THE MASTERPIECES OF
GEORGE SAND

AMANDINE LUCILLE AURORE DUPIN,
BARONESS DUDEVANT

VOLUME IX

LES BEAUX
MESSIEURS DE BOIS-DORÉ

CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXIX

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LES BEAUX MESSIEURS DE BOIS-DORÉ
VOLUME I

MARIO COMFORTS MADAME DE BEUVRE
MERCEDES ENCOUNTERS D'ALVIMAR
BOIS-DORÉ AND JOVELIN, HIS PROTÉGÉ
MERCEDES AND MARIO ENTERTAIN THE MARQUIS
MARIO ESTABLISHES HIS IDENTITY
THE DUEL BETWEEN THE MARQUIS AND D'ALVIMAR

LES BEAUX MESSIEURS DE BOIS-DORÉ

I

Among the numerous protégés of the favorite Concini, one of the least remarked, yet one of the most remarkable by reason of his wit, education, and the distinction of his manners, was Don Antonio d'Alvimar, a Spaniard of Italian origin, who styled himself Sciarra d'Alvimar. He was a very pretty cavalier, whose face denoted a man of no more than twenty years, although at that time he confessed to thirty. Rather short than tall, muscular without seeming to be so, skilful in all manly exercises, he was certain to interest the ladies by the gleam of his bright and penetrating eyes and by the charm of his conversation, which was as light and agreeable with the fair sex as it was solid and substantial with serious-minded men. He spoke the principal languages of Europe almost without accent, and was no less versed in the ancient languages.

Despite all these appearances of merit, Sciarra d'Alvimar formed no scheme for his own advancement amid the constant intriguing at the court of the Regent; at all events, any that he may have dreamed of came to nothing. He confessed afterward, in the strictest privacy, that he had aspired to make himself agreeable to no less a personage than Marie de Médicis herself, and to replace his own master and patron, Maréchal d'Ancre, in that queen's good graces.

But the balorda, as Leonora Galigai called her, paid no attention to the humble Spaniard, and saw in him only a paltry adventurer—a subaltern without future prospects. Did she even notice Monsieur d'Alvimar's real or feigned passion? That is something that history does not divulge and that D'Alvimar himself never knew.

It is not an unreasonable supposition that he would have been capable of pleasing the Regent by his wit and the charms of his person, had not her thoughts been occupied by Concini. The favorite was of even lower origin, and was not half so intelligent as he. But D'Alvimar had within himself an obstacle to his attainment of the exalted fortune enjoyed by the successful courtiers of the day—an obstacle which his ambition could not overcome.

He was a bigoted Catholic, and he had all the faults of the intolerant Catholics of the Spain of Philip II. Suspicious, restless, vindictive, implacable, he had abundance of faith nevertheless; but faith without love and without light, faith falsified by the passions and hatreds of a political system which identified itself with religion, "to the great displeasure of the merciful and indulgent God, whose kingdom is not so much of this world as of the other;" that is to say, if we apprehend aright the thought of the contemporary author to whom we look for information from time to time, the God whose conquests are supposed to extend through the moral world by charity, and not through the material world by the use of violence.

It is impossible to say that France would not have been subjected in some degree to the régime of the Inquisition, in the event that Monsieur d'Alvimar had obtained possession of the Regent's heart and mind; but such was not the case, and Concini, whose sole crime was that he was not noble enough by birth to be entitled to rob and pillage as freely as a genuine great nobleman of those days, remained until his tragic death the arbiter of the Regents uncertain and venal policy.

After the murder of the favorite, D'Alvimar, who had compromised himself seriously in his service in the affair of the Paris serjean,[1] was compelled to disappear to avoid being involved in the prosecution of Leonora.

He would have been very glad to insinuate himself into the service of the new favorite, the king's favorite, Monsieur de Luynes, but he could not bring it about; and, although he had no more scruples than "most courtiers of his time, he felt that he could not stoop to the shuffling of the royal party, whose policy was to yield many points to the Calvinists, whenever they saw reason to hope that they could purchase the submission of the princes who made use of the Reformed religion to forward their ambition."

