Les beaux messieurs de Bois-Doré Vol. 2 (of 2)

At this period the leprosy hospitals were already empty; the pest, still so frequent in La Brenne and the neighborhood of Bourges, rarely scourged Fromental. The dwelling-houses, which were filthy and pestilential in the Marche and the Bourbonnais, were, at least in our neighborhood, stoutly built and healthy, as is proved by a large number of old country houses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which are still standing and easily recognizable by their vast tiled roofs, their windows framed with stone cut in the shape of prisms, and their attic windows surmounted by great sheaves of grain moulded in terra cotta.[5]

The marquis felt no repugnance, therefore, to entering the farmer's house, taking his seat by the fireplace, and chatting for a few moments there.

As everybody loved him, the good monsieur could safely entrust to Jean Faraudet and his wife, if necessary, the care of a friend of his who was being prosecuted, he said, for an offence against the game laws; and when he informed them that their master, Monsieur Robin, wished to see them the next morning, to give them orders to that effect, they seemed overjoyed and eager to obey, answering him with the sacramental phrase expressive of zeal and willingness in that country:—"Il y a bien moyen!"

Madame Faraudet, however, who was called La Grand' Cateline, could not refrain from pitying the man who should be condemned to pass even a single night at the château of Brilbault.

She firmly believed that it was haunted, and her husband, after laughing at her as a sop to the marquis's scepticism, eventually admitted that he would rather die than put foot inside the building after sunset.

"My friend's presence," said the marquis, "will give you courage, I trust, for I promise you that it will drive away the evil spirits; but, since you are not afraid to enter the house by daylight, I beg you to put some wood on the hearth and prepare a bed in the best room that there is."

"We will carry everything there that is necessary, my dear monsieur," replied La Grand' Cateline; "but the poor Christian who goes there won't sleep a wink. He will hear a terrible uproar and hurly-burly all night, just as we do, may the good Lord preserve us! and as you will hear them yourself if you choose to wait till after twelve o'clock."

"I cannot wait," said the marquis, "and besides, the spirits wouldn't stir, knowing that I was there. I know what cowards they are, for I never have succeeded in hearing the voices that shout at the top of the donjon at Briantes, on Christmas night, nor the doors that open themselves at La Motte-Seuilly, nor the white lady who pulls aside the bed-curtains at the château of Ars."

"It's a curious thing, Monsieur Sylvain," said the farmer with a knowing air, "that there should be apparitions in our old château. We all know that there may be such things in other châteaux, because there aren't any of them where some great wrong hasn't been done or suffered; and that's the reason why the poor Christians who have been tortured or heartbroken in those houses return to them afterward to complain, as souls asking for prayers or justice. But in the château of Brilbault, which was never occupied, there never has been any good or evil done so far as I know."

"We must believe," said the woman, who plied her distaff busily as she talked, "that the former lord died in a distant land, by violence and in sin; for you know the legend of Brilbault, don't you? It isn't long. A noble had built this château as far as the roof, when he started for the Holy Land with his seven sons. The château was sold again and again, but no one ever fancied it. People thought that it brought families ill-luck; that is why it has never been used except to store crops. They put on a roof which is good for nothing now; but there are still two fine rooms and such a hall! So big that two people can hardly recognize each other from one end to the other."

"Can you let me have the keys?" said the marquis; "I would like to see the interior."

"Here are the keys; but my dear Monsieur Sylvain of the good Lord, don't go there! It is just the time for the deviltry to begin."

"What deviltry, my good friends?" said the marquis laughingly; "what sort of creatures are these wicked devils?"

"I have never seen them, monsieur, nor wanted to see them," said the farmer; "but I hear them well enough, I hear them too well! Some groan and others sing. There's laughter, then yelling and swearing and weeping till daybreak, when they all fly away through the air; for it is securely locked, and no human being can enter without leave or help from me."

"May it not be that your farm-hands go there to amuse themselves, or some thief to prevent you detecting his thievery?"

"No, monsieur, no! Our workmen and servants are so frightened that with all your money you couldn't hire them to go within two gunshots of the château after sunset; indeed, you see they no longer sleep in our house, because they say it's too near that infernal building. They all sleep in the barn yonder at the end of the yard."

"So much the better for the little secret we have together to-night," said the marquis; "but so much the better too, perhaps, for those who play the part of ghosts for the sole purpose of robbing you!"

"What could they steal, pray, Monsieur Sylvain? There's nothing in the château. When I saw that the devil used torches there, I was afraid of a fire, and I took out my whole crop, except a few little fagots and a dozen bundles of hay and straw, which I left in order not to make them too angry, for they say that imps like to play about in the hay and the branches; and, to tell the truth, I found it all tossed about and trampled; it was as if fifty living men had walked over it."

The marquis knew Faraudet to be very truthful and incapable of inventing anything whatsoever to avoid doing him a service.

He began to think therefore that, if lights were seen in the old manor, if voices were heard there, and above all, if feet or bodies trampled and disturbed the straw, there was more reality than deviltry in that state of affairs, and that the château, which the farmer and his wife confessed that they had not dared to enter for more than six weeks, might very well be used already as a refuge by fugitives.

"Whether they be maleficent or congenial, I propose to see them," he said to himself.

And, putting his naked sword under his arm, carrying the keys of the château in one hand and a lantern in the other, he started across the fields toward the silent, ruined structure.

Faraudet, when his wife began to lament the good monsieur's rashness, was ashamed to let him go alone and decided to accompany him.

But when the marquis had crossed the bridge, he found that the poor peasant was trembling so violently, that he feared that he should be more embarrassed than assisted by a man in such a plight and begged him to go no farther.

Most of the châteaux in the Black Valley, even those of the primitive Middle Ages, are situated in the depths of the valleys instead of on the high land, as in La Marche and the Bourbonnais. There is a very plausible explanation of this anomaly. In a region devoid of any considerable elevations, the water-courses afford the best means of defence.

At Brilbault therefore, as at Briantes, La Motte-Seuilly, Saint-Chartier, La Motte-de-Presles, etc., the manor-house was built on a winding stream of sufficient size to fill with running water the double circular moat.

