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

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Ebook has 1970 lines and 140360 words, and 40 pages

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."

They had not ridden far, after this exclamation, when they were joined by the ma?tre d'h?tel, who seemed on exceedingly good terms with the chaplain, and rather in a merry mood. "Ah, Father Peter!" he exclaimed; "you passed me in such haste, you would neither see nor hear me. What was it lent wings to your mule?"

"Oh, that fool, that fool!" cried the good father. "He has got on a black cloak like yours, signor--stolen it from some one, I dare say--and he declares he is a doctor of the university, and must needs chop logic with me."

"What was his thesis?" asked Lomelini, laughing heartily. "He is grand at an argument, I know; and I have often heard him declare that he likes to spoil a doctor of divinity."

"It was no thesis at all," answered Father Peter. "He propounded a question for debate, and asked me which of the seven capital sins was the most capital. I told him they were all equally heinous; but he contended that could not be, and said he would prove it by a proposition divided into three parts and three members, each part divided into six points--"

"Let us hear," cried Lomelini. "Doubtless his parts and points were very amusing. Let us hear them, by all means."

"Why, I did not stay to hear them myself," replied Father Peter. "He began by explaining and defining the seven capital sins; and fearing some greater scandal--for all the boys were roaring with laughter--I rode on and left him."

"Ah, father, father! He will say that he has defeated you in argument," replied Lomelini; and then added, with a sly glance at Jean Charost, "the sharpest weapon in combat with a grave man is a jest."

The good father looked quite distressed, as if to be defeated in argument by a fool were really a serious disgrace. With the natural kindliness of youth, Jean Charost felt for him, and, turning the conversation, proceeded to inquire of the ma?tre d'h?tel who and what was the person who had driven the good chaplain so rapidly from the field.

"Oh, you will become well acquainted with him by-and-by, my son," answered Lomelini, who still assumed a sort of paternal and patronizing air toward the young secretary. "They call him the Seigneur Andr? in the household, and his lordship makes himself known to every body--sometimes not very pleasantly. He is merely the duke's fool, however, kept more for amusement than for service, and more for fashion even than amusement; for at bottom he is a dull fellow; but he contrives occasionally to stir up the choler of the old gentlemen, and, when the duke is in a gay humor, makes him laugh with their anger."

"To be angry with a fool is to show one's self little better than a fool, methinks," answered Jean Charost; but Lomelini shook his head, with his usual quiet smile, saying, "Do not be too sure that he will not provoke you, Monsieur De Brecy. He has a vast fund of malice, though no great fund of wit, and, as you may see, can contrive to torment very grave and reverend personages. I promised you a hint from time to time, and one may not be thrown away in regard to Seigneur Andr?. There are two or three ways of dealing with him which are sure to put him down. First, the way which Monsieur Blaize takes: never to speak to him at all. When he addresses any of his witticisms to our good friend, Monsieur Blaize stares quietly in his face, as if he spoke to him in an unknown tongue, and takes care not to give him a single word as a peg to hang a rejoinder upon. Another way is to break his head, if he be over saucy, for he is mighty careful of his person, and has never attacked young Juvenel de Royans since he cuffed him one morning to his heart's content. He has no reverence for any thing, indeed, but punishment and fisticuffs. He ventured at first to break his jests on me, for whom, though a very humble personage, his highness's officers generally have some respect."

"May I ask how you put a stop to this practice?" asked Jean Charost.

"Well, I do think it is impious," said Father Peter, in a tone of melancholy gravity. "I do, indeed."

"What, to give a fool a pickled herring as a sort of corrective of bad humors?" asked Lomelini.

"No, no," replied the chaplain, peevishly "But to keep such poor, benighted creatures in great houses for the purpose of extracting merriment from their infirmities. It is making a mockery of the chastisement of God."

"Pooh, pooh," said Lomelini. "What can you do with them? If you do not keep them in great houses, you would be obliged to shut them up in little ones; and, I will answer for it, Seigneur Andr? would rather be kept as a fool in the palace of the Duke of Orleans than pent up as a madman in the hospitals. But here he comes to answer for himself."

"Then I won't stay to hear him," cried the chaplain, putting his mule into a quicker pace, and riding on after the litter of the Duke of Orleans, which was not above two hundred yards in advance.

"There he goes," cried Signor Lomelini. "Poor man! this fool is a complete bugbear to him. To Father Peter he is like a gnat, or a great fly, which keeps buzzing about our ears all night, and gives us neither peace nor rest."

