Chapter LII: The Chapel in the Wood

So ended my painful interview with Marie Louise.

The lofty air assumed by this presumptuous Austrian lord rankled in my breast like a poisoned arrow! I longed to meet him alone--alone on the solitary highway, or in some deep and voiceless solitude, in any sequestered place where there would be none to see or to separate us; and where, with sword and dagger, we might prove which was the better man, or which was the greater braggart of the two. For the present, there was nothing for me but to retreat, leaving him in quiet possession of the battlefield and of the contested prize, alas! for hope, had I none! That fickle fortune would ever afford to one so humble, a prospect or a plea for disputing her hand and love with the son and heir of Pappenheim, the rival of Tilly--he whose pride made him spurn even the Golden Fleece was more than a madman's dream.

Had the gallant old Duke been severe upon me as his prisoner--nay, had he even been less kind--I would have left nothing undone to carry off his daughter and wed her in the face of France and the Empire; but the demeanour of Charles IV. was too conciliatory to spur or foster such a thought of treachery in me.

After a residence in Paris, during that age of dissipation and vice when virtue and religion were alike made a mockery, it charmed me to find that, with all her beauty, her natural wit and shrewdness, Marie Louise was so innocent and so amiable. In short, I knew not which dazzled me most--her vivacity of thought and grace of expression, the beauty of her person, or the purity and sincerity of her heart, which (unchanged as when first I met her) loved me still, with a regard which was strengthened by a sentiment of pity for the deception of which I had been the dupe, and for the wrong that had thus been done me.

But Pappenheim had certainly overheard a considerable portion of our interview: he might thus know my route to the French camp, and put in practice some foul treachery; for I believed that he and his compatriot, De Bitche, were capable of any atrocity.

I exchanged my cassock for a good buff coat, trimmed with broad bars of silver lace, a cuirass, and gorget, which, together with a basinette of tempered steel, were given to me by De Vaudemont. I charged carefully my pistols, the recent gift of his father, examined the locks, and then placed them in my girdle, with a good dagger and sword. My papers and despatches I had already secured in a secret pocket; and the Prince, as he placed in my hand a passport signed by the Duke, told me that the master of the horse had selected the best steed in the ducal stables to replace the fine Spanish barb so wickedly destroyed by De Bitche. My old travelling-cloak, with a Spanish beaver, I presented to Sergeant Asfeldt, and a dear gift they proved to him in the sequel.

'You go by Dieuze and Sarrebourg?' said the Prince.

'Yes; but would not a route by Rosiers and Luneville be safer?'

'It would be a longer detour; but as for the safety, I do not see much difference. De Bitche has property and adherents both at Luneville and Rosiers, and I suspect him of conspiring with Pappenheim, so keep well to the left of the main road to Elsace-Zaberne. They have just had a long conference in the court-yard; I watched them from a window, and the moment it was concluded, De Bitche departed towards the bridge of the Meurthe, with ten petardiers of his company on horseback. Thus, I fear me, the Luneville road may be beset, and pray you to be wary.'

'Beset by De Bitche?'

'Sacre, yes!'

'A curse on him and on all his generation.'

'It will not mend the matter: but in case you are actually watched, leave Nanci to-night, as pre-arranged; but do not set forward, lest there be an ambuscade on one or both of the roads. There is an old chapel of St. Nicolas in the Wood, a mile below the city, on the right bank of the river. A pathway diverging to the left near an old stone cross leads directly to it; there you can remain till morning, and then ride boldly forward. You will have a long summer day's march before you, and by nightfall may see the ramparts of Elsace-Zaberne still glittering, I hope, with the helmets of Mulheim's brave Lorrainers.'

I thanked Vaudemont, and bade him adieu with a depth of feeling that must have surprised him; but he was the brother of her I loved more than all the world beside; and, moreover, with all his recklessness and devil-may-care spirit, he was a gallant and generous youth, who struggled nobly but vainly in after years to regild the faded glories of his house.

I rode from the palace and through the principal street of Nanci, that my departure might be seen by all who felt any interest therein; and quitting the city by one of its northern gates, trotted along the well-wooded highway, that led towards the frontier. At the stone cross, which stood near a well, I turned my horse, as directed by the Prince; and after throwing a sharp glance round me, to assure myself that no secret eye was upon me, I descended into a dell, covered by thick dark copsewood, and rode rapidly in search of the ancient chapel, in which, like a hero of the Round Table, I was to pass the night alone.

The sun had set beyond the valleys of the Meuse and the Moselle, and the last gleams of the west bathed with a saffron tint the walls and towers, the spires and ducal palace, of Nanci, as they rose to the eastward of my path, above green groves of full-bearing orange and plum trees.

