Chapter I: Part 1

THE MASTERPIECES OF

GEORGE SAND

AMANDINE LUCILLE AURORE DUPIN,
BARONESS DUDEVANT

VOLUME IX

LES BEAUX
MESSIEURS DE BOIS-DORÉ

_He knelt on the edge of the cushion on which she had placed her feet, and gazed at her speechless. At last he ventured to take her hands._]

The Masterpieces of George Sand
Amandine Lucille Aurore Dupin, Baroness
Dudevant, _NOW FOR THE FIRST
TIME COMPLETELY TRANSLATED
INTO ENGLISH LES
BEAUX MESSIEURS DE BOIS-DORÉ
BY G. BURNHAM IVES_

_WITH TWELVE PHOTOGRAVURES AFTER PAINTINGS BY
H. ATALAYA._

_VOLUME I_

_PRINTED ONLY FOR SUBSCRIBERS BY
GEORGE BARRIE & SON
PHILADELPHIA_

CONTENTS CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX CHAPTER XXI CHAPTER XXII CHAPTER XXIII CHAPTER XXIV CHAPTER XXV CHAPTER XXVI CHAPTER XXVII CHAPTER XXVIII CHAPTER XXIX CHAPTER XXX CHAPTER XXXI CHAPTER XXXII CHAPTER XXXIII CHAPTER XXXIV CHAPTER XXXV CHAPTER XXXVI CHAPTER XXXVII CHAPTER XXXVIII CHAPTER XXXIX

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LES BEAUX MESSIEURS DE BOIS-DORÉ

VOLUME I

MARIO COMFORTS MADAME DE BEUVRE

MERCEDES ENCOUNTERS D'ALVIMAR

BOIS-DORÉ AND JOVELIN, HIS PROTÉGÉ

MERCEDES AND MARIO ENTERTAIN THE MARQUIS

MARIO ESTABLISHES HIS IDENTITY

THE DUEL BETWEEN THE MARQUIS AND D'ALVIMAR

LES BEAUX MESSIEURS DE BOIS-DORÉ

I

Among the numerous protégés of the favorite Concini, one of the least remarked, yet one of the most remarkable by reason of his wit, education, and the distinction of his manners, was Don Antonio d'Alvimar, a Spaniard of Italian origin, who styled himself Sciarra d'Alvimar. He was a very pretty cavalier, whose face denoted a man of no more than twenty years, although at that time he confessed to thirty. Rather short than tall, muscular without seeming to be so, skilful in all manly exercises, he was certain to interest the ladies by the gleam of his bright and penetrating eyes and by the charm of his conversation, which was as light and agreeable with the fair sex as it was solid and substantial with serious-minded men. He spoke the principal languages of Europe almost without accent, and was no less versed in the ancient languages.

Despite all these appearances of merit, Sciarra d'Alvimar formed no scheme for his own advancement amid the constant intriguing at the court of the Regent; at all events, any that he may have dreamed of came to nothing. He confessed afterward, in the strictest privacy, that he had aspired to make himself agreeable to no less a personage than Marie de Médicis herself, and to replace his own master and patron, Maréchal d'Ancre, in that queen's good graces.

But the _balorda_, as Leonora Galigai called her, paid no attention to the humble Spaniard, and saw in him only a paltry adventurer--a subaltern without future prospects. Did she even notice Monsieur d'Alvimar's real or feigned passion? That is something that history does not divulge and that D'Alvimar himself never knew.

It is not an unreasonable supposition that he would have been capable of pleasing the Regent by his wit and the charms of his person, had not her thoughts been occupied by Concini. The favorite was of even lower origin, and was not half so intelligent as he. But D'Alvimar had within himself an obstacle to his attainment of the exalted fortune enjoyed by the successful courtiers of the day--an obstacle which his ambition could not overcome.

He was a bigoted Catholic, and he had all the faults of the intolerant Catholics of the Spain of Philip II. Suspicious, restless, vindictive, implacable, he had abundance of faith nevertheless; but faith without love and without light, faith falsified by the passions and hatreds of a political system which identified itself with religion, "to the great displeasure of the merciful and indulgent God, whose kingdom is not so much of this world as of the other;" that is to say, if we apprehend aright the thought of the contemporary author to whom we look for information from time to time, the God whose conquests are supposed to extend through the moral world by charity, and not through the material world by the use of violence.

It is impossible to say that France would not have been subjected in some degree to the régime of the Inquisition, in the event that Monsieur d'Alvimar had obtained possession of the Regent's heart and mind; but such was not the case, and Concini, whose sole crime was that he was not noble enough by birth to be entitled to rob and pillage as freely as a genuine great nobleman of those days, remained until his tragic death the arbiter of the Regents uncertain and venal policy.

After the murder of the favorite, D'Alvimar, who had compromised himself seriously in his service in the affair of the _Paris serjean_,[1] was compelled to disappear to avoid being involved in the prosecution of Leonora.

He would have been very glad to insinuate himself into the service of the new favorite, the king's favorite, Monsieur de Luynes, but he could not bring it about; and, although he had no more scruples than "most courtiers of his time, he felt that he could not stoop to the shuffling of the royal party, whose policy was to yield many points to the Calvinists, whenever they saw reason to hope that they could purchase the submission of the princes who made use of the Reformed religion to forward their ambition."

When Queen Marie was in open disgrace, Sciarra d'Alvimar considered it to be for his interest to display his fidelity to her cause. He reflected that parties are never without resources, and that they all have their day. Moreover, the queen, even though she were to remain in exile, might still make the fortunes of her faithful adherents. Everything is relative, and D'Alvimar was so poor that the gifts of a royal personage, however nearly ruined she might be, offered an excellent chance for him.