As he spoke, the personage who had been so long the subject of their conversation rode up, presenting to the eyes of Jean Charost a very different sort of man from that which he had expected to see, and, in truth, a very different personage altogether from the poetical idea of the jester which has been furnished to us by Shakspeare and others. Seigneur Andr?, indeed, was not one of the most famous of his class, and he has neither been embalmed in fiction nor enrolled in history. The exceptions I believe, in truth have been taken generally for the types, and if we could trace the sayings and doings of all the jesters downward from the days of Charlemagne, we should find that nine out of ten were very dull people indeed. His lordship was a fat, gross-looking man of the middle age, with a countenance expressive of a good deal of sensuality--dull and heavy-looking, with a nose glowing with wine; bushy, overhanging eyebrows, and a fat, liquorish under lip. His stomach was large and protuberant, and his legs short; but still he rode his horse with a good, firm seat, though with what seemed to the eyes of Jean Charost a good deal of affected awkwardness of manner. There was an expression of fun and joviality about his face, it is true, which was a very good precursor to a joke, and, like the sauce of a French cook's composing, which often gives zest to a very insipid morsel, it made many a dull jest pass for wit. His eye, indeed, had an occasional fire in it, wild, wandering, mysterious, lighted up and going out on a sudden, which to a physician might probably have indicated the existence of some degree of mental derangement, but which, with ordinary persons, served at once to excite and puzzle curiosity.

"Ah, reverend signor," he exclaimed, as he pulled up his horse by Lomelini's side, "I am glad to find you so far in advance. It betokens that all good things of life will be provided for--that we shall not have to wait three hours at Juvisy for dinner, nor be treated with goat's flesh and rye bread, sour wine and stale salad."

"That depends upon circumstances, Seigneur Andr?," replied Lomelini. "That his highness shall have a good dinner, I have provided for; but, good faith, the household must look out for themselves. In any other weather you would find eggs enough, and the water is generally excellent, but now it is frozen. But let me introduce you to Monsieur De Brecy, his highness's secretary."

"Ha! I kiss his fingers," cried the jester. "I asked for him all yesterday, hearing of his advent, but was not blessed with his presence. They told me he was in the nursery, and verily he seems a blessed babe. May I inquire how old you are, Signor De Brecy?"

"Like yourself, Seigneur Andr?," replied Jean Charost, with a smile; "old enough to be wiser."

"Marvelous well answered!" exclaimed the jester. "The dear infant is a prodigy! Did you ever see any thing like that?" he continued, throwing back his black cloak, and exhibiting his large stomach, dressed in his party-colored garments, almost resting on the saddle-bow.

"Yes, often," answered Jean Charost. "I have seen it in men too lazy to keep down the flesh, too fond of good things to refrain from what is killing them, and too dull in the brain to let the wit ever wear the body."

A sort of wild, angry fire came up in the jester's face, and he answered, "Let me tell you there is more wit in that stomach than ever you can digest."

"Perhaps so," answered Jean Charost. "I doubt not in the least you have more brain under your belt than under your cap; but it is somewhat soft, I should think, in both places."

Signor Lomelini laughed, but at the same time made a sign to his young companion to forbear, saying, in a low tone, "He won't forgive you easily, already. Don't provoke him farther. Here we are coming to that accursed hill of Juvisy, Seigneur Andr?. Don't you see the town lying down there, like an egg in the nest of a long-tailed titmouse?"

"Or like a bit of sugar left at the bottom of a bowl of mulled wine," replied the jester. "But, be it egg or be it sugar, the horses of his highness seem inclined to get at it very fast."

His words first called the attention of both Lomelini and Jean Charost to what was going on before them, and the latter perceived with dismay that the horses in the litter--a curious and ill-contrived sort of vehicle--which had been going very slowly till they reached the top of the high hill of Juvisy, had begun to trot, and then to canter, and were now in high course toward a full gallop. The man who drove them, usually walking at the side, was now running after them as fast as he could go, and apparently shouting to them to stop, though his words were as unheeded by the horses as unheard by Jean Charost.

"Had we not better ride on and help?" asked the young gentleman, eagerly.

Lomelini shrugged his shoulders, replying, with a sort of fatalism hardly less ordinary in Italians than in Turks, "What will be, will be;" and the jester answered, "Good faith! though they call me fool, yet I have as much regard for my skin as any of them; so I shall not trot down the hill."

Jean Charost hardly heard the end of the sentence, for he saw that the horses of the litter were accelerating their pace at every instant, and he feared that some serious accident would happen. The duke was seen at the same moment to put forth his head, calling sharply to the driver, and the young secretary, without more ado, urged his horse on at the risk of his own neck, and, taking a little circuit which the broadness of the road permitted, tried to reach the front horse of the litter without scaring him into greater speed. He passed two groups of the duke's attendants before he came near the vehicle, but all seemed to take as much or as little interest in their master's safety as Lomelini and the jester, uttering, as the young man passed, some wild exclamations of alarm at the duke's peril, but taking no means on earth to avert it.

Jean Charost did not pause or stop to inquire, however, but dashed on, passed the litter, and got in front of the horses just at the moment that one of them stumbled and fell.

There was a steep, precipitous descent over the hillside, as the old road ran, down which there was the greatest possible risk of the vehicle being thrown; but, luckily, one of the shafts broke, and Jean Charost was in time to prevent the horse from doing any further damage, as he sprang up from his bleeding knees.

