From the Memoirs of a Minister of France
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Stanley Weyman >> From the Memoirs of a Minister of France
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"I thought it likely that you would lie at Saury," he said, with
a ghastly smile.
"And yet made this preparation for us?" I answered politely, yet
letting a little of my real mind be seen. "Well, as a fact, M.
Bareilles, save for one thing we should have lain there."
"And that thing?" he asked, his tongue almost failing him as he
put the question.
"The fact that you have a villain in your company," I answered.
"What?" he stammered.
"A villain, M. le Capitaine Martin," I continued sternly. "You
sent him out this morning against the Great Band; instead, he
took it upon him to lay a plot for me, from which I have only
narrowly escaped."
"Martin?"
"Yes, M. de Bareilles, Martin!" I answered roundly, fixing him
with my eyes; while Parabere went quietly to the door, and stood
by it. "If I am not mistaken, I hear him at this moment
dismounting below. Let us understand one another therefore, I
propose to sup with you, but I shall not sit down until he
hangs."
It would be useless for me to attempt to paint the mixture of
horror, perplexity, and shame which distorted Bareilles'
countenance as I spoke these words. While Parabere's attitude
and my demeanour gave him clearly to understand that we suspected
the truth, if we did not know it, our coolness and the very
nature of my demand imposed upon his fears and led him to believe
that we had a regiment at our call. He knew, too, that that
which might be done in a ruined hamlet might not be done in the
square at Gueret; and his knees trembled under him. He muttered
that he did not understand; that we must be mistaken. What
evidence had we?
"The best!" I answered grimly. "If you wish to hear it, I will
send for it; but witnesses have sometimes loose tongues,
Bareilles, and he may not stop at the Capitaine Martin."
He started and glared at me. From me his eyes passed to
Parabere; then he shuddered, and looked down at the table. As he
leaned against it, I heard the glasses tinkling softly. At last
he muttered that the man must have a trial.
I shrugged my shoulders, and would have answered that that was
his business; but at the moment a heavy step rang on the stone
steps, the door was flung hastily open, and a dark-complexioned
man came in with his hat on. The stranger was splashed to the
chin, and his face wore an expression of savage annoyance; but
this gave place the instant he saw us to one of intense surprise,
while the words he had had on his lips died away, and he stood
nonplussed. I turned to M. de Bareilles.
"Who is this?" I said harshly.
"One of my lieutenants," he answered in a stifled tone.
"M. le Capitaine Martin?"
"The same," he answered.
"Very well," I replied. "You have heard my terms."
He stood clutching the table, and in the bright light of the
candles that burned on it his face was horrible. Still he
managed to speak. "M. le Capitaine, call four men," he muttered.
"Monsieur?" the Captain answered.
"Call four men--four of your men," Bareilles repeated with an
effort.
The Captain turned and went downstairs in amazement, returning
immediately after with four troopers at his heels.
Bareilles' face was ghastly. "Take M. le Capitaine's sword," he
said to them.
The Captain's jaw fell, and, stepping back a pace, he looked from
one to another. But all were silent; he found every eye upon
him, and, doubtful and taken by surprise, he unbuckled his sword
and flung it with an oath upon the floor.
"To the garden with him!" Bareilles continued, hoarsely.
"Quick! Take him! I will send you your orders."
They laid hands on the man mechanically, and, unnerved by the
suddenness of the affair, the silence, and the presence of so
many strangers,--ignorant, too, what was doing or what was meant,
he went unresisting. They marched him out heavily; the door
closed behind them; we stood waiting. The glittering table, the
lights, the arrested dicers, all the trivial preparations for a
carouse that at another time must have given a cheerful aspect to
the room, produced instead the most sombre impression. I waited,
but, seeing that Bareilles did not move, I struck the table with
my gauntlet. "The order!" I said, sharply; "the order!"
He slunk to a table in a corner where there was ink, and scrawled
it. I took it from his hand, and, giving it to Boisrueil, "Take
it," I said, "and the three men on the landing, and see the order
carried out. When it is over, come and tell me."
He took the order and disappeared, La Font after him. I remained
in the room with Parabere, Bareilles, and the dicers. The
minutes passed slowly, no one speaking; Bareilles standing with
his head sunk on his breast, and a look of utter despair on his
countenance. At length Boisrueil and La Font returned. The
former nodded.
