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Huguenot: A Tale of the French Protestants

<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2><h3>THE JOURNEY, AND SOME OF ITS EVENTS.</h3> We will pass over all comments which took place amongst the parties to the scene which we described in our last chapter, and will take up our story again with the interval of a single day. How happy would it often be for us in life if we could thus blot out a single day! if, out of our existence as out of our history, we could extirpate one four and twenty hours, its never-to-be-recalled deeds, its thoughts affecting the mind for ever, its events affecting the whole course of after-existence! How happy would it be if we could blot it out from being! and often, too often, how happy would it be if we could blot it out from memory--from memory, the treasurer of our joys and pains--memory, whose important charge differs from the bright office of hope, in the sad particular of having to deal with nothing but realities! However, with the Count de Morseiul and his friend the Chevalier d'Evran, that day had passed in nothing which left regret. The Count had explained to his friend that he judged it necessary to go to Poitiers at once: the Chevalier had very willingly agreed to accompany him, saying, that he would take the good old Duke by surprise: they had then enjoyed every thing that Morseiul afforded of enjoyable; they had wandered by the glassy stream, they had ridden through the beautiful scenes around, they had hunted the boar in the Count's green woods, they had tasted with moderation his good wine, and the rich fruits of a sunny land; and thus that day had passed over without a cloud. Although the King of France had given over, by this time, the habit with which he set out, in the light and active days of his first manhood, and no longer made all his journeys on horseback, yet the custom was kept up by a great part of his nobility and officers, and it was very usual to ride post upon a journey, that is to say, to mount whatever horse the postmaster chose to give, and ride on to the next relay, accompanied by a postilion on another horse, carrying the baggage. The Count de Morseiul, however, did not follow this plan, as he had no inclination to appear in the city of Poitiers, which at that time boasted of being the largest city in France, except Paris, in the character of a courier. As he loved not carriages, however, and had plenty of fiery horses in his stable panting for exercise, he sent forward a relay himself to a distant inn upon the road, and, on the morning we speak of, accompanied by his friend and a large body of their servants, rode calmly on upon the way, proposing to make a journey of about five and thirty miles that day. "It is politic of me, D'Evran," he said, conversing with the Chevalier, "it is politic of me to carry you away from Morseiul so soon; as you have promised to give me one whole month, for fear you should become tired of your abode, and exhaust all its little stock of amusements and pleasures too rapidly. Satiety is a great evil, and surely one of the minor policies of life is to guard against it." "No fear of my getting tired of Morseiul so soon," replied the Chevalier; "but I cannot agree entirely to your view of satiety. I have often had many doubts as to whether it be really an evil or not." "I have none," replied the Count; "it seems to me the greatest of intellectual evils; it seems to me to be to the mind what despair is to the heart, and in the mind of a young man is surely what premature decrepitude is to the body. Good God, Louis, how can you entertain a doubt? The idea of losing one sense, one fine perception, is surely horrible enough; but tenfold horrible must be the idea of losing them altogether; or, what comes to the same thing, of losing the enjoyment that they confer upon us?" "Nay, but, Albert," said the Chevalier, who was fond of playing with his own wit as a bright weapon, without considering its dangerous nature, and took no little pleasure in calling forth, even against himself, the enthusiastic eagerness of his friend; "nay, but, Albert, what I contend for is, that satiety is true wisdom; that it is a perfect, thorough knowledge of all enjoyments, and a proper estimation of their emptiness." "Hold, hold," exclaimed the Count, "that is a very different thing; to my mind satiety is the exhaustion of our own powers of enjoying, not the discovery of the want of a power of conferring enjoyment in other things. Because a man loses the sense of smelling, that will not deprive the rose of its sweet odour. Does a tyrant cut out my tongue? the delicious flavour of the peach will remain, though I taste it not; though he blind my eyes, the face of nature will flourish and look fair as much as ever. No, no, satiety is the deprivation, by over enjoyment, of our own powers of receiving; and not a just estimate of the powers of other things in giving pleasure." "But you will own," said the Chevalier, "that a deep and minute acquaintance with any source of enjoyment