that of a lamp whose aliment has
long since been exhausted, fitfully playing about the wick which can no
longer support it. Her reason, which had been partially obscured during
the latter period of her malady, had been restored to its full vigor on
the preceding evening; but the only fruit of its restoration was the
utmost anguish of mental suffering and conscientious remorse. From the
moment when the messenger, whose arrival we have already witnessed, had
been despatched on his nocturnal mission, she had passed the time in
fearful struggles with the last foe, wrestling as it were bodily with
the dark angel; now pleading with the Almighty, and adjuring him by
her sufferings and by her very sins, to spare her yet a little while;
now shrieking on the name of Elizabeth, and calling her, as she valued
her soul’s salvation, to make no long tarrying. In the opinion of the
leeches who watched around her pillow, and of the terrified preacher
who communed with his own heart and was still, her life was kept up
only by this fierce and feverish excitement.

At a glance she recognised the queen, before another eye had marked her
entrance. “Ha!” she groaned, in deep, sepulchral tones, “she is come,
before whose coming my guilty soul had not the power to pass away! She
is come to witness the damnation of an immortal spirit! to hear a tale
of sin and sorrow that has no parallel! Hear my words, O queen! hear
my words now, and laugh--laugh if you can; for, by Him who made us
both, and is now dealing with me according to my merits, never shall
you laugh again! Hereafter you shall groan, and weep, and tremble, and
curse yourself, as I do! Laugh, I say, Elizabeth of England--laugh now,
or never laugh again!”

For a moment the spirit of the queen, manly and strong as it was,
beyond perhaps all precedent, was fairly overawed and cowed by the
fierce intensity of the dying woman’s manner. Not long, however, could
that proud soul quail to any created thing.

“’Fore God, woman,” she cried, “thou art bewitched, or desperately
wicked! What, in the fiend’s name, mean ye?”

“In the fiend’s name truly, for he alone inspired me! Look here--and
then pardon me, Elizabeth; in God’s name, pardon me!”

As she spoke, she held aloft, in her thin and bird-like fingers, a
massive ring of gold, from which a sapphire of rare price gleamed
brilliantly, casting a bright, dancing spark of blue reflection upon
her hollow, ghastly features. “Know you,” she screamed, “this token?”

“Where got you it, woman? Speak, I say, speak, or I curse you!--where
got you that same token?” The proud queen shook and shuddered as she
spoke, like one in an ague-fit.

“Essex!” sighed the dying countess, through her set teeth--“the
murthered Essex!”

“Murthered? God’s death, thou liest! He was a traitor--done to death!
O God! O God! I know not what I say!” and a big tear-drop--the first
in many a year, the first perhaps that ever had bedewed that iron
cheek--slid slowly down the face of Elizabeth, and fell heavily on the
brow of the glaring sufferer, who still held the ring aloft, in hands
clasped close in attitude of supplication. “Speak,” she said again, in
milder accents, “speak, Nottingham: what of--of Essex?”

“That ring he gave to me, to bear it to thy footstool, and to pray a
gracious mistress’s favor to an erring but a grateful servant--”

“And thou, woman--thou!” absolutely shrieked the queen.

“Gave it not to thee--that Essex might die, not live!” was the steady
reply. “Pardon me before I die; pardon me, as God shall pardon thee!--”

“God shall not pardon me, woman!--neither do I pardon thee! He, an’ he
will, may pardon thee; but that will I do never! never!--by the life of
the Eternal, NEVER!”--and, in the overpowering fury and agitation of
the moment, she seized the dying sinner with an iron gripe, and shook
her in the bed, till the ponderous fabric creaked and quivered. Not
another word, not another sob passed the lips of the old countess: her
frame was shaken by a mightier hand than that of the indignant queen;
a deep, harsh rattle came from her chest; she raised one skinny arm
aloft, and after the jaw had dropped, and the glaring eyeball fixed,
that wretched limb stood erect, appealing as it were from a mortal to
an immortal Judge!

The paroxysm was over. Speechless, and all but motionless, the
miserable queen was borne by her attendants to the barge; the tide
had shifted, and was still in their favor, though their course was
altered. On their return, they again passed the triumphant fleet of
Cavendish, bearing the mightiest sovereign of the world, the envied
of all the earth--a wretched, feeble, heart-broken woman, grovelling
like a crushed worm beneath the bitterest of human pangs, the agonies
of self-merited misery! A few hours found her outstretched upon
the floor of her chamber, giving away to anguish uncontrolled and
uncontrollable. Refusing the earnest prayers of her women, and of her
physicians, to suffer herself to be disrobed, and to recline upon
her bed; feeding on tears and groans alone; uttering no sound but
the name of Essex, in one plaintive and oft-repeated cry; mocking
at all consolation; acknowledging no comforter except despair--ten
long days and nights she lingered thus, in pangs a thousand times
more intolerable than those which she had inflicted on her Scottish
rival: and when, at length, the council of the state assembled, in
her last moments, around the death-bed of a sovereign truly and not
metaphorically lying in dust and ashes--she named to them, as her
successor in the kingdom, the son of that same rival. Who shall say
that the death of Mary Stuart went unavenged?




