CHAPTER IX.
King Philip rode out of Paris attended like the monarch of a great nation; but, pausing at the tower of Vincennes, he left his men-at-arms behind; and, after throwing a brown mantle over his shoulders, and drawing the aumuce,[[12]] or furred hood, round his face, he proceeded through the park on foot, followed only by a single page to open the gate, which led out into the vast forest of St. Mandé. When this task was performed, the attendant, by order of the monarch, suffered him to proceed alone, and waited on the outside of the postern, to admit the king on his return.
Philip Augustus took a small path that, wandering about amidst the old trees, led on into the heart of the forest. All was in thick leaf; and the branches, meeting above, cast a green and solemn shadow over the way. It was occasionally crossed, however, with breaks of yellow sunshine where the trees parted; and there the eye might wander down the long, deep glades, in which sun and shade, and green leaves, and broad stems, and boughs, were all seen mingled together in the dim forest air, with an aspect of wild, original solitude, such as wood scenery alone can display.
One might have fancied oneself the first tenant of the world, in the sad loneliness of that dark, old wood; so that, as he passed along, deep thoughts of a solemn, and even melancholy character came thick about the heart of the monarch. The littleness of human grandeur--the evanescence of enjoyment--the emptiness of fame--the grand and awful lessons that solitude teaches, and the world wipes out, found their moment then: and, oh! for that brief instant, how he hated strife, and cursed ambition, and despised the world, and wished himself the solitary anchorite he went to visit!
At about half a league from the tower of Vincennes stood in those days an antique tomb. The name and fame of him whose memory it had been intended to perpetuate, had long passed away; and it remained in the midst of the forest of St. Mandé, with its broken tablets and effaced inscription, a trophy to oblivion. Near it, Bernard the hermit had built his hut; and when the monarch approached, he was seated on one of the large fragments of stone which had once formed part of the monument. His head rested on one hand; while the other, fallen by his side, held an open book; and at his feet lay the fragments of an urn in sculptured marble. Over his head, an old oak spread its wide branches; but through a vacant space amidst the foliage, where either age or the lightning had riven away one of the great limbs of the forest giant, the sunshine poured through, and touching on the coarse folds of the Hermit's garments, passed on, and shone bright upon the ruined tomb.
As Philip approached, the hermit raised his eyes, but dropped them again immediately. He was known to have, as it were, fits of this sort of abstraction, the repeated interruption of which had so irritated him, that, for a time, he retired to the mountains of Auvergne, and only returned at the express and repeated request of the king. He was now, if one might judge by the morose heaviness of his brow, buried in one of those bitter and misanthropical reveries into which he often fell; and the monarch, knowing his cynical disposition, took care not to disturb the course of his ideas, by suddenly presenting any fresh subject to his mind. Neither, to say the truth, were the thoughts of the king very discordant with those which probably occupied the person he came to see. Sitting down, therefore, on the stone beside him, without giving or receiving any salutation, he remained in silence, while the hermit continued gazing upon the tomb.
"Beautiful nature!" said the old man at last. "How exquisitely fine is every line thou hast chiseled in yon green ivy that twines amongst those stones!--Whose tomb was that, my son?"
"In truth, know not, good father!" replied the king; "and I do not think that in all France there is a man wise enough to tell you."
"You mock me!" said the hermit. "Look at the laurel--the never-dying leaf--the ever, ever-green bay, which some curious hand has carved all over the stone, well knowing that the prince or warrior who sleeps there should be remembered till the world is not! I pray thee, tell me whose is that tomb?"
"Nay, indeed, it is unknown," replied the king. "Heaven forbid that I should mock you! The inscription has been long effaced--the name for centuries forgot; and the living in their busy cares have taken little heed to preserve the memory of the dead."
"So shall it be with thee," said the old man--"so shall it be with thee. Thou shalt do great deeds; thou shalt know great joys, and taste great sorrows! Magnified in thy selfishness, thy littleness shall seem great. Thou shalt strive and conquer, till thou thinkest thyself immortal; then die, and be forgot! Thy very tomb shall be commented upon by idle speculation, and men shall come and wonder for whom it was constructed. Do not men call thee Augustus?"[[13]]
"I have heard so," replied the king. "But I know not whether such a title be general in the mouths of men, or whether it be the flattery of some needy sycophant."
"It matters not, my son," said the hermit--"it matters not. Think you, that if Augustus had been written on that tablet, the letters of that word would have proved more durable than those that time has long effaced? Think you, that it would have given one hour of immortality?"
