Chapter XLI: Startling Tidings

'And let me the canakin clink, clink!
A soldier's a man;
A life's but a span;
Why, then, let a soldier drink!'

I hummed the song of the subtle Iago in the Moor of Venice, and, like him, adding--

'Some wine, ho!' stepped towards the tree under which the Marquis and his two followers were regaling. The latter stared at me with the usual insolence of liveried valets, until their master raised his hat, exclaiming--

'Pardieu! who do I see? M. Blane of the King's Guards--M. Blane here, and dressed as an abbé!'

'Yes, Marquis--but so dressed, for a time only.'

'A strange garb for the king's most faithful soldier--and his rival too, at times, if all tales be true.'

'Marquis, permit me to observe that your remarks are very unwise.'

'Letters from Paris could tell us nothing about you--you were keeping your whereabouts so very quiet, that it was rumoured in the Garde du Corps Ecossais, you were about to become ridiculous.'

'Marquis!'

'By marrying and becoming quite a respectable person.'

'A false rumour, on my honour!' said I, reddening as I remembered the conversation in the forest last night; 'but what have you to tell me of the Garde du Corps, Marquis? Who are dead and who alive now?'

'Faith I can scarcely tell you; but I do not think the cuirassiers muster above seventy-five now. They have been carrying themselves with glory, these lords of the creation, and playing the devil in Alsace and on the Rhine. You delivered my letters to Marion de l'Orme?'

'Yes.'

'And how was the little one looking?'

'Divine as usual.'

'Bon! did you see anything of Madame la Duchesse de Charost?'

'The beautiful divorced--no.'

'Yet you were all winter in Paris!'

'I was studying, my dear friend.'

'Studying--you?'

'Studying practically the interior economy of your French prisons.'

'Tête Dieu! I don't understand you--but your life in Paris seems to have been very circumscribed.'

'Because it was confined to an upper chamber of the Bastille.'

'The Bastille--diable!'

'I expected that exclamation; the prince of darkness being the potentate usually applied to by such wild gallants as you.'

'But let me hear all about this; for even at this distance from Paris, the Bastille has a very alarming sound.'

I told him my story, at least so much of it as I deemed prudent to reveal; and contrived to lay all the blame of my captivity to the score of De Brissac's jealousy.

'So when you reach Paris, M. le Marquis,' said I, in conclusion, 'do me the favour to rip up a little of M. de Brissac's skin. I owe him a peculiar grudge for the part he played in my affair, and especially for his manner of playing it. Do this for me; I shall follow suit if he escapes you, and if I live to see the old towers of Notre Dame again. I had no time to give him an airing on the Boulevards, or at Montmartre, before leaving Paris, being ordered off on such short notice--moreover, he never leaves the side of Marion de l'Orme.'

'Mort de ma vie! then I am wholly at your service,' said the Marquis, whose eyes sparkled with anger at this information.

'Believe me, I shall be ready to do so much for you again.'

'I always deemed De Brissac to be an unsophisticated country Benedick, who luxuriated at his petit château near Versailles, and was actually in love with his own wife. So, so--he has been at the Rue de St. Jacques. Peste! I shall give him a wholesome horror of that locality after I reach Paris.'

On this matter these sparks really fought near the ferry of the Nesle. De Brissac afterwards became involved in the plots formed by the King's dissolute and libertine favourite, Henri de Cinq-Mars against Richelieu in 1642; but the Cardinal played his cards with his usual skill and subtlety, for Cinq-Mars perished on the scaffold at Lyons, and De Brissac was broken on the wheel in the Place de la Grève at Paris. But I am anticipating.

'This is the finest wine I have tasted since I crossed the Rhine,' said the Marquis, setting down his cup and gathering up his reins; 'ere long I shall be in my native province of Champagne, and then I shall have such wine as hath never been pressed in Germany since Father Noah planted the grape and conferred on mankind the benefit of getting drunk. And now farewell; I am bound to Paris, with despatches from the Marechal-Duke, my father. In a week I shall have kissed Marion, thrown myself at the feet of Charost, run De Brissac through the body, danced with the girls at the Hotel d'Argent, and given a benefit to those at the Hotel de Bourgogne. I shall have coquetted with all the fleuristes on Pont aux Colombes; got drunk at the Fleur-de-lis; rattled the bones of Beelzebub in a dice-box with Ferte Imbault, and Heaven knows all what more. 'Tis said this war will soon be over, for Richelieu has discovered and sent to the Bastille, Mademoiselle de Lorraine, whom he will probably marry perforce to some French peer. Thus Louis XIII. will easily bring the Duke her father to terms, it is thought. But, apropos, before we part, let me warn you to beware how you venture near Nanci.'