Torrents of rain had recently fallen amid the woods and snows of the Vosges: thus the waters of the Meurthe were swollen, and I heard their current roaring in full flood as they rolled through the echoing woods of the valley I traversed.

Rising amid the coppice, on a knoll, I found the chapel of St. Nicolas--a plain but sturdy old Gothic structure, the low round arches, zigzag ornaments, and grimly-grotesque carvings of which declared it to be coeval, perhaps, with Charles, Lord of Lower Lorraine. It contained an altar and shrine of St. Nicolas, before both of which some oil-lamps, that were nightly lit by the old canonesses of a neighbouring establishment, were burning and sputtering in the currents of air. I unbitted and stabled my charger, relaxed his saddle-girths, and left him in one of the stalls built near the porch for the horses of visitors. Entering, I shut the door, rolled my cloak round me, and with my sword, pistols, and a flask of good brandy, endeavoured to make myself at ease, after dropping a few coins into the visitors' box, lest I might depart with the shades of night and forget all about it on the morrow. I then composed myself to sleep on a bench at the lower end of the chapel.

The altar lamps flickered and flared in the currents of wind; but, as my eye become accustomed to their feeble light, the features of the chapel grew gradually clearer to my eye, and many a stone visage that was hideously grotesque, seemed to laugh and wink to me, from the carved corbeilles of the roof, and the massive bosses that clasped the interlacings of the groined arches. St. Nicolas, with a halo of gilded iron round his head, stood quaintly out in bold relief from the painted wall on one side; on the other, framed in marble, shone a large sheet of polished copper, whereon was written a complete history of the battle fought before the walls of Nanci in 1475 by Charles the Hardy, Duke of Burgundy, who, with the flower of his followers, was there slain by the soldiers of René, Duke of Lorraine. On this plate were graven the names and armorial bearings of all the Burgundian knights who perished with Duke Charles; and the list closed by a request that the pious reader would pray for their souls, as their bodies were all interred in this chapel of St. Nicolas.

There were certainly more pleasant places wherein to pass a night than that old chapel, with all its buried dead and gloomy associations of desperation and defeat; but Scot though I was, and deeply imbued, moreover, by that superstition which few of my countrymen are without, I thought not of the hacked helmets and knightly bones that lay beneath me, or of the chances of spectral appearances, as the mid-mirk hour of the night approached--as the air waxed colder and the altar lights grew dim--I thought only of my own wayward fate; of the strange passages of my life during the last few years; of the dangers I had escaped and those I might yet encounter; of Louise, whom I loved so well--who loved me in return, but from whom I seemed hopelessly separated for ever.

How much more enchanting than the large and voluptuous Clara--she who for a time had so dangerously dazzled me--was the smaller and more delicately-formed Marie Louise--half-woman and half-angel; like a poet's dream, a Raphael's happiest thought! So perfect in her purity of form; so beautiful in face, expression and thought.

'Ah, Marie Louise, there is none other like you in the world!' thought I, with mingled rapture and bitterness. 'Who ever loved me so well? Yet we shall never see, never meet, never hear each other's voice again! I can be reckless enough in battle now, for I have no mistress for whom to spare myself.'

The exhaustion of long toil and deprivation of rest, now began to steal over me, and I had fallen into a doze, to dream of Louise as Nicola, when a sound roused me, making me start to full and nervous wakefulness, as the whizz of the first shot in action might do. I started! My horse was neighing in its adjacent stall, to me a signal sufficient that other nags were near. I thought of De Bitche with his ten petardiers, and cocked my pistols. I heard the hoofs of a horse ringing, as it was galloped down the path, across the wooded valley, and drawing nearer as it approached the chapel, till at last the sound become dull and muffled on the sward. I boldly threw open the chapel door to confront this midnight visitor, and by the dim light of the stars without, and the flicker of the altar lamps within, beheld a handsome young man, mounted on a powerful grey horse, with his cloak muffled up to his nose and his hat pulled down to his eyes; but I soon perceived that he wore the long moustache and pointed _royale_, peculiar to the court of-Louis XIII.

'Hark you, M. le Chevalier!' said he.

'Who are you?' I asked.

'I am René, Knight of Malta, one of the Duke's gentlemen in ordinary. I had the pleasure of conducting you, monsieur, to the presence of my foster-sister to-day.'

'You mean Mademoiselle de Lorraine?'

'Marie Louise--yes.'

'And you are her foster-brother?'

