CHAPTER XXXIII.
In change lies all our joy; in change lies all our pain. Change is the true Janus whose two faces are always looking different ways. I know not whether it may please the reader, but I must change the place and the time, and change it so suddenly and so far as to pass over for a time, events not only interesting in themselves, but affecting deeply the fate of those who have formed the principal objects of my history. Yet it must be so, for there are inexorable laws established by judges against whom is no appealing, which limit the teller of a tale to a certain space; and were I to relate in detail all the events which occupied the two years succeeding the events last mentioned in this book, I should far transgress the regulations of the craft, and perhaps exhaust the patience of my readers. Those events, therefore, must be gathered from others which followed, and, indeed, perhaps this is the best, as it certainly is the shortest way of giving them to the public.
There is a fine old chateau in the south of France, two towers of which are still standing, and hardly injured by the tooth of time. I have a picture of it before me by the hand of one who, born in lofty station and of surpassing excellence, was, as a beacon at a port of refuge, raised high to direct aright all who approached her, who lived not only honoured, but beloved, and has not left a nobler or a better behind. Her eye can never see these lines; her ear can never hear these words; but I would that this work were worthy to be a monument more lasting than brass, to write on it an epitaph truer than any that ever consoled the living or eulogised the dead.
I have the picture before me, with two great towers standing on the wooded hill, with vineyards at the foot, and many a ruined fragment scattered round, showing where the happy and the gay once trod, and commenting silently upon the universal doom. Oh! a ruin is the best memento mori, for it tells not the fate of one, but of many generations, and gives to death that universality which most impresses the mind and most prepares the heart.
Those buildings were all fresh, and many of them new at the time of which I write. Not a century had passed since the first stone of the whole edifice was laid; and sumptuously furnished, after the fashion of those times, was the great suite of rooms occupying one floor of both those great towers and of the connecting building, now fallen.
In one of these rooms was a fine hall, lighted by windows of many-coloured glass, with two oriels or bays penetrating the thick walls and projecting into air, supported by light brackets and corbels of stonework without. The floor of those bays was raised two or three steps above the ordinary level of the hall, and each formed, as it were, a separate room within the room.
In one of those bays, just two years after the event which closed the last chapter, sat a tall, powerful man of perhaps thirty-six years of age, dressed in those gorgeous garments of peace which were common to the higher classes in that day. His face was somewhat weather-beaten; there was a scar upon his cheek and on his hand, and the short, curling hair over the forehead had been somewhat worn away by the pressure of the helmet. On the back of the head and on the temples it flowed in unrestrained luxuriance, somewhat grey, indeed, but with the deep brown predominating.
At his knee, on a stool of Genoa velvet--it was her favourite seat--was a beautiful girl, seemingly sixteen or seventeen years of age, fair as a snow-drop, with light, flowing hair, and eyes of violet-blue, deep fringed and tender. Her head rested against his side, her arm lay negligently upon his knee, and those blue eyes were turned towards his face with a look of love--nay, almost of adoration.
They were De Vitry and Blanche Marie, some two months after their marriage. Her good old grandsire, on his bed of death, had committed her to the guardianship of the King of France, with the request that in two years he would bestow her hand upon the gallant soldier, if she loved him still. Nor had that love for a moment faltered, while, under the care of fair Anne of Brittany, she had passed the allotted time at the court of France; and now she was happy--oh! how supremely blessed with him whose character, without shade or concealment, with all its faults and all its perfections, had stood plain and straightforward from the first.
But why does De Vitry turn his eyes so often towards the window and gaze forth upon the road, which, winding down from the castle, ploughs its way through the thick vineyard, and, crossing the Isere by its bridge of stone, ascends the opposite slopes?
"Is he coming, love?" said Blanche Marie. "Do you see him, De Vitry? yes, you do; there is the falcon look in your eyes. They are upon something now."
"How can I tell what it is at this distance, lady mine?" answered her husband; "falcon, indeed, if I could see so far. There is a dark something moving yonder on the far verge of the hills. It may be a train of horsemen; it may be some country carts, for aught I know. But, Madame Blanche," he added, casting his right arm round her, "by my fay, I shall be jealous of this Lorenzo, if you are so eager for his coming."
"Out, false knight," she answered; "I defy you to be jealous of any man on earth. To make you jealous, is alas! beyond my power, for like a foolish girl, I have let you know too well how much I love you."
