CHAPTER XXV
AN HEROIC RANSOM
The next day, August 12, it was with an unfaltering step and a tranquil face that Gabriel de Montgommery took his way to the Louvre to ask audience of the king.
He had debated long and earnestly in his own mind, and with Aloyse, as to what he should do and say. Convinced that a violent course would have no other result with an adversary who wore a crown than to subject him to his father's fate, Gabriel had resolved to speak plainly and with dignity, but in a tone of moderation and with due respect. He would ask, not demand. Would there not still be time for him to adopt a more lofty demeanor, and ought he not in the first place to ascertain if the lapse of eighteen years had not softened Henri's bitter enmity?
Gabriel, in forming this resolution, showed as much discretion and shrewdness as were consistent with the bold step he had determined on.
Circumstances moreover lent him aid from an unexpected quarter.
As he entered the courtyard of the Louvre, attended by Martin-Guerre,—the real Martin-Guerre on this occasion,—Gabriel noticed an extraordinary commotion; but his mind was too deeply absorbed in his own affairs to pay much attention to the busily talking groups and sad faces which he passed at every step.
Nevertheless, he could but recognize on his way a litter with the Guise arms, and salute the cardinal, who was just leaving it in a state of great excitement.
"Ah! is it you, Monsieur Vicomte d'Exmès," said Charles de Lorraine, "and are you quite yourself again? So much the better! so much the better! Monsieur my brother was asking for news of you in his last letter with much interest."
"Monseigneur is so very kind!" responded Gabriel.
"You have well earned it by your gallantry," said the cardinal. "But where are you going so fast?"
"To seek the king, Monseigneur."
"Hm! The king has other business on hand than receiving you, my young friend. But wait a moment! I am going to his Majesty also, for he just sent for me. Let us go up together; I will be your sponsor, and you shall lend me the support of your strong arm. One good turn for another. In fact, that is just what I was going to say to his Majesty; for you have heard the sad news, I suppose?"
"No, indeed," Gabriel replied; "for I have just come from home; and I only noticed that there seemed to be something exciting in the air."
"I should say as much!" said the cardinal. "Monsieur de Montmorency has been up to his old tricks down yonder with the army. He undertook to fly to the relief of St. Quentin, which was in a state of siege, did the gallant constable! Don't go so fast, I beg you, Monsieur d'Exmès, for I no longer have the sprightly legs of twenty years. I was saying that he offered battle to the enemy, the intrepid general! It was day before yesterday, August 10, St. Laurent's Day. He had almost as many troops as the Spaniards, a superb body of cavalry,—the very pick and flower of the French nobility. Oh, well! he had so skilfully arranged matters, experienced commander that he is, that he sustained a most overwhelming defeat in the plains of Gibercourt and Lizerolles; that he was himself wounded and made prisoner, and with him all the leading officers and generals who did not remain on the field. Monsieur d'Enghien is among the latter; and of the whole infantry not a hundred men have come back. And that explains why everybody is so absorbed, Monsieur d'Exmès, and why his Majesty needs me, no doubt."
"Great God!" cried Gabriel, appalled, even in the depths of his own sorrow, by this great public calamity; "Great God! are the days of Poitiers and Agincourt returning upon poor France? But St. Quentin, Monseigneur?"
"St. Quentin," the cardinal replied, "was still holding out when the courier left; and the constable's nephew, Monsieur l'Amiral Gaspard de Coligny, who is defending the town, has sworn to lessen the result of his uncle's defeat by allowing himself to be buried in the ruins of the place rather than surrender it. But I am much afraid that he may be buried already, and the last rampart which kept the enemy out carried."
"In that case the kingdom is lost!" said Gabriel.
"May God protect France!" rejoined the cardinal. "But here we are at the king's apartments; and we will see what steps he proposes to take to protect himself."
The guards, as well they might, allowed the cardinal to pass with a bow, for they saw in him the man necessary for the emergency, and whose brother was the only man who could save the country. Charles de Lorraine, followed by Gabriel, entered unopposed the king's apartments, where they found him alone with Madame de Poitiers, and a prey to most profound dismay. Henri, as he saw the cardinal, rose and came eagerly forward to meet him.