THE MOORISH FATHER.

A TALE OF MALAGA.


It was the morning of the day succeeding that which had beheld the
terrible defeat, among the savage glens and mountain fastnesses of
Axarquia, of that magnificent array of cavaliers which, not a week
before, had pranced forth from the walls of Antiquera, superbly mounted
on Andalusian steeds, fiery, and fleet, and fearless, with helm and
shield and corslet engrailed with arabesques of gold, surcoats of
velvet and rich broidery, plumes of the desert bird, and all in short
that can add pomp and circumstance to the dread game of war. The strife
was over in the mountain valleys; the lonely hollows on the bare
hill-side, the stony channels of the torrent, the tangled thicket, and
the bleak barren summit, were cumbered with the carcasses of Spain’s
most noble cavaliers. War-steeds beside their riders, knights of the
proudest lineage among their lowliest vassals, lay cold and grim and
ghastly, each where the shaft, the stone, the assagay, had stretched
beneath him, beneath the garish lustre of the broad southern sun.
The Moorish foe had vanished from the field, which he had won almost
without a struggle--the plunderer of the dead plied his hateful trade
even to satiety, and, gorged with booty that might well satiate the
wildest avarice, had left the field of slaughter to the possession of
his brute comrades, the wolf, the raven, and the eagle.

It was now morning, and the broad sun, high already, was pouring
down a flood of light over the giant crags, the deep precipitous
defiles, and all the stern though glorious features which mark the
mountain scenery of Malaga; and far beyond over the broad, luxuriant
Vega, watered by its ten thousand streams of crystal, waving with
olive-groves, and vineyards, and dark woodlands; and farther yet over
the laughing waters of the bright Mediterranean. But one, who having
found concealment during that night of wo and slaughter in some dark
cave, or gully so sequestered that it had escaped the keen eyes of
the Moorish mountaineers, now plied his bloody spurs almost in vain,
so weary and so faint was the beautiful bay steed which bore him. He
paused not to look upon the wonders of his road, tarried not to observe
the play of light and shadow over that glorious plain, although by
nature he was fitted to admire and to love all that she had framed of
wild, of beautiful, or of romantic. Nay more, he scarcely turned his
eye to gaze upon the miserable relics of some beloved comrade, who had
so often revelled gayly, and in that last awful carnage had striven
fearlessly and well, even when all was lost, beside him. He was a tall
dark-featured youth, with a profusion of black hair clustered in short
close curls about a high pale forehead; an eye that glanced like fire
at every touch of passion, yet melted at the slightest claim upon his
pity; an aquiline, thin nose, and mouth well cut, but compressed and
closely set, completed the detail of his eminently handsome features.
But the dark curls--for he had been on the preceding day unhelmed and
slightly wounded--were clotted with stiff gore, matted with dust, and
bleached by the hot sun under which he had for hours fought bareheaded.
The keen, quick eye was dull and glazed, the haughty lineaments clouded
with shame, anxiety, and grief, and the chiselled lips pale and cold
as ashes. His armor, which had been splendid in the extreme, richly
embossed and sculptured, was all defaced with dust and gore, broken
and dinted, and in many places riven quite asunder. The surcoat which
he had donned a few short days before, of azure damask, charged with
the bearings of his proud ancestral race, fluttered in rags upon the
morning breeze--his shield was gone, as were the mace and battle-axe
which had swung from his saddle-bow--his sword, a long, cross-handled
blade, and his lance, its azure pennoncelle no less than its steel
head, crusted and black with blood, alone remained to him. The
scabbard of his poignard was empty, and the silver hilt of his sword,
ill-matched with the gilded sheath, showed plainly that it was not the
weapon to which his hand was used. Yet still, though disarrayed, weary,
and travel-spent, and worn with wo and watching, no eye could have
looked on him without recognising in every trait, in every gesture, the
undaunted knight and the accomplished noble.

