The Duchess, who really was not unlike 'that great woman'
the Shunammite, in her dignified content with 'dwelling among her
own people,' and her desire to 'receive a prophet in the name of a
prophet,' generally sat presiding over the work while some one,
chaplain, grandson, or young maiden, read aloud from carefully
assorted books; religious treatises at certain hours, and at
others, history. Often, however, Madame was called away into her
cabinet, where she gave audience to intendants, notaries from her
estates, pastors from the villages, captains of little garrisons,
soldiers offering service, farmers, women, shepherds, foresters,
peasants, who came either on her business or with their own needs--
for all of which she was ready with the beneficence and decision of
an autocrat.
The chapel had been 'purified,' and made bare of all altar or
image. It was filled with benches and a desk, whence Isaac Gardon,
the chaplain, any pastor on a visit, or sometimes a candidate for
his promotion, would expound, and offer prayers, shortly in the
week, more at length on Sunday; and there, too, classes were held
for the instruction of the peasants.
There was a great garden full of medicinal plants, and decoctions
and distilleries were the chief variety enjoyed by the gentlewomen.
The Duchess had studied much in quaint Latin and French medical
books, and, having great experience and good sense, was probably as
good a doctor as any one in the kingdom except Ambroise Pare and
his pupils; and she required her ladies to practise under her upon
the numerous ailments that the peasants were continually bringing
for her treatment. 'No one could tell,' she said, 'how soon they
might be dealing with gun-shot wounds, and all ought to know how to
sew up a gash, or cure an argue.'
This department suited Eustacie much better than the stitching, and
best of all she liked to be sent with Maitre Isaac to some cottage
where solace for soul and body were needed, and the inmate was too
ill to be brought to Madame la Duchess. She was learning much and
improving too in the orderly household, but her wanderings had made
her something of a little gipsy. She now and then was intolerably
weary, and felt as if she had been entirely spoilt for her natural
post. 'What would become of her,' she said to Maitre Isaac, 'if
she were too grand to dress Rayonette?'
She was not greatly distressed that the Montauban pursuivant turned
out to have only the records of the Provencal nobility, and was
forced to communicate with his brethren at Bordeaux before he could
bring down the Ribaumont genealogy to the actual generation; and so
slow was communication, so tardy the mode of doing everything, that
the chestnut leaves were falling and autumn becoming winter before
the blazoned letter showed Ribaumont, de Picardie--'Gules, fretty
or, a canton of the last, a leopard, sable. Eustacie Berangere, m.
Annora, daughter and heiress of Villiam, Baron of Valvem, in the
county of Dorisette, England, who beareth, azure, a siren regardant
in a mirror proper.' The siren was drawn in all her propriety
impaled with the leopard, and she was so much more comprehensible
than the names, to both Madame de Quinet and Eustacie, that it was
a pity they could not direct their letters to her rather than to
'Le Baron de Valvem,' whose cruel W's perplexed them so much.
However, the address was the least of Eustacie's troubles; she
should be only too glad when she got to that, and she was sitting
in Maitre Isaac's room, trying to make him dictate her sentences
and asking him how to spell every third word, when the dinner-bell
rang, and the whole household dropped down from salon, library,
study, or chamber to the huge hall, with its pavement of black and
white marble, and its long tables, for Madame de Quinet was no
woman to discard wholesome old practices.
Then, as Eustacie, with Rayonette trotting at her side, and Maitre
Isaac leaning on her arm, slowly made her way to that high table
where dined Madame la Duchess, her grandsons, the ministers, the
gentlemen in waiting, and some three or four women besides herself,
she saw that the lower end of the great hall was full of silks,
cloths, and ribbons heaped together; and, passing by the lengthy
rank of retainers, she received a bow and look of recognition from
a dark, acute-looking visage which she remembered to belong to the
pedlar she had met at Charente.
The Duchess, at the head of her table, was not in the best of
humours. Her son had sent home letters by a courier whom he had
picked up for himself and she never liked nor trusted, and he
required an immediate reply when she particularly resented being
hurried. It was a galimafre, literally a hash, she said; for
indeed most matters where she was not consulted did become a
galimafre with her. Moreover, under favour of the courier, her
porters had admitted this pedlar, and the Duchess greatly disliked
pedlars. All her household stores were bought at shops of good
repute in Montauban, and no one ought to be so improvident as to
require dealings with these mountebank vagabonds, who dangled
vanities before the eyes of silly girls, and filled their heads
with Paris fashion, if they did not do still worse, and excite them
to the purchase of cosmetics and love-charms.
Yet the excitement caused by the approach of a pedlar was
invincible, even by Madame la Duchess. It was inevitable that the
crying need of glove, kerchief, needle, or the like, should be
discovered as soon as he came within ken, and, once in the hall,
there was no being rid of him except by a flagrant act of
inhospitality. This time it was worst of all, for M. le Marquis
himself must needs be the first to spy him, bring him in, and be in
want of a silver chain for his hawk; and his brother the Vicomte
must follow him up with all manner of wants inspired by the mere
sight of the pack.
