The cardinal's musketeer

THE Rue de Bethisi was the artery which connected the older quarter of the Hôtel de Ville and the Palais Tournelles with the more modern neighborhood of the Louvre. In the vicinity of the Church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, the Rue de Bethisi divided the Rue de l’Arbre Sec from the Rue des Fossés St. Germain l’Auxerrois, the spot fortified by the Normans during their siege of Paris, and the scene of the murder of Coligny. Near this corner, on the north side of the Rue de Bethisi, and not far from the Hôtel Montbazon, was the lodging of Père Antoine, though it was some distance from his parish of St. Nicholas des Champs. The house was tall and narrow, with an oriel window in the second story, which commanded a view of three streets. Houses are not mere masses of stones or bricks and mortar: they have expressions, eyes, mouths, ears; one might almost fancy—souls. They are the shells of those who inhabit them, and many speak, in plain language, their own histories. Is there anything more sad than the house of death? more desolate than the forsaken home? This house on the Rue de Bethisi had an expression of serious benevolence. The room which Père Antoine occupied, where little Péron came daily for his lessons, was a large one on the second floor, and well lighted by the oriel window. There were no indications of wealth in the furnishings; the polished floor was scantily covered with two threadbare rugs, there were two carved arm-chairs,—one in which the priest always sat, the other turned to the wall and never used. Besides these there were two or three stiff-backed chairs, a table, a crucifix, a small but beautiful painting of the Annunciation, and a little clock, fashioned after those of the Valois period, a gift of Jacques des Horloges; for portable clocks were still a luxury for the rich, and the priest would as soon have dreamed of buying one as of possessing a cardinal’s hat. This was all, except the books, and those were Père Antoine’s greatest worldly treasures; they were arranged with loving care on the shelves on either side of the room. Many of them were of great value, gifts from the wealthier patrons who had learned to appreciate him or owed him a debt for consolation that could never be repaid. Some of these gifts were splendid specimens of the bookbinder’s art, and rich in clasps of gold and silver. It was told of Père Antoine that one of the princes of the blood had sent him a worldly book bound with great magnificence and set with jewels, and the good priest had returned it with the quotation of St. Jerome’s words: “Your books are covered with precious stones, and Christ died naked before the gate of His temple!”

To this room came daily little Péron, the clockmaker’s adopted child, to learn his lessons out of Père Antoine’s primer, and to spend a laborious hour copying from the Gospels, that he might learn his Bible and his penmanship at the same time. It was a pretty sight to see the rosy-faced, dark-eyed boy sitting by the pale, studious priest and taking his lesson soberly. Péron was a good scholar, and willing enough except on occasions when the shouts of children at play made his ears tingle and his heart throb; but he had never been allowed to join in those rough sports, so he bore the ordeal with patience, and only sighed more heavily at the task. He loved his teacher, as many other people loved Père Antoine, and he had a quick mind. The surroundings, too, were an incentive; he longed to be able to read all those books, those beautiful books which he was allowed to look at and to handle with a care that had been instilled by constant teaching and example. By the time he was ten years old he could read both French and Latin fairly well, and by spelling out the longer words could gather the meaning of most of the books which he especially loved to look at. These were the older volumes, with gayly decorated borders, some of great beauty and a few having miniatures en camaïeu or en grisaille after the fashion of the time of Charles VI. There was one, the “Heures de la Croix,” which was curiously bound in white silk with sacred emblems upon it, and encased in a red “chemise,” a kind of pocket in which books were kept, and which was made of silk, velvet, or sandal-wood, as occasion might require. Naturally, the books which attracted the boy were those most gorgeously bound or emblazoned with pictures of saints and martyrs, such as the “Livre d’Heures,” “Les Miracles de Notre Dame,” the illuminated antiphonaries and missals. He had even tried to spell out the “Commentaries of St. Jerome” and “Boèce on Consolation,” this last because it was bound in green “Dampmas cloth” and very beautifully embroidered. He was familiar, too, with every printer’s and bookseller’s mark, and these were then curious enough, from the two leopards of Simon Vostre to the six-oared galley of Galliot de Pré, bookseller of Paris in 1531, nearly a hundred years before Cardinal de Richelieu. But it was these old books, whose capital letters had been decorated by the illuminator in many colors, which pleased Péron, and not any of the more modern volumes. Solid and somewhat dreary books for a child to spell a lesson from, but none the less helpful in the struggle; and so faithful was the pupil that there was seldom a day that Père Antoine did not send him away with some word of commendation. And praise from the priest meant more than the wondering admiration of Madame Michel, who regarded the boy as a marvel of erudition for his years; and so he was, for a child of his condition in the world. So ready was he to learn, and so prone to meditation, that Jacques des Horloges occasionally grumbled out a fear that he might be made a better priest than a soldier, for strangely enough the clockmaker never seemed to entertain a thought of training Péron as an apprentice at his own trade.

