Chapter IX: We Dine at the Fleur-De-Lis

This hotel was a picturesque old mansion having three sharp wooden gables that cut the blue sky overhead, and projected over the street on beams of grotesquely-carved wood, which rested on stone pillars, like some of the old timber-fronted houses of king James IV.'s time which I had seen at home. A large sign-board bearing a blue shield powdered with golden fleurs-de-lis swung on a rusty iron rod above the thoroughfare.

The arrival of six cavaliers all so showily attired--five of them at least being so--with plume and mantle, sword and dagger, and having, moreover, in their hats the white silver cross of St. Andrew, which in Paris was the distinguishing badge of that patrician band the Guard du Corps Ecossais, made the host bow at least eighteen successive times to the red rosettes of his garters as he ushered us into a plainly-furnished room, decorated by a few coarse Flemish engravings of the wars in Flanders--the siege of the Brielle and the fighting at the Isle Rhé. There were also two tawdry prints of the beautiful Ninon de l'Enclos, which the Chevalier Livingstone and Raynold Cheyne pronounced to be execrable likenesses, and proposed to tear down.

My friends being all gay fellows entered as noisily as a herd of scholars broken loose from school--all jokes and laughter--for in Paris all seemed to live as if their lives and joys were to last for ever, like those of the gods in Homer.

'By the devil's mercy, M. Fleur-de-lis, my brave bully host,' said the Marechal de Logis, 'but thy wife looks well and rosy!'

'As if she were a widow,' added the Chevalier Livingstone, pinching her chin.

'Dinner for six, Madame Omelette--and plenty of Burgundy--'

'Nay Marechal, devil strangle me, no Burgundy for me--but Champagne--the pure wine of Champagne,' said Cheyne of Dundargle, who had lost his left ear under Lord Teviot at the capture of Nanci in 1633.

'Champagne and Burgundy be it--M. le Duc de Burgundy's best, by Jupiter!' said the Viscount.

'To the devil with Jupiter and all false gods,' cried Sir Quentin, adding his voice to the din; 'let us all shout Vive le Roi!'

''Tis all the French thou hast learned yet.'

''Tis enough for me, Viscount.'

'And will serve thee under fire,' said the Marechal de Logis; 'but make love to a grisette, and she will soon teach you French.'

'Thanks for the advice, sir. I have already engaged a preceptress.'

'What! you who have not been twenty-four hours in Paris?'

'Yes, I. The language of the eyes will aid the language of the tongue.'

'Of course, Viscount,' said the Chevalier Livingstone. 'Noel! Noel! say I, like Messieurs le Bourgeois, whenever they are pleased, and choose to quote the canticle.'

'Aha, chevalier! where do they cry this?'

'At the Petit Theatre, where the old scriptural moralities are acted by women quite nude. Yes, sirs. Zounds! Viscount Dundrennan, what would your sobersided kirk session say to that?'

'And to buying pigeons in daylight at the Pont aux Colombes?' added Dundrennan, laughing.

'Seats, gentlemen,' said Pierre Omelette, the host, 'for dinner waits.'

'Thank Heaven!' exclaimed the Chevalier, 'for I am alike tired and hungry. This forenoon I have fenced with the King's master; drank with Chavagnac; chatted with Richelieu; flirted with Marion in his absence; lost fifty crowns at primero with the Duchesse de Bouillon; I have heard _le Fête d'Amour_ sung at the Opera in the Tennis Court de Bellair; I tried a new horse for Mademoiselle Chevreuse quite round the Boulevardes, and I am here!'

The dinner ordered by our old Marechal de Logis was sumptuous; but I cannot say that I enjoyed it much; everything was cooked in the French fashion; thus, fish, flesh, and fowl were so disguised that I never knew of which I was partaking. The wines were excellent, and amid merriment and anecdotes, the evening slipped joyously away.