"Very well," I said. "Then let us sup, gentlemen. Come, M. de
Bareilles, your place is at the head of the table. Parabere, sit
here. Gentlemen, I have not the honour of knowing you, but here
are places."
And we supped; but not all with the same appetite. Bareilles,
silent, despairing, a prey to the bitterest remorse, sat low in
his chair, and, if I read his face aright, had no thought but of
vengeance. But, assured that by forcing him to that which must
for ever render him odious--and particularly among his inferiors
--I had sapped his authority at the root, I took care only that
he should not leave us. I directed Colet to unsaddle and bivouac
in the garden, and myself lay all night with Parabere and
Bareilles in the room in which we had supped, Boisrueil and La
Font taking turns to keep the door.
To have betrayed too much haste to be gone might have proved as
dangerous as a long delay; and our horses needed rest. But an
hour before noon next day I gave the order and we mounted in the
square, in the presence of a mixed mob of soldiers and townsfolk,
whom it needed but a spark to kindle. I took care that that
spark should be wanting, however; and to that end I compelled
Bareilles to mount and ride with us as far as Saury. Here, where
I found the inn burned and the woman murdered, I should have done
no more than justice had I hung him as well; and I think that he
half expected it. But reflecting that he had a score of
relations in Poitou who might give trouble, and, besides that,
his position called for some degree of consideration, I parted
with him gravely, and hastened to put as many leagues between us
as possible. That night we slept at Crozant, and the next at St.
Gaultier.
It was chiefly in consequence of the observations I made during
this journey that Henry, in the following October, marched into
the Limousin with a considerable force and received the
submission of the governors. The details of that expedition, in
the course of which he put to death ten or twelve of the more
disorderly, will be found in another place. It remains for me
only to add here that Bareilles was not of them. He escaped a
fate he richly deserved by flying betimes with Bassignac to
Sedan. Of his ultimate fate I know nothing; but a week after my
return to the Arsenal, a man called on me who turned out to be
the astrologer. I gave him fifty crowns.
VIII. THE OPEN SHUTTER.
Few are ignorant of that weakness of the vulgar which leads them
to admire in the great not so much the qualities which deserve
admiration as those which, in the eyes of the better-informed,
are defects; so that the amours of Caesar, the clock-making of
Charles, and the jests of Coligny are more in the mouths of men
than their statesmanship or valour. For one thing commendable,
two that are diverting are told; and for one man who in these
days recalls the thousand great and wise deeds of the late King a
thousand remember his occasional freaks, the duel he would have
fought, or his habit of visiting the streets of Paris by night
and in disguise. That this last has been much exaggerated, I can
myself bear witness; for though Varenne or Coquet, the Master of
the Household, were his usual companions on these occasions, he
seldom failed to confess to me after the event, and more than
once I accompanied him.
If I remember rightly, it was in April or May of this year, 1606,
and consequently a few days after his return from Sedan, that he
surprised me one night as I sat at supper, and, requesting me to
dismiss my servants, let me know that he was in a flighty mood;
and that nothing would content him but to play the Caliph in my
company. I was not too willing, for I did not fail to recognise
the risk to which these expeditions exposed his person; but, in
the end, I consented, making only the condition that Maignan
should follow us at a distance. This he conceded, and I sent for
two plain suits, and we dressed in my closet. The King,
delighted with the frolic, was in his wildest mood. He uttered
an infinity of jests, and cut a thousand absurd antics; and,
rallying me on my gravity, soon came near to making me repent of
the easiness which had led me to fall in with his humour.
However, it was too late to retreat, and in a moment we were
standing in the street. It would not have surprised me if he had
celebrated his freedom by some noisy extravagance there; but he
refrained, and contented himself--while Maignan locked the
postern behind us--with cocking his hat and lugging forward his
sword, and assuming an air of whimsical recklessness, as if an
adventure were to be instantly expected.
But the moon had not yet risen, the night was dark, and for some
time we met with nothing more diverting than a stumble over a
dead dog, a word with a forward wench, or a narrow escape from
one of those liquid douches that render the streets perilous for
common folk and do not spare the greatest. Naturally, I began to
tire, and wished myself with all my heart back at the Arsenal;
but Henry, whose spirits a spice of danger never failed to raise,
found a hundred things to be merry over, and some of which he
made a great tale of afterwards. He would go on; and presently,
in the Rue de ]a Pourpointerie, which we entered as the clocks
struck the hour before midnight, his persistence was rewarded.