It was the child’s custom to talk more to the priest than to any one else. In the shop on the Rue de la Ferronnerie he confined his confidential communications to M. de Turenne, but on the Rue de Bethisi he found his tongue, and many times Père Antoine turned his face aside to hide a smile, too wise to wound the boy’s feelings. This was the secret of his power, for a child both dreads and hates ridicule. It was therefore to the priest that he carried the doubts and the curiosity awakened by his visit to the Château de Nançay. Père Antoine knew nothing of the journey to Poissy, and was unprepared for the sudden questions which his pupil propounded. The boy had been reading laboriously from “Les Petites Heures,” guided by his teacher’s pencil, when he stopped and turned his large eyes upon him.

“Père Antoine,” he said slowly, “who died in the room next the tower at the great château near Poissy?”

The priest leaned back in his chair, an expression of intense astonishment crossing his face, instantly followed by one of sorrow so sharp that the pupils of his eyes contracted as if with pain.

“Who told you of Poissy?” he asked quietly.

“I have been there,” Péron declared with an air of conscious pride; “Maître Jacques took me on horseback. We rode a long way and saw the fair in the forest.”

“The fête at St. Germain-en-Laye?” said Père Antoine. “Did you like the green fields and the flowers, Péron?”

The child looked down; he was thinking of the bunch of violets which he had brought home surreptitiously and hidden in his cupboard; he was ashamed to keep anything that had been thrown at him as if he were a beggar or a vagrant.

“I should like to live always in the green fields,” he said; “they are so much prettier than the stone walls of the Rue de la Ferronnerie.”

Père Antoine sighed, laying his hand softly on the bent head with one of his rare caresses.

“Poor child,” he murmured sadly; “our paths are not always easy, the stones cut our feet; but fret not for a different condition of life; discontent is a cankerworm which eats the heart. The streets of Paris are narrow and dingy, yet you may learn here to walk the narrow way of life eternal. You grow to be a big boy, Péron; presently, instead of spelling with me, you will begin to learn the lessons of existence. Some of us can have green fields and flowers, but many, my child, have only the flint-paved way, and are shut in by walls as grim as those of the Châtelet. See to it that you crave not that which is another’s; verily, there is no more cruel sin than envy.”

“Why do the rich say rude things to the poor?” asked the boy sharply.

A slow flush crept up to Père Antoine’s temples and his sensitive lips tightened.

“It is the way of the world, Péron,” he said softly, “not God’s way.”

“It is a very mean way!” the child declared promptly; “I will never stand it.”

The priest looked at him in surprise; for some time he had been conscious of the development of a new characteristic in his pupil, but he was not prepared for the fire of the boy’s resentment. He shook his head gravely.

“You must not harbor thoughts of malice, Péron,” he said; “I have labored to teach you the lessons of Christian humility.”

“I do not see why some people are so rich and others so poor,” Péron remarked, unmoved.

“You are not very poor,” Père Antoine replied soothingly, “you have a comfortable shelter, and the care of good Maître Jacques and his wife.”

He was endeavoring to quiet the child, but his words only called forth another question.