"Good father, you mistake!" said Philip, "and read me a homily on that where least I sin. None feels more than I the emptiness of fame. Those that least seek it, very often win; and those that struggle for it with every effort of their soul, die unremembered. 'Tis not fame I seek: I live in the present."
"What!" cried the hermit, "and bound your hopes to half-a-dozen morrows? The present! What is the present? Take away the hours of sleep--of bodily, of mental pain--of regrets for the past--of fears for the future--of all sorts of cares. And what is the present? One short moment of transitory joy--a point in the wide eternity of thought!--a drop of water to a thirsty man, tasted and then forgot!"
"'Tis but too true!" replied the king; "and even now, as I came onward, I dreamed of casting off the load of sovereignty, and seeking peace."'
The hermit gazed at him for a moment, and seeing that he spoke gravely--"It cannot be," he replied. "It must not be!"
"And why not?" demanded the king. "All your reasoning has tended but to that. Why should I not take the moral to myself?"
"It cannot be," replied the hermit; "because the life of your resolution would be but half an hour. It must not be, because the world has need of you.--Monarch! I am not wont to flatter, and you have many a gross and hideous fault about you; but, according to the common specimens of human kind, you are worthy to be king. It matters little to the world, whether you do good for its sake or your own. If your ambition bring about your fellow-creatures' welfare, your ambition is a virtue: nourish it. You have done good, O king! and you will do good; and therefore you must be king, till Heaven shall give you your dismissal. Nor did my reasoning tend, as you say, to make you quit the cares of the world; but only to make you justly estimate its joys, and look to a better immortality than that of earth--that empty dream of human vanity! Still you must bear the load of sovereignty you speak of; and, by freeing the people from the yoke of their thousand tyrants, accomplish the work you have begun. See you not that I, who have a better right to fly from the affairs of men, have come back from Auvergne at your call?"
"My good father," answered the king, "I would fain, as you say, take the yoke from the neck of the people; but I have not means. Even now, my finances are totally exhausted; and I sit upon my throne a beggar."
"Ha!" said the hermit; "and therefore 'tis you seek me? I knew of this before. But say, are your exigencies so great as to touch the present, or only to menace the future?"
"'Tis present--too truly present, my want!" replied the king. "Said I not, I am a beggar? Can a king say more?"
"This must be remedied!" replied the hermit.--"Come into my cell, good son! Strange! that the ascetic's frock should prove richer than the monarch's gown!--but 'tis so!"
Philip followed the hermit into the rude thatched hut, on the cold earthen floor of which was laid the anchorite's bed of straw. It had no other furniture whatever. The mud walls were bare and rough. The window was but an opening to the free air of heaven; and the thatch seemed scarcely sufficient to keep off the inclemency of the weather. The king glanced his eye round the miserable dwelling, and then to the ashy and withered cheek of the hermit! as if he would have asked, Is it possible for humanity to bear such privation?
The anchorite remarked his look, and pointing to a crucifix of ebony hanging against the wall, "There," cried he, "is my reward!--there is the reward of fasting, and penitence, and prayer, and maceration, and all that has made this body the withered and blighted thing it is:--withered indeed! so that those who loved me best would not know a line in my countenance. But there is the reward!" And casting himself on his knees before the crucifix, he poured forth a long, wild, rhapsodical prayer, which, indeed, well accorded with the character of the times, but which was so very unlike the usual calm, rational, and even bitter manner of the anchorite, that Philip gazed on him, in doubt whether his judgment had not suddenly given way under the severity of his ascetic discipline.
At length the hermit rose, and, without noting the king's look of astonishment, turned abruptly from his address to heaven, to far more mundane thoughts. Pushing back the straw and moss which formed his bed, from the spot where it joined the wall, he discovered, to the king's no small surprise, two large leathern sacks or bags, the citizen-like rotundity of which evinced their fulness in some kind.
"In each of those bags," said the hermit, "is the sum of one thousand marks of silver. One of them shall be yours, my son; the other is destined for another purpose."
It would be looking too curiously into the human heart to ask whether Philip, who, the moment before, would have thought one of the bags a most blessed relief from his very unkingly distresses, did not, on the sight of two, feel unsatisfied that one only was to be his portion. However, he was really of too noble a disposition not to feel grateful for the gift, even as it was; and he was proceeding gracefully to thank the hermit, when the old man stopped him.