"Your Eminence has arrived most opportunely," said he. "Well, well, Monsieur de Lorraine, what a frightful disaster! Who could have imagined it, I ask you?"
"I, Sire," replied the cardinal, "if your Majesty had asked me the question a month ago, at the time of Monsieur de Montmorency's departure—"
"No useless recrimination, cousin!" said the king; "we have not to do with the past, but with the threatening future and the dangerous present. Monsieur le Duc de Guise is on his way from Italy, is he not?"
"Yes, Sire; and he should be at Lyons now."
"God be praised!" cried the king. "Well, Monsieur de Lorraine, I intrust the welfare of the realm to the care of your illustrious brother. You and he, do you henceforth assume full power and sovereign authority to forward this glorious result. Be kings like me, and more truly kings than I am. I have just written with my own hand to Monsieur le Duc de Guise, to hasten his return. Here is the letter. Will your Eminence kindly write as well, and point out to your brother our horrible position and the necessity of not losing a moment, if France is to be saved. Say to Monsieur de Guise that I put myself entirely in his hands. Write, Monsieur Cardinal, and write at once, I beg. You have no need to go away from here. See, here in this closet you will find all you need. The courier, booted and spurred, is waiting below, already in the saddle. Hasten, Monsieur Cardinal, I pray you; hasten! A half-hour more or less may save or ruin everything."
"I obey your Majesty," replied the cardinal, going toward the closet, "and my noble brother also will obey, for his life belongs to the king and the kingdom; but whether he succeed or fail, your Majesty will remember later that you have intrusted him with power in a desperate situation."
"Say dangerous," rejoined the king, "but do not say desperate. But do my good city of St. Quentin and Monsieur de Coligny, its brave defender, still hold their own?"
"Yes, or they were holding out two days ago, at all events," said Charles; "but the fortifications were in a pitiable condition, and the starving inhabitants were talking of capitulation; and with St. Quentin in the hands of the Spaniard to-day, Paris will be his in a week. Never mind, Sire! I will write to my brother, and you need not to be told that whatever man can do, Monsieur de Guise will do."
And the cardinal, saluting the king and Madame Diane, entered the closet to write the letter which Henri desired.
Gabriel had remained apart, thinking deeply and unnoticed. His generous young heart was deeply moved by contemplation of the terrible extremity to which France was reduced. He forgot that it was Monsieur de Montmorency, his bitterest enemy, who had been beaten, wounded, and captured. For the moment he saw in him only the commander of the French forces. In fact, he thought almost as much of his country's danger as of his father's suffering. The noble youth had a sympathetic heart, which was easily aroused by deep feeling, and he pitied all who were in distress; and when the king, after the cardinal had left the room, sank back despairingly upon his couch, with his head in his hands, crying aloud,—
"Oh, St. Quentin! on thee now hangs the destiny of France! St. Quentin, my noble city! If thou canst still resist but for one short week, Monsieur de Guise will have time to return, and the defence of thy faithful walls be organized anew! Whereas if they fall, the foe will march upon Paris, and all will be lost. St. Quentin, oh, I would give thee a new privilege for each hour of resistance, and a diamond for each of thy crumbling stones, if thou couldst hold out only one week more!"
"Sire, it shall hold out, and more than a week!" said Gabriel, coming forward.
He had made his resolution; and a sublime resolution it was!
"Monsieur d'Exmès!" cried Henri and Diane, in the same breath,—the king in wonder, and Diane with contempt.
"How did you come here, Monsieur?" asked the king, sternly.
"Sire, I entered with his Eminence."
"That's a different matter," said Henri; "but what were you saying, pray, Monsieur d'Exmès?—that St. Quentin might hold out, I think."
"Yes, Sire; and you said, did you not, that if it did hold out, you would endow it with freedom and wealth?"
"I say it again," said the king.
