Read Ebook: Agnes Sorel: A Novel by James G P R George Payne Rainsford

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1970 lines and 140360 words, and 40 pages

k up your own grain without coming to mine."

"And so I can, and so I will, uncle," replied our friend Martin Grille, pausing at the entrance of the booth to look at himself from head to foot, in evident admiration of his own appearance. "Did you ever see any thing fit better? Upon my life, it is a perfect marvel that any man should ever have been made so perfectly like me as to have worn these clothes before, without the slightest alteration! Nobody would believe it."

"Nobody will believe they are your own, Cousin Martin," said the deformed boy, with a grin.

"Ah," said Caboche, dryly, "men always gave you credit for more ingenuity than you possess, and they will in this instance also. I always said you were a good-humored, foolish, hair-brained lad, without wit enough to take a bird's nest or bamboozle a goose; but people would not believe me, even when you were clad in hodden gray. What will they think now, when you dance about in silk and broadcloth?"

"Why they'll think, good uncle, that I have all the wit they imagined, and all the honesty you knew me to have. But I'll tell you all about it, that my own relations, at least, may have cause to glorify themselves."

"Get you gone--get you gone," cried the cutler, in a rough, but not ill-humored tone. "I don't want to know how you got the clothes."

"Tell me, Martin, tell me," said the boy; "I should like to hear, of all things. Perhaps I may get some in the same way, some day."

"Mayhap," answered Martin Grille, seating himself on a bench, and kindly putting his arm round the deformed boy's neck. "Well, you must know, Petit Jean, that there is a certain Signor Lomelini, who is ma?tre d'h?tel to his highness the Duke of Orleans--"

"Big Caboche growled out a curse between his teeth; for while pretending to occupy himself with other things, he was listening to the tale all the time, and the Duke of Orleans was with him an object of that strange, fanciful, prejudiced hatred, which men of inferior station very often conceive, without the slightest cause, against persons placed above them.

"Well, this Signor Lomelini--"

"There, there," cried Caboche; "we know all about that long ago. How his mule put its foot into a hole in the street, and tumbled him head over heels into the gutter, and you picked him out, and scraped, and wiped him, and took him back clean and sound, though desperately frightened, and a little bruised. We recollect all about that, and what gay day-dreams you built up, and thought your fortune made. Has he recollected you at last, and given you a cast off suit of clothes? He has been somewhat tardy in his gratitude, and niggardly, too."

"All wrong, uncle mine, all wrong!" replied Martin Grille, laughing. "There has been hardly a day on which I have not seen him since, and when I hav'n't dined with you, I have dined at the H?tel d'Orleans. He found out what you never found out: that I was dexterous, serviceable, and discreet, and many has been the little job which required dispatch and secrecy which I have done for him."

"Ay, dirty work, I trow," growled Caboche; but Martin Grille proceeded with his tale, without heeding his uncle's accustomed interruptions.

"Well, Signor Lomelini always promised," he said, "to get me rated on the duke's household. There was a prospect for a penniless lad, Petit Jean!"

"As well get you posted in the devil's kitchen," said Caboche, "and make you Satan's turnspit."

"But are you placed--but are you placed?" cried the deformed boy, eagerly.

"You shall hear all in good time," answered Martin Grille. "He promised, as I have said, to get me rated as soon as there was any vacancy; but the devil seemed in all the people. Not one of them would die, except old Angelo, the squire of the stirrup, and Monsieur De Gray, the duke's secretary. But those places were far too high for me."

"I see not why they should be," answered the deformed boy, "except that the squire is expected to fight at his lord's side, and the secretary to write for him; and I fancy, Cousin Martin, thou wouldst make as bad a hand at the one as the other."

"Ha, ha, ha!" shouted Caboche; "he hit thee there, Martin."

"On my life! I don't know," answered Martin Grille; "for I never tried either. However, yesterday afternoon the signor sent for me, and told me that the duke had got a new secretary--quite a young man, who knew very little of life, less of Paris, and nothing of a court: that this young gentleman had got no servant, and wanted one; that he had recommended me, and that I should be taken if I could recommend myself. I went to him in the gray of the evening, to set off my apparel the better, but I found the youth not quite so pastoral as I expected, and he began to ask me questions. Questions are very troublesome things, and answers still more so; so I made mine as short as possible."

"And he engaged you," cried the boy, eagerly.

"On my life! I can hardly say that," replied Martin Grille. "But the Duke of Orleans himself just happened to come in at the nick of time, when I was beginning to get a little puzzled. So I thought it best to take it for granted I was engaged; and making my way as fast as possible out of the august presence of my master, and my master's master, I went away to Signor Lomelini and told him I was hired, all through his influence. So, then, he patted me on the shoulder, and called me a brave lad. He told me, moreover, to get myself put in decent costume, and wait upon the young gentleman early the next morning."

