A Gentleman of France

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It was followed immediately by a knock on the outside of our
door. Obeying my companion's look, I cried, 'Enter!'

A slender man of middle height, booted and wrapped up, with his
face almost entirely hidden by a fold of his cloak, came in
quickly, and closing the door behind him, advanced towards the
table. 'Which is M. de Rosny?' he said.

Rosny had carefully turned his face from the light, but at the
sound of the other's voice he sprang up with a cry of relief. He
was about to speak, when the newcomer, raising his hand
peremptorily, continued, 'No names, I beg. Yours, I suppose, is
known here. Mine is not, nor do I desire it should be. I want
speech of you, that is all.'

'I am greatly honoured,' M. de Rosny replied, gazing at him
eagerly. 'Yet, who told you I was here?'

'I saw you pass under a lamp in the street,' the stranger
answered. 'I knew your horse first, and you afterwards, and bade
a groom follow you. Believe me,' he added, with a gesture of the
hand, 'you have nothing to fear from me.'

'I accept the assurance in the spirit in which it is offered,' my
companion answered with a graceful bow, 'and think myself
fortunate in being recognised'--he paused a moment and then
continued--'by a Frenchman and a man of honour.'

The stranger shrugged his shoulders. 'Your pardon, then,' he
said, 'if I seem abrupt. My time is short. I want to do the
best with it I can. Will you favour me?'

I was for withdrawing, but M. de Rosny ordered Maignan to place
lights in the next room, and, apologising to me very graciously,
retired thither with the stranger, leaving me relieved indeed by
these peaceful appearances, but full of wonder and conjectures
who this might be, and what the visit portended. At one moment I
was inclined to identify the stranger with M. de Rosny's brother;
at another with the English ambassador; and then, again, a wild
idea that he might be M. de Bruhl occurred to me. The two
remained together about a quarter of an hour and then came out,
the stranger leading the way, and saluting me politely as he
passed through the room. At the door he turned to say, 'At nine
o'clock, then?'

'At nine o'clock,' M. de Rosny replied, holding the door open.
'You will excuse me if I do not descend, Marquis?'

'Yes, go back, my friend,' the stranger answered. And, lighted
by Maignan, whose face on such occasions could assume the most
stolid air in the world, he disappeared down the stairs, and I
heard him go out.

M. de Rosny turned to me, his eyes sparkling with joy, his face
and mien full of animation. 'The King of Navarre is better,' he
said. 'He is said to be out of danger. What do you think of
that, my friend?'

'That is the best news I have heard for many a day,' I answered.
And I hastened to add, that France and the Religion had reason to
thank God for His mercy.

'Amen to that,' my patron replied reverently. 'But that is not
all--that is not all.' And he began to walk up and down the room
humming the 118th Psalm a little above his breath--

La voici l'heureuse journee
Que Dieu a faite a plein desir;
Par nous soit joie demenee,
Et prenons en elle plaisir.

He continued, indeed, to walk up and down the floor so long, and
with so joyful a countenance and demeanour, that I ventured, at
last to remind him of my presence, which he had clearly
forgotten. 'Ha! to be sure,' he said, stopping short and
looking at me with the utmost good-humour. 'What time is it?
Seven. Then until nine o'clock, my friend, I crave your
indulgence. In fine, until that time I must keep counsel. Come,
I am hungry still. Let us sit down, and this time I hope we may
not be interrupted. Simon, set us on a fresh bottle. Ha! ha!
VIVENT LE ROI ET LE ROI DE NAVARRE!' And again he fell to
humming the same psalm--

O Dieu eternel, je te prie,
Je te prie, ton roi maintiens:
O Dieu, je te prie et reprie,
Sauve ton roi et l'entretiens!

doing so with a light in his eyes and a joyous emphasis, which
impressed me the more in a man ordinarily so calm and self-
contained. I saw that something had occurred to gratify him
beyond measure, and, believing his statement that this was not
the good news from La Ganache only, I waited with the utmost
interest and anxiety for the hour of nine, which had no sooner
struck than our former visitor appeared with the same air of
mystery and disguise which had attended him before.

M. de Rosny, who had risen on hearing his step and had taken up
his cloak, paused with it half on and half off, to cry anxiously,
'All is well, is it not?'

'Perfectly,' the stranger replied, with a nod.

'And my friend?'

Yes, on condition that you answer for his discretion and
fidelity.' And the stranger glanced involuntarily at me who
stood uncertain whether to hold my ground or retire.