"Very well, Sire; and would you refuse to the man who should make its holding out possible what you would accord to the town which held out? To the man whose energetic will should infect the whole city, and who would not surrender it until the last piece of the wall crumbles under the enemy's cannon? The favor which this man shall ask at your hands, this man who shall have given you this week's respite, and thus preserved your kingdom, shall he ask it in vain, Sire, and will you chaffer about an act of mercy with, him who has given you back an empire?"
"No, by Heaven!" cried the king; "and whatever a king has to give that man shall have."
"A bargain, Sire; for not only can a king give, but he can forgive as well. And it is a pardon, and not titles or gold which this man will ask at your hands."
"But who is he? Where is this deliverer?" said the king.
"He stands before you, Sire. It is I, the humble captain of your Guards, but who feel in my heart and my arm a superhuman strength, which shall help me to prove that I make no vain boast in undertaking to save at one and the same time my country and my father."
"Your father, Monsieur d'Exmès!" said the astonished king.
"I am not Monsieur d'Exmès," said Gabriel. "I am Gabriel de Montgommery, son of Comte Jacques de Montgommery, whom you ought to remember, Sire."
"The son of the Comte de Montgommery!" cried the king, rising and turning pale.
Madame Diane too fell back upon her couch with a gesture of terror.
"Yes, Sire," replied Gabriel, calmly; "I am the Vicomte de Montgommery, who, in exchange for the service which he will render you by maintaining the defence of St. Quentin for a week, asks you for nothing but his father's liberty."
"Your father, Monsieur!" said the king. "Your father is dead, has disappeared. What do I know about him? I don't know, I'm sure, where your father is."
"But I do, Sire; I know," replied Gabriel, choking down a terrible dread. "My father has been in the Châtelet for eighteen years past, awaiting the divine gift of death; or the royal gift of mercy. My father is alive; I am certain of it. As to his crime, of that I know nothing."
"You know nothing of it?" the king asked, frowning darkly.
"I know nothing of it, Sire; but surely it should have been a serious offence to have deserved so long an imprisonment. But it could not have been an unpardonable one, since it did not merit death. Sire, listen. In eighteen years justice has had time to slumber and clemency to awake. Human passions, whether evil or good, do not resist so long as that. My father, who was a vigorous man when he entered his prison, will come out of it old and feeble. However guilty he may have been, has not his expiation been ample? And even if it should happen that his punishment was too severe, is he not too weak to remember? Restore to liberty, Sire, a poor prisoner, who will henceforth be of no consequence in the world. Remember, O Christian king, the words of the Christian creed, and forgive the sins of another that your own sins may be forgiven!"
These last words were uttered in a meaning tone which caused the king and Madame de Valentinois to look at each other in anxious and terrified inquiry.
But Gabriel chose only to touch delicately upon this sore spot in their consciences, and made haste to continue,—
"Please take notice, Sire, that I address you as an obedient and devoted subject. I have not said to you, 'My father was not tried; my father was secretly condemned without an opportunity to be heard in his own defence; and such injustice seems much like revenge. So I, his son, am about to appeal boldly to the nobility of France from this secret judgment which has been pronounced upon him. I am about to declare from the house-tops to every one who wears a sword the insult which has been offered to us all in the person of one gentleman—'"
Henri moved uneasily in his seat.
"I have not said this, Sire," Gabriel went on. "I know that there are emergencies stronger than law and right, and where an arbitrary act is the least perilous. I respect, as my father undoubtedly would respect, the secrets of a past which lies so far behind us. I ask you simply to allow me to commute the balance of my father's punishment by a glorious exploit of deliverance. I offer you by way of ransom for him to hold St. Quentin for a week against the enemy; and if that is not enough, why, to make up for the eventual loss of St. Quentin by capturing some other town from the Spaniards or the English! Surely that will be worth the gift of freedom to an old gray-headed man. Well, I will do all this and more too! for the cause which strengthens my arm is a pure and holy one. My will is strong and daring: and I know that God will be with me."
