a cold and dark northeaster, had swept together a host of straggling vapors and thin lowering clouds over the french metropolis—the course of the seine might be traced easily among the grotesque roofs and gothic towers which at that day adorned its banks, by the gray ghostly mist which seethed up from its sluggish waters—a small fine rain was falling noiselessly, and almost imperceptibly, by its own weight as it were, from the surcharged and watery atmosphere—the air was keenly cold and piercing, although the seasons had not crept far as yet beyond the confines of the summer. the trees, for there were many in the streets of paris, and still more in the166 fauxbourgs and gardens of the haute noblesse, were thickly covered with white rime, as were the manes and frontlets of the horses, the clothes, and hair, and eyebrows of the human beings who ventured forth in spite of the inclement weather. a sadder and more gloomy scene can scarcely be conceived than is presented by the streets of a large city in such a time as that i have attempted to describe. but this peculiar sadness was, on the day of which i write, augmented and exaggerated by the continual tolling of the great bell of st. germains auxerrois, replying to the iron din which arose from the gray towers of n?tre dame. from an early hour of the day the people had been congregating in the streets and about the bridges leading to the precincts of the royal palace, the chateau des tournelles, which then stood—long since obliterated almost from the memory of men—upon the isle de paris, the greater part of which was covered then with the courts, and terraces, and gardens of that princely pile.
strong bodies of the household troops were posted here and there about the avenues and gates of the royal demesne, and several large detachments of the archers of the prev?t’s guard—still called so from the arms which they had long since ceased to carry—might be seen everywhere on duty. yet there were no symptoms of an émeute among the populace, nor any signs of angry feeling or excitement in the features of the loitering crowd, which was increasing every moment as the day waxed toward noon. some feeling certainly there was—some dark and earnest interest, as might be judged from the knit brows, clinched hands, and anxious whispers which everywhere attended the exchange of thought throughout the concourse—but it was by no means of an alarming or an angry character. grief, wonder, expectation, and a sort of half-doubtful pity, as far as might be gathered from the words of the passing speakers, were the more prominent ingredients of the167 common feeling, which had called out so large a portion of the city’s population on a day so unsuited to any spectacle of interest. for several hours this mob, increasing as it has been described from hour to hour, varied but little in its character, save that as the day wore it became more and more respectable in the appearance of its members. at first it had been composed almost without exception of artisans and shop-boys, and mechanics of the lowest order, with not a few of the cheats, bravoes, pickpockets, and similar ruffians, who then as now formed a fraternity of no mean size in the parisian world. as the morning advanced, however, many of the burghers of the city, and respectable craftsmen, might be seen among the crowd; and a little later many of the secondary gentry and petite noblesse, with well-dressed women and even children, all showing the same symptoms of sad yet eager expectation. now, when it lacked but a few minutes of noon, long trains of courtiers with their retinues and armed attendants, many a head of a renowned and ancient house, many a warrior famous for valor and for conduct might be seen threading the mazes of the crowded thoroughfares toward the royal palace.
a double ceremony of singular and solemn nature was soon to be enacted there—the interment of a noble soldier, slain lately in an unjust quarrel, and the investiture of an unwilling woman with the robes of a holy sisterhood preparatory to her lifelong interment in that sepulchre of the living body—sepulchre of the pining soul—the convent cloisters. armand de laguy!—marguerite de vaudreuil!
many circumstances had united in this matter to call forth much excitement, much grave interest in the minds of all who had heard tell of it!—the singular and wild romance of the story, the furious and cruel combat which had resulted from it—and last not least, the violent, and, as it was generally considered, unnatural resentment of the king toward the guilty victim168 who survived the ruin she had wrought.
the story was, in truth, then, but little understood. a thousand rumors were abroad, and of course no one accurately true; yet in each there was a share of truth, and the amount of the whole was perhaps less wide of the mark than is usual in matters of the kind. and thus they ran: marguerite de vaudreuil had been betrothed to the youngest of france’s famous warriors, charles de la-hirè, who after a time fell—as it was related by his young friend and kinsman armand de laguy—covered with wounds and honor. the body had been found outstretched beneath the survivor, who, himself desperately hurt, had alone witnessed and in vain endeavored to prevent his cousin’s slaughter. the face of charles de la-hirè, as all men deemed the corpse to be, was mangled and defaced so frightfully as to render recognition by the features utterly hopeless; yet, from the emblazoned surcoat which it bore, the well-known armor on the limbs, the signet-ring upon the finger, and the accustomed sword clinched in the dead right hand, none doubted the identity of the body, or questioned the truth of armand’s story.