'Good,' M. de Rosny cried. Then he turned to me with a mingled
air of dignity and kindness, and continued: 'This is the
gentleman. M. de Marsac, I am honoured with permission to
present you to the Marquis de Rambouillet, whose interest and
protection I beg you to deserve, for he is a true Frenchman and a
patriot whom I respect.'

M. de Rambouillet saluted me politely. 'Of a Brittany family, I
think?' he said.

I assented; and he replied with something complimentary. But
afterwards he continued to look at me in silence with a keenness
and curiosity I did not understand. At last, when M. de Rosny's
impatience had reached a high pitch, the marquis seemed impelled
to add something. 'You quite understand M. de Rosny?' he said.
'Without saying anything disparaging of M. de Marsac, who is, no
doubt, a man of honour'--and he bowed to me very low--'this is a
delicate matter, and you will introduce no one into it, I am
sure, whom you cannot trust as yourself.'

'Precisely,' M. de Rosny replied, speaking drily, yet with a
grand air which fully matched his companion's. 'I am prepared to
trust this gentleman not only with my life but with my honour.'

'Nothing more remains to be said then,' the marquis rejoined,
bowing to me again. 'I am glad to have been the occasion of a
declaration so flattering to you, sir.'

I returned his salute in silence, and obeying M. de Rosny's
muttered direction put on, my cloak and sword. M. de Rosny took
up his pistols.

'You will have no need of those,' the Marquis said with a high
glance.

'Where we are going, no,' my companion answered, calmly
continuing to dispose them about him. 'But the streets are dark
and not too safe.'

M. de Rambouillet laughed. 'That is the worst of you Huguenots,'
he said. 'You never know when to lay suspicion aside.'

A hundred retorts sprang to my lips. I thought of the
Bartholomew, of the French fury of Antwerp, of half a dozen
things which make my blood boil to this day. But M. de Rosny's
answer was the finest of all. 'That is true, I am afraid,' he
said quietly. 'On the other hand, you Catholics--take the late
M. de Guise for instance--have the habit of erring on the other
side, I think, and sometimes trust too far.'

The marquis, without making any answer to this home-thrust, led
the way out, and we followed, being joined at the door of the
house by a couple of armed lackeys, who fell in behind us. We
went on foot. The night was dark, and the prospect out of doors
was not cheering. The streets were wet and dirty, and
notwithstanding all our care we fell continually into pitfalls or
over unseen obstacles. Crossing the PARVIS of the cathedral,
which I remembered, we plunged in silence into an obscure street
near the river, and so narrow that the decrepit houses shut out
almost all view of the sky. The gloom of our surroundings, no
less than my ignorance of the errand on which we were bound,
filled me with anxiety and foreboding. My companions keeping
strict silence, however, and taking every precaution to avoid
being recognised, I had no choice but to do likewise.

I could think, and no more. I felt myself borne along by an
irresistible current, whither and for what purpose I could not
tell; an experience to an extent strange at my age the influence
of the night and the weather. Twice we stood aside to let a
party of roisterers go by, and the excessive care M. de
Rambouillet evinced on these occasions to avoid recognition did
not tend to reassure me or make me think more lightly of the
unknown business on which I was bound.

Reaching at last an open space, our leader bade us in a low voice
be careful and follow him closely. We did so and crossed in this
way and in single file a narrow plank or wooden bridge; but
whether water ran below or a dry ditch only, I could not
determine. My mind was taken up at the moment with the discovery
which I had just made, that the dark building, looming huge and
black before us with a single light twinkling here and there at
great heights, was the Castle of Blois.

CHAPTER XV.

VILAIN HERODES.

All the distaste and misliking I had expressed earlier in the day
for the Court of Blois recurred with fresh force in the darkness
and gloom; and though, booted and travel-stained as we were, I
did not conceive it likely that we should be obtruded on the
circle about the king, I felt none the less an oppressive desire
to be through with our adventure, and away from the ill-omened
precincts in which I found myself. The darkness prevented me
seeing the faces of my companions; but on M. de Rosny, who was
not quite free himself, I think, from the influences of the time
and place, twitching my sleeve to enforce vigilance, I noted that
the lackeys had ceased to follow us, and that we three were
beginning to ascend a rough staircase cut in the rock. I
gathered, though the darkness limited my view behind as well as
in front to a few twinkling lights, that we were mounting the
scarp from the moat; to the side wall of the castle; and I was
not surprised when the marquis muttered to us to stop, and
knocked softly on the wood of a door.

