The Huguenot: A Tale of the French Protestants. Volumes I-III

by G. P. R. James

The words were scarcely spoken when the Count, with his own peculiar, graceful, but energetic manner, walked straight up to Clémence de Marly, and stopped opposite to her, saying gravely, but not angrily, "I assure you, dear lady, I do not deserve your sarcasm. If you knew, on the contrary, how great was the pleasure that I myself have derived from this society, you would estimate the sacrifice I made in quitting it, and approve, rather than condemn, the self-command and resolution I have shown."

Clémence looked suddenly up in his face with one of her bright beaming smiles, and then frankly extended her hand to him. "I was wrong," she said; "forgive me, Monsieur de Morseiul! You know a spoilt woman always thinks that she has done penance enough when she has forced herself to say I was wrong."

If the whole world had been present, Albert of Morseiul could not have refrained from bending down his lips to that fair hand; but he did so calmly and respectfully, and then turning to the Duchess, he said that if she would permit him, he would but do away the dust and disarray of his apparel, and return in a moment. The petition was not of course refused: his toilet was hasty, and occupied but a few minutes; and he returned as quickly as possible to the hall, where he passed the rest of the evening without giving any farther thoughts or words to painful themes, except in asking the governor to beg the presence of the Bishop, Monsieur Pelisson, and the Abbé de St. Helie, as early as possible on the following morning, in order that the whole business might be over before the hour appointed for the meeting of the states.

The Bishop, who was an eager and somewhat bigoted man, was quite willing to pursue the matter at once; and before breakfast on the following day, he, with the two Abbés and the Curé de Guadrieul, met the Count de Morseiul in the cabinet of the governor.

There was something in the frank, upright, and gallant bearing of the young nobleman that impressed even the superstitious bigots to whom he was opposed with feelings of doubt as to the truth of their own suspicions, and even with some sensations of shame for having urged those suspicions almost in the form of direct charges. They hesitated, therefore, as to the mode of their attack, and the Count, impatient of delay, commenced the business at once by addressing the Bishop.

"My noble friend, the Duke here present," he said, "has communicated to me, my Lord, both by letter and by word of mouth, a strange scene that has been enacted here regarding a commission, real or supposed, given by the King to the Abbés of St. Helie and Pelisson. It seems, that when the packet supposed to contain the commission was produced, a pack of cards was found therein, instead of what was expected; that Monsieur Pelisson found reason to suppose that the packet had been previously opened; and that he then did--what Monsieur Pelisson should not have done, considering the acquaintance that he has with me and with my character--namely, charged me with having opened, by some private means, the packet containing his commission, abstracted and destroyed the commission itself, and substituted a pack of cards in its place."

"Stop, stop, my dear Count," said Pelisson, "you are mistaken as to the facts. I never made such an accusation, whatever others did. All I said was, that you were the only person interested in the abstraction of that commission who had possessed any opportunity of destroying it."

"And in so saying, sir, you spoke falsely," replied the Count de Morseiul; "for, in the first place, you insinuated what was not the case, that I have had an opportunity of destroying it; and, in the next place, you forgot that for three quarters of an hour, or perhaps more, for aught I know, your whole baggage was in the hands of a body of plunderers, while neither you, buried in your devotions, under the expectation of immediate death, nor Monsieur de St. Helie, weeping, trembling, and insane in the agony of unmanly fear, had the slightest knowledge of what was done with any thing in your possession; so that the plunderers, if they had chosen it, might have re-written you a new commission, ordering you both to be scourged back from Poitiers to Paris. I only say this to show the absurdity of the insinuations you have put forth. Here, in a journey which has probably taken you seven or eight days to perform, in the course of which you must have slept at seven or eight different inns upon the road, and during which you were for a length of time in the hands of a body of notorious plunderers, you only choose to fix upon me, who entertained you with civility and kindness, who delivered you from death itself, and who saved from the flames and restored to your own hands, at the risk of my life, the very commission which you now insinuate I had some share in abstracting from the paper that contained it. Besides, sir, if I remember rightly, that packet was entrusted to the care of a personage attendant upon yourselves, and who watched it like the fabled guardian of the golden fleece."

"But the guardian of the fleece slumbered, sir," replied Pelisson, who, to say the truth, was really ashamed of the charge which had been brought against the Count de Morseiul, and was very glad of an opportunity to escape from the firm grasp of the Count's arguments by a figure of speech. "Besides, Monsieur de Morseiul," he said, "had you but listened a little longer you would have heard, that though I said yours was the only party which had an opportunity of taking it, and were interested in its destruction, I never charged you with doing so, or commanding it to be done; but I said that some of your servants, thinking to do you a pleasure, might have performed the exchange, which certainly must have been accomplished with great slight of hand."

"You do not escape me so, sir," replied the young Count; "if I know any thing of the laws of the land, or, indeed, of the laws of common sense and right reason, you are first bound to prove that a crime has been committed, before you dare to accuse any one of committing it. You must show that there ever has been, in reality, a commission in that packet. If I understood Monsieur de Rouvré's letter right, the seals of the King were found unbroken on the packet, and not the slightest appearance of its having been opened was remarked, till you, Monsieur Pelisson, discovered that there was such an appearance after the fact. The King may have been jesting with you; Monsieur de Louvois may have been making sport of you; a drunken clerk of the cabinet may have committed some blunder in a state of inebriety; no crime may have been committed at all, for aught we know."