‘I must return,’ said he, ‘in two more days. Is it true they embark without fail to-morrow? Is there no danger from the ships of England? Is Her Majesty well accompanied? Doth the household sail with her? Ladies and all?’
‘The Maries, of course,’ replied the other, answering only the last question, which he reasonably considered the most interesting to his listener; ‘and right glad they seem to be to quit this merry land of France for that cold bleak country where I hear music is scarcely known, and dancing interdicted as a sin! I marvel much at their taste. To be sure, they accompany one who would inspire the wildest savages with chivalry, and make the veriest desert a paradise! Ah! when was such a garland of beauty ever trusted to the waves? The Queen and her satellites! One lovelier than another, but all paling before her. A bumper, my friend! on your knees, a bumper—a health to the letter M! nay, pledge me one for each of the four, and a fresh flask for the Queen—for the Queen!’
Again the speaker’s voice sank to a whisper, and the archer, who had ere now recovered the usual indifference of his demeanour, proceeded to do justice to a toast which could not, according to the manners of the age, have been refused, and which, in truth, for reasons of his own, he was by no means loth to pledge. The table at which they sat, however, was by this time surrounded by the different frequenters of the auberge, for the archer’s companion, no other than the poet Chastelâr, was too well-known and popular an individual in the gay circles of France to remain long unnoticed, where so many of her nobility were congregated. Young, handsome, and well-born, his romantic disposition and undoubted talents had rendered him an especial favourite with a people who, above all things, delight to be amused, and with whom enthusiasm, whether real or affected, is generally accepted as an equivalent for merit. To look on Chastelâr, with his long dark curls and his bright eyes, was to behold the poet-type in its most attractive form; and when to beauty of feature and delicacy of mind were added a graceful figure, skill in horsemanship, as in all knightly exercises, great kindliness of disposition, and gentle birth, what wonder that with the ladies of the French Court to be in love with Chastelâr, was as indispensable a fashion as to wear a pointed stomacher, or a delicate lace-edging to the ruff? And Chastelâr, with true poet-nature, sunned himself in their smiles, and enjoyed life intensely, as only such natures can, and bore about with him the while, unsuspected and incurable, a sorrow near akin to madness in his heart.
As gallant after gallant strode up to the table at which the two friends sat, the conversation became general, turning, as such conversations usually do, on the congenial themes of love and war. Again and again was mine host summoned for fresh supplies of wine, and the archer, whose recent arrival from Paris made him an object of general interest, was plied with questions as to the latest news and gossip of the capital. Richly-mounted swords were laid aside on the coarse deal table, cloaks of velvet and embroidery draped the uncouth chairs, gilt spurs jingled on the humble floor, and voices that had bandied opinions with kings in council, or shouted ‘St Denis!’ in the field, were now exchanging jest and laugh and repartee under the homely roof of a common wine-shop.
Even the Marquis d’Elbœuf, the Queen’s uncle, a lord of the princely house of Guise, and Admiral of France, joined with a sailor’s frankness in the gay revel, and taking a seat between Chastelâr and the archer, questioned the latter as to his late interview with the constable, and the well-being of that distinguished veteran, a soldier of whom every man in France was proud.
‘And you made sail with the despatches the moment you were out of his sight,’ observed the marquis. ‘I’ll warrant, you made a fair wind of it all the way to Calais, for the Montmorency brooks no delay in the execution of his orders. How looked he, my friend?—and what said he? Come tell us the exact words.’
‘He looked like an old lion, as he always does,’ answered the archer, simply; ‘and he said to me in so many words, “These letters must be in my son’s hands within eight-and-forty hours. I can depend upon you Scots. May the blessing of Our Lady be upon you, my child. And now, Right—Face! and go to the devil!”’
The Marquis laughed heartily.
‘He loves your countrymen well,’ said he, ‘and with reason. I have heard him swear the bravest man he ever saw was a Scot.’
A murmur of dissent, if not disapproval, rose around the table, and many of the Frenchmen present bent their brows in manifest impatience; but the marquis, who had his own reasons for wishing to be well with the Scottish nation, and whose frank nature brooked no withdrawal or modification of his opinions, struck his hand on the board, till the cups leaped again, and repeated in loud tones—