By that time the moon had risen; but, naturally, few were abroad
so late, and such as were to be seen belonged to a class among
whom even Henry did not care to seek adventures. Our
astonishment was great therefore when, half-way down the street--
a street of tall, mean houses neither better nor much worse than
others in that quarter--we saw, standing in the moonlight at an
open door, a boy about seven years old.
The King saw him first, and, pressing my arm, stood still. On
the instant the child, who had probably seen us before we saw
him, advanced into the road to us. "Messieurs," he said,
standing up boldly before us and looking at us without fear, "my
father is ill, and I cannot close the shutter."
The boy's manner, full of self-possession, and his tone,
remarkable at his age, took us so completely by surprise--to say
nothing of the late hour and the deserted street, which gave
these things their full effect--that for a moment neither of us
answered. Then the King spoke. "Indeed, M. l'Empereur," he said
gravely; "and where is the shutter?"
The boy pointed to an open shutter at the top of the house behind
him.
"Ah!" Henry said. "And you wish us to close it?"
"If you please, messieurs."
"We do please," Henry replied, saluting him with mock reverence.
"You may consider the shutter closed. Lead on, Monsieur; we
follow."
For the first time the boy looked doubtful; but he turned without
saying anything, and passing through the doorway, was in an
instant lost in the pitchy darkness of the entry. I laid my hand
on the King's arm, and tried to induce him not to follow; fearing
much that this might be some new thieves' trap, leading nowhither
save to the POIRE D'ANGOISSE and the poniard. But the attempt
was hopeless from the first; he broke from me and entered, and I
followed him.
We groped for the balustrade and found it, and began to ascend,
guided by the boy's voice; who kept a little before us, saying
continually, "This way, messieurs; this way!" His words had so
much the sound of a signal, and the staircase was so dark and
ill-smelling, that, expecting every moment to be seized or to
have a knife in my back, I found it almost interminable. At
last, however, a gleam of light appeared above us, the boy opened
a door, and we found ourselves standing on a mean, narrow
landing, the walls of which had once been whitewashed. The child
signed to us to enter, and we followed him into a bare attic,
where our heads nearly touched the ceiling.
"Messieurs, the air is keen," he said in a curiously formal tone.
"Will you please to close the shutter?"
The King, amused and full of wonder, looked round. The room
contained little besides a table, a stool, and a lamp standing in
a basin on the floor; but an alcove, curtained with black, dingy
hangings, broke one wall. "Your father lies there?" Henry said,
pointing to it.
"Yes, monsieur."
"He feels the cold?"
"Yes, monsieur. Will you please to close the shutter?"
I went to it, and, leaning out, managed, with a little
difficulty, to comply. Meanwhile, the King, gazing curiously at
the curtains, gradually approached the alcove. He hesitated
long, he told me afterwards, before he touched the hangings; but
at length, feeling sure that there was something more in the
business than appeared, he did so. Drawing one gently aside, as
I turned from the window, he peered in; and saw just what he had
been led to expect--a huddled form covered with dingy bed-clothes
and a grey head lying on a ragged, yellow pillow. The man's face
was turned to the wall; but, as the light fell on him, he sighed
and, with a shiver, began to move. The King dropped the curtain.
The adventure had not turned out as well as he had hoped; and,
with a whimsical look at me, he laid a crown on the table, said a
kind word to the boy, and we went out. In a moment we were in
the street.
It was my turn now to rally him, and I did so without mercy;
asking if he knew of any other beauteous damsel who wanted her
shutter closed, and whether this was the usual end of his
adventures. He took the jest in good part, laughing fully as
loudly at himself as I laughed; and in this way we had gone a
hundred paces or so very merrily, when, on a sudden, he stopped.
"What is it, sire?" I asked.
"Hola!" he said, "The boy was clean."
"Clean?"
"Yes; hands, face, clothes. All clean."
"Well, sire?"
"How could he be? His father in bed, no one even to close the
shutter. How could he be clean?"
"But, if he was, sire?"
For answer Henry seized me by the arm, turned me round without a
word, and in a moment was hurrying me back to the house. I
thought that he was going thither again, and followed
reluctantly; but twenty paces short of the door he crossed the
street, and drew me into a doorway. "Can you see the shutter?"
he said. "Yes? Then watch it, my friend."
