To Diane, the very suggestion became
certainty: she already saw Eutacie's shallow little heart consoled
and her vanity excited by these magnificent prospects, and she
looked forward to the triumph of her own constancy, when Berenger
should find the image so long enshrined in his heart crumble in its
sacred niche.
Yet a little while then would she be patient, even though nearly a
year had passed and still she saw no effect upon her prisoners,
unless, indeed, Philip had drunk of one of her potions by mistake
and his clumsy admiration was the consequence. The two youths went
on exactly in the same manner, without a complaint, without a
request, occupying themselves as best they might--Berenger
courteously attentive recovered his health, and the athletic powers
displayed by the two brothers when wrestling, fencing, or snow-
balling in the courtyard, were the amazement and envy of their
guard. Twice in the course of the winter there had been an alarm of
wolves, and in their eagerness and excitement about this new sport,
they had accepted the Chevalier's offer of taking their parole for
the hunt.
They had then gone forth with a huge posse of villagers,
who beat the woods with their dogs till the beast was aroused from
its lair and driven into the alleys, where waited gentlemen,
gendarmes, and game keepers with their guns. These two chases were
chiefly memorable to Berenger, because in the universal
intermingling of shouting peasants he was able in the first to have
some conversation with Eutacie's faithful protector Martin, who
told him the incidents of her wanderings, with tears in his eyes,
and blessed him for his faith that she was not dead; and in the
second, he actually found himself in the ravine of the Grange du
Temple. No need to ask, every voice was shouting the name, and
though the gendarmes were round him and he durst not speak to
Rotrou, still he could reply with significative earnestness to the
low bow with which the farmer bent to evident certainty that here
was the imprisoned Protestant husband of the poor lady. Berenger
wore his black vizard mask as had been required of him, but the
man's eyes followed him, as though learning by heart the outline of
his tall figure. The object of the Chevalier's journey was, of
course, a secret from the prisoners, who merely felt its effects by
having their meals served to them in their own tower; and when he
returned after about a month's absence though him looking harassed,
aged, and so much out of humour that he could scarcely preserve his
usual politeness. In effect he was greatly chagrined.
'That she is in their hands is certain, the hypocrites!' he said to
his daughter and sister; 'and no less so that they have designs on
her; but I let them know that these could be easily traversed.'
'But where is she, the unhappy apostate child?' said the Abbess.
'They durst not refuse her to you.'
'I tell you they denied all present knowledge of her. The Duke
himself had the face to make as though he never heard of her. He
had no concern with his mother's household and guests forsooth! I
do not believe he has; the poor fellow stands in awe of that
terrible old heretic dragon, and keeps aloof from her as much as he
can. But he is, after all, a beau jeune home; nor should I be
surprised if he were the girl's gay bridegroom by this time, though
I gave him a hint that there was an entanglement about the child's
first marriage which, by French law, would invalidate any other
without a dispensation from the Pope.'
'A hard nut that for a heretic,' laughed the Abbess.
'He acted the ignorant--knew nothing about the young lady; but had
the civility to give me a guide and an escort to go to Quinet. Ma
foi! I believe they were given to hinder me--take me by indirect
roads, make me lose time at chateaux. When I arrived at the grim
old chateau--a true dungeon, precise as a convent--there was the
dame, playing the Queen Jeanne as well as she could, and having the
insolence to tell me that it was true that Madame la Baronne de
Ribaumont, as she was pleased to call her, had honoured her
residence for some months, but that she had now quitted it, and she
flatly refused to answer any question whither she was gone! The
hag! she might at least have had the decorum to deny all knowledge
of her, but nothing is more impertinent that the hypocritical
sincerity of the heretics.'
'But her people,' exclaimed the Abbess; 'surely some of them knew,
and could be brought to speak.'
'All the servants I came in contact with played the incorruptible;
but still I have done something. There were some fellows in the
village who are not at their ease under that rule. I caused my
people to inquire them out. They knew nothing more than that the
old heretic Gardon with his family had gone away in Madame la
Duchesse's litter, but whither they could not tell. But the
cabaretier there is furious secretly with the Quinets for having
spoilt his trade by destroying the shrine at the holy well, and I
have made him understand that it will be for his profit to send me
off intelligence so soon as there is any communication between them
and the lady. I made the same arrangement with a couple of
gendarmes of the escort the Duke gave me. So at least we are safe
for intelligence such as would hinder a marriage.'
'But they will be off to England!' said the Abbess.
'I wager they will again write to make sure of a reception.
Moreover, I have set that fellow Ercole and others of his trade to
keep a strict watch on all the roads leading to the ports, and give
me due notice of their passing thither. We have law on our side,
and, did I once claim her, no one could resist my right. Or should
the war break out, as is probable, then could my son sweep their
whole province with his troops. This time she cannot escape us.