Every one with the smallest sum of money must buy, every one
without inspect and assist in bargaining; and all dinner-time,
eyes, thoughts, and words were wandering to the gay pile in the
corner, or reckoning up needs and means. The pedlar, too, knew
what a Calvinist household was, and had been extremely discreet,
producing nothing that could reasonably be objected to; and the
Duchess, seeing that the stream was too strong for her, wisely
tried to steer her bark through it safely instead of directly
opposing it.
As soon as grace was over, she called her maitre d'hotel, and bade
him look after that galimafre, and see that none of these fools
were unreasonably cheated, and that there was no attempt at gulling
the young ones with charms or fortune-telling, as well as to
conclude the matter so as to give no excuse for the Italian fellow
lingering to sup and sleep. She then retired to her cabinet to
prepare her dispatches, which were to include a letter to Lord
Walwyn. Though a nominal friendship subsisted between Elisabeth
and the French court, the Huguenot chiefs always maintained a
correspondence with England, and there was little danger but that
the Duke de Quinet would be able to get a letter, sooner or later,
conveyed to any man of mark. In the course of her letter, Madame
de Quinet found it necessary to refer to Eustacie. She rang her
little silver handbell for the hall. There, of course, Master Page
had been engulfed in the galimafre, and not only forming one of
the swarm around the pedlar, but was actually aping courtly
grimaces as he tried a delicate lace ruffle on the hand of a silly
little smirking maiden, no older than himself! But this little
episode was, like many others, overlooked by Madame de Quinet, as
her eye fell upon the little figure of Rayonette standing on the
table, with her mother and two or three ladies besides coaxing her
to open her mouth, and show the swollen gums that had of late been
troubling her, while the pedlar was evidently expending his
blandishments upon her.
The maitre d'hotel was the first to perceive his mistress, and, as
he approached, received a sharp rebuke from her for allowing the
fellow to produce his quack medicines; and, at the same time, she
desired him to request Madame Esperance to come to her immediately
on business. Eustacie, who always had a certain self-willed sense
of opposition when the Duchess showed herself peremptory towards
her, at first began to make answer that she would come as soon as
her business was concluded; but the steward made a gesture towards
the great lady sailing up and down as she paced the dais in
stately impatience. 'Good fellow,' she said, 'I will return
quickly, and see you again, though I am now interrupted. Stay
there, little one, with good Mademoiselle Perrot; mother will soon
be back.'
Rayonette, in her tooth-fretfulnes, was far from enduring to be
forsaken so near a strange man, and her cry made it necessary for
Eustacie to take her in arms, and carry her to the dais where the
Duchess was waiting.
'So!' said the lady, 'I suspected that the fellow was a quack as
well as a cheat.'
'Madame,'said Eustacie, with spirit, 'he sold me unguents that
greatly relieved my father last spring.'
'And because rubbing relieved an old man's rheumatics, you would
let a vagabond cheat drug and sicken this poor child for what is
not ailment at all--and the teeth will relieve in a few days. Or,
if she were feverish, have not we decoctions brewed from Heaven's
own pure herbs in the garden, with no unknown ingredient?'
'Madame,' said Eustacie, ruffling into fierceness, 'you are very
good to me; but I must keep the management of my daughter to
myself.'
The Duchess looked at her from head to foot. Perhaps it was with
an impulse to treat her impertinence as she would have done that of
a dependant; but the old lady never forgot herself: she only
shrugged her shoulders and said, with studied politeness, 'When I
unfortunately interrupted your consultation with this eminent
physician, it was to ask you a question regarding this English
family. Will you do me the honour to enter my cabinet?'
And whereas no one was looking, the old lady showed her displeasure
by ushering Madame de Ribaumont into her cabinet like a true noble
stranger guest; so that Eustacie felt disconcerted.
The Duchess then began to read aloud her own letter to Lord Walwyn,
pausing at every clause, so that Eustacie felt the delay and
discussion growing interminable, and the Duchess then requested to
have Madame de Ribaumont's own letter at once, as she wished to
inclose it, make up her packet, and send it without delay. Opening
a secret door in her cabinet, she showed Eustacie stair by which
she might reach Maitre Gardon's room without crossing the hall.
Eustacie hoped to find him there and tell him how intolerable was
the Duchess; but, though she found him, it was in company with the
tutor, who was spending an afternoon on Plato with him. She could
only take up her letter and retreat to Madame's cabinet, where she
had left her child. She finished it as best she might, addressed
it after the herald's spelling of the title, bound it with some of
the Duchess's black floss silk--wondering meanwhile, but little
guessing that the pedlar knew, where was the tress that had bound
her last attempt at correspondence, guessing least of all that that
tress lay on a heart still living and throbbing for her. All this
had made her a little forget her haste to assert her liberty of
action by returning to the pedlar; but, behold, when she came back
to the hall, it had resumed its pristine soberness, and merely a
few lingering figures were to be seen, packing up their purchases.
