Chapter VII: Charenton

The horse I rode, my new bay horse Dagobert, was a beautiful animal, and his housings were worthy of the generous donor, whose strange freedom of manner and voluptuous image, filled all my thoughts as I rode on; and heedless of the way to Paris, caracoled along the green lanes and hedgerows, until I lost the main road, and found myself at a village beside a broad river. It proved to be Charenton-on-the-Marne, and about four miles from Paris. I was about to ride on, when my informant, who was an innkeeper, asked me to tarry and refresh.

'There is an inn here?' said I.

'An inn? I should think so! and there is no better in France; 'tis my own, M. le Chevalier; an inn where Henri Quatre himself has dined and got drunk, and where you may still see his favourite oath, _Ventre Saint Gris_, written with his diamond ring on a window.'

It was a quaint old tumble-down house, at the end of the stone bridge, with pigeon-holes for windows, and covered up to the chimney tops in luxuriant ivy and wild roses. Without dismounting, I drank a pot of wine under the sign-board, which bore on one side three fleurs-de-lis, and on the other a likeness of Henry the Great, with his famous white feather in his helmet, waggishly on one side, just as he wore it at the battle of Ivry. This sign-board had been painted, for a pot of wine and a loaf of bread, by a poor discharged soldier, who was travelling to Paris; and this dusty wayfarer was now known to honourable fame as Nicolas Poussin, of whom Louis XIII. was proud to be the patron.

'And how came it to pass,' said I, 'that within four miles of the Louvre, Henry the Great halted at an auberge so humble as this?'

'It was all an accident, M. le Chevalier,' replied the host, receiving my empty tankard with a profound bow. 'You must know, that one day Henry IV. was hunting in yonder wood, on the left bank of the Marne, and having outridden all his company, and left even the twenty-four chosen gentlemen of the Scottish guard far behind, he arrived here at nightfall weary and travel-stained, with a lame horse and a sharpened appetite. Of the hostess he inquired if he could have anything to eat.

'"Monsieur has come too late," said she, taking him for a private gentleman, in his long black leather boots, and plain jackwambeson.

'"Ventre Saint Gris!" muttered the King, in his strong Bearnais accent; "and for whom is all this dainty roast, which turns so savourily on your spit, madame?"

'"For eight gentlemen, who are upstairs."

'"Eight, who--madame?"

'"Gentlemen, whom I believe to be solicitors of Paris."

'"Then say to them, madame, if you please, that a gentleman, a traveller who is weary, begs the honour of being permitted to sit at the same board with messieurs the solicitors, and that he will gladly pay for his share of the repast with a good flask of wine to boot."

'The hostess duly delivered the message, but the solicitors being low fellows, loudly and rudely declined.

'"No!" exclaimed they; "no, sang-dieu! not if your traveller were Henry IV. himself!"

'"Ventre Saint Gris!" swore the King again, and, drawing his sword, laid hold of the roasted meat.

'At that moment a chevalier of the Scottish Guard appeared, having discovered the inn quite by accident, and the profound salute he accorded to her visitor surprised and terrified the landlady.

'"Sieur Blane," said the King--'

'_Blane!_' I reiterated; 'oh, heavens! this Scottish guardsman was _my father_!' But, heedless of me, the garrulous Frenchman, full of his story, continued:

'"Sieur Blane," said the Bearnais, "I am likely to be starved in this devil of an inn, for there are up stairs eight solicitors of our city of Paris, who have seized all the provisions, and will not permit me to eat with them!"

'The Sieur Blane drew his sword, and, curling up his long mustachios, swore he would put every man of them to death; but at that moment in came the Sieur de Vitry, with ten more gentlemen of the Scottish Guard: so to teach messieurs the solicitors politeness for the future, they were all seized and sent to Grosbois, where they were well whipped with a bridle-rein, their threats, entreaties, and remonstrances only exciting laughter in the Sieur Blane and his comrades. Hence, monsieur, my inn bears the head of the brave Bearnais--king Henry IV.'

I thanked the landlord, slipped a coin into his hand, and after gazing with more than ordinary attention at this quaint old auberge, where, more than thirty years ago, my brave father had this remarkable adventure with 'the arbiter of Christendom,' I left Charenton, and turned the head of Dagobert towards Paris; but I was so much delighted with the paces, speed, and beauty of the fine animal, that I caracoled round the boulevardes, and noon was long passed before I entered by the ancient gate of St. Marcel.

My heart was full of exultation and gratitude.

'Fortune, what have I done, that thou shouldest favour me thus?' I exclaimed, while prancing along, thinking of the beauty of Clara d'Amboise, the too evident favour with which she viewed me, and the brilliant prospect she had opened before me, by an honourable career in the Scottish Guard--the oldest and most noble body of men-at-arms the world ever saw; but on the cornice of the gate of St. Marcel I perceived a skull, bare, white, and bleached. This gave my thoughts an unpleasant turn, and the warnings of the Marquis recurred to my memory.

On inquiry, I was informed that this poor remnant of humanity was the head of Guy de Beaumanoir, Baron de Fontenelle, who had been accused many years ago of a design to deliver up the fortress of Dournenes to the Spaniards, for which he was dragged to the Place de la Grève, and barbarously broken alive on the wheel.

I rode through the heart of the city, crossed the Place Maubert and the Pont de Notre Dame, and proceeded along the crowded quays, where every variety of signboard, indicative of trade and traffic, with barbers' glittering basins, were swinging in the wind, and where many a veiled figure of Mary Queen of Scots--la Heine Blanche--the invariable sign of a French milliner, was displayed; and thence along the quaint Rue St. Germain l'Auxerrois, at the end of which I perceived the pointed turrets, the narrow windows, and guarded drawbridge of the palace of Francis I.--the Louvre--which I, who had never seen a statelier building than the barred and moated towers of our Scottish barons, conceived to be the grandest edifice in the world.