The bridge over the outer moat was very narrow and supported upon arches of no definite type, midway between the full arch and the ogive.

The whole château was of a transitional style of architecture; the façade was of a curious shape; the door and the staircase window above it were set in the wall to a depth of several mètres, as if for protection from attacks from without.

The top of the building should have been mascherolé at that point; but it was originally left unfinished and was finally surmounted by a roof entirely out of keeping with the rest of the structure, which indicated a scheme of some grandeur never carried to completion.

The marquis went straight to the château as the crow flies; the encircling walls had crumbled to such an extent and sustained so many breaches, the moats were so completely filled in innumerable places, that it was not necessary to go to the gates.

He noiselessly opened the main door, which was small and low, under a rampant arch surmounted by an ogive of carved flower-work.

There he partly opened his lantern to look at the floor at his feet, for the farmer had warned him to be careful of the staircase.

XLV

It was a spiral staircase of great beauty, broad enough for six persons and as light as the sticks of a fan. It was built of a friable white stone; many steps had been entirely destroyed by the fall of some portion of the building; but those which remained seemed freshly hewn and bore no trace of wear. At each half turn of the spiral was a step, supported by a grinning face, a fantastic beast, or the bust of an armed man carved in relief on the wall.

The marquis was interested in these figures, which seemed to move in the flickering light of his lantern.

He ascended the stairs slowly, listening whenever he stopped; and as he heard no other sound than that of the wind in the crumbling roof, and as the doors of the rooms that he passed were secured by padlocks, he became more and more doubtful of the existence of any inhabitants whatsoever. Thus he reached the upper floor, where were the two apartments originally intended for the châtelain.

As it was the custom, in the Middle Ages, for the lord of the manor to have his own quarters under the eaves, and, if necessary, to destroy the staircase and sustain a siege in his own apartments, gaps were often left in building stairways, so that the châtelain could reach his nest only by means of a ladder which he drew up after him at night. In other instances the steps of the last flight were purposely made so thin that a few blows with a bar sufficed to shatter them.

The latter was the case at the château of Brilbault; and the gaps for which the marquis had to be on the lookout were caused by accident, as we have said. With his long legs he was able to straddle them without serious danger.

These two rooms being those which the farmer had mentioned as suitable for Lucilio's occupancy in case of need, Bois-Doré's first impulse was to go in and see if they were provided with window-frames, or at least with shutters at the windows; for all of the narrow, deep-set windows in the stairway, with stone benches placed diagonally across the embrasures, admitted violent gusts of wind, from which he had difficulty in protecting his light.

But, as he was on the point of opening those seignioral apartments, of which he had the keys, the marquis hesitated.

If the manor-house was in reality resorted to as a place of refuge by any person, that person was probably in those rooms, and, being surprised in his sleep, would seek to defend himself without awaiting an explanation. His proposed exploration therefore should be conducted with due prudence. The marquis did not believe in ghosts, and was the less disposed to fear living things because he was not seeking them with any evil purpose. If some poor devil were in hiding there, he was resolved, whoever he might be, to leave him there in peace and not betray the secret he had surprised.

But the refugee's first fright might assume the form of hostility. The marquis could have made no appreciable noise in entering and ascending the stairs, as nothing stirred. It was most advisable for him to make sure of the truth unseen and unheard, if possible, or at all events without making his appearance too abruptly.

With that end in view, he entered a room with no door, where the most absolute darkness reigned, all the windows being covered with boards or stuffed with straw. The floor was covered with a layer of dust and pulverized cement, of such depth that one's footsteps were deadened by it as by ashes.

Bois-Doré walked for a long while, hardly able to see where he was going. He had closed his lantern, which was unprovided with glass or horn, but had a half cylinder of iron with three holes in it, according to the custom of the province. He did not venture to open it until he had reached the end of that vast apartment and had satisfied himself that he was in an absolutely silent and deserted spot.

Then he placed his light on the floor in front of him and stepped back to an enormous fire-place which was near at hand.

Standing there, he was able to accustom his eyes little by little to so faint a light in so vast a space, and to make out that he was in a hall which extended the whole length of the château.

He examined the fire-place by which he was standing. Like everything else it was of white stone, and the square bases, projecting from the massive columns, seemed as fresh and new as if they had been hewn the day before; the double fillets of the mantel were neither marred nor chipped, and the same was true of the escutcheon, without coat-of-arms, which crowned the mantel. Even the smoke-flue, and the fire-place itself, which was not sheathed with iron, bore no traces of fire, smoke or ashes. The unfinished building had never been used, that was evident. No one had ever occupied, no one now occupied that bare, cheerless hall.

Having satisfied himself of that fact, the marquis made bold to go to ascertain why a barrier of boards, waist-high, extended diagonally across that immense room at a point halfway between the two ends. Upon reaching that point, he found himself looking into space. The floor had fallen or been cut away, as had that of the lower stories, in quite half of the building, perhaps to facilitate the storing of the crops.

The eye plunged into the darkness of an expanse that seemed as large as the interior of a cathedral.

Bois-Doré had been there for some moments, trying to form a just idea of his surroundings, when, from the depths which his eyes questioned in vain, a sort of groan rose to his ears.

He started, closed his lantern, and concealed it behind the boards, held his breath and listened intently, for his hearing was a little dull and might deceive him as to the nature of the sounds.

Was it a door or a shutter closed by the wind?

He had not waited three minutes when the same groan was repeated, even more distinct, and at the same time it seemed to him that a faint ray of light, very far below him, illumined those depths, which, viewed from his position, were literally an abyss.

He knelt to avoid being seen, and looked between the boards which served him as a balustrade.

The light rapidly increased and soon became bright enough to enable him to see, or rather to divine, in a vague blending of light and shadow, the outline of a room on the ground floor, as large as that in which he was, but evidently much higher before the crumbling of the intermediate floors, as he could judge by the spring of the arched ceiling which rested upon bases embellished with fanciful human and animal figures, much larger and protruding farther than those he had previously seen on the stairway.