"Ay, that's the question," cried Caboche; "where did you get the clothes? Did you steal them from your new master the first day; for you will not say that Lomelini gave them to you. If so, men have belied him."

"No," said Martin, in an exceedingly doubtful tone, "no--I can't say he exhibits his money. What his own coin is made of, I can not tell. I never saw any of it that I know of. He pays out of other men's pockets though, and he has been as good as his word with me."

"How so?" asked the cutler.

"Why, you must know," answered Martin, with an important air, "that every servant in the duke's house is rated on the duke's household. Each gentleman, down to the very pages, has one or more valets, and they are all on the household-book. To prevent excess, however, and with a paternal solicitude to keep them out of debt, the ma?tre d'h?tel takes upon himself the task of paying all the valets, sending in to the treasurer a regular account against each master every month, to be deducted from that master's salary; and, as it is the custom to give earnest to a valet when he is engaged, I persuaded the signor to advance me a sufficient number of crowns to carry me on silver wings to a frippery shop."

"Where you spent the last penny, Cousin Martin," said the deformed boy, with a sly smile.

"No, I did not, Petit Jean," replied Martin Grille; "for I brought one whole crown to you. There, my boy; you are a good lad, and I love you dearly, though you do break your sharp wit across my hard head sometimes--take it, take it!"

The boy looked as if he would very much like to have the crown, but still put it away from him, with fingers itching as much to clutch it as Caesar's on the Lupercal.

"Take it," repeated Martin Grille. "I owe your father much more than that."

"You owe me nothing," answered Caboche, quickly; and then added in a softened tone, as he saw how eagerly the boy looked at the piece of money: "you may take it, my son. That will show Martin that I really think he owes me nothing. What I have given him was given for blood relationship, and what he gives you is given in the same way."

The boy took it, exclaiming, "Thank you, Martin--thank you. Now I will buy me a viol of my own; for neighbor Pierrot says I spoil his, just because I make it give out sounds that he can not."

"Ay, thou had'st always a hankering after music," said Martin Grille. "Be diligent, be diligent. Petit Jean, and play me a fine tune on your fiddle at my return; for we are all away to-morrow morning by the crow of the cock."

"Where to?" exclaimed Caboche, eagerly. "More wrangling toward, I warrant. Some day I shall have to put on the salad and corselet myself, for this strife is ruining France; and if the Duke of Orleans will not let his noble cousin of Burgundy save the country, all good men must join to force him."

"Ay, ay, uncle. You always take a leap in the dark when the Duke of Orleans' name is mentioned. There's no wrangling, there's no quarreling, there's no strife. All is peace and good-will between the two dukes; and this is no patched up business, but a regular treaty, which will last till you are in your grave, and Petit Jean is an old man. We shall see bright days yet, for all that's come and gone. But the truth is, the duke is ill, and this business being happily settled, he goes off for his Castle of Beaut? to-morrow, to have a little peace and quiet."

"Ill! what makes him ill?" asked the cutler. "If he had to work from morning till night to get a few sous, or to stand here in this cold shop all day long, with nobody coming in to buy, he'd have a right to be ill. But he has every thing he wants, and more than he ought to have. What makes him ill?"

"Ah, that I can't say," answered Martin Grille. "There has something gone wrong in the household, and he has been very sad; but great men's servants may use their eyes, but must hold their tongues. God mend us all."

"Much need of it," answered Caboche, "and him first. Well, I would rather be a rag-picker out of the gutter than one of your discreet, see-every thing, say-nothing serving-men--your curriers of favor, your silent, secret depositories of other men's wickedness. What I see I must speak, and what I think, too. It is the basest part of pimping, to stand by and say nothing. Out upon such a trade."

"Well, uncle, every one loves his own best," answered Martin Grille. "I, for instance, would not make knives for people to cut each other's throats with. But for my part, I think the best plan is for each man to mind his own business, and not to care for what other people do. I have no more business with my master's secrets than with his purse, and if he trusts either the one or the other with me, my duty is to keep them safely."

"I say amen," answered Martin Grille, turning to leave the booth; "I only came to wish you both good-by; for when a man once sets out from Paris there is no knowing when he may return again."

"Oh, he is certain to come back some time," replied the cutler. "Paris is the centre of all the world, and every thing is drawn toward it by a force not to be resisted. So fare you well, my good nephew, and let us see you when you come back."

Martin promised to come and visit the cutler and his son as soon as he returned, and then sauntered away, feeling himself as fine in his new clothes as a school-boy in a holiday suit.

