La Dame de Monsoreau (36 page)

Then, when the air moved freely through his lungs, he made his way to the Rue Saint-Jacques, not stopping until he reached the Corne d'Abondance, and knocked at the door without hesitation or delay.

Maitre Claude Bonhomet opened the door in person.

He was a man who knew that any inconvenience he suffered was generally made up to him, and who depended for the building up of his fortune more on his extras than on his ordinary custom.

He recognized Chicot at the first glance, although Chicot had left the inn as a cavalier and returned to it as a monk.

" So it's you, my gentleman," said he; " you are welcome."

Chicot handed him a crown.

" And Brother Gorenflot ? " he asked.

The face of the innkeeper expanded in a broad smile.

He advanced to the private room and pushed open the door.

" Look," said he.

Brother Gorenflot was snoring in exactly the same spot where Chicot had left him.

" Venire de blche ! my venerated friend," said the Gascon, " you have had a terrible nightmare, and never suspected it! "

CHAPTER XXII.

HOW MONSIEUR AND MADAME DE SAINT-LUC TRAVELLED AND MET WITH A TRAVELLING COMPANION.

NEXT morning, about the hour when Brother Gorenflot, comfortably huddled up in his robe, was beginning to wake, our reader, if he had travelled on the highway from Paris to Angers, might have seen, somewhere between Chartres and Nogent, two horsemen, a gentleman and his page, whose peaceful nags were ambling side by side, rubbing each other's noses, communicating their mutual sentiments by neighing or breathing, like honest animals, which, though deprived of the gift of speech, had, and not the less on that account, discovered a way to give expression to their thoughts.

The two horsemen had reached Chartres the evening before, almost at the same hour, on smoking and frothing coursers; one of the two coursers had even fallen on the cathedral square, and as this happened just at the time when the faithful were going to mass, the citizens of Chartres were moved at the spectacle of the death of this noble steed, for which its owners seemed to feel no more concern than if it had been some spavined jade.

Some had noticed — the citizens of Chartres have been celebrated in all ages as wide-awake observers — some, we repeat, had even noticed that the taller of the two horsemen had slipped a crown into the hand of an honest lad, who thereupon guided the pair to a neighboring ^nn, and that, half an hour later, they had issued forth through the back gate opening on the plain, mounted on fresh steeds, and with a high color

on their cheeks that bore testimony to the excellence of the glasses of hot wine they had just imbibed.

Once in the country — bare and naked enough, but tinged with those bluish tones that are the harbingers of spring — the taller of the two cavaliers drew near the smaller, and opening his arms, said :

" My own dear little wife, you may kiss me at your ease, for now we have nothing more to fear."

Then Madame de Saint-Luc, for it was she beyond a doubt, leaned gracefully forward, opened the mantle in which she was muffled, rested her arms on the young man's shoulders, and, with her eyes plunged into the depths of his, gave him the lingering, tender kiss he had asked.

As a result of the confidence expressed by Saint-Luc to his wife, and perhaps also as a result of the kiss given by Madame de Saint-Luc to her husband, they stopped that day at a little hostelry in the village of Courville, only four miles from Ohartres. This hostelry, by its isolation, its doors front and rear, and by a thousand other advantages, assured to the two lovers perfect security.

There they remained a whole day and a whole night, mysteriously concealed in their little chamber, where they shut themselves up after breakfast, requesting the host not to disturb them before dawn next day, as they were very tired after their long journey, and this request was obeyed to the letter.

It was on the forenoon of that day that we discover Monsieur and Madame de Saint-Luc on the highway between Paris and Nogent.

As they were feeling more tranquil on that day than on the evening before, they were no longer travelling as fugitives, nor even as lovers, but as schoolboys who turn out of their way every moment to plunder the early buds, collect the early mosses, or gather the early flowers, — those sentinels of spring that pierce the crests of winter's fleeing snows, — and take infinite delight in the play of the sunlight on the sparkling plumage of the ducks, or in the flitting of a hare across the plain.