When Queen Marie was in open disgrace, Sciarra d'Alvimar considered it to be for his interest to display his fidelity to her cause. He reflected that parties are never without resources, and that they all have their day. Moreover, the queen, even though she were to remain in exile, might still make the fortunes of her faithful adherents. Everything is relative, and D'Alvimar was so poor that the gifts of a royal personage, however nearly ruined she might be, offered an excellent chance for him.

He exerted himself, therefore, to assist in planning the escape from the château of Blois, even as he had been employed, several years before, in the third or fourth rôles in the various political dramas evolved sometimes by the diplomatic manœuvres of Philip III., sometimes by those of Marie de Médicis, their aim being to bring about the marriages.[2]

This Monsieur d'Alvimar was, generally speaking, sufficiently shrewd in the interests of others, discreet and ready for work; but he was often reproached with having a mania for giving his advice "where he should have been content to follow that of other people," and for exhibiting an ability of which he should have been content to leave the credit to his superiors, "being as yet only an unimportant personage."

Thus, despite his zeal, he did not succeed in drawing upon himself the queen mothers attention, and, at the time of Marie's retirement to Angers, he was lost to sight among the subaltern officers, tolerated rather than popular.

D'Alvimar was touched by these numerous rebuffs. Nothing seemed to profit him, neither his comely face nor his fine manners, nor his respectable birth, nor his learning, his penetration, his courage, his agreeable and instructive conversation: "people did not like him." He made a pleasant impression at first, but then—very quickly too—people were disgusted by a touch of bitterness which he soon displayed; or else they distrusted a flavor of ambition which he inopportunely allowed to appear. He was neither Spanish enough nor Italian enough, or, perhaps, he was too much of both: one day as talkative, persuasive and supple as a young Venetian; the next day as haughty, obstinate and gloomy as an old Castilian.

All his disappointments were intensified by a certain secret remorse which he did not reveal until his last hour, and which, as the narrative proceeds, will be forcibly dragged forth from the oblivion in which he wished to bury it.

Despite our careful investigations, we lose sight of him more than once during the years that elapsed between the death of Concini and the last year of Luynes's life; with the exception of a few words in our manuscript concerning his presence at Blois and at Angers, we find no fact worthy of mention in his obscure and unhappy life until the year 1621, when, while the king was carrying on the siege of Montauban with such ill success, young D'Alvimar was in Paris, still in the suite of the queen-mother, who had been reconciled with her son after the affair of the Ponts-de-Cé.

At that time D'Alvimar had renounced the hope of winning her favor, and perhaps he, too, in his rancorous heart called her balorda, although for the first time she had given proof of good sense by bestowing her confidence—and it was said her heart—upon Armand Duplessis. There was a rival whom D'Alvimar could hardly hope to outshine! Moreover, the queen, under Richelieu's guidance, adopted the policy of Henry IV. and Sully. She combated for the moment the Spanish influence in Germany, and D'Alvimar found himself almost in disgrace, when, to cap the climax of his misfortunes, he became involved in a most unpleasant affair.

He fell into a dispute with another Sciarra, a Sciarra Martinengo, whom Marie de Médicis employed much more freely, and who refused to acknowledge him as a kinsman. They fought: Sciarra Martinengo was severely wounded, and it came to Marie's ears that Monsieur Sciarra d'Alvimar had not scrupulously observed the laws of the duello as practised in France.

She summoned him to her presence and reprimanded him most brutally; whereupon D'Alvimar retorted with the bitterness that had been long heaping up within him. He succeeded in leaving Paris before measures were taken for his arrest, and, early in November, arrived at the château of Ars, in Berry, in the Duchy of Châteauroux.

It will be well enough to state the reasons which led him to seek that place of refuge in preference to any other.

About six weeks before his unfortunate duel, Monsieur Sciarra d'Alvimar had been brought into social relations with Monsieur Guillaume d'Ars, an amiable and wealthy young man, descended in a straight line from the gallant Louis d'Ars, who had effected the honorable retreat from Venouze, in 1504, and was killed at the battle of Pavia.

Guillaume d'Ars had been fascinated by D'Alvimar's wit and by the very great affability of which he was capable when the spirit moved him. He had not had time to become well enough acquainted with him to conceive the species of antipathy which the unfortunate young man almost inevitably inspired, after a few weeks, in those who were much in his company.

