'With wolves, robbers, and spectres for companions—a dark forest, rain, thunder, and wind—we shall pass a pleasant night! now the torrent begins to patter on the leaves! my poor little Nicola, you will be quite drenched.'
'Mon Dieu! it was in this forest that Charles VIII. of France was warned of his approaching death,' whispered Nicola, shuddering.
'Warned—by what?'
'The spectre—the demon who haunts it.'
'Ouf! we are to have a demon too! How came it to pass?'
'Charles VIII. was marching home from the conquest of Naples, and was passing through this wood, accompanied by Anne of Brittany his queen, and the Lady Beaujeu his sister, when suddenly a tall and ghastly form like a skeleton, having a long white beard and enormous red eyes, started from among the bushes, and grasped the royal bridle, exclaiming with a shrill voice, like the whistling wind—
'"Stop! O King, whence go you?"
'"To Paris!" answered Charles, boldly; "but why?"
'"Because you are betrayed—beware of the orange-tree!" replied the spectre, and vanished, for no trace of him could be found by the King or his company. Charles therefore became alarmed, and tarried till all the Scottish Guard, under the Lord Bernard Stuart d'Aubigne came up, and with these he passed through the forest in safety; but the terrible visage of the spectre was ever before him; so that he lost his senses soon after, and died of a poisoned orange.'
Nicola also told me that, in the local superstition of the peasantry, the forest was the haunt of a malevolent female spirit known as La Bête Havette, who lived in wells and springs (like that watery spirit which haunted our friend St. Fiacre), and was wont suddenly to pour its fury upon children, drowning them, as the kelpies are said to do in Scotland. Here, too, was heard St. Hubert's hunt, when the yelling of fiendish dogs, the clank of hell-forged fetters, and mournful cries swept at midnight over the tree tops, and died away in distance, as the demons bore off the souls of the damned to punishment; for such the terrified peasantry believed the passing flocks of wild geese to be; but at last, as the darkness increased, Nicola became terrified by her own legends; she ceased to speak, and kept close to my side.