The scene that her father's words and her own imagination conjured
up, of Eustacie attracting the handsome widower-duke, removed all
remaining scruples from Madame de Selinville. For his own sake,
the Baron must be made to fulfil the prophecy of the ink-pool, and
allow his prison doors to be opened by love. Many and many a
tender art did Diane rehearse; numerous were her sighs; wakeful,
languishing, and restless her nights and days; and yet, whatever
her determination to practise upon her cousin the witcheries that
she had learnt in the Escadron de la Reine-mere, and seen played
off effectually where there was not one grain of love to inspire
them, her powers and her courage always failed her in the presence
of him whom she sought to attract. His quiet reserve and
simplicity always disconcerted her, and any attempt at blandishment
that he could not mistake was always treated by him as necessarily
an accidental error, as if any other supposition would render her
despicable; and yet there was now and then a something that made
her detect an effort in his restraint, as if it were less distaste
than self-command. Her brother had contemptuously acquiesced in
the experiment made by herself and her father, and allowed that so
long as there was any danger of the Quinet marriage, the Baron's
existence was needful. He would not come to Nid-de-Merle, nor did
they want him there, knowing that he could hardly have kept his
hands off his rival. But when the war broke out again in the
summer of 1575 he joined that detachment of Guise's army which
hovered about the Loire, and kept watch on the Huguenot cities and
provinces of Western France. The Chevalier made several
expeditions to confer with his son, and to keep up his relations
with the network of spies whom he had spread over the Quinet
provinces. The prisoners were so much separated from all
intercourse with the dependants that they were entirely ignorant of
the object of his absence from home. On these occasions they never
left their tower and its court, and had no enlivenment save an
occasional gift of dainties or message of inquiry from the ladies
at Bellaise. These were brought by a handsome but slight, pale lad
called Aime de Selinville, a relative of the late Count, as he told
them, who had come to act as a gentleman attendant upon the widowed
countess. The brothers rather wondered how he was disposed of at
the convent, but all there was so contrary to their preconceived
notions that they acquiesced. The first time he arrived it was on
a long, hot summer day, and he then brought them a cool iced
sherbet in two separate flasks, that for Philip being mixed with
wine, which was omitted for Berenger; and the youth stood lingering
and watching, anxious, he said, to be able to tell his lady how the
drinks were approved. Both were excellent, and to that effect the
prisoners replied; but no sooner was the messenger gone than
Berenger said smilingly, 'That was a love potion, Phil.'
'And you drank it!' cried Philip, in horror.
'I did not think of it till I saw how the boy's eyes were gazing
curiously at me as I swallowed it. You look at me as curiously,
Phil. Are you expecting it to work? Shall I be at the fair lady's
feet next time we meet?'
'How can you defy it, Berry?'
'Nay, Phil; holy wedded love is not to be dispelled by a
mountebank's decoction.'
'But suppose it were poisonous, Berry, what can be done?' cried
Philip, starting up in dismay.
'Then you would go home, Phil, and this would be over. But'--
seeing his brother's terror--'there is no fear of that. She is not
like to wish to poison me.'
And the potion proved equally ineffective on mind and body, as
indeed did all the manipulations exercised upon a little waxen
image that was supposed to represent M. le Baron. Another figure
was offered to Diane, in feminine form, with black beads for eyes
and a black plaster for hair, which, when stuck full of pins and
roasted before the fire, was to cause Eustacie to peak and pine
correspondingly. But from this measure Diane shrank. If aught was
done against her rival it must be by her father and brother, not by
herself; and she would not feel herself directly injuring her
little cousin, nor sinking herself below him whom she loved. Once
his wife, she would be good for ever, held up by his strength.
Meantime Berenger had received a greater shock than she or her
father understood in the looking over of some of the family
parchments kept in store at the castle. The Chevalier, in showing
them to him, had chiefly desired to glorify the family by
demonstrating how its honours had been won, but Berenger was
startled at finding that Nid-de-Merle had been, as it appeared to
him, arbitrarily and unjustly declared to be forfeited by the Sieur
de Bellaise, who had been thrown into prison by Louis XI. for some
demonstration in favour of the poor Duke de Berri, and granted to
the favourite Ribaumont. The original grant was there, and to his
surprise he found it was to male heirs--the male heirs alone of the
direct line of the Ribaumont--to whom the grant was made. How,
then, came it to Eustacie? The disposal had, with almost equal
injustice, been changed by King Henry II. and the late Count de
Ribaumont in favour of the little daughter whose union with the
heir of the elder line was to conclude all family feuds. Only now
did Berenger understand what his father had said on his death-bed
of flagrant injustice committed in his days of darkness. He felt
that he was reaping the reward of the injuries committed against
the Chevalier and his son on behalf of the two unconscious
children. He would willingly at once have given up all claim to
the Nid-de-Merle estate--and he was now of age; two birthdays had
passed in his captivity and brought him to years of discretion--but
he had no more power than before to dispose of what was the
property of Eustacie and her child; and the whole question of the
validity of his marriage would be given up by his yielding even the
posthumous claim that might have devolved on him in case of
Eustacie's death. This would be giving up her honour, a thing
impossible.
'Alas!' he sighed, 'my poor father might well say he had bound a
heavy burthen round my neck.'
And from that time his hopes sank lower as the sense of the justice
of his cause left him. He could neither deny his religion nor his
marriage, and therefore could do nothing for his own deliverance;
and he knew himself to be suffering in the cause of a great
injustice; indeed, to be bringing suffering on the still more
innocent Philip.
The once proudly indifferent youth was flagging now; was losing
appetite, flesh, and colour; was unwilling to talk or to take
exercise; and had a wan and drooping air that was most painful to
watch. It seemed as if the return of summer brought a sense of the
length and weariness of the captivity, and that the sunshine and
gaiety of the landscape had become such a contrast to the captives'
deadness of spirit that they could hardly bear to behold them, and
felt the dull prison walls more congenial to their feelings than
the gaiety of the summer hay and harvest-fields.