armand de laguy, succeeding by his cousin’s death to all his lands and lordships, returned to the metropolis, and mixed in the gayeties of that gay period, when all the court of france was revelling in the celebration of the union of the dauphin with the lovely mary stuart, in after-days the hapless queen of scotland.
he wore no decent and accustomed garb of mourning. he suffered no interval, however brief—due to decorum at least, if not to kindly feeling—to elapse, before it was announced that marguerite de vaudreuil, the dead man’s late betrothed, was instantly to wed his living cousin! her wondrous beauty, her all-seductive manners, her extreme youth, had in vain pleaded against the general censure of the court—the world. men had frowned on her for a while, and women sneered and slandered;169 but after a little while, as the novelty of the story wore away, the indignation against her inconstancy ceased, and she was once again installed the leader of the court’s unwedded beauties.
suddenly, on the very eve of her intended nuptials, charles de la-hirè returned!—ransomed, as it turned out, by brissac, from the italian dungeons of the prince of parma, and making fearful charges of treason and intended murder against armand de laguy. the king had commanded that the truth should be proved by a solemn combat; had sworn to execute upon the felon’s block whichever of the two should yield or confess falsehood; had sworn that the inconstant marguerite—who, on the return of de la-hirè, had returned instantly to her former feelings, asserting her perfect confidence in the truth of charles, the treachery of armand—should either wed the victor, or live and die the inmate of the most rigorous convent in his realm.
the battle had been fought yesterday! armand de laguy fell, mortally wounded by his wronged cousin’s hand, and with his latest breath declared his treasons, and implored pardon from his king, his kinsman, and his god—happy to perish by a brave man’s sword, not by a headman’s axe. and marguerite, the victor’s prize—rejected by the man she had betrayed—herself refusing, even if he were willing, to wed with him whom she could but dishonor—had now no option save death or the detested cloister.
and now men pitied—women wept—all frowned, and wondered, and kept silence. that a young, vain, capricious beauty—the pet and spoiled child from her very cradle of a gay and luxurious court, worshipped for her charms like a second aphrodite, intoxicated with the love of admiration—that such a one should be inconstant, fickle—should swerve from her fealty170 to the dead—a questionable fealty always—and be won to a rash second love by the falsehood and treasons of a man young, and brave, and handsome—falsehood which had deceived wise men—that such should be the course of events, men said, was neither strange nor monstrous! it was a fault, a lapse, of which she had been guilty—which might indeed make her future faith suspected, which would surely justify charles de la-hirè in casting back her proffered hand—but which at the worst was venial, and deserving no such doom as the soul-chilling cloister.
she had, they said, in no respect participated in the guilt or shared the treacheries of armand. on the contrary, she, the victim of his fraud, had been the first to denounce, to spit at, to defy him.
moreover, it was understood that, although de la-hirè had refused her hand, several of equal and even higher birth than he had offered to redeem her from the cloister by taking her to wife of their free choice. jarnac had claimed the beauty, and it was whispered that the duke de nevers had sued to henry vainly for the fair hand of the unwilling novice.
but the king was relentless. “either the wife of de la-hirè, or the bride of god in the cloister!” was his unvarying reply. no further answer would he give—no disclosure of his motives would he make, even to his wisest councillors. some, indeed, augured that the good monarch’s anger was but feigned, and that, deeming her sufficiently punished already, he was desirous still of forcing her to be the bride of him to whom she had been destined, and whom she still, despite her brief inconstancy, unquestionably worshipped in her heart; for all men still supposed that at the last charles would forgive the hapless girl, and so relieve her from the living tomb that even now seemed yawning to enclose her. but others—and they were those who understood the best mood of france’171s second henry—vowed that the wrath was real; and felt that, though no man could fathom the cause of his stern ire, he never would forgive the guilty girl, whose frailty, as he swore, had caused such strife and bloodshed.
