One in a Thousand; or, The Days of Henri Quatre. G. P. R. James
turns of artifice, which no one knew better how to employ, "if this is not a high crime and misdemeanour in the court of love and gallantry, to tell a lady, whom he dare not deny to be fair, that he came for any other purpose on earth than to see herself?"
"Blasphemy! blasphemy! utter blasphemy!" cried half a dozen voices. "Judge him, fair lady, for his great demerits!"
"Philip d'Aubin!" exclaimed the Duchess, putting on a theatrical air, "you are condemned by your peers; but, under consideration of your having been thoroughly brutalized, by a two months' residence at the distance of a hundred leagues from Paris, we are inclined to show you lenity: kneel down here, then; humbly, at our feet, confess your crime! and swear upon this paper crown, which we have cut expressly for the royal Henry's head, never to commit the like iniquity again!"
D'Aubin had entered the apartment, not very well disposed to jest, but yet the feelings which had oppressed him were of such a nature, that he was quite willing to forget them; and the smiles of the Duchess de Montpensier, as well as the tone of tenderness she assumed towards him, together with the remembrance of many gay moments, spent in her society long before, made him gladly enough take up the part that she assigned him. Bending his knee gracefully before her, then, he made confession of his crime, declared his penitence, and, vowing, in the terms she had dictated, never to offend again, he stooped his head to kiss the paper crown which she held upon her knee. At the same moment the Duchess bent forward, as if to receive his vow, and, as she did so, she whispered, rapidly, "Stay with me, D'Aubin, and I will soon send these fools away."
The Count replied nothing, but rose; and, still holding the paper crown playfully in his hand, demanded, in his ordinary tone, what was the real intent and purpose of that fragile mockery of the royal symbol.
The Duchess saw that he had heard, understood, and was prepared to obey her whisper; and she replied, "'Tis exactly as I have told you, most incredulous of men. When, by the fate of war, or by the blessing of God, Henry, calling himself the Third, shall be brought in chains into Paris, it might be expected that the sister of the murdered Guise"--and as she spoke, her eye flashed for a moment with all the fiery spirit of her race;--"it might be supposed that the sister of the murdered Guise should not bound her wishes for revenge, till she saw the assassin's blood flow like water in the kennel. But she is more charitable, or, rather, he is too pitiful a thing to be worthy of severe punishment. With these scissors shall be cut off his royal locks, ere he quits the courtly world for the world of the cloister; and on his head shall he bear this crown, from the door of Notre Dame to the abbey of St. Denis, when he goes to take the vows that exclude him for ever from the world."
D'Aubin laughed. "So, this crown is for King Henry!" he exclaimed: "and have you never thought, madam, of cutting out another, from some different materials, for your noble brother of Mayenne?"
"It must be an iron crown, then," replied the Duchess, tossing her head proudly; "and he must hew it out for himself, with his good sword."
"Rather a Cyclopean labour," remarked D'Aubin; "rather a Cyclopean labour I suspect! especially since Harry of Valois, to whom you deny the crown, has chosen to turn up his hat with a Huguenot button."
"We shall see, we shall see!" replied the Duchess: "I know, sir Count, you laugh at all parties; so I understand not why you should cling so fondly to the rabble of accursed murderers and heretics, who lie out there at St. Cloud, like vipers in a garden."
D'Aubin laughed outright at the Duchess's vehemence, and reminded her that some of her near relations were amongst the rabble she so qualified.
"They are none the less vipers for that," she replied: and the conversation taking a turn neither very wise nor very decent, may as well be omitted in this place. It lingered on, however, from minute to minute, without the Duchess making any apparent effort to fulfil the promise she had made to D'Aubin, and send away the idlers by whom she was surrounded. Too long accustomed to the intriguing society of Paris, and too well acquainted with the character of the wily woman with whom he had now to deal, not to be armed at all points against every art and deception, D'Aubin began to suspect that the Duchess was trifling with him for some particular purpose, and was seeking to occupy him with other matters, till some moment of importance, to himself or his cousin, was irretrievably lost.