I had no option but to resign myself, and I nodded. A moist and
chilly wind, which blew through the street and penetrating our
cloaks made us shiver, did not tend to increase my enthusiasm;
but the King was proof even against this, as well as against the
kennel smells and the tedium of waiting, and presently his
persistence was rewarded. The shutter swung slowly open, the
noise made by its collision with the wall coming clearly to our
ears. A minute later the boy appeared in the doorway, and stood
looking up and down.
"Well," the King whispered in my ear, "what do you make of that,
my friend?"
I muttered that it must be a beggar's trick.
"They would not earn a crown in a month," he answered. There
must be something more than that at the bottom of it."
Beginning to share his curiosity, I was about to propose that we
should sally out and see if the boy would repeat his overture to
us, when I caught the sound of footsteps coming along the street.
"Is it Maignan?" the King whispered, looking out cautiously.
"No, sire," I said. "He is in yonder doorway."
Before Henry could answer, the appearance of two strangers coming
along the roadway confirmed my statement. They paused opposite
the boy, and he advanced to them. Too far off to hear precisely
what passed, we were near enough to be sure that the dialogue was
in the main the same as that in which we had taken part. The men
were cloaked, too, as were we, and presently they went in, as we
had gone in. All, in fact, happened as it had happened to us,
and after the necessary interval we saw and heard the shutter
closed.
"Well," the King said, "what do you make of that?"
"The shutter is the catch-word, sire."
"Ay, but what is going on up there?" he asked. And he rubbed
his hands.
I had no explanation to give, however, and shook my head; and we
stood awhile, watching silently. At the end of five minutes the
two men came out again and walked off the way they had come, but
more briskly. Henry moreover, whose observation was all his life
most acute, remarked that whatever they had been doing they
carried away lighter hearts than they had brought. And I thought
the same.
Indeed, I was beginning to take my full share of interest in the
adventure; and in place of wondering, as before, at Henry's
persistence, found it more natural to admire the keenness which
he had displayed in scenting a mystery. I was not surprised,
therefore, when he gripped my arm to gain my attention, and, a
the window fell slowly open again, drew me quickly into the
street, and hurried me across it and through the doorway of the
house.
"Up!" he muttered in my ear. "Quickly and quietly, man! If
there are to be other visitors, we will play the spy. But
softly, softly; here is the boy!"
We stood aside against the wall, scarcely daring to breathe; and
the child, guiding himself by the handrail, passed us in the dark
without suspicion, and pattered on down the staircase. We
remained as we were until we heard him cross the threshold, and
then we crept up; not to the uppermost landing, where the light,
when the door was opened, must betray us, but to that immediately
below it. There we took our stand in the angle of the stairs and
waited, the King, between amusement at the absurdity of our
position and anxiety lest we should betray ourselves, going off
now and again into stifled laughter, from which he vainly strove
to restrain himself by pinching me.
I was not in so gay a mood myself, however, the responsibility of
his safety lying heavy upon me; while the possibility that the
adventure might prove no less tragical in the sequel than it now
appeared comical, did not fail to present itself to my eyes in
the darkest colours. When we had watched, therefore, five
minutes more--which seemed to me an hour--I began to lose faith;
and I was on the point of undertaking to persuade Henry to
withdraw, when the voices of men speaking at the door below
reached us, and told me that it was too late. The next moment
their steps crossed the threshold, and they began to ascend, the
boy saying continually, "This way, messieurs, this way!" and
preceding them as he had preceded us. We heard them approach,
breathing heavily, and but for the balustrade, by which I felt
sure that they would guide themselves, and which stood some feet
from our corner, I should have been in a panic lest they should
blunder against us. But they passed safely, and a moment later
the boy opened the door of the room above. We heard them go in,
and without a second's hesitation we crept up after them,
following them so closely that the door was scarcely shut before
we were at it. We heard, therefore, what passed from the first:
the child's request that they would close the shutter, their
hasty compliance, and the silence, strange and pregnant, which
followed, and which was broken at last by a solemn voice. "We
have closed one shutter," it said, "but the shutter of God's
mercy Is never closed."
"Amen," a second person answered in a tone so distant and muffled
that it needed no great wit to guess whence it came, or that the
speaker was behind the curtains of the alcove. "Who are you?"
"The cure of St. Marceau," the first speaker replied.
"And whom do you bring to me?"
"A sinner."
"What has he done?"
"He will tell you."
"I am listening."
