"But can you ascertain?" demanded Bernard de Rohan; "is it possible to learn exactly in such a labyrinth-like country as this?"
The priest laughed. "Beyond all doubt, my son, beyond all doubt," he said. "The past we can always ascertain. The future is God's," he added, more reverently; "the future is God's, and must rest in his dark council chamber. But do you not know, have you not yourself seen, that though the peasant and the traveller wander along the sides of these mountains without beholding anything but the gray stone, and the clear stream, and the green bush; though he might whistle all the lays of France and Italy together, and blow all the horns that ever were winded from Naples to the far North, without rousing anything but a roebuck or an eagle, there are particular sounds, to be uttered by particular voices, which would call every bush into life, and change every rock into an armed man? My good friend, my good friend, the mountain is full of eyes; and the Lord of Masseran himself, though he knows it is so, does not know to what extent. There is only one being under the blue eye of heaven that sees it all, and that is the man whom I met with you the other night."
"He is certainly a very extraordinary being," replied Bernard de Rohan, "and I would fain know more of him."
"In all probability you will know more," replied the priest. "But you may meet with thousands like him in various parts of the world. There are three places where you generally find the great rogues congregate—the court, the court of law, and the refectory. The honest man has only two places that I know of—the mountain-side and the highway. There are exceptions, you know; for instance, there is a very honest priest, who has the care of the poor souls in the parish of Saint John of Bonvoisin, just across the frontier line in France. Sinner that I am! what should he be doing here, using his time no better than his patron, Saint Anthony, used his head? Why should he be here, I say, preaching to the stones upon this mountain, when his reverend predecessor preached to fishes and petted a pig? However, the king, a blessing on his good-humoured head, sent the said priest to Bonvoisin to keep him out of harm's way; for that boisterous heretic, Clement Marot, threatened to drive his dagger into him for throwing back some of his ribald poetry on his own head. Then, again, the grave and serious admiral felt aggrieved at his preaching, one Saint Anthony's day, upon the subject of herrings, which he vowed was a satire upon the tax he had laid on the fishery. However, there the good priest is—or, rather, there he is not, but ought to be—one of the honestest men in all France, if you will take his own word for it; a great rogue according to some men, and a good soul according to others. There may be two or three like him in other parts of France; and depend upon it, wherever they are, you will find the poor speak well of them, the widows and the maidens over forty shake their heads and disparage them when they compare them with their reverend predecessor; while some very grave men in the parish look wise and suspect them to be heretics, without being able to prove it."
Bernard de Rohan smiled; but, wishing to hear somewhat more of Father Willand's acquaintance with his friend Corse de Leon, he replied, "I thought that this same good priest you mention, if not a Savoyard by birth, had a Savoyard cure, and that the first of his penitents was our good friend Corse de Leon."
"You are mistaken, my son," replied the ecclesiastic, "you are mistaken altogether. He has no cure in Savoy, though he may have business there; and as to Corse de Leon being a penitent, he is very impenitent indeed. I remember now," he continued, in a thoughtful way, "it is some five or six years since, when I was travelling through a little village called Pommieres, not far from the foot of Mount Rosa, that the people called me to confess a young man who had been crushed under an earth-slip of the mountain. It was difficult to get him to confess at all; and one priest from Saint Maurice had left him. But I set about the matter in a different way; told him I did not think he would die, and had great hopes of his not being damned if he did. He said he would rather die than not; but I argued him out of that, and in the end got him to make a full confession. What he did confess is no business of yours, my son; but I found him to be a man who had suffered many wrongs, and had endured bitter griefs; but one who was naturally as kind of heart as he was bold, fearless, and determined, and as noble and generous in his purposes as he was sometimes wild, fierce, and intemperate in their execution. I sat by his bedside for six weeks, for the three first of which he fluttered between life and death. At the end of that time he recovered, and his frame, like iron tempered in the fire, seemed to become but the stronger and more active for what it had undergone. Two or three years elapsed ere I met him again, and by that time he had become Corse de Leon. The cause of his quitting his native country, France, which was just before I first met with him, was that, on his return from the army, where he had served his king for years, he found his sister injured, insulted, and disgraced by the intendant of a high nobleman who was lately dead. He first sought for justice, but could not obtain it. He then visited the deathbed of the poor girl, and found her head supported by the daughter of that very high noble, and her lips moistened by the hand of—Bernard de Rohan. He turned away as soon as Death had done his work, and, mad for revenge, had sought the house of the intendant. But the generous spirit of two high youths, Bernard de Rohan and Henry de Brienne, had been beforehand with him, and had driven forth with ignominy the oppressor whom he sought. Still, however, the thing rankled on his mind, and the injustice which he had once suffered and but too often seen, turned a portion of his blood to bitterness. But hark! there is mine host knocking at the door to tell us that supper is ready; and what is all human nature compared with supper?"
CHAPTER IX.
The evening was dark and somewhat stormy; and, though the hour was the same as that in which Bernard de Rohan had met Isabel on the preceding day, so much less light was there now in the heavens that he could scarcely see the postern gate, while with a beating heart he watched it from the small clump of fir-trees of which we have already spoken. Although a hollow and whistling wind blew sharp and strong among the mountains, the heavy vapours hung unmoved around the peaks; and though there was a reddish glare upon the edges of some of the clouds in the western sky, no light was derived from any lingering rays of the sun. Everything was gloomy, and dark, and cheerless; and yet the heart of Bernard de Rohan beat high with love, with joy, with expectation.
She was to be his, the being whom he had so long, so deeply, so tenderly loved. Within one short hour she was to be his own, bound to him by that indissoluble bond, to which he looked forward all the more joyfully, because it was to be eternal. Whose heart would not beat high at the fulfilment of the dream of years?