Chapter XLIII: L'homme Propose--Dieu Dispose

'Dagobert, you devil of a nag,' said I, stroking his fine head; 'you nearly caused a kind master to lose his life, by making such an uproar.'

Gathering the reins I prepared to mount, when suddenly the animal snorted again, and swerving round in an unusual manner, nearly fell upon his haunches. Blood on the grass now attracted my attention; and, to my astonishment, I found that the poor animal was wounded in the off hind-leg, and by a slash from a sharp instrument, was irretrievably hamstrung!

I remembered the malevolent expression that lighted the eyes of the wicked Count de Bitche; and that I had seen him near my horse with his dagger drawn; I remembered also, the wild snort and plunge, given at that moment by the animal, a movement which, by startling me, so nearly caused me to lose my self-possession and life together; and my heart filled with anger and compassion, at the cruelty of this barbarous Imperialist; for the noble horse was destroyed by a mutilation, beyond the skill of farriery to cure; and as I wiped, with my handkerchief, the moisture caused by agony in the fine eyes of my beautiful Spanish barb, I felt a tear start to my own; for I knew that now poor Dagobert must die. I thought of my pistols to end his misery--

'No, no, Dagobert--another must do this sad office for you. My old nag, you and I have been too often under fire together--we have too often shared the same meal, the same biscuit, and the same bed of straw, for you to die by my hand. Another shall do this, and place the greenest sods above you too.'

And thinking thus, I led him slowly, halting and with difficulty, along the road, which he marked with blood, towards the little inn that lay in the valley of the Meuse, intending to have him shot and buried there by the aubergiste, to whom I would give my saddle and holsters for his trouble.

Thus I lost a charger, the gift of Clara d'Amboise, and worth at least six hundred crowns of the sun.

On the morrow I meant to conduct Nicola to Nanci; and there, in my own name and character, to enclose to the Duke of Lorraine, a solemn challenge to the cruel and infamous Count de Bitche. Full of these fiery thoughts, and pausing at every two or three paces, for my poor horse moaned in its agony, I proceeded slowly along the narrow path between the hedgerows, and under chestnut-trees in full foliage, towards the auberge; and as I went, the darkness grew deeper, for the sun had long since set. The stars studded the sky; and between its wooded banks, the Meuse gleamed like a silver current, as the round white summer moon rose above the hills.

At the door of the wayside inn (a grotesque-looking house of carved wood, with its upper windows opening from a steep roof, which was buried under a load of woodbine, honeysuckle, hops, and ivy) I was met by the old aubergiste, with fear and wonder expressed in every feature of his otherwise rather stolid visage.

'Oh Monsieur l'Abbé! Monsieur l'Abbé!' he exclaimed; 'and so you are not killed after all!'

'Killed--no.'

'Nor even wounded?'

'No; but why do you ask?'

'Because--but where is mademoiselle, your sister--that dear, pious daughter of Vincent de Paule?'

'Asleep, in her chamber, I presume; but what mean you by all these questions?' I demanded, while a vague emotion of alarm agitated me.

'Mademoiselle, about half-an-hour ago, was told that you had been attacked on the road, and left dangerously wounded; that you were dying, in fact, and had sent for her; so she instantly went with them, in search of you.'

'With _them_!--with whom, fellow?--and who told her all this?'

'M. le Comte de Bitche, who came hither hurriedly and clamorously inquiring for the young girl of Nanci, whom an abbé had brought from Paris. He gave her these dreadful tidings, and sadly terrified and grieved the poor little thing became; but she threw on her hood, and hastened to you.'

'Accompanied by whom?--speak fellow, speak!'

'M. le Comte, and two other gentlemen of Monseigneur de Vaudemont's suite.'

'Eternal infamy! it has all been a decoy--a snare! Oh, Nicola, Nicola! what insanity prompted me to leave you, even for a moment? Was the Prince with them?'

'No monsieur, no,' replied the aubergiste, trembling.

'Which way did they take her?--towards Commercy?'

'No; towards Nanci.'

I was about to spring on poor Dagobert, but remembered his mutilation, and perceived at once the whole details of the trick which had been played me by the Count de Bitche, on hearing my request concerning the safety of Nicola--a request made so solemnly to Vaudemont before we fought. And so she had been carried away by this brutal and unscrupulous noble, whose forcible abduction of the beautiful Countess of Lutzelstein was so notorious throughout all Germany and France; a crime which was followed by another more terrible; for the corpse of that unfortunate lady, who had been savagely strangled, was left ignominiously stripped in the woods near his castle in Lorraine; and in her hands was found a portion of a velvet pourpoint, which she had clutched in her dying struggles, and which, by its remarkable lacing, was known to have been worn by the Count.

And Nicola was in his power!

'The Count is a sorcerer, Monsieur l'Abbé,' said the aubergiste, imploringly; 'so beware what you do. He is said to attend the sabbat in the forest of St. Michel; he anoints himself with the fat of unbaptized children; he dries up the milk of poor men's cattle, and turns the gold of the rich into birchen chips; and he has an ointment which he puts on his eyes, to enable him to see where treasure is hidden. It was thus he found the gold which Charles VII. buried in his old Rendezvous de Chasse, in the forest of Loches, where it was guarded by a dragon. Beware, M. l'Abbé, beware! or at least do not name me; for I am a poor man, whom he would think no more of hanging than he would of drinking a cup of wine.'

Heedless of all these warnings, on foot I rushed along the road, with my sword drawn; but night had now closed in, and objects had become vague and indistinct. I placed an ear on the ground to listen, but heard only the throbbing of my heart; my whole brain seemed to have become one huge pulse. Nicola, whom I might never see again, seemed before me, with all her thousand winning ways, her beauty and her gentleness, her modesty and timidity--Nicola subjected to the rude advances of this brutal and licentious lord!

My heart grew sick!

It was too much to think of--too exasperating a subject for contemplation; and half-blind with rage and grief. I rushed along the Nanci road, which stretched far away before me, lonely and silent in the light of the rising moon.

Thus Nicola was lost or taken from me; and all the injunctions from the Countess, and my responsive promises, came back to my memory with a glow of shame and mortification, for, by my own neglect, I felt that I had forfeited my honour, and would be disgraced in the estimation of them both for ever. But these reflections were altogether secondary to the horror I experienced at the idea of her being subjected to captivity by such a man as Rudolf de Bitche; and now, when I had lost her, oh! how paltry did all my vile conventional scruples about her humble birth and position seem to me! Poor, beloved girl!

And now the song of Bernard de Ventadour, the sweet minstrel who followed Elinor of Guienne, occurred to me:--

'I thought my heart had known the whole
Of love; but small its knowledge proved;
For still the more my longing soul
Loves on, itself the while unloved.
She stole my heart, myself she stole,
And all I prized from me removed;
She left me but the fierce control
Of vain desires for her I loved!'

How lonely, voiceless, and silent seemed that moonlit landscape to me then!

Nicola was indeed gone!

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