The only furniture consisted of several piles of dry forage, and boards arranged as a barrier near one end, with the broken remains of a number of mangers. The room had been used for a long time as a stable for cattle. Among the boards could be seen pieces of yokes and ploughshares. Then all these things were shrouded in shadow once more, and the light, ascending, struck the great stretch of wall which formed the gable end of the building, and which was directly opposite the marquis, some forty feet in height.

This light, now pale, now reddish, came from an invisible flame placed under the ceiling of the ground-floor apartment—that is to say, under that part of it which had not fallen, corresponding to that from which the marquis watched this gloomy, flickering tableau.

Suddenly there was a noise of doors closing, footsteps and voices under that ceiling, and a confused mass of moving shadows, sometimes of enormous size, sometimes stunted as it were, was thrown in the most curious fashion on the high wall, as if a great number of persons were passing back and forth in front of a great fire.

"This is a very strange game of hide-and-seek," thought the marquis, "and it is impossible to deny that this château is filled with wandering, chattering ghosts. Let us hear what they say."

He listened, but he could not succeed in distinguishing a single phrase, a word, a syllable, amid a loud murmur of words, songs, groans and laughter.

The appalling resonance of the arched ceiling, which hurled the sounds like shadows against the opposite wall, blended all the voices in a single one—all the words in a confused murmur.

The marquis was not deaf, but he had the sensitive hearing peculiar to old men, who can hear very distinctly sounds that are moderately loud and words clearly articulated, but whom an uproar, a hurly-burly of voices disturbs and confuses to no purpose.

Thus he distinguished intonations, nothing more: sometimes that of a hoarse, loud voice, which seemed to be telling a story; sometimes the refrain of a ballad abruptly interrupted by threatening accents; and then a loud voice which seemed to ridicule and imitate the others, and which raised a tempest of uproarious and brutal laughter.

Sometimes there were long monologues, then dialogues between two or three, and suddenly shouts of anger or merriment which resembled roars. Indeed, it might be that those people were speaking a language which the marquis did not know.

He persuaded himself that they were simply a band of vagrants or mountebanks out of employment, living by marauding, and waiting under cover of that ruin for the spring to come, or perhaps in hiding there because of some crime.

That laughter, those strange costumes outlined on the wall like Chinese ghosts, those long harangues, those animated dialogues were connected perhaps with the study of some burlesque art.

"If I were nearer to them," he thought, "I might be amused; no man is ever ill received in any company, however bad it may be, if he enters it offering his purse with a good grace."

So he took up his lantern and was preparing to descend, when the conversations, songs and laughter changed into cries of animals, so lifelike, so perfectly imitated, that one would have said that it was a whole barnyard in commotion. There were the ox, the ass, the horse, the goat, the rooster, the duck and the lamb, all braying and crowing together. Then they all ceased, as if to listen to the barking of a pack of hounds, the blast of the horn—all the typical noises of a hunt.

Was it a game? Did it occur to the actors to look at themselves on the wall? They did not seem to be imitating the actions of the beasts whose cries they mimicked.

In the midst of the uproar a child cried out in a shrill voice, perhaps to do as the others did, perhaps because he was frightened in his sleep; and Bois-Doré saw the shadow of a tiny person pass, with gestures like those of a monkey. Next there came a huge head crowned by a sort of plumed helmet, with an absurd nose outlined against the bright wall; then a long-haired head which seemed to wear a priest's cap, and which conversed with a long shadow that stood for many minutes as motionless as a statue.

Then all the noises suddenly ceased, and naught could be heard save a low groaning, which resembled the groaning caused by physical pain, and which Bois-Doré had constantly detected, recurring at intervals, like a doleful chord on an organ, in the pauses of that wild charivari.

The tumult stilled, the shadow of a gigantic crucifix was thrown upon the wall.

The light seemed to change its position, and the cross became very small; at last it disappeared, and its place was taken by a single figure very sharply outlined, while a sepulchral voice recited in a monotonous tone a prayer which seemed to be the prayer for those who are in the death agony.

XLVI

Bois-Doré, who had held his place, detained by the amusement he derived from that phantasmagoric spectacle and those strange noises, was beginning to feel so cold that his teeth fairly chattered when this tedious ceremony began.

This time, although he had determined to go to see what was taking place, he was withheld by the appalling resemblance presented by the last apparition. It became more precise and more unmistakable as the sepulchral voice proceeded with its sepulchral prayer, and the marquis, as if fascinated, could not remove his eyes from it.

That head, so easily recognizable by the short hair, cut à la malcontent, by the Spanish ruff in which it was framed as it were, by its sharp and angular, yet refined outlines, and lastly by the peculiar shape of the beard and moustache, was the head of D'Alvimar, thrown back in the rigor of death.

At first Bois-Doré fought against the idea; then it took entire possession of him, became a certainty, a source of intense agitation and insurmountable terror.

He had never believed that he was in any danger from ghosts. He said and he thought that, having never put any man to death from revenge or from cruelty, he was quite sure that he should never be visited by any soul in anger or distress; but he was no more disposed than the majority of sensible men of his time to deny the return of spirits to earth, or the reality of the apparitions which so many persons entirely worthy of confidence described in detail.

"This D'Alvimar is surely dead," he thought; "I touched his cold limbs; I saw his body, already stiff in death, taken from his horse's back. He has been reposing underground for several weeks, and yet I see him here before me, I who have always refused to see anything supernatural where others saw terrible phantoms! Was this man, contrary to all appearances, innocent of the crime of which I accused him and for which I punished him? Is this a rebuke of my conscience? Is it a vision of my brain? Is it the chilling atmosphere of this ruin stealing over me and confusing my faculties? Whatever it may be," he thought, "I have had enough of it."

And, feeling the dizziness which is the precursor of a swoon, he dragged himself out to the stairway. There he recovered himself somewhat, and descended the ruinous spiral staircase with a firm step. But, when he reached the foot, instead of mustering courage to force his way into the apartments on the ground floor, he had no desire to see or hear anything further; and impelled by an unconquerable feeling of repugnance, he rushed forth into the fields, confessing his fear to himself, and ready to avow it artlessly to the first person who should question him concerning it.

He found the farmer, more dead than alive, waiting for him on the bridge.

It was an heroic act on the good man's part to remain there. He was incapable of saying or listening to anything whatsoever, and not until he and the marquis had returned to the farmhouse, did he venture to ask any questions.

"Well, my poor dear Monsieur Sylvain," he said, "I trust you have had your fill of watching their lights, and listening to their bellowing! I thought surely I should never see you come back!"

"It is certain that something out of the common course is taking place in that ruin," said the marquis, tossing off a glass of wine which the farmer's wife handed him, and which was by no means unacceptable.

"I fell in with no evil spirits there—-"

"Ah! but you're whiter than your ruffles, my dear monsieur!" said La Grand' Cateline. "Warm yourself, pray, my lord, so that you won't be sick."

"To tell the truth, I was very cold," replied the marquis, "and I fancied that I saw things which perhaps I didn't see at all; but the walk will quicken my blood, and I fear to alarm my family by remaining longer. Good night to you, good people! Drink to my health."

He paid them handsomely for their eagerness to oblige, and returned to his carriage, which was waiting for him at the place where he had left it. Aristandre had begun to be anxious; but, when the marquis assured him that nothing unpleasant had happened to him, the honest coachman was convinced that Adamas was not boasting when he declared that monsieur still indulged in gallant adventures.

"There must be some pretty shepherdess at that farm!" he said to Clindor as they drove homeward.

He was confirmed in this sagacious idea when his master forbade him to speak of his trip through the fields.

Instead of stopping at Ars, the marquis bade him drive on to Briantes. He was surprised at and already a little ashamed of the momentary panic that had caused him to leave Brilbault without fathoming the mystery.

"If I say anything about it, they will laugh at me," he thought; "they will say under their breaths that I am becoming a dotard in my old age. It will be much better not to mention it to anyone; and, as it makes little difference, after all, whether Brilbault is in the hands of a band of gypsies or of sorcerers, I will look about for some other quieter place of refuge for Lucilio."

As he approached the château, his mind, becoming constantly calmer, questioned itself concerning its sensations.

What impressed him most deeply was the fact that he had been surprised by terror at a moment when nothing had happened which tended to terrify him; when, on the contrary, he had felt strongly inclined to laugh at the whimsical antics of those imps and the amusing oddity of their shadows on the wall.

As a result of his reflections on this subject, he ordered Aristandre to stop at the Chambon meadow and walked the short distance from the road to the cottage of Marie the gardener, called La Caille-Bottée.

That cottage still exists; it is occupied by market-gardeners. It is a tumble-down structure, flanked by a stair-turret built of stones without mortar. The pretty orchard, surrounded by dense hedges and wild bramble-bushes, was, so it is said, a gift from Monsieur de Bois-Doré to La Caille-Bottée.

He found the lay brother there, sharing the convent repast with his mistress, who shared with him the wine and the fruit from her garden.

Their partnership was not avowed, however; they observed some precaution, in order not to be "ordered to marry," and thereby to lose the veteran's privilege enjoyed by Jean le Clope at the Carmelite convent.

XLVII

During this duet of lamentations, the marquis reflected.

"Tell me, my friends," he said, "did you see no footprints in your garden, no indication that your house had been entered by violent means?"

"We paid no attention to that matter for some time," replied La Caille-Bottée, "we were too much upset; but when it was daylight, we examined everything as well as we could. There was nothing unusual in the house. They must have come in as soon as our backs were turned; we left the door and the drawer open, and the money in plain sight; we were much to blame for that, alas!"

"In that case," observed the marquis, "the deceased did not go away unaided, and had not only friends to take away his remains, but others to recover his money and jewels."

"I imagine, monsieur, that there were only two of them for the first task, and one for the last, and that one not connected with the others; for we discovered the prints of two pair of feet on our flower-beds, going toward the fence on the Briantes side, and those feet seemed to have had on boots or pattens; while on the gravel in our little yard, there were the marks of bare feet, little child's feet, going toward the town. But, as there was already water in the paths, we couldn't discover anything outside of our own place."

Bois-Doré reasoned thus mentally:

"Sancho, having made his escape, must have followed and watched us. Then he probably went to Monsieur Poulain, who sent someone or came himself with Sancho, to obtain D'Alvimar's body and bury it. That accounts for the denunciation. For reasons of which I know nothing, the rector dared not exhibit the body to his parishioners and denounce me publicly. Perhaps he wished to give Sancho time to make his escape. As for the money, some little reprobate must have noticed the going in and out, listened at the door, and seized the opportunity: that is of very little consequence to me."

Then, having reflected further upon the whole matter and asked various questions which resulted in throwing no new light, he said:

"My friends, when we brought that dead man here across his horse, we left the saddle-bags with you, with no other purpose than to rid ourselves of them and wash our hands of everything that had belonged to our enemy. The next day, however, on reflecting that those saddle-bags might contain papers of interest to us, we sent to you to obtain them, and you told Adamas that they contained nothing except a change of clothing and a little linen—no papers or documents of any kind."

"That is the truth, monsieur," replied the gardener, "and we can show them to you now, just as they were given to us. The thief didn't see them lying on the bed, where we tossed them, or else he didn't choose to burden himself with them."

The marquis caused them to be brought, and verified the truth of her statement.

However, on examining them and turning them over, he discovered a sort of secret pocket, which had escaped the notice of his hosts, and of which the stitching had to be ripped in order to open it. He found there some papers which he carried away, after compensating the gardener and the veteran for the loss they had sustained, and enjoining silence upon them until further orders.

It was after eleven o'clock when the marquis returned home.

Mario was not asleep; he was playing jackstraws with Lauriane in the salon, being unwilling to go to bed until his father returned safely.

Lucilio was reading by the fire, not allowing his attention to be distracted by the laughter of the children, but pleasantly soothed in his deep meditations by that fresh, charming music, to which his loving heart and his musical ear were peculiarly sensitive.

Since he had played the soothsayer in monsieur le prince's presence, the children called him the astrologer, and teased him to make him smile. The good-natured savant smiled as much as they wished without ceasing his mental labor, for his kindly disposition and gentle instincts remained united to his body, so to speak, and spoke through his beautiful Italian eyes, even when his mind was voyaging in celestial spheres.

Adamas, who, despite his adoration for his little count, was bored to the point of melancholy by the absence of his divine marquis, was wandering about the halls and the courtyard like a soul in distress, when he heard at last the echoing trot of Pimante and Squilindre and the grinding of the stones in the road, which were crushed under the wheels of the monumental chariot like grapes in the wine-press.

"Here comes monsieur!" he cried, throwing open the door of the salon as noisily and joyously as if the marquis had been absent a year; and he ran to the kitchen to bring with his own hands a bowl of steaming punch, concocted of wine and aromatic herbs—a cunningly compounded and pleasant beverage of which he jealously guarded the secret, and to which he attributed his old master's excellent health and lusty appearance.

Honest Sylvain embraced his son and greeted his daughter affectionately, pressed his astrologer's hand, drank the cordial which his faithful retainer offered him, and, having thus gratified his whole family, thrust his long legs almost into the fire, placed a small round table by his side, and requested Lucilio to read certain papers which he had brought, while Mario translated them aloud as best he could.

The papers were written in Spanish, in the shape of notes collected for a memorial, and were held together by a strap. They bore no address, nor seal, nor signature. The notes were a series of alleged facts, official or officious, concerning the state of feeling in France; concerning the disposition, presumed or discovered by stealth, of divers individuals of more or less consequence from a Spanish standpoint; and concerning public opinion with respect to the policy of Spain; in a word, a species of diplomatic production, very well done, although unfinished, and partly in the shape of a rough draft.

It was very clear that D'Alvimar, whose voluntary seclusion and constant writing during the few days of his sojourn at Briantes they had not been able to understand, had been constantly reporting to some prince, minister or patron, the results of a secret mission; that he was exceedingly hostile to France, and overflowing with aversion and disdain for the Frenchmen of all classes with whom he had come in contact.

His minute criticism was not devoid of wit, nor, consequently, of interest. D'Alvimar had a keen intellect, and was a specious reasoner. In default of connections as exalted and as intimate as he might have desired in the interests of his fortune and of the importance of his rôle, he was very skilful in making the most of trivial incidents, and in interpreting a word he had surprised or caught on the wing: a chance remark, a rumor, a reflection let fall by anybody, wherever he happened to be—everything was turned to some use by him; and one could see in that treacherous yet trivial labor the irresistible impulse and the secret gratification of a heart overflowing with bitterness, envy and distress.

Lucilio, who divined at the first word the marquis's deep interest in this discovery, turned over the last leaves, and soon found this one, which Mario translated fluently, almost without hesitation, turning his beautiful eyes to the beautiful eyes of his teacher at the end of each sentence, to make sure before continuing that he had made no mistake:

"As to the Pr—— de C——é, I shall find a way to see him personally; I have received certain information from an intelligent and intriguing priest, which may be of use.

"Remember the name of Poulain, rector of Briantes. He is from Bourges and knows many things, notably concerning the said prince, who is very greedy of money and exceedingly incapable in respect to politics; but he will go where ambition drives him. He can be led on by great hopes, and used as the Guises were, for he has nothing of Condé but the name, and is afraid of everybody and everything.

"He is for that reason more difficult to catch than he appears. Personally he amounts to nothing. His name is still a host in itself. In the hope of becoming king, he is prepared to give many pledges to the most holy I——, reserving the right to retract if his interest demands it. It is said that he would not shrink from making way with the k—— and his brother, and that, if need were, one could strike high and hard by means of that paltry mind and that nerveless arm.

"If in your opinion it is wise to encourage him in this ambition, advise your most humble——"

"Good! good!" cried the marquis. "Here we have the wherewithal to make trouble between our friend Poulain and monsieur le prince, and between them both and the memory of dear Monsieur d'Alvimar. God knows that my choice would be to let that dead man rest in peace; but if they threaten to avenge him, we will let the kind friends who pity him know him as he really was."

"That is all very well," said pretty Madame de Beuvre, "on condition that you can prove that these notes were written by his hand."

"True," replied the marquis, "without that they will not help us. But doubtless Guillaume will be able to provide us with a letter signed by him."

"That is probable; and you must look to it at once, my dear marquis!"

"In that case," said the marquis, kissing her hand as he wished her good-night—for she had risen to retire—"in that case I will return to Guillaume's to-morrow; meanwhile let us be very careful of our proofs and our weapons."

On waking the next morning, the marquis found Lucilio in his room, who handed him a sheet upon which he had written something for him to read.

The poor fellow proposed that he should go away for a time, in order that the storm which threatened them both might not burst upon his generous friend more quickly because of his presence.

"No, no!" cried Bois-Doré, deeply touched; "surely you will not wound me to the heart by leaving me! The danger is postponed, that is clear enough to all of us; and Monsieur d'Alvimar's notes make me feel perfectly secure so far as I am concerned. As for yourself, rest assured that you have nothing to fear from the prince, having so accurately announced the favorite's death. Moreover, whatever risk you may run by remaining here, I think that it would be much greater elsewhere, and only in this province can I protect you effectively or conceal you, as circumstances require. Let us not worry about the unknown; and if you are afraid of adding to the embarrassment of my position, think of this—that without you, Mario's education is a hopeless failure. Think of the service you render me by transforming a lovable child into a man of brain and heart, and you will realize that neither my fortune nor my life can pay my debt to you, for both together are not equivalent to the learning and virtue which we owe to you."

Having, not without difficulty, extorted from his friend a promise not to leave Briantes without his assent, the marquis was about to start for Ars once more, when Guillaume arrived with Monsieur Robin de Coulogne, the latter greatly surprised by what his farmer Faraudet had told him that morning, the former surprised that he had not received a visit from the marquis during the evening, as his servants had led him to expect.

Bois-Doré made his confession and described faithfully the vision he had had at Brilbault, declaring, however, that, until the appearance of D'Alvimar's profile on the wall, he would have sworn that he had not dreamed of the uproar and the shadows, which might well have been perfectly real.

He had the mortification of detecting an incredulous smile on the faces of his two auditors; but when he had told them what had happened previously at the gardener's cottage, and had shown them D'Alvimar's notes, his friends became grave and attentive once more.

"Cousin," said Guillaume, "so far as these notes are concerned, it will be easy for me to authenticate them and to furnish you with specimens of Monsieur d'Alvimar's handwriting and his signature. Meanwhile, I assure you that these pages are in his hand. Put them with your own papers and wait, before announcing the traitor's death, until you are officially called to account therefor."

Such was not Monsieur Robin's advice. He criticised the policy of keeping the fact secret, the precautions taken to conceal the body, and the prolongation of the mystery at a time when everybody in the neighborhood was prepossessed in favor of the lovely Mario, touched by the story of his adventures, and disposed to curse the cowardly assassins of his father.

Bois-Doré would have followed this advice instantly, except for his unwillingness to displease Guillaume, who persisted in his first opinion.

"My dear neighbor," he said, "I would come over to your views and retract the advice I have given the marquis, except for one thought which has occurred to me, and which I beg you to weigh seriously; it is this: that it is unnecessary for the marquis to accuse himself of killing a man who may not be dead at all."

Messieurs Robin and Bois-Doré made a gesture of surprise, and Guillaume continued:

"I have two strong reasons for thinking and saying this: the first is that a man was carried away from La Caille-Bottée's garden, who, although run through by a lusty sword-thrust, may not have breathed his last; the second is that our marquis, whose courage is not of the sort that anyone can doubt, recognized his enemy's face at Brilbault."

Monsieur Robin reflected in silence; Bois-Doré collected his memories of the preceding night, and tried to disentangle them from the bewilderment that had then taken possession of him; then he said:

"If Monsieur d'Alvimar is dead, he did not die on the field of battle at La Rochaille, nor at the gardener's cottage, but at Brilbault, no later than last evening. He died in I know not what strange and brutal company, but attended by a priest who may have been Monsieur Poulain, and by a servant who must have been old Sancho. There was nothing in the confused shadows which I saw to contradict these suppositions, and the one thing that I saw most clearly and distinctly was a crucifix as sharply outlined as the cross on an escutcheon, and under the right branch of that crucifix the emaciated, fleshless face of Monsieur d'Alvimar. The features seemed somewhat agitated at first, while a voice repeated the prayers for the dying; faint groans, which I had heard throughout the revel, I continued to hear during the prayer. Then the groans ceased, the face became like stone; you would have said that the lines were petrified on the wall which showed me their reflection. The head was no longer bent forward but thrown back, and then——"

"Then what?" said Guillaume.

"Then," said the marquis, ingenuously, "I became weak and idiotic, and I fled to avoid seeing anything more."

"Well," said Monsieur Robin, "however it may be, and whatever may be there, we will go to examine that hovel and ransack it from roof to cellar, if need be, to see what it conceals, and what sort of people it shelters."

Guillaume advised waiting until nightfall, and taking all manner of precautions, in order to make sure of discovering the object of these mysterious meetings.

Faraudet had given Monsieur Robin precise information as to the hour at which the tumult began, and the moment that it became certain that those strange noises were not a pure product of the imagination of terrified peasants, it was impossible not to see, in their regularity and their persistent recurrence, a deliberately adopted plan to spread terror abroad and turn it to advantage in one direction or another.

Monsieur Robin observed moreover that, according to the farmer, this performance had been going on at Brilbault only about two months, that is to say since the time fixed by Guillaume and the marquis as the period of D'Alvimar's death.

"All this," he said, "reminds me that, on the day that I arrived at Coudray, last week, I met at several places on the road, at varying intervals, groups of evil-appearing people, who did not look like peasants or bourgeois or soldiers, and whom I was surprised not to recognize. Ascertain from your servants whether they have not met similar folk in your neighborhood of late."

Several servants were summoned. Bois-Doré's and Guillaume's agreed in saying that, within a few weeks, they had seen many suspicious persons prowling about in the woods and the unfrequented roads of La Varenne, and that they had wondered how those strangers could earn a living in such lonely regions.

Thereupon they remembered numerous thefts that had been committed in farm-houses and barnyards roundabout; and lastly, La Flèche's face had reappeared, with other outlandish faces, at fairs and markets in the towns nearby. At all events they believed that they could swear that a certain mountebank, an irrepressible chatterer, dressed in various disguises, was the same fellow who had prowled about between Briantes and La Motte-Seuilly for several days, at the time of Mario's recovery.

The result of all this information was that they concluded that they had to deal with the most suspicious and artful genus of vagrants and bandits, and they took measures to obtain possession of their secret without giving the alarm.

They agreed to separate at once; for it was very possible that the wretches might have noticed the marquis's visit to Brilbault, and that they had spies on the watch behind the bushes on all the roads.

Guillaume was to return home, take a considerable number of his servants, and pretend to start for Bourges.

Monsieur Robin was to remain at Coudray with his people until the appointed hour.

Bois-Doré was to lie in ambush in the direction of Thevet, Jovelin toward Lourouer.

XLVIII

At nightfall, the servants and vassals, led by these four gentlemen, were to form a large circle around Brilbault and close in rapidly, as in a battue of wolves, each man reckoning the time required to reach the ruin from his starting-point, so that they might all arrive at the time fixed for investing it at close quarters.

That time was ten o'clock. Until then they were to move silently and keep out of sight as far as possible; they were to allow anyone to pass who was going toward Brilbault, but, after the stroke of ten, they were to arrest anyone who should attempt to leave the ruin.

They were strictly forbidden to kill or wound anyone unless they were seriously attacked, the main object being to take prisoners and obtain information.

It was also agreed that each man should start alone from his first position, and the positions were assigned in accordance with the minute strategic knowledge of the country possessed by Guillaume and the marquis.

Thus, Guillaume and his men were to separate at La Berthenoux, and scatter along the Igneraie. Monsieur Robin was to go alone to his farmer's, while his men were to take a score of different paths from Coudray to Brilbault, taking care to cover the whole Saint-Chartier line.

Monsieur de Bois-Doré, meanwhile, was to ride to Montlevic, and thence start alone for the rendezvous, after scattering his escort in the same manner, in order to avoid all suspicion on the part of anyone who might be watching his movements.

