The night was dark and gloomy. A thousand black clouds were flitting over the sky, borne by a quick rough breeze, which ever and anon, with wild caprice, would scatter them abroad, leaving the yellow moonlight to shine bright upon their white edges, and pour a flood of mellow radiance on the world below, and then again would whirl some deep shadowy mass up from the profound verge of the horizon, and once more overwhelm all in gloom and obscurity.
Amidst such occasional glimpses of moonlight, struggled on from the village of Vincennes, through the great forest of St. Mandé, a stout, short man, wrapped in an immense cloak, and preceded by a boy holding a torch, which the high wind threatened every moment to extinguish.
"Art thou sure thou knowest the way, urchin?" cried the man, in a wearied and panting tone, which argued plainly enough that his corpulency loved not deeply the species of stumbling locomotion, to which his legs subjected his paunch, amidst the roots and stones of the forest path.--"Art thou sure that thou knowest the road?--Jesu preserve me! I would not lose my way here, to be called to the conclave!"
"Oh, I know the way well!" replied the boy, in a shrill treble. "I come here every day to ask the prayers of the holy hermit for my grandmother, who is ninety years of age, and sick of a hydropsy."
"Better pray God to take her, rather than to leave her!" replied his companion. "'Tis a foolish errand mine,--'tis a foolish errand!" he continued, speaking peevishly to himself, as he struggled to shake off a pertinacious branch of withered thorn which, detached from its parent bush, clung fondly to the tail of his robe, and trailed solemnly on behind him. "Not the errand itself, which is holy, just, and expedient; but the coming at night.--Take care, urchin! The wind will blow it out, if you flaunt it after such a fashion. The coming at night! Yet what could I do? The canon of St. Berthe's said true--that if I came in the day, folks would say I could not govern my diocese myself. I told you so, foolish child! I told you so! Now, what are we to do?" continued he, raising his voice to the very highest pitch of dismay and crossness, as a sharp gust of wind, up one of the long glades, extinguished completely the flame of the torch, which had for some time been wavering with a very undecided sort of flicker:--"now, what are we to do?"
"Oh, I know the way, as well without the light as with," replied the same childish voice: "I'll lead you right, beau sire."
"Ay, ay, child," said the other; "but I love not forests in the dark:--this one has a bad name too--'tis said more sorts of evil spirits than one haunt it. The Lord be merciful unto us! The devil is powerful in these hours of darkness! And besides, there are other dangers--" Here he stumbled over one of the large roots of an elm, shot across the path, and would doubtless have fallen at full length, had not his little guide's shoulder come opportunely in the way of his hand, as it sprawled forth in the act of descent, and thus afforded him some stay!--"Cursed be the root!" cried he;--"cursed be it, above the earth and under the earth!--cursed be it in this life, and to all eternity! Amen.--Lord have mercy upon me! Sinner that I am! I am repeating the anathema. It will never go out of my head, that anathema--cursed be it!--Boy, is it far off still?--Did not you hear a noise?" he added suddenly.
"I hear the rustling of the wind," replied the child, "but nothing more. You folks that do not live near the forests do not know what sounds it makes sometimes."
"Evil spirits, boy!--evil spirits!" cried the man. "Evil spirits, I tell thee, screaming in their malice; but I vow I hear a rushing, as if there were some wild beasts.--Hark! hark!" and he grasped the boy's arm, looking round and round in the darkness, which his fancy filled with all the wild creation of fear.
"Ne in furore tuo arguas me, Domine, neque in irâ tuâ corripias me. Miserere mei, Domine, quoniam infirmus sum!" cried the frightened traveller; when suddenly the clouds rolled white away from the face of the moon, and her beams for a moment, streaming down clear upon them, showed the wide open glade of the wood, untenanted by any one but themselves, with the old ruined tomb in the forest, and the rude hut of Bernard the hermit, "Kyrie eleïson! Christe eleïson!" cried the traveller, at the sight of these blessed rays; and running forward to reach the dwelling of the hermit, before the clouds again brought darkness over the face of the earth, he arrived, all breathless and panting, and struck hard with his fist against the closed door. "Open, open! brother Bernard! and let me in," he cried loudly. "Let me in, before the moon goes behind the cloud again."