" Morbleu ! " cried Saint-Luc, suddenly, " what a glorious thing it is to be free ! Have you ever been free, Jeanne ? "

" I ? " answered the young wife, in tones of exuberant joy, "never; this is the very first time in my life I have had my fill of air and space. My father was suspicious j my mother

home-keeping. I never went out except attended by a governess, two maids, and a big lackey. T never remember running on the grass, since the time when, a wild, laughing child, I used to scamper through the great woods of Meridor with my good Diane, challenging her to a race and scudding through the branches until we lost sight of each other. Then we would stop, panting, at the noise of a stag, or doe, or red deer, which, in its alarm at our approach, rushed from its haunt, and then we would be alone, thrilled by the silence of the vast forest. But, at least, you were free, my love."

« I free ? "

" Of course, a man "

" Well, then, I have never been free. Reared with the Due d'Anjou ; brought by him to Poland, and brought back by him again to Paris; condemned to be always at his side by the perpetual laws of etiquette; followed, whenever I tried to get away, by that doleful voice of his, crying :

" ( Saint-Luc, my friend, I am bored ; come here and we '11 be bored in company.'

" Free ! ah, yes, indeed ! with that corset that strangled my stomach, and that monstrous starched ruff that rubbed the skin off my neck, and that dirty gum with which I had to curl my hair, and that little cap fastened on my head by pins. Oh, no, no, my dear Jeanne, I don't think I was as free as you were. So you see I am making the most of my liberty. Great heavens ! is there anything in the world to be compared to freedom ? and what fools are they who give it up when they might have kept it?"

" But what if we were caught, Saint-Luc ? " said the young woman, with an anxious glance behind her ; " what if we were put in the Bastile ? "

" If we are there together, my own, it will be but half a misfortune. If I recollect aright, we were as much confined yesterday as if we had been state prisoners, and we did not find it particularly irksome."

" Saint-Luc," said Jeanne, smiling archly, " don't indulge in useless hopes ; if we are taken, you may be quite sure we shall not be locked up together."

And the charming young woman blushed at the thought that, while saying so little, she would have liked to say so much.

" Then, if that be the case, we must conceal ourselves well," said Saint-Luc.

11 Oh, you need not be alarmed/' answered Jeanne, " we have nothing to fear, we shall be concealed perfectly. If you knew Meridor and its tall oaks, that seem like pillars of a temple whose dome is the sky, and its endless thickets and its sleepy rivers, that in summer glide under dusky arches of verdure, and in winter creep under layers of dead foliage, its wide lawns, its immense ponds, its fields of corn, its acres of flowers, and the little turrets from which thousands of doves are continually escaping, flitting and buzzing like bees around a hive — And that is not all, Saint-Luc : in the midst of this little kingdom, its queen, the enchantress of these gardens of Armida, the lovely, the good, the peerless Diane, a heart of diamond set in gold, — you will love her, Saint-Luc."

" I love her already, since she has loved you."

" Oh, I am very sure she loves me still and will love me always. Diane is not the woman to change capriciously in her friendships. But you can have no idea of the happy life we shall lead in this nest of moss and flowers, now about to feel the verdant touch of spring ! Diane is the real ruler of the household, so we need not be afraid of disturbing the baron. He is a warrior of the time of Francois I., now as feeble and inoffensive as he was once strong and daring; he thinks only of the past, Marignano's victor and Pavia's vanquished; his present tenderness and his future hopes are concentrated on his beloved Diane. We can live in Meridor, and he not know or even perceive it. And if he know ? Oh, we can get out of the difficulty by listening attentively while he assures us that Diane is the most beautiful girl in the world and Frangois I. the greatest captain of all ages,"

" It will be delightful," said Saint-Luc, " but I foresee some terrible quarrels."

" Between whom ? "

" The baron and me."

< About what ? Franqois I. ? "

" No, I '11 give way to him on that point; but about the most beautiful woman in the world."

" Oh, I do not count; you see I 'm your wife."

" Ah, you 're right there," said Saint-Luc.

