Читать книгу One in a Thousand; or, The Days of Henri Quatre - G. P. R. James - Страница 15

We must now turn to trace the proceedings of Philip Count d'Aubin, who, riding on at full speed, drew not his bridle rein till he reached the magnificent Hotel de Guise; where, pushing through the mingled crowd of attendants and petitioners, that swarmed, round the porte cochere of the dwelling, in which, for the time, resided all the power of Paris, if not of France, he advanced, with hasty steps and abstracted look, to the foot of the great staircase. He had even proceeded some way up the stairs ere he noticed, or even seemed to hear, the reiterated inquiries regarding his name and business, which were addressed to him by the various grooms and porters in his progress. When, at length--called for a moment from his fit of absence--he did condescend to speak, he merely mentioned his name, without indicating in any manner which of the many persons that the house contained was the object of his present visit.

Although unacquainted with his person, the valet, who had at length obtained an answer, happening to recall some of the court scandal of former times, instantly, by an association not unnatural, connected the coming of the Count d'Aubin with the presence of the Duchess de Montpensier, the sister of the Duke de Mayenne, in the house at that moment; and he proceeded forthwith to show the Count to her apartments. D'Aubin entered the splendid saloon in which the Duchess was sitting with the same thoughtful and abstracted air which had been left behind by the strong and turbulent passions, that had just been excited in his bosom by his interview with Beatrice of Ferrara. Madame de Montpensier, surrounded by a group of the gay idlers of the capital, who even at that time mingled in their character that degree of levity and ferocity which marked with such dreadful traits the first French revolution, was engaged in the seemingly puerile employment of cutting out a paper crown with a huge pair of scissors, the sheath of which, black, coarse, and disfiguring, was passed through the silken girdle that spanned her beautiful waist.

Shouts of laughter were ringing through the hall, when the valet opened the door, and announced the Count d'Aubin. The Duchess instantly looked up, with a smile of pleasure; but, remarking the ruffled aspect of the Count, she instantly exclaimed--"Why, how now, D'Aubin! how now! After so long an absence, do you come back to our feet, not like a penitent suing for pardon, but rather like a harsh husband, full of scoldings and tempests?"

The cause of those gloomy looks, which she remarked, was not one which Philip d'Aubin would willingly have communicated to the gay, satirical Duchess de Montpensier, who, to the libertine freedom common to the whole court, added many a wily art, and many a vindictive passion, derived from the angry political factions of the time. The immediate cause of his visit to Paris, however, afforded him a ready motive to assign for his dark brow and agitated look. "Well may I be disturbed, madam," he replied, after a hasty word of salutation, "when my noble cousin, St. Real, confiding in an authentic pass, from the hands of your Highness's brother, has been entrapped in the neighbourhood of Senlis, and is now, as I am informed, a prisoner in Paris!"

"Nay, but why bear such a countenance into our presence, Count d'Aubin?" rejoined the Duchess; "I am guiltless of entrapping your cousin, or of even trying to entrap yourself; though, once upon a time," she added in a low tone, "I may have seen the Count d'Aubin a tassel not unwilling to be lured;" and she looked up at him with a glance in which reproach was so skilfully mingled with playfulness and tenderness, that D'Aubin, although he knew that full two-thirds of the pageant which daily played its part on her countenance, was mere artifice, could not refrain from smiling in his turn.

"Ever willing to be lured, dear lady, where the lure is fair!" he replied; "and though I certainly came to speak reproaches, they were not to you. I know not why your blockhead groom," he added, "brought me hither, unless he divined, indeed, how much the sight of your Highness softens all wrath. My business was with your brother, the Duke of Mayenne."

The Duchess muttered to herself--"That will never do! If he see Mayenne, he will spoil the whole! I appeal to you, fair ladies and gentlemen all," she exclaimed aloud, with one of those quick and happy turns of artifice, which no one knew better how to employ, "if this is not a high crime and misdemeanour in the court of love and gallantry, to tell a lady, whom he dare not deny to be fair, that he came for any other purpose on earth than to see herself?"

"Blasphemy! blasphemy! utter blasphemy!" cried half a dozen voices. "Judge him, fair lady, for his great demerits!"

"Philip d'Aubin!" exclaimed the Duchess, putting on a theatrical air, "you are condemned by your peers; but, under consideration of your having been thoroughly brutalized, by a two months' residence at the distance of a hundred leagues from Paris, we are inclined to show you lenity: kneel down here, then; humbly, at our feet, confess your crime! and swear upon this paper crown, which we have cut expressly for the royal Henry's head, never to commit the like iniquity again!"