He exerted himself, therefore, to assist in planning the escape from the château of Blois, even as he had been employed, several years before, in the third or fourth rôles in the various political dramas evolved sometimes by the diplomatic manœuvres of Philip III., sometimes by those of Marie de Médicis, their aim being to bring about _the marriages_.[2]

This Monsieur d'Alvimar was, generally speaking, sufficiently shrewd in the interests of others, discreet and ready for work; but he was often reproached with having a mania for giving his advice "where he should have been content to follow that of other people," and for exhibiting an ability of which he should have been content to leave the credit to his superiors, "being as yet only an unimportant personage."

Thus, despite his zeal, he did not succeed in drawing upon himself the queen mothers attention, and, at the time of Marie's retirement to Angers, he was lost to sight among the subaltern officers, tolerated rather than popular.

D'Alvimar was touched by these numerous rebuffs. Nothing seemed to profit him, neither his comely face nor his fine manners, nor his respectable birth, nor his learning, his penetration, his courage, his agreeable and instructive conversation: "people did not like him." He made a pleasant impression at first, but then--very quickly too--people were disgusted by a touch of bitterness which he soon displayed; or else they distrusted a flavor of ambition which he inopportunely allowed to appear. He was neither Spanish enough nor Italian enough, or, perhaps, he was too much of both: one day as talkative, persuasive and supple as a young Venetian; the next day as haughty, obstinate and gloomy as an old Castilian.

All his disappointments were intensified by a certain secret remorse which he did not reveal until his last hour, and which, as the narrative proceeds, will be forcibly dragged forth from the oblivion in which he wished to bury it.

Despite our careful investigations, we lose sight of him more than once during the years that elapsed between the death of Concini and the last year of Luynes's life; with the exception of a few words in our manuscript concerning his presence at Blois and at Angers, we find no fact worthy of mention in his obscure and unhappy life until the year 1621, when, while the king was carrying on the siege of Montauban with such ill success, young D'Alvimar was in Paris, still in the suite of the queen-mother, who had been reconciled with her son after the affair of the Ponts-de-Cé.

At that time D'Alvimar had renounced the hope of winning her favor, and perhaps he, too, in his rancorous heart called her _balorda_, although for the first time she had given proof of good sense by bestowing her confidence--and it was said her heart--upon Armand Duplessis. There was a rival whom D'Alvimar could hardly hope to outshine! Moreover, the queen, under Richelieu's guidance, adopted the policy of Henry IV. and Sully. She combated for the moment the Spanish influence in Germany, and D'Alvimar found himself almost in disgrace, when, to cap the climax of his misfortunes, he became involved in a most unpleasant affair.

He fell into a dispute with another Sciarra, a Sciarra Martinengo, whom Marie de Médicis employed much more freely, and who refused to acknowledge him as a kinsman. They fought: Sciarra Martinengo was severely wounded, and it came to Marie's ears that Monsieur Sciarra d'Alvimar had not scrupulously observed the laws of the duello as practised in France.

She summoned him to her presence and reprimanded him most brutally; whereupon D'Alvimar retorted with the bitterness that had been long heaping up within him. He succeeded in leaving Paris before measures were taken for his arrest, and, early in November, arrived at the château of Ars, in Berry, in the Duchy of Châteauroux.

It will be well enough to state the reasons which led him to seek that place of refuge in preference to any other.

About six weeks before his unfortunate duel, Monsieur Sciarra d'Alvimar had been brought into social relations with Monsieur Guillaume d'Ars, an amiable and wealthy young man, descended in a straight line from the gallant Louis d'Ars, who had effected the honorable retreat from Venouze, in 1504, and was killed at the battle of Pavia.

Guillaume d'Ars had been fascinated by D'Alvimar's wit and by the very great affability of which he was capable when the spirit moved him. He had not had time to become well enough acquainted with him to conceive the species of antipathy which the unfortunate young man almost inevitably inspired, after a few weeks, in those who were much in his company.

Moreover, Monsieur d'Ars was a youth with little experience of the world, and, as may well be believed, without great penetration. He had been reared in the provinces, and had just made his first appearance in Parisian society, when he met D'Alvimar, and became infatuated with him because of the superior skill which he displayed, on occasion, in horsemanship, hunting and tennis-playing. Generous and lavish, Guillaume placed his purse and his arm at the Spaniard's service, and warmly urged him to visit him at his château in Berry, whither he was recalled by business of some sort.

D'Alvimar profited discreetly by his new friend's generosity. Although he had many faults, he could not be accused of showing any lack of pride in the way of accepting offers of money, and yet God knows that he was not rich, and that the whole of his slender revenue was none too much to meet the demands of his wardrobe and his horses. He indulged in no follies, and, "by the most painstaking economy, succeeded in appearing as well clad and mounted as many others whose pockets were better lined than his."

But when he found that he was threatened with a criminal prosecution, he remembered the overtures and invitations of the young Berry squire, and adopted the wise plan of seeking refuge with him.

He judged from what Guillaume had told him of his district, that it was at that period the most tranquil province in France.

Monsieur le Prince de Condé was its governor, and, being thoroughly content with the fat sum by which he had been bought, he passed his time partly in his château of Montrond at Saint Amand, partly in his good city of Bourges, where he was heartily engaged in the king's service, and even more heartily in that of the Jesuits.

