"Ha! me chère ennemie
Si tu veux m'apaiser,
Redonne--moy la vie
Par l'esprit d'un baiser.
Ha! j'en ay la douceur
Senti jusque au cœur.
C'est une douce rage
Qui nous poindra doucement
Quand d'un même courage
On s'aime incessament.
Heureux sera le jour
Que je mourrai d'amour!"
V
This audacious love-song at that time flitted from lip to lip at the court of King Francis, until about a year later the poet Ronsard sang it,--and after he had enriched it with two or three daintily elaborated verses it was incorporated with his works.
De Lancy had often hummed it when hastening through the gray corridors, or walking in the garden under the sombre boughs of the blossoming lindens. But never had Blanche heard it so completely and clearly. Warm and full the tones of his voice rang in her ears. Through this exuberant and frivolous nature passed the agitating sense of an almost pathetic tenderness.
Blanche stared before her into the empty air, and there came into her face a great terror--a mighty longing!
VI
Gottfried watched and suffered--each hour more suspicious and uneasy.
In the castle chapel of Montalme stood a narrow-chested saint with peaked beard,--St. Sebaldus,--who bore on his wooden forefinger an amethyst ring. With this ring was connected a legend,--viz.,--that whoever would have the courage to draw it off the finger at midnight and put it on his own--to him Heaven would grant the fulfilment of his wish, even were it the most presumptuous in the world. But should the one who took off the jewel let it fall from his linger ere returning it on the following night, as in duty bound, to the saint, some terrible misfortune would speedily overtake him.
It was midnight, and deathly stillness reigned; the moonlight played about the pointed roof and glittered in the deeply set windows of the old castle. Black and heavy, almost as a bier-cloth, the shadow of this gigantic old building spread over the ground. In the garden below, the nightingales sobbed their sweet songs in the flowering lindens, sometimes interrupted by the weird screech of an owl. Then a slender figure glided softly through the echoing corridors of the castle--the figure of a love-sick girl. At times she paused and listened and laid her hand upon her breast. A vague, ghostly fear chilled the blood in her veins. Now she stepped through the high hall adjoining the chapel. She opened the door heavily weighted with its ornamental iron bands and rosettes. The moonlight glanced through the coloured windows and painted fantastic images on the brown church pews. Two long, brilliant streaks of light cut through the shadows which broadened out over the marble floor.
Above the altar hung a Madonna with attenuated arms and too long a neck, as the "Primitives" in their naïve awkwardness like to picture her. Blanche knelt before her and lisped an Ave and the Lord's Prayer; then turning to the saint who, stiff and complacent, gazed down from his pedestal, she drew the ring off his finger and put it on her own.