Agnes Sorel: A Novel

by G. P. R. James

"I know a better plan than that," replied Martin Grille. "Let us turn down here by the back of the town, and take refuge in the house of the astrologer. He will give us refuge for the night, and the duke departs by sunrise to-morrow."

"Do you know him?" demanded Jean Charost. "I thought you had never been in Pithiviers before."

"Nor have I," replied the man. "But I'll tell you all about it by-and-by. He will give us lodging, I will answer for it--hide us in his cabinet of the spheres, among his other curiosities, and those who seek will seek for us in vain. But there is no time to be lost. Mine is the best plan, depend upon it."

"Perhaps it is," replied Jean Charost, turning his horse's head. "We might be overtaken ere we could reach any other place of concealment. My horse moves as if his joints were frozen. Come on, Monsieur Chauvin. Do you know the house, Martin?"

"Well, sir--right well," replied the valet. "Hark! I hear horses stamping;" and riding on, down a side street, he turned back to the east, passing along between the old decayed wall and the houses of the suburb.

Little was said as they rode, for every ear was on the alert to catch any sounds from the main street, lest, mayhap, their course should be traced, and they should be followed.

It is hardly possible for any one in the present day--at least for any dweller in the more civilized parts of earth, where order is the rule and disorder the exception--to form any correct idea of those times in France, when order was the exception, and disorder the rule; when no man set out upon a journey without being prepared for attack and defense; when the streets of a great city were in themselves perilous places; when one's own house might, indeed, be a castle, but required to be as carefully watched and guarded as a fortress, and when the life of every day was full of open and apparent danger--when, in short, there was no such thing as peace on earth, or good-will among men. Yet it is wonderful how calmly people bore it, how much they looked upon it as a matter of course, how much less anxiety or annoyance it occasioned them. Just as an undertaker becomes familiar with images of death, and strangely intimate with the corpses which he lays out and buries, jokes with his assistant in the awful presence of the dead, and takes his pot of beer, or glass of spirits, seated on the coffin, with the link of association entirely cut by habit, and no reference of the mind between his fate and the fate of him whom he inters; so men, by the effect of custom, went through hourly peril in those times, saw every sort of misery, sorrow, and injustice inflicted on others, and very often endured them themselves, merely as a matter of course, a part of the business of the day.

I do not, and I will not pretend, therefore, that Jean Charost felt half the annoyance or apprehension that any one of modern days would experience, could he be carried back some four or five centuries; but he did feel considerable anxiety, not so much lest his own throat should be cut, though that was quite within the probabilities of the case, as lest he should be seized, and the letters of the Duke of Orleans which he bore taken from him. That anxiety was considerably aggravated, as he rode along, by hearing a good deal of noise from the streets on the right, orders and directions delivered in loud tones, the jingle of arms, and the dull beat of horses' hoofs upon ground covered by hardened snow. For a moment or two it was doubtful whether the pursuers--if pursuers they were--would or would not discover that he had quitted the highway and follow on his track; but at length Armand Chauvin, who had hardly spoken a word, said, in a tone of some relief, "They have passed by the turning. They will have a long ride for their pains. Heaven bless them with a snow-shower, and freeze them to the saddle!"

"There's the house, sir," said Martin Grille, pointing to a building of considerable size, the back of which stood out toward the dilapidated wall somewhat beyond the rest, with a stone tower in the extreme rear, and a light burning in one of the windows.

"I should like to hear how you know, all about this place, Master Martin," replied his young master, "and whether you can assure me really a good reception."