Those were not pleasant days to live in; and it is a very difficult thing for any one born in and accustomed to the bad comfortable modern days to realize those good old times. Espionage was then a great science, an honorable profession, practised by great dignitaries and men of high degree. Words brought men's heads to the block, and thoughts often conducted to a prison. There was no need of overt acts: intentions were quite sufficient; and friends and foes were so continually changing places that no one could tell that the thoughts uttered in the confidence of familiar intercourse would not be brought forward a few days or weeks later to lead one to the dungeon and the rack. Yet it is wonderful, unaccountable, how freely and daringly men spoke their mind,—how the grave condemnation, the witty lampoon, or the hideous libel, was disseminated without ceremony. Men laughed and had their heads chopped off,—and would have laughed still if they could have been fixed on again, I do believe; for nothing seemed a warning or a restraint.
Edward, however, born in a country where neither the reign of the Tudor nor of the Stuart had been able to crush out the spirit of liberty, loved not to be watched; and there is always something more alarming in the indefinite than the definite danger. He could not divine what was the object of the two strangers, if, indeed, they had any object, in thus persisting in following him. The cardinal had lacked no opportunity of detaining him at Nantes, or of arresting him on his journey, if he had thought fit; and yet he could not clear his mind from suspicion till he reached Franche Comté and found himself beyond the power of the French minister.
It may be necessary to remind the reader that Franche Comté was not annexed to France till the year 1668; and at the time of which I now write the important town of Gray was a fortified place, consisting of the city on the high ground strongly walled, and a suburb on the bank of the Saône, defended merely by a small battery. For a long period of troublous times, so frequent had been the visits of French exiles to Lorraine, Burgundy, and Franche Comté, that safe-conducts or passports from one country to another were very generally dispensed with in the country and in open towns; but in fortresses some trouble was experienced; and it is probable that the directions which the Duchesse de Chevreuse had given Edward Langdale to stop in the faubourg were intended to guard against his detention. The inn which she had named to him was good, however,—perhaps better than that in the upper town; and the appointed two days of Edward's stay passed dully but not unpleasantly. The horses were refreshed and the two men none the worse for the repose. For Edward himself, too, perhaps two days of thought were beneficial. Every man, in the toil and tumult and hurry of the world, requires some moment to pause and consider his position, to decide upon his future course, to apply the lesson of past errors, to take breath as it were amidst the bustle of existence. Edward was like a stout swimmer who had been suddenly plunged into a torrent, and was likely to be carried away by the flood which for the last three months had been whirling confusedly round him; and those two days at Gray were like a little island of dry ground where he could rest and scan his way to the opposite bank, avoiding the rocks and eddies which might impede or destroy him. It is a quaint old proverb, but a true one, that "a man who does not look clearly before him will often have to look sadly behind him;" and happy is he who has both the will and the time to do so.
Those two days then with Edward passed in almost uninterrupted thought; but at last the night of the second day came, and yet neither message nor letter had arrived. Supper had been eaten, and the horses had been ordered for daybreak on the following morning to proceed to Turin, when, toward nine o'clock, the landlord brought in a scrap of writing, asking Edward if that was intended for him. It was addressed in English,—"Master Edward Langdale,"—and underneath was written, "Join me at Chambéry or Aix. I shall be there from the twenty-ninth till the first."
No name was signed, but the writing was Lord Montagu's; and the landlord, on being questioned, said the paper had been given to him by a courier from Arnay le Duc going to Vesoul, who had gone on his way as soon as he had left it.
Now, Edward's knowledge of geography was considerable, and, as far as France and England were concerned, minute; but he had at Gray got somewhat out of his latitude, and the landlord had to be consulted as to the road to Aix and Chambéry. The good man was learned upon the subject, however, knew every inch of the road, he said, and could find his way in the dark. It was true, he added, that it was rather a wild way, and carriages could hardly go one-half the distance; but, as the gentleman had horses, it would be easily managed. He must first go straight to Dole, then from Dole to Lons-le-Saulnier, from Lons-le-Saulnier to Bourg or Nantua, and thence to the Pont du Sault. After that, he said, came Bellay and Aix and Chambéry; but there the traveller would have to ask every step of his way. It was a five days' journey, he remarked, and, ride as hard as you would, it would take four and a half.
Edward did ride hard, and the first part of the way was overcome in a much shorter space of time than the good host had anticipated; nor was it till the party had passed Bourg that any thing like difficulties occurred. It is as pleasant a ride in fine weather as any one can take, for the roads are now good and the scenery exceedingly picturesque without being fatiguingly grand; but neither Edward nor ourselves have any time to pause upon the beauties of nature. The roads, however, were then in a very different condition from that which they now display; and, indeed, the wonder-working eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have done more for few countries than for the districts lying between the Jura and the Rhone and Saône.
On the twenty-seventh of July, Edward Langdale and his party were within one short day's journey of Aix, and the early morning when they set out was fresh and beautiful. The hot summer sun was shaded by the rocks and forests, and the air was cooled by the mountain-breeze. As he was earlier than the first of the days named by Lord Montagu, the young traveller suffered his horses to proceed leisurely. But in this he made a mistake. Man always wants more money and time than he calculates upon; and nobody can tell what the want of an hour or a guinea may bring about.
As every one knows, the country which Edward had now to traverse is a land of rocks and mountains, of rivers and lakes. Not three miles can be passed without encountering some stream or torrent hurrying down to join the great Rhone; and at every mile, as the road then went, was some steep ascent or descent, flanked with rugged cliffs, sometimes covered with dark forests, sometimes naked and gray, with immense masses of stone impending over the traveller's head without the root of a single tree to bind them to the crag, while high up in front the Mont du Chat was seen from time to time rearing its rugged front and seeming to close the pass. About one o'clock, over the edges of the hills some heavy clouds were seen rising, knotty and dull, and of a deep lead-color, except where the sun tipped their edges with an ochrey yellow. The wind was from the northeast, and the clouds were coming from the south. But they did not heed the breeze, which soon began to fail before them.
"Let us ride faster," said Edward: "the road is good here." And on he went, keeping his eye on the heavy masses, but fearing no greater inconvenience than a wetting. He had never travelled in Savoy before. However, by quick trotting he saved himself and his followers for about two hours; but by the end of that time the sun was hidden and great drops began to fall. Then came the thunder echoing through the hills, and then a complete deluge. Every thing turned gray, and the old castles which strew that part of the country could hardly be distinguished from the rocks on which they stood.