CHAPTER I
IN WHICH A GREAT EXPLORER LISTENS AT MIDNIGHT
TO A TALE OF LOVE
“LOUIS LE GRAND, King of France and Navarre, has deserted pleasure to follow piety—and times are changed, monsieur.”
The speaker, Louis de Sancerre, of Languedoc, descendant of a famous constable of France, leaned against a tree near the shore of a majestic river, and musingly watched the moonbeams as they chased the ripples toward an unknown sea. A soft, cool breeze, heavy with the odor of new-born flowers, caressed his pale, clear-cut face, and toyed with the ruffles and trappings of a costume more becoming at Versailles than in the mysterious wilderness through which its wearer had floated for many weeks.
On the bank at the exiled courtier’s feet lay reclining the martial figure of a man, whose stern, immobile face, lofty brow, and piercing eyes told a tale of high resolve and stubborn will. Sieur de la Salle, winning his way to immortality through wastes of swamp and canebrake and the windings of a great river, had made his camp at a bend in the stream from which the outlook seemed to promise the fulfilment of his dearest hopes. On the crest of a low hill, sloping gently to the water, his followers had thrown up a rude fort of felled trees, and now at midnight the adventurous Frenchmen and their score of Indian allies were tasting sleep after a day of wearisome labor.
De la Salle and a hapless waif from the splendid court of Louis XIV., more sensitive than their subordinates to the grandeur of the undertaking in which they were engaged, had felt no wish to slumber. They had strolled away from the silent camp; and, for the first time since Count Louis de Sancerre had joined the expedition, its leader had been learning something of the flippant, witty, reckless, debonair courtier’s career.
“Beware the omnipresent ear of the Great Order, Monsieur le Comte!” exclaimed La Salle, rising to his elbow and searching the shadows behind him with questioning eyes. “Think not, de Sancerre, that in the treacherous quiet of this wilderness you may safely speak your mind. I have good reason to distrust the trees, the waters, and the roving winds. Where I go are ever savages or silence, but always in my ear echoes the stealthy footfall of the Jesuit. And this is well, monsieur. I seize this country in the name of France; the Order takes it in the name of God!”
“In the name of God!” repeated de Sancerre, mockingly. “You know Versailles, monsieur? There is no room for God. Banished once by a courtesan, the Almighty now succumbs to a confessor.”
“Hold, monsieur!” cried La Salle, sternly. “This is blasphemy! Blasphemy and treason! But enough of priests! You tell me that you loved this woman from the court of Spain?”
“How can I say? What is love, monsieur?” exclaimed de Sancerre, lightly, throwing himself down beside his leader.
It was as if a butterfly, born of the moonbeams, had come to ask a foolish riddle of the grim forest glades. The incarnation of all that was most polished, insincere, diabolical, fascinating at Versailles had taken the form of a handsome man, not quite forty years of age, who reclined at midnight upon the banks of an unexplored river, and pestered the living embodiment of high adventure and mighty purposes with the light and airy nothings of a courtier’s tongue. How should Sieur de la Salle know the mystery of love? He who had wooed hardship to win naught but the kiss of disappointment, he who had cherished no mistress save the glory of France, no passion but for King and Church, was not a source from which a flippant worldling could wring a definition of the word of words.
The majestic silence of the night was broken by the raucous muttering of some restless dreamer within the confines of the camp. An owl hooted, and far away a wolf bayed at the moon. La Salle arose, climbed the bank to see that his sentries were attentive at their posts, and then returned to Count de Sancerre’s side.
“You do not answer me, Sieur de la Salle!” exclaimed the latter, testily. “I have sought the answer from La Fontaine, from Moliêre, Racine; aye, from Bossuet and Fénelon. ’Twas all in vain. They were men, you say, and did not understand? But I have asked the question of de Montespan, la Vallière, la Fayette, Sêvigné. One was witty, another silent, and all were wrong. There remained, of course, de Maintenon. Her I never asked. She would have said, I doubt not, that love is a priest who leads by prayer to power.”
“You wander far afield, Monsieur le Comte,” remarked La Salle, coldly, after an interval of silence. “The night grows old, and still you have not told me why you left the splendors that you love, to risk your life in this fierce struggle in an unknown land.”