'Yes, monsieur; my mother nursed her; I have taught mademoiselle to ride; to throw off a falcon, and to shoot with the arbalest à jallet, as we name a little crossbow for throwing clay pellets. Were not such tasks a happiness?'

'M. René, I envy you; but what seek you here?' I asked, with suspicion.

'I sought you, M. Blane, and I am happy to find that you are not gone. Are you not afraid of being robbed in this solitary place.'

'I am afraid of nothing, M. René; fifty crowns are all I possess in the world.'

'But one's skin is of some value, and that may be perilled in these woods among wolves and outlaws.'

'To the point, M. le Chevalier de Malta,' said I, suspiciously; 'it was not merely to tell me all this you sought me. Perhaps you bring a message from Wolfgang Count Pappenheim? If so----'

'What then?'

'You are doubly welcome.'

The eyes of the Lorrainer sparkled.

'No, monsieur,' said he, 'I am not in the habit of bearing messages for M. Pappenheim; he is one for whom I have but little love----'

'Give me your hand, my dear M. René. I request to be admitted to a copartnery in that abhorrence.'

'You hate each other, then?'

''Tis to avoid his assassins I am this night quartered like a paladin of old in this enchanted chapel; for being in a wood, it must, of course, be enchanted.'

'Yes; it is said that the spirit of Charles the Hardy stalks forth every night at twelve o'clock, side by side with René of Lorraine, both cap-a-pie.'

'Well, twelve is long since past by my watch, and neither of these personages have gone forth, unless they have done so unseen by me. And so you, too, are at enmity with Pappenheim?'

'Enmity deep, bitter, and undying!'

'We are allies,' thought I; 'but, the devil! we may be rivals, too!'

'In a dispute when hunting, Count Pappenheim, who is a rough and unlicked German cub, dared to strike me with his riding-rod--I, René of Gondrecourt, knight of Malta. Oh, M. Blane! but for the solemn vow which binds me to my order, and but for the marriage which is about to be celebrated between him and mademoiselle my foster-sister, this dagger had laid him dead beside the deer which was the matter in dispute.'

'No vows bind me, dear René,' said I, pressing the hand of the young Chevalier; 'and when Pappenheim and I meet, my sword, I hope, shall write on his plump German hide a full and fair apology for all our wrongs.'

'We heard of a strange accident just before I left the palace. The Count de Bitche and ten of his petardiers left Nanci on horseback this forenoon abruptly, and without the Duke's orders took the road to Luneville.'

'Indeed!' said I, becoming suddenly interested.

'Sergeant Caspar Alsfeldt of Vaudemont's musketeers----'

'A brave and kind old fellow; he brought me prisoner to Nanci.'

'Well, he was despatched with an order for their immediate return; but they mistook him for some one else, as he was dressed in a strange hat and cloak, so they fired and pistolled the poor man about sunset, and he is now lying dead on the road, about three miles from Nanci.'

'My brave sergeant! he fell into the trap intended by the villains for me; for doubtless the hat and cloak he wore were mine. I may well thank Heaven for the foresight of Vaudemont.'

'Hence, M. Blane,' said René, grasping his reins, 'mademoiselle, my foster-sister, sent me to conjure you, by God's love and her own, to leave this place without delay, and to accept this little note, which contains her farewell to you. Adieu, monsieur--or rather au revoir, for we shall meet again in our helmets during some of those fine summer days on the banks of the Rhine.'

As he said this, René placed a note in my hand, put spurs to his horse, and, from the chapel door, rode down the wooded valley. The note was written on perfumed Dutch paper, tied crosswise by white ribbons, and fastened by a little red seal, bearing the winglets under a coronet.

I cut the ribbons with my dagger, and trembled as I read the note, by the dim flickering light of the altar.

It bore the signature of Marie Louise, and was written by herself, assuring me of her unalterable regard, and that death itself were more welcome to her than this projected union with Pappenheim: it contained little; but began by desiring me to forget her, and, like a dear paradox, ended by begging me to remember the pleasant days we had passed together, and though separated, to think kindly of her, as she would never cease to think of me but with sorrow and love.

This little billet occasioned in me the usual burst of transport such evidences of affection generally develop in lovers, all of which the reader knows very well; and I was carefully refolding, after reading it for the tenth time, when a sound caught my ear. I listened. It was a distant clock striking the hour of four. I looked up, and saw that already the altar lamps were sinking and about to expire, and that grey dawn was beginning to shine through the painted windows of the old chapel.

'Now,' thought I, 'let me to my saddle, and with whip and spur make this new nag of mine believe that he has Satan himself on his back!'