The young cavalier followed his example; but, before they had gone a hundred yards, a loud explosion took place, which shook the rocks around, and echoed afar through the valley. Their horses started at the sound, and Bernard and his companion turned their eyes towards the castle of Masseran. The burning tower had now lost all shape and form, though part of the walls still remained, with the fire clinging to them in various places.
"Do you know what that is?" demanded Corse de Leon; and, ere Bernard de Rohan could reply, he went on. "It is an act of folly worthy of a king or a prime minister. There are people in that castle," he said, "who, knowing of my coming and of your escape, have done the act, the effects of which you see flaming yonder, in order that the tower may fall in and crush the dungeon into which they had thrust you, solely to prevent the Lord of Masseran from discovering how you have escaped. Thus it is with the world; every one act of weakness, of folly, or of crime, we judge must be followed by another, to conceal or to justify it. Let men or ministers place themselves in a dangerous situation by some capital fault, and then they think expediency requires them to commit another to obviate the effects of the first, forgetting that each fault is written down in the two eternal books—the Book of Fate, God's servant, and the Book of God himself; and that there must be a reckoning, a terrible reckoning, for the whole amount, in this world and in the next. Let us ride on."
CHAPTER XIV.
We must now entirely change the scene. The spot is no longer the same—the actors different. From the mountains of Savoy, the feudal castle, the lonely chapel, and the humble inn, let us turn to the capital of France, her stately palaces, and the gay and glittering hall where laughed and revelled the bright, the brave, the fair, and the witty of that splendid epoch which began with Francis the First, and ended with his immediate successor. The personages, too, have changed with the scene. The young warrior and his fair bride, the wily Italian and the supercilious and unprincipled Count de Meyrand, are no longer before us. Even good Father Willand himself is left behind, and one for whom we owe no slight affection, Corse de Leon, is, for the time, off the stage.
At the door—or rather, we may say, beyond the door, for they were not actually in the chamber—stood two of the king's guard, with their halberds resting on their shoulders, embroidered on which appeared the well-known cognisance of the salamander. They were there merely to perform the place of a living gate, barring the way against any who would enter, till such time as the orders of the king threw open the halls of the Louvre.
Henry himself, in the prime of his years, graceful, handsome, vigorous, with a countenance full of fire, but still kindly and good-humoured, stood at the farther end of the large and nearly vacant reception room, close to one of the windows, which looked out upon the river Seine, speaking with a lady, on whose appearance we may well be expected to pause for a moment. That lady was the celebrated Diana of Poitiers; and, though the period had by this time passed by when her dazzling beauty captivated all eyes as well as those of her royal lover, she was certainly still very handsome. But she had also in her countenance an expression of power and resolution, of quickness of understanding and of sparkling vivacity, which at once displayed many of the chief points of her character. As one stood and looked at her, and saw the play of her fine features, the rapid changes, the sudden lighting up of the eyes, the occasional look of intense eagerness, the shade of momentary meditation, succeeded by the bright smile, the gay laugh, the eyes cast up to heaven, it was easy to understand what manifold powers of charming and persuading lay beneath, and to perceive that, whatever might have been at any time the mere beauty of feature and expression, the chief loveliness of that lovely countenance must ever have been in its wonderful variety.
What was it that moved her now? What was the eager scheme that she was urging upon the king with such a host of wiles, and charms, and graces, that it was hardly possible to expect that he should resist? Lo! how she hangs upon his arm with those two fair hands, and gazes up into his face with those speaking eyes! Now comes a shade of vexation over her brow. One hand drops from his arm. Her head is partly turned away: a tear dims the eye for an instant, then leaves it brighter than before. Now, again, how merrily she laughs, with the clear, joyous, ringing laugh that we so seldom hear but from the lips of infancy; and then, again, that look of bright and eloquent thoughtfulness, while with her extended hand she argues with the monarch on some mighty theme, and carries high conviction on her lofty brow! What a wonderful picture does she form there, even at this very moment, changing by her words the destinies of Europe, and with smiles, and tears, and laughter, and high thoughts, all mingled in a wondrous antidote, curing one of those spoiled children of fortune that we call kings of that venomous and pestilential sickness, the love of war!
"Well," said the king, "well, you have triumphed. He shall have the powers, although it goes against my soul to yield anything to that cold and haughty Spaniard. What though Fortune have, with all her fickleness, left at the last a momentary balance in the scale against France, have we not already retrieved much, and are we not daily retrieving?"
"True, sire, true," replied Diana of Poitiers, "your armies are retrieving all that was once lost. But your country, sire, alas! your country is not. France suffers, France groans even, while Spain is wounded, and each blow that you strike at the enemy but injures yourself far more."