The sky, we have said, was brighter, the day more cheerful, and the scenery itself gradually assuming a finer and a bolder character. Entering that hilly district which lies between Limoges and Tulle, the road was constantly ascending or descending. Wide woods and moors, broken by rocks and streams, were seen on either side; while now a soft green meadow covered the slope, now a rich-coloured fallow field showed traces of man's industrious hand. Here and there, too, a cottage appeared, with its little garden and orchard round about it; here and there a forge, while the castellated houses of many of the small provincial nobility showed their glittering weathercocks above the grey woods. The aspect of the whole scene was very peaceful; and so, indeed, that part of the country was at the time; for no towns of sufficient consequence were near to render it, though extremely defensible, worth the while of any of the various parties which tore the state to defend it against the rest. Through these scenes the young count and his attendants rode on during the day, till they came to their gîte for the night, at the pleasant-named town of St. Germain les belles Filles.
When the young Count de Logères sat down to supper, with none but one habitual attendant near him--while the rest of his train dined at a table at the other end of the hall--his mind drew up the short summary of what changes of feeling his heart had undergone, which we are almost always inclined to make unconsciously, when we come to the end of a day's journey.
It were vain to say that the scenes through which he had passed, or the aspect of the day, or the occupation of his thoughts by the boy that he had freed, had made his heart lighter; but they had, perhaps, taught that heart to bear its load more firmly. He still thought of Marie de Clairvaut with the intense passion of first, true, ardent love. He felt but the more convinced, at every step he took away from her, that that love would last throughout his being. He felt that, without her, life was now a blank, void of the grand pointing interest of existence--void of all sustaining power, but a knowledge of rectitude, and a purpose of endurance. It was hard, far more hard, for a young heart like his, that had seldom, if ever, tasted sorrow before, or known affliction, to undergo at once the extinction of that brightest of life's lights, the hope of mutual affection. We value not our minor sorrows sufficiently: there are great ones to be endured by every man on earth; and did not the lesser ones prepare us gently for the burden, we should be crushed under the first mighty misfortune that befall us. But Charles of Montsoreau had known few, so few, that he felt, as it were, stunned and benumbed by the weight of grief that now came upon him. He had been deprived of the belief that he possessed the love of Marie de Clairvaut; he had abandoned the hope and task of winning that love; and, at the same time, the deep, warm confidence which he had ever till that moment possessed in his brother's strong, unalterable affection, had been swept away too. He could regard Gaspar de Montsoreau no longer as he had regarded him; he could think of him no longer as he had thought; he could not respect or esteem him as heretofore; and all the fraternal love that remained in his bosom towards his brother, rendered him but the more sorrowful, that his brother was less worthy than he thought.
He was sad and gloomy then, and that sadness was seen in every look and action: he seemed scarcely to know what were the meats placed before him, and only mechanically to taste of that which was next to him. After he had eaten as much as was necessary to satisfy mere nature, he leaned his head upon his hand, and fell into deep thought, which was only interrupted by the low sweet voice of the boy, who had come quietly up to his side, saying, "May I not sing to you, sir count? I have seen a song prove better sauce to a poor meal than a duke's kitchen could produce."
"It would not be so with me, Ignati," replied the Count. "You shall not sing to me to-night, my good boy; but go to bed, and rest your young limbs."
Though he refused him, yet the voluntary offer the boy had made came sweetly; for, on the first sweep of disappointment's heavy wing, a sort of misanthropy is cast upon us which we own not even to our own hearts. We doubt, without our will, that there is such a thing as affection, or gratitude, or kindly feeling, or generous sensibility left upon earth; and it is sweet, and happy, and consoling when any thing happens, however light or small, to show us feelingly that our dark judgment of the world was wrong. He still refused the boy's music, however, though kindly; for he was busy with his own thoughts, and wished to pursue them undisturbed.
On the following morning he continued his journey: nor is it worth while to follow him day by day, while, taking his way by Bourges and Chalons, he approached the north-eastern frontier of France. The journey was long and tedious, but it was accomplished without any accident or interruption; and, indeed, till he approached near the frontiers of Lorraine, the traces of the war which desolated France were comparatively small. Commerce, indeed, there was little or none throughout the land; but agriculture was pursued with less difficulty; and in those districts where the strife was not actually going on, the first return of spring saw the husbandman again in the field.
The neighbourhood of Troyes and Chalons, however, began to show evident marks of the ravages of war: the fields were uncultivated; the towns guarded with rigorous strictness; no tall ricks of corn were seen near the farm-house; the cattle lowed not in the plains; the shepherd turned anxiously round at every sound of a horse's steps; and, in many places, the vineyards themselves showed the marks of fire, and the vines were seen cut down and piled up for fuel. Wherever the traveller stopped and inquired what was the cause of the destruction he beheld, he was told that a body of reiters had pillaged here, or a horde of Germans wasted there; and, although there were some who ventured, in the angry indignation of their heart, to curse both the house of Guise and the house of La Mark, and to express their horror of all parties alike, yet it was evident that the chivalrous spirit of the Guises, their gracious demeanour, and their heroic actions against a foreign enemy, had in general won the love of the people, so that they were greatly preferred to the Protestant princes of Sedan, who had led an army of thirty thousand strangers to the invasion of their native country.
Charles of Montsoreau learned all these tales as he passed; and at each inn where he stopped he received some warning not to advance rashly in this direction, or in that, lest he should meet with some of the scattered bands who had turned their swords into reaping hooks in a very different sense from the pacific one, and were gathering in a harvest which they had not sown, from the fears and necessities of the country.
Thus it happened in setting out from Chalons, the good aubergiste, who had taken care to extract from the purse of the young nobleman as much as could be obtained with any appearance of honesty, counselled him strongly, instead of pursuing the high road towards Rheims, to follow the way along the river towards Mareuil, and thence across the country. "For," said he, "there is a band of at least fifty reiters have been watching the Rheims' gate for the last ten days, and have taken toll of every one that passed, be he citizen or gentleman. Your train, too, is so scanty, young sir, that one sees evidently you come from a quieter place. Why, no one here ever thinks of riding without forty men at least; and the good Duke of Guise dare not go himself from one château to another without a hundred salads at his back."