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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Accordingly, next evening Maignan again appeared, this time with
a face even longer; so that at first I supposed him to have
discovered a plot worse than Chastel's; but it turned out that he
had discovered nothing. The Spaniard had spent the morning in
lounging and the afternoon in practice at the Louvre, and from
first to last had conducted himself in the most innocent manner
possible. On this I rallied Maignan on his mare's nest, and was
inclined to dismiss the matter as such; still, before doing so, I
thought I would see La Trape, and dismissing Maignan I sent for
him.
When he was come, "Well," I said, "have you anything to say?"
"One little thing only, your excellency," he answered slyly, "and
of no importance."
"But you did not tell it to Maignan?"
"No, my Lord," he replied, his face relaxing in a cunning smile.
"Well?"
"Once to-day I saw Diego where he should not have been."
"Where?"
"In the King's dressing-room at the tennis-court."
"You saw him there?"
"I saw him coming out," he answered.
It may be imagined how I felt on hearing this; for although I
might have thought nothing of the matter before my suspicions
were aroused--since any man might visit such a place out of
curiosity--now, my mind being disturbed, I was quick to conceive
the worst, and saw with horror my beloved master already
destroyed through my carelessness. I questioned La Trape in a
fury, but could learn nothing more. He had seen the man slip
out, and that was all.
"But did you not go in yourself?" I said, restraining my
impatience with difficulty.
"Afterwards? Yes, my lord."
"And made no discovery?"
He shook his head.
"Was anything prepared for his Majesty?"
"There was sherbet; and some water."
"You tried them?"
La Trape grinned. "No, my lord," he said. "But I gave some to
Maignan."
"Not explaining?"
"No, my lord."
"You sacrilegious rascal!" I cried, amused in spite of my
anxiety. "And he was none the worse?"
"No, my lord."
Not satisfied yet, I continued to press him, but with so little
success that I still found myself unable to decide whether the
Spaniard had wandered in innocently or to explore his ground. In
the end, therefore, I made up my mind to see things for myself;
and early next morning, at an hour when I was not likely to be
observed, I went out by a back door, and with my face muffled and
no other attendance than Maignan and La Trape, went to the
tennis-court and examined the dressing-room.
This was a small closet on the first floor, of a size to hold two
or three persons, and with a casement through which the King, if
he wished to be private, might watch the game. Its sole
furniture consisted of a little table with a mirror, a seat for
his Majesty, and a couple of stools, so that it offered small
scope for investigation. True, the stale sherbet and the water
were still there, the carafes standing on the table beside an
empty comfit box, and a few toilet necessaries; and it will be
believed that I lost no time in examining them. But I made no
discovery, and when I had passed my eye over everything else that
the room contained, and noticed nothing that seemed in the
slightest degree suspicious, I found myself completely at a loss.
I went to the window, and for a moment looked idly into the
court.
But neither did any light come thence, and I had turned again and
was about to leave, when my eye alighted on a certain thing and I
stopped.
"What is that?" I said. It was a thin case, book-shaped, of
Genoa velvet, somewhat worn.
"Plaister," Maignan, who was waiting at the door, answered. "His
Majesty's hand is not well yet, and as your excellency knows,
he--"
"Silence, fool!" I cried. and I stood rooted to the spot,
overwhelmed by the conviction that I held the clue to the
mystery, and so shaken by the horror which that conviction
naturally brought with it that I could not move a finger. A
design so fiendish and monstrous as that which I suspected might
rouse the dullest sensibilities, in a case where it threatened
the meanest; but being aimed in this at the King, my master, from
whom I had received so many benefits, and on whose life the well-
being of all depended, it goaded me to the warmest resentment. I
looked round the tennis-court--which, empty, shadowy and silent,
seemed a fit place for such horrors--with rage and repulsion;
apprehending in a moment of sad presage all the accursed strokes
of an enemy whom nothing could propitiate, and who, sooner or
later, must set all my care at nought, and take from France her
greatest benefactor.
But, it will be said, I had no proof, only a conjecture; and this
is true, but of it hereafter. Suffice it that, as soon as I had
swallowed my indignation, I took all the precautions affection
could suggest or duty enjoin, omitting nothing; and then,
confiding the matter to no one the two men who were with me
excepted--I prepared to observe the issue with gloomy
satisfaction.