" Just fancy what our existence will be, my love," continued Jeanne. " In the morning we 're off for the woods through the little gate of the pavilion which Diane will make over to us for our abode. I know that pavilion : a dainty little house

built under Louis XII., with a turret at either end. Fond as you are of flowers and lace, you will be charmed with its delicate architecture; and then such a number of windows, windows from which you have a view of the quiet, sombre woods, as far as the eye can reach, and of the deer feeding in the avenues, raising their startled heads at every whisper of the forest; from the windows opposite you have a vision of plains golden with corn, white-walled cottages with their red-tiled roofs, the Loire glistening in the sun and populous with little boats ; then, nine miles away, a bark among the reeds for our'selves; then, our own horses and dogs, with which we '11 course the stag through the great woods, while the old baron, unaware of the presence of his guests, will say, as he hears the baying in the distance : ' Listen, Diane; would you not fancy Astrea and Phlegethon were hunting ? '

" And Diane would answer : < And if they are hunting, dear father, let them hunt.' '

" Let us push on, Jeanne," said Saint-Luc, " you make me long to be at Meridor."

And they clapped spurs to their horses, which, for two or three leagues, galloped like lightning, then halted to allow their riders to resume an interrupted conversation or improve an awkwardly given kiss.

In this fashion they journeyed from Chartres to Mans, where they spent a whole day, feeling now almost secure ; it was another delightful halt in their delightful rambles ; but next morning they made a firm resolution to reach Meridor that very evening, and to make their way through the sandy forests which, at that period, stretched from Guecelard to Ecomoy.

When Saint-Luc came to them, he regarded his perils as things of the past — he was well acquainted with the King's fiery yet sluggish temper. According to the state of his mind after Saint-Luc's flight, he would have sent twenty couriers and a hundred guards after them with orders to take them dead or alive, or else he would have sighed heavily, raised his arms above the bed-clothes, and murmured:

" Ah! traitor Saint-Luc! why have I not known thee sooner ? "

Now, as the fugitives had not seen any courier at their heels and had not encountered any guards, the probability was that the slothful temper of King Henri had got the better of his fiery temper, and so he was letting them alone.

Such were the thoughts of Saint-Luc as he glanced behind him occasionally, without catching sight of a single pursuer on his solitary path.

" Good," said Saint-Luc to himself, " poor Chicot must have had to face the brunt of the storm ; fool though he be, and, perhaps, because he is a fool, he gave me good advice. He '11 get out of the trouble with an anagram on me more or less witty."

And Saint-Luc recalled a terrible anagram Chicot had made on him in the heyday of his favor.

Suddenly Saint-Luc felt the pressure of his wife's hand on his arm.

He started. It was not a caress.

u Look," said Jeanne.

Saint-Luc turned round and saw on the horizon a horseman riding at a rapid pace along the road they were following.

This cavalier was on the most elevated part of the highway, and his form, as it stood out from the dull, gray sky, seemed far larger than life, an effect of perspective our reader must have sometimes noticed in similar circumstances.

In the eyes of Saint-Luc the incident was of sinister augury : it came to cloud his hopes at the moment they were brightest, and, although he tried to put on an air of calmness, he knew the capricious nature of Henri III. too well not to be alarmed.

" Yes," said he, turning pale in spite of himself, " there is a horseman yonder."

" Let us fly," said Jeanne, spurring her horse.

"No," said Saint-Luc, who did not allow his fear to get entire control of him, " no, as far as I can judge, there is but a single horseman, and I must not run away from one man. Let us draw aside and let him pass; when he passes, we can continue our journey."

" But if he stops ? "

" Oh, if he stops, we '11 know with whom we have to deal, and act accordingly."

" You are right," said Jeanne, " and I was wrong to be afraid, since my Saint-Luc is here to protect me."

." For all that, we had better fly," said Saint-Luc, who, on looking back again, perceived that the stranger saw them and had set his horse to a gallop; " for there is a plume in yon hat and under the hat a ruff that make me uneasy."

" Goodness gracious ! how can a plume and a ruff make you

uneasy ?" asked Jeanne of her husband, who had seized her bridle rein and was hurrying her horse into the wood.