“I say nothing, mademoiselle, of your King, the great Louis, except that he is not only the most generous king, but the most generous man who ever lived, to those in misfortune; and every man of us at St. Germains—English, Scotch, and Irish—would shed the last drop of our blood for him, for his kindness to our master. But I see that kings and people know little of each other. Our English people knew little of King James, or they would not have turned him out, and less of King William, or they would not have put him in. If I were a king, I should be like your great Henry,—I should wish that every peasant had a fowl in his pot on Sunday. There spoke a great king, nay more, a great man, for he saw the peasant’s rude power, and would stop his mouth with a delicate fowl.”
Michelle sat musing, her chin in her hands. The two horses rubbed noses, and stamped lightly on the soft, damp earth. The mist was rising and enveloping the lonely landscape.
“Yet, after all, the peasant’s lot is not different from that of all humanity.”
“I remember, mademoiselle, the very first time I spoke to you. You told me there were only three great true things,—work, pain, and death. We cannot help death, but we can help work and pain.”
“I do not think so,” she said, gently; “but that by no means releases us from doing our duty. Nay, it only compels us the more. And when we have found what is our duty,—which is not always easy,—we should go to meet it cheerfully, as if it were a friend. I think I have found mine. Yesterday the King sent for me to Marly. He told me something I might do for my country, for him. It involved great pain and loss and disappointment to me; but why should we not go half-way to meet pain, since it searches us out and finds us no matter where we hide,—whether it be in solitude, or in the midst of the greatest court of the greatest king in the world? So I accepted my portion, and will live with it cheerfully, as if it were pleasure.”
What did she mean? Roger’s natural curiosity made him long to know, but natural courtesy restrained him. One thing he had noticed ever since he had been in France, and had seen French people at close quarters: they had different ideas of patriotism, chivalry, and duty from those he had been bred upon. Where he loved his home and his country, they loved their king; where he revered the laws, they revered their sovereign. He was always coming upon some strange anomaly—for so it seemed to this untravelled gentleman—in them. Yet Michelle was only half French, and the lesser half, it seemed to him. She had not the vanity of a Frenchwoman, who is coquettish even as a wit; she was freer than any woman he knew of a desire to shine; she was quite satisfied to be, instead of to do.
“I hope,” he said, diffidently, “that this duty of yours will not take you away from us? Not that our sojourn here is fixed,—we all yearn unspeakably for the day when we shall once more venture our carcasses against the Prince of Orange,—but while we stay—”
“Yes,” answered Michelle; “it will take me away, a long journey, and I know not what I shall find at the end. But I am master of my soul, and nothing shall daunt me.”
The moon, a slender silver bow, suddenly appeared in the eastern sky, the clouds melting away on the horizon, and the mist stealing off magically. There were lights in the peasants’ huts. All at once the scene grew less melancholy.
“Ah!” cried Michelle, with a sudden change in her air, a quick gleam of daring in her eyes, which Roger saw by the faint moonlight, a laugh upon her lips, as she struck her horse smartly with the spur she wore, “we are talking like a couple of death’s heads. After all, one must take chances in life. Anything is better than the dull stagnation of mere fine ladies and gentlemen. We may learn a lesson from the poor players in Monsieur Molière’s play-house at Paris. Think you any one of them would refuse a great part, a chance to be the chief figure in the events passing around them, from a paltry fear of what might befall in the acting? Certainly they would not. Ambition must be a noble quality, especially when it is not for one’s self so much as for one’s country. It makes me thrill from head to foot, Mr. Egremont, to think that I, a mere woman, can serve my King and France.”