Hours had passed away, since, with the first gray twilight of the dawn
he had come forth from the precarious hiding-place wherein he had spent
a terrible and painful night; and so far he had seen no human form,
living at least, and heard no human voice! Unimpaired, save by the
faintness of his reeling charger, he had ridden six long leagues over
the perilous and rugged path by which, late on the previous night, the
bravest of the brave, Alonzo de Aguilar, had by hard dint of hoof and
spur escaped from the wild infantry of El Zagal to the far walls of
Antiquera; and now from a bold and projecting summit he looked down
upon the ramparts of that city, across a rich and level plain, into
which sloped abruptly the steep ridge on which he stood, at less than
a league’s distance. Here, for the first time, since he had set forth
on his toilsome route, the knight drew up his staggering horse--for
the first time a gleam of hope irradiating his wan brow--and, as a
pious cavalier is ever bound to do, stretched forth his gauntleted
hands to Heaven, and in a low, deep murmur breathed forth his heartfelt
thanksgivings to Him, who had preserved him from the clutches of the
pitiless heathen. This duty finished, with a lighter heart he wheeled
his charger round an abrupt angle of the limestone-rock, and, plunging
into the shade of the dense cork-woods which clothed the whole descent,
followed the steep and zigzag path, by which he hoped ere long to reach
his friends in safety. His horse, too, which had staggered wearily and
stumbled often, as he ascended the rude hills, seemed to have gained
new courage; for as he turned the corner of the rock, he pricked his
ears and snorted, and the next moment uttered a long, tremulous,
shrill neigh, quickening his pace--which for the last two hours he had
hardly done at the solicitation of the spur--into a brisk and lively
canter. Before, however, his rider had found time to debate upon the
cause of this fresh vigor, the neigh was answered from below by the
sharp whinny of a war-horse, which was succeeded instantly by the
clatter of several hoofs, and the long barbaric blast of a Moorish
horn. The first impulse of the cavalier was to quit the beaten path,
and dashing into the thickets to conceal himself until his foemen
should have passed by. Prudent, however, as was his determination,
and promptly as he turned to execute it, he was anticipated by the
appearance of at least half a score of Moorish horsemen--who, sitting
erect in their deep Turkish saddles, goring the sides of their slight
Arabian coursers with the edges of their broad sharp stirrups, and
brandishing their long assagays above their heads, dashed forward with
their loud ringing Lelilies, to charge the solitary Spaniard. Faint as
he was, and in ill-plight for battle, there needed but the sight of
the heathen foe to send each drop of his Castilian blood eddying in
hot currents through every vein of the brave Spaniard. “St. Jago!”
he cried, in clear and musical tones, “St. Jago and God aid!” and
with the word he laid his long lance in the rest, and spurred his
charger to the shock. It was not, however, either the usual mode of
warfare with the Moors, or their intent at present to meet the shock
of the impetuous and heavily armed cavalier. One of their number, it
is true, dashed out as if to meet him--a spare gray-headed man, whose
years, although they had worn away the soundness, and destroyed the
muscular symmetry of his frame, had spared the lithe and wiry sinews;
had dried up all that was superfluous of his flesh, and withered all
that was comely of his aspect; but had left him erect, and strong and
hardy as in his youngest days of warfare. His dress, caftan and turban
both, were of that dark-green hue, which bespoke an emir, or lineal
descendant of the prophet--the only order of nobility acknowledged by
the Moslemin--while the rich materials of which they were composed,
the jewels which bedecked the hilt and scabbard of both cimeter and
yatagan, the necklaces of gold which encircled the broad glossy chest
of his high-blooded black Arabian, proved as unerringly his wealth
and consequence. Forth he dashed then, with the national war-cry,
“La illah allah la!” brandishing in his right hand the long, light
javelin, grasped by the middle, which his countrymen were wont to hurl
against their adversaries, with such unerring accuracy both of hand
and eye; and swinging on his left arm a light round buckler, of the
tough hide of the African buffalo, studded with knobs of silver; while
with his long reins flying as it would seem quite loose, by aid of
his sharp Moorish curb, he wheeled his fiery horse from side to side
so rapidly as quite to balk the aim of the Spaniard’s level lance.
As the old mussulman advanced, fearlessly as it seemed, against the
Christian knight, his comrades galloped on abreast with him, but by
no means with the same steadiness of purpose, the track was indeed
so narrow that three could hardly ride abreast in it; yet narrow as
it was, the nearest followers of the emir did not attempt to keep
it; on the contrary, giving their wild coursers the sharp edge of
their stirrups, they leaped and bolted from one side to the other of
the path now plunging into the open wood on either hand, and dashing
furiously over rock and stone, now pressing straightforward for perhaps
a hundred yards as if to bear down bodily on their antagonist. All