"Hark!" he exclaimed, as this thought crossed his mind; "there is the clock of St. Gervais striking one, and I must really seek my lord the Duke."
"I hear no clock," replied the Duchess--nor could she, for none had struck--"I hear no clock! But not yet, D'Aubin, not yet; I am not yet going to slip the jesses of my faucon gentil, after having just recovered him from so long a flight. Stay you with me, D'Aubin, and I will send and see if my brother be within. You go, Mont-Augier," she added, turning to one of the young cavaliers, who instantly sprang to obey her; but, ere he reached the door, the Duchess, by a sudden movement, placed herself near him; and, while D'Aubin was for a moment occupied by some other person present, she said, in a low voice, "Do not return, do not return: we must keep the Count away from Mayenne, or they will together spoil some of our best schemes."
D'Aubin's eye turned upon her; and his quick suspicions might have gone far to counteract her purposes, had not Madame de Montpensier, almost as soon as Mont-Augier's back was turned, contrived, on various pretences, to dismiss the rest of her little court. Left thus alone with a fascinating and beautiful woman, who condescended to court his society, D'Aubin could not resist the temptation to trifle away with her half an hour of invaluable time, though he knew all her arts, and even suspected that, on the present occasion, they were employed against him for insidious purposes. He was on the watch, however, and, ere long, the clatter of many horses' feet in the court-yard caught his attention, and led him instantly to conclude that the Duke of Mayenne was about to go forth, without having seen him. It was now all in vain that Madame de Montpensier, who likewise heard the sounds, and attributed them to the same cause, endeavoured to occupy his attention by every little art of coquetry. D'Aubin started up, and, in gay, but resolute terms, expressed his determination of seeing the Duke ere he left the house.
To what evasion Madame de Montpensier would have had recourse, is difficult to say; but, ere she could reply, the door opened, and a lady entered, whom we will not pause here to describe. Suffice it, that she was the widow of the murdered Duke of Guise, and that, though her person wore the weeds, her face betrayed few of the sorrows, of widowhood.
"Catherine! Catherine!" she exclaimed, entering; "there is our slow brother of Mayenne just returned, and calling for you so quickly that one would think he were himself as nimble as Harry of Navarre."
"Returned! I knew not that he was absent!" replied the Duchess de Montpensier, with an air of irrepressible mortification, on finding that all her arts had been thrown away, and, instead of preventing D'Aubin from seeing her brother ere he went forth, had only tended to keep the Count there till he returned. A meaning smile, too, on the lip of D'Aubin, served to increase her chagrin; and she exclaimed, with a slight touch of pettish impatience in her tone, "Well, well, I go to him; and you, my fair sister, had better stay and console this tiresome man, till my return."
The Duchess of Guise saw that something had gone wrong; but D'Aubin laughed, and replied, as Madame de Montpensier turned towards the door, "May I request you to tell his Highness that the tiresome man waits an audience; and, as his business will be explained in few words, he will not detain the Duke so long as he has detained Madame de Montpensier,--or as, perhaps, I might say, more truly, Madame de Montpensier has detained him,--probably under a mistake;" and he made her a low and significant bow, to which she only replied by shaking her finger at him as she passed through the doorway.
"Where is the Duke?" she demanded eagerly of the pages in the corridor, who started up at her approach; and then, scarcely listening to their answer, she hurried on to the room in which she expected to find him, and opened the door without ceremony. The Duke was seated at a table, hastily sealing some letters, while a courier, booted, spurred, and armed, stood by his side, ready to bear them to their destinations as soon as the packets were complete.
"Why, how now, Catherine!" he exclaimed, turning towards her as she entered, and, in so doing, spilling the boiling wax over his broad hand, without suffering the pain to produce the slightest change