'More than I am, apparently,' retorted de Brissac, as he thrust his broad beaver on his head, and retired in a gust of wine and passion; but not without levelling a dark glance at me.
In an hour after, I tired of this witty and brilliant but loose company, and bade Marion adieu. As I kissed her hand, she gave me a glance so bright and tender, that I would not have given a brass bodle for the chances of M. de Brissac, had I deemed it worth my while to attempt supplanting him in her favour; for the silver saltire of the Scottish Guard bore all before it in Paris; but, save once in her coach on the Boulevards, I never saw Marion again.
This wild and remarkable girl, whose beauty turned the heads of all the gallants in Paris, died at the early age of thirty-nine, after four days' illness, when she was still lovely as ever. Of the cause of her death, I dare not trust myself to write; and but for the reckless life she led, she might have preserved her wondrous beauty longer. She had divine hands, and never wore a pair of gloves for more than three hours. She left sixty thousand francs' worth of dresses and ornaments. She never accepted a denier from a lover; but yet had presents of dresses, jewellery, plate, and furniture sufficient to stock the Louvre.
During her last illness, which made a great sensation in Paris and in the French camp, she confessed ten times to a priest, having always something new, some little forgotten sin to communicate. The gallants of Paris, and all her former admirers, laid her body in state for twenty-four hours, with a maiden crown on her head; but the austere curé of St. Gervais very properly denounced this proceeding as a ridiculous scandal, and tore it from the corpse; yet Marion looked so beautiful in her pure white shroud, that the 'Gazette Historique de Loret,' of the 30th June, 1650, has the following epigram upon her:—
'Le pauvre Marion de l'Orme,
De si rare et plaisante forme;
A saissi ravis au tombeau,
Son corps si charmant et si beau!'
Marion had three sisters, all very attractive girls. The eldest, Madame de la Montague, a beautiful blonde, was wont somewhat rashly to boast—'we have no riches, but we have honour;' yet my friend Viscount Dundrennan, like M. de Moret, nearly broke his neck when descending one night from her chamber window.
The youngest and least artful was married, to M. Maugiron, Treasurer of the Artillery du Roi, who served with me in the campaign of Alsace. As they lived in the arsenal, old Marechal de la Meilleraye, though he had not a tooth in his head, fell in love with her; but finding that she was carrying on an intrigue with the Cardinal de Retz, he revengefully deprived her poor husband of his commission; and this is all that I know of the family of the gayest woman that ever influenced the scandalous, joyous, and immoral city of Paris.
CHAPTER XXIX.
ARRESTED.
To resume my own narrative: I had proceeded from the Rue St. Jacques, after a somewhat devious course, along the Rue Betizi and the Fosses St. Germain l'Auxerrois, when at the place where the latter is intersected by the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, a dark and ancient street that leads from the Rue St. Honoré to the Seine, I found all the oil-lamps extinguished, and a fiacre, surrounded by twelve foot musketeers of the Comte de Treville's company, standing fairly in the centre of the way. At that moment the clock of St. Germain tolled two; but daybreak seemed far distant, as the shadows lay deep and black in the quaint and overhanging streets of Paris.