The match was to take place at three in the afternoon. A little
after that hour, I arrived at the tennis-court, attended by La
Font and other gentlemen, and M. l'Huillier, the councillor, who
had dined with me. L'Huillier's business had detained me
somewhat, and the men had begun; but as I had anticipated this, I
had begged my good friend De Vic to have an eye to my interests.
The King, who was in the gallery, had with him M. de Montpensier,
the Comte de Lude, Vitry, Varennes, and the Florentine
Ambassador, with Sancy and some others. Mademoiselle d'Entragues
and two ladies had taken possession of his closet, and from the
casement were pouring forth a perpetual fire of badinage and BONS
MOTS. The tennis-court, in a word, presented as different an
aspect as possible from that which it had worn in the morning.
The sharp crack of the ball, as it bounded from side to side, was
almost lost in the crisp laughter and babel of voices; which as I
entered rose into a perfect uproar, Mademoiselle having just
flung a whole lapful of roses across the court in return for some
witticism. These falling short of the gallery had lighted on the
head of the astonished Diego, causing a temporary cessation of
play, during which I took my seat.
Madame de Lude's saucy eye picked me out in a moment. "Oh, the
grave man!" she cried. "Crown him, too, with roses."
"As they crowned the skull at the feast, madame?" I answered,
saluting her gallantly.
"No, but as the man whom the King delighteth to honour," she
answered, making a face at me. "Ha! ha! I am not afraid! I am
not afraid! I am not afraid!"
There was a good deal of laughter at this. "What shall I do to
her, M. de Rosny?" Mademoiselle cried out, coming to my rescue.
"If you will have the goodness to kiss her, mademoiselle," I
answered, "I will consider it an advance, and as one of the
council of the King's finances, my credit should be good for the
re--"
"Thank you!" the King cried, nimbly cutting me short. "But as
my finances seem to be the security, faith, I will see to the
repayment myself! Let them start again; but I am afraid that my
twenty crowns are yours, Grand Master; your man is in fine play."
I looked into the court. Diego, lithe and sinewy, with his
cropped black hair, high colour, and quick shallow eyes, bounded
here and there, swift and active as a panther. Seeing him thus,
with his heart in his returns, I could not but doubt; more, as
the game proceeded, amid the laughter and jests and witty sallies
of the courtiers, I felt the doubt grow; the riddle became each
minute more abstruse, the man more mysterious. But that was of
no moment now.
A little after four o'clock the match ended in my favour; on
which the King, tired of inaction, sprang up, and declaring that
he would try Diego's strength himself, entered the court. I
followed, with Vitry and others, and several strokes which had
been made were tested and discussed. Presently, the King going
to talk with Mademoiselle at her window, I remarked the Spaniard
and Maignan, with the King's marker, and one or two others
waiting at the further door. Almost at the same moment I
observed a sudden movement among them, and voices raised higher
than was decent, and I called out sharply to know what it was.
"An accident, my lord," one of the men answered respectfully.
"It is nothing," another muttered. "Maignan was playing tricks,
your excellency, and cut Diego's hand a little; that is all."
"Cut his hand now!" I exclaimed angrily "And the King about to
play with him. Let me see it!"
Diego sulkily held up his hand, and I saw a cut, ugly but of no
importance.
"Pooh!" I said; "it is nothing. Get some plaister. Here, you,"
I continued wrathfully, turning to Maignan, "since you have done
the mischief, booby, you must repair it. Get some plaister, do
you hear? He cannot play in that state."
Diego muttered something, and Maignan that he had not got any;
but before I could answer that he must get some, La Trape thrust
his may to the front, and producing a small piece from his
pocket, proceeded with a droll air of extreme carefulness to
treat the hand. The other knaves fell into the joke, and the
Spaniard had no option but to submit; though his scowling face
showed that he bore Maignan no good-will, and that but for my
presence he might not have been so complaisant. La Trape was
bringing his surgery to an end by demanding a fee, in the most
comical manner possible, when the King returned to our part of
the court. "What is it?" he said. "Is anything the matter?"
"No, sire," I said. "My man has cut his hand a little, but it is
nothing."
"Can he play?" Henry asked with his accustomed good-nature.
"Oh, yes, sire," I answered. "I have bound it up with a strip of
plaister from the case in your Majesty's closet."
"He has not lost blood?"
"No, sire."
