From the Memoirs of a Minister of France, Stanley John Weyman [read along books txt] 📗

as I could bend my mind to the matter I began an inquiry. At the first stage, however, I came to an IMPASSE; the butler, who had been long in my service, cleared himself without difficulty, but a few questions discovered the fact that a person who had been in his department on the evening in question was now to seek, having indeed disappeared from that time. This was the gipsy-girl, whom La Trape had mentioned, and whose presence in my household seemed to need the more elucidation the farther I pushed the inquiry. In the end I had the butler punished, but though my agents sought the girl through Paris, and even traced her to Meaux, she was never discovered.

The affair, at the King's instance, was not made public; nevertheless, it gave him so strong a distaste for the Arsenal that he did not again visit me, nor use the rooms I had prepared. That later, when the first impression wore off, he would have done so, is probable; but, alas, within a few months the malice of his enemies prevailed over my utmost precautions, and robbed me of the best of masters; strangely enough, as all the world now knows, at the corner of that very Rue de la Feronnerie which he had seen in his dream.

XII. AT FONTAINEBLEAU.

The passion which Henry still felt for Madame de Conde, and which her flight from the country was far from assuaging, had a great share in putting him upon the immediate execution of the designs we had so long prepared. Looking to find in the stir and bustle of a German campaign that relief of mind which the Court could no longer afford him, he discovered in the unhoped-for wealth of his treasury an additional incitement; and now waited only for the opening of spring and the Queen's coronation to remove the last obstacles that kept him from the field.

Nevertheless, relying on my assurances that all things were ready, and persuaded that the more easy he showed himself the less prepared would he find the enemy, he made no change in his habits; but in March, 1610, went, as usual, to Fontainebleau, where he diverted himself with hunting. It was during this visit that the Court credited him with seeing—I think, on the Friday before the Feast of the Virgin—the Great Huntsman; and even went so far as to specify the part of the forest in which he came upon it, and the form—that of a gigantic black horseman, surrounded by hounds—which it assumed The spectre had not been seen since the year 1598; nevertheless, the story spread widely, those who whispered it citing in its support not only the remarkable agitation into which the Queen fell publicly on the evening of that day, but also some strange particulars that attended the King's return from the forest; and, being taken up and repeated, and confirmed, as many thought, by the unhappy sequence of his death, the fable found a little later almost universal credence, so that it may now be found even in books.

As it happened, however, I was that day at Fontainebleau, and hunted with the King; and, favoured both by chance and the confidence with which my master never failed to honour me, am able not only to refute this story, but to narrate the actual facts from which it took its rise. And though there are some, I know, who boast that they had the tale from the King's own mouth, I undertake to prove either that they are romancers who seek to add an inch to their stature, or dull fellows who placed their own interpretation on the hasty words he vouchsafed such chatterers.

As a fact, the King, on that day wishing to discuss with me the preparations for the Queen's entry, bade me keep close to him, since he had more inclination for my company than the chase. But the crowd that attended him was so large, the day being fine and warm—and comprised, besides, so many ladies, whose badinage and gaiety he could never forego—that I found him insensibly drawn from me. Far from being displeased, I was glad to see him forget the moodiness which had of late oppressed him; and beyond keeping within sight of him, gave up, for the time, all thought of affairs, and found in the beauty of the spectacle sufficient compensation. The bright dresses and waving feathers of the party showed to the greatest advantage, as the long cavalcade wound through the heather and rocks of the valley below the Apremonts; and whether I looked to front or rear—on the huntsmen, with their great horns, or the hounds straining in the leashes—I was equally charmed with a sight at once joyous and gallant, and one to which the calls of duty had of late made me a stranger.

On a sudden a quarry was started, and the company, galloping off pell-mell, with a merry burst of music, were in a moment dispersed, some taking this track, and others that, through the rocks and DEBRIS that make that part of the forest difficult. Singling out the King, I kept as near him as possible until the chase led us into the Apremont coverts, where, the trees growing thickly, and the rides cut through them being intricate, I lost him for a while. Again, however, I caught sight of him flying down a ride bordered by dark-green box-trees, against which his white hunting coat showed vividly; but now he was alone, and riding in a direction which each moment carried him farther from the line of the chase, and entangled him more deeply in the forest.

Supposing that he had made a bad cast and was in error, I dashed the spurs into my horse, and galloped after him; then, finding that he still held his own, and that I did not overtake him, but that, on the contrary, he was riding at the top of his speed, I called to him. "You are in error, sire, I think!" I cried. "The hounds are the other way!"

He heard, for he raised his hand, and, without turning his head, made me a sign; but whether of assent or denial, I could not tell. And he still held on his course. Then, for a moment, I fancied that his horse had got the better of him, and was running away; but no sooner had the thought occurred to me than I saw that he was spurring it, and exciting it to its utmost speed, so that we reached the end of that ride, and rushed through another and still another, always making, I did not fail to note, for the most retired part of the forest.