The cutler resumed his avocations again; but could not forbear some grumbling observations upon valets and valetry, which perhaps he might have spared, had he understood his nephew's character rightly. About quarter of an hour, however, after the young man had left the shop, a letter, neatly tied and sealed, was brought by a young boy, apparently one of the choristers of some great church or cathedral. It was addressed "To Martin Grille;" and, whatever might be his curiosity, Caboche did not venture to open it, but sent the lad on to the palace of the Duke of Orleans, telling him he would find his nephew there.

I know few things more pleasant than a stroll through Paris, as I remember it, in a fine early winter's morning. There was an originality about the people whom one saw out and abroad at that period of the day--a gay, cheerful, pleasant originality--which is not met with in any other nation. Granted that this laughing semblance was but the striped skin of the tiger, and that underneath there was a world of untamable ferocity, which made the cat-like creature dangerous to play with; yet still the sight was an agreeable one, one that the mind's eye rested upon with sensations of pleasure. The sights, too, had generally something to interest or to amuse--very often something that moved the feelings; but more generally something having a touch of the burlesque in it, exciting a smile, though seldom driving one into a laugh.

Doubtless the same was the case on the morning when the Duke of Orleans and his household set out from his brother's capital; for the Parisians have always been Parisians, and that word, as far as history shows us, has always meant one thing. It was very early in the morning, too. The sun hardly tipped the towers of N?tre Dame, or gilded the darker and more sombre masses of the Ch?telet. The most matutinal classes--the gatherers of rags: the unhappy beings who pilfered daily from unfastened doors and open entries: the peasants coming into market: the laborers going out with ax or shovel: even the roasters of chestnuts were all astir, and many a merry cry to wake slumbering cooks and purveyors was heard along the streets of the metropolis. Always cheerful except when ferocious, the population of Paris was that day in gayer mood than usual, for the news that a reconciliation had taken place between the Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy, whose feuds had become wearisome as well as detrimental, had spread far and wide during the preceding evening, and men anticipated prosperous and peaceful times, after a long period of turbulence and disaster. Seldom had the Duke of Orleans gone forth from the metropolis in such peaceful array. Sometimes he had galloped out in haste with a small body of attendants, hardly enough in number to protect his person; sometimes he had marched forward in warlike guise, to do battle with the enemy. But now he proceeded quietly in a horse-litter, feeling himself neither very well nor very ill. His saddle-horse, some pages, squires, and a few men-at-arms followed close, and the rest of the attendants, who had been selected to go with him, came after in little groups as they mounted, two or three at a time. The whole cavalcade did not amount to more than fifty persons--no great retinue for a prince of those days; but yet, in its straggling disorder, it made a pretty long line through the streets, and excited a good deal of attention in the multitude as it passed. But the distance to the gates was not great, and the whole party soon issued forth through the very narrow suburbs which then surrounded the city, into the open country beyond. To tell the truth, though the whole land was covered with the white garmenture of winter, it was a great relief to Jean Charost to find his sight no longer bounded by stone walls, and his chest no longer oppressed by the heavy air of a great city. The sun sparkling on the snow, the branches of the trees incrusted with frost, the clear blue sky without a cloud, the river bridged with its own congealed waters, all reminded him of early days and happy hours, and filled his mind with the memory of rejoicing.

Insensibly the young man dropped behind, and might be said to be riding alone, when an elderly man, in the habit of a priest, ambled up to his side on a sleek, well-fed mule. His hair was very white, and his countenance calm and benignant; but there was no very intellectual expression in his face, and one might have felt inclined to pronounce him, at the first glance, a very simple, good man, with more rectitude than wit, more piety than learning. There would have been some mistake in this, for Jean Charost soon found that he had read much, and studied earnestly, supplying by perseverance and labor all that was wanting in acuteness.

"Good morning, my son," said the old man, in a frank and familiar tone. "I believe I am speaking to Monsieur De Brecy, am I not? his highness's secretary."

"The same, sir," replied Jean Charost; "though I have not been long in that office."

"I know, I know," replied the good priest. "You were commended to his favor by my good friend Jacques Cur. I was absent from the palace till last night, or I would have seen you before. I am his highness's chaplain and director--would to Heaven I could direct him right; but these great men--"

There he stopped, as if feeling himself treading upon dangerous ground, and a pause ensued; for Jean Charost gave him no encouragement to go on in any discussion of the duke's doings, of which probably he knew as much as his confessor, without any great amount of information either.

The priest continued to jog on by his side, however, turning his head very frequently, as if afraid of being pursued by something. Once he muttered to himself, "I do believe he is coming on;" and then added, a moment after, in a relieved tone, "No, it is Lomelini."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet