"How so?" demanded the hermit: "what wouldst thou say, boy? Why did not the good count go? Speak more plainly."
"Alas! good father, he is as mad as the moon!" replied the page; "something that happened this morning at Compiègne, his followers say, must have been the cause, for yesterday he was as wise and calm as ever. To-day, too, when he rose, he was gloomy and stern, they tell me, as he always is; but when he came back from the château, he was as mad as a Saracen santon."
The hermit clasped his hands, and knit his brows; and after thinking deeply for several minutes, he said, apparently more as a corollary to his own thoughts, than to the pages words, "Thus we should learn, never for any object, though it may seem good, to quit the broad and open path of truth. That word policy has caused, and will cause, more misery in the world, than all the plagues of Egypt. I abjure it, and henceforth will never yield a word's approval to aught that has even a touch of falsehood, be it but in seeming. Never deceive any one, youth! even to their own good, as thou mayest think; for thou knowest not what little circumstance may intervene, unknown to thee, and, scattering all the good designs of the matter to the wind, may leave the deceit alone, to act deep and mischievously. A grain of sand in the tubes of a clepsydra will derange all its functions, and throw its manifold and complicated movements wrong. How much more likely, then, that some little unforeseen accident in the intricate workings of this great earthly machine should prove our best calculations false, and whip us with our own policy! Oh! never, never deceive! Deceit in itself is evil, and intention can never make it good."
Though, like most people, who, when they discover an error in their own conduct, take care to sermonise some other person thereupon, the hermit addressed his discourse to Ermold de Marcy, his homily was in fact a reproach to himself; for, in the page's account of the count d'Auvergne's madness, he read, though mistakenly, the effects of the scheme he had sanctioned, as we have seen, for freeing the country from the interdict. For a moment or two, he still continued to think over what he had heard, inflicting on himself that sort of bitter castigation, which his stern mind was as much accustomed to address to himself as to others. He then turned again to the subject of De Coucy. "'Tis an unhappy accident, thou hast told me there, youth," he said, coming suddenly back, upon the subject, without any immediate connexion;--"'tis an unhappy accident,--both your lord being taken, and his brother in arms being unable to aid him; but we must see for means to gain his ransom, and, God willing! it shall be done."
"'Tis done already, father hermit," replied the page: "the noble count had not lost his love for sir Guy, though he had lost his own senses; and albeit he was in no state to manage the matter of the ransom himself, he gave me sufficient money. It lies there in that pouch, twelve thousand crowns, all in gold. Now, I dare not be riding about with such a sum; and so I have brought it to you to keep safe, while I go back and find out the earl of Salisbury, who, I have heard say, was an old companion of my master's in the Holy Land, and will tell me, for his love, into whose hands he has fallen. I will now lead my beast back to the village, by Vincennes, for carry me he can no farther; and, though I could stretch me here in your hut for the night, no stable is near, and my poor bay would be eaten by the wolves before daybreak. To-morrow, with the first ray of the morning, I set out to seek my lord, and find means of freeing him. 'Tis a long journey, and may be a long treaty. Give me, therefore, two months to accomplish it all; and if I come not then, think that the routiers have devoured me; and send, I pray thee, good father, to king Philip, and bid him see my lord ransomed."
"Stay, boy," said the hermit: "you must not go alone. To-morrow morning, speed to Paris; seek sir François de Roussy, Mountjoy king-at-arms; tell him I sent thee. Show him thy lord's case, and bid him give thee a herald to accompany thee on thine errand. Thus shall thou do it far quicker, and far more surely; and the herald's guerdon shall not be wanting when he returns."
The page eagerly caught at the idea, and the farther arrangements between himself and the hermit were easily made. After having yielded a few of its gold pieces, to defray the expenses of the page's journey, the pouch, with the money it contained, was safely deposited under the moss and straw of the hermit's bed; which place, as we have seen, had already, on one occasion, served a similar purpose. Ermold de Marcy then received the old man's blessing, and bidding him adieu, left him to contemplate more at leisure the news he had so suddenly brought him.
It was then, when freed from the immediate subject of De Coucy's imprisonment, which the presence of the page had of course rendered the first subject of consideration, that the mind of the hermit turned to the unhappy fate of Arthur Plantagenet. He paused for several moments, with his arms folded on his chest, drawing manifold sad deductions from that unhappy prince's claim to the crown of England, joined with his present situation, and his uncle's established cruelty. There were hopes that the English barons might interfere, or that shame and fear might lead John to hold his unscrupulous hand. But yet the chance was a frail one; and as the old man contemplated the reverse, he gave an involuntary shudder, and sinking on his knees before the crucifix, he addressed a silent prayer to Heaven, for protection to the unfortunate beings exposed to the cruel ambition of the weak and remorseless tyrant.
CHAPTER II.
There stood in ancient days, on the banks of the river Seine, a tall strong tower, forming one of the extreme defences of the city of Rouen towards the water. It has long, long been pulled down; but I have myself seen a picture of that capital of Normandy, taken while the tower I speak of yet stood; and though the painter had indeed represented it as crumbling and dilapidated, even in his day, there was still an air of menacing gloom in its aspect, that seemed to speak it a place whose dungeons might have chronicled many a misery--a place of long sorrows, and of ruthless deeds.