but now it was high noon; and forth filed from the palace-gates a long and glittering train—henry and all his court, with all the rank and beauty of the realm, knights, nobles, peers and princes, damsels and dames—the pride of france and europe. but at the monarch’s right walked one, clad in no gay attire—pale, languid, wounded, and warworn—charles de la-hirè, the victor. a sad, deep gloom o’ercast his large dark eye, and threw a shadow over his massy forehead. his lip had forgot to smile, his glance to lighten; yet was there no remorse, no doubt, no wavering in his calm, noble features—only fixed, settled sorrow. his long and waving hair of the darkest chestnut, evenly parted on his crown, fell down on either cheek, and flowed over the broad, plain collar of his shirt, which, decked with no embroidery-lace, was folded back over the cape of a plain black pourpoint, made of fine cloth indeed, but neither laced nor passemented, nor even slashed with velvet; a broad scarf of black taffeta supported his weapon—a heavy, double-edged, straight broadsword—and served at the same time to support his left arm, the sleeve of which hung open, tied in with points of riband; his trunk-hose and nether stocks of plain black silk, black velvet shoes, and a slouched hat, with neither feather nor cockade, completed the suit of melancholy mourning which he wore.
in the midst of the train was a yet sadder sight—marguerite de vaudreuil, robed in the snow-white vestments of a novice, with all her glorious ringlets flowing in loose redundance over her shoulders and her bosom, soon to be cut close by the fatal scissors—pale as the monumental stone, and only not as rigid. a hard-featured, gray-headed monk supported her on172 either hand; and a long train of priests swept after, with crucifix, and rosary, and censer.
scarcely had this strange procession issued from the great gates of les tournelles—the death-bells tolling still from every tower and steeple—before another train, gloomier yet and sadder, filed out from the gate of the royal tiltyard, at the farther end of which stood a superb pavilion. sixteen black benedictine monks led the array, chanting the mournful miserere. next behind these (strange contrast!) strode on the grim, gaunt form, clad in his blood-stained tabard, and bearing full displayed his broad, two-handed axe—fell emblem of his odious calling—the public executioner of paris. immediately in the rear of this dark functionary, not borne by his bold captains, nor followed by his gallant vassals with arms reversed and signs of martial sorrow, but ignominiously supported by the grim-visaged ministers of the law, came on the bier of armand, the last count de laguy.
stretched in a coffin of the rudest material and construction, with his pale visage bare, displaying still in its distorted lines and sharpened features the agonies of mind and body which had preceded his untimely dissolution, the bad but haughty noble was borne to his long home in the graveyard of n?tre dame. his sword, broken in twain, was laid across his breast, his spurs had been hacked from his heels by the base cleaver of the scullion, and his reversed escutcheon was hung above his head.
narrowly saved by his wronged kinsman’s intercession from dying by the headman’s weapon ere yet his mortal wounds should have let out his spirit, he was yet destined to the shame of a dishonored sepulchre. such was the king’s decree—alas! inexorable.
the funeral-train proceeded; the king and his court followed. they reached the graveyard, hard beneath those173 superb gray towers!—they reached the grave, in a remote and gloomy corner, where, in unconsecrated earth, reposed the executed felon. the priests attended not the corpse beyond the precincts of that unholy spot; their solemn chant died mournfully away; no rites were done, no prayers were said above the senseless clay, but in silence was it lowered into the ready pit—silence disturbed only by the deep, hollow sound of the clods that fell fast and heavy on the breast of the guilty noble! for many a day a headstone might be seen—not raised by the kind hands of sorrowing friends, nor watered by the tears of kinsmen, but planted there to tell of his disgraceful doom—amid the nameless graves of the self-slain, and the recorded resting-places of well-known thieves and felons. it was of dark-gray freestone, and it bore these brief words—brief words, but in that situation speaking the voice of volumes:—
“ci git armand, le dernier comte de laguy.”
three forms stood by the grave—stood till the last clod had been heaped upon its kindred clay, and the dark headstone planted: henry the king; and charles the baron de la-hirè; and marguerite de vaudreuil.
