This caitiff monk for gold did swear,
That by his drugs my rival fair
A saint in heaven should be.--SCOTT
A grand cavalcade bore the house of Quinet from Montauban--coaches,
wagons, outriders, gendarmes--it was a perfect court progress, and
so low and cumbrous that it was a whole week in reaching a grand
old castle standing on a hill-side among chestnut woods, with an
avenue a mile long leading up to it; and battlemented towers fit to
stand a siege.
Eustacie was ranked among the Duchess's gentlewomen. She was so
far acknowledged as a lady of birth, that she was usually called
Madame Esperance; and though no one was supposed to doubt her being
Theodore Gardon's widow, she was regarded as being a person of rank
who had made a misalliance by marrying him. This Madame de Quinet
had allowed the household to infer, thinking that the whole bearing
of her guest was too unlike that of a Paris bourgeoise not to
excite suspicion, but she deemed it wiser to refrain from treating
her with either intimacy or distinction that might excite jealousy
or suspicion.
Even as it was, the consciousness of a secret, or
the remnants of Montauban gossip, prevented any familiarity between
Eustacie and the good ladies who surrounded her; they were very
civil to each other, but their only connecting link was the delight
that every one took in petting pretty little Rayonette, and the
wonder that was made of her signs of intelligence and attempts at
talking. E
Even when she toddled fearlessly up to the stately
Duchess on her canopied throne, and held out her entreating hands,
and lisped the word 'nontre,' Madame would pause in her
avocations, take her on her knee, and display that wonderful gold
and enamel creature which cried tic-tic, and still remained an
unapproachable mystery to M. le Marquis and M. le Vicomte, her
grandsons.
Pale, formal stiff boys they looked, twelve and ten years old, and
under the dominion of a very learned tutor, who taught them Latin,
Greek and Hebrew, alternately with an equally precise, stiff old
esquire, who trained them in martial exercises, which seemed to be
as much matters of rote with them as their tasks, and to be quite
as uninteresting. It did not seem as if they ever played, or
thought of playing; and if they were ever to be gay, witty
Frenchmen, a wonderful change must come over them.
The elder was already betrothed to a Bearnese damsel, of an
unimpeachably ancient and Calvinistic family; and the whole
establishment had for the last three years been employed on
tapestry hangings for a whole suite of rooms, that were to be
fitted up and hung with the histories of Ruth, of Abigail, of the
Shunammite, and of Esther, which their diligent needles might hope
to complete by the time the marriage should take place, three years
later!