D'Aubin had entered the apartment, not very well disposed to jest, but yet the feelings which had oppressed him were of such a nature, that he was quite willing to forget them; and the smiles of the Duchess de Montpensier, as well as the tone of tenderness she assumed towards him, together with the remembrance of many gay moments, spent in her society long before, made him gladly enough take up the part that she assigned him. Bending his knee gracefully before her, then, he made confession of his crime, declared his penitence, and, vowing, in the terms she had dictated, never to offend again, he stooped his head to kiss the paper crown which she held upon her knee. At the same moment the Duchess bent forward, as if to receive his vow, and, as she did so, she whispered, rapidly, "Stay with me, D'Aubin, and I will soon send these fools away."

The Count replied nothing, but rose; and, still holding the paper crown playfully in his hand, demanded, in his ordinary tone, what was the real intent and purpose of that fragile mockery of the royal symbol.

The Duchess saw that he had heard, understood, and was prepared to obey her whisper; and she replied, "'Tis exactly as I have told you, most incredulous of men. When, by the fate of war, or by the blessing of God, Henry, calling himself the Third, shall be brought in chains into Paris, it might be expected that the sister of the murdered Guise"--and as she spoke, her eye flashed for a moment with all the fiery spirit of her race;--"it might be supposed that the sister of the murdered Guise should not bound her wishes for revenge, till she saw the assassin's blood flow like water in the kennel. But she is more charitable, or, rather, he is too pitiful a thing to be worthy of severe punishment. With these scissors shall be cut off his royal locks, ere he quits the courtly world for the world of the cloister; and on his head shall he bear this crown, from the door of Notre Dame to the abbey of St. Denis, when he goes to take the vows that exclude him for ever from the world."

D'Aubin laughed. "So, this crown is for King Henry!" he exclaimed: "and have you never thought, madam, of cutting out another, from some different materials, for your noble brother of Mayenne?"

"It must be an iron crown, then," replied the Duchess, tossing her head proudly; "and he must hew it out for himself, with his good sword."

"Rather a Cyclopean labour," remarked D'Aubin; "rather a Cyclopean labour I suspect! especially since Harry of Valois, to whom you deny the crown, has chosen to turn up his hat with a Huguenot button."

"We shall see, we shall see!" replied the Duchess: "I know, sir Count, you laugh at all parties; so I understand not why you should cling so fondly to the rabble of accursed murderers and heretics, who lie out there at St. Cloud, like vipers in a garden."

D'Aubin laughed outright at the Duchess's vehemence, and reminded her that some of her near relations were amongst the rabble she so qualified.

"They are none the less vipers for that," she replied: and the conversation taking a turn neither very wise nor very decent, may as well be omitted in this place. It lingered on, however, from minute to minute, without the Duchess making any apparent effort to fulfil the promise she had made to D'Aubin, and send away the idlers by whom she was surrounded. Too long accustomed to the intriguing society of Paris, and too well acquainted with the character of the wily woman with whom he had now to deal, not to be armed at all points against every art and deception, D'Aubin began to suspect that the Duchess was trifling with him for some particular purpose, and was seeking to occupy him with other matters, till some moment of importance, to himself or his cousin, was irretrievably lost.

"Hark!" he exclaimed, as this thought crossed his mind; "there is the clock of St. Gervais striking one, and I must really seek my lord the Duke."

"I hear no clock," replied the Duchess--nor could she, for none had struck--"I hear no clock! But not yet, D'Aubin, not yet; I am not yet going to slip the jesses of my faucon gentil, after having just recovered him from so long a flight. Stay you with me, D'Aubin, and I will send and see if my brother be within. You go, Mont-Augier," she added, turning to one of the young cavaliers, who instantly sprang to obey her; but, ere he reached the door, the Duchess, by a sudden movement, placed herself near him; and, while D'Aubin was for a moment occupied by some other person present, she said, in a low voice, "Do not return, do not return: we must keep the Count away from Mayenne, or they will together spoil some of our best schemes."

