Agnes Sorel. G. P. R. James

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СКАЧАТЬ and you shall have a choice."

      Jean Charost promised to follow his counsels, and soon after the little party broke up.

      Strange is the sensation with which a young man encounters the first half hour of solitary thought in a new situation. Have you forgotten it, dear reader? Yes--perhaps entirely; and yet you must have experienced it at some time. When you first went to join your regiment; when, after all the bustle, and activity, and embarrassment, and a little sheepishness, and a little pride, and a little awkwardness perhaps, and perhaps all the casualties of the first mess dinner, you sat down in your barrack-room, not so much to review the events of the day, as to let the mind settle, and order issue out of chaos: you have felt it then. Or, when you have joined a squad of lawyer's clerks, or entered a merchant's counting-house, or plunged into a strange city, or entered a new university, and passed through all the initiations, and sat down in the lull of the evening or the dead of night, to find yourself alone--separate not only from familiar faces, and things associated with early associations, but from habitual thoughts and sensations, from family customs and domestic habits: you must have felt it then, and experienced a solitude such as a desert itself can hardly give.

      Seated in his writing-room, without turning a thought or a look to his baggage, which had been placed at the door for himself to draw in, Jean Charost gave himself up to thought--I believe I might better say to sensation. He felt his loneliness, more than thought of it, and Memory, with one of those strange vagaries, in which she delights as much as Fancy, skipped at once over a period of fourteen or fifteen months, and carried him back at once to the small château of Brecy, and to the frugal table in his mother's hall. The quaint, long windows, with one pointed arch within another, and two or three pale yellow warriors of stained glass, transmitting the discolored rays upon the floor. The high-backed chair, never used since his father's death, standing against the wall, with a knob in the centre, resting against the iron chausses of an antiquated suit of armor, the plain oaken board in the middle of the room, and his mother and the two maids spinning in the sunniest nook, came up before his eyes almost as plainly as they had appeared the year and a half before. He heard the hound howling in the court-yard, and the song of the milk-maid bringing home the pail upon her head, and the song of the bird, which used to sit in March mornings on the topmost bough of an ash-tree, which had rooted itself on an inner tower, somewhat neglected and dilapidated. For a moment or two he was at home again. His paternal dwelling-place formed a little picture apart in his room in the Parisian palace, and the cheerful sunshine, pouring from early associations, formed a strange and striking contrast with the sort of dark isolation which he felt around him.

      The contrast, perhaps, might have been as great if he had compared the present with days more recently passed; for in the house of Jacques Cœur he had been, from the first, at home; but still his mind did not rest upon it. It reverted to those earlier days; and he sat gazing on the floor, and wishing himself--notwithstanding the eagerness of youthful hope, the buoyancy of youthful spirits, the impetuosity of youthful desires--wishing himself once more in the calm and happy bosom of domestic life, and away from splendid scenes devoid of all warm and genial feelings, where gold and jewels might glitter and shine, but where every thing was cold as the metal, and hard as the stone.

      It was a boy's fancy. It was the fancy of an hour. He knew that the strangeness would soon pass away. Young as he was, he was aware that the spirit, spider-like, speedily spins out threads to attach itself to all the objects that surround it, however different to its accustomed haunts, however strange, and new, and rough may be the points by which it is encompassed.

      At length he started up, saying to himself, "Ah, ha! the half hour must be past;" and quitting the room without locking the door behind him, he threaded his way through the long passage to the office of the maître d'hôtel.

      The Italian seemed to have got through the labors of the day, and seated in a large chair, with his feet in velvet slippers, extended to the fire, was yielding after the most improved method to the process of digestion. He was neither quite awake, nor quite asleep, and in that benign state of semi-somnolence which succeeds a well considered meal happily disposed of. The five or ten minutes which Jean Charost was behind his time had been favorable, by enabling him to prolong his comfortable repose, and he received the young gentleman with the utmost benevolence, seating him by him, and talking to him in a quiet, low, almost confidential tone, but not at first touching upon the subject which brought his young visitor there. On the contrary, his object in inviting him seemed to have been rather to give him a general idea of the character of those by whom he was surrounded, and of what would be expected from him by the duke himself, than to recommend him a lackey.

      Of the duke he spoke in high terms, as in duty bound, but of the duchess in higher terms still; mingling his commendations, however, with expressions of compassion, which led Jean Charost to believe that her married life was not as happy as her virtue merited. The young listener, however, discovered that the good signor had accompanied the duchess from her father's court at Milan, and had a hereditary right to love and respect her.

      All the principal officers of the duke's household were passed one by one in review by the good maître d'hôtel, and although the prince and his lady were both spoken of with profound respect, none of the rest escaped without some satirical notice, couched in somewhat sharp, though by no means bitter terms. Even Monsieur Blaize himself was not exempt. "He is the best, the most upright, and the most prudent man in the whole household," said the signor; "just in all his proceedings, with a little sort of worldly wisdom, not the slightest tincture of letters, a great deal of honest simplicity, and is, what we call in Italy, 'an ass.'"

      Such a chart of the country, when we can depend upon its accuracy, is very useful to a young man in entering a strange household; but, nevertheless, Jean Charost, though grateful for the information he received, resolved to use his own eyes, and judge for himself. To say the truth, he was not at all sorry to find the good maître d'hôtel in a communicative mood; for the curiosity of youth had been excited by many of the events of the morning, and especially by the detention and examination which he had undergone immediately after his arrival. That some strange and terrible event had occurred, was evident; but a profound and mysterious silence had been observed by every one he had seen in the palace regarding the facts. The subject had been carefully avoided, and no one had even come near it in the most unguarded moment. With simple skill he endeavored to bring round the conversation to the point desired, and at length asked, straightforwardly, what had occurred to induce the the duke's officers to put him and several others in a sort of arrest, as soon as he had entered the gates. He gained nothing by the attempt, however. "Ah, poor lady! ah, sweet lady!" exclaimed the master of the hotel, in a sad tone. "But we were talking, my young friend, of a varlet fitted for your service. I have got just the person to suit you. He is as active as a squirrel, as gay as a lark, understands all points of service for horse or man, and never asks any questions about what does not concern him--a most invaluable quality in a prince's household. If he has any fault, he is too chaste; so you must mind your morals, my young friend. His wages are three crowns a month, and your cast-off clothes, with any little gratuity for good service you may like to bestow. He will be rated on the duke's household, and nourished at his expense; but you will need a horse for him, which had better be provided as soon as possible. I advise you strongly to take him; but, nevertheless, see him first, and judge for yourself. He will be with you some time to-day; and now I must to work again. Ah, ha! It is a laborious life. Good-day, my son--good-day."

      Jean Charost took his leave, and departed; but he could not help thinking that his instructive conversation with the maître d'hôtel had been brought to a somewhat sudden close by his own indiscreet questions.

      CHAPTER VIII.

      Great silence pervaded the palace of the Duke of Orleans, or, at least, that part of it in which Jean Charost's rooms were situated, during the rest of the day. He thought he heard, indeed, about half an hour after he had left the maître d'hôtel, some distant sounds СКАЧАТЬ