"You have done quite well, and wisely, my son," replied the Curé. "Would to God that all dissensions in the church would cease, as I feel sure they would do, if all men would act as prudently as you have done."
"And as wisely and moderately as you always do, Monsieur le Curé," added the Count.
The Curé bowed his head, and advanced towards the tree, where he read the inscription over the head of the murdered man, and then gazed upon the veil that was round his throat.
He shook his head sadly as he did so, and then turning to the Count, he said, "Perhaps you do not know the key of all this sad story. I heard it before I came hither. This morning, an hour before matins, the bell of the religious house of St. Hermand--you know it well, Count, I dare say, a mile or so beyond the chêne vert--was rung loudly, and on the portress opening the gate, four men, with their faces covered, carried in the body of one of the novices, called Claire Duval, who had been absent the whole night, causing great alarm. There was a shot wound in her breast; she was laid out for the grave; and, though none of the men spoke a word, but merely placed the body in the lodge, and then retired, a paper was found with it afterwards, saying, 'An innocent girl murdered by the base De Hericourt, and revenged by Brown Keroual.'--This, of course, I imagine, is the body of him called De Hericourt."
"It is, indeed, Sir," replied the Count, "the young Marquis de Hericourt, a relation not very distant of the Marquis de Louvois; and a brave, but rash, unprincipled, and weak young man he was. In your hands I leave the charge of the body, but any assistance that my servants can give you, or that my influence can procure, are quite at your service."
The Curé' thanked him for his offer, but only requested that he would send him down some sort of a litter or conveyance, to carry the body to the church. The Count immediately promised to do so; and returning home he fulfilled his word. He then took some refreshment before his journey, wrote a brief note to the Duc de Rouvré, stating that he would have come over to see him immediately, but was obliged to go to Paris without loss of time; and then mounting his horse, and followed by his attendants, he rode to the first post-house, where taking post-horses, he proceeded at as rapid a pace as possible towards the capital.
CHAPTER VI.
[THE COURT.]
We must once more--following the course of human nature as it is at all times, but more especially as it then was, before all the great asperities of the world were smoothed and softened down, and one universal railroad made life an easy and rapid course from one end to another--We must once more then, following the common course of being, shift the scene, and bring before our readers a new part of the great panorama of that day. It was then at the lordly palace of Versailles, in the time of its greatest and most extraordinary splendour, when the treasures of a world had been ransacked to adorn its halls, and art and genius had been called in to do what riches had been unable to accomplish; while yet every chamber throughout the building flamed with those far-famed groups, cast in solid gold, the designs of which had proceeded from the pencil of Le Brun, and the execution of which had employed a thousand of the most skilful hands in France; while yet marble, and porphyry, and jasper, shone in every apartment; and the rarest works, from every quarter of the world, were added to the richness of the other decorations: before, in short, the consequences of his own ambition, or his successor's faults and weaknesses, had stripped one splendid ornament from that extraordinary building, which Louis XIV. had erected in the noon of his splendour--it was then that took place the scene which we are about now to describe.
The Count de Morseiul had scarcely paused even to take needful rest on his way from Poitou to Paris, and he had arrived late at night at the untenanted dwelling of his fathers in the capital. The Counts de Morseiul had ever preferred the country to the town, and though they possessed a large house in the Place Royale, which then was, though it is now no longer a fashionable part of the city; that house had become, at it were, merely the dwelling-place of some old officers and attendants, who happened to have a lingering fondness for the busy haunts of men which their lord shared not in. The old white-headed porter, as he opened the gate for his young master, stared with wonder and surprise to see him there, and nothing of course was found prepared for his reception. But the Count was easily satisfied and easily pleased. Food could always be procured without any difficulty, in the great capital of all eating, but repose was what the young Count principally required; and, after having despatched a messenger to Versailles, to ask in due form an audience of the King as early as possible on the following morning, to cast himself on the first bed that could be got ready, and forgot in a few minutes all the cares, and sorrows, and anxieties, which had accompanied him on his way to the capital.