The chateau of Bourgneuf, within which I so singularly found myself an inhabitant, stands* on the north slope of a hill, about a mile from the old highway that leads from Dol to Rennes, the capital of Brittany, where bourg signifies especially a village or residence.
* We may now say stood, as it was demolished in the wars subsequent to the Revolution.
It was a fabric of striking aspect, but of large and irregular proportions, having been built in the days of local war and turbulence, when the lords of Bourgneuf kept constantly a numerous body of armed men about them. As the household consisted now only of the widowed countess (then at St. Malo), her niece, Mademoiselle de Broglie, and a few servants, for the young count was serving with his regiment, but a small portion of this great mansion was inhabited, and thus a melancholy stillness reigned in its long, shady galleries, great suites of apartments, and round towers, the bases of which were washed by the waters of a lake.
It had at least twenty steep conical roofs on its towers and turrets, and each of these was surmounted by a grotesque iron girouette, as the French name those vanes which were exclusively placed on the houses of their ancient nobility.
In this chateau had Isabelle of Scotland, daughter of James I., passed two nights when proceeding to Rennes, where, in 1442, she was married to Francis I., Duke of Bretagne; where the peasants yet sing of her beauty, and the luxuriance of her golden hair.
The edifice resembled in style several of our old Scottish baronial dwellings, such as Glammis or Castle Huntly, and I afterwards learnt that it had been engrafted on an older fortress of the Counts of Brittany, in which died Alain with the Strong Beard, in the tenth century; and like all ancient castles in France, it had its legends of blood and sorrow.
It was approached from the Rennes road through two rows of ancient yews, of vast size, towering, solemn, and sombre. Between each of these stood an orange-tree in a green tub; and in the garden were long walks covered with closely cut grass, and a labyrinth of trim beech hedges of great height, amid the dense leaves of which the lark and yellow-hammer built their nests undisturbed.
I remember the spacious entrance-hall, with its floor of tesselated marble, its tall cabinets of ebony and marqueterie, piled with rare china and Indian pagodas; its trophies of arms, a barred helmet or dinted corslet forming the centre of each; its vast dining-hall, with deeply-recessed windows, tapestry curtains, and chairs covered with rose-coloured brocaded silk; and in that hall, Francis II., last Duke of Brittany, had been feasted in 1459 by Roderique, Count of Bourgneuf, who was slain by a Burgundian knight six years after at the battle of Montleheri.
The long disused moat of the old mansion was overgrown by wild brambles, and masses of clematis and ivy shrouded the cannon, carriages and all, on the bastion at the outer gate. Old pieces they were—old perhaps as the days of the League; and above the gate they had once defended, were carved the three besants of Bourgneuf, impaled with the saltire of Broglie.
Such was the old chateau in Brittany, wherein the fortune of war had so strangely cast me.
On the window of my bedroom I one day discovered the name of the author of "Gil Blas," Alain René le Sage (who was a Breton), written with a diamond, for he had once visited the chateau; this window overlooked the lake, which was covered by water-lilies, and bordered by long reedy grass, where the snipe lay concealed, and the tall heron waded in search of the gold-scaled barbel.
Beyond this lake rose some steep and rugged rocks, nearly covered by the yellow bells of the wild gorse; and on the highest stood a haunted Druid stone, around which the fairies and the poulpicous (their husbands) danced on certain nights. This stone, as Angelique assured me, bore a deep mark, the cut of Excalibur, the sword of King Arthur, who is peculiarly the national hero of the Bretons.
How was I to get away from this secluded place?
By sea every port and harbour were watched and guarded. If discovered, the jealous military authorities would certainly put me to death without much inquiry, as a spy; the peasantry as an invader; the local magistrates or lords, would be sure to dispose of me as both.
This was a tormenting question which even my kind little nurse Angelique could in no way answer. Indeed, she detailed so many difficulties to be overcome, and so many dangers to be dared, that there seemed a probability of my spending the term of my natural life at the chateau of Bourgneuf, unless Commodore Howe with his fleet, and His Grace of Marlborough with at least ten thousand men, paid again a special visit to Brittany, the chance of which was very slender; and a conversation, a portion of which I was compelled to overhear, between Angelique and her lover Jacquot, served still more to increase my anxiety to be gone.
He had come to announce the return of the countess in a few days, after a certain pilgrimage, in which she was to accompany Père Celestine and a train of devotees to the Hole of the Serpent, and see the silver cross of St. Suliac dipped three times in the lonely cave of La Guivre, a famous religious superstition of the Bretons.
What I overheard took place on the fourth day of my convalescence.
"So you are sulky and in a pet, Monsieur Jacquot?" said the soubrette, pouting, with her hands in the pockets of her little apron.
"Perchance I have reason to be so, Mademoiselle Angelique," replied the other, with his hands thrust into his breeches pockets.
"You think yourself very clever, no doubt!"
"Parbleu! what if I do?"
"I have heard that when at school——"
"Bah! don't talk of our days at school. All clever men are dunces there."
"A clever boy you must have been!"
"Morbleu!" growled Jacquot; "a lover does not like to be laughed at."
"In such a humour, Monsieur Jacquot, what in the name of goodness brings you to me?"
"Say rather badness, mademoiselle, and it may better suit your disposition."
"Indeed! are you jealous of anyone again? Monsieur de Boisguiller and his hussars are now gone to Rennes."
"Yes; but the spark who walks with you on the north terrace in the twilight——"
"O ciel! what are you saying?"
"Yes, and whom I have caught so often lurking among the shrubbery and in the avenue at night; he, at least, is not gone to Rennes. An ugly fellow he is too, with a mark like a bullet-hole in each cheek. Eh, Mademoiselle Angelique, what say you to this?"
I did not hear the girl's reply, and they moved away from the room adjoining mine; but I had heard enough to cause me intense alarm. I had been twice on the north terrace in the evening with Angelique; but who was the lurker detected by Jacquot in the shrubbery and avenue?
"An ugly fellow with a mark like a bullet-hole in each cheek!" My heart foreboded in a moment that he must be the ruffian Hautois.
If he had traced me to the chateau, I was lost indeed!
No sooner was Jacquot gone, than Angelique came to me, and repeated all that I had previously heard, adding that some disguise was necessary now; but we knew not what kind to adopt. In the meantime, my uniform—my poor red coat, which I had first donned with such pride at Rothbury—was concealed or destroyed, and she brought me a hunting-suit of green cloth from the wardrobe of the absent count.
Still complete seclusion was necessary, and I could only take the air in the evening, on a secluded terrace or upper bartizan of the chateau, where Mademoiselle de Broglie and her attendant frequently sat in a kind of bower formed by the projection of a turret and a mass of wild roses, and where they read, chatted, or worked.
I had the pleasure of spending several evenings with Mademoiselle de Broglie there, and with each of these lovely summer evenings, when the purple shadow of the chateau fell far across the weedy lake, whose waters rippled in opal tints, and when the Druid monolith on the opposite rocks shone like a pillar of flame in the crimson light of the setting sun, it seemed to me that I was becoming less and less anxious about my escape from Bourgneuf, my flight from Brittany, and my return to the army.
Why was this? I asked my heart, and could only look for an answer in the quiet deep eyes of Jacqueline.
Her emerald ring was still on my finger, and as I looked at it again and again, and then on the lovely donor, the words of Charters, when I first showed him the ring on that morning near our camp at Paramé, came back to my memory like a prediction about to be verified.