this, it must be understood, passed in less time than it has taken
to describe it; for though the enemies, when first their eyes caught
sight of one another, were some five hundred yards apart, the speed
of their fleet horses brought them rapidly to close quarters. And now
they were upon the very point of meeting--the Spaniard bowing his
unhelmed head behind his charger’s neck, to shield as best he might
that vital part from the thrust of the flashing assagay with his lance
projecting ten feet at the least, before the chamfront which protected
the brow of his barbed war-horse, and the sheath of his twohanded
broadsword clanging and rattling at every bound of the horse against
the steel-plates which protected the legs of the man-at-arms!--the Moor
sitting erect, nay, almost standing up in his short stirrups, with
his keen, black eye glancing from beneath the shadow of his turban,
and his spear poised and quivering on high. Now they were scarce a
horse’s length asunder, when, with a shrill, peculiar yell, the old
Moor wheeled his horse out of the road, and dashed into the wood, his
balked antagonist being borne aimlessly right onward into the little
knot of men who followed on the emir’s track. Not far, however, was
he borne onward; for, with a second yell, even shriller than before,
the moslem curbed his Arab, till he stood bolt upright, and turning
sharp round, with such velocity that he seemed actually to whirl about
as if upon a pivot, darted back on him, and with the speed of light
hurled the long assagay. Just at that point of time the lance point
of the Spaniard was within a hand’s breadth of the buckler--frail
guard to the breast--of the second of those eastern warriors, but it
was never doomed to pierce it. The light reed hurtled through the
air, and its keen head of steel, hurled with most accurate aim, found
a joint in the barbings of the war-horse. Exactly in that open and
unguarded spot, which intervenes between the hip-bone and the ribs,
it entered--it drove through the bright and glistening hide, through
muscle, brawn, and sinew--clear through the vitals of the tortured
brute, and even--with such tremendous vigor was it sent from that old
arm--through the ribs on the farther side. With an appalling shriek,
the agonized animal sprung up, with all his feet into the air, six feet
at least in height, then plunged head foremost! Yet, strange to say,
such was the masterly and splendid horsemanship, such was the cool
steadiness of the European warrior, that, as his charger fell, rolling
over and over, writhing and kicking in the fierce death-struggle, he
alighted firmly and fairly on his feet. Without a second’s interval,
for he had cast his heavy lance far from him, while his steed was yet
in air, he whirled his long sword from its scabbard, and struck with
the full sweep of his practised arm at the nearest of the Saracens,
who were now wheeling round him, circling and yelling like a flock of
sea-fowl. Full on the neck of a delicate and fine-limbed Arab, just at
the juncture of the spine and skull, did the sheer blow take place;
and cleaving the vertebræ asunder, and half the thickness of the
muscular flesh below them, hurled the horse lifeless, and the rider
stunned and senseless to the earth at his feet. A second sweep of the
same ponderous blade brought down a second warrior, with his right arm
half-severed from his body; a third time it was raised; but ere it
fell, another javelin, launched by the same aged hand, whizzed through
the air, and took effect a little way below the elbow-joint, just where
the brassard and the gauntlet met, the trenchant-point pierced through
between the bones, narrowly missing the great artery, and the uplifted
sword sunk harmless! A dull expression of despair settled at once over
the bright expressive features, which had so lately been enkindled by
the fierce ardor and excitement of the conflict. His left hand dropped,
as it were instinctively, to the place where it should have found the
hilt of his dagger; but the sheath was empty, and the proud warrior
stood, with his right arm dropping to his side, transfixed by the long
lance, and streaming with dark blood, glaring, in impotent defiance,
upon his now triumphant enemies. The nature of the Moorish tribes
had been, it should be here observed, very materially altered, since
they had crossed the straits; they were no longer the cruel, pitiless
invaders offering no option to the vanquished, but of the Koran or the
cimeter; but, softened by intercourse with the Christians, and having
imbibed, during the lapse of ages spent in continual warfare against
the most gallant and accomplished cavaliers of Europe, much of the true
spirit of chivalry, they had adopted many of the best points of that
singular institution. Among the principal results of this alteration
in the national character was this--that they now no longer ruthlessly
slaughtered unresisting foes, but, affecting to be guided by the
principles of knightly courtesy, held all to mercy who were willing to
confess themselves overcome. When, therefore, it was evident that any
farther resistance was out of the question, the old emir leaping down
from his charger’s back, with all the agility of a boy, unsheathed his
Damascus cimeter, a narrow, crooked blade, with a hilt elaborately
carved and jewelled, and strode slowly up to face the wounded Christian.