I had been glancing anxiously from time to time at the porch of the Benedictine church, in expectation of seeing my devotee appear; and I had soon tired of the harebrained young Marquis, whose light conversation savoured so much of Paris and the old style of the French camp. It bored and disgusted me after the pleasant days I had spent in the pure and virtuous society of Nicola; but now his warning interested me.

'I am to avoid Nanci, you say--why, Marquis?'

'It is full of the enemy.'

'This is indeed unfortunate for me.'

'Rather, as it lies in your front. While my valiant papa, the Marechal-Duke, was occupying himself near Strasburg, Charles IV., with his son, the Prince of Vaudemont, and that young fire-eater, Wolfgang Count Pappenheim, with four thousand chosen troops, crossed the Rhine by a bridge of boats, and reaching the old capital of Lorraine by a forced march, are now actually holding high festival in the ancient palace of the duchy.'

'Parbleu! I must be careful--being under orders, or promise rather, to see a lady to the gates of Nanci.'

'A lady?'

'Yes.'

'From whence?'

'Paris.'

'Peste! is she pretty?'

'I cannot say--she is an ecclesiastic.'

'Nom d'un Pape! and do you think to make me believe that you have travelled all the way from Paris with a pretty woman, without seeing so much as her face? Very likely, M. le Garde Ecossais!'

At that moment, Nicola in her sombre garb appeared at the huge Gothic porch of St. Bennet, where she looked around her irresolutely.

'Oho, M. l'Abbé,' said the reckless Marquis, 'there is your little penitent awaiting you. Pleasant this! by my faith, I shall doff the corslet, and don the cassock too--but a safe journey to you--au revoir!'

'Adieu!'

I raised my hat, and, followed by his two attendants, the Marquis galloped gaily down the road which led towards the forest wherein Nicola and I had passed the night.

On joining her, she greeted me with what was almost a caress; and whether it was the effect of her devotion I know not, but now she seemed placid, content, and even cheerful--yet my heart was still wrung.

'To-morrow we will be at Nanci; and on the morrow after we will be parted, Nicola, parted to meet no more,' said I, lifting her into her saddle.

'My dear, dear Arthur,' said she, bending her face close to mine; 'your accent and expression tear my heart with sorrow--you doubt me--oh! what shall I say, to convince, and to reassure you?'

'Why should all this be, Nicola; listen to me. Here are a church and a priest,' (Father Colville was at that moment waving to us an adieu from the porch,) 'why cannot we marry? Here is a ring too--it was my mother's, Nicola. 'Tis but a few words--"with this ring, I thee wed--this gold and silver I give thee--and with all my worldly goods, I thee endow," and then heaven alone could separate us.'

'Poor Arthur! your gold and silver, as yet, the pay of a Scottish cuirassier; your worldly goods in France, the dust of a day's march. Yet would I wed you,' she added, while her tears fell fast and hot; 'but I have others than myself, to consult, others who would rather see me in my grave than the wife of soldier of fortune. Our ranks are unequal; and I--with all your present love--would wed but future misery.'

'Oh! Nicola, and have you no trust in me? What mean you by present love, and future misery?'

'Would you rejoin the proud, fiery, and haughty Garde de Corps Ecossais, with a French soubrette as your bride?'

'No--we would quit France.'

'Does not this admission show there is a shame to shun?'

'A shame, Nicola!' I stammered.

'Yes--and what of the Countess's promises to you--are they as yet fulfilled?'

'Alas! no.'

'And your despatches for M. le Chevalier Hepburn; are they as yet delivered?'

'True--true; but the dread of losing you renders me desperate, and blind to everything.'

'Enough, dear Arthur--let us talk of this no more.'

'Yet, Nicola, for you I would risk any danger; for I love you, as I have never loved any woman, since I buried my poor mother, who sleeps far away from me, in the old churchyard at Glenkens.'

As if she dreaded her own resolution, Nicola whipped up her horse, and muffling her face, and, as I thought, her sobs, in her hood, rode on. I followed, and thus we sorrowfully left the gates and ramparts of St. Michel behind us. I informed her of the risk we ran--I at least--as Nanci was full of the troops of Duke Charles, and of Wolfgang Pappenheim, his intended son-in-law.

She expressed joy to hear that the brave old Duke was in possession of his hereditary home, which, as she was a Lorrainer, was only natural and proper; but she shuddered at the name of young Pappenheim, who, to all his father's brilliant courage, united the cunning of the fox with the pitiless ferocity of the tiger.