The brusque air, the soldierly gaiety and jollity of these brave spirits proved very infectious and captivating. My heart expanded with pleasure at the conviction that I was one of them; and I longed--a poor ambition, perhaps--to emulate them in their career of hare-brained frolics, duels, flirtations, and intrigues. As yet I felt myself but a boy; while they were men, who treated me as an equal, and though not many years my senior, Cheyne and the Chevalier were veritable patriarchs in experience and knowledge of the world--the wicked world of Paris.

The quarrels of our King and Kirk and all the Scottish news--the cloud that overhung our government and the threatened war with England--were soon discussed, for we were sure that these disputes would come to the musket at last. Then we spoke of everything on the tapis; the cruel burning of Madame la Marechale d'Ancre for witchcraft; the alleged beauty of Marie Louise of Lorraine, who was said to be secretly and politically intriguing in Paris; of the projected war against her father the Duke; of duels and of girls; of Cardinal Richelieu's state craft and profound cunning; of the last new poem by Corneille, and the latest work of Poussin, who, from being a poor disbanded soldier in the regiment of Tavannes in which he served during the wars of Charles IX. and Henry IV., had become the equal of Raphael; of the beauty of the Countess d'Amboise (my heart leaped at her name), the last mistress of the king, and she was declared to be superior in loveliness even to the younger and lovely Marion de l'Orme.

Every liaison in and about the Court was freely discussed. The names of countesses and courtezans, grisettes and grandees were all jangled together pell mell by these reckless fellows. The intrigues of the Coadjutor; of Mademoiselle de Chevreuse; of the beautiful Duchesse de Montbazon and the Duc de Beaufort, were all canvassed as freely as if they had been the love-affairs of students or musketeers, with grisettes and flower-girls. All this seemed wonderfully easy, free, and, to me, not a little brilliant and captivating; for I was barely twenty years of age.

Some of their anecdotes and adventures were very remarkable.

Raynold Cheyne, of Dundargle, when quite a youth had served as a cuirassier, under the famous Raymond, Count de Montecuculi, in after years the rival of the great Turenne. Once, when on the march through Germany, the Count had given orders that, on pain of death, no soldier or cavalier under his command, should tread down ripened corn. A soldier who rode a wild and unmanageable horse, spurred it recklessly through a field of yellow grain near Leipzig; and then Montecuculi ordered the Provost-Marshal to hang him without ceremony at the first halting-place; but the soldier advanced to Count Raymond and resolutely pleaded his innocence, laying the whole blame upon his horse.

'Silence, sir!' said the Count, haughtily; 'the Provost-Marshal shall do his duty. Away with him!'

'Count Raymond,' exclaimed the cuirassier, full of rage and vengeance, 'I was guiltless before; but shall no longer be so!' and levelling his arquebuse, before he could be disarmed, he fired a bullet through his colonel's plume.

'Thou art a brave fellow!' said the Count, with a sudden admiration of his heedless daring; 'I pardon thee--give me thy hand; and, in the charge to-morrow, let us see who will go furthest among the Swedish ranks--thou or I.'

Next day was fought the great battle of Leipzig; where the furious ardour of the Count de Montecuculi carried him so far among the ranks of the victorious Swedes, that he was taken prisoner. One soldier, who attempted to rescue him, was also taken. He was the hero of the cornfield adventure--Raynold Cheyne, of Dundargle--who thereafter left the Imperial service and joined the Scottish Guard.

'Have you seen the house that the Comte de Treville, captain of the Musketeers, has built for Ninon de l'Enclos?' asked the Marechal de Logis, after the foregoing anecdote.

'Ninon,' murmured, the chevalier; 'the beautiful Ninon--no.'

''Tis quite a Palais Royale!' said Cheyne.

'How--has he left Marion de l'Orme?'

'No--for she still visits him at night, disguised as a page. So M. de Bouillon told me.'

'Oho--just as she visits Richelieu.'

'She looked charming as she passed the cabaret where we dined yesterday, chevalier.'

'Yes, Marechal, attended by Rouville, who fought the duel about her with La Ferte Senecterre, exchanging five pretty sword-thrusts and two pistol-shots.'