We had proceeded in this way about a mile, and the sound of the hunt had quite died away behind us, and I was beginning to chafe, as well as marvel, at conduct so singular, when at last I saw that he was slackening his pace. My horse, which was on the point of failing, began, in turn, to overhaul his, while I looked out with sharpened curiosity for the object of pursuit. I could see nothing, however, and no one; and had just satisfied myself that this was one of the droll freaks in which he would sometimes indulge, and that in a second or two he would turn and laugh at my discomfiture, when, on a sudden, with a final pull at the reins, he did turn, and showed me a face flushed with passion and chagrin.

I was so taken aback that I cried out. "MON DIEU! sire," I said. "What is it? What is the matter?"

"Matter enough!" he cried, with an oath. And on that, halting his horse, he looked at me as if he would read my heart. "VENTRE DE SAINT GRIS!" he said, in a voice that made me tremble, "if I were sure that there was no mistake, I would—I would never see your face again!"

I uttered an exclamation.

"Have you not deceived me?" quoth he.

"Oh, sire, I am weary of these suspicions!" I answered, affecting an indifference I did not feel. "If your Majesty does not—"

But he cut me short. "Answer me!" he said harshly, his mouth working in his beard and his eyes gleaming with excitement. "Have you not deceived me?"

"No, sire!" I said.

"Yet you have told me day by day that Madame de Conde remained in Brussels?"

"Certainly!"

"And you still say so?"

"Most certainly!" I answered firmly, beginning to think that his passion had turned his brain. "I had despatches to that effect this morning."

"Of what date?"

"Three days gone. The courier travelled night and day."

"They may be true, and still she may be here to-day?" he said, staring at me.

"Impossible, sire!"

"But, man, I have just seen her!" he cried impatiently.

"Madame de Conde?"

"Yes, Madame de Conde, or I am a madman!" Henry answered, speaking a little more moderately. "I saw her gallop out of the patch of rocks at the end of the Dormoir—where the trees begin. She did not heed the line of the hounds, but turned straight down the boxwood ride; and, after that, led as I followed. Did you not see her?"

"No, sire," I said, inexpressibly alarmed—I could take it for nothing but fantasy—"I saw no one."

"And I saw her as clearly as I see you," he answered. "She wore the yellow ostrich-feather she wore last year, and rode her favourite chestnut horse with a white stocking. But I could have sworn to her by her figure alone; and she waved her hand to me."

"But, sire, out of the many ladies riding to-day—"

"There is no lady wearing a yellow feather," he answered passionately. "And the horse! And I knew her, man! Besides, she waved to me! And, for the others—why should they turn from the hunt and take to the woods?"

I could not answer this, but I looked at him in fear; for, as it was impossible that the Princess de Conde could be here, I saw no alternative but to think him smitten with madness. The extravagance of the passion which he had entertained for her, and the wrath into which the news of her flight with her young husband had thrown him, to say nothing of the depression under which he had since suffered, rendered the idea not so unlikely as it now seems. At any rate, I was driven for a moment to entertain it; and gazed at him in silence, a prey to the most dreadful apprehensions.

We stood in a narrow ride, bordered by evergreens, with which that part of the forest is planted; and but for the songs of the birds the stillness would have been absolute. On a sudden the King removed his eyes from me, and, walking his horse a pace or two along the ride, uttered a cry of joy.

He pointed to the ground. "We are right!" he said. "There are her tracks! Come! We will overtake her yet!"

I looked, and saw the fresh prints of a horse's shoes, and felt a great weight roll off my mind, for at least he had seen someone. I no longer hesitated to fall in with his humour, but, riding after him, kept at his elbow until he reached the end of the ride. Here, a vista opening right and left, and the ground being hard and free from tracks, we stood at a loss; until the King, whose eyesight was always of the keenest, uttered an exclamation, and started from me at a gallop.

I followed more slowly, and saw him dismount and pick up a glove, which, even at that distance, he had discerned lying in the middle of one of the paths. He cried, with a flushed face, that it was Madame de Conde's; and added: "It has her perfume—her perfume, which no one else uses!"

I confess that this so staggered me that I knew not what to think; but, between sorrow at seeing my master so infatuated and bewilderment at a riddle that grew each moment more perplexing, I sat gaping at Henry like a man without counsel. However, at the moment, he needed none, but, getting to his saddle as quickly as he could, he began again to follow the tracks of the horse's feet, which here were visible, the path running through a beech wood. The branches were still bare, and the shining trunks stood up like pillars, the ground about them being soft. We followed the prints through this wood for a mile and a half or more, and then, with