“Yield thee,” he said, in calm and almost courteous tones--using
the _lingua Franca_, or mixed tongue, half Arabic, half Spanish,
which formed the ordinary medium of communication between the two
discordant races which at that time occupied the great peninsula of
Europe--“yield thee, sir knight! thou art sore wounded, and enough hast
thou done already, and enough suffered, to entitle thee to all praise
of valor, to all privilege of courtesy.”

“To whom must I yield me, emir?” queried the Christian, in reply; “to
whom must I yield? since yield I needs must; for, as you truly say, I
can indeed resist no longer. I pray thee, of thy courtesy, inform me?”

“To me--Muley Abdallah el Zagal!”

“Nor unto nobler chief or braver warrior could any cavalier surrender.
Therefore, I yield myself true captive, rescue or no rescue!” and
as he spoke he handed the long silver-hilted sword, which he had so
well wielded, to his captor. But the old Moor put aside the proffered
weapon. “Wear it,” he said, “wear it, sir, your pledged word suffices
that you will not unsheath it. Shame were it to deprive so good a
cavalier of the sword he hath used so gallantly! But lo! your wound
bleeds grievously. I pray you sit, and let your hurt be tended--Ho!
Hamet, Hassan, lend a hand here to unarm this good gentleman. I pray
you, sir, inform me of your style and title.”

“I am styled Roderigo de Narvaez,” returned the cavalier, “equerry and
banner-bearer to the most noble Don Diego de Cordova, the famous count
of Cabra!”

“Then be assured, Don Roderigo, of being, at my hands, entreated with
all due courtesy and honor--till that the good count shall arrange for
thy ransom or exchange.”

A little while sufficed to draw off the gauntlet, to cut the shaft of
the lance, where the steel protruded entirely through the wounded arm,
and to draw it out by main force from between the bones, which it had
actually strained asunder. But so great was the violence which it was
necessary to exert, and so great was the suffering which it caused,
that the stout warrior actually swooned away; nor did he altogether
recover his senses, although every possible means at that time known
were applied for his restoration, until the blood had been stanched,
and a rude, temporary litter, framed of lances bound together by the
scarfs and baldrics of the emir’s retinue, and strewn with war-cloaks
was prepared for him. Just as this slender vehicle was perfected
and slung between the saddles of four warriors, the color returned
to the pallid lips and cheeks of the brave Spaniard, and gradually
animation was restored. In the meantime, the escort of El Zagal had
been increased by the arrival of many bands of steel-clad warriors,
returning from the pursuit of the routed Spaniards; until at length a
grand host was collected, comprising several thousands of soldiery, of
every species of force at that time in use--cavalry, archers, infantry,
arrayed beneath hundreds of many colored banners, and marching gayly on
to the blithe music of war-drum, atabal, and clarion. The direction of
the route taken by this martial company was the same wild, desolate,
and toilsome road, by which Don Roderigo had so nearly escaped that
morning. All day long did they march beneath a burning sun and
cloudless sky, the fierce heat insupportably reflected from the white
limestone crags, and sandy surface of the roads; and so tremendous were
its effects, that many of the horses and mules, laden with baggage,
which accompanied the cavalcade, died on the wayside; while the wounded
captive, between anxiety and pain, and the incessant jolting of the
litter, was in a state of fever bordering nearly on delirium, during
the whole of the long march.

At length, just when the sun was setting, and the soft dews of evening
were falling silently on the parched and scanty herbage, the train of
El Zagal reached the foot of a rugged and precipitous hill, crowned by
a lofty watch-tower. Ordering his troops to bivouac as best they might,
at the base of the steep acclivity, the old Moor spurred up its side
with his immediate train and his enfeebled captive. Just as he reached
the brow the gates flew open, and the loveliest girl that ever met a
sire’s embrace, rushed forth with her attendants--the sternness melted
from the old warrior’s brow, as he clasped her to his bosom, before
he entered the dark portal. Within that mountain fortalice long lay
the Christian warrior, struggling midway between the gates of life and
death; and when at length he awoke from his appalling dreams, strange
visions of dark eyes compassionately beaming upon his, soft hands that
tended his worn limbs, and shapes angelically graceful floating about
his pillow, were blent with the dark recollections of his hot delirium,
and that too so distinctly, that he long doubted whether these too were
the creations of his fevered fancy. Well had it been for him, well for
one lovelier and frailer being, had they indeed been dreams; but who
shall struggle against his destiny!