naturally tends to diminish the gratification that we at first received from it. You will not deny that moralist and philosopher, from Solomon down to our own days, have all been right in pointing out the vanity of all things. Vanitas vanitatis, my dear Count, has been the stamp fixed by every great mind that the world has yet produced upon the objects of human enjoyment. This has been the acme, this the conclusion at which wisdom has arrived; and surely the sooner we ourselves arrive at it in life the better." "Heaven forbid," exclaimed the Count; "Heaven forbid, either that it should be so, or that such should be your real and mature opinion. You say that a minute acquaintance with the sources of enjoyment diminishes the gratification they afford. There is undoubtedly something lost in every case of such minute acquaintance; but it is by the loss of a peculiar and distinct source of pleasure accompanying every other enjoyment the first time it is tasted, and never going beyond. I mean novelty--the bloom upon the ripe plum, which renders it beautiful to the eye as well as refreshing to the taste--brush away the bloom, the plum is no longer so beautiful, but the taste no less refreshing. Setting aside the diminution made for the loss of that novelty, I deny your position." The Chevalier laughed at his friend's eagerness. "You will not surely deny, Morseiul," he said, "that there is no pleasure, no enjoyment, really satisfactory to the human heart; and, consequently, the more intimately we become acquainted with it, the more clearly do we see its emptiness." "Had you said at the first," replied the Count, "that our acquaintance with pleasures show their insufficiency, I should have admitted the truth of your assertion; but to discover the insufficiency of one pleasure seems to me only a step towards the enjoyment of pleasures of a higher quality." "But we may exhaust them all," said the Chevalier, "and then comes--what but satiety?" "No," replied the Count, "not satiety, aspirations for and hopes of higher pleasures still; the last, the grandest, the noblest seeking for enjoyment that the universe can afford; the pursuit that leads us through the gates of the tomb to those abodes where the imperfections of enjoyment end, where the seeds of decay grow not up with the flowers that we plant, where the fruit is without the husk, and the music without the dissonance. This still is left us when all other enjoyments of life are exhausted, or have been tasted, or have been cast away, or have been destroyed. Depend upon it, Louis, that even the knowledge we acquire of the insufficiency of earth's enjoyment gives us greater power to advance in the scale of enjoyment; and that, if we choose to learn our lesson from the picture given us of the earthly paradise, we shall find a grand moral in the tree of eternal life having been planted by the tree of knowledge." "But still, my dear Count," replied the Chevalier, "you seem still to approach to my argument, while you deny its force. If such be the result of satiety, as you say it is, namely, to lead us to the aspiration after higher enjoyments, till those aspirations point to another world, surely it is better to arrive at that result as soon as possible." "No," replied the Count; "in the first place, I did not say that such was the result of satiety; I said that it was the result of discovering by experience the insufficiency of all earthly enjoyments to give perfect satisfaction to a high and immortal spirit and well-regulated mind. Satiety I hold to be quite the reverse of this; I hold it to be the degradation of our faculties of enjoyment, either by excessive indulgence, or by evil direction. The man who follows such a course of life as to produce any chance of reaching satiety, tends downward instead of upward, to lower rather than to higher pleasures, and exhausts his own capabilities, not the blessings of God. The opposite course produces the opposite result; we know and learn that all God's creations afford us some enjoyment, although we know and learn, at the same time, that it has been his will that none of those enjoyments upon earth should give complete and final satisfaction. Our capabilities of enjoying by enjoying properly are not blunted but acuminated; we fly from satiety instead of approaching it; and even while we learn to aspire to higher things, we lose not a particle of the power--except by the natural decay of our faculties--of enjoying even the slight foretaste that Heaven has given us here." "Solomon, Solomon, Solomon!" said his companion, "Solomon was evidently a misanthrope either by nature or by satiety. He had seen every thing under the sun, and he pronounced every thing vanity--ay, lighter than vanity itself." "And he was right," replied the Count; "every thing is lighter than vanity itself, when comparing the things of this world with the things of eternity. But you know," he added with a smile, "that we Huguenots, as you call us, acknowledge no authority against the clear operation of reason, looking upon no man as perfect but