“To risk my life?” cried the Count, laughingly. “If that were all! To tear my velvets where no draper is, to see the gay-plumed birds a-laughing at my plight, to long in vain for powder for my wig, to find my buckles growing red with damp—all this is worse than death. But still, I bear it bravely, do I not? Ah, well, Turenne—God rest his soul!—taught me the lessons of a hard campaign. What is this voyage in a bark canoe upon the peaceful breast of yonder stream? A pleasure-jaunt, monsieur, to one who fought with France against the world—who sheathed his sword at Nimeguen. Once only were we beaten, de la Salle. The Dutch let in the sea, and, lo! his Majesty and Luxembourg, Turenne and Condé, Vauban and the rest, were powerless against the mighty ally of the foe. I say to you, Monsieur le Capitaine, beware the sea! You seek it in your quest. ’Tis full of treachery.”
The Count had arisen and drawn his sword, which gleamed in the moonlight as he turned its point toward the unknown mouth the roving river sought.
“This blade,” he said, reseating himself and patting the steel with affection, “flashed gayly for the King upon the Rhine. Alas for me, it drove me at the last to seek my fortunes in a weary land.”
“You drew it, then, for something other than the cause of France?” remarked La Salle, suspiciously.
“For that of which we spoke, which no tongue voices but all hearts have felt. I drew it once for love—et voilà tout!”
“You killed a Spaniard, then?”
“They speak the truth, monsieur, who say your mind is quick. She—as I told you—came to France with Spain’s great embassy. He, a strutting grandee, proud and bigoted, came with the suite, holding some post that made his person safe. The tool of diplomats, the pet of priests, my rival—as he was—defied my hate. ’Tis said they were betrothed, Don Josef and— But hold! her name I need not speak.”
The Count remained silent for a time, watching the moon-kissed waters at his feet. La Salle, grim, reticent, but not unsympathetic, gazed steadfastly at his companion’s delicately-carved face. A stern knight-errant, who sought to win an empire for his king, lay wasting the midnight hours to listen to a love-tale from a flippant tongue.
“’Twas with this blade,” went on de Sancerre after a time, waving his sword from side to side in the moonlight, “that I pierced his heart—and broke my own. For which all praise be to Saint Maturin, who watches over fools.”
“He was no coward, then?” questioned La Salle.
“Not when his pride was pricked,” answered de Sancerre. “Great wars have been begun with less diplomacy than I employed to make my insult drive him to his steel. But, Spanish blood is hot, and, truth to tell, my tongue can cut and thrust. Her eyes were on us at a fête champêtre when, standing by his side, I spoke the words that made him mine at midnight—’neath a moon like this. There’s little left to tell. He knew a Spanish trick or two, but, monsieur, he was a boy! In the moonlight there his eyes were so like hers I lost all pity—and—so—he died.”
“And then?”
“And then I vowed a candle to St. Christopher and sailed across the sea. Breathe it not, monsieur—I bore a letter from de Montespan to Frontenac.”
“Then cut your tongue out ere you tell the tale,” exclaimed La Salle, gruffly. After a moment’s silence he went on, more gently: “But, Monsieur le Comte, I cannot understand the ease of your escape. You’ve roused the anger of the King, de Maintenon, the Jesuits, and Spain. Such foes could crush an empire in a day.”
“But you yourself, monsieur, have stood against them all.”
“I?” exclaimed La Salle, musingly. “You may be right, my friend. I sometimes wonder if my life is charmed. Whom can I trust, monsieur? Allies false when the hour of danger came, assassins at my bedside, and poison in my food—all these I’ve known, monsieur. And still I live.”
The two adventurers had arisen and were facing each other in the moonlight. La Salle, tall, commanding—a king by the divine right of a dauntless soul—stood, with head uncovered, looking down at the slender, graceful patrician confronting him.
“You strive for France, Sieur de la Salle,” exclaimed de Sancerre, the mocking note gone from his voice—“for the glory of dear France—and France will not destroy you.”
“For France!” repeated La Salle, solemnly. “For France and for the Church! Vive le Roi!”
Silently they turned and, mounting the hillock, made their way toward the sleeping camp, while the Mississippi rolled on beneath the moon to tell a strange tale to the listening waters of the gulf.