Moreover, Monsieur d'Ars was a youth with little experience of the world, and, as may well be believed, without great penetration. He had been reared in the provinces, and had just made his first appearance in Parisian society, when he met D'Alvimar, and became infatuated with him because of the superior skill which he displayed, on occasion, in horsemanship, hunting and tennis-playing. Generous and lavish, Guillaume placed his purse and his arm at the Spaniard's service, and warmly urged him to visit him at his château in Berry, whither he was recalled by business of some sort.

D'Alvimar profited discreetly by his new friend's generosity. Although he had many faults, he could not be accused of showing any lack of pride in the way of accepting offers of money, and yet God knows that he was not rich, and that the whole of his slender revenue was none too much to meet the demands of his wardrobe and his horses. He indulged in no follies, and, "by the most painstaking economy, succeeded in appearing as well clad and mounted as many others whose pockets were better lined than his."

But when he found that he was threatened with a criminal prosecution, he remembered the overtures and invitations of the young Berry squire, and adopted the wise plan of seeking refuge with him.

He judged from what Guillaume had told him of his district, that it was at that period the most tranquil province in France.

Monsieur le Prince de Condé was its governor, and, being thoroughly content with the fat sum by which he had been bought, he passed his time partly in his château of Montrond at Saint Amand, partly in his good city of Bourges, where he was heartily engaged in the king's service, and even more heartily in that of the Jesuits.

This so-called tranquillity of Berry would be considered in our day a state of civil war, for many things were taking place there which we shall narrate in their proper time and place; but it was a state of perfect peace and orderliness if we compare it with what was taking place elsewhere, and especially with what had taken place in the preceding century.

Thus Sciarra d'Alvimar was justified in hoping that he would not be molested in one of the old châteaux of lower Berry, where the Calvinists had attempted no sudden outbreaks for several years, and where the royalist nobles, former Leaguers, politiques and others, no longer had the opportunity or the pretext to revictual their men-at-arms at the expense of their neighbors, friends or foes.

D'Alvimar reached the château of Ars one morning in autumn, about eight o'clock, accompanied by a single servant, an old Spaniard, who claimed to be of noble birth, but whom want had reduced to the necessity of taking service, and who seemed in little danger of betraying his master's secrets, for he spoke very little—sometimes not three words a week.

Both were well mounted, and, although their horses were laden with heavy boxes, they had made the journey from Paris in less than seven days.

The first person whom they saw in the courtyard of the castle was its young lord, Guillaume, just mounting for something more than a morning's ride, for he was attended by several of his retainers, prepared to ride forth with him—that is to say, with their horses laden with luggage.

"Ah! you arrive in the nick of time!" he cried, hastening to embrace D'Alvimar; "I am just setting out to witness the fêtes to be given by Monsieur le Prince at Bourges, to celebrate the birth of his son, the Duc d'Enghien.[3] There will be whole days of dancing and play-acting, target-shooting, fireworks, and a thousand other amusing things. Now you have come, I will postpone my departure for a few hours so that you can go with me. Come into my house, and rest and eat. I will see to it that you are supplied with a fresh horse, for the one you are riding, well as he looks, can hardly be in condition to do eighteen more leagues to-day."

When D'Alvimar was alone with his host, he told him confidentially that he could not dream of attending any public festivities, and that what he desired of him was not to be taken to any such function, however diverting, but to be concealed in his château for a few weeks. Nothing more was needed in those days to assure oblivion touching an affair so frequent and so simple as death or wounds inflicted on an enemy, whether in single combat or otherwise. It was merely a matter of securing a protector at court, and D'Alvimar was relying upon the speedy arrival at Paris of the Duke of Lerma, whose kinsman he was or claimed to be. The duke was a personage of sufficient note to obtain his pardon, and even to place his fortunes upon a better footing than before.

