I started, and raised my eyes, and instantly from behind one of the large heavy pillars looked out the ghastly countenance of my dying enemy, with the same look of bitter hatred convulsing his pale features, that they had borne ere his eyes closed for ever.
THE PLACE OF DREAMS.
I suppose that all human beings feel alike on those points, but certainly when the sun shines I am materially happier; his brightness seems to penetrate into the heart, and to make it expand like a flower.
The first decidedly fine weather we had had since our arrival in France, began at Le Mans, and during our journey towards Tours, through a country that became richer and more rich as we advanced; scarcely a cloud overshadowed the sky, except occasionally one of those light summer vapours that, skimming along over the landscape, gave a partial shadow as it passed, enough to vary, but not darken, the scene.
At Château du Loir we began to meet with the abundance of Touraine. Fine peaches at six for four sous, and delicious pears at a price still lower, with grapes for a penny the cluster, all began to show that we progressed in a land of summer. It was here, too, that the first vineyards made their appearance, climbing up the sides of the hills on each side of the road, and giving a luxuriant colouring to the view, though not, indeed, offering half the picturesque beauties which are attributed to them by imagination.
Tours--I know not why, but it excited in my mind a sensation of melancholy. When I visited it before, was at the time of the unhappy and ill-contrived revolt of Berton at Saumur; and returning with the officers of a party of the troops that had been sent to disperse his undisciplined forces, we spent several agreeable days in the antique capital of Touraine. In general, we are fond of fixing upon some spot for building our castles in the air, and Tours and the Loire had yielded me many a foundation for those unsubstantial structures, which, as they so often do, had crumbled away, and left me nothing but the ruins behind.
Independent of individual associations, too, Tours is one of those places which has many recollections attached to it, especially since the Wizard of the North has raised again the fallen walls of Plessis les Tours, and conjured up the king of the people, Louis XI., the effects of whose hatred to the nobility were felt even in the eighteenth century. But his mulberry-trees are no more, and all that he did for the commerce of his favourite city is equally fallen to nothing. The abbey of St. Martin, whose abbots were once kings of France, is almost entirely destroyed, though there are two of the old towers still standing, at so great a distance from each other as to show the enormous extent of the ancient building. Besides all this, are there not a thousand shadowy visions come floating down the sea of time from the dreamy ages of chivalry and romance--Charles VII. and his knights, Alençon, Dunois, the Maid of Arc, and Agnes Sorrel? The beautiful Gabrielle d'Estrées too, owed her birth to Tours: but, unlike Agnes Sorrel, her best quality was her beauty, and for that her countrywomen are still deservedly famed.
In many respects it is a magnificent town. The Rue Royale, the Cathedral, the bishop's palace, and a fine bridge over the river, are the first objects the eye falls upon in entering the city; but before all, is the Loire itself, flowing on in calm majesty through the richest part of one of the most fertile countries in the world. Its banks were covered with all nature's choicest gifts at the time we entered Touraine, and, as if feeling the loneliness of the scene, the stream seemed to linger amidst the beauty that surrounded it. Long, long ago, it was the song of the troubadours. The Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oil took its waters for a boundary, and many noble deeds have rendered it famous in history. It was the birth-place, too, of the Count of St. Maurice, whose fate, with all its curious turns of fortune, told over the glowing fruit and the sparkling wine of the land in which he dwelt, had deeper interest than it may have here. He who narrated the tale called it.
THE FATE OF THE DUC DE BIRON.
Francis, Count of St. Maurice, was born at Tours, in the year 1580. His father perished in battle before his eyes opened to the day, and his mother scarcely survived his birth a week. His patrimonial property had been wasted in the wars of the League, and his only inheritance was his father's sword, and a few trembling lines written by his dying mother to the famous Baron de Biron, with whom she was distantly connected by the ties of blood. A trinket or two, the remnant of all the jewels that had decked her on her bridal day, paid the expense of arraying the dead wife of the fallen soldier for the grave, and furnished a few masses for the repose of both their souls; and an old servant, who had seen her mistress blossom into woman's loveliness, and then so soon fade into the tomb, after beholding the last dread dear offices bestowed upon the cold clay, took up the unhappy fruit of departed love, and bore it in her arms, on foot, to the only one on whom it seemed to have a claim. Biron, though stern, rude, and selfish, did not resist the demand. Ambition had not yet hardened his heart wholly, nor poisoned the purer stream of his affections; and gazing on the infant for a moment, he declared it was a lovely child, and wondrous like his cousin. He would make a soldier of the brat, he said, and he gave liberal orders for its care and tending. The child grew up, and the slight unmeaning features of the infant were moulded by time's hand--as ready to perfect as to destroy--into the face of as fair a boy as ever the eye beheld. Biron often saw and sported with the child, and its bold, sweet, and fearless mood, tempered by all the graces of youth and innocence, won upon the soldier's heart. He took a pride in his education, made him his page and his companion, led him early to the battle-field, and inured him almost from infancy to danger and to arms.