When all these arrangements were made, they could count upon bringing into the field about a hundred stout and cautious men, upon whom they could rely. Bois-Doré alone supplied almost fifty, and still left half a score of trusty fellows to guard the château and his lovely guest Lauriane.

In order that the spies who were presumed to be watching him might not suspect him of any design upon Brilbault, the marquis took Mario with him to the château of Montlevic, to pay a visit to his youthful neighbors.

The D'Orsannes were grandsons of Antoine d'Orsanne, who was lieutenant-general of Berry and a Calvinist.

The marquis and Mario passed an hour there; after which Bois-Doré told Aristandre to take the child back to Briantes, while he remounted his horse to ride alone to Etalié, a hamlet on the road from La Châtre to Thevet, at the top of a hill called Le Terrier.

When Mario, who was puzzled by all these precautions, asked leave to accompany him, he replied that he was going to sup with Guillaume d'Ars, and that he would return early.

The child sighed as he mounted his little horse, for he had a feeling that something was about to happen, and, by dint of listening to the conversation of gentlemen, the pretty peasant of the Pyrenees had soon become a gentleman himself, in the romantic and chivalrous sense still attributed to that title by the excellent marquis.

Everyone knows how marvellously the child modifies and transforms himself to adjust himself to the environment to which he is transplanted. Mario was already dreaming of noble feats of arms, running giants through and rescuing captive damsels.

He tried to insist after his manner, obeying without a murmur, but fastening his loving and persuasive eyes upon the old man, who adored him.

"No, my dear count," replied Bois-Doré, who understood perfectly his silent prayer; "I cannot leave alone in my château at night the sweet girl who has been placed in my care. Remember that she is your sister and your lady, and that, when I am compelled to be absent, your place is beside her, to serve her, to divert her and, if need be, to defend her."

Mario was vanquished by this exaggerated flattery, and, spurring his horse, rode away toward Briantes at a gallop.

Aristandre followed him, and was to return to the marquis as soon as he had escorted the child back to the château.

The night, like the preceding one, was decidedly mild for the season. The sky, sometimes overcast, sometimes swept clear by gusts of warm air, was very dark when the young horseman and his attendant galloped into the ravine and rode under the venerable trees of the village.

As they rapidly ascended one of the narrow undulating roads, lined with hedges, which served the purposes of streets between the thirty or forty firesides of which the village consisted, Mario's horse, which was leading, shied and snorted with terror.

"What is that?" said the child, sitting like a rock in his saddle. "A drunken man asleep in the road? Pick him up, Aristandre, and take him to his family."

"Monsieur le comte," replied the coachman, who had instantly dismounted, "if he is drunk, you might say he is dead drunk, for he doesn't move any more than a stone."

"Shall I help you?" said the child, dismounting.

He went nearer and tried to distinguish the features of the man, who answered none of Aristandre's questions.

"He may belong hereabout," said the coachman with his accustomed stolidity; "I don't know him; but what I do know is that he is dead or the next thing to it."

"Dead!" cried the child; "right here, in the middle of the village! and no one thinks of helping him!"

He ran to the nearest house and found it empty; the fire was burning brightly, and the tea-kettle, abandoned to its fate, was sputtering in the ashes; the settle was upset across the room.

Mario called in vain, no one answered.

He was about to run to another house, for they were separated from one another by large enclosures thickly planted with trees, when the report of firearms and strange rumbling noises, drowning the clatter of his horse's hoofs on the stones, made him jump and abruptly draw rein.

"Do you hear, monsieur le comte?" cried Aristandre, who had carried the body to the side of the road, and had remounted to join his young master; "that comes from the château, and there's something strange going on there, for sure!"

"Let us hurry!" said Mario, urging his steed to a gallop. "If it's a fête, they are making a great noise over it!"

"Wait! wait!" cried the coachman, doubling his speed to stop Mario's horse; "that is no fête! There wouldn't be a fête at the château without you and monsieur le marquis. They are fighting! Do you hear how they are yelling and cursing? And see, there's another dead man, or a horribly wounded Christian, at the foot of the wall! Fly, monsieur; hide, for the love of God! I will go to see what the matter is, and come back and tell you."

"You are laughing at me!" cried Mario, tearing himself free; "hide, when they are attacking my father's château? What about my Lauriane? let us hasten to her defence!"

He galloped across the drawbridge, which was lowered, a most extraordinary circumstance after nightfall.

By the light of a stack of straw which was blazing merrily in front of the farm buildings, Mario obtained a confused view of a most incomprehensible scene.

The marquis's retainers were engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict with a numerous band of horned, hairy, shiny creatures, "in every respect more like devils than men."—Musket or pistol shots rang out from time to time, but it was not a battle according to rule; it was a mêlée, following a sudden and unfortunate surprise. They saw frantic groups writhe and struggle for an instant, then suddenly disappear, when the flame of the burning straw was obscured by dense clouds of smoke.

The coachman held Mario in his arms, so that he could not rush into the fray. He struggled in vain, and wept with rage.

At last he was forced to listen to reason.

"You see, monsieur," said honest Aristandre, "you prevent me from going and taking a hand yonder! And yet my fist is worth four of an ordinary man's. But the devil could not make me let go my hold of you, for I am responsible for you; so I won't do it until you swear that you will keep quiet."

"Go then," replied Mario, "I swear it."

"But if you stay here, some straggler may see you. Come, I'll hide you in the garden."

And, without awaiting the child's consent, the coachman lifted him from his horse and carried him into the garden, the gate of which was at the left, not far from the entrance tower. He locked him in there, and ran off to throw himself into the mêlée.

Dull and uninteresting as we know mere descriptions of locality to be, we are compelled, in order to enable the reader to understand what follows, to remind him of the general arrangement of the small estate of Briantes. The recollection of many venerable country houses, built upon the same plan, and still existing with slight changes, will assist him to form an idea of the one with which we are here concerned.

I will suppose that we enter by the drawbridge which spans the outer moat; let us pause a moment at that point.

The sarrasine is raised. Let us examine this system of defence.

