While I was undressing, some thoughts would fain have intruded, which I was very sure would have broken up my rest for the night. The agitation of being in new, strange scenes, acting with people of whom I yet knew hardly anything, and involved in schemes which at best were hazardous, was quite enough to make sleep difficult, and I felt very certain, that if I let my mind rest one moment on the thought of Helen, and of the circumstances in which she might at that moment be placed, all hope of repose--mental repose, at least--was gone--and where is any exercise so exhausting to the body, as that anxious occupation of the mind? The next morning I was hardly awake, when Monsieur de Varicarville entered my chamber, and informed me that Monsieur le Comte wished to see me; and dressing myself as fast as possible, I hurried to the Prince's apartments, where I found him still in bed. Varicarville left us, and the Count made me sit down by his bedside.
"I have been thinking, De l'Orme," said he, "over the history you gave me last night, and I again assure you that I sympathize not a little with you. I am much older than you, and the first hasty torrent of passion has passed away at my time of life; but I can still feel, and know, that love such as you profess towards this young lady, whom your mother has educated, is not a passion easily to be rooted out. Nor is the death of her brother by your hand an insurmountable obstacle. She evidently does not know it herself; and it would be a cruel piece of delicacy in you either to let her know it, or to sacrifice both her happiness and your own for such a scruple."
The picture of Helen in the arms of her brother's murderer, and the horror she would feel at his every caress, if she did but know that he was so, rose up frightfully before my imagination, as the Count spoke; and, without replying, I covered my eyes with my hands, as if to shut the image out.
"This is an age, Monsieur de l'Orme," said the Count, "in which few people would suffer, as you seem to do, for having shed their fellow-creature's blood; and yet, I would not have you feel less. Feel, if you will, but still govern your feelings. Every one in this world has much to suffer; the point of wisdom is to suffer well. But think over what I have said. Time may soon bring about a change in the face of affairs. If fortune smiles upon me, I shall soon have the power of doing greater things than obtaining letters of nobility for your fair lady's father. Thus the only substantial objection to your marriage will be removed. From what you said of the house where you last saw her, and the liveries of the servants, it must have been the hotel of the Maréchal de Chatillon; and the youth whose conversation you overheard was probably his nephew; but fear not for that. He is a hair-brained youth, little capable of winning the heart of a person such as you describe. The only thing that surprises me is, that Arnault, her father, should have acquired any degree of intimacy with so proud a man as Chatillon; but that very circumstance will be some excuse for asking nobility for him; and the favour will come with the more grace, as Chatillon is somewhat a personal enemy of my own."
I thanked the Prince for his kind intentions, though I saw no great likelihood of their fulfilment, and fancied that, like the cottager in the fairy tale, Monsieur le Comte imagined himself a great conqueror, and gave away crowns and sceptres, though he had not two roods of land himself. But I was mistaken: the Count's expectations were much more likely to be accomplished than I had supposed, as I soon perceived, when he began to explain to me his views and situation.
When a man's mind is in doubt upon any subject, and he has heard reiterated a thousand times the various reasonings of his friends, without being able to choose his part determinately, it is wonderful with what eagerness he seeks for any new opinion to put him out of suspense--the most painful situation in which the human mind can remain. Thus the Count de Soissons, after having entertained me shortly with my own affairs, entered full career upon his; and briefly touching upon the causes which originally compelled him to quit the court of France, and retire to Sedan, he proceeded:--
"Here I would willingly have remained quiet and tranquil, till the course of time brought some change. I neither sought to return to a court where the king was no longer sovereign, nor to cabal against the power of a minister upheld by the weakness of the monarch. All I required was to be left at peace in this asylum, where I could be free from the insult and degradation which had been offered me at the court of France. I felt that I was sufficiently upholding the rights and privileges which had been transmitted to me by my ancestors, and maintaining the general cause of the nobility of France, by submitting to a voluntary exile, rather than yield to the ambitious pretensions of a misproud minister; and nothing would have induced me to raise the standard of civil war, even though the king's own good was to be obtained thereby, if Richelieu had but been content to abstain from persecuting me in my retirement. Not the persuasions of the Dukes of Vendome and La Valette, nor the entreaties of my best friend the Duke of Bouillon, nor the promises and seductions of the house of Austria, would have had any effect, had I been left at peace: but no! never for a day has the cardinal ceased to use every measure in his power to drive me to revolt. The truth is this: he calculates upon the death of my cousin Louis, and upon seizing on the regency during the dauphin's minority. He knows that there is no one who could and would oppose him but myself. The Duke of Orleans is hated and despised throughout France--the house of Condé is bound to the cardinal by alliance. He knows that he could not for a moment stand against me, without the king's support and authority; and he has resolved to ruin me while that support still lasts. For this purpose, he at one time offers me the command of one of the armies, that I may return and fall into his power; he at another threatens to treat me as a rebel and a traitor. He now proposes to me, a prince of the blood royal of France, a marriage with his upstart niece; and then menaces me with confiscation and attainder; while at the same time my friends on every side press me to shake off what they call apathy--to give my banner to the wind, and, marching upon Paris, to deliver the country, the king, and myself, of this nightmare cardinal, who sits a foul incubus upon the bosom of the state, and troubles its repose with black and frightful dreams."
As he went on, I could see that Monsieur le Comte worked himself up with his own words to no small pitch of wrath; calling to mind, one by one, the insults and injuries that the cardinal had heaped upon him, till all his slumbering anger woke up at once, and with a flashing eye, he added, "And so I will. By Heaven! I will hurl him from his usurped seat, and put an end to this tyranny, which has lasted too long." But very soon after, relapsing again into his irresolution, he asked, "What think you, Monsieur de l'Orme? Should I not be justified? Am I not called upon so to do?"
"I would pray your Highness," replied I, "not to make me a judge in so difficult a point; I am too young and inexperienced to offer an opinion where such great interests are concerned."
"Fie, fie!" cried he with a smile; "you, who have already acted the conspicuous part of member of the insurrectionary council of Catalonia! We are all inexperienced, in comparison with you.--Tell me, what had I better do?"