While she was still looking round in dismay, Mademoiselle Perrot
came up to her and said, 'Ah! Madame, you may well wonder! I
never saw Maitre Benoit there so cross; the poor man did but offer
to sell little Fanchon the elizir that secures a good husband, and
old Benoit descended on him like a griffin enraged, would scarce
give him time to compute his charges or pack his wares, but hustled
him forth like a mere thief! And I missed my bargain for that
muffler that had so taken my fancy. But, Madame, he spoke to me
apart, and said you were an old customer of his, and that rather
than the little angel should suffer with her teeth, which surely
threaten convulsions, he would leave with you this sovereign remedy
of sweet syrup--a spoonful to be given each night.'
Eustacie took the little flask. She was much inclined to give the
syrup by way of precaution, as well as to assure herself that she
was not under the Duchess's dominion; but some strong instinct of
the truth of the lady's words that the child was safer and
healthier undoctored, made her resolve at least to defer it until
the little one showed any perilous symptom. And as happily
Rayonette only showed two little white teeth, and much greater
good-humour, the syrup was nearly forgotten, when, a fortnight
after, the Duchess received a dispatch from her son which filled
her with the utmost indignation. The courier had indeed arrived,
but the packet had proved to be filled with hay and waste-paper.
And upon close examination, under the lash, the courier had been
forced to confess to having allowed himself to be overtaken by the
pedlar, and treated by him to a supper at a cabaret. No doubt,
while he was afterwards asleep, the contents of his packet had been
abstracted. There had been important documents for the Duke
besides Eustacie's letters, and the affair greatly annoyed the
Duchess, though she had the compensation of having been proved
perfectly right in her prejudice against pedlars, and her dislike
of her son's courier. She sent for Eustacie to tell her privately
of the loss, and of course the young mother at once turned pale and
exclaimed, 'The wicked one! Ah! what a blessing that I gave my
little darling none of his dose!'
'Hein? You had some from him then!' demanded the Duchess with
displeasure.
'No, Madame, thanks, thanks to you. Oh! I never will be self-
willed and naughty again. Forgive me, Madame.' And down she
dropped on her knee, with clasped hands and glistening eyes.
'Forgive you, silly child, for what?' said Madame de Quinet, nearly
laughing.
'Ah! for the angry, passionate thoughts I had! Ah! Madame, I was
all but giving the stuff to my little angel in very spite--and
then---' Eutacie's voice was drowned in passion of tears, and she
devoured the old lady's hand with her kisses.
'Come, come,' said the Duchess, 'let us be reasonable. A man may be
a thief, but it does not follow that he is a poisoner.'
'Nay, that will we see,' cried Eutacie. 'He was resolved that the
little lamb should not escape, and he left a flask for her with
Mademoiselle Perrot. I will fetch it, if Madame will give me
leave. Oh, the great mercy of Heaven that made her so well that I
gave her none!'
Madame de Quinet's analytic powers did not go very far; and would
probably have decided against the syrup if it had been nothing but
virgin honey. She was one who fully believed that her dear Queen
Jeanne had been poisoned with a pair of gloves, and she had
unlimited faith in the powers of evil possessed by Rene of Milan.
Of course, she detected the presence of a slow poison, whose
effects would have been attributed to the ailment it was meant to
cure; and though her evidence was insufficient, she probably did
Ercole no injustice. She declined testing the compound on any
unfortunate dog or cat, but sealed it up in the presence of Gardon,
Eutacie, and Mademoiselle Perrot, to be produced against the pedlar
if ever he should be caught.
Then she asked Eutacie if there was any reason to suspect that he
recognized her. Eutacie related the former dealings with him, when
she had sold him her jewels and her hair, but she had no notion of
his being the same person whom she had seen when at Montpipeau.
Indeed, he had altered his appearance so much that he had been only
discovered at Nid-de-Merle by eyes sharpened by distrust of his
pretensions to magic arts.
Madame de Quinet, however, concluded that Eutacie had been known,
or else that her jewels had betrayed her, and that the man must
have been employed by her enemies. If it had not been the depth of
winter, she would have provided for the persecuted lady's immediate
transmission to England; but he storms of the Bay of Biscay would
have made this impossible in the state of French navigation, even
if Isaac Gardon had been in a condition to move; for the first
return of cold had brought back severe rheumatic pains, and with
them came a shortness of breath which even the Duchess did not know
to be the token of heart complaint. He was confined to his room,
and it was kneeling by his bedside that Eutacie poured out her
thankfulness for her child's preservation, and her own repentance
for the passing fit of self-will and petulance. The thought of
Rayonette's safety seemed absolutely to extinguish the fresh
anxiety that had arisen since it had become evident that her
enemies no longer supposed her dead, but were probably upon her
traces. Somehow, danger had become almost a natural element to
her, and having once expressed her firm resolution that nothing
should separate her from her adopted father, to whom indeed her
care became constantly more necessary, she seemed to occupy herself
very little with the matter; she nursed him as merrily as ever, and
left to him and Madame de Quinet the grave consultations as to what
was to be done for her security. There was a sort of natural
buoyancy about her that never realized a danger till it came, and
then her spirit was roused to meet it.