Torrents of rain had recently fallen amid the woods and snows of the Vosges: thus the waters of the Meurthe were swollen, and I heard their current roaring in full flood as they rolled through the echoing woods of the valley I traversed.
Rising amid the coppice, on a knoll, I found the chapel of St. Nicolas—a plain but sturdy old Gothic structure, the low round arches, zigzag ornaments, and grimly-grotesque carvings of which declared it to be coeval, perhaps, with Charles, Lord of Lower Lorraine. It contained an altar and shrine of St. Nicolas, before both of which some oil-lamps, that were nightly lit by the old canonesses of a neighbouring establishment, were burning and sputtering in the currents of air. I unbitted and stabled my charger, relaxed his saddle-girths, and left him in one of the stalls built near the porch for the horses of visitors. Entering, I shut the door, rolled my cloak round me, and with my sword, pistols, and a flask of good brandy, endeavoured to make myself at ease, after dropping a few coins into the visitors' box, lest I might depart with the shades of night and forget all about it on the morrow. I then composed myself to sleep on a bench at the lower end of the chapel.
The altar lamps flickered and flared in the currents of wind; but, as my eye become accustomed to their feeble light, the features of the chapel grew gradually clearer to my eye, and many a stone visage that was hideously grotesque, seemed to laugh and wink to me, from the carved corbeilles of the roof, and the massive bosses that clasped the interlacings of the groined arches. St. Nicolas, with a halo of gilded iron round his head, stood quaintly out in bold relief from the painted wall on one side; on the other, framed in marble, shone a large sheet of polished copper, whereon was written a complete history of the battle fought before the walls of Nanci in 1475 by Charles the Hardy, Duke of Burgundy, who, with the flower of his followers, was there slain by the soldiers of René, Duke of Lorraine. On this plate were graven the names and armorial bearings of all the Burgundian knights who perished with Duke Charles; and the list closed by a request that the pious reader would pray for their souls, as their bodies were all interred in this chapel of St. Nicolas.
There were certainly more pleasant places wherein to pass a night than that old chapel, with all its buried dead and gloomy associations of desperation and defeat; but Scot though I was, and deeply imbued, moreover, by that superstition which few of my countrymen are without, I thought not of the hacked helmets and knightly bones that lay beneath me, or of the chances of spectral appearances, as the mid-mirk hour of the night approached—as the air waxed colder and the altar lights grew dim—I thought only of my own wayward fate; of the strange passages of my life during the last few years; of the dangers I had escaped and those I might yet encounter; of Louise, whom I loved so well—who loved me in return, but from whom I seemed hopelessly separated for ever.
How much more enchanting than the large and voluptuous Clara—she who for a time had so dangerously dazzled me—was the smaller and more delicately-formed Marie Louise—half-woman and half-angel; like a poet's dream, a Raphael's happiest thought! So perfect in her purity of form; so beautiful in face, expression and thought.
'Ah, Marie Louise, there is none other like you in the world!' thought I, with mingled rapture and bitterness. 'Who ever loved me so well? Yet we shall never see, never meet, never hear each other's voice again! I can be reckless enough in battle now, for I have no mistress for whom to spare myself.'
The exhaustion of long toil and deprivation of rest, now began to steal over me, and I had fallen into a doze, to dream of Louise as Nicola, when a sound roused me, making me start to full and nervous wakefulness, as the whizz of the first shot in action might do. I started! My horse was neighing in its adjacent stall, to me a signal sufficient that other nags were near. I thought of De Bitche with his ten petardiers, and cocked my pistols. I heard the hoofs of a horse ringing, as it was galloped down the path, across the wooded valley, and drawing nearer as it approached the chapel, till at last the sound become dull and muffled on the sward. I boldly threw open the chapel door to confront this midnight visitor, and by the dim light of the stars without, and the flicker of the altar lamps within, beheld a handsome young man, mounted on a powerful grey horse, with his cloak muffled up to his nose and his hat pulled down to his eyes; but I soon perceived that he wore the long moustache and pointed royale, peculiar to the court of-Louis XIII.
'Hark you, M. le Chevalier!' said he.
'Who are you?' I asked.
'I am René, Knight of Malta, one of the Duke's gentlemen in ordinary. I had the pleasure of conducting you, monsieur, to the presence of my foster-sister to-day.'