one. If you were to tell me that it was right to put a friend in a dangerous place where he was sure to be killed for the purpose of marrying his widow, I should not a bit more believe that it was right, because David had done it; and even if you were to prove to me that through the whole writings of Solomon there was not, as I believe there is, a continual comparison between earthly things and heavenly things, I should still say that you were in the wrong; the satiety that he felt being a just punishment upon him for the excesses he committed and the follies to which he gave way, and by no means a proof of his wisdom, any more than those follies and excesses themselves. Long before we have exhausted the manifold pleasures which Heaven has given us here by moderate and virtuous enjoyment--long before we have even discovered by experience the insufficiency of one half that we may properly enjoy, the span of man's life is finished; and at the gates of death he may think himself happy, if, while he has learnt to desire the more perfect enjoyment of heavenly things, he has not rendered himself unfit for that enjoyment, by having depraved his faculties to satiety by excess." "Well, well," said the Chevalier, seeing that his friend spoke earnestly, "I am afraid I must give up Solomon, Albert. If I remember right, the man had some hundreds of wives or so; and I am sure he might well cry out that all is vanity after that. I wonder they did not all fall upon him at once, and smother him under looking-glasses and bonbonnières." The Count saw that his friend turned the matter into a joke, and, from his long acquaintance with him, he doubted not that he had been carrying on the discussion from first to last for sport. He was not angry or cross about it; but, of an eager and of an earnest disposition, he could not play with subjects of value, like an unconscious child tossing jewels to and fro, and he remained thoughtful for some time. While the Chevalier continued to jest upon a thousand things, sometimes connecting one joke with another in rapid and long succession, sometimes pausing for a moment or two, and taking his next subject from any accidental circumstance in their ride or feature in the scene around, the Count gradually resumed the conversation upon indifferent matters. Having only in view, however, in any extracts that we may give from their conversation, either to forward the progress of their history or to display the peculiar character of each, we shall dwell no longer upon their words during the rest of the ride to a little village, some seventeen miles from the château, where they stayed a moment to water their horses. The Count was looking down, watching the animals drink; but the Chevalier, who was gazing at every thing in the place, suddenly exclaimed, "Surely there cannot be two such ugly heads as that in France! The Abbé Pelisson, as I live! Why, Monsieur Pelisson," he exclaimed, advancing till he was directly under the window from which the head of the Abbé was protruded, "how have you stuck here by the way?" "Alas! my good sir," replied the Abbé, "the fright of the day before yesterday had such an effect upon my poor companion de St. Helie, that he was quite unable to proceed. He is better this afternoon, and we shall set out in an hour, after he has taken something to refresh him and give him strength." "You will overtake us at our next lodging," said the Chevalier. "Oh no, we shall pass you far," replied the Abbé. "We shall still have five hours' light, and as we travel by post, we may calculate upon going between five and six miles an hour." The Count on his part made no comment, but merely nodded his head to Pelisson; and when the Chevalier's brief conversation was at an end, they rode on. The village which they had fixed upon for their resting-place that night was a large straggling open collection of houses, which had grown up on either side of the wide road, simply because it happened to be at a convenient distance from many other places. The buildings were scattered, and separated by large gardens or courts, and the inn itself was in fact the only respectable dwelling in the place, having been an old brick-built country seat in former days, with the walls that defended it from attack still standing round the court, the windows rattling and quivering with the wind and their antiquity, the rooms wide and lofty, and perhaps a little cheerless, and the kitchen, which formed the entrance, as black as the smoke of many generations could render it. The whole house was prepared to meet the Count de Morseiul, his coming having been announced by the servants sent on with the horses; and did ducks and fowls in various countries write the histories of their several races, that morning would have been memorable for the massacre that took place, and only be comparable to the day of St. Bartholomew. But the culinary art was great in France then as it is now, and the cook, knowing that she had a difficult task to perform, exerted her utmost ingenuity to render tough poultry tender, and insipid