One in a Thousand; or, The Days of Henri Quatre. G. P. R. James
order, but all gay and cheerful, and singing as they went. Amongst them, but in separate bands, appeared the various sorts of foot soldiers then common in France; the musketeer with his long gun upon his shoulder, and the steel-pointed fork, or rest, used to assist his aim in discharging his piece, while, together with the broad leathern belt which supported his long and heavy sword, hung the innumerable small rolls of leather, in which the charges for his musket were deposited. The ancient pikeman, too, was there, with his long pike rising over the weapons of the other soldiers, and one or two bodies of arquebusiers, armed with a lighter and less cumbersome, but even more antique kind of musket, here and there chequered the ranks. A troop of cavalry, still stronger in point of numbers, succeeded, consisting of two companies of men-at-arms, which old privileges permitted the two houses of St. Real and D'Aubin to raise for the service of the crown, and of about four hundred of more lightly armed horse of that description which, from having been first introduced from Germany and Flanders, had acquired the name of reitters, even when the regiment was composed entirely of Frenchmen. The first body contained none but men of noble birth, and consisted principally of young gentlemen attached to the two great houses who raised it. Each carried his lance, to which weapon the men-at-arms of that day clung with peculiar tenacity, as a vestige of that ancient chivalry which people felt was rapidly passing away before improved science, but from which they did not like to part. Each also was splendidly armed; and gold and polished steel made their horses shine in the sunbeams.
The reitters, however, were more simply clothed, and were composed of such persons from the wealthier part of the classe bourgeoise as the love of arms, the distinctions generally affixed to military life, or feudal attachment to any particular house, brought from the very insecure tranquillity then afforded by their paternal dwellings, to the open struggle of the field. This corps, however, was not distinguished by the lance: a long and heavy sword, which did terrible execution in the succeeding wars, together with a number of pistols, each furnished with a rude flint lock, composed the offensive arms of the reitter. His armour, too, and his horse were both somewhat lighter than those of the man-at-arms; but his movements were, in consequence, more easy, and his march less encumbered.
The whole body wound slowly on with very little disarray Of confusion, till, one by one, the several bands turned the angle of the wood, and disappeared in the distant forest. A few scattered parties followed; then a few stragglers, and then all was left to solitude, while nothing but a cloudy line of dust, rising up above the green covering of the trees, and two or three notes of the trumpet, told that such a force was near, or marked the road it took. Leonard de Monte gazed from the place of his concealment upon each party as it passed, and then waited for several minutes, listening with attentive ear till the trumpet sounded so faintly that it was evident his own small hunting-horn might be winded unheard by the retiring squadrons. He descended, however, in the first instance, to the bank of the stream where he had been previously sitting, and then gave breath to a few low notes, as of a huntsman recalling his dogs. The sounds were heard by his attendants, and instantly obeyed. The horses were led forth from the wood; and, while the two servants bestirred themselves to draw out the carriage from the brake in which it had been concealed, the youth beckoned the dwarf towards him, demanding--"Now, Bartholo! now! what think you of this?"
"Why, I think it a very silly trick, sir," replied the dwarf: "I could forgive a raw youth like the Marquis for leading his men through such a wood as this; but how an experienced soldier, like my good lord the Count, could let him do it, I cannot fancy. Why, the League might have taken them all like quails in a falling net!"
"You are wrong," said the youth; "you are wrong, Bartholo. He knows full well that the League, close cooped in Paris, have not men to spare, and that Longueville and La Noue keep Aumale in check near Compeigne. St. Real is no bad soldier. At least, so I have heard. But it was not of that I spoke. What are we to do now? You told me that they were a day behind, and now they are right on the road before us. They must have changed their route. What must we do?"
"Why, we must turn back," answered the dwarf, calmly; "and then at Dreux seek out the maître des postes, leave these slow brutes behind us, and on to Paris with all the speed we can."
"But should there be no horses?" said the youth, "as was the case at La Fleche; what must we do then?"
"Oh, beyond all doubt, we shall find horses there," the dwarf replied; "and if the post be broken up, we can but apply to the master of relais, whose horses will take us on for fifteen leagues, while these tired brutes will scarce carry us to Dreux: better go with beasts that have dragged a cart, than halt half way on the road."[2]
The youth paused and pondered; and though his intention was at first directed to the exertions of the servants with the carriage, yet the moment after, his glance began to stray abstractedly over the forest; and it is more than probable that his thoughts wandered much farther than the mere trifling embarrassment in which he found himself; for his brow became clouded and melancholy, his lip quivered, and his eye, which was now again straining vacantly upon the grass, seemed as if it would willingly have harboured a tear. The dwarf gazed at him earnestly with his quick black eyes, while the habitual sneer upon his lip seemed mingled with other feelings, which somewhat changed its character, but rendered it not less dark and keen. Whatever were his own thoughts, however, he seemed perfectly to comprehend that his young lord's mind had run beyond the situation of the moment. "You are sorry you undertook it at all!" he said, keeping his eyes still fixed upon the face of the other.
"Out, knave!" cried Leonard de Monte, turning sharply upon him. "Out! Did you ever know me hesitate in a pursuit that I had once determined, or regret a deed when once it was done? Firm in myself, I am firm to myself, and, whether good or ill happens, I never regret. No, no; think you that I am such a fool or such a child as to start from the first trifling obstacle? To whimper, because I am forced to lie on a hard bed, or fly off indignant because some saucy serving-man breaks his jest upon the page? No, no! I was thinking of my father's house, and of a picture there which some skilful hand had painted of just such a scene as this. There was the little sparkling stream, and there a sweet and tranquil grassy bank like that, with the bright sunshine--even as it does now--streaming through the bushes, and touching the rounded turf with gold. Often, very often, have I stood and gazed upon that landscape, and my fancy has rendered the dull canvass instinct with life. I have dreamed that I could see through those groves, or climb the hill, and wander amongst the rocks; and in infancy--that time of happy hearts--imagination, as I stood and looked, has shaped me out a little paradise in such a scene as that. The palace and its cold splendour has faded away around me, and I have fancied myself wandering in the midst of Nature's beauties, with beings as bright and as ideal as my dream: and now, Bartholo--and now--what are all those visions now?"
The dwarf cast his eyes to the ground, and for a moment, a single moment, the cynical smile passed away from his lip. "You," he said--"you have made your fate! You have sought the bitter well from which you are forced to drink. You have chosen sorrow, and the way to sorrow; for the love of any human thing is but the high road thither, and you must tread it to the end."
"How now, sir!" cried the youth, proudly tossing back his head; "school'st thou me?"
"Nay, I school you not," answered the dwarf; "and less than all sought to offend you. I would have given you consolation. I would have said that you, for a great prize, had played a stake as weighty:--I mean that knowingly, willingly, you had risked happiness for love; and, seemingly having lost, are sorrowful; but still you have the satisfaction of knowing that your fate has been your own deliberate act."
"Would not that make it all the more painful, thou bitter medicine?" asked the youth.
"Not so!" answered the dwarf, "not so! Think, what must be his feelings who is born to disappointment and to scorn; whose heart may be as fine as that which beats in the bosom of the lordliest warrior in the land, and yet whose birthright is contempt, and degradation, and slight; whose mind may be as bright as that of prelate, or of lawgiver, and yet whose doom is to be despised and neglected? Think what must be his feelings, who has no refuge from disappointment, but in the hardness of despair; who has no warfare to wage against insult, but by hurling back contempt and defiance!"
"I am sorry for thee, from my heart," answered the youth. "Indeed, I am