Hours, days, and weeks, rolled onward; and, as they fled, brought
health and vigor to the body of the wounded knight; but brought no
restoration to his overwrought and excited mind. The war still raged in
ruthless and unsparing fury, between the politic and crafty Ferdinand,
backed by the chivalry of the most puissant realm of Europe, and the
ill-fated Moorish prince, who, last and least of a proud race, survived
to weep the downfall of that lovely kingdom which he had lacked the
energy to govern or defend. Field after field was fought, and foray
followed foray, till every streamlet of Grenada had been empurpled by
the mingled streams of Saracen and Christian gore, till every plain and
valley had teemed with that rank verdure, which betrays a soil watered
by human blood. So constant was the strife, so general the havoc, so
wide the desolation, that those who fell were scarcely mourned by their
surviving comrades, forgotten almost ere the life had left them. Hardly
a family in Spain but had lost sire, son, husband, brother; and so fast
came the tidings in, of slaughter and of death, that the ear scarce
could drink one tale of sorrow, before another banished it. And thus
it was with Roderigo de Narvaez. For a brief space, indeed, after the
fatal day of Axarquia, his name had been syllabled by those who had
escaped from the dread slaughter, with those of others as illustrious
in birth, as famous in renown, and as unfortunate, for all believed
that he had fallen in the catastrophe of their career. For a brief
space his name had swelled the charging cry of Antiquera’s chivalry,
when thirsting for revenge, and all on fire to retrieve their tarnished
laurels, they burst upon their dark-complexioned foemen. A brief space,
and he was forgotten! His death avenged by tenfold slaughter--his
soul redeemed by many a midnight mass--his virtues celebrated, and
his name recorded, even while yet he lived, on the sepulchral marble,
and the bold banner-bearer was even as though he had never been.
Alone, alone in the small mountain tower, he passed his weary days,
his long and woful nights. Ever alone! He gazed forth from the lofty
lattices over the bare and sun-scourged summits of the wild crags of
Malaga, and sighed for the fair _huertas_, the rich vineyards, and
the shadowy olives of his dear native province. He listened to the
clank of harness, to the wild summons of the Moorish horn, to the
thick-beating clatter of the hoofs, as with his fiery hordes old Muley
el Zagal swooped like some bird of rapine from his far mountain eyry
on the rich booty of the vales below; but he saw not, marked not, at
least, the gorgeousness and pomp of their array; for, when he would
have looked forth on their merry mustering, his heart would swell
within him as though it would have burst from his proud bosom--his
eyes would dazzle and grow dim, filled with unbidden tears, that his
manhood vainly strove to check--his ears would be heavy with a sound,
as it were of many falling waters. Thus, hour by hour, the heavy
days lagged on, and though the flesh of the imprisoned knight waxed
stronger still and stronger, the spirit daily flagged and faltered.
The fierce old emir noted the yielding of his captive soul, noted the
dimness of the eye, the absence of the high and sparkling fire, that
had so won his admiration on their first encounter; he noted, and to do
him justice, noted it with compassion; and ever, when he sallied forth
to battle, determined that he would grasp the earliest opportunity,
afforded by the capture of any one of his own stout adherents, to
ransom or exchange his prisoner. But, as at times, things will fall
out perversely, and, as it were, directly contrary to their accustomed
course; though he lost many by the lance, the harquebus, the sword, no
man of his brave followers was taken; nay more, so rancorous and savage
had the war latterly become, that Moor and Spaniard now, where’er they
met, charged instantly--with neither word nor parley--and fought it out
with murderous fury, till one or both had fallen. And thus it chanced,
that, while his friends esteemed him dead, and dropped him quietly into
oblivion, and his more generous captor would, had he possessed the
power, have sent him forth to liberty on easy terms of ransom, fate
kept him still in thrall.

After a while, there came a change in his demeanor; the head no longer
was propped listlessly from morn to noon, from noon “to dewy eve,” upon
his burning hand; the cheek regained its hue, the eye its quick clear
glance, keen and pervading as the falcon’s; the features beamed with
their old energy of pride and valiant resolution; his movements were
elastic, his step free and bold, his head erect and fearless; and the
old Moor observed the change, and watched, if he perchance might fathom
the mysterious cause, and queried of his menials; and yet remained
long, very long, in darkness and in doubt.

And what was that mysterious cause, that sudden overmastering power,
that spell, potent as the magician’s charm, which weaned the prisoner
from its melancholy yearnings; which kindled his eye once again with
its old fire; which roused him from his oblivious stupor, and made
him bear himself once more, not as the tame heart-broken captive, but
as the free, bold, dauntless, energetic champion; clothed as in arms
of proof, in the complete, invulnerable panoply of a soul; proud,
active, and enthusiastic, and, at a moment’s notice, prepared for
every fortune? What should it be but love--the tamer of the proud and
strong--the strengthener of the weak and timid--the tyrant of all
minds--the change of all natures--what should it be but love?

The half-remembered images of his delirium--the strong and palpable
impressions, which had so wildly floated among his feverish dreams,
had been clothed with reality--the form, which he had viewed so often
through the half-shut lids of agony and sickness, had stood revealed
in the perfection of substantial beauty before his waking eyesight;
the soft voice, which had soothed his anguish, had answered his in
audible and actual converse. In truth, that form, that voice, those
lineaments, were all-sufficient to have spell-bound the sternest and
the coldest heart, that ever manned itself against the fascinations
of the sex. Framed in the slightest and most sylph-like mould, yet of
proportions exquisitely true, of symmetry most rare, of roundness most
voluptuous, of grace unrivalled, Zelica was in sooth a creature, formed
not so much for mortal love as for ideal adoration. Her coal-black
hair, profuse almost unto redundancy, waving in natural ringlets,
glossy and soft as silk--her wild, full, liquid eyes, now blazing with
intolerable lustre, now melting into the veriest luxury of languor; her
high, pale, intellectual brow; her delicately-chiselled lineaments,
the perfect arch of her small ruby mouth, and, above all, the fleet
and changeful gleams of soul that would flit over that rare face--the
flash of intellect, bright and pervading as the prophet’s glance of
inspiration; the sweet, soft, dream-like melancholy, half lustre and
half shadow, like the transparent twilight of her own lovely skies; the
beaming, soul-entrancing smiles, that laughed out from the eyes before
they curled the ever-dimpling lips--these were the spells that roused
the Christian captive from his dark lethargy of wo.