Our Spaniard's version of his duel with Sciarra Martinengo—whether he attempted to explain his having attacked him in violation of the rules, or claimed to have been slandered in that respect, to Queen Marie as well as to Monsieur de Luynes—was a matter to which Guillaume d'Ars paid little heed. Like the loyal gentleman that he was, he had been fascinated by D'Alvimar, and had no distrust of him. Moreover, he was much more anxious to start than to remain behind, and it would have been impossible to surprise him when he was less inclined to discuss any question whatsoever.

So he dismissed the serious part of the affair very lightly, and was disturbed only by the possibility of being detained another day from the fêtes at the capital of Berry. Doubtless there was, behind his impatience, some amourette to be carried to a conclusion.

D'Alvimar, who saw his embarrassment, urged him to make no change in his plans, but to suggest some village or farm on his domain where he could safely remain.

"It is my desire to shelter and conceal you in my own château, and not in a village or a farm-house," Guillaume replied. "And yet I fear you will be sadly bored in such seclusion, and, upon reflection, I have thought of a better plan. Eat and drink; then I will myself escort you to the abode of a kinsman and friend of my own who lives not more than an hour's ride from here. There you will be as pleasantly entertained and in as perfect security as possible in our province of Lower Berry. In four or five days I will come and take you away again."

D'Alvimar would have preferred to remain alone, but, as Guillaume insisted, courtesy compelled him to assent. He refused to eat or drink, and, remounting at once, he followed Guillaume d'Ars, who took with him his retinue all equipped for travelling, as the road they were to take deviated very slightly from the Bourges road.

II

They left the château by way of the warren, rode through a by-path to the Bourges highroad, from which they soon turned to the right, and then through other by-paths to the Château Meillant road, leaving on their right the baronial town of La Châtre, and finally, leaving the last-mentioned road, they descended across the fields to the château and village of Briantes, which was the goal of their journey.

As the country was really peaceful, the two gentlemen had ridden on ahead of their little escort, in order that they might converse without restraint; and this is how young D'Ars enlightened D'Alvimar:

"The friend upon whom I propose to quarter you," he said, "is the most extraordinary personage in Christendom. You must keep a close watch upon yourself in order to stifle a wild desire to laugh when you are with him; but you will be well rewarded for such tolerance as you may display of his mental peculiarities by the great kindness of heart he will manifest to everybody he meets. He is so kind-hearted that, if you should happen to forget his name and ask the first passer-by, noble or serf, where the kind gentleman lives, he will direct you, and never make a mistake as to the person you mean. But this requires an explanation, and, as your horse has no great desire to hurry, and as it is only nine o'clock at the latest, I propose to entertain you with your host's story. Listen, I begin! Story of the kind Monsieur de Bois-Doré!

"As you are a foreigner, and have been in France no more than ten years, you can hardly have met him, because he has been living on his estate about the same time. Otherwise, you would certainly have remarked, wherever you might have chanced to see him, the good, mad, gallant, noble old Marquis de Bois-Doré, to-day lord of Briantes, Guinard, Validé and other places; also, abbé fiduciaire of Varennes, etc., etc.

"Despite all these titles, Bois-Doré does not belong to the great nobility of the province, and we are related to him by marriage only. He is a simple gentleman whom the late King Henri IV. made a marquis solely through friendship, and who made a fortune, no one very well knows how, in the wars of the Béarnais. We are compelled to believe that he must have done more or less sacking and pillaging, as the custom was in those days, and as is the well recognized privilege of partisan warfare.

"I will not attempt to describe Bois-Doré's campaigns; it would take too long. Let me tell you his family history simply. His father, Monsieur de——"

"Stay," said Monsieur d'Alvimar; "so this Monsieur de Bois-Doré is a heretic, is he?"

"Ah! deuce take it," replied his guide, laughing, "I forgot that you are a zealot—a genuine Spaniard! We fellows hereabout do not care so much about these religious disputes. The province has suffered too much because of them, and we long for the time when France shall suffer no more. We hope that the king will soon bring all those fanatics of the South to terms at Montauban. We want them to have a sound thrashing, but not the cord and the stake to which our fathers would have treated them. Political parties are not what they used to be, and in our day people don't damn one another so much as they used. But I see that my remarks displease you, and I hasten to inform you that Monsieur de Bois-Doré is to-day as good a Catholic as many others who have never ceased to be Catholics. On the day when the Béarnais concluded that Paris was well worth a mass, Bois-Doré concluded that the king could not be in error, and he abjured the doctrine of Geneva, without publicity, but sincerely, I think."