"Vanity, vanity! my son," cried he. "What need of thanks, for giving you a thing that is valueless to me?--ay, more worthless than the moss amongst which it lies. My vow forbids me either to buy or sell; and though I may use gold, as the beast of burden bears it--but to transfer it to another,--to me, it is more worthless than the dust of the earth, for it neither bears the herbs that give me food, nor the leaves that form my bed. Send for it, sir king, and it is yours.--But now, to speak of the future. I heard by the way that the Count de Tankerville is dead, and that the Duke of Burgundy claims all his broad lands. Is it so?"
"Nay," replied the king, "not so. The Count de Tankerville is wandering in the Holy Land. I have not heard of him since I went thither myself some ten years since: but he is there. At least, no tidings have reached me of his death. Even were he dead," continued the King, "which is not likely,--for he went but as one of the palmers, to whom, you know, the Soldan shows much favour; and he was a strong and vigorous man, fitted to resist all climates:--but even were he dead, the Duke of Burgundy has no claim upon his lands; for, before he went, he drew a charter and stamped it with his ring, whereby, in case of his death, he gives his whole and entire lands, with our royal consent, to Guy de Coucy, then a page warring with the men I left to Richard of England, but now a famous knight, who has done feats of great prowess in all parts of the world. The charter is in our royal treasury, sent by him to our safe keeping about ten years agone."
"Well, my son," replied the hermit, "the report goes that he is dead.--Now, follow my counsel. Lay your hand upon those lands; call in all the sums that for many years are due from all the count's prévôts and sénéchals; employ the revenues in raising the dignity of your crown, repressing the wars and plunderings of your barons, and----"
"But," interrupted the King, "my good father, will not what you advise itself be plundering? Will it not be a notable injustice?"
"Are you one of those, sir king," asked the hermit, "who come for advice, resolved to follow their own: and who hear the counsels of others, but to strengthen their own determination? Do as I tell you, and you shall prosper; and, by my faith in yon blessed emblem, I pledge myself that, if the Count de Tankerville be alive, I will meet his indignation; and he shall wreak his vengeance on my old head, if he agree not that the necessity of the case compelled you. If he be a good and loyal baron, he will not hesitate to say you did well, when his revenues were lying unemployed, or only fattening his idle servants. If he be dead, on the other hand, this mad-brained De Coucy, who owes me his life, shall willingly acquit you of the sums you have taken."
The temptation was too strong for the king to resist; and determining inwardly, merely to employ the large revenues of the Count de Tankerville for the exigencies of the state, and to repay them, if he or de Coucy did not willingly acquiesce in the necessity of the case,--without however remembering that repayment might not be in his power,--Philip Augustus consented to what the hermit proposed. It was also farther agreed between them, that in case of the young knight presenting himself at court, the question of his rights should be avoided, till such time as the death of the Count de Tankerville was positively ascertained; while, as some compensation, Philip resolved to give him, in case of war, the leading of all the knights and soldiers furnished by the lands which would ultimately fall to him.
The hermit was arranging all these matters with Philip, with as much worldly policy as if he never dreamed of nobler themes, when they were startled by the sound of a horn, which, though at some distance, was evidently in the forest. It seemed the blast of a huntsman; and a flush of indignation came over the countenance of the king, at the very thought of any one daring to hunt in one of the royal forests, almost within sight of the walls of Paris.
The hermit saw the angry spot, and giving way to the cynicism which mingled so strangely with many very opposite qualities in his character--"O God!" cried he, "what strange creatures thou hast made us! That a great, wise king should hold the right of slaughtering unoffending beasts as one of the best privileges of his crown!--to be sole and exclusive butcher of God's forests in France! I tell thee, monarch, that when those velvet brutes, that fly panting at thy very tread heard afar, come and lick my hand, because I feed them and hurt them not, I hold my staff as much above thy sceptre, as doing good is above doing evil! But hie thee away quick, and send thy men to search the forest; for, hark! the saucy fool blows his horn again, and knows not royal ears are listening to his tell-tale notes!"
Philip was offended: but the vast reputation for sanctity which the hermit had acquired; the fasts, the vigils, and the privations, which he himself knew to be unfeigned,--had, in that age of superstition, no small effect even upon the mind of Philip Augustus:--he submitted, therefore, to the anchorite's rebuke with seeming patience, but taking care not to reply upon a subject whereon he knew himself to be peculiarly susceptible, and which might urge him into anger, he took leave of the hermit, fully resolved to follow his advice so far as to send out some of his men-at-arms, to see who was bold enough to hunt in the royal chase.
