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days to which I have just alluded, were, nevertheless, much better suited to the times in which they were built, than to the more luxurious present.
Tumults, feuds, insurrections, civil wars, rendered every man's house his castle in no metaphorical sense; and thus the old chateau of St. Real, which had been originally built more than 400 years before the opening of this history, and had been repaired and improved at least a hundred times during the intervening ages of strife and bloodshed, was naturally, in almost all respects, much better calculated for defence against assault than for comfortable habitation. The woody chase, which swept for many a mile round the base of the little hill on which it stood, was cleared and opened in the immediate vicinity of the chateau; and the various avenues were defended with all the accuracy to which the art of war had arrived in those times. The very garden was a regular fortification; the chateau itself a citadel. From the reign of Louis VI., in which its walls had first been raised from the ground, to the reign of Henry III. with which this tale begins, although repairs and improvements had, as we have said, been often made, they were solely military, and nothing had in the slightest degree been permitted which could change the antique aspect of the place. Indeed, its proprietors, the Marquises of St. Real, springing from the most ancient race of French nobility, clung to the antiquity of their dwelling as if it formed a part and parcel of the antiquity of their family. Their habits, their manners, their characters, smacked all of the ancient day; and it was ever with pain that they suffered any of their old customs to be wrenched from them by the innovating hand of improvement.
At their gate, even in the times I speak of, hung, for the purpose of summoning the warder to the wicket, the last horn which, perhaps, was ever used on such occasions in France; and, though the mouthpiece had been renewed, and the chain frequently mended, the horn itself was averred to be the very same which had been hung there in the days of Philip Augustus. But if the lords of St. Real still maintained some tinge of the rudeness of their ancestors, it must by no means be forgotten that it was to the nobler and brighter qualities of former times that they adhered most strongly. They were a proud but a chivalrous race, bold, hospitable, courteous, generous, unswerving in faith and in honour. Their talents, which were by no means inconsiderable, had been principally displayed in the field; and some of the sneerers of the court had not scrupled to call them the Simple St. Reals: but, notwithstanding a degree of simplicity, which certainly did characterise them, they had ever been distinguished, from father to son, by that discriminating discernment of right and wrong which is worth all the wit in the world. Never had their word been pledged without being redeemed; never had their voice sanctioned a bad action; never had their sword supported an evil cause.
The present Marquis of St. Real, who was an old man who had borne arms under Francis I. had during the whole of the wars of the League remained obstinately neuter. He had declared, at the commencement of these unhappy wars, that he would not unsheathe his sword against his lawful sovereign, though friendly to the King of Navarre, and allied remotely to the house of Bourbon; but at the same time he added, that nothing should ever induce him to join in an unjust and cruel war against a portion of his countrymen, who were but defending one of the dearest and most unalienable rights of mankind--their religious liberty.
Too powerful for either party to entertain the hope of forcing him from his neutrality by any violent measures, both the League and the Huguenots spared no means of conciliation, which either wisdom or cunning could suggest, to win him to their side; for vast domains, in which the feudal customs of former times remained in full force, rendered his alliance a thing to be coveted even by the strongest. He remained unmoved, however; and neither a strong personal friendship which existed between himself and the Duke of Mayenne, nor the instigations and artifices of his confessor, could induce him to join the League, any more than gratitude to the King of Navarre for several personal favours, horror at the crimes of Saint Bartholomew, or even a strong belief that the Protestants were right in their warfare, if not in their religion, could bring him over to the party of the Huguenots.
To avoid wearisome solicitation, he had entirely abandoned the capital, and remained in the solitude of his paternal estates, wholly occupied in the education of his son, into whose mind, as principles, he endeavoured to instil, not knowledge of the world, or of courts, but all the firm and noble feelings of his own heart. He succeeded; the Chevalier de St. Real grew up to manhood everything that his father's fondest hopes could have anticipated: bold as a lion, skilled in all warlike exercises, and full of every sentiment that does honour to human nature. But yet, in many things, he was as simple as a child. Cut off from the general society of Paris, he wanted entirely that knowledge of the world which was never more necessary than in the days in which he lived.
On one occasion, indeed, when the infamous Catherine de Medicis, and her beautiful but licentious train, had visited the chateau of St. Real for the purpose of winning its lord to the party she espoused, more than one of her fair syrens had striven, by various arts, to initiate the handsome Chevalier of St. Real into the libertine mysteries of that debauched court; but he met them uniformly with that perfect simplicity which, though joined with much natural good sense, raised many a secret laugh at his expense, and yet guarded him effectually from their worst artifices.
The general current of his time flowed on in the various amusements of the country, as they existed in that age. The chase of the boar, the stag, and the wolf afforded active exercise for the body, while the large and ancient library of the chateau--a rare treasure in those days--yielded occupation to a quick imagination and an energetic mind, in poring over many a printed tome and many an illuminated manuscript. Besides these employments, however, both the old lord of St. Real and his son felt a keen interest in pursuits seldom much attended to by the feudal nobility of France. They not only lived in the country, and amongst their peasantry, but they also loved the country and their peasantry, and delighted in watching and superintending all those agricultural operations which formed the daily relaxation of many of the noblest Romans, but which were, in general, looked upon with indifference, if not contempt, by the new class of chieftains who sprung from the élite of their barbarous conquerors. The lords of St. Real delighted in all: they held to the full the opinion of the old orator, when he exclaimed--"Nec vero segetibus solum et pratis, et vineis, et arbustis res rusticæ lætæ sunt, sed etiam hortis et pomariis, tum pecudum pastu, apium examinibus, florum omnium varietate;" and, though they followed not precisely all the directions of Liebaut in his Maison Rustique, the garden that lay within the flanking walls of the castle, the orchard which extended from the outer balium to the barbacan, and the trellised avenue of vines which ran to what was called the lady's bower, showed taste as well as skill in those who had designed and executed them.
During several years previous to the precise epoch at which we have commenced our tale, the old lord of St. Real had seldom, if ever, slept a night without the walls of his own dwelling. His son, however, when either business, or that innocent love of a temporary change, which every man may well feel without meriting the charge of being versatile, afforded a motive for his absence from home, would often spend a day or two in the great city of Tours, or at the castles of the neighbouring nobility. Some communication with the external world was thus kept up; but the chief companionship of the Chevalier of St. Real was with his cousin-german the Count d'Aubin, who, though attached to the court, and very different in mind and character from his relations, often retired for a while from the gay and busy scenes in which he mingled, to enjoy the comparative solitude of his estates in Maine, and the calm refreshing society of his more simple cousin.
The character of Philip Count d'Aubin was one that we meet with every day. Endowed with passions and talents naturally strong, his passions had been pampered, and his talents misdirected, by an over-indulgent parent. A doubt had been at one time entertained of the legitimacy of his birth, but no one had contested his title; and the early possession of wealth, power, and influence, with the unrestrained disposal of himself and of the property which the death of his father left in his hands, had certainly tended in no degree to curb his desires or extinguish his vanity. His heart had, perhaps, been originally too feeling; but the constant indulgence of every wish and fancy had dulled the former brightness of its sensations; and it was only at times that the yet unextinguished fight shone clearly up to guide him through a maze of errors. His very talents and shrewdness often led him onwards in the wrong: for, possessing from education few fixed principles of action, the energies of his mind