"Return to the story of Monsieur de Bois-Doré's family," said D'Alvimar, who did not choose to let his companion see with what suspicious contempt he regarded new converts.

"As you please," replied the young man. "Our marquis's father was the sturdiest Leaguer in the neighborhood. He was the âme damnée of Monsieur Claude de la Châtre and the Barbançois; I need say no more. He had, in the château where he lived, a nice little assortment of instruments of torture for such Huguenots as he might capture, and did not hesitate to plant his own vassals on the wooden horse when they could not pay their dues.

"He was so feared and detested by everybody, that he was universally known as the cheti' monsieur, and with good reason.

"His son, now Marquis de Bois-Doré, whose baptismal name is Sylvain, suffered so heavily from his father's cruel disposition, that he began at an early age to take an entirely different view of life, and showed toward his father's prisoners and vassals a gentleness and condescension that were perhaps too great on the part of a man of war toward rebels and of a noble toward inferiors; witness the fact that these qualities, instead of making him popular, caused him to be despised by the majority, and that the peasants, who are ungrateful and suspicious as a class, said of him and his father:

"'One weighs more than he ought to; the other weighs nothing at all.'

"They considered the father a hard man, but of sound understanding, fearless, and quite capable, after squeezing and tormenting them, of protecting them against the exactions of the tax-gatherer and the pillaging of the brutal soldiery; whereas, in their opinion, young Monsieur Sylvain would allow them to be devoured and trampled upon for lack of heart and brain.

"Now I don't know what it was that passed through Monsieur Sylvain's brain one fine day, when he was sadly bored at the château; but the result was that he fled from Briantes, where his good father blushed for him, and considering him an imbecile, would never permit him to rise above the station of a page, and joined the moderate Catholics, who were then called the third party. As you know, that party many a time lent a hand to the Calvinists; so that, proceeding from one error to another, Monsieur Sylvain found himself one fine morning a full-fledged Huguenot, and a close friend and well-beloved servitor of the young king of Navarre. His father, having learned of it, cursed him, and, to be even with him, conceived the scheme of marrying in his old age and presenting him with a brother.

"That meant a reduction by one-half of Monsieur Sylvain's already slender inheritance; for, as a Huguenot, he was in danger of losing his right of primogeniture, and the cheti' monsieur was not very rich, his estates having been laid waste many times by the Calvinists.

"But observe the young man's natural goodness of heart! Far from being angry, or even complaining of his father's marriage and the birth of the child who bit his future crowns in two, he drew himself up proudly when he heard the news.

"'Look you!' he said to his companions. 'Monsieur my father has passed his sixtieth year, and here he is begetting a fine boy! I tell you that's good blood, which I trust that I inherit!'

"He carried his good-humor farther than that; for, seven years later, his father having left Berry to join Le Balafré against Monsieur d'Alençon's expedition, and our soft-hearted Sylvain having heard that his stepmother was dead, which left the child almost unprotected at the château of Briantes, he returned secretly to the province, to defend him at need, and, also, he said, for the pleasure of seeing him and embracing him.

"He passed the whole winter with the little fellow, playing with him and carrying him in his arms, as a nurse or governess would have done; the which made the neighbors laugh and think that he was far too simple-minded—innocent—to use the term they apply to a man deprived of his reason.

"When the stern father returned after the Peace of Monsieur, ill-pleased, as you can imagine, to see the rebels more generously rewarded than the friends of the true faith, he flew into a furious rage against the whole world, even against God Himself, who had allowed his young wife to die of the plague in his absence. Looking about for somebody to be revenged upon, he declared that his older son had returned solely for the purpose of destroying the son of his old age by witchcraft.

"It was a most villainous charge on the old corsair's part, for the child had never been in better health nor better cared for, and poor Sylvain was as incapable of an evil design as the child unborn."