M. de Rosny might have spared the touch he had laid on my sleeve,
for by this time I was fully and painfully sensible of the
critical position in which we stood, and was very little likely
to commit an indiscretion. I trusted he had not done so already!
No doubt--it flashed across me while we waited--he had taken care
to safeguard himself. But how often, I reflected, had all
safeguards been set aside and all precautions eluded by those to
whom he was committing himself! Guise had thought himself secure
in this very building, which we were about to enter. Coligny had
received the most absolute of safe-conducts from those to whom we
were apparently bound. The end in either case had been the same
--the confidence of the one proving of no more avail than the
wisdom of the other. What if the King of France thought to make
his peace with his Catholic subjects--offended by the murder of
Guise--by a second murder of one as obnoxious to them as he was
precious to their arch-enemy in the South? Rosny was sagacious
indeed; but then I reflected with sudden misgiving that he was
young, ambitious, and bold.

The opening of the door interrupted without putting an end to
this train of apprehension. A faint light shone out; so feebly
as to illumine little more than the stairs at our feet. The
marquis entered at once, M. de Rosny followed, I brought up the
rear; and the door was closed by a man who stood behind it. We
found ourselves crowded together at the foot of a very narrow
staircase, which the doorkeeper--a stolid pikeman in a grey
uniform, with a small lanthorn swinging from the crosspiece of
his halberd--signed to us to ascend. I said a word to him, but
he only stared in answer, and M. de Rambouillet, looking back and
seeing what I was about, called to me that it was useless, as the
man was a Swiss and spoke no French.

This did not tend to reassure me; any more than did the chill
roughness of the wall which my hand touched as I groped upwards,
or the smell of bats which invaded my nostrils and suggested that
the staircase was little used and belonged to a part of the
castle fitted for dark and secret doings.

We stumbled in the blackness up the steps, passing one door and
then a second before M. de Rambouillet whispered to us to stand,
and knocked gently at a third.

The secrecy, the darkness, and above all the strange arrangements
made to receive us, filled me with the wildest conjectures. But
when the door opened and we passed one by one into a bare,
unfurnished, draughty gallery, immediately, as I judged, under
the tiles, the reality agreed with no one of my anticipations.
The place was a mere garret, without a hearth, without a single
stool. Three windows, of which one was roughly glazed, while the
others were filled with oiled paper, were set in one wall; the
others displaying the stones and mortar without disguise or
ornament. Beside the door through which we had entered stood a
silent figure in the grey uniform I had seen below, his lanthorn
on the floor at his feet. A second door at the farther end of
the gallery, which was full twenty paces long, was guarded in
like manner. A couple of lanthorns stood in the middle of the
floor, and that was all.

Inside the door, M. de Rambouillet with his finger on his lip
stopped us, and we stood a little group of three a pace in front
of the sentry, and with the empty room before us. I looked at M.
de Rosny, but he was looking at Rambouillet. The marquis had his
back towards me, the sentry was gazing into vacancy; so that
baffled in my attempt to learn anything from the looks of the
other actors in the scene, I fell back on my ears. The rain
dripped outside and the moaning wind rattled the casements; but
mingled with these melancholy sounds--which gained force, as such
things always do, from the circumstances in which we were placed
and our own silence--I fancied I caught the distant hum of voices
and music and laughter. And that, I know not why, brought M. de
Guise again to my mind.

The story of his death, as I had heard it from that accursed monk
in the inn on the Claine, rose up in all its freshness, with all
its details. I started when M. de Rambouillet coughed. I
shivered when Rosny shifted his feet. The silence grew
oppressive. Only the stolid men in grey seemed unmoved,
unexpectant; so that I remember wondering whether it was their
nightly duty to keep guard over an empty garret, the floor strewn
with scraps of mortar and ends of tiles.

The interruption, when it came at last, came suddenly. The
sentry at the farther end of the gallery started and fell back a
pace. Instantly the door beside him opened and a man came in,
and closing it quickly behind him, advanced up the room with an
air of dignity, which even his strange appearance and attire
could not wholly destroy.

He was of good stature and bearing, about forty years old as I
judged, his wear a dress of violet velvet with black points cut
in the extreme of the fashion. He carried a sword but no ruff,
and had a cup and ball of ivory--a strange toy much in vogue
among the idle--suspended from his wrist by a ribbon. He was
lean and somewhat narrow, but so far I found little fault with
him. It was only when my eye reached his face, and saw it rouged
like a woman's and surmounted by a little turban, that a feeling
of scarcely understood disgust seized me, and I said to myself,
'This is the stuff of which kings' minions are made!'

