One in a Thousand; or, The Days of Henri Quatre

by G. P. R. James

Eugenie instinctively shrunk back farther into the corner of the carriage, and the king proceeded; "But we must get you a horse, at all events. Colonel James, send up some of your arquebusiers to that farm-house upon the hill, and see whether in the stables thereof you can find a horse. As your fire has killed one of the beasts which were dragging these two young gentlemen, it is but fit you should take the trouble of providing them with another."

The king waited to know if his embassy were successful; and after having seen the soldiers return with a strong cart horse, which was instantly harnessed to the carriage, in the place of the dead one, he gave orders for a party of troopers to escort the young wanderers as far as the Pont de l'Arche; and then, taking his leave, rode on towards his camp.

When the carriage was once more in motion, Eugenie breathed again; but still, at every place where it stopped her terrors were renewed, and she gazed out, with alarm and anxiety, upon the dark figures of the soldiery, who watched with unsleeping vigilance in the camp of the warrior monarch, till, at the Pont de l'Arche, which was the advanced post of the king's army, the horse they had obtained was exchanged for another, and they rolled on more smoothly towards the little hamlet of St. Ouen. The fears of Eugenie de Menancourt were during those moments of a very varied kind; for with her terrors so strongly roused as they had been, she found it impossible to submit them entirely to the influence of reason; and yet, strange to say, the thing she dreaded most, after immediate personal danger was over, was to meet and be known by the man whom she now felt, she loved more than any other being upon earth. She shrunk from the thought of seeing St. Real in the garb that she had assumed to escape from the persecution of his cousin,--she shrunk even from the thought of seeing him, now that a ceremony, however vain, illegal, and compulsory, had taken place between her and any other; and though she felt, even to pain, how much she detested the Count d'Aubin, and how much she loved St. Real, yet it seemed to her as if she had wronged her love for him in not dying sooner than suffering even the shadow of an engagement to pass between herself and another. Thus, it was not till they had passed the extreme outpost of the royal camp, and were rolling along in the quiet darkness of the night, that she breathed at ease, free from the constant expectation of seeing the Marquis of St. Real gallop up to the side of the carriage, and recognise her under her disguise.

At the little village of St. Ouen all the world was sound asleep; and manifold were the strokes of sword hilts upon the door of the auberge, many the shouts up to the unlistening windows, before the inmates could be roused to comprehend that there were strangers on the road demanding admission. At length, the hostess, half dressed, and scarcely half awake, came scolding down the stairs, extremely angry that anyone should travel at such unseemly hours; and on her steps soon followed her husband, a big burly Norman, but shrewd withal, and sufficiently sensible of his own interests to smother all expression of annoyance, and give his guests the best welcome that he could.

Early the next morning, the carriage was again in motion, but not before some of the light troops of the matutinal monarch of France were upon the road, and Eugenie was more than once alarmed by their gazing boldly into the vehicle when the curtains were undrawn, and by talking to the driver and the servants when the carriage was closed. These parties, however, as they marched but slowly, and the carriage went fast, were soon passed, and the rest of the journey proceeded as peaceably as any journey could do in those disturbed and unhappy days. Beatrice of Ferrara, after the experiment at Heudbouville, did not suffer herself again to be drawn from the route which she had laid out at first for her fair friend, but advanced as rapidly as possible towards the sea-side, seeing security only in the hope of Henry's army still interposing between them and the League, and thus preventing all search for Eugenie de Menancourt in the direction which she had really followed.

"At all events, dear Eugenie," she said, as they approached Dieppe, "here, upon the sea-coast, you will always have an opportunity of escape to England, should need be; and I will take care that our friend King Henry shall furnish you with such letters to the queen of those bold islanders, as to ensure you protection and assistance. For my part, you know, Eugenie, after a week or fortnight's rest, I must leave you, if you can do without me. My destiny, dear girl, has to be fulfilled, and I must back to Paris by a different road, both to hide my having aught to do with your successful flight, and to watch the progress of all on which my ultimate fate depends."

"Would to Heaven," said Eugenie de Menancourt, "that I could have such a happy and saving influence on your fate, Beatrice, as you have had on mine! But I am destined only to be a burden to you, and to rely upon you for everything, without knowing or comprehending the past or the present, as far as it regards you, without understanding your means, your wishes, or your purposes."

"I will tell you all, dear Eugenie, I will tell you all," replied Beatrice of Ferrara; "and then, as my daring rashness was necessary to give vigour to your timid nature, your gentle counsel may now perhaps tend to moderate and restrain my bold, wild schemes. But wait till we come to a resting-place, and then in some sweet quiet cottage in green Normandy, with the soft autumn sun shining upon our door, I will rest beside you for a short time, and drawing you a picture of my wayward fate, will see whether we cannot find means to give it a brighter colouring and a happier hue."

So spake Beatrice of Ferrara; but ere we go on to look into the picture to which she alluded, we must beg the reader to pause for a few minutes, upon some of those dull details, which in books calling themselves historical romances serve the mind as bad post-houses on a much-travelled road--places where, after scampering on for many a league in pursuit of pleasure, the little traveller is obliged to stop, kicking his heels in impatient irritation till the horses are brought out, the harness prepared, the postilion has got into his boots, the lash is put on his whip, and, in short, all is made ready for carrying on that same little eager traveller, the human mind, once more upon his way.

Giving up, then, heroes and heroines, knights and ladies, we must even follow the progress of that lumbering and uninteresting machine called an army, and pause for a while to consider its clumsy and crocodile-like movements. We have already seen that on the day preceding Eugenie de Menancourt's escape from Paris, the camp of the besieging Royalists had broken up; and that the gay and chivalrous Henry Quatre led his meagre and somewhat ill-furnished host down the bright and laughing banks of the Seine, in such a direction that, should need be, he could either march across Normandy, and fall back upon Touraine, or advance at once to the sea-coast, and cover the disembarkation of his English allies.