She spoke gaily, but the moment after she said, in a saddened tone:
"But poor Lorenzo! he is so unfortunate--so unhappy, De Vitry. I may well wish for my cousin's coming when I know that only with you and me he finds any consolation. And yet every time I see him I feel almost self-reproach, as if I had a share in making him so miserable. I loved her so; I believed her so good, so noble, so kind, that I foolishly planned their marriage long before they ever met, and did all I could to promote their love when they did meet; and now to think that she should be so faithless, so cold, so cruel, when she knows he loves her more than life."
"It is indeed strange," said De Vitry with a clouded brow; "she seemed to me as she seemed to you, one of the noblest girls I ever saw. She is not married yet, however. That story is false. I saw a messenger from Rome three days ago. He says she is living with her father, who is now one of the vicars in the Church in Romagna, and she is certainly unmarried."
"That is but poor consolation for Lorenzo," replied Blanche Marie; "he has too much pride, too much nobility of heart, to take her hand now, were it offered him after such conduct."
"I trust he has," said De Vitry; "and were I he, I would cast her from my thoughts for ever. Beauty is something, my love, but there must be goodness, too; otherwise one might as well fall in love with a picture, my dear girl. But tell me, Blanche, when last she wrote to you did she show any such signs of strange caprice?"
"It is near eighteen months since she wrote at all," replied the young wife, "and then her billet, it is true, was somewhat strange and constrained, but it gave no indication of such a change. Oh, how happy is it, De Vitry, to have a constant heart? How dreadful it must be to see one we love change toward us without cause. It is that which makes me pity Lorenzo so much, for it is plain he loves her still.
"We must have that away," said her husband; "he must be reasoned with, amused, engaged in some new pursuit, my Blanche. I will do my best, and you must help me. Look there! upon my life 'tis he. Those are mounted men coming down the hill; but they are bringing thunder with them, and if they do not ride faster the storm will catch them ere they reach us. Do you not see those clouds rising above the trees, looking as hard as iron and as grey as lead. By my faith! dear lass, you have never seen a storm in the valley of the Isere, and it is something to see. I have been in many lands, my Blanche, but I never beheld any like it, when the clouds rolled down from the mountains like black smoke, pouring forth a deluge such as no other part of the world has ever been soaked with since the days of Noah. In less than half an hour you will see the valley a lake, and the bridge quite covered. Your little heart will rejoice to think that the castle is built upon a hill, for I never saw the water come higher than the edge of the vineyard there."
"Does it come as high as that?" exclaimed Blanche, with a look of alarm; "why, how will Lorenzo cross!"
"He will not be able to cross at all unless he make more haste," answered her husband. "Pardieu, I cannot guess what has come to him; he who, for the last eighteen months, has never ridden up hill or down dale at less than a gallop, as if some devil were tempting him to break his own neck or his horse's, is now creeping down the hill as if he were at a funeral or a procession."
By this time De Vitry had risen and gone near the open window. The sun had near an hour to run before its course for the day would be ended. The clouds, as he said, were rapidly and heavily descending the mountains, and the rain could be seen at the distance of three or four miles sweeping the valley like a black pall. The sun was still shining bright and clear upon the chateau, and the bridge, and the vineyard. But a moment after De Vitry had taken his place, a redder and a fiercer light blazed fitfully across the scene, followed a few moments after by a peal of thunder which seemed to shake the castle to its foundations.
"Oh, come away, De Vitry, come away," cried Blanche Marie; "the lightning might strike you at that open window."
De Vitry turned round his head with a laugh, calling her a little coward, and then resumed his watch again upon the party of horsemen coming down the opposite hill.
"Ay, ride fast," cried the marquis, "or you will not be in time; but what are all the people thinking of? they have lost their way."
As he spoke the party on whom his eyes were fixed turned from the direct road toward the chateau, and took a smaller path, which, slanting along the hill side, led down the stream.
"Lorenzo is not among them," said De Vitry, abruptly; "he knows the way here as well as I do, my love; but that party of fools will get into a scrape if they do not mind; there is no shelter for ten miles down the river, and the road on the bank will be under water in ten minutes. Ha! they have seen their mistake, and are turning back. Now ride hard, my gallants, and you may reach the bridge yet."