The orgue, or sarrasine, or, as it was then called, the sarracinesque, was a sort of portcullis, less expensive and less heavy than the iron portcullis. It consisted of a series of movable stakes, independent of one another, and moving up and down, like the portcullis, in the archway of the gate-tower. More time was required to set in motion the mechanism of the sarrasine than that of the ordinary portcullis made in a single piece; but it had this advantage, that a single person, stationed in the salle de manœuvre, or room from which it was worked, could, if need were, raise one of the stakes and admit a fugitive, without making too large an opening of which the besiegers could avail themselves.

This room was a sort of corridor inside the gate-tower and above the arch, with openings which enabled those on guard there to look down upon whoever might attempt to go in or out. These openings also enabled them to fire or hurl projectiles on the besiegers, when they had succeeded in crossing the moat and destroying the sarrasine, and the battle was renewed under the archway.

This room communicated with the moucharabi, a low, crenellated, mascherolé gallery, which crowned the arch of the portcullis on the outer face of the tower. From that point bullets and stones could be rained upon the enemy to prevent their destroying the sarrasine.

The gate-tower of Briantes, which contained these defensive appliances, was a heavy oval mass, built on the edge of the moat. It was called the tower of the huis, to distinguish it from the huisset, of which we shall speak in a moment. The huis, or gate, opened into the immense enclosure which contained the farm buildings, the dove-cote, the heron-yard, the mall, etc., and which was invariably called the basse-cour, because it was always on a lower level than the courtyard.

On our left is the high garden wall, pierced at regular intervals with narrow loopholes, from which, in case of surprise, the enemy could be harassed after making themselves masters of the basse-cour.

A paved road ran all the way along this wall to the second line of defences, where the second moat, supplied with water by the little stream, extended to the pond at the end of the courtyard.

Over this moat, bordered by its turfed counterscarp, was thrown the stationary bridge, a bridge built of stone, and very old, as indicated by the sharp angle which it made with the tower at its inner end.

This was customary in the Middle Ages. Some antiquaries explain the custom by pointing out that the archers in the assaulting party, when they raised their arms to fire, laid their sides open to the fire of the besieged. Others tell us that this angle broke the force of an assault very materially. It matters little.

The tower of the huisset stood between this stationary bridge and the courtyard. It contained a small iron portcullis and stout oaken gates studded with nails with enormous heads.

This tower formed, with the moat, the only defence of the manor, properly so-called.

When he gratified his own tastes by razing the donjon of his fathers and replacing it by the pavilion called the grand'maison, the marquis had said to himself, and justly, that, whether in the shape of a castle or a villa, his country house would not hold out an hour against an attack with cannon. But, against the paltry means of attack which bandits or hostile neighbors could command, the broad, deep moat filled with a swiftly-running stream, the little falconets placed on each side of the huisset, and the loopholes cut diagonally in the wall on the basse-cour or farmyard side, were capable of holding out a considerable time. As a matter of comfort and convenience rather than of prudence, the manor was always well supplied with provisions and forage.

Let us add that walls and moats, always kept in perfect repair, enclosed the whole domain—even the garden—and that, if Aristandre had taken time for reflection, he would have carried Mario out of the farmyard, into the village, and not into the garden, which was as likely to become a prison for him as a place of safety.

But one never thinks of everything, and Aristandre never dreamed that the enemy could not be repelled with a turn of the hand.

The honest fellow was not noted for vividness of imagination; it was fortunate for him that he did not allow himself to be excited by the fantastic and truly frightful figures which were presented to his astonished eyes. Being as credulous as other men, he took counsel with himself as he ran, but without slackening his headlong pace; and, when he had struck down one or two of them, he made the philosophical reflection that they were canaille, nothing more.

Mario, with his face pressed against the garden gate, throbbing with ardor and excitement soon lost sight of him.

The burning mill had fallen in; the fighting continued during the darkness; the child could follow only with his ears the confused sounds of the changing scenes of the action.

He judged that the arrival of the sturdy and intrepid Aristandre revived the courage of the defenders, but after a few moments of uncertainty, which seemed to him like centuries, he thought that the assailants must be gaining ground, for the shouts and scuffling receded to the second bridge, and, after a moment of ghastly silence, he heard a pistol shot and the splash of a body falling into the stream.

A few seconds later the portcullis of the huisset fell with a great crash, and a volley from the falconets forced the party that had rushed upon the bridge to fall back with horrible imprecations.

One act of this incomprehensible drama was finished; the besieged had been driven back and confined in the courtyard; the invaders were masters of the basse-cour.

Mario was alone; Aristandre was probably dead, since he abandoned him in the midst or at least within reach of enemies who might burst into the garden at any moment by breaking down the gate, and take him prisoner.

And there was no means of escape for him except to scale that gate at the risk of falling into the hands of those demons! There was no exit from the garden except into the basse-cour; it had no direct communication of any sort with the château.

Mario was afraid; and then, too, the thought of the death of Aristandre, and, perhaps, of other faithful servants equally dear to him, brought tears to his eyes. Even his poor little horse, whom he had left at the entrance to the basse-cour, with the reins on his neck, came into his mind and added to his distress.

Lauriane and Mercedes were safe, doubtless, and there were still many defenders about them, for the deathly silence in the direction of the village indicated that men and beasts had taken refuge within the enclosure at the outset, in order to receive the enemy under shelter of the walls. It was the custom of the period that, at the slightest alarm, vassals should repair to the seignioral château at once, to seek and offer aid. They always took their families and cattle with them.

"But if Lauriane and my good Moor have any idea that I am here," thought poor Mario, "how worried they will be about me! Let us hope that they don't suspect that I have returned! And dear old Adamas—I am sure he is like a madman! If only they haven't taken him prisoner!"

His tears flowed silently; crouching in a clump of trimmed yews, he dared not show himself at the gate, where he might be discovered by the enemy, nor go farther away and lose sight of what he could still see of the scene of confusion being enacted in the basse-cour.

He heard the howls of those besiegers who were wounded by the shot from the falconets. They had been taken to the farmhouse, and there were evidently wounded and dying men there belonging to the besieged force as well, for Mario could distinguish voices that seemed to be exchanging reproaches and threats. But it was all very vague; it was a considerable distance from the garden to the farm-house; moreover, the little stream, swollen by the winter rains, was making a deal of noise.