D'Aubin's eye turned upon her; and his quick suspicions might have gone far to counteract her purposes, had not Madame de Montpensier, almost as soon as Mont-Augier's back was turned, contrived, on various pretences, to dismiss the rest of her little court. Left thus alone with a fascinating and beautiful woman, who condescended to court his society, D'Aubin could not resist the temptation to trifle away with her half an hour of invaluable time, though he knew all her arts, and even suspected that, on the present occasion, they were employed against him for insidious purposes. He was on the watch, however, and, ere long, the clatter of many horses' feet in the court-yard caught his attention, and led him instantly to conclude that the Duke of Mayenne was about to go forth, without having seen him. It was now all in vain that Madame de Montpensier, who likewise heard the sounds, and attributed them to the same cause, endeavoured to occupy his attention by every little art of coquetry. D'Aubin started up, and, in gay, but resolute terms, expressed his determination of seeing the Duke ere he left the house.

To what evasion Madame de Montpensier would have had recourse, is difficult to say; but, ere she could reply, the door opened, and a lady entered, whom we will not pause here to describe. Suffice it, that she was the widow of the murdered Duke of Guise, and that, though her person wore the weeds, her face betrayed few of the sorrows, of widowhood.

"Catherine! Catherine!" she exclaimed, entering; "there is our slow brother of Mayenne just returned, and calling for you so quickly that one would think he were himself as nimble as Harry of Navarre."

"Returned! I knew not that he was absent!" replied the Duchess de Montpensier, with an air of irrepressible mortification, on finding that all her arts had been thrown away, and, instead of preventing D'Aubin from seeing her brother ere he went forth, had only tended to keep the Count there till he returned. A meaning smile, too, on the lip of D'Aubin, served to increase her chagrin; and she exclaimed, with a slight touch of pettish impatience in her tone, "Well, well, I go to him; and you, my fair sister, had better stay and console this tiresome man, till my return."

The Duchess of Guise saw that something had gone wrong; but D'Aubin laughed, and replied, as Madame de Montpensier turned towards the door, "May I request you to tell his Highness that the tiresome man waits an audience; and, as his business will be explained in few words, he will not detain the Duke so long as he has detained Madame de Montpensier,--or as, perhaps, I might say, more truly, Madame de Montpensier has detained him,--probably under a mistake;" and he made her a low and significant bow, to which she only replied by shaking her finger at him as she passed through the doorway.

"Where is the Duke?" she demanded eagerly of the pages in the corridor, who started up at her approach; and then, scarcely listening to their answer, she hurried on to the room in which she expected to find him, and opened the door without ceremony. The Duke was seated at a table, hastily sealing some letters, while a courier, booted, spurred, and armed, stood by his side, ready to bear them to their destinations as soon as the packets were complete.

"Why, how now, Catherine!" he exclaimed, turning towards her as she entered, and, in so doing, spilling the boiling wax over his broad hand, without suffering the pain to produce the slightest change of expression on his heavy, determined countenance; "why, how now, Catherine! you have been tampering, I find, with things wherein you have no right to meddle. What is this business about the young Marquis of St. Real? Is it not bad enough that that rash boy, Aumale, should lose me a battle beneath the walls of Senlis, without my sister losing me my honour?"

"Tush, nonsense, Duke of Mayenne!" replied his sister; "Nonsense, I tell you! If you intend that packet for Senlis, you may spare the wax, and your trouble, and your fingers, for it shall never go!"

"Indeed!" said the Duke, pressing firm upon it the broad seal of his arms; "indeed! and why not? Do you not know me better than that, my fair sister? Do you not know that my word, or my safe-conduct, was never in life violated by myself, and never shall be violated by any one else with impunity?"

"All very true! all very true, Charles of Mayenne!" she replied; "but, in the first place, I tell you that your safe-conduct cannot be said to be violated, because some friends of mine choose to help this young St. Real to pursue his journey on the very road for which the safe-conduct was given; and, in the second place, there is no use of sending to Mortfontaine or Nanteuil either, for within an hour St. Real will be, I trust, in Paris."

"Then within an hour he shall be set at liberty!" replied the Duke; "for I shall suffer no quibbling with my honour: he shall be free to come and free to go, till the term of the safe-conduct expires."

"Nonsense, nonsense, Charles!" replied the Duchess; "do not talk like the man in the mystery. Send this fellow away, and let me speak with you calmly; for here is the Count d'Aubin already in the house; and, if you go on vapouring in this way, you may miss a golden opportunity of gaining more than the battle of Senlis has lost."

The Duke made a sign for the courier to withdraw. "I know your skill well, Kate!" he said, as the man left the room, "and am far from wishing to counteract your views; but neither must you meddle with my schemes, nor affect my honour. Now let me hear what it is you have done, and what you propose to do."