This trouble, however, was spared him; for, as he walked back with a rapid pace, along the path that conducted to Vincennes, the sound of the horn came nearer and nearer; and suddenly the king was startled by an apparition in one of the glades, which was very difficult to comprehend. It consisted of a strong grey mare, galloping at full speed, with no apparent rider, but with two human legs, clothed in crimson silk, sticking far out before, one on each side of the animal's neck. As it approached, however, Philip began to perceive the body of the horseman, lying flat on his back, with his head resting on the saddle, and not at all discomposed by his strange position, nor the quick pace of his steed, blowing all sorts of mots upon his horn, which was, in truth, the sound that had disturbed the monarch in his conference with the hermit.
We must still remember, that the profound superstition of that age held, as a part of the true faith, the existence and continual appearance, in corporeal shape, of all sorts of spirits. It was also the peculiar province of huntsmen, and other persons frequenting large forests, to meet with these spirits; so that not a wood in France, of any extent, but had its appropriate fiend; and never did a chase terminate without some of the hunters separating from the rest, and having some evil communication of the kind with the peculiar demon of the place.
Now, though the reader may have before met with the personage who, in the present case, approached the king at full gallop, yet as Philip Augustus had never done so,--and as no mind, however strong, is ever without some touch of the spirit of its age, it was not unnatural for the monarch to lay his hand upon his sword, that being the most infallible way he had ever found of exorcising all kinds of spirits whatever. The mare, however, aware that she was in the presence of something more awful than trees and rocks, suddenly stopped, and, in a moment, our friend Gallon the fool sat bolt upright before the king, with his long and extraordinary nose wriggling in all sorts of ways on the blank flat of his countenance, as if it were the only part of his face that was surprised.
"Who the devil are you?" exclaimed the monarch; "and what do you, sounding your horn in this forest?"
"I, the devil, am nobody," replied the jongleur; "and if you ask what I do here, I am losing my way as hard as I can--Haw, haw!"
"Nobody! How mean you?" demanded Philip. "You cannot be nobody."
"Yes, I am," answered the juggler. "I have often heard the sage Count Thibalt d'Auvergne say to my master, the valiant Sir Guy de Coucy, that the intellect is the man. Now, I lack intellect; and therefore am I nobody.--Haw, haw! Haw, haw!"
"So thou art but a buffoon," said the king,
"No, not so either," replied Gallon. "I am, indeed. Sir Guy de Coucy's tame juggler; running wild in this forest, for want of instruction."
"And where is now Sir Guy de Coucy," demanded the king, "and the Count Thibalt d'Auvergne you speak of? They were both in the Holy Land when last I heard of them."
"As for the Count d'Auvergne," replied Gallon the fool,--"he parted from us three days since to go to Paris, to make love to the king's wife, who, they say, has a pretty foot. God help me!"
"Ha, villain!" cried the king. "'Tis well the king hears you not, or your ears would be slit!"
"So should his hearing spoil my hearing," cried the juggler; "but I would keep my ears out of his way. I have practice enough, in saving them from my Lord Sir Guy; but no man has reached them yet, and shall not.--Haw, haw!"
"And where is Sir Guy?" demanded the king. "How happen you to have parted from him?"
"He is but now sitting a mile hence, singing very doleful ballads under an oak," replied the juggler. "All about the old man and his daughter.--Haw, haw! Sir Julian of the Mount and the fair Isadore.--Haw, haw, haw!--You know?"
"No, 'faith, fool! I know not," replied Philip. "What do you mean?"
"Why, have you not heard," said the juggler, "how my good lord and my better self, and five or six varlets and squires, conducted old Sir Julian and the young Lady Isadore all the way from Vic le Comte to Senlis----and how we lost our way in this cursed forest--and how lord sent me to seek it? Oh, 'tis a fine tale, and my lord will write it in verse--Haw, haw, haw!--and sing it to an old rattling harp; and make all the folks weep to hear how he has sworn treason against the king, all for the sake of the Lady Isadore.--Haw, haw, haw! Haw, haw!" And placing his hand against his cheek, the juggler poured forth a mixture of all sorts of noises, in which that of sharpening a saw was alone predominant.
Philip called, and entreated, and commanded him to cease, and to tell him more; but the malicious juggler only burst out into one of his long shrill laughs, and throwing himself back on his horse, set it off into a gallop, without at all asking his way; at the same time putting the horn to his mouth, and blowing a blast quite sufficient to drown all the monarch's objurgations.
Philip turned upon his heel, and pursued his way to Vincennes, and--oh, strange human nature!--though he saw that his informant was a fool--though he easily guessed him to be a malicious one, he repeated again and again the words that Gallon had made use of--"Gone to make love to the king's wife!--sworn treason against the king! But the man's a fool--an idiot," added the monarch. "'Tis not worth a thought;" and yet Philip thought of it.