This so-called tranquillity of Berry would be considered in our day a state of civil war, for many things were taking place there which we shall narrate in their proper time and place; but it was a state of perfect peace and orderliness if we compare it with what was taking place elsewhere, and especially with what had taken place in the preceding century.

Thus Sciarra d'Alvimar was justified in hoping that he would not be molested in one of the old châteaux of lower Berry, where the Calvinists had attempted no sudden outbreaks for several years, and where the royalist nobles, former Leaguers, _politiques_ and others, no longer had the opportunity or the pretext to revictual their men-at-arms at the expense of their neighbors, friends or foes.

D'Alvimar reached the château of Ars one morning in autumn, about eight o'clock, accompanied by a single servant, an old Spaniard, who claimed to be of noble birth, but whom want had reduced to the necessity of taking service, and who seemed in little danger of betraying his master's secrets, for he spoke very little--sometimes not three words a week.

Both were well mounted, and, although their horses were laden with heavy boxes, they had made the journey from Paris in less than seven days.

The first person whom they saw in the courtyard of the castle was its young lord, Guillaume, just mounting for something more than a morning's ride, for he was attended by several of his retainers, prepared to ride forth with him--that is to say, with their horses laden with luggage.

"Ah! you arrive in the nick of time!" he cried, hastening to embrace D'Alvimar; "I am just setting out to witness the fêtes to be given by Monsieur le Prince at Bourges, to celebrate the birth of his son, the Duc d'Enghien.[3] There will be whole days of dancing and play-acting, target-shooting, fireworks, and a thousand other amusing things. Now you have come, I will postpone my departure for a few hours so that you can go with me. Come into my house, and rest and eat. I will see to it that you are supplied with a fresh horse, for the one you are riding, well as he looks, can hardly be in condition to do eighteen more leagues to-day."

When D'Alvimar was alone with his host, he told him confidentially that he could not dream of attending any public festivities, and that what he desired of him was not to be taken to any such function, however diverting, but to be concealed in his château for a few weeks. Nothing more was needed in those days to assure oblivion touching an affair so frequent and so simple as death or wounds inflicted on an enemy, whether in single combat or otherwise. It was merely a matter of securing a protector at court, and D'Alvimar was relying upon the speedy arrival at Paris of the Duke of Lerma, whose kinsman he was or claimed to be. The duke was a personage of sufficient note to obtain his pardon, and even to place his fortunes upon a better footing than before.

Our Spaniard's version of his duel with Sciarra Martinengo--whether he attempted to explain his having attacked him in violation of the rules, or claimed to have been slandered in that respect, to Queen Marie as well as to Monsieur de Luynes--was a matter to which Guillaume d'Ars paid little heed. Like the loyal gentleman that he was, he had been fascinated by D'Alvimar, and had no distrust of him. Moreover, he was much more anxious to start than to remain behind, and it would have been impossible to surprise him when he was less inclined to discuss any question whatsoever.

So he dismissed the serious part of the affair very lightly, and was disturbed only by the possibility of being detained another day from the fêtes at the capital of Berry. Doubtless there was, behind his impatience, some _amourette_ to be carried to a conclusion.

D'Alvimar, who saw his embarrassment, urged him to make no change in his plans, but to suggest some village or farm on his domain where he could safely remain.

"It is my desire to shelter and conceal you in my own château, and not in a village or a farm-house," Guillaume replied. "And yet I fear you will be sadly bored in such seclusion, and, upon reflection, I have thought of a better plan. Eat and drink; then I will myself escort you to the abode of a kinsman and friend of my own who lives not more than an hour's ride from here. There you will be as pleasantly entertained and in as perfect security as possible in our province of Lower Berry. In four or five days I will come and take you away again."

D'Alvimar would have preferred to remain alone, but, as Guillaume insisted, courtesy compelled him to assent. He refused to eat or drink, and, remounting at once, he followed Guillaume d'Ars, who took with him his retinue all equipped for travelling, as the road they were to take deviated very slightly from the Bourges road.

[Footnote 1: Picard the shoemaker, a sergeant in the bourgeois train-bands, where he possessed great influence. Concini, having undertaken to disregard an order which Picard compelled him to obey, caused the sergeant to be cudgelled. The popular wrath was so fierce that Concini deemed his life in danger and left Paris. Two valets who had acted for him were hanged.]

[Footnote 2: Of Louis XIII. to Anne of Austria, and of Elisabeth, the young king's sister.]

[Footnote 3: Who became the great Condé.]

II

They left the château by way of the warren, rode through a by-path to the Bourges highroad, from which they soon turned to the right, and then through other by-paths to the Château Meillant road, leaving on their right the baronial town of La Châtre, and finally, leaving the last-mentioned road, they descended across the fields to the château and village of Briantes, which was the goal of their journey.

As the country was really peaceful, the two gentlemen had ridden on ahead of their little escort, in order that they might converse without restraint; and this is how young D'Ars enlightened D'Alvimar:

"The friend upon whom I propose to quarter you," he said, "is the most extraordinary personage in Christendom. You must keep a close watch upon yourself in order to stifle a wild desire to laugh when you are with him; but you will be well rewarded for such tolerance as you may display of his mental peculiarities by the great kindness of heart he will manifest to everybody he meets. He is so kind-hearted that, if you should happen to forget his name and ask the first passer-by, noble or serf, where the _kind gentleman_ lives, he will direct you, and never make a mistake as to the person you mean. But this requires an explanation, and, as your horse has no great desire to hurry, and as it is only nine o'clock at the latest, I propose to entertain you with your host's story. Listen, I begin! _Story of the kind Monsieur de Bois-Doré_!