"For the done first, then," replied Madame de Montpensier: "what I have done is simply this:--Hearing from good authority that this St. Real had left his troops under the command of his Lieutenant, and, while his cousin D'Aubin went to join Longueville, at Chantilly, had shown a strong inclination to seek the camp of the Henrys before he came to Paris, I thought it much better to change his destination, and bring him hither, well knowing that the first step is all. So much for the past! and now for the future. Leave him but in my hands two days; and if, in that time, I do not find a way, by one means or another, to make him put his hand to the Union, and draw his sword for Mayenne, why, set him free, in God's name! and then talk of your honour and your safe-conducts as much as you like. He shall be well and kindly treated, upon my word!"

The Duke smiled. "I doubt not that, Catherine," he said; "you and your fair sister of Guise, who, I suppose, has some hand in the affair, are not such hard-hearted dames, I know, as to use harsh measures, when tender ones will do."

"Well, well, Mayenne," she answered, "if we bestow our smiles to promote your interest, you, at least, have no occasion to complain, good brother: but you consent, is it not so?"

"On condition that no harshness is used--that I know not where he is--that I see him not--and, that he finds no means for applying for liberation to me: for on the instant I set him free!"

"Manifold conditions!" replied his sister; "but they shall be all complied with. And now for the Count d'Aubin. If we can but win St. Real, I will promise you D'Aubin; for I know one or two of the good Count's secrets, which give me some tie upon him."

"I hold him by a stronger bond," replied the Duke; "the bond of interest, Catherine; for, by my faith, if he quit not soon him whom Beatrice of Ferrara calls the crowned Vice at St. Cloud, I will give the hand of Eugenie de Menancourt to some better friend of the League. I am glad he is come, for I may give him a gentle notice to decide more speedily."

At the name of Beatrice de Ferrara, the cheek of Madame de Montpensier reddened, and her brow contracted; and, without noticing the concluding words of her brother, she replied, "I hate that woman, that Beatrice of Ferrara!" and as she spoke, she moved absently towards the door. The Duke marked her with a smile, and followed, saying, "Well, well, where is this Count d'Aubin?"

The Duchess led the way to the apartment in which he had been left with the Duchess de Guise, and where she still found him, bandying repartees with the fair widow, and with the Chevalier d'Aumale, who had lately been added to the party. The entrance of the Duke of Mayenne, however, at once put a stop to the light jests which were flying thick and fast; and the Duke, without preface, entered upon the subject of D'Aubin's journey to Paris.

"Good morrow! Monsieur le Comte," said he, with an air of unconsciousness, which his somewhat inexpressive countenance enabled him easily to assume. "Right glad was I of your application for a safe-conduct last night, doubting not that, by this time, you are heartily tired of consorting with the effeminate rabble of painted minions and Huguenot boors gathered together at St. Cloud, and are come to support the Catholic faith, with a sharp sword, that has been somewhat too long employed against her."

"Your Highness's compliment to the sharpness of my sword," replied D'Aubin, "does not, I am afraid, extend to the sharpness of my wit; for the occurrences which have taken place within the last five days are surely not calculated to bring over a cousin of the Marquis of St. Real to the party of the Catholic League, or to raise very high the character of dealers in Spanish Catholicon."

The Duke of Mayenne turned a sharp and somewhat angry glance upon Madame de Montpensier; but to D'Aubin he replied coldly, "You seem angry, Monsieur le Comte d'Aubin; and as it is far from my wish to give just cause for anger to a French nobleman, whose good sense, I am sure, will, sooner or later, detach him from a party composed of all that is either infamous or heretical, if you will explain the subject of your wrath, I will do all that is in my power to satisfy you, if I shall find your complaints just and reasonable."

"My complaint is simply this, my lord Duke," replied D'Aubin, smiling at the air of unconsciousness which Mayenne assumed:--"If my imagination have not deceived me, somewhat less than a month ago, Charles, Duke of Mayenne vouchsafed, under the title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom, to grant a regular safe-conduct to a noble gentleman called the Marquis of St. Real, in order that the said Marquis might visit, in safety, the capital of this country, as well as the court of King Henry, in order to judge between the factions which strangle this unhappy land, and take his part accordingly."

"True," said the Duke of Mayenne, bowing his head, "true, we did so."

"Well, then, my lord," continued D'Aubin, "is it not equally true that, when my cousin, St. Real, thought fit to leave his forces at a sufficient distance from either army to give him an opportunity of joining which he pleased hereafter, and was advancing calmly to confer with the King, he was entrapped by false information, surrounded by a party wearing the green scarfs of the League, and carried off, in direct contravention of the safe-conduct you had given him?"