The lightning now flashed nearer, the thunder followed close upon its flaming messenger, the heavy drops of rain began to fall, and poor Blanche Marie, who had much more taste for the beauties than the sublimities of nature, covered her face with her hands, while her heart beat quick. The next moment she felt a warm and kindly kiss upon her brow, and the voice of De Vitry said--
"Take courage, love, take courage; God is everywhere. In His hand we stand, as much in that fierce blaze and amid that thunder roar, as in the gay saloon with nothing but music near. Do not fear, my Blanche, but remember you will soon have guests to entertain. These gentlemen are coming hither. They have passed the bridge just in time, and five minutes will see them in this hall. I would not have them say that De Vitry's wife is afraid of a little thunder."
Blanche took her fingers from her eyes, and, looking up with a smile, put De Vitry's great strong hand on her beating heart, and pressed her own delicate hand upon it.
"See, De Vitry," she said, "just as your hand is stronger than my hand, so is your heart firmer than my heart. Mine is a very weak one, husband, but I will show no fear before your guests. I will be very brave."
The words were hardly uttered when there came another flash, and Blanche's promised bravery did not prevent her from starting and covering her eyes again; and De Vitry, with a laugh, turned to the window and gazed forth once more.
"By Heaven!" he exclaimed, "it is his highness the Duke of Orleans. I heard he was coming down to Valence, but never dreamed of his coming here. It is lucky the castle lies so near the road. But I must down and meet him;" and he hastily quitted the room.
Blanche was left for some time alone to give way to all her terrors at the storm, without any one to laugh at them, for De Vitry took every hospitable care of his royal guest, and spared his young wife the trouble of giving those orders for the entertainment of the duke and his train which Blanche might have found it difficult to think of in the perturbation of her mind at the time.
As every one knows, the storms on the Isere are frequently as brief as they are fierce; and the one in question was passing away when De Vitry led into the hall the Duke of Orleans, now clothed in fresh and dry garments.
Always courteous and gentle in demeanour, the Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis XII. of France, applied himself to put his entertainers at their ease. He took Blanche's hand and kissed it, saying, "Your noble husband, dear lady, tells me you expect here to-night your cousin and mine, Lorenzo Visconti. If he come, I shall call it a lucky storm that drove me for shelter to your house, as I have much to say to him; but I fear he cannot reach Vitry to-day. The sun is well-nigh down, and the waters of the river seem as high as ever."
"The storm, too, seems going directly along his road," said De Vitry, "and if it reached him where I think he must have first felt it, he will know that he cannot cross the bridge tonight, and find shelter amongst the peasants' cottages out beyond the hills there. But I trust your highness will stay over to-morrow, as you wish to see him. He is certain to be here, I think, early in the morning."
"I must be away before noon," said the duke, "and in case he should not arrive before I go, you must tell him from me, De Vitry, that I have the king's permission to call any noble gentleman to my aid who is willing to draw the sword for the recovery of my heritage of Milan. Now I think a Visconti would rather see a child of a Visconti in the ducal chair of Milan than any other. Thus I fully count upon his aid toward the end of autumn, with all the men that we can raise. So tell him from me, De Vitry."
"You may count surely, my lord the duke, upon Lorenzo's going to any place where there is a chance of his losing his life," said De Vitry. "He is in a curious mood just now."
"I have remarked it," replied the duke. "He used to be gentle, courteous, gay, bright, and brave as his sword, but when last I saw him he had grown stern and somewhat haughty, careless of courtesies, and curt and sharp of speech. They said that some disappointment weighed upon his mind."
"The most bitter, your highness, that can press down the heart of man or woman," answered Blanche Marie; "no less than the faithlessness of one he loved. She is my cousin, yet I cannot but blame her for breaking so noble a heart. They parted with the fondest hopes. She promised to wait his coming in Florence, where they were to be united immediately. When he arrived there she was gone, without leaving letter or message, or announcement of any kind. He could not follow her to Rome, from the state of the country; and though he wrote, and took every means to make her know where he was, his letters remained unanswered, or were sent back. He might have doubted some foul play; but a few words in her own hand, written carelessly on a scrap of paper, in a packet returned to him, showed too well that she was cognizant of all that had been done; and the last news was that she was married, or to be married to another."
"Then let him marry another too," said the Duke of Orleans; but the conversation was here cut short by the announcement that supper was spread in the hall below, and the duke's noble followers assembled there.