viands savoury, for the distinguished guest that was to dine and sleep within those walls. Though the preparations had been begun at an early hour, yet they were by no means concluded when the party arrived; and while Jerome Riquet plunged into the kitchen, and communicated to the cook a thousand secrets from the vast stores of his own mind, the Count and his friend gazed forth from the window of a high, wide, square-shaped room over the wide prospect, which lay in gentle undulations beneath their eyes, with the road that they themselves had just passed taking, as it were, a standing leap over each of the little hills that it met with in its way. The day had been remarkably fine during the earlier portion thereof, but towards three o'clock clouds had come over, not indeed veiling the sky under a sheet of sombre grey, but fleeting lightly across the blue expanse, like the momentary cares of infancy, and passing away, after dropping a few large tears, which the joyful sun dried up again the moment after. As the Count and his friend gazed forth, however, a heavier shower was seen sweeping over the prospect, the sky became quite covered, a grey mist--through which, however, a yellow gleam was seen, saying that the summer night was not far off,--advanced over wood and field, and hill and dale, and dashing down with all the impetuous and short-lived fury of an angry boy, the cloud poured forth its burden on the earth. While yet it was raging in its utmost wrath, the plain carriage of Pelisson and his companions was seen rolling slowly onward towards the village, with coachman and lackey holding down the drenched head towards the storm, and shading the defenceless neck. All the windows of the vehicle were closed, in order, if possible, to keep out the wind and rain; but constructed as carriages were in those days, there was no great protection to be found in them from the breath or the drops of heaven; and, as the rumbling vehicle approached the village, the head of Pelisson was seen suddenly thrust forth on the safest side, shouting something to the coachman, who seemed inclined to go through all the signs in the subjunctive mood of the verb, not to hear. After repeating three times his words, the Abbé drew his head in again, and the carriage entered the village. "For a hundred louis," said the Chevalier, "we have the company of Messieurs Pelisson and St. Helie to-night. I beseech thee, Albert, tell them they cannot lodge here, if it be but to see their rueful faces. Look, look! There comes the vehicle, like the ark of Noah, discovered by some fortunate chance on Ararat, and set upon the wheels of Pharaoh's chariot, fished out of the Red Sea. Where could they pick up such an antediluvian conveyance? Look, the ark stops! Now, open the window, Noah. Out comes the door!" and, as he spoke, he had matter for more merriment, for the first person that issued forth was the fat black-faced priest in his greasy cassock. "The raven! The raven!" shouted the Chevalier, laughing aloud, "What beast next, Count? What beast next?" "Hush, hush! Louis," said his friend, in a lower tone; "they will hear you, and it is a pity to give pain." "True, oh most sapient Albert," answered the Chevalier, "and you shall see how courteous I can be. I will even take the raven by the claw--if you give me but time to order a basin and napkin in the adjoining room for the necessary ablution afterwards. Oh, Monsieur Pelisson, enchanted to see you!" he continued, as the Abbé entered the room; "Monsieur de St. Helie, this is indeed delightful; Monsieur de Beaumanoir, allow me to take you by the hand," he added, advancing towards the greasy priest. "You mistake me for some one else," said the priest, drawing slightly back, turning his shoulder, and speaking through his teeth like a muzzled bear: "I am the Curé de Guadrieul." "True, true, I forgot," went on the Chevalier in the same wild way. "Enchanted to see you, Monsieur le Curé de Guadrieul! How much we are bound to laud and love this shower for having given us the felicity of your society." "I am sure I have no cause to laud it," said the priest, "for all the rain has come in at that crazy window, and run into my neck, besides drenching my soutane." The Chevalier might have gone on for an hour, but the Count came to the relief of the poor priest. He notified to Pelisson and his companions, that the house and all that it contained had been engaged by him, but he pressed them to remain as his guests so cordially, that Monsieur de St. Helie, who--though he loved not Huguenots, loved damp weather worse and savoury viands more--consented readily, warned by the rising odours from the kitchen, that he might certainly go farther and fare worse. Chambers were found for the new guests, and, before an hour had passed, the whole party was seated at a groaning board, the plentiful supply on which made Monsieur de St. Helie open his eyes with well satisfied astonishment. We are not quite sure, indeed, that he did not feel a greater respect for protestantism than he had ever felt before; and so placable