To my surprise, however, M. de Rambouillet went to meet him with
the utmost respect, sweeping the dirty floor with his bonnet, and
bowing to the very ground. The newcomer acknowledged his salute
with negligent kindness. Remarking pleasantly 'You have brought
a friend, I think?' he looked towards us with a smile.

'Yes, sire, he is here,' the marquis answered, stepping aside a
little. And with the word I understood that this was no minion,
but the king himself: Henry, the Third of the name, and the last
of the great House of Valois, which had ruled France by the grace
of God for two centuries and a half! I stared at him, and stared
at him, scarcely believing what I saw. For the first time in my
life I was in the presence of the king!

Meanwhile M. de Rosny, to whom he was, of course, no marvel, had
gone forward and knelt on one knee. The king raised him
graciously, and with an action which, viewed apart from his
woman's face and silly turban, seemed royal and fitting. 'This
is good of you, Rosny,' he said. 'But it is only what I expected
of you.'

'Sire,' my companion answered, 'your Majesty has no more devoted
servant than myself, unless it be the king my master.'

'By my faith,' Henry answered with energy--'and if I am not a
good churchman, whatever those rascally Parisians say, I am
nothing--by my faith, I think I believe you!'

'If your Majesty would believe me in that and in some other
things also,' M. de Rosny answered, 'it would be very well for
France.' Though he spoke courteously, he threw so much weight
and independence into his words that I thought of the old
proverb, 'A good master, a bold servant.'

'Well, that is what we are here to see,' the king replied. 'But
one tells me one thing,' he went on fretfully, 'and one another,
and which am I to believe?'

'I know nothing of others, sire,' Rosny answered with the same
spirit. 'But my master has every claim to be believed. His
interest in the royalty of France is second only to your
Majesty's. He is also a king and a kinsman, and it erks him to
see rebels beard you, as has happened of late.'

'Ay, but the chief of them?' Henry exclaimed, giving way to
sudden excitement and stamping furiously on the floor. 'He will
trouble me no more. Has my brother heard of THAT? Tell me, sir,
has that news reached him?'

'He has heard it, sire.'

'And he approved? He approved, of course?'

'Beyond doubt the man was a traitor,' M. de Rosny answered
delicately. 'His life was forfeit, sire. Who can question it?'

'And he has paid the forfeit,' the king rejoined, looking down at
the floor and immediately falling into a moodiness as sudden as
his excitement. His lips moved. He muttered something
inaudible, and began to play absently with his cup and ball, his
mind occupied apparently with a gloomy retrospect. 'M. de Guise,
M. de Guise,' he murmured at last, with a sneer and an accent of
hate which told of old humiliations long remembered. 'Well, damn
him, he is dead now. He is dead. But being dead he yet troubles
us. Is not that the verse, father? Ha!' with a start, 'I was
forgetting. But that is the worst wrong he has done me,' he
continued, looking up and growing excited again. 'He has cut me
off from Mother Church. There is hardly a priest comes near me
now, and presently they will excommunicate me. And, as I hope
for salvation, the Church has no more faithful son than me.'

I believe he was on the point, forgetting M. de Rosny's presence
there and his errand, of giving way to unmanly tears, when M. de
Rambouillet, as if by accident, let the heel of his scabbard fall
heavily on the floor. The king started, and passing his hand
once or twice across his brow, seemed to recover himself.
'Well,' he said, 'no doubt we shall find a way out of our
difficulties.'

'If your Majesty,' Rosny answered respectfully, 'would accept the
aid my master proffers, I venture to think that they would vanish
the quicker.'

'You think so,' Henry rejoined. 'Well, give me your shoulder.
Let us walk a little.' And, signing to Rambouillet to leave him,
he began to walk up and down with M. de Rosny, talking familiarly
with him in an undertone.

Only such scraps of the conversation as fell from them when they
turned at my end of the gallery now reached me. Patching these
together, however, I managed to understand somewhat. At one turn
I heard the king say, 'But then Turenne offers--' At the next,
'Trust him? Well, I do not know why I should not. He promises
--' Then 'A Republic, Rosny? That his plan? Pooh! he dare not.
He could not. France is a kingdom by the ordinance of God in my
family.'