There was a pause on this, a long pause; which was broken at
length by a third speaker, in a tone half sullen, half miserable.
"I have robbed my master," he said.
"Of how much?"
"Fifty livres."
"Why?"
"I lost it at play."
"And you are sorry."
"I must be sorry," the man panted with sudden fierceness, "or
hang!" Hidden though he was from us, there was a tremor in his
voice that told a tale of pallid cheeks and shaking knees,and a
terror fast rising to madness.
"He makes up his accounts to-morrow?"
"Yes."
Someone in the room groaned; it should have been the culprit, but
unless I was mistaken the sound came through the curtains. A
long pause followed. Then, "And if I help you," the muffled
voice resumed, "will you swear to lead an honest life?"
But the answer may be guessed. I need not repeat the assurances,
the protestations and vows of repentance, the cries and tears of
gratitude which ensue; and to which the poor wretch, stripped of
his sullen indifference, completely abandoned himself. Suffice
it that we presently heard the clinking of coins, a word or two
of solemn advice from the cure, and a man's painful sobbing; then
the King touched my arm, and we crept down the stairs. I was for
stopping on the landing where we had hidden ourselves before; but
Henry drew me on to the foot of the stairs and into the street.
He turned towards home, and for some time did not speak. At
length he asked me what I thought of it.
"In what way, sire?"
"Do you not think," he said in a voice of much emotion, "that if
we could do what he does, and save a man instead of hanging him,
it would be better?"
"For the man, sire, doubtless," I answered drily; "but for the
State it might not be so well. If mercy became the rule and
justice the exception--there would be fewer bodies at Montfaucon
and more in the streets at daylight. I feel much greater doubt
on another point."
Shaking off the moodiness that had for a moment overcome him,
Henry asked with vivacity what that was.
"Who he is, and what is his motive?"
"Why?" the King replied in some surprise--he was ever of so kind
a nature that an appeal to his feelings displaced his judgment.
"What should he be but what he seems?"
"Benevolence itself?"
"Yes."
"Well, sire, I grant that he may be M. de Joyeuse, who has spent
his life in passing in and out of monasteries, and has performed
so many tricks of the kind that I could believe anything of him.
But if it be not he--"
"It was not his voice," Henry said, positively.
"Then there is something here," I answered, "still unexplained.
Consider the oddity of the conception, sire, the secrecy of the
performance, the hour, the mode, all the surrounding
circumstances! I can imagine a man currying favour with the
basest and most dangerous class by such means. I can imagine a
conspiracy recruited by such means. I can imagine this
shibboleth of the shutter grown to a watchword as deadly as the
'TUEZ!' of '72. I can imagine all that, but I cannot imagine a
man acting thus out of pure benevolence."
"No?" Henry said, thoughtfully. "Well, I think that I agree
with you." and far from being displeased with my warmth (as is
the manner of some sovereigns when their best friends differ from
them), he came over to my opinion so completely as to halt and
express his intention of returning and probing the matter to the
bottom. Midnight had gone, however; it would take some little
time to retrace our steps; and with some difficulty I succeeded
in dissuading him, promising instead to make inquiries on the
morrow, and having learned who lived in the house, to turn the
whole affair into a report, which should be submitted to him.
This amused and satisfied him, and, expressing himself well
content with the evening's diversion--though we had done nothing
unworthy either of a King or a Minister--he parted from me at the
Arsenal, and went home with his suite.
It did not occur to me at the time that I had promised to do
anything difficult; but the news which my agents brought me next
day--that the uppermost floor of the house in the Rue
Pourpointerie was empty--put another face upon the matter. The
landlord declared that he knew nothing of the tenant, who had
rented the rooms, ready furnished, by the week; and as I had not
seen the man's face, there remained only two sources whence I
could get the information I needed--the child, and the cure of
St. Marceau.
I did not know where to look for the former, however; and I had
to depend on the cure. But here I carne to an obstacle I might
easily have foreseen. I found him, though an honest man,
obdurate in upholding his priest's privileges; to all my
inquiries he replied that the matter touched the confessional,
and was within his vows; and that he neither could, nor dared--to
please anyone, or for any cause, however plausible--divulge the
slightest detail of the affair. I had him summoned to the
arsenal, and questioned him myself, and closely; but of all
armour that of the Roman priesthood is the most difficult to
penetrate, and I quickly gave up the attempt.
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