Guillaume d'Ars had reached this point in his narrative, which had brought them in sight of Briantes, when a sort of bourgeois maiden, dressed in black, red and gray, with her dress turned up at the bottom and cut high at the neck, came toward them, and, approaching young D'Ars' stirrup, said, with repeated reverences:

"Alas! monsieur, I fear that you have come to ask my honored master, the Marquis de Bois-Doré, to entertain you at dinner. But you will not find him: he is at La Motte-Seuilly for the day, having given us our liberty until night."

This intelligence was exceedingly annoying to young D'Ars, but he was too well-bred to allow his annoyance to appear. He instantly determined what course to pursue, and said, courteously uncovering:

"Very well, Demoiselle Bellinde; we will go on to La Motte-Seuilly. A pleasant walk and bonjour!"

Then, to relieve his vexation, he said to Monsieur d'Alvimar, after pointing out their new direction:

"Is she not a most toothsome housekeeper, whose comely aspect gives one a captivating idea of our dear Bois-Doré's abode?"

Bellinde, who overhead this query, which was propounded aloud and in a jovial tone, bridled up, smiled, and, summoning a little groom by whom she was escorted as by a page, produced from her flowing sleeves two small white dogs, which she bade him deposit gently on the turf, as if to give them exercise, but in reality to have an excuse for facing the cavaliers, and affording them a longer view of her fine new serge gown and her plump figure.

She was a damsel of some thirty-five years, high-colored, with hair of a shade approaching red and by no means unpleasant to the eye; for she had a great quantity of it, and wore it in curls under her cap, to the great scandal of the ladies of the province, who reproached her for seeking to rise above her station. But she had a malicious expression, even when she strove to be agreeable.

"Why do you call her Bellinde?" queried D'Alvimar, "Is it a common name in the province?"

"Oh! by no means; her name is Guillette Carcot; Monsieur de Bois-Doré christened her according to his custom. It's a mania of his, which I will explain to you very soon. I must first tell you the rest of his story."

"It is needless," replied D'Alvimar, stopping his horse. "Despite your courtesy and the good grace with which you endure disappointment, I see plainly enough that I am a considerable burden to you. Let us go on to the château of Briantes, and do you leave me there with a letter to Monsieur de Bois-Doré, introducing me to him. As he is to return to-night, I will wait for him and rest a little meanwhile."

"No, no!" cried Guillaume, "I should prefer to abandon the pleasures of Bourges, and I should have done so already, were it not for the promise I have made to some of my friends to be there this evening. But I certainly will not leave you until I have myself commended you to the care of an agreeable and faithful friend. La Motte-Seuilly is not a league away, and there is no need to tire our horses. Let us take our time. I shall reach Bourges an hour or two later, but in these holiday times I am sure to find the gates open."

And he resumed Bois-Doré's history, to which D'Alvimar hardly listened. That gentleman was anxious concerning his own safety, and it did not seem to him that the country through which they were riding was very well adapted to his plan of lying hidden.

It was a flat, open country, where, in case of an unpleasant meeting, it was hardly possible to find the shelter of a wood, or even of a clump of trees. The tillage land is too rich there ever to have been wasted in tree-planting. It is a fine reddish soil, which stretches away in vast, broadly-undulating fields, melancholy to look upon, although bordered by lovely hills and strewn with picturesque little castles.

Briantes, however, to which our travellers had drawn very near, had impressed D'Alvimar much more favorably.

Within ten minutes' walk of the château, the land suddenly slopes downward, and leads gradually down into a narrow, well-wooded valley.

The château itself cannot be seen until one is on top of it, as they say in the province; and the expression is quite accurate, for the slated belfry of its highest tower rises very little above the plateau, and when, from the plain beyond, you see it gleaming in the rays of the setting sun, you would say that it was a tiny lantern hung on the brink of the ravine.

Almost the same may be said of the château of La Motte-Seuilly,[4] which lies below the plain of Chaumois, but in a less charming location than Briantes; a dull, flat country, instead of a lovely valley.

Before reaching the cross-road which leads to the castle, Guillaume had told his companion in a few words the remaining vicissitudes in the life of Monsieur Sylvain de Bois-Doré; how his father had attempted to confine him in his tower, to prevent his returning to the Huguenots; how the young man had escaped by scaling the walls, and had gone off to join his dear Henri de Navarre, with whom, after the death of King Henri III., he had fought nine years; how, finally, having contributed to the utmost of his ability to place him on the throne, he had returned to live on his estates, where his tyrant of a father had ceased to live and drive his neighbors mad.