"As you are a foreigner, and have been in France no more than ten years, you can hardly have met him, because he has been living on his estate about the same time. Otherwise, you would certainly have remarked, wherever you might have chanced to see him, the good, mad, gallant, noble old Marquis de Bois-Doré, to-day lord of Briantes, Guinard, Validé and other places; also, _abbé fiduciaire_ of Varennes, etc., etc.

"Despite all these titles, Bois-Doré does not belong to the great nobility of the province, and we are related to him by marriage only. He is a simple gentleman whom the late King Henri IV. made a marquis solely through friendship, and who made a fortune, no one very well knows how, in the wars of the Béarnais. We are compelled to believe that he must have done more or less sacking and pillaging, as the custom was in those days, and as is the well recognized privilege of partisan warfare.

"I will not attempt to describe Bois-Doré's campaigns; it would take too long. Let me tell you his family history simply. His father, Monsieur de----"

"Stay," said Monsieur d'Alvimar; "so this Monsieur de Bois-Doré is a heretic, is he?"

"Ah! deuce take it," replied his guide, laughing, "I forgot that you are a zealot--a genuine Spaniard! We fellows hereabout do not care so much about these religious disputes. The province has suffered too much because of them, and we long for the time when France shall suffer no more. We hope that the king will soon bring all those fanatics of the South to terms at Montauban. We want them to have a sound thrashing, but not the cord and the stake to which our fathers would have treated them. Political parties are not what they used to be, and in our day people don't damn one another so much as they used. But I see that my remarks displease you, and I hasten to inform you that Monsieur de Bois-Doré is to-day as good a Catholic as many others who have never ceased to be Catholics. On the day when the Béarnais concluded that Paris was well worth a mass, Bois-Doré concluded that the king could not be in error, and he abjured the doctrine of Geneva, without publicity, but sincerely, I think."

"Return to the story of Monsieur de Bois-Doré's family," said D'Alvimar, who did not choose to let his companion see with what suspicious contempt he regarded new converts.

"As you please," replied the young man. "Our marquis's father was the sturdiest Leaguer in the neighborhood. He was the _âme damnée_ of Monsieur Claude de la Châtre and the Barbançois; I need say no more. He had, in the château where he lived, a nice little assortment of instruments of torture for such Huguenots as he might capture, and did not hesitate to plant his own vassals on the wooden horse when they could not pay their dues.

"He was so feared and detested by everybody, that he was universally known as the _cheti' monsieur_, and with good reason.

"His son, now Marquis de Bois-Doré, whose baptismal name is Sylvain, suffered so heavily from his father's cruel disposition, that he began at an early age to take an entirely different view of life, and showed toward his father's prisoners and vassals a gentleness and condescension that were perhaps too great on the part of a man of war toward rebels and of a noble toward inferiors; witness the fact that these qualities, instead of making him popular, caused him to be despised by the majority, and that the peasants, who are ungrateful and suspicious as a class, said of him and his father:

"'One weighs more than he ought to; the other weighs nothing at all.'

"They considered the father a hard man, but of sound understanding, fearless, and quite capable, after squeezing and tormenting them, of protecting them against the exactions of the tax-gatherer and the pillaging of the brutal soldiery; whereas, in their opinion, young Monsieur Sylvain would allow them to be devoured and trampled upon for lack of heart and brain.

"Now I don't know what it was that passed through Monsieur Sylvain's brain one fine day, when he was sadly bored at the château; but the result was that he fled from Briantes, where his good father blushed for him, and considering him an imbecile, would never permit him to rise above the station of a page, and joined the moderate Catholics, who were then called the third party. As you know, that party many a time lent a hand to the Calvinists; so that, proceeding from one error to another, Monsieur Sylvain found himself one fine morning a full-fledged Huguenot, and a close friend and well-beloved servitor of the young king of Navarre. His father, having learned of it, cursed him, and, to be even with him, conceived the scheme of marrying in his old age and presenting him with a brother.

"That meant a reduction by one-half of Monsieur Sylvain's already slender inheritance; for, as a Huguenot, he was in danger of losing his right of primogeniture, and the _cheti' monsieur_ was not very rich, his estates having been laid waste many times by the Calvinists.

"But observe the young man's natural goodness of heart! Far from being angry, or even complaining of his father's marriage and the birth of the child who bit his future crowns in two, he drew himself up proudly when he heard the news.

"'Look you!' he said to his companions. 'Monsieur my father has passed his sixtieth year, and here he is begetting a fine boy! I tell you that's good blood, which I trust that I inherit!'

"He carried his good-humor farther than that; for, seven years later, his father having left Berry to join Le Balafré against Monsieur d'Alençon's expedition, and our soft-hearted Sylvain having heard that his stepmother was dead, which left the child almost unprotected at the château of Briantes, he returned secretly to the province, to defend him at need, and, also, he said, for the pleasure of seeing him and embracing him.

"He passed the whole winter with the little fellow, playing with him and carrying him in his arms, as a nurse or governess would have done; the which made the neighbors laugh and think that he was far too simple-minded--_innocent_--to use the term they apply to a man deprived of his reason.

"When the stern father returned after the Peace of Monsieur, ill-pleased, as you can imagine, to see the rebels more generously rewarded than the friends of the true faith, he flew into a furious rage against the whole world, even against God Himself, who had allowed his young wife to die of the plague in his absence. Looking about for somebody to be revenged upon, he declared that his older son had returned solely for the purpose of destroying the son of his old age by witchcraft.