While the young man, jumping from the saddle, held the horses tight by the bridle, the driver and half a dozen attendants hurried up and assisted the prince to alight. Their faces were now pale and anxious enough; but the countenance of the duke himself was as calm and tranquil as if he had encountered no danger. Lomelini and the jester were soon upon the spot; and the latter thought fit to remark, with a sagacious air, that haste spoiled speed. "Your highness went too fast," he said; "and this young gentleman went faster still. You were likely to be at the bottom of the hill of Juvisy before you desired it, and he had nearly sent you thither sooner still in trying to stop you."

"You are mistaken, Seigneur Andr?," said the duke, gravely. "The horse fell before he touched it; and even had it not been so, I would always rather see too much zeal than too little. He came in time, however, to prevent the litter going over."

Two of the squires instantly led forward horses for the prince to ride, as the litter, in its damaged state, was no longer serviceable. But the duke replied, "No, I will walk. Give me your arm, De Brecy; it is but a step now."

The little accident which had occurred undoubtedly served to confirm Jean Charost in the favor of the Duke of Orleans; but, at the same time, it made him a host of enemies. The tenants of a wasp's nest are probably not half as malicious as the household of a great man. The words of the jester had given them their cue, and the report ran through all the little cavalcade that Jean Charost had thrown the horse down in attempting to stop it.

There are periods in the life of every man daring which accidents, misadventures, annoyances even, if they be not of too great magnitude, are of service to him. When, from within or from without, some dark vapor has risen up, clouding the sunlight, and casting the soul into darkness--when remorse, or despair, or bitter disappointment, or satiety, or the dark pall of grief, has overshadowed all things, and left us in a sort of twilight, where we see every surrounding object in gloom, we bless the gale, even though it be violent, that arises to sweep the tempest-cloud from our sky. Still greater is the relief when any thing of a gentler and happier kind comes along with the breeze that dispels the mists and darkness, like a sun-gleam through a storm; and the little accident which had occurred, and the escape from danger, did a great deal to rouse the Duke of Orleans from a sort of apathetic heaviness which had hung upon him for the last two or three days.

Dinner had been prepared for him at the great inn at Juvisy; but, with one of those whims in which high and mighty princes indulged frequently in those days, he paused before the gates of the old abbey, on the left hand side of the road, saying, in a low tone, to Jean Charost, but with a gay smile, "We will go in and dine with the good fathers. They are somewhat famous for their cheer, and it must be about the dinner hour."

The little crowd of attendants had followed; slowly behind their princely master, leaving the distance of a few paces between him and them, for reverence' sake; and he now beckoned up Lomelini, and told him to go forward and let the household dine, adding, "We will dine at the abbey."

"How many shall remain with your highness?" asked Lomelini, with a profound bow.

"None, signor," replied the duke; "none but Monsieur De Brecy. Go on--I would be incognito;" and turning up the path, he struck the bell at the gates with the iron hammer that hung beside it.

"Now, De Brecy," he said, in a light and careless tone, very different from any his young companion had ever heard him use before, "here we forget our names and dignities. I am Louis Valois, and you Jean Charost, and there are no titles of honor between us. Some of the good friars may have seen me, and perhaps know me; but they will take the hint, and forget all about me till I am gone. I would fain see them without their frocks for awhile. It will serve to divert my thoughts from sadder things."

"Well, well; come in," he said, at length; "I have nothing to do with it, but to open and shut the door. The people within will tell you whether you can eat with them or not. They eat enough themselves, God wot, and drink too; but they are not over-fond of sharing with those they don't know, except through the buttery hole or the east wicket; and there it is only what they can't eat themselves. Ay, we had different times of it when Abbot Jerome was alive."

Before the long fit of grumbling was at an end, the Duke of Orleans and his young companion were at the inner door of the building; and a little bell, ringing from a distant corner, gave notice that the mid-day meal of the monks was about to begin.

"Come along--come along, Jean," said the duke, seeming to participate in the eagerness with which several monks were hurrying along in one direction; "they say the end of a feast is better than the beginning of a fray; but, to say truth, the beginning is the best part of either."

On they went; no one stopped them--no one said a word to them. The impulse of a very voracious appetite was upon the great body of the monks, and deprived them of all inclination to question the strangers, till they were actually at the door of the refectory, where a burly, barefooted fellow barred the way, and demanded what they wanted. "A dinner," answered the Duke of Orleans, with a laugh. "You are hospitable friars, are you not?"

The man gazed at him for a moment without reply, but with a very curious expression of countenance, ran his eye over the duke's apparel, which, though by no means very splendid, was marked by all the peculiar fopperies of high station; then gave a glance at Jean Charost, and then replied, in a much altered tone, "We are, sir. But it so happens that to-day my lord abbot has visitors who dine here. Doubtless he will not refuse you hospitality, if you let him know who it is demands it. He has with him Monsieur and Madame Giac, and their train, high persons at the court of Burgundy. Who shall I say are here?"

"Two poor simple gentlemen in need of a dinner," replied the duke, in a careless tone--"Louis Valois and Jean Charost by name. But make haste, good brother, or the pottage will be cold."

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