A first chance interview in the small garden of the fortress--for
in the smallest and most iron fastnesses of the Moors of Spain, the
decoration of a garden, with its dark cypresses, its orange-bowers,
its marble fountains, and arabesque kiosk among its group of fan-like
palms, imported with great care and cost from their far native sands,
was never lacking--a first chance interview, wherein the Moorish
maiden, bashful at being seen beyond the precincts of the harem
unveiled, and that too by a giaour, was all tears, flutter, and
dismay; while the enamored Spaniard--enamored at first sight, and
recognising in the fair, trembling shape before him the ministering
angel who had smoothed his feverish pillow, and flitted round his
bed during those hours of dark and dread delirium--poured forth his
gratitude, his love, his admiration, in a rich flood of soul-fraught
and resistless eloquence: a first chance interview led by degrees, and
after interchange of flowery tokens, and wavings of white kerchiefs
by hands whiter yet, from latticed casements, and all those thousand
nothings, which, imperceptible and nothing worth to the dull world, are
to the lover confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ, to frequent
meetings--meetings sweeter that they were stolen, fonder that they were
brief, during the fierce heat of the noontide, when all beside were
buried in the soft siesta, or by the pale light of the amorous moon,
when every eye that might have spied out their clandestine interviews
was sealed in deepest slumber.

Hours, days, and weeks, rolled onward, and still the Spanish cavalier
remained a double captive in the lone tower of El Zagal. Captive in
spirit, yet more than in the body--for, having spent the whole of his
gay youth, the whole of his young, fiery manhood, in the midst of
courts and cities; having from early boyhood basked in the smiles of
beauty, endured unharmed the ordeal of most familiar intercourse with
the most lovely maids and matrons of old Spain, and borne away a heart
untouched by any passion, by any fancy, how transient or how brief
soever; and having, at that period of his life when man’s passions
are perhaps the strongest, and surely the most permanent, surrendered
almost at first sight his affections to this wild Moorish maiden--it
seemed as if he voluntarily devoted his whole energies of soul and
body to this one passion; as if he purposely lay by all other wishes,
hopes, pursuits; as if he made himself designedly a slave, a blinded
worshipper.

It was, indeed, a singular, a wondrous subject for the contemplation
of philosophy, to see the keen, cool, polished courtier, the warrior
of a hundred battles, the cavalier of the most glowing courts, the
bland, sagacious, wily, and perhaps cold-hearted citizen of the
great world, bowing a willing slave, surrendering his very privilege
of thought and action, to a mere girl, artless, and frank, and
inexperienced; devoid, as it would seem, of every charm that could have
wrought upon a spirit such as his; skilled in no art, possessing no
accomplishment, whereby to win the field against the deep sagacity, the
wily worldly-heartedness of him whom she had conquered almost without
a struggle. And yet this very artlessness it was which first enchained
him; this very free, clear candor, which, as a thing he never had
before encountered, set all his art at nothing.

Happily fled the winged days in this sweet dream; until at length the
Spaniard woke--woke to envisage his position; to take deep thought as
to his future conduct; to ponder, to resolve, to execute. It needed
not much of the deep knowledge of the world for which, above all else,
Roderigo was so famous, to see that under no contingency would the old
Moor--the fiercest foeman of Spain’s chivalry, the bitterest hater of
the very name of Spaniard--consent to such a union. It needed even less
to teach him that, so thoroughly had he enchained the heart, the fancy,
the affections of the young Zelica, that for him she would willingly
resign, not the home only, and the country, and the creed of her
forefathers, but name and fame, and life itself, if such a sacrifice
were called for. Fervently, passionately did the young Spaniard
love--honestly too, and in all honor; nor would he, to have gained an
empire, have wronged that innocent, confiding, artless being, who had
set all the confidence of a young heart, which, guileless in itself,
feared naught of guile from others, upon the faith and honor of her
lover. At a glance he perceived that their only chance was flight. A
few soft moments of persuasion prevailed with the fair girl; nor was
it long ere opportunity, and bribery, and the quick wit of Roderigo,
wrought on the avarice of one, the trustiest of old Muley’s followers,
to plan for them an exit from the guarded walls, to furnish them with
horses and a guide, the very first time the old emir should go forth to
battle.

Not long had they to wait. As the month waned, and the nights grew dark
and moonless, the note of preparation once again was heard in hall, and
armory, and stable. Harness was buckled on, war-steeds were barbed for
battle, and, for a foray destined to last three weeks, forth sallied El
Zagal.