and mild had he evidently become, that the Chevalier whispered, to his friend, while apparently speaking of something else, "For Heaven's sake, Morseiul, never suffer your people to give that man such a feast again! Three such dinners would make him condemn his own soul, and turn heretic." Pelisson was cheerful as usual, mild and gentle, a little plausible perhaps, and somewhat too courtier like, but still rendering himself most agreeable, both by his manner and by a sort of indescribable ease and grace in his conversation and language. Behind the chair of the Count, as a sort of nomenclator of the different dishes, had placed himself worthy Maître Jerome Riquet. Now, Heaven knows that no person was naturally more simple in his tastes than Albert of Morseiul; but he had left, as usual, all the minor arrangements of his comfort to others, and certainly Jerome Riquet, as soon as he heard that two Catholic abbés and a priest were about to dine at the table of his master, had not relaxed in any of his efforts to excel all excellence, determined to astound the ecclesiastics by the luxury and splendour of a country inn. Had it produced nothing but parchment and jack-boots, Jerome Riquet would have discovered means of sending in entrée upon entrée in various different forms, and under various different names. But as it was, notice of the Count's coming having been given the day before, and vast preparations made by the worthy aubergiste, the suppers of Versailles were little more refined than that to which Pelisson and his companions now sat down; while, according to Jerome's directions, two servants stood behind every chair, and the Count was graced by his own additional presence at the right elbow. Riquet himself had not only taken up that position as the Pièce de résistance, but as the Pièce de parade, and, as was not uncustomary then, he mingled with what was going forward at table whenever it suited him. Often by a happy exhortation upon some dish, or observation upon some wine, he contrived to turn the conversation in a different direction when it was proceeding in a way that did not please him. About half way through the meal, however, his attention seemed to be caught by something awkward in the position of the Curé de Guadrieul, and from time to time he turned a sort of anxious and inquiring glance towards him, wondering whether he sat so high in his chair from the natural conformation of short legs and a long body, or from some adventitious substance placed beneath his nether man. He made various movements to discover it; but, in the meantime, the conversation went on, and the Count having been naturally drawn by the observation of some other person to pay Pelisson a compliment upon his graceful style, the Abbé replied, "Oh, my style is nothing, Monsieur le Comte, though you are good enough to praise it; and besides, after all, it is but style. I had a brother once, poor fellow!" he added, "who might indeed have claimed your praise; for, in addition to good style, which he possessed in an infinitely higher degree than myself, he had a peculiar art of speaking briefly, which, Heaven knows, I have not, and of leaving nothing unsaid that could be said upon the subject he treated. When he was only nineteen years of age he was admitted to the academy of Castres; but, upon his admission, they made this singular and flattering condition with him, namely, that he should never speak upon any subject till every body else had spoken, 'for,' said the academicians, 'when he speaks first, he never leaves any body else any thing to say upon the subject, and when he speaks last he finds a thousand things to say that nobody else has said.' Besides all this," he continued, "my brother had another great and inestimable advantage over me." "Pray what was that?" demanded the Count. "He was not hideous," replied Pelisson. "Oh, I do not think that such an advantage," said the Chevalier. "It is the duty of a woman to be handsome; but I think men have a right to be ugly if they like." "So say I," replied Pelisson; "but Mademoiselle de Scudery says that I abuse the privilege, and upon my word I think so, for just before I came from Paris something happened which is worth telling. I was walking along," he continued, "quite soberly and thoughtfully down the Rue de Beauvoisis--you know that little street that leads up by the convent of St. Mary--when coming opposite to a large house nearly at the corner, I was suddenly met by as beautiful a creature as ever I saw, with her soubrette by her side, and her loup in her hand, so that I could quite see her face. She was extremely well dressed, and, in fact, altogether fit to be the Goddess of an Idyl. However, as I did not know her, I was passing quietly on, when suddenly she stopped, took me by the hand, and said, in an earnest voice, 'Do me the pleasure, sir, of accompanying me for one moment.' On my word, gentlemen, I did not know what was going to happen, but I was a great deal too gallant, of course, to refuse her; when, without another word, she led me to the door of the house, up the stairs, rang the bell on the first floor, and conducted me into an anteroom. A servant threw open another door for her; and then bringing me into a second room, where I found a gentleman of good mien with two sticks in his hand, she presented me to him with these singular words: 'Line for line, sir, like that! Remember, line for line, sir, like that!' and then turning on her heel she walked away, leaving me petrified with astonishment. The gentleman in whose presence I stood seemed no less surprised for a moment than myself; but the instant after he burst into a violent fit of laughter, which made me a little angry. "'Pray, sir, what is the meaning of all this?' I asked. 