"It was a most villainous charge on the old corsair's part, for the child had never been in better health nor better cared for, and poor Sylvain was as incapable of an evil design as the child unborn."

Guillaume d'Ars had reached this point in his narrative, which had brought them in sight of Briantes, when a sort of bourgeois maiden, dressed in black, red and gray, with her dress turned up at the bottom and cut high at the neck, came toward them, and, approaching young D'Ars' stirrup, said, with repeated reverences:

"Alas! monsieur, I fear that you have come to ask my honored master, the Marquis de Bois-Doré, to entertain you at dinner. But you will not find him: he is at La Motte-Seuilly for the day, having given us our liberty until night."

This intelligence was exceedingly annoying to young D'Ars, but he was too well-bred to allow his annoyance to appear. He instantly determined what course to pursue, and said, courteously uncovering:

"Very well, Demoiselle Bellinde; we will go on to La Motte-Seuilly. A pleasant walk and _bonjour_!"

Then, to relieve his vexation, he said to Monsieur d'Alvimar, after pointing out their new direction:

"Is she not a most toothsome housekeeper, whose comely aspect gives one a captivating idea of our dear Bois-Doré's abode?"

Bellinde, who overhead this query, which was propounded aloud and in a jovial tone, bridled up, smiled, and, summoning a little groom by whom she was escorted as by a page, produced from her flowing sleeves two small white dogs, which she bade him deposit gently on the turf, as if to give them exercise, but in reality to have an excuse for facing the cavaliers, and affording them a longer view of her fine new serge gown and her plump figure.

She was a damsel of some thirty-five years, high-colored, with hair of a shade approaching red and by no means unpleasant to the eye; for she had a great quantity of it, and wore it in curls under her cap, to the great scandal of the ladies of the province, who reproached her for seeking to rise above her station. But she had a malicious expression, even when she strove to be agreeable.

"Why do you call her Bellinde?" queried D'Alvimar, "Is it a common name in the province?"

"Oh! by no means; her name is Guillette Carcot; Monsieur de Bois-Doré christened her according to his custom. It's a mania of his, which I will explain to you very soon. I must first tell you the rest of his story."

"It is needless," replied D'Alvimar, stopping his horse. "Despite your courtesy and the good grace with which you endure disappointment, I see plainly enough that I am a considerable burden to you. Let us go on to the château of Briantes, and do you leave me there with a letter to Monsieur de Bois-Doré, introducing me to him. As he is to return to-night, I will wait for him and rest a little meanwhile."

"No, no!" cried Guillaume, "I should prefer to abandon the pleasures of Bourges, and I should have done so already, were it not for the promise I have made to some of my friends to be there this evening. But I certainly will not leave you until I have myself commended you to the care of an agreeable and faithful friend. La Motte-Seuilly is not a league away, and there is no need to tire our horses. Let us take our time. I shall reach Bourges an hour or two later, but in these holiday times I am sure to find the gates open."

And he resumed Bois-Doré's history, to which D'Alvimar hardly listened. That gentleman was anxious concerning his own safety, and it did not seem to him that the country through which they were riding was very well adapted to his plan of lying hidden.

It was a flat, open country, where, in case of an unpleasant meeting, it was hardly possible to find the shelter of a wood, or even of a clump of trees. The tillage land is too rich there ever to have been wasted in tree-planting. It is a fine reddish soil, which stretches away in vast, broadly-undulating fields, melancholy to look upon, although bordered by lovely hills and strewn with picturesque little castles.

Briantes, however, to which our travellers had drawn very near, had impressed D'Alvimar much more favorably.

Within ten minutes' walk of the château, the land suddenly slopes downward, and leads gradually down into a narrow, well-wooded valley.

The château itself cannot be seen until one is on top of it, as they say in the province; and the expression is quite accurate, for the slated belfry of its highest tower rises very little above the plateau, and when, from the plain beyond, you see it gleaming in the rays of the setting sun, you would say that it was a tiny lantern hung on the brink of the ravine.

Almost the same may be said of the château of La Motte-Seuilly,[4] which lies below the plain of Chaumois, but in a less charming location than Briantes; a dull, flat country, instead of a lovely valley.

Before reaching the cross-road which leads to the castle, Guillaume had told his companion in a few words the remaining vicissitudes in the life of Monsieur Sylvain de Bois-Doré; how his father had attempted to confine him in his tower, to prevent his returning to the Huguenots; how the young man had escaped by scaling the walls, and had gone off to join his dear Henri de Navarre, with whom, after the death of King Henri III., he had fought nine years; how, finally, having contributed to the utmost of his ability to place him on the throne, he had returned to live on his estates, where his tyrant of a father had ceased to live and drive his neighbors mad.

"And what became of his young brother?" queried D'Alvimar, making an effort to become interested in the narrative.

"The young brother is no more," replied D'Ars. "Bois-Doré knew but little of him, for his father sent him when he was very young to serve under the Duc de Savoie, and while in his service he met his death in a----"

At this point Guillaume was interrupted once more by an incident which seemed to annoy D'Alvimar exceedingly, whether because he was beginning to be interested in his companion's information, or because, being a Spaniard, he had a marked repugnance for interrupters.

[Footnote 4: Now Feuilly; formerly and successively Seuly, Sully and Seuilly.]

