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

by G. P. R. James

St. Real was not a man, however, to waste upon fruitless regrets those powers of mind which should be employed in forming and executing noble resolutions. He grieved bitterly for what was past, but he grieved only with the purpose of shaping his conduct differently for the future; and, as he turned again to enter the Hotel de Guise, it was with the full determination of never seeing Eugenie de Menancourt again, till the fate of Philip d'Aubin, as far as it was connected with hers, was fixed beyond all recall.

This resolution was joined with another, which rendered the first not difficult to execute. With all her art, with all her skill, with all her knowledge of human character, and with all her insight into that of St. Real, Madame de Montpensier had overreached herself. She had been able to comprehend and appreciate the simplicity and purity with which he was attached to Eugenie de Menancourt, without perceiving the nature of his own feelings; but the quality of her own mind prevented her from comprehending the deep firmness of principle which existed in his heart, and from foreseeing the means that principle would take to combat love as soon as ever the progress of the insidious enemy was discovered. The proposal that she had made to him had produced upon the mind of St. Real an effect the most directly opposite to that which she had intended. The character of the Duke of Mayenne St. Real could not but esteem: there was a dignity, a generosity, a frankness about it, which, together with his splendid talents, commanded no small admiration; and had St. Real been convinced that his opposition to his king, that his bold rebellion, that even his connexion with a party, factious, turbulent, and depraved, originated in motives of patriotism and virtue, his views of the League might have been modified by his opinion of the leader, and his ultimate conduct determined by the judgment he might form in regard to whether that leader's efforts would, or would not, be ultimately beneficial to his country. In the course of that night, however, he had heard and seen enough to convince him that the passion of Mayenne was ambition, and that his object was his own aggrandizement; and the only hold, therefore, that the League could have had upon St. Real would have been virtue, honour, and patriotism, in the whole, considered as a party.

The question, therefore, with the young Marquis had now become, whether the League did, or did not, possess such qualities. At the Jacobins, on the preceding night, however, he had witnessed the means employed by those who were considered the holiest men amongst them to obtain ends which he could not doubt were treacherous and bloody: that very night it had been calmly proposed to him, as a bribe to attach him to the party of the League, to betray his cousin's confidence, and to gratify his own passions at the expense of his honour and integrity. In his examination of the city during the day, he had seen the high and the noble demeaning themselves to court popularity by fawning on persons they despised--an irrefragable proof that their own designs were base; he had seen the good and the just in the filthy and unsparing hands of villains and plunderers; and he had seen those who professed to be the ministers of a God of peace armed to promote a civil war and to shed the blood of their fellow-creatures!

What then could be the result, he asked himself, when a leader, whose principle was ambition, took upon him to guide a fierce and lawless multitude, composed of nobles whose motive was selfishness, of priests whose spirit was fanaticism, and of a rabble whose objects were licentiousness, bloodshed, and plunder? The answer was not difficult; and, as he turned and mounted the staircase, amidst the crowd of lacqueys and attendants who stared at his thoughtful and abstracted demeanour without his noticing their presence, he determined to proceed to the royal camp as early as might be on the following morning, doubting not that, whatever might be the vices and the follies it presented to his sight, he should there find the path which led to his country's welfare, and, he trusted, also to his own peace of mind.

Passing the doors of the saloons, he proceeded to that part of the house in which was situated the apartments that had been assigned to him; and, sending for his master of the horse--a common officer at that time, in the houses of the principal French nobility--he directed him to have everything prepared to quit Paris by daybreak on the following morning. The earliness of the hour which he thus appointed was not dictated by any apprehension that Mayenne would endeavour to impede his departure; but, his resolution being taken, and his opinion fixed by the most favourable view that could be afforded him of the party of the League itself, he wished to avoid, as far as possible, anything like solicitation; and he likewise desired neither to explain his feelings, nor reason upon his motives, in the conduct he was about to pursue regarding Eugenie de Menancourt.