'Do you not know that lady?' he rejoined. 'No, sir,' I replied, 'I neither know her nor you.' 'Oh, as for me,' replied the gentleman, 'you have seen me more than once before, Monsieur Pelisson, though you do not know me. I am Mignard, the painter; but as to the lady, I must either not give you the clue to her bringing you here, or not give you her name, which you like.' 'Give me the clue; give me the clue,' replied I: 'the lady's name I will find out hereafter.' "'Do not be offended then,' he said, 'but the truth is, I am painting for that lady a picture of the temptation in the wilderness. She came to see it this morning, and a violent dispute arose between us as to how I was to represent the devil; she contending that he was to be excessively ugly, and I, that though disfigured by bad passions, there was to be the beauty of an angel fallen. She left me a minute ago in a fit of playful pettishness, when lo and behold she returns almost instantly, bringing you in her hand, and saying, 'Line for line, like that.' I leave you to draw your own conclusion." "I did draw my own conclusion," continued Pelisson, "and got out of the way of Monsieur Mignard's brush as fast as possible, only saying, that I thought the lady very much in the wrong, for there could lie no great temptation under such an exterior as mine." His auditors laughed both at the story and at the simplicity with which it was told, and no one laughed more heartily than the black-faced priest. But while he was chuckling on his seat, Maître Jerome, who had glided round behind him, suddenly seized hold of two leathern strings that hung down over the edge of the chair, and exclaiming, "That must be very inconvenient to your reverence," he pulled out from underneath him, by a sudden jerk which nearly laid him at his length on the floor, the identical sheep-skin bag which had nearly been burnt to pieces in the wood. The priest started up with terror and dismay, exclaiming, "Give it to me: give it to me, sirrah. How dare you take it from under me? It is the King's commission to Messieurs Pelisson and St. Helie for putting down heresy in Poitou." A sudden grave look and a dead silence succeeded this unexpected announcement; but while the priest snatched the packet from Jerome Riquet's profane hands, declaring that he had promised not to part with it for a moment, Pelisson made his voice heard, saying, "You mistake, my good brother; such is not the object of the commission, as the King explained it to me. On the contrary, his Majesty said that, when it was opened at Poitiers, we would find that the whole object and scope of it was to heal the religious differences of the province in the mildest and most gentle manner possible." "I trust it may be found so, Monsieur Pelisson," replied the Count gravely, turning his eyes from the Abbé de St. Helie, who said nothing. "I trust it may be found so;" and though it was evident that some damp was thrown upon his good spirits, he turned the conversation courteously and easily to other subjects: while Jerome Riquet, satisfied in regard to the nature of the packet, made a thousand apologies to the Curé of Guadrieul, loaded his plate with delicacies, and then returned to his master's elbow. After supper, for so the meal was then called, the party separated. The Chevalier d'Evran, for motives of his own, attached himself closely, for the time being, to the Abbé de St. Helie, and engaged him in a party at trick track; the young Count strolled out in the evening light with Pelisson, both carefully avoiding any religious subjects from the delicacy of their mutual position; the fat priest went to gossip with Maître Jerome, and smoke a pipe in the kitchen of the inn; and the serving men made love to the village girls, or caroled in the court-yard. Thus ended the first day's journey of the Count de Morseiul towards Poitiers. On the following morning he had taken his departure before the ecclesiastics had risen, leaving the servants, who were to follow with the horses, to make them fully aware that they had been his guests during their stay at the inn; and on the third day, at about five o'clock in the afternoon, he came under the high rocky banks which guard the entrance to the ancient city which was to be the end of his journey. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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