Madame Diane could not restrain a smile of incredulity at this heroic exhibition of youthful enthusiasm and confidence such as she had never seen and could not appreciate.
"I understand your smile, Madame," rejoined Gabriel, with a sad glance at her; "you think that I shall fall under this great task, do you not? Mon Dieu! it may be so. It may be that my presentiments mislead me. But what then? Why, then I shall die. Yes, Madame, yes, Sire, if the enemy enters St. Quentin before the end of the eighth day, I shall die in the breach for the town which I have failed to defend. Neither God nor my father nor you can ask more of me than that. My destiny will then have been fulfilled as the Lord has seen fit: my father will die in his dungeon, and I upon the field of battle; and you,—you will be relieved by natural means of the debt and of your creditor at the same time. Then you can be easy in your mind."
"That last remark of his is very true, at all events," whispered Diane, in the ear of the king, who was absorbed in thought.
However, she said aloud to Gabriel, while Henri maintained a dreamy silence,—
"Even supposing that you fall, Monsieur, leaving your work half done, it is easy to imagine that you will leave some inheritor of your name behind you, or some confidant of your secret."
"I swear to you by my father's safety," said Gabriel, "that when I die everything shall die with me, and that no one will then have the right to importune his Majesty on this subject. I put myself in God's hands in advance, I say again; and you ought, in like manner, Sire, to recognize His intervention, if He shall endow me with the strength to fulfil my vast design. But here and now, if I die, I relieve you from all obligation and from all responsibility, Sire,—at least before men; but the rights of the Most High are not lost by prescription."
Henri shuddered. His naturally irresolute mind did not know what course to decide upon; and the vacillating prince turned to Madame de Poitiers as if to ask for aid and advice.
She, understanding fully his hesitation, to which she was well used, responded to his glance with a peculiar smile.
"Is it not your opinion, Sire, that we ought to rely upon the word of Monsieur d'Exmès, who is a loyal gentleman, and, I believe, of a chivalrous and knightly character? I know not whether his request is or is not well founded; and your Majesty's silence in that regard affords no ground upon which I or any one can allege anything, and leaves the whole question in uncertainty. But in my humble opinion, Sire, you should not reject so generous a proffer; and if I were in your place, I would gladly pledge my royal word to Monsieur d'Exmès to grant him, if he fulfil his heroic and daring promise, whatever favor he might choose to ask at my hands on his return."
"Ah, Madame, I ask no more than that," said Gabriel.
"Just one word more," resumed Diane. "How," she added, fixing a piercing glance upon the young man,—"how and why did you make up your mind to speak of a mysterious affair, which seems to be of some consequence, before me,—before a woman who may be anything but discreet for aught you know of her, and an entire stranger to this whole matter?"
"I had two reasons, Madame," replied Gabriel, with perfect sang-froid. "In the first place, I imagined that there neither could be nor should be any secret in his Majesty's heart so far as you are concerned. In that case, it was only disclosing to you what you were sure to know sooner or later, or what you already knew. In the second place, I hoped, as indeed has come to pass, that you would deign to support my request to the king; that you would urge him to put me to this proof; and that you, a woman, would be found, as you always have been, on the side of clemency."
It would have been impossible for the closest scrutiny to detect in Gabriel's tone the least inflection of irony, or upon his calm and unmoved features the slightest symptom of a disdainful smile; and Madame Diane's penetrating gaze was thrown away.
She responded to a speech which might after all have been meant to be complimentary by a slight inclination of the head.
"Allow me one more question," she said, "just as to one circumstance which has aroused my curiosity, that is all. How is it that you who are so young happen to be in possession of a secret that is eighteen years old?"
"I reply so much the more willingly, Madame," said Gabriel, gravely and sombrely, "because my reply may serve to convince you of God's intervention in the matter. My father's squire, one Perrot Travigny, who was killed in the transactions which preceded the disappearance of the count, has risen from the tomb, by the grace of God, and has revealed to me what I have told you."
