“Even so,” answered the man; “and if I forget not, thou art the Woodman’s boy. But come, prithee, tell us what is thy real errand with the Count. We are all his friends, you know; and selling him the wood is all a tale.”
Charles thought for a moment, to determine whether he should tell the man all he knew or not; but remembering the answer his father had furnished him with, he replied, “The truth then is, I carry him a note from a lady.”
“Oh, ho! my little Mercury!” cried the servant; “so you are as close with your secrets as if you were an older politician. This is the way you sell wood, is it?”
“I do not know what you mean by Mercury,” rejoined the boy.
“Why he was a great man in his day,” replied the servant, “and, as I take it, used to come and go between the gods and goddesses; notwithstanding which, Monsieur Rubens, who is the greatest painter that ever lived, has painted this same Mercury as one of the late Queen’s[A] council, but nevertheless he was a carrier of messages, and so forth.”
[A] Alluding, no doubt, to the picture of the reconciliation of Mary de Medicis and her son Louis XIII. in which Mercury seems hand in glove with the cardinals and statesmen of the day.
“Why, then, thou art more Mercury than I, for thou carriest a message, and I a letter,” answered Charles, as they approached the hotel of the Count, towards which they had been bending their steps during this conversation. Their proximity to his dwelling, in all probability, saved Charles from an angry answer; for his companion did not seem at all pleased with having the name of Mercury retorted upon himself; and intending strongly to impress upon the Woodman’s boy that he was a person of far too great consequence to be jested with, he assumed a tone of double pomposity towards the servant who appeared on the steps of the hotel. “Tell Henry de La Mothe, the Count’s page,” said the servant, “that the Marquise de Beaumont has sent to inquire after his master’s health.”
The servant retired with the message, and in a moment after Henry de La Mothe himself appeared, and informed the messenger that his master was greatly better. He had slept well, he said, during the night; and his surgeons assured him that the wounds which he had received were likely to produce no farther harm than the weakness naturally consequent upon so great a loss of blood as that which he had sustained. Having given this message on his master’s account, Henry, on his own, began to question the servant concerning many little particulars of his own family; his father being, as already said, Fermier to Madame de Beaumont.
Charles, the Woodman’s son, perceiving that the conversation had turned to a subject too interesting soon to be discussed, glided past the Marchioness’s servant, placed the note he carried in the hand of the Count’s Page, pressed his finger on his lip, in sign that it was to be given privately, and detaching himself from them, without waiting to be questioned, drove back his mule through the least known parts of the forest, and rendered an account to his father of the success of his expedition.
“Who can that note be from?” said the Marchioness de Beaumont’s servant to Henry de La Mothe. “The boy told me, it came from a lady.”