“Are my father and mother really dead?” Péron asked, leaning his elbows on the table and gazing earnestly at his teacher.

Again the older face clouded and the kind eyes dwelt sadly on the rosy countenance of his interrogator.

“Both dead, Péron,” he answered softly. “Your mother when you were a baby, your father when you were three years old.”

“Did you know my mother, Père Antoine?” the child asked, a longing in his tone which may have caused the spasm of pain that passed over the priest.

“I knew her all her life,” he answered, “and I was with her when her spirit passed into Paradise; she was a very noble, gentle, Christian woman.”

He bent his head as he spoke and crossed himself, seeming for an instant to forget the child.

“Do I look like her?” the boy asked, with eager interest.

“You have her eyes, my child,” Père Antoine said tenderly, “but you grow daily more and more like your father.”

“Of what did he die?” Péron inquired; his mind seemed fully roused at last, and he was not inclined to spare.

The priest’s pale face grew even more grave than it had been; he laid his hand on the neglected book before his pupil.

“He died suddenly,” he said; “but come, child, you neglect your lesson.”

But he was not to evade the persistent little questioner.

“What was my father’s name, what is mine?” he asked; “other boys have always two names—or three, sometimes even four—but I am only Péron.”

The priest spoke severely now. “My child,” he replied, “you have no name but Péron now, nor can I tell you your father’s name; neither can Maître Jacques. Be content, my boy, to bear the name we have given you and to do your duty, since you may not know more than we can tell you. See here rather this sentence which you left half read.”

Péron followed his guiding pencil for a few moments, and then he looked up again, fixing his eyes on his instructor.

“You have not told me who died in the room at the château at Poissy,” he said.

The priest passed his hand over his eyes; he was thinking prayerfully, although the boy did not know it. A long, sad vista opened before Père Antoine’s mental vision; the questions of love, duty, necessity, beset him. He was a wise man as well as a good one, but sometimes a child may confound a sage. He loved Péron too, with the tenderness of a woman, and he felt that with him lay the chief responsibility, since he was the most intelligent as well as the most deeply concerned of his guardians. After an instant’s pause, a pause so slight that the eager interrogator scarcely noted it, the priest answered him in his usual calm tone.

“The Marquise de Nançay died there, Péron,” he said gravely. “A very good woman.”

This answer did not satisfy the boy.

“Maître Jacques said she was like a saint,” he remarked curiously.

Père Antoine drew a deep breath, his luminous eyes looking over Péron’s head into space.

“We cannot judge,” he said, in a low voice, “but I have never known a better woman.”

“Was she as good as my mother?” asked the child bluntly.

“She was as good as your mother,” replied the priest slowly.

“Maître Jacques made me say my prayers there,” remarked Péron gravely.

The sad shadow in Père Antoine’s blue eyes cleared, as sometimes the clouds break in the eastern sky and let the sun shine through.

“It is well,” he said, and there was a reverent pause.

But this was not the end of it.

“Is that her little girl who lives at Nançay?” was the next question.

Père Antoine started, and the sensitive flush came again.

“No!” he replied sharply.

“Is that tall man, who wears such wonderful lace ruffles, her husband?” pursued Péron, unmercifully.

“A thousand times, no!” cried Père Antoine.

“Then,” exclaimed Péron in triumph, “how can she have been the Marquise de Nançay? I heard them call him the marquis.”

Père Antoine wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, and rose and opened the casement.

“It is warm,” he said, then he turned to the child with the manner which his pupil knew how to interpret. “We have wasted much valuable time,” he remarked gravely. “I wish you to learn from the Psalter to-day. You should not ask so many questions; there may always be several people of the same name. It is more important for you to read well than to know so much of unprofitable matters. I notice that when the letters are colored in blue, you more easily mistake them than those in red; this is not as it should be, and shows either a want of application or inattention to your lessons.”

For the next hour and a half Péron found Père Antoine a harder taskmaster than he had ever been before, and many times, in the interval, the child sighed as he thought of the green fields and flowers between Paris and St. Germain-en-Laye.