At this reply, delivered in a tone of the utmost solemnity, the king arose, pale and breathless, and even Madame de Poitiers, despite her nerves of steel, could not repress a shudder of terror. At that superstitious epoch, when apparitions and ghosts were freely believed in, Gabriel's words, uttered with the conviction of truth personified, might well have had a terrifying effect upon two tormented consciences.
"Enough, enough, Monsieur!" said the king, hastily, with trembling voice; "and everything that you ask is granted. Leave us! leave us!"
"And I may set out for St. Quentin, then, within the hour, relying upon your Majesty's word?"
"Yes, yes, Monsieur, set out at once!" said the king, who, notwithstanding Diane's warning glances, had great difficulty in mastering his distress; "set out at once! Do what you have promised; and I give you my word as king and gentleman that I will do what you wish."
Gabriel, with joy at his heart, bent low before the king and duchess, and took his leave without another word, as if, having obtained his desire, he had not a moment more to lose.
"At last! He is not here now!" said the king, breathing deeply, as if relieved of a heavy burden.
"Sire," said Madame de Poitiers, "be calm, and try to regain your self-command. You came very near betraying yourself before that man."
"That is no man, Madame," said the king, as one dreaming; "that is my ever-living remorse: it is my reproachful conscience."
"Well, Sire," said Diane, who was herself again, "you have done very well to accede to this Gabriel's request, and to send him where he is now going; for I am very much mistaken, or your remorse will soon die before St. Quentin, and you will then be rid of your conscience."
The Cardinal de Lorraine returned at this moment with the letter he had been writing to his brother, and the king had no time to reply.
Meanwhile Gabriel, leaving the king with a light heart, had only one thought and one wish in the world: it was to see once more, with hope beating high in his breast, her whom he had left with death in his soul; to say to Diane de Castro all that he hoped from the future, and to draw from her loved glances the courage of which he should stand so much in need.
He knew that she had gone into a convent; but into what convent? It might be that her women had not gone with her; and he turned his steps in the direction of her former apartment at the Louvre, to question Jacinthe.
Jacinthe was with her mistress; but Denise, the second waiting-maid, had stayed behind; and it was she who received Gabriel.
"Ah, Monsieur d'Exmès!" she cried. "You are such a welcome visitor; for it may perhaps be that you have come to give me some news of my dear mistress."
"On the contrary, Denise, I have come to learn of her from you," said Gabriel.
"Ah, Holy Virgin! I know nothing at all, and I am terribly frightened about her."
"But why so anxious, Denise?" asked Gabriel, who began to be anxious himself.
"Why!" replied the maid; "why, you must know where Madame de Castro is now!
"Indeed, no! I know nothing about it, Denise; and it is just what I hoped to learn from you."
"Holy Virgin! and didn't you know, Monseigneur, that she asked leave of the king to enter a convent a month ago?"
"I know that; and then?"
"And then! Ah, that is the terrible part of it. For do you know what convent she chose? That of the Benedictines, of which her old friend, Sister Monique, is superior, at St. Quentin, Monseigneur,—at St. Quentin, at this very moment besieged and perhaps taken by these English and Spanish heathens. She had not been there a fortnight, Monseigneur, when the siege began."
"Oh," cried Gabriel, "the hand of God is in all this! He awakens the son in me to new life, by arousing the lover anew, and thus doubles my courage and my strength. Thanks, Denise. This for your good news," he added, placing a purse in her hand. "Pray to Heaven for your mistress and for me."
In hot haste he went down once more into the courtyard of the Louvre, where Martin-Guerre was awaiting him.
"Where do we go now, Monseigneur?" asked the squire.
"Where the cannon is echoing, Martin,—to St. Quentin! to St. Quentin! We must be there day after to-morrow, so we start within the hour, my fine fellow."
"Ah, so much the better!" cried Martin. "Oh, mighty Saint Martin, my patron saint," he added, "I am content now to be a drunkard and a gambler and a rake; but I give you fair warning that I would throw myself into the midst of the enemy's battalions if ever I were a coward!”