LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

with an air which betrayed at once a strange mixture of effrontery and hypocrisy.

      "Landry!" exclaimed together both Jocelyne and Alayn.

      "Captain Landry, at your service," said the man; "or, if you will, at the service of her majesty the Queen-mother. Good-day, my gentle cousins both. Good-day to you, my good aunt Perrotte. How goes it with her now? Her head was somewhat ailing as I heard, since she had left the court." And he touched his forehead significantly with his finger.

      "She is well!" answered Jocelyne hastily, trembling in spite of her efforts to be calm.

      "But this is no visit of ceremony, my good friends," continued Captain Landry, with some haughtiness of manner. "I come upon state affairs. A criminal of rank, who has conspired against the life and person of the king, has escaped; and we are sent in his pursuit. We have contrived to track him of a surety to this neighbourhood; and, as I bethought me that this same delinquent was a friend of my fair cousin Jocelyne, who, although she has received my offers of affection with disdain, could look upon another with more favour, I doubted not that I should find news of him in her company. Know you of none such here, sweet cousin?"

      "I know not of whom you speak," said Jocelyne, her colour varying from the flush of emotion to the deadly paleness of fear.

      "And you, Alayn, boy, since our fair cousin's memory is so short, can doubtless tell me. Has no one entered here within the last half hour?"

      "No one!" answered Alayn sturdily; but he then turned and moved to the window to hide his confusion.

      The Queen's agent shrugged his shoulders.

      "And my good aunt has had no visitors?" he resumed, advancing towards the old woman.

      Perrotte lifted her head, and regarded the captain fixedly, and with a look of scorn, but said not a word.

      "Search!" said the officer, turning to the soldiers, who had waited without.

      The men entered; and in a few instants the scanty and small rooms attached to the principal apartment were examined. The captain was informed that no one could be found. For a moment he looked disappointed, and paused to reflect.

      "Their trouble is evident," he murmured to himself. "He may still be here. The reward for his capture is too great to be given up lightly; and, besides, I hate the fellow for the love she bears him – I will leave no stone unturned."

      "Dame Perrotte!" he said returning to the old woman, and speaking to her in a low tone of voice – "A criminal of state has escaped from the king's justice. In spite of the protestations of your grandchildren, I cannot doubt that he is concealed hereabouts; and you must know where. You will not fail, I am sure, to indicate the place of his retreat, when you know that, as the friend of those who have proved the bitterest enemies of your religion, he must also be your deadly enemy."

      "And is it Landry, the recreant, the apostate, the only seceder of our family from the just cause, who speaks thus?" said the old woman lifting her head with a haggard expression.

      "The necessary policy of the times," whispered the captain, sitting down on the stool by her side, and approaching himself confidentially nearer, "has compelled me, like many others, to be that in seeming which we are not in heart. Has not our chief, Henry of Navarre, yielded also to the pressure of the circumstances in which he lives? Judge me not so harshly, good aunt. But this criminal – he is one of those who have hunted and destroyed, who have cried – 'Down with them; down with the Huguenots – pursue and kill;' and you would withdraw him from the punishment he merits?"

      "He! he! Was it, so?" muttered Perrotte, with eyes staring at the vacancy before her.

      "Do you not fear to pass for the accomplice of his crimes?" continued Captain Landry in her ear. "Know you not that he has attainted the life of your nursling by deeds of sorcery, and that Charles IX., our king, now lies upon his death-bed."

      "Who speaks of Charles?" exclaimed the old woman with increasing wildness and excitement. "Charles and death! Yes, they go hand in hand!"

      "Landry! You shall not torture our poor mother thus," cried Jocelyne springing towards them, in order to interrupt a conversation which she had been witnessing in agony, although she could not hear it, and the effect of which upon her grandmother's unsettled mind became every moment more visible.

      "Fair cousin, with your leave!" replied the captain. "I am bound to do the duties of my office. I shall be grieved to use constraint." And, waving his hand to her to withdraw, he made a sign to the soldiers to approach both Jocelyne and Alayn, and prevent their interference.

      Jocelyne wrung her hands.

      "Do you not fear the reproaches of your murdered son?" continued Captain Landry, turning to Perrotte, with an expression of perfidious hypocrisy in his eyes, and again pouring his words lowly, but distinctly, into her ear. "Do you not fear that he should rise from his tomb, and, showing the bloody wounds of that fatal night, cry for vengeance on his murderers, and curse the weakness of that mother who would screen and shelter them? Do you not fear that Heaven should condemn you as a friend to the destroyers of the righteous? Think on your slaughtered kindred, woman!"

      "Mercy! mercy! my son!" cried the old woman, springing up with her hands outstretched, as if to repel a spectre. "Oh! hide that streaming blood! Look not so angry on me! Blood shall have blood, thou say'st; so be it. Vengeance is the Lord's! and He shall avenge his people!"

      "Where is he?" enquired Landry, also rising, and watching her every movement.

      "There! there!" exclaimed the excited woman, pointing to the corner of the room.

      In spite of the attempt of Jocelyne, who was now restrained by the soldiers, to interrupt him, Captain Landry walked to the corner indicated, and after a few attempts succeeded in discovering the secret of the concealed recess.

      "Count Philip de la Mole, you are my prisoner, under warrant of his majesty the King, and by order of the Queen-mother," he said, as the young nobleman appeared to view.

      Jocelyne uttered a cry of despair.

      "Conduct me where you are bidden, sir," said La Mole, offering his sword. "My sweet Jocelyne, farewell! – your kindly interest in my fate I shall never forget. But we shall meet again. Fear nothing for me; I will prove my innocence."

      The unhappy girl fell at the feet of the captured nobleman, and wetted his outstretched hand with her tears, as she pressed it to her lips.

      "My strict orders," said Captain Landry, "were to arrest all those who should be convicted of harbouring the criminal. Forget not, then, cousin Jocelyne, that I spare you so hard a lot. But my duty compels me to adopt other measures. Come, sir!"

      When Philip de la Mole had been conducted from the room by the agents of the Queen-mother, Jocelyne turned to her grandmother, without rising from the ground, and exclaimed in the bitterest despair —

      "Mother – mother – you have killed me!"

      "Who spoke of Charles? Who said he lay upon his death-bed?" cried Perrotte, walking up and down with the uncertain step of the deranged of mind, and unheeding her unhappy grandchild; "Charles dying! and I shall see him no more – shall he die without a warning word from her who loved and cherished him so long – die without repentance? What was that voice that tortured my very soul? Who said he was about to die, and that I should see him no more?"

      Jocelyne sprung up from the ground, as if a sudden thought had crossed her mind.

      "Yes, mother, yes," she cried, "the king is dying. Come to him. See him once more. He will hear your words upon his death-bed, and extend his pardon to the innocent – for Philip de la Mole is innocent, my mother. He will save him who is unjustly condemned; and you will save his repentant soul. Come, mother, come – come," she continued, as if speaking to a child, "the king is waiting for you!"

      "Charlot – my nursling – dying!" murmured the old woman – "Yes – let us go."

      "Alayn will accompany us," said Jocelyne, turning to the youth, who stood at the window unhappy and confused.

      Without waiting for any addition to their dress, the eager girl seized her grandmother's hand, and led her to the door.

      When

Скачать книгу