And he had not. But it was small wonder that the King asked;
small wonder, for the man's face had changed in the last ten
seconds to a strange leaden colour; a terror like that of a wild
beast that sees itself trapped had leapt into his eyes. He shot
a furtive glance round him, and I saw him slide his hand behind
him. But I was prepared for that, and as the King moved off a
space I slipped to the man's side, as if to give him some
directions about his game.
"Listen," I said, in a voice heard only by him; "take the
dressing off your hand, and I have you broken on the wheel. You
understand? Now play."
Assuring myself that he did understand, and that Maignan and La
Trape were at hand if he should attempt anything, I went back to
my place, and sitting down by De Vic began to watch that strange
game; while Mademoiselle's laughter and Madame de Lude's gibes
floated across the court, and mingled with the eager applause and
more dexterous criticisms of the courtiers. The light was
beginning to sink, and for this reason, perhaps, no one perceived
the Spaniard's pallor; but De Vic, after a rally or two, remarked
that he was not playing his full strength.
"Wise man!" he added.
"Yes," I said. "Who plays well against kings plays ill."
De Vic laughed. "How he sweats!" he said, "and he never turned
a hair when he played Colet. I suppose he is nervous."
"Probably," I said.
And so they chattered and laughed--chattered and laughed, seeing
an ordinary game between the King and a marker; while I, for whom
the court had grown sombre as a dungeon, saw a villain struggling
in his own toils, livid with the fear of death, and tortured by
horrible apprehensions. Use and habit were still so powerful
with the man that he played on mechanically with his hands, but
his eyes every now and then sought mine with the look of the
trapped beast; and on these occasions I could see his lips move
in prayer or cursing. The sweat poured down his face as he moved
to and fro, and I, fancied that his features were beginning to
twitch. Presently--I have said that the light was failing, so
that it was not in my imagination only that the court was sombre
--the King held his ball. "My friend, your man is not well," he
said, turning to me.
"It is nothing, sire; the honour you do him makes him nervous," I
answered. "Play up, sirrah," I continued; "you make too good a
courtier."
Mademoiselle d'Entragues clapped her hands and laughed at the
hit; and I saw Diego glare at her with an indescribable look, in
which hatred and despair and a horror of reproach were so nicely
mingled with something as exceptional as his position, that the
whole baffled words. Doubtless the gibes and laughter he heard,
the trifling that went on round him, the very game in which he
was engaged, and from which he dared not draw back, seemed in his
eyes the most appalling mockery; but ignorant who were in the
secret, unable to guess how his diabolical plot had been
discovered, uncertain even whether the whole were not a concerted
piece, he went on playing his part mechanically; with starting
eyes and labouring chest, and lips that, twitching and working,
lost colour each minute. At length he missed a stroke, and
staggering leaned against the wall, his-face livid and ghastly.
The King took the alarm at that, and cried out that something was
wrong. Those who were sitting rose. I nodded to Maignan to go
to the man.
"It is a fit," I said. "He is subject to them, and doubtless the
excitement--but I am sorry that it has spoiled your Majesty's
game.
"It has not," Henry answered kindly. "The light is gone. But
have him looked to, will you, my friend? If La Riviere were here
he might do something for him."
While he spoke, the servants had gathered round the man, but with
the timidity which characterises that class in such emergencies,
they would not touch him. As I crossed the court, and they made
way for me, the Spaniard, who was still standing, though in a
strange and distorted fashion, turned his bloodshot eyes on me.
"A priest!" he muttered, framing the words with difficulty, "a
priest!"
I directed Maignan to fetch one. "And do you," I continued to
the other servants, "take him into a room somewhere."
They obeyed, reluctantly. As they carried him out, the King,
content with my statement, was giving his hand to Mademoiselle to
descend the stairs; and neither he nor any, save the two men in
my confidence, had the slightest suspicion that aught was the
matter beyond a natural illness. But I shuddered when I
considered how narrow had been the King's escape, how trifling
the circumstance which had led to suspicion, how fortuitous the
inspiration by which I had chanced on discovery. The delay of a
single day, the occurrence of the slightest mishap, might have
been fatal not to him only but to the best interests of France;
which his death at a time when he was still childless must have
plunged into the most melancholy of wars.