Three days they waited, waited in wild suspense, in order that the
host might have advanced so far, that they should risk no interruption
from the stragglers of the rear. The destined day arrived, and slowly,
one by one, the weary hours lagged on. At last--at last--the skies are
darkened, and Lucifer, love’s harbinger, is twinkling in the west.
Three saddled barbs, of the best blood of Araby, stand in a gloomy
dingle, about a bow-shot from the castle-walls, tended by one dark,
turbaned servitor. Evening has passed, and midnight, dark, silent,
and serene, broods o’er the sleeping world. Two figures steal down
from the postern gate: one a tall, stately form, sheathed cap-à-pie in
European panoply; the other a slight female figure, veiled closely, and
bedecked with the rich, flowing draperies that, form the costume of all
oriental nations. ’Tis Roderigo and Zelica. Now they have reached the
horses; the cavalier has raised the damsel to her saddle, has vaulted
to his demipique. Stealthily for a hundred yards they creep away at
a foot’s pace, till they have gained the greensward, whence no loud
clank will bruit abroad their progress. Now they give free head to
their steeds--they spur, they gallop! Ha! whence that wild and pealing
yell--“La illah, allah la!” On every side it rings--on every side--and
from bush, brake, and thicket, on every side, up spring turban, and
assagay, and cimeter--all the wild cavalry of El Zagal!

Resistance was vain; but, ere resistance could be offered, up strode
the veteran emir. “This, then,” he said, in tones of bitter scorn,
“this is a Christian’s gratitude--a Spaniard’s honor!--to bring
disgrace--”

“No, sir!” thundered the Spaniard, “no disgrace! A Christian cavalier
disgraces not the noblest demoiselle or dame by offer of his hand!”

“His hand?” again the old Moor interrupted him; “his hand--wouldst thou
then marry--”

“Had we reached Antiquera’s walls this night, to-morrow’s dawn had seen
Zelica the all-honored bride of Roderigo de Narvaez!”

“Ha! is it so, fair sir?” replied the father; “and thou, I trow, young
mistress, thou too art nothing loath?” and taking her embarrassed
silence for assent--“be it so!” he continued, “be it so! deep will we
feast to-night, and with to-morrow’s dawn Zelica shall be the bride of
Roderigo de Narvaez!”

Astonishment rendered the Spaniard mute, but ere long gratitude found
words, and they returned gay, joyous, and supremely happy, to the lone
fortress.

There, in the vaulted hall, the board was set, the feast was spread,
the red wine flowed profusely, the old Moor on his seat of state, and
right and left of him that fair young couple; and music flowed from
unseen minstrels’ harps, and perfumes steamed the hall with their rich
incense, and lights blazed high, and garlands glittered: but blithe as
were all appliances, naught was so blithe or joyous as those young,
happy hearts.

The feast was ended; and Abdallah rose, and filled a goblet to the
brim--a mighty goblet, golden and richly gemmed--with the rare
wine of Shiraz. “Drink,” he said, “Christian, after your country’s
fashion--drink to your bride, and let her too assist in draining this
your nuptial chalice.”

Roderigo seized the cup, and with a lightsome smile drank to his lovely
bride--and deeply he quaffed, and passed it to Zelica; and she, too,
pleased with the ominous pledge, drank as she ne’er had drank before,
as never did she drink thereafter!

The goblet was drained, drained to the very dregs; and, with a fiendish
sneer, Muley Abdallah uprose once again.

“Christian, I said to-morrow’s dawn should see Zelica Roderigo’s
bride, and it shall--in the grave! To prayer--to prayer! if prayer may
now avail ye! Lo! your last cup on earth is drained; your lives are
forfeit--nay, they are gone already!”

Why dwell upon the hateful scene--the agony, the anguish, the despair?
For one short hour, in all the extremities of torture, that hapless
pair writhed, wretchedly convulsed, before the gloating eyes of the
stern murderer! Repressing each all outward symptoms of the tortures
they endured, lest they should add to the dread torments of the
other--not a sigh, not a groan, not a reproach was heard! Locked in
each other’s arms, they wrestled to the last with the dread venom;
locked in each other’s arms, when the last moment came, they lay
together on the cold floor of snowy marble--unhappy victims, fearful
monuments of the dread vengeance of a Moorish father!


THE END.




Transcriber’s Notes

Spelling variations were made consistent when a predominant preference
was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

There were many occurrences of unusual or unexpected punctuation and
capitalization (or lack thereof); they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks
were remedied when the proper placement was unambiguous.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of
inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.

Page 161: “longes” was printed that way.

Page 289: “lounged” was printed that way.

Page 339: “glorious, rash, and hazardous” was misprinted as “rask”. The
footnote refers to documents with the correct spelling.