Knights and their days

by Dr. Doran

“Faites silence; je vais parler de lui!”— Boileau.

Between the city of Namur and the quaint old town of Dinant there is as much matter of interest for the historian as of beauty for the traveller and artist. War has been the most terrible scourge of the two localities on the Meuse which I have just named. Namur has a present reputation for cutlery, and an old one for “slashing blades” of another description. Don John, the great victor at Lepanto, lies entombed in the city, victim of the poison and the jealousy of his brother Philip. There the great Louis proved himself a better soldier than Boileau did a poet, when he attempted to put the royal soldier’s deeds into rhyme. Who, too, can stand at St. Nicholas’s gate, without thinking of “my uncle Toby,” and the Frenchmen, for whose dying he cared so little, on the glacis of Namur? At present the place, it is true, has but a dull and dreamy aspect. Indeed, it may be said of the inhabitants, as of Molly Carew’s lovers, that “It’s dhrames and not sleep that comes into their heads.” Such, at least, would seem to be the case, if I may draw a conclusion from what I saw during the last summer, at the bookseller’s stall at the Namur station, where I found more copies of a work professing to interpret dreams than of any other production, whether grave or gaillard.

Dinant, a curious old town, the high limestone-rocks behind which seems to be pushing it from off its narrow standing-ground into the Meuse, has even bloodier reminiscences than Namur; but of these I will not now speak. Between the two cities, at the most picturesque part of the stream, and on the loftiest cliff which rises above the stream, is the vast ruin of the old titanic castle of Poilvache, the once rather noisy home of the turbulent household of those terrible brothers, known in chivalrous history as the “Four Sons of Aymon.” During one of the few fine evenings of the last summer, I was looking up at this height, from the opposite bank, while around me stood in groups a number of those brilliant-eyed, soft-voiced, ready-witted Walloons, who are said to be the descendants of a Roman legion, whose members colonized the country and married the ladies in it! A Walloon priest, or one at least who spoke the dialect perfectly, but who had a strong Flemish accent when addressing to me an observation in French, remained during the period of my observation close at my side. “Are these people,” said I to him, “a contented people?” He beckoned to a cheerful-looking old man, and assuming that he was contented with the dispensation that had appointed him to be a laborer, inquired of him which part of his labor he loved best? After pausing for a minute, the old peasant replied in very fair French, “I think the sweetest task I have is when I mow that meadow up at Bloquemont yonder, for the wild thyme in it embalms the very air.” “But your winter-time,” said I, “must be a dark and dreary time.” “Neither dark nor dreary,” was the remark of a tidy woman, his wife, who was, at the moment, on her knees, sewing up the ragged rents in the gaberdine of a Walloon beggar—“Neither dark nor dreary. In winter-time, at home, we don’t want light to get the children about us to teach them their catechism.” The priest smiled. “And as for spring-time,” said her husband, “you should be here to enjoy it; for the fields are then all flower, and the sky is one song.” “There is poetry in their expressions,” said I to the priest. “There is better than that,” said he, “there is love in their hearts;” and, turning to the woman who was mending the raiment of the passive mendicant, he asked her if she were not afraid of infection. “Why should I fear?” was her remark. “I am doing but little; Christ did more; He washed the feet of beggars; and we must risk something, if we would gain Paradise.” The particular beggar to whom she was thus extending most practical charity was by no means a picturesque bedesman; but, not to be behind-hand in Χάρις toward him, I expressed compassion for his lot. “My lot is not so deplorable,” said he, uncovering his head; “I have God for my hope, and the charity of humane people for my succor.” As he said this, my eye turned from him to a shepherd who had just joined our group, and who was waiting to be ferried over to the little village of Houx. I knew him by name, and knew something of the solitariness of his life, and I observed to him, “Jacques, you, at least, have a dull life of it; and you even now look weary with the long hours you have been spending alone.” “Alone!” he exclaimed, in a joyful tone, “I am never alone, and never weary. How should I be either, when my days are passed in the company of innocent animals, and time is given me to think of God!” The priest smiled even more approvingly than before; and I remarked to him, “We are here in Arcadia.” “But not without human sin,” said he, and pointing to a woman at a distance, who was in the employ of the farmer’s wife, he asked the latter how she could still have anything to do with a well-known thief. “Eh, father,” was the comment of a woman whom John Howard would have kissed, “starving her in idleness would not cure her of pilfering; and between working and being well-watched, she will soon leave her evil habits.” “You are a good Christian,” I said to her, “be you of what community you may.” “She is a good Catholic,” added the priest. “I am what the good God has made me,” was the simple reply of the Walloon wife; “and my religion is this to go on my knees when all the house is asleep, and then pray for the whole world.” “Ay, ay,” was the chorus of those around her, “that is true religion.” “It is a part of true religion,” interposed the priest; but I could not help thinking that he would have done as well had he left Marie Justine’s text without his comment. We walked together down to the bank of the river opposite the Chateau of the young Count de Levignon the proprietor and burgomaster of Houx. I looked up from the modern chateau to the ruins of the vast castle where the sons of Aymon once held barbaric state, maintained continual war, and affected a reverence for the mother of Him who was the Prince of Peace. The good priest seemed to guess my thoughts, for he remarked, “We live now in better times; the church is less splendid, and chivalry less ‘glorious,’ if not extinct; but there is a closer brotherhood of all men—at least,” he added hesitatingly—“at least I hope so.” “I can not remember,” said I, “a single virtue possessed by either Aymon or his sons, except brute courage, and a rude sort of generosity, not based on principle, but born of impulse. It is a pity that Belgium can not boast of more perfect chevaliers than the old proprietors of Poilvache, and that you have not a hero to match with Bayard.” “Belgium,” was his answer, “can make such boast, and had a hero who had finished his heroic career long before Bayard was born. Have you never heard of ‘the Good Knight without fear and without doubt’?” “I have heard of one without fear and without reproach.” “That title,” he remarked, “was but a plagiarism from that conferred on Jacques de Lelaing, by his contemporaries.” And then he sketched the outline of the good knight’s career, and directed me to sources where I might gather more detailed intelligence. I was interested in what I learned, and it is because I hope also to interest readers at home, that I venture to place before them, however imperfectly rendered, a sketch of the career of a brave man before the time of Bayard; one who illustrates the old saying that—

“Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona.”

Jacques de Lelaing, the good knight, without fear and without doubt, was born in the château of Lelaing, in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. The precise year is not known, but it was full half a century before the birth of Bayard. He came of a noble race; that is, of a race, the male portion of which saw more honor in slaughter than in science. His mother was celebrated for her beauty as well as nobility. She was wise, courteous, and débonnaire; well-mannered, and full of all good virtues. So, at least, in nearly similar terms, wrote George Chastellan of her, just two centuries ago.

Jacques de Lelaing was as precocious a boy as the Duke of Wharton in his youth. At the age of seven, a priestly tutor had perfected him in French and Latin, and the good man had so imbued him with literary tastes that, in after life, the good knight found time to cultivate the acquaintance of Captain Pen, as well as of Captain Sword; and specimens of his handiwork are yet said to exist in the libraries of Flanders and Brabant.

Jacques, however, was never a mere student, “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” He loved manly sports; and he was yet but a blooming youth when the “demoiseau of Clèves,” nephew of that great Duke whom men, for no earthly reason, called Philip the Good, carried off his young friend from the castle of Lelaing, and made of him a squire, not of dames, but of knights, in the turbulent court of the ducal Philip, with the benevolent qualification to his name.

The youth entered upon his career with a paternal provision which bespoke at once the liberality and the wisdom of his father, stout William de Lelaing. The sire bestowed upon his son four splendid horses, a well-skilled groom, and a “gentleman of service” which, in common phrase, means a valet, or “gentleman’s gentleman.” But the young soldier had more than this in his brain; namely, a well-lettered cleric, commissioned to be for ever expounding and instructing, with a special object, to boot, that Jacques should not forget his Latin! Excellent sire thus to care for his son! If modern fathers only might send into barracks with their sons, when the latter first join their regiments, reverend clerks, whose office it should be to keep their pupils well up in their catechism, the Eton grammar, and English orthography, what a blessing it would be to the young gentlemen and to all acquainted with them! As it is, we have officers worse instructed and less intelligent than the sons of the artists who make their uniforms.

When Jacques went forth into the world, his sire gave him as good advice as Polonius threw away on his son Laertes. The sum of it was according to the old French maxim, “Noblesse oblige”—“Inasmuch,” said the old man, “as you are more noble than others by birth, so,” said he, “should you be more noble than they by virtues.” The hearty old father added an assurance, that “few great men gained renown for prowess and virtue who did not entertain love for some dame or damoiselle.” This last, however, was but an equivocal assurance, for by counselling Jacques to fall in love with “some dame or damoiselle,” he simply advised him to do so with any man’s wife or daughter. But it was advice commonly given to young gentlemen in arms, and is, to this day, commonly followed by them. Jacques bettered the paternal instruction, by falling in love with two ladies at the same time. As ambitious youths are wont to do, he passed by the white and pink young ladies whom he met, and paid his addresses, with remarkable success, to two married duchesses. Neither of these suspected that the smooth-chinned young “squire” was swearing eternal fidelity to the other, or that this light-mailed Macheath wooed his madiæval Polly with his pockets full of “favors,” just bestowed on him by an unsuspecting Lucy. Thus has love ever been made by officers and highwaymen.

But if Jacques loved two, there was not a lady at the Court of Burgundy who did not love him. The most virtuous of them sighingly expressed a wish that their husbands, or their lovers, were only like him. The men hated him, while they affected to admire his grace, his bearing, and his irresistible bravery. Jacques very complacently accepted the love of the women and the envy of the men; and feeling that he had something to be thankful for, he repaired to the shrine of the Virgin at Hal, and thanked “Our Lady,” accordingly.