I gathered from these and other chance words, which I have since
forgotten, that M. de Rosny was pressing the king to accept the
help of the King of Navarre, and warning him against the
insidious offers of the Vicomte de Turenne. The mention of a
Republic, however, seemed to excite his Majesty's wrath rather
against Rosny for presuming to refer to such a thing than against
Turenne, to whom he refused to credit it. He paused near my end
of the promenade.

'Prove it!' he said angrily. 'But can you prove it? Can you
prove it? Mind you, I will take no hearsay evidence, sir. Now,
there is Turenne's agent here--you did not know, I dare say, that
he had an agent here?'

'You refer, sire, to M. de Bruhl,' Rosny answered, without
hesitation. 'I know him, sire.'

'I think you are the devil,' Henry answered, looking curiously at
him. 'You seem to know most things. But mind you, my friend, he
speaks me fairly, and I will not take this on hearsay even from
your master. Though,' he added after pausing a moment, 'I love
him.'

'And he, your Majesty. He desires only to prove it.'

'Yes, I know, I know,' the king answered fretfully. 'I believes
he does. I believe he does wish me well. But there will be a
devil of an outcry among my people. And Turenne gives fair words
too. And I do not know,' he continued, fidgeting with his cup
and ball, 'that it might not suit me better to agree with him,
you see.'

I saw M. de Rosny draw himself up. 'Dare I speak openly to you,
sire,' he said, with less respect and more energy than he had
hitherto used. 'As I should to my master?'

'Ay, say what you like,' Henry answered. But he spoke sullenly,
and it seemed to me that he looked less pleasantly at his
companion.

'Then I will venture to utter what is in your Majesty's mind,' my
patron answered steadfastly. 'You fear, sire, lest, having
accepted my master's offer and conquered your enemies, you should
not be easily rid of him.'

Henry looked relieved. 'Do you call that diplomacy?' he said
with a smile. 'However, what if it be so? What do you say to
it? Methinks I have heard an idle tale about a horse which would
hunt a stag; and for the purpose set a man upon its back.'

'This I say, sire, first,' Rosny answered very earnestly. 'That
the King of Navarre is popular only with one-third of the
kingdom, and is only powerful when united with you. Secondly,
sire, it is his interest to support the royal power, to which he
is heir. And, thirdly, it must be more to your Majesty's honour
to accept help from a near kinsman than from an ordinary subject,
and one who, I still maintain, sire, has no good designs in his
mind.'

'The proof' Henry said sharply. 'Give me that!'

'I can give it in a week from this day.'

'It must be no idle tale, mind you,' the king continued
suspiciously.

'You shall have Turenne's designs, sire, from one who had them
from his own mouth.'

The king looked startled, but after a pause turned and resumed
his walk. 'Well,' he said, 'if you do that, I on my part--'

The rest I lost, for the two passing to the farther end of the
gallery, came to a standstill there, balking my curiosity and
Rambouillet's also. The marquis, indeed, began to betray his
impatience, and the great clock immediately over our heads
presently striking the half-hour after ten, he started and made
as if he would have approached the king. He checked the impulse,
however, but still continued to fidget uneasily, losing his
reserve by-and-by so far as to whisper to me that his Majesty
would be missed.

I had been, up to this point, a silent and inactive spectator of
a scene which appealed to my keenest interests and aroused my
most ardent curiosity. Surprise following surprise, I had begun
to doubt my own identity; so little had I expected to find myself
first in the presence of the Most Christian King--and that under
circumstances as strange and bizarre as could well be imagined--
and then an authorised witness at a negotiation upon which the
future of all the great land of France stretching for so many
hundred leagues on every side of us, depended. I say I could
scarcely believe in my own identity; or that I was the same
Gaston de Marsac who had slunk, shabby and out-at-elbows, about
St. Jean d'Angely. I tasted the first sweetness of secret
power, which men say is the sweetest of all and the last
relinquished; and, the hum of distant voices and laughter still
reaching me at intervals, I began to understand why we had been
admitted with, so much precaution, and to comprehend the
gratification of M. de Rosny when the promise of this interview
first presented to him the hope of effecting so much for his
master and for France.

Now I was to be drawn into the whirlpool itself. I was still
travelling back over the different stages of the adventure which
had brought me to this point, when I was rudely awakened by M. de
Rosny calling my name in a raised voice. Seeing, somewhat late,
that he was beckoning to me to approach, I went forward in a
confused and hasty fashion; kneeling before the king as I had
seen him kneel, and then rising to give ear to his Majesty's
commands. Albeit, having expected nothing less than to be called
upon, I was not in the clearest mood to receive them. Nor was my
bearing such as I could have wished it to be.

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