Leonora D'Orco: A Historical Romance

by G. P. R. James

CHAPTER XXXIII.

In change lies all our joy; in change lies all our pain. Change is the true Janus whose two faces are always looking different ways. I know not whether it may please the reader, but I must change the place and the time, and change it so suddenly and so far as to pass over for a time, events not only interesting in themselves, but affecting deeply the fate of those who have formed the principal objects of my history. Yet it must be so, for there are inexorable laws established by judges against whom is no appealing, which limit the teller of a tale to a certain space; and were I to relate in detail all the events which occupied the two years succeeding the events last mentioned in this book, I should far transgress the regulations of the craft, and perhaps exhaust the patience of my readers. Those events, therefore, must be gathered from others which followed, and, indeed, perhaps this is the best, as it certainly is the shortest way of giving them to the public.

There is a fine old chateau in the south of France, two towers of which are still standing, and hardly injured by the tooth of time. I have a picture of it before me by the hand of one who, born in lofty station and of surpassing excellence, was, as a beacon at a port of refuge, raised high to direct aright all who approached her, who lived not only honoured, but beloved, and has not left a nobler or a better behind. Her eye can never see these lines; her ear can never hear these words; but I would that this work were worthy to be a monument more lasting than brass, to write on it an epitaph truer than any that ever consoled the living or eulogised the dead.

I have the picture before me, with two great towers standing on the wooded hill, with vineyards at the foot, and many a ruined fragment scattered round, showing where the happy and the gay once trod, and commenting silently upon the universal doom. Oh! a ruin is the best memento mori, for it tells not the fate of one, but of many generations, and gives to death that universality which most impresses the mind and most prepares the heart.

Those buildings were all fresh, and many of them new at the time of which I write. Not a century had passed since the first stone of the whole edifice was laid; and sumptuously furnished, after the fashion of those times, was the great suite of rooms occupying one floor of both those great towers and of the connecting building, now fallen.

In one of these rooms was a fine hall, lighted by windows of many-coloured glass, with two oriels or bays penetrating the thick walls and projecting into air, supported by light brackets and corbels of stonework without. The floor of those bays was raised two or three steps above the ordinary level of the hall, and each formed, as it were, a separate room within the room.

In one of those bays, just two years after the event which closed the last chapter, sat a tall, powerful man of perhaps thirty-six years of age, dressed in those gorgeous garments of peace which were common to the higher classes in that day. His face was somewhat weather-beaten; there was a scar upon his cheek and on his hand, and the short, curling hair over the forehead had been somewhat worn away by the pressure of the helmet. On the back of the head and on the temples it flowed in unrestrained luxuriance, somewhat grey, indeed, but with the deep brown predominating.

At his knee, on a stool of Genoa velvet--it was her favourite seat--was a beautiful girl, seemingly sixteen or seventeen years of age, fair as a snow-drop, with light, flowing hair, and eyes of violet-blue, deep fringed and tender. Her head rested against his side, her arm lay negligently upon his knee, and those blue eyes were turned towards his face with a look of love--nay, almost of adoration.

They were De Vitry and Blanche Marie, some two months after their marriage. Her good old grandsire, on his bed of death, had committed her to the guardianship of the King of France, with the request that in two years he would bestow her hand upon the gallant soldier, if she loved him still. Nor had that love for a moment faltered, while, under the care of fair Anne of Brittany, she had passed the allotted time at the court of France; and now she was happy--oh! how supremely blessed with him whose character, without shade or concealment, with all its faults and all its perfections, had stood plain and straightforward from the first.

But why does De Vitry turn his eyes so often towards the window and gaze forth upon the road, which, winding down from the castle, ploughs its way through the thick vineyard, and, crossing the Isere by its bridge of stone, ascends the opposite slopes?