“Well, so be it then,” answered the Statesman. “You are now, as you wished to be, intrusted with an affair of more importance than stopping a courier, or carrying off a weak girl; and as the reward is greater, so would be the punishment in case you were to betray your trust. I rely on your honour; but let me hint at the same time, that there is such a thing as the rack, which has more than once been applied to persons who reveal State secrets. Keep good account of your expenses, and such as are truly incurred for the Government, the Government wall pay.”
Thus ended the conference between Chavigni and the Norman, neither of whom we shall follow much farther in this volume. Of Chavigni it is only necessary to say, that immediately after the departure of Pauline he proceeded to the Louvre to wait the arrival of Louis the Thirteenth, who soon after entered Paris, accompanied by the Queen, Cinq Mars, and all the usual attendants of the court, and followed by the Cardinal and those members of the Council who had not previously arrived along with Chavigni.
In regard to the Norman, inspired by the agreeable prospect of a thousand crowns, he was not long in visiting the Chapel of the Palais Cardinal, where the Priest speedily united him to a black-eyed damsel that he brought in his hand. Who this was, it does not suit me to discover to the reader. If he have found it out already, I cannot help it; but if he have not, I vow and protest that in the whole course of this true history I will afford him no farther explanation; no, not even in the last sentence of the last page of the last volume.
Immediately after their marriage the Norman put his bride upon horseback and proceeded to Brie, each carrying behind them a valise, containing a variety of articles which would doubtless greatly edify the reader to learn, but which unfortunately cannot now be detailed at full length, the schedule having been lost some years after by one of their collateral descendants in the great fire of London, where it had found its way in consequence of the revocation of the edict of Nantes. All that can be affirmed with certainty is, that in the valise of the Norman were three shirts and a half with falling collars, according to the fashion of that day; a pourpoint or doublet of blue velvet, (which was his best,) and a cloak to match; also (of the same stuff) a haut-de-chausses, which was a machine then used for the same purpose as a pair of breeches now-a-days; and over and above all the rest was his Astrologer’s robe and grey beard, folded round a supernumerary brace of pistols, and a small stiletto. Into the Lady’s wardrobe we shall not inquire: suffice it to say, that it accompanied its mistress safe from Brie to Troyes, where, putting up at the Grand Soleil, the Norman began his perquisitions concerning Fontrailles.
Now having left all my friends and acquaintances at sixes and sevens, I shall close this volume; and if the reader be interested in their fate, he may go on to the next, in which I mean utterly to annihilate them all, leaving nothing behind but the sole of the Count de Blenau’s shoe, with FINIS at the bottom of the page.
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
| Typographical error corrected by the etext transcriber: |
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| aud the servant again=> and the servant again {pg 118} |