His sensations, indeed, upon the subject were so painful in themselves, that St. Real did not wish either to speak of or to dwell upon them. Arguing, with the usual simplicity of his nature, that, where our wishes and our duties are at variance, it is better to employ our thoughts in performing the duties, than to give them up to the hard task of combating the wishes--in which combat they are but too often defeated--he prepared to occupy all the energies of his mind in the attempt to serve his country, and to benefit to the utmost of his power the party he had determined to espouse, leaving his cousin to pursue his suit towards Eugenie de Menancourt as best he might, but endeavouring to serve him therein by pointing his efforts to nobler objects than had hitherto employed them, and by taking care that all he did should be placed in a fairer light than that in which the levity and somewhat vain indifference of d'Aubin had hitherto permitted his own actions to appear.

Poor St. Real, however, did not know how hard is the task--how painful, how continual is the struggle, to turn the thoughts of a feeling and affectionate heart from the objects of its first attachment, and to occupy, even in the busiest scenes and most stirring actions wherein other men find employment for their whole soul, a mind to which love has given its direction elsewhere. His first experience of what he was but too long to undergo, was made when he lay down to rest, on the night of which we have just spoken. He thought to sleep, to taste the same refreshing, undisturbed slumbers which were so rarely absent from his pillow; but, alas! alas! how changed were all his sensations. The burning thirst for thoughts to which he would not give way--the consciousness that he was resigning for ever that which would have made his happiness through life--anxieties, which he dared not probe, regarding the happiness of her he loved--self-reproaches, slight, indeed, but bitter, because they were the first he had ever had occasion to address to his own heart--and doubts respecting the conduct and vows of his cousin, which he now saw with eyes sharpened by love--all planted his pillow thick with thorns; and he tossed in feverish restlessness upon his uneasy couch, while slumber and all its wholesome balms were far away.

The sounds of music and of laughing, which to his saddened heart rang like the revelry of fiends, came in bursts up to his windows; and the roll of carriages, the trampling of horses, the shouts of torch-bearers, and the murmuring hum of a thousand less vociferous tongues, poured irritatingly upon his ear, and set sleep at defiance. Gradually, however, those sounds died away, and that space of time which the citizens of the masterless metropolis called a day, and set apart for the transaction of a certain portion of intrigue and faction, levity, sensuality, and bloodshed, came to an end. The bell of the neighbouring church, unheard during many an hour of turbulence and noise, struck two, and the whole world around sank into silence, if not into repose. Still, however, sleep came not to the eyes of St. Real; and he lay and counted the moments till a new class of sounds were heard, announcing that the sons of toil were up and busy in the task of preparing luxuries for the sons of idleness and dissipation. At length, a faint rosy light was seen to glimmer through the open window, the indistinct forms of the massive furniture began to stand out from the gray darkness, and St. Real started up more weary and fatigued with that one night of restless anxiety than he would have felt after weeks of watching in the tented field.

The first task, after dressing himself, was to sit down, and, with the writing materials that stood at hand, to indite a brief note to the Duke of Mayenne, apologizing for not waiting to make a more formal leave-taking. He did not, it is true, announce in distinct terms his determination of joining his arms to the other supporters of the royal cause, because he felt it was within the bounds of possibility that circumstances might yet change his purpose; though, as he left the matter still open, he thought that bad must be the scene presented by the camp of the Henrys indeed, if it could make him prefer the craft, the treachery, and the baseness he had beheld in Paris. In this respect, while expressing his high opinion of the Duke himself, he did not scruple to use language and to display sentiments which had already brought many a venerable and respected head low, amongst the factions and anarchy of the day; and, having said enough to show which way his feelings at that moment led him, he descended to the court, and, mounting his horse, which, with his train, stood prepared for departure, he bade adieu to the Hotel de Guise.

The streets of Paris now presented a very different scene from that which they afforded in either the full life of the risen day, or in the dregs of the evening. Few were the persons to be seen walking slowly along in the fresh, clear, unpolluted light of the early morning; and the long irregular perspective of the antique streets might be seen unencumbered by the many gaudy vehicles which obstructed the sight at a later hour. As St. Real rode on towards the suburbs, one or two patrols of horse, returning from their night watch beyond the walls, passed him with tired faces and soiled arms; but, although the numbers that composed his train were sufficient to have justified some inquiry, yet such was the confused organization of the garrison of Paris, and of the army of the League in general, that no one asked his errand, and he passed on uninterrupted to the gates.