The Knights of England, France, and Scotland

by Henry William Herbert

“Away with you then, Sir Happiness! Betake yourself on the wings of love to your bright lady; and mind the advice of your favorite, Horace, to pluck the pleasures of the passing hour, mindful how short is the sum of mortal life!”

The young man embraced his father gayly, and left the room with a quick step and a joyous heart; and the jingling of his spurs, and the quick, merry clash of his scabbard on the marble staircase, told how joyously he descended its steps.

A moment afterward his father heard the clear, sonorous tones of his fine voice calling to his attendants, and yet a few seconds later the lively clatter of his horse’s hoofs on the resounding pavement.

“Alas for the happy days of youth, which are so quickly flown!” exclaimed the father, as he participated in the hopeful and exulting mood of his noble boy; “and alas for the promise of mortal happiness, which is so oft deceitful and a traitress!” He paused for a few moments, and seemed to ponder, and then added, with a confident and proud expression: “But I see not why one should forebode aught but success and happiness to this noble boy of mine. Thus far, everything has worked toward the end as I would wish it. They have fallen in love naturally and of their own accord, and D’Argenson, whether he like it or not, can not help himself. He must needs accede proudly and joyfully, to my proposal; he knows his estates to be in my power far too deeply to resist. Nay, more—though he be somewhat selfish, and ambitious, and avaricious, I know nothing of him that should justify me in believing that he would sell his daughter’s honor, even to a king, for wealth or title! My good wife is all too doubtful and suspicious.—But, hark! here comes the mob, returning from that unfortunate man’s execution! I wonder how he bore it?”

And with the words he moved toward the window, and, throwing it open, stepped out upon the spacious balcony. Here he learned speedily, from the conversation of the passing crowd, that, although dreadfully shocked and startled by the first intimation of the death he was to undergo, which he received from the sight of the fatal wheel, the lord of Kerguelen had died as becomes a proud, brave man, reconciled to the church, forgiving his enemies, without a groan or a murmur, under the protracted agonies of that most horrible of deaths, the breaking on the wheel!

Meanwhile the day passed onward; and when evening came, and the last and most social meal of the day was laid on the domestic board, young Raoul had returned from his visit to the lady of his love, full of high hopes and happy anticipations. Afterward, according to his promise, the count de St. Renan went forth and held debate until a late hour of the night with the sieur d’Argenson. Raoul had not retired when he came home, too restless in his youthful ardor even to think of sleep. His father brought good tidings: the father of the lady had consented, and on their arrival in Bretagne the marriage-contract was to be signed in form.

That was to Raoul an eventful day; and never did he forget it, or the teachings he drew from it. That day was his fate.

PART II.

The castle of St. Renan, like the dwellings of many of the nobles of Bretagne and Gascony, was a superb old pile of solid masonry towering above the huge cliffs which guard the whole of that iron coast with its gigantic masses of rude masonry. So close did it stand to the verge of these precipitous crags on its seaward face, that whenever the wind from the westward blew angrily and in earnest, the spray of the tremendous billows which rolled in from the wide Atlantic, and burst in thunder at the foot of those stern ramparts, was dashed so high by the collision that it would often fall in salt, bitter rain, upon the esplanade above, and dim the diamond-paned casements with its cold mists.

For leagues on either side, as the spectator stood upon the terrace above and gazed out on the expanse of the everlasting ocean, nothing was to be seen but the salient angles or deep recesses formed by the dark, gray cliffs, unrelieved by any spot of verdure, or even by that line of silver sand at their base, which often intervenes between the rocks of an iron coast and the sea. Here, however, there was no such intermediate step visible; the black face of the rocks sunk sheer and abrupt into the water, which, by its dark-green hue, indicated to the practised eye, that it was deep and scarcely fathomable to the very shore.