and as the last clod was flattened down upon the dead—after the stone was fixed—de la-hirè crossed the grave to the despairing girl, where she had stood gazing with a fixed, rayless eye on the sad ceremony, and took her by the hand, and spoke so loud that all might hear his words, while henry looked on calmly, but not without an air of wondering excitement:—
“not that i did not love thee,” he said, “marguerite! not that i did not pardon thee thy brief inconstancy, caused as it was by evil arts of which we will say nothing now—since he who plotted them hath suffered even above his merits, and is,174 we trust, now pardoned! not for these causes, nor for any of them, have i declined thine hand thus far; but that the king commanded, judging it in his wisdom best for both of us. now armand is gone hence; and let all doubt and sorrow go hence with him! let all your tears, all my suspicions, be buried in his grave for ever! i take your hand, dear marguerite—i take you as mine honored and loved bride—i claim you mine for ever!”
thus far the girl had listened to him, not blushingly, nor with a melting eye, nor with any sign of renewed hope or rekindled happiness in her pale features—but with cold, resolute attention. but now she put away his hand very steadily, and spoke with a firm, unfaltering voice.
“be not so weak!” she said; “be not so weak, charles de la-hirè—nor fancy me so vain! the weight and wisdom of years have passed above my head since yester morning: then was i a vain, thoughtless girl; now am i a stern, wise woman! that i have sinned, is very true—that i have betrayed thee, wronged thee! it may be, had you spoke pardon yesterday—it might have been all well! it may be it had been dishonor in you to take me to your arms; but if to do so had been dishonor yesterday, by what is it made honor now? no! no! charles de la-hirè—no! no! i had refused thee yesterday, hadst thou been willing to redeem me, by self-sacrifice, then, from the convent-walls; i had refused thee then, with love warming my heart toward thee—in all honor! force me not to reject thee now with scorn and hatred. nor dare to think that marguerite de vaudreuil will owe to man’s compassion what she owes not to love! peace, charles de la-hirè!—i say, peace! my last words to thee have been spoken, and never will i hear more from thee! and now, sir king, hear thou—may god judge between thee and me, as thou hast judged! if i was frail and fickle, nature and god made woman weak175 and credulous—but made man not wise, to deceive and ruin her. if i sinned deeply against this baron de la-hirè, i sinned not knowingly, nor of premeditation! if i sinned deeply, more deeply was i sinned against—more deeply was i left to suffer—even hadst thou heaped no more brands upon the burning! if to bear hopeless love—to pine with unavailing sorrow—to repent with continual remorse—to writhe with trampled pride!—if these things be to suffer, then, sir king, had i enough suffered without thy just interposition!” as she spoke, a bitter sneer curled her lip for a moment; but as she saw henry again about to speak, a wilder and higher expression flashed over all her features: her form appeared to distend, her bosom heaved, her eye glared, her ringlets seemed to stiffen, as if instinct with life.
“nay!” she cried, in a voice clear as the strain of a silver trumpet—“nay, thou shalt hear me out! and thou didst swear yesterday i should live in a cloister-cell for ever! and i replied to thy words then, ‘not long!’ i have thought better now; and now i answer, ‘never!’ lo here! lo here! ye who have marked the doom of armand—mark now the doom of marguerite! ye who have judged the treason, mark the doom of the traitress!”
and with the words, before any one could interfere, even had they suspected her intentions, she raised her right hand on high—and all then saw the quick twinkle of a weapon—and struck herself, as it seemed, a quick, slight blow immediately under the left bosom! it seemed a quick, slight blow! but it had been so accurately studied—so steadily aimed and fatally—that the keen blade, scarcely three inches long and very slender, of the best of milan steel, with nearly a third of the hilt, was driven home into her very heart. she spoke no syllable again, nor uttered any cry!—nor did a single spasm contract her pallid features, a single convulsion distort her176 shapely limbs; but she leaped forward, and fell upon her face, quite dead, at the king’s feet!
henry smiled not again for many a day thereafter. charles de la-hirè died very old, a carthusian monk of the strictest order, having mourned sixty years and prayed in silence for the sorrows and the sins of that most hapless being.