"And what became of his young brother?" queried D'Alvimar, making an effort to become interested in the narrative.

"The young brother is no more," replied D'Ars. "Bois-Doré knew but little of him, for his father sent him when he was very young to serve under the Duc de Savoie, and while in his service he met his death in a——"

At this point Guillaume was interrupted once more by an incident which seemed to annoy D'Alvimar exceedingly, whether because he was beginning to be interested in his companion's information, or because, being a Spaniard, he had a marked repugnance for interrupters.

III

It was a band of gypsies, who were lying flat in a ditch, and rose at the approach of the horsemen like a flock of sparrows, causing Monsieur d'Alvimar's horse to shy. But they were very well tamed sparrows, for, instead of flying away, they threw themselves almost under the legs of the horses, jumping, yelling and holding out their hands in a piteous and hypocritical way.

It did not occur to Guillaume to do anything else than laugh at their strange actions, and he bestowed alms on them very generously; but D'Alvimar was extraordinarily surly, and said again and again, threatening them with his whip:

"Away! away! away from me, canaille!"

He went so far as to attempt to strike a lad who was clinging to his boot, with the look, at once mocking and imploring, of children trained to the trade of begging on the highway. He avoided the whip, and Guillaume, who was riding behind, saw him pick up a stone, which he would have hurled at D'Alvimar, if another boy, somewhat older than he, had not caught his arm, scolding and threatening him.

But the incident did not end there: a small woman, of not unattractive appearance, albeit sadly faded and poorly dressed, seized the child, and, speaking to him as if she were his mother, pushed him toward Guillaume, then ran after D'Alvimar, holding out her hand, but at the same time gazing at him as if she wished never to forget his face.

D'Alvimar, with increasing irritation, urged his horse toward the woman, and would have ridden her down had she not quickly stepped aside; he even put his hand to the butt of one of the pistols in his holsters, as if he would readily have fired on one of those wretched beasts of idolaters.

Thereupon the gypsies exchanged glances, and drew together as if to consult.

"Avanti! avanti!" Guillaume shouted to D'Alvimar.

He loved to use Italian words, to show that he had been to the queen-mother's court; or perhaps he fancied that an i at the end of a word was sufficient to make it unintelligible to those gypsies.

"Why avanti?" said D'Alvimar, declining to urge his horse.

"Because you have irritated yonder blackbirds. See! they are crowding together like cranes in distress; and, faith! there are a score of them and only seven of us."

"How now, my dear Guillaume! Can it be that you have any fear of those feeble, cowardly animals?"

"I am not accustomed to fear," replied the young man, slightly piqued, "but it would be exceedingly distasteful to me to fire on the poor, ragged wretches; and I am surprised that they have roused your temper so, when it would have been a very simple matter to rid yourself of them with a little small change."

"I never give to such people," said Sciarra D'Alvimar, in a short dry tone, which surprised the good-humored Guillaume.

The latter felt that his companion had what we should call to-day an attack of the nerves, and he abstained from reproving him. But he insisted on quickening their pace, for the gypsies, running faster than the horses trotted, followed them, and even went before them, divided into two bands, one on each side of the road.

They had not a hostile air, however, and it was difficult to guess what their purpose was in escorting the horsemen thus.

They talked among themselves in an unintelligible jargon, and seemed, one and all, intent upon watching the woman at their head.

The child whom Monsieur d'Alvimar had tried to strike with his whip trotted along beside Monsieur d'Ars, as if he relied upon his protection, and seemed to take great interest in this extraordinary race. Guillaume noticed that the little fellow was less black and less dirty than the others, and that his refined and attractive features bore no racial resemblance to those of the gypsies.

If he had paid the same attention to the woman whom D'Alvimar had insulted and threatened, he would have noticed also that, while she did not resemble the child in the slightest degree, she resembled no more her other companions in misery. Her bearing was noble and less rough. She was clearly not of European race, although she wore the costume of a mountaineer of the Pyrenees.