III

It was a band of gypsies, who were lying flat in a ditch, and rose at the approach of the horsemen like a flock of sparrows, causing Monsieur d'Alvimar's horse to shy. But they were very well tamed sparrows, for, instead of flying away, they threw themselves almost under the legs of the horses, jumping, yelling and holding out their hands in a piteous and hypocritical way.

It did not occur to Guillaume to do anything else than laugh at their strange actions, and he bestowed alms on them very generously; but D'Alvimar was extraordinarily surly, and said again and again, threatening them with his whip:

"Away! away! away from me, canaille!"

He went so far as to attempt to strike a lad who was clinging to his boot, with the look, at once mocking and imploring, of children trained to the trade of begging on the highway. He avoided the whip, and Guillaume, who was riding behind, saw him pick up a stone, which he would have hurled at D'Alvimar, if another boy, somewhat older than he, had not caught his arm, scolding and threatening him.

But the incident did not end there: a small woman, of not unattractive appearance, albeit sadly faded and poorly dressed, seized the child, and, speaking to him as if she were his mother, pushed him toward Guillaume, then ran after D'Alvimar, holding out her hand, but at the same time gazing at him as if she wished never to forget his face.

D'Alvimar, with increasing irritation, urged his horse toward the woman, and would have ridden her down had she not quickly stepped aside; he even put his hand to the butt of one of the pistols in his holsters, as if he would readily have fired on one of those wretched beasts of idolaters.

Thereupon the gypsies exchanged glances, and drew together as if to consult.

"_Avanti_! _avanti_!" Guillaume shouted to D'Alvimar.

He loved to use Italian words, to show that he had been to the queen-mother's court; or perhaps he fancied that an _i_ at the end of a word was sufficient to make it unintelligible to those gypsies.

"Why _avanti_?" said D'Alvimar, declining to urge his horse.

"Because you have irritated yonder blackbirds. See! they are crowding together like cranes in distress; and, faith! there are a score of them and only seven of us."

"How now, my dear Guillaume! Can it be that you have any fear of those feeble, cowardly animals?"

"I am not accustomed to fear," replied the young man, slightly piqued, "but it would be exceedingly distasteful to me to fire on the poor, ragged wretches; and I am surprised that they have roused your temper so, when it would have been a very simple matter to rid yourself of them with a little small change."

"I never give to such people," said Sciarra D'Alvimar, in a short dry tone, which surprised the good-humored Guillaume.

The latter felt that his companion had what we should call to-day an attack of the nerves, and he abstained from reproving him. But he insisted on quickening their pace, for the gypsies, running faster than the horses trotted, followed them, and even went before them, divided into two bands, one on each side of the road.

They had not a hostile air, however, and it was difficult to guess what their purpose was in escorting the horsemen thus.

They talked among themselves in an unintelligible jargon, and seemed, one and all, intent upon watching the woman at their head.

The child whom Monsieur d'Alvimar had tried to strike with his whip trotted along beside Monsieur d'Ars, as if he relied upon his protection, and seemed to take great interest in this extraordinary race. Guillaume noticed that the little fellow was less black and less dirty than the others, and that his refined and attractive features bore no racial resemblance to those of the gypsies.

If he had paid the same attention to the woman whom D'Alvimar had insulted and threatened, he would have noticed also that, while she did not resemble the child in the slightest degree, she resembled no more her other companions in misery. Her bearing was noble and less rough. She was clearly not of European race, although she wore the costume of a mountaineer of the Pyrenees.

_She walked boldly by his side, no longer trying to beg from him, nor with any appearance of threatening him, but watching him constantly with the closest attention._]

The most surprising fact was that, while she had understood perfectly the movement which Sciarra made to draw his pistol, and despite the natural cowardliness of beggars and mountebanks of that species, she walked boldly by his side, no longer trying to beg from him, nor with any appearance of threatening him, but watching him constantly with the closest attention.

Her conduct seemed downright insolent to D'Alvimar, and he was on the verge of listening to the promptings of his capricious and violent temper.

Guillaume saw that such was the case, and, being apprehensive of some unpleasant outbreak, and of being obliged to take sides with the overbearing gentleman against the inoffensive canaille, he urged his horse between Sciarra and the little woman, motioned to her to stop, and said to her, half-laughing, half-serious:

"Would you deign to tell us, queen of the genesta and the heather, whether it is to put shame upon us or to do us honor that you follow us in this way, and whether we should be pleased or displeased at the ceremony with which you treat us?"

The Egyptian--these nomadic hordes of unknown origin were called Egyptians or Bohemians indifferently in those days--shook her head and motioned to the boy who had taken the stone from the child's hand.

He walked toward them, and, pointing to the silent woman, said, with an impudent manner, but in a wheedling tone, speaking French with no marked accent:

"Mercedes doesn't understand your lordships' language. I always speak for those of our people who can't make themselves understood."

"Ah! yes," said Guillaume, "you are the orator of the tribe; what is your name, Master Impertinent?"

"_La Flèche_, at your service. I have the honor to have been born a Frenchman, in the town of which I bear the name."

"The honor is on France's side, assuredly! Now, then, Master La Flèche, tell your comrades to let us go our way in peace. I have given you enough for a man who is travelling, and to make us swallow your dust is not the way to thank me for it. Adieu, and leave us, or, if you have some further request to make, do it quickly, for we are in a hurry."

La Flèche rapidly translated Guillaume's words to her whom he called Mercedes, and who seemed to be treated with peculiar deference by himself as well as by all the others.

She replied with a few words in Spanish, whereupon La Flèche said to D'Ars:

"This worthy woman humbly requests your lordships' names, so that she may pray for you."

