Agnes Sorel. G. P. R. James

Чтение книги онлайн.

      CHAPTER VI.

      Hope is nothing but a bit of cork floating on the sea of life, now tossed up into the sky, now sunk down into the abyss, but rising, rising again over the crest of the foamy wave, and topping all things even unto the end.

      Joyous and hopeful, Jean Charost presented himself at the gates of the Duke of Orleans's palace; but the heavy door under the archway was closed, and some minutes elapsed ere he obtained admission. The tall man who opened for him seemed doubtful whether he would let him in or not; and it was not till Jean had explained that the duke had appointed him, and that he was the person who had accompanied Jacques Cœur on the preceding night, that the man would let him pass the wicket. He then told him, however, to go on to the house and inquire for the master of the pages.

      Jean Charost was not very well satisfied with this reply; for, to his mind, it seemed to indicate that the duke had made up his mind to place him among his pages, and had given orders accordingly. Now the position of a page in a great household was not very desirable in the eyes of Jean Charost; besides, he had passed the age, he thought, when such a post was appropriate. He had completed his seventeenth year, and looked much older than he really was.

      As he walked on, however, he heard a step behind him, and, looking round, saw a man following him. There was nothing very marvelous in this, and he proceeded on his way till he found himself in the vestibule before described, and asked, as he had been directed, for the master of the pages. The man to whom he addressed himself said, "I'll send you to him. You were here last night, were you not, young gentleman?"

      Jean Charost answered in the affirmative, and the man made a sign to the person who had followed the youth across the garden and had entered the vestibule with him. Immediately Jean felt his arm taken hold of, somewhat roughly, by the personage behind him, and, ere he well knew what was taking place, he was pulled into a small room on one side of the vestibule, and the door closed upon him. The room was already tenanted by three or four persons of different conditions. One seemed an old soldier, with a very white beard, and a scar across his brow; one was dressed as a mendicant friar; and one, by his round jacket, knee-breeches, and blue stockings, with broad-toed shoes and a little square cap, was evidently a mechanic. The old soldier was walking up and down the room with a very irritable air; the mendicant friar was telling his beads with great rapidity; the mechanic sat in a corner, twisting his thumbs round and round each other, and looking half stupefied. The scene did not explain itself at all, and Jean stood for a moment or two, not at all comprehending why he was brought there, or what was to happen next.

      "By Saint Hubert, this is too bad!" exclaimed the old soldier, at length; and approaching the door, he tried to open it, but it was locked.

      "Pray, what is the matter?" asked Jean Charost, simply.

      "Why, don't you know?" exclaimed the old man. "On my life, I believe the duke is as mad as his brother."

      "The fact is, my son," said the friar, "some offense was committed here last night, a robbery or a murder; and the duke has given orders that every body who was at the house after the hour of seven should be detained till the matter is investigated."

      "He does not suppose I committed a murder!" exclaimed the old soldier, in a tone of great indignation.

      "I can't tell that," replied the friar, with a quiet smile; "gentlemen of your profession sometimes do."

      "I never murdered any body in my life," whined the mechanic.

      "Happy for you," said the friar; "and happier still if you get people to believe you."

      He then addressed himself to his beads again, and for nearly an hour all was silence in the room, except the low muttering of the friar's paters and aves. But the gay hopes of Jean Charost sunk a good deal under the influence of delay and uncertainty, although, of course, he felt nothing like alarm at the situation in which he was placed. At length a man in a black gown and a square black cap was introduced, struggling, it is true, and saying to those who pushed him in, "Mark, I resist! it is not with my own consent. This incarceration is illegal. The duke is not a lord high justiciary on this ground; and for every minute I will have my damages, if there be honesty in the sovereign courts, and justice in France."

      The door was closed upon him, however, unceremoniously; for the servants of great men in those days were not very much accustomed to attend to punctilios of law; and the advocate, for so he seemed, turned to his fellow-prisoners, and told them in indignant terms how he had been engaged to defend the steward of the prince in a little piece of scandal that had arisen in the Marais; how he had visited him to consult the night before, and had been seized on his return that day, and thrust in there upon a pretense that would not bear an argument.

      "I thought," said the old soldier, bitterly, "that you men of the robe would make any thing bear an argument. I know you argued me out of all my fortune among