Agnes Sorel: A Novel

by G. P. R. James

"Oh, you don't know that," answered the other. "I can help more than people know. Why, I have sold more things for my father in three hours, since he went up to the Celestins to see the body of the Duke of Orleans, than he ever sold in three days before."

"Ah, the poor duke! the poor duke!" cried Martin, with a deep sigh.

"Well, well, come sit down," said Petit Jean. "My father will be in presently, and in the mean while, I'll play you a tune on my new violin, and you will see how I can play now."

Martin Grille seated himself with an absent look, leaned his forehead upon his hands, and seemed totally to forget every thing around him in the unwonted intensity of his own thoughts. But the boy, creeping under the board on which the wares were displayed, brought forth an instrument of no very prepossessing appearance, tried its tune with his thumb, as if playing on a guitar, and then seating himself at Martin Grille's knee, put the instrument to his deformed shoulder.

There be some to whom music comes as by inspiration. All other arts are more or less acquired. But those in whom a fine sensibility to harmony is implanted by Nature, not unfrequently leap over even mechanical difficulties, and achieve at once, because they have conceived already. Music must have started from the heart of Apollo, as wisdom from the head of Jove, without a childhood. Little had been the instruction, few, scanty, and from an incompetent teacher, the lessons which that poor deformed boy had received. But now, when the bow in his hand touched the strings, it drew from them sounds such as a De Beriot or a Rhode might have envied him the power of educing; and, fixing his large, lustrous eyes upon his cousin's face, he seemed to speak in music from his own spirit to the spirit of his hearer. Whether he had any design, and, if so, what that design was, I can not tell; perhaps he did not know himself; but certain it is, that the wandering, wavering composition that he framed on the moment seemed to bear a strange reference to Martin's feelings. First came a harsh crash of the bow across all the strings--a broad, bold discord; then a deep and gloomy phrase, entirely among the lower notes of the instrument, simple and melodious, but without any attempt at harmony; then, enriching itself as it went on, the air deviated into the minor, with sounds exquisitely plaintive, till Martin Grille almost fancied he could hear the voices of mourners, and exclaimed, "Don't Jean! don't! I can not bear it!"

But still the boy went on, as if triumphing in the mastery of music over the mind, and gradually his instrument gave forth more cheerful sounds; not light, not exactly gay, for every now and then a flattened third brought back a touch of melancholy to the air, but still one could have fancied the ear caught the distant notes of angels singing hope and peace to man.

The effect on Martin Grille was strange. It cheered him, but he wept; and the boy, looking earnestly in his face, said, with a strange confidence, "Do not tell me I have no power, Martin. Mean, deformed, and miserable as I am, I have found out that I can rule spirits better than kings, and have a happiness within me over which they have no sway. You are not the first I have made weep. So now tell me what it is you want with my father. Perhaps I may help you better than he can."

"It was not you made me weep, you foolish boy," said Martin Grille; "but it was the thought of the bloody death of the poor Duke of Orleans, so good a master, and so kind a man; and then I began to think how his terrible fate might have expiated, through the goodness of the blessed Virgin, all his little sins, and how the saints and the angels would welcome him. I almost thought I could hear them singing, and it was that made me cry. But as to what I want with your father, it was in regard to my poor master, Monsieur De Brecy, a kind, good young man, and a gallant one, too. They have arrested him, and thrown him into prison--a set of fools!--accusing him of having compassed the prince's death, when he would have laid down his life for him at any time. But all the people at the hotel are against him, for he is too good for them, a great deal; and I want somebody powerful to speak in his behalf, otherwise they may put him to the torture, and cripple him for life, just to make him confess a lie, as they did with Paul Laroche, who never could walk without two sticks after. Now I know, your father is one of the Duke of Burgundy's men, and that duke will rule the roast now, I suppose."

"Strong spirits seek strong spirits," said the boy, thoughtfully; "and perhaps my father might do something with the duke. But Martin," he continued, after a short and silent pause, "do not you have any thing to do with the Duke of Burgundy! He will not help you. I do not know what it is puts such thoughts in my head. But the king's brother had an enemy; the king's brother is basely murdered; his enemy still lives heartily; and it is not him I would ask to help a man falsely accused. Stay a little. They took me, three days ago, to play before the King of Navarre, and I am to go to-day, with my instrument, to play before the Queen of Sicily. I think I can help you, Martin, if she will but hear me. This murder, perhaps, may put it all out, for she was fond of the duke, they tell me; but I will send her word, through some of her people, when I go, that I have got a dirge to play for his highness that is dead. She will hear that, perhaps. Only tell me all about it."

Martin Grille's story was somewhat long; but as the reader already knows much that he told in a desultory sort of way to his young cousin, and the rest is not of much importance to this tale, we will pass over his account, which lasted some twenty minutes, and had not been finished five when Caboche himself entered the booth in holiday attire. His first words showed Martin Grille the good sense of Petit Jean's advice, not to speak to his father in favor of Jean Charost.