Guillaume laughed.

"That is an amusing request," he said. "Advise this worthy woman, friend La Flèche, to pray for us without knowing our names. The good Lord knows us well, and we can tell him nothing about ourselves that he does not know better than we do."

La Flèche saluted humbly with his dirty cap, and our travellers, spurring their steeds, soon left the gypsies behind.

"By the way," said D'Alvimar to Guillaume, as the bell-tower of La Motte-Seuilly appeared on the horizon, "you have not told me where you are going. Does that château belong to another of your friends who would, doubtless, think me an intruder?"

"Yonder château is the home of a young and lovely woman, who lives there with her father, and they will both receive you courteously. They will keep you until evening, not only in order not to be deprived of the company of Monsieur de Bois-Doré, whom they esteem very highly, but also to prove to you that we are not savages in our poor country province, and that we know how to practise hospitality in the old French way."

D'Alvimar replied that he had no manner of doubt of it, and succeeded in making some other courteous remarks to his companion, for no man was ever better taught; but his bitter thoughts soon turned to another subject.

"According to what you have told me of this Bois-Doré, my host that is to be," he said, "he is an old mannikin, I should judge, whose vassals enjoy themselves to their hearts' content?"

"No," replied Monsieur d'Ars. "Those gypsies interrupted me. I was about to tell you that, when he returned to the country, wealthy and bemarquised, people were surprised to find that he was as brave as a lion, despite his mild aspect, and that, while he had some laughable foibles, he also had some Christian virtues which are a very comfortable possession for a man."

"Do you reckon temperance and chastity among your Christian virtues?"

"Why not, I pray you?"

"Because that housekeeper with the glowing mane, whom we saw at the gate of his domain, seemed to me something lusty for so demure a man."

"Evil to him who evil thinks!" rejoined Guillaume, with a smile. "I would not take my oath that our marquis was altogether insensible to the cajoleries of Queen Catherine's maids of honor; but that was a long while ago! I am strongly of the opinion that you could tell Bellinde about it without offending her or causing her pain. But here we are. I need not tell you that such subjects are not in season here. Our fair widow, Madame de Beuvre, is no prude, but at her age and in her position----"

Our friends rode over the drawbridge, which, in view of the tranquil state of the province, was lowered all day; the portcullis was closed.

Thus they rode, without hindrance or ceremony, into the courtyard of the manor, where they dismounted.

"One moment!" said Sciarra d'Alvimar to Guillaume, as they were about to enter the house; "do not, I beg you, mention my name here, on account of the servants."

"Neither here nor elsewhere," Monsieur d'Ars replied. "You have almost no foreign accent; so there is no need to say that you are Spanish. For which of my friends in Paris do you wish me to pass you off?"

"I should be sadly embarrassed to play a rôle other than my own. I prefer to remain almost myself, and simply to assume one of my family names. I will be a Villareal, if you choose, and as an explanation of my flight from Paris----"

"You can talk confidentially with the marquis, and arrange matters as you choose. There is nothing for me to do but to tell him how dear a friend of mine you are; that you are running away from some persecution or other; and that I beg him to take as good care of you as he would of myself."

IV

The château of La Motte-Seuilly,--that name finally carried the day,--which is still standing and almost intact to-day, is a small manor-house consisting of a hexagonal entrance tower, purely feudal in style, of a main building, very plain, with windows far apart, and of two wings at right angles thereto, one of which is a donjon. In the left wing are the stables, with arched ceilings and heavy timbers, the kitchens and the servants' quarters; in the other, the chapel with its ogival windows, of the time of Louis XII., spans a short open gallery, supported by two heavy pillars surrounded by mouldings in relief, like huge tree-trunks in the embrace of creeping plants.

This gallery leads to the large tower or donjon, which, like the entrance tower, dates from the twelfth century. The rooms within are circular, decorated very simply but very prettily with columns set in claw-shaped pedestals. The winding staircase, which is in a small tower built against the larger one, leads to one of those old-fashioned _charpentes_, cunningly and boldly fashioned, which are to this day considered objects of art.

This one bore, at the centre of its radiating spokes, a _chevalet_ or wooden horse, an instrument of torture, the use of which was regulated in cold blood by ordinance as late as 1670. This horrible machine dates from the construction of the building, for it is built into the _charpente_.

It was in this poor, cramped, dismal manor that the beautiful Charlotte d'Albret, wife of the ill-omened Cæsar Borgia, passed fifteen years and died, still quite young, after a life of sorrow and sanctity.

Everyone knows that the infamous cardinal, the pope's bastard, the incestuous, blood-stained debauchee, the lover of his sister Lucretia, and the murderer of his own brother and rival, divested himself of the dignities of the church one fine day, to seek fortune and a wife in France.

Louis XII. desired to break off his own marriage with Jeanne, daughter of Louis XI., in order to marry Anne de Bretagne. The pope's assent was required. He obtained it on condition that he should give the duchy of Valentinois and the hand of a princess to the bastard--the brigand cardinal.

Charlotte d'Albret, a lovely, pure and learned maiden, was sacrificed; a few months later she was abandoned and looked upon as a widow.

She purchased this dismal castle and took up her abode there to educate her daughter.[5] Her only external pleasure was an occasional journey to Bourges, to see her mysterious companion in misfortune, Jeanne de France, the cast-off queen, who had become the Duchesse de Berry and the foundress of the _Annonciade_.

But Jeanne died, and Charlotte, then twenty-four years old, put on mourning, which she never laid aside, and did not leave La Motte-Seuilly again until her own death, which occurred nine years later--in 1514.

