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

by G. P. R. James

CHAPTER VI.

A month and some days succeeded--full of events important to France, it is true, but containing nothing calculated to affect materially the course of this history; and I shall, therefore, pass over in my narrative that lapse of time without comment, changing the scene also without excuse.

There is in France a forest, in the heart of which I have spent many a happy hour--which, approaching the banks of the small river Iton, spreads itself out over a large tract of varied and beautiful ground between Evreux and Dreux, sweeping round that habitation of melancholy memories called Navarre, filled with the recollections of Turennes and Beauharnois. Over a much greater extent of ground, however, than the forest, properly so called, now occupies, large masses of thicket and wood, with, occasionally, much more splendid remnants of the primeval covering of earth, show how wide the forest of Evreux must have spread in former years; and, in fact, the records of the times of which I write compute the extreme length thereof at thirty-five French leagues; while the breadth seems to have varied at different points from five to ten miles.

In the space thus occupied, was comprised almost every description of scenery which a forest can display; hill and dell, rock and river, with sometimes even a meadow or a corn-field presenting itself in different parts of the wood, which was also traversed by two high roads--the one leading from Touraine, and the other from Alençon, Caen, and the northern parts of Normandy. These high roads, however, were, from the very circumstances of time, but little frequented; for the eloquent words of Alexis Monteil, in describing the state of France in the days of the League, afford no exaggerated picture:--"France, covered with fortified towns, with houses, with castles, with monasteries enclosed with walls within which no one entered, and from which no one issued forth, resembled a great body mailed, armed, and stretched lifeless on the earth."

Nevertheless, interest and necessity either lead or compel men to all things; and along the line of the two high roads already mentioned were scattered one or two villages and hamlets--the inhabitants of which had little to lose--and a number of detached houses, the proprietors of which were willing to risk a little in the hopes of gaining much. The fronts of these houses, by the various signs and inscriptions which they bore, gave notice to the wayfaring traveller, sometimes that man and horse could be accommodated equally well within those walls; sometimes that the human race could there find rest and food, if unaccompanied by the four-footed companion whose greater corporeal powers we have made subservient to our greater cunning. According to the strict letter of the existing laws, we find that the auberge for foot passengers was forbidden to lodge the equestrian, and that the auberge for cavaliers had no right to receive the traveller on foot. But these laws, like all other foolish ones, were neglected or evaded in many instances; and he who could pay well for his entertainment was, of course, very willingly admitted to the mercenary hospitality of either the one or other class of inns, whether he made use of the two identical feet with which nature had provided him, or borrowed four more for either speed or convenience.

Notwithstanding the turbulent elements which rendered every state of life perilous in those days, the landlord of the auberge, however isolated was his dwelling, did not, in fact, run so much risk as may be supposed; for by a sort of common consent, proceeding from a general conviction of the great utility of his existence, and the comfort which all parties had at various times derived from his ever-ready welcome, the innkeeper's dwelling was almost universally exempt from pillage, except, indeed, in those cases where the party spirit of the day had got the better of that interested moderation in politics which is such a distinguishing feature of the class, and had led him to espouse one of the fierce factions of the times with somewhat imprudent vehemence. Nevertheless, it need hardly be said, that between the several villages, and the several detached houses which chequered the forest of Evreux, large spaces were left without anything like a human habitation; and the traveller on either of the two highways, or on any of the multifarious cross-roads which wandered through the woods, might walk on for many a long and weary mile, without seeing anything in the likeness of mankind. Perhaps, indeed, he might think himself lucky if he did find it so; for--as there then existed three or four belligerent parties in France, besides various bodies who took advantage of the discrepancy of other people's opinions upon most subjects, to assert their own ideas of property at the point of the sword--there was every chance that, in any accidental rencontre, the traveller would find the first person he met a great deal more attached to the sword than to the olive branch.

A little more than a month, then, after the funeral of the old Marquis of St. Real, in a part of the forest where a few years before the axe had been busy amongst the taller trees, there appeared a group of several persons, two of whom have already been introduced to the notice of the reader. The spot in which they were seated was a small dry grassy strip of meadow by the side of a clear little stream, which at a hundred yards distance crossed the high road from Touraine. From the bank of the stream the ground rose very gradually for some way, leaving a space of perhaps fifty yards in breadth free of underwood or bush. It then took a bolder sweep, and became varied with manifold trees and shrubs; and then, breaking into rock as it swelled upwards, it towered into a high and craggy hill, diversified with clumps of the fine tall beeches which the axe had spared, and clothed thickly, wherever the soil admitted it, with rich underwood, springing up from the roots of larger trees long felled. On the other side again, the ground sloped away so considerably, that had the stream flowed straight on, it would have formed a cataract; and as the eye rested on the clear water, winding in a thousand turns within a very short distance of the edge of the descent, and seeming to seek a way over without being able to find it, one felt as we do in gazing upon a child in a meadow looking for something it has lost, which we ourselves see full well, yet cannot resolve to point out, lest the little seeker should desist from all the graceful vagaries of his search. Various bends and knolls, however, confined the rivulet to the course it had taken; but still the whole ground on that side was low, and at one point sunk much beneath the spot where the travellers before mentioned were seated, affording--over the green tree-tops--a beautiful view of a long expanse of varied ground, lying sweet in the misty light of summer, with many a wide and undulating sweep, fainter and more faint, till some grey spires marked the position of a distant town, and cut the line of the horizon.

The party here assembled consisted of five persons: the first of whom was the page already described under the name of Leonard de Monte, and who, now stretched upon the ground, seemed making a light repast, while the dwarf Bartholo, standing beside him, filled a small horn cup with wine from a gourd he carried, and presented it to the young Italian with a low inclination of the head. The other three personages who made up the group were evidently servants. The colours of their dress, however, were very different from those of the Marquis of St. Real, and they were also armed up to the teeth, though their garb bespoke them the followers of some private individual, and not soldiers belonging to any of the parties which then divided the land. Besides the human denizens of the scene, five horses were browsing the forest grass at a little distance. Three of these were equipped with saddles; while two still bore about them the rough harness, if harness it could be called, by means of which they had been attached to a small vehicle, somewhat between a carriage and a car, which, with its leathern curtains and its wicker frame, might be seen peeping out from amongst the bushes hard by.

While the page concluded his repast, two of the servants--the other seemed the driver of the carriage--stood behind him with their arms folded on their bosoms, but still in an attitude so common in those times of trouble as to have found its way into most of the pictures which have come down from that epoch to the present. The same movement which crossed the right and left arms over the chest had easily brought the hilt of the sword, and the part of the broad belt in which it hung, up from the haunch to the breast, where the weapon was supported by the pressure of the left arm and the right hand, and was ever ready for service at a moment's notice. The youth, however, who was the principal person of the party, and the dwarf, who seemed to ape his demeanour, wore their swords differently, following the extravagant court fashion of the day, and throwing the weapon which, in those times, might be needed at every instant, so far behind them, that the hilt was concealed by the short cloak then worn, and would have been out of the reach of any but a very dexterous hand.

When the page had concluded his repast, he wiped his dagger on the grass, and returned it to the sheath; and then, making the dwarf mingle some water from the stream with the wine he offered, he asked, ere he drank, "Are you sure, Bartholo, right sure, that we have passed them?"