'She has a divine hand!'

'And magnificent bust.'

'But she spoils it,' said Livingstone, 'by those hideous stays that are now in fashion.'

'Ah--that devilish invention of the queen of M. Henri le Grand,' said the Marechal de Logis, for, in phraseology and tastes, those Gardes Ecossais had become quite French.

'Still, she is not comparable to Madame d'Amboise,' observed Cheyne.

'If we go to war with Duke Charles,' said the Viscount, 'what will the King do with his beautiful Lorrainer?'

'Send her to keep company with La Fayette in her convent perhaps.'

'Her brother Raoul d'Ische commands a fortress in Alsace,' said Gordon; 'but is it true that the Marquis our captain has quite relinquished Marion de l'Orme?'

'Always that woman,' said the chevalier, laughing; ''pon my soul, Marechal, I begin to think you are in love with her yourself.'

'Having a fortune to spend--my poor pay as Marechal de Logis of horse.'

'No--the Marquis has only been playing a game of three points. In love with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, with the Duchesse de Bouillon and with Marion.'

'So if he loses one point, two still remain.'

'But the blue-eyed Chevreuse is said to view with favour our brave countryman the Lord Teviot, a colonel of pikes.'

'Then she must find a successor,' said Gordon, 'for my Lord Teviot was yesterday committed to the Bastille for slaying a Chevalier of St. Lazare in a duel.'

'To the Bastille!'

'To the Bastille--for a duel!' we all exclaimed, indignantly.

'Yes--but it was fought within the precincts of the Palais Royale.'

'Zounds!' said Raynold Cheyne, twisting his fierce moustache, 'in the days of Henry the Great, we might have fought in his bed-chamber, and I am sure the brave Bearnais would have enjoyed the sport.'

'And what was the duel about?' I asked.

'Oh! the old story--a girl--a fleuriste on the Pont de Notre Dame.'

'And the chevalier was killed?'

'Run right through the body,' replied Gordon; 'and the Cardinal, at the instance of Marion, whose lover M. le Chevalier had formerly been, sent his Lordship to the Bastille.'

'Too bad this!' exclaimed the Viscount; 'my Lord Teviot could not help this sprig of a chevalier not being immortal. But why has a Cardinal all this power?'

'Because he is a minister, and since the days of Henry IV. France has always been governed by ministers or--their mistresses.'

Sir Quentin Home whose circumstances had been somewhat desperate since he killed the English captain at Berwick, now proposed cards.

'Let us play, gentlemen,' said he; 'Blane, we will draw lots for partners.'

'Nay, Sir Quentin,' said I; 'I beg to be excused, having only ten louis.'

'The devil thou hast? I have only two in the world.'

'Then, why play?'

'For that very reason,' said he.

'But you may lose.'

'But I may win.'

'Thank you--but I would rather be excused.'

Sir Quentin frowned and pushed aside his glass.

'Never mind, Ravendean,' said the jolly Marechal de Logis; 'all the world are going to fight the Emperor and the Duke of Lorraine; and we shall have rare pickings and plenty of prize-money, when we march through Alsace and bend our cannon on the Rhine. Long ere that day comes to pass, Sir Quentin, thy two louis may have become twenty thousand. Now, gentlemen, a glass of right Rhenish all round, and then M-e shall adjourn to the Comedie Française, and see all those beauties we have been talking about--yes, see them in all the bloom of beauty, rouge and patches, brocade and cloth of gold.'

From the Fleur-de-lis we went after dusk to the Hotel de Bourgogne, where plays had been acted since 1548, and where we saw a tragedy by Scuderi, about heaven knows what, but every one was killed in the last scene, to the entire satisfaction of the audience. After a petty brawl with the watch, and singing a chorus under the windows of Marion de l'Orme, we all repaired to our quarters in the Louvre.

And thus, at midnight, closed the first day I spent with my wild and fiery comrades of the Garde du Corps Ecossais.