Of the wretched Spaniard I need say little more. Caught in his
own snare, he was no sooner withdrawn from the court than he fell
into violent convulsions, which held him until midnight when he
died with symptoms and under circumstances so nearly resembling
those which had attended the death of Madame de Beaufort at
Easter, that I have several times dwelt on the strange
coincidence, and striven to find the connecting link. But I
never hit on it; and the King's death, and that unexplained
tendency to imitate great crimes under which the vulgar labour,
prevailed with me to keep the matter secret. Nay, as I believed
that d'Evora had played the part of an unconscious tool, and as a
hint pressed home sufficed to procure the withdrawal of the
chaplain whom Maignan had named, I did not think it necessary to
disclose the matter even to the King my master.
III. TWO MAYORS OF BOTTITORT.
Believing that I have now set down all those particulars of the
treaty with Epernon and the consequent pacification of Brittany
in the year 1598 which it will be of advantage to the public to
know, that it may the better distinguish in the future those who
have selfishly impoverished the State from those who, in its
behalf, have incurred obloquy and high looks, I proceed next to
the events which followed the King's return to Paris.
But, first, and by way of sampling the diverting episodes that
will occur from time to time in the most laborious existence, and
for the moment reduce the minister to the level of the man, I am
tempted to narrate an adventure that befell me on my return,
between Rennes and Vitre; when the King having preceded me at
speed under the pretext of urgency, but really that he might
avoid the prolix addresses that awaited him in every town, I
found myself no more minded to suffer. Having sacrificed my
ease, therefore, in two of the more important places, and come
within as many stages of Vitre, I determined also on a holiday.
Accordingly, directing my baggage and the numerous escort and
suite that attended me to the full tale of four-score horses--to
keep the high road, I struck myself into a byway, intending to
seek hospitality for the night at a house of M. de Laval's; and
on the second evening to render myself with a good grace to the
eulogia and tedious mercies of the Vitre townsfolk.
I kept with me only La Font and two servants. The day was fine,
and the air brisk; the country open, affording many distant
prospects which the sun rendered cheerful. We rode for some
time, therefore, with the gaiety of schoolboys released from
their tasks, and dining at noon in the lee of one of the great
boulders that there dot the plain, took pleasure in applying to
the life of courts every evil epithet that came to mind. For a
little time afterwards we rode as cheerfully; but about three in
the afternoon the sky became overcast, and almost at the same
moment we discovered that we had strayed from the track. The
country in that district resembles the more western parts of
Brittany, in consisting of huge tracts of bog and moorland strewn
with rocks and covered with gorse; which present a cheerful
aspect in sunshine, but are savage and barren to a degree when
viewed through sheets of rain or under a sombre sky.
The position, therefore, was not without its discomforts. I had
taken care to choose a servant who was familiar with the country,
but his knowledge seemed now at fault. However, under his
direction we retraced our steps, but still without regaining the
road; and as a small rain presently began to fall and the day to
decline, the landscape which in the morning had flaunted a wild
and rugged beauty, changed to a brown and dreary waste set here
and there with ghost-like stones. Once astray on this, we found
our path beset with sloughs and morasses; among which we saw
every prospect of passing the night, when La Font espied at a
little distance a wind-swept wood that, clothing a low shoulder
of the moor, promised at least a change and shelter. We made
towards it, and discovered not only all that we had expected to
see, but a path and a guide.
The latter was as much surprised to see us as we to see her, for
when we came upon her she was sitting on the bank beside the path
weeping bitterly. On hearing us, however, she sprang up and
discovered the form of a young girl, bare-foot and bareheaded,
wearing only a short ragged frock of homespun. Nevertheless, her
face was neither stupid nor uncomely; and though, at the first
alarm, supposing us to be either robbers or hobgoblins--of which
last the people of that country are peculiarly fearful--she made
as if she would escape across the moor, she stopped as soon as
she heard my voice. I asked her gently where we were.
At first she did not understand, but the servant who had played
the guide so ill, speaking to her in the PATOIS of the country,
she answered that we were near St. Brieuc, a hamlet not far from
Bottitort, and considerably off our road. Asked how far it was
to Bottitort, she answered--between two and three leagues, and an
indifferent road.
We could ride the distance in a couple of hours, and there
remained almost as much daylight. But the horses were tired, so,
resigning myself to the prospect of some discomfort, I asked her
if there was an inn at St. Brieuc.
"A poor place for your honours," she answered, staring at us in
innocent wonder, the forgotten tears not dry on her cheeks.
"Never mind; take us to it," I answered.
She turned at the word and tripped on before us. I bade the
servant ask her, as we went, why she had been crying, and learned
through him that she had been to her uncle's two leagues away to
borrow money for her mother; that the uncle would not lend it,
and that now they would be turned out of their house; that her
father was lately dead, and that her mother kept the inn, and
owed the money for meal and cider.
"At least, she says that she does not owe it," the man corrected
himself, "for her father paid as usual at Corpus Christi; but
after his death M. Grabot said that he had not paid, and--"
"M. Grabot?" I said. "Who is he?"
"The Mayor of Bottitort."
"The creditor?"
"Yes."
"And how much is owing?" I asked.
"Nothing, she says."
"But how much does he say?"
"Twenty crowns."
Doubtless some will view my conduct on this occasion with
surprise; and wonder why I troubled myself with inquiries so
minute upon a matter so mean. But these do not consider that
ministers are the King's eyes; and that in a State no class is so
unimportant that it can be safely overlooked. Moreover, as the
settlement of the finances was one of the objects of my stay in
those parts--and I seldom had the opportunity of checking the
statements made to me by the farmers and lessees of the taxes,
the receivers, gatherers, and, in a word, all the corrupt class
that imparts such views of a province as suit its interests--I
was glad to learn anything that threw light on the real condition
of the country: the more, as I had to receive at Vitre a
deputation of the notables and officials of the district.
Accordingly, I continued to put questions to her until, crossing
a ridge, we came at last within sight of the inn, a lonely house
of stone, standing in the hollow of the moor and sheltered on one
side by a few gnarled trees that took off in a degree from the
bleakness of its aspect. The house was of one story only, with a
window on either side of the door, and no other appeared in
sight; but a little smoke rising from the chimney seemed to
promise a better reception than the desolate landscape and the
girl's scanty dress had led us to expect.
As we drew nearer, however, a thing happened so remarkable as to
draw our attention in a moment from all these points, and bring
us, gaping, to a standstill. The shutters of the two windows
were suddenly closed before our eyes with a clap that came
sharply on the wind. Then, in a twinkling, one window flew open
again and a man, seemingly naked, bounded from it, fled with
inconceivable rapidity across the front of the house and vanished
through the other window, which opened to receive him. He had
scarcely gained that shelter before a coal-black figure followed
him, leaping out of the one window and in at the other with the
same astonishing swiftness--a swiftness which was so great that
before any of us could utter more than an exclamation, the two
figures appeared again round the corner of the house, in the same
order, but this time with so small an interval that the fugitive
barely saved himself through the window. Once more, while we
stared in stupefaction, they flashed out and in; and this time it
seemed to me that as they vanished the black spectre seized its
victim.
When I say that all this time the two figures uttered no sound,
that there was no other living being in sight, and that on every
side of the solitary house the moor, growing each minute more
eerie as the day waned, spread to the horizon, the more
superstitious among us may be pardoned if they gave way to their
fears. La Font was the first to speak.
"MON DIEU!" he cried--while the girl moaned in terror, the
Breton crossed himself, and La Trape looked uncomfortable--"the
place is bewitched!"
"Nonsense!" I said. "Who is in the house, girl?"
"Only my mother," she wailed. "Oh, my poor mother!"
I silenced her, scolding them all for fools, and her first; and
La Font, recovering himself, did the same. But this was the year
of that strange appearance of the spectre horseman at
Fontainebleau of which so much has been said; and my servants,
when we had approached the house a little nearer, and it still
remained silent and, as it were, dead to the eye, would go no
farther, but stood in sheer terror and permitted me to go on
alone with La Font. I confess that the loneliness of the house,
and the dreary waste that surrounded it (which seemed to exclude
the idea of trickery) were not without their effect on my
spirits; and that as I dismounted and approached the door, I felt
a kind of chill not remarkable under the circumstances.
But the courage of the gentleman differs from that of the vulgar
in that he fears yet goes; and I lifted the latch, and entered
boldly. The scene which met my eyes inside was sufficiently
commonplace to reassure me. At the farther end of a long bare
room, draughty, half-lighted, and having an earthen floor, yet
possessing that air of homeliness which a wood fire never fails
to impart, sat a single traveller; who had drawn his small table
under the open chimney, and there, with his feet almost in the
fire, was partaking of a poor meal of black bread and onions. He
was a tall, spare man, with sloping shoulders and a long sour
face, of which, as I entered, he gave me the full benefit.
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