Her body was taken to Bourges and buried beside Jeanne's, to be exhumed, insulted and burned by the Calvinists half a century later, together with that of the other poor saint. Her body rested in peace somewhat longer in the rustic chapel of La Motte-Seuilly, under a pretty monument which her daughter erected to her.

But it was written that no earthly trace of that melancholy destiny should be respected. In 1793 the peasants, venting upon that tomb the hatred they bore their lord, burned it to the ground, and its débris lie scattered over the pavement to-day. The statue of Charlotte is propped against the wall, broken in three pieces. The chapel, utterly neglected, is crumbling to decay. The victim's heart was in all probability sealed up in a gold or silver casket: what has become of it? Sold perhaps at a low price; perhaps simply hidden away or buried, in consequence of a sudden return of fear or devotion, that poor heart may be reposing in some village hovel, unknown to its new occupant, under the hearthstone, or under the briar hedge.

To-day the castle, restored in some degree, brightens up a little in the sunlight, which finds its way into the gravelled courtyard through a great breach in the wall. The water from the ancient moats, fed, I believe, by a spring near by, flows in a charming little stream through the newly laid out English garden.

The enormous yew, which dates from the time of Charlotte d'Albret, rests its venerable, drooping branches on blocks of stone, arranged with pious care to support its monumental decrepitude. A few flowers and a solitary swan cast a sort of melancholy smile about the sorrowful manor-house.

The outlook is still gloomy; the landscape most depressing; the tower of sinister aspect--and yet an artistic generation loves these dismal abodes, these old, desolate nests, solid structures of a stern and bitter past of which the common people know nothing, which they had forgotten as early as 1793, since they shattered poor Charlotte's tomb and left untouched the triumphant wooden horse of La Motte-Seuilly.

At the time of our narrative, the manor-house, closed on all sides, was at once more dismal and more comfortable than to-day. People lived in the cold obscurity of those little fortresses; therefore, they must have been able to make themselves comfortable in them.

The huge fireplaces, all sheathed in cast-iron at the back, filled the vast apartments with an intense heat. The former hangings on the walls were replaced by felt paper of extraordinary thickness and beauty; instead of our pretty Persian curtains, which quiver in the draughts from the windows, were heavy folds of damask, or, in more modest dwellings, of wadded silk, that lasted fifty years. On the sandstone floors of corridors and living-rooms were rugs of a new kind, made of wool, cotton, flax and hemp.

Very handsome marquetry floors were made in those days, and in the central provinces people ate from lovely Nevers porcelain, while the sideboards were resplendent with those curious goblets of colored glass, used only on grand occasions, and representing fanciful monuments, plants, vessels or animals.

Thus, despite the modest appearance of the exterior of the wing set aside for the apartments of the masters--for the nobles had already ceased to live near the roofs of their old feudal donjons--Monsieur d'Alvimar found an attractive interior, neat and not unrefined, which denoted genuine ease, at least, if not great wealth.

La Motte-Seuilly had passed, by the marriage of Louis Borgia, into the family of La Trémouille, to which Monsieur de Beuvre belonged through his mother.

He was a rough and gallant gentleman, who never hesitated to promulgate his opinions and beliefs. His only daughter, Lauriane, had married, at the age of twelve, her cousin Hélyon de Beuvre, aged sixteen.

The two children had been kept apart, with the greater ease in that the province was suddenly stirred by a commotion in which Messieurs de Beuvre felt that they were in duty bound to take part. They left La Motte on the very day of the marriage, to go to the succor of the Duchesse de Nevers, who had declared for the Prince de Condé, and who was besieged in her good city by Monsieur de Montigny--François de la Grange.

While making a bold attempt to force his way into Nevers, under the eyes of the Catholics, young Hélyon was killed. On his return from that campaign, therefore, Monsieur de Beuvre had the painful task of informing his darling daughter that she had passed without transition from the state of a virgin to that of a widow.

Lauriane[6] wept bitterly for her young cousin. But can a maiden weep incessantly at twelve years of age? And then her father gave her such a lovely doll!--a doll with a dress of cloth of silver, and red velvet slippers pinked like a crab's tail! And then, when she was fourteen, he gave her such a pretty little horse, from Monsieur le Prince's own stud! And then, too, Lauriane, who, at the time of her marriage, was only a pale, slender chit, became at fifteen a dainty blonde, so graceful and rosy and lovable, that there was no great danger that she would remain a widow.

But she was so happy with her father, and reigned so absolutely in the little château he had given her by way of dowry, that she felt in no manner of haste to enter the marriage state a second time. Was she not called _madame_? And is not the childish desire to be so called one of the most potent reasons which induce young girls to marry?--that and the gifts and the fêtes and the wedding trousseau?

"I have already had all the joys and all the sorrows of married life," Lauriane would say artlessly.

And yet, although he had a considerable fortune, managed by him with great prudence, to which his retired life enabled him to add materially, Monsieur de Beuvre did not find it a simple matter to arrange a second marriage for his daughter.

He had embraced the cause of the Reformed religion at the moment that that cause, drained of men and of money, had no other alternative in our provinces than to keep in the shadow and obtain toleration.

Everybody in his neighborhood was a Catholic, or pretended to be; for, in Berry, Calvinism had only a single moment of power and a single real stronghold. But

_The year fifteen sixty-two_

when

_Bourges lacked priests and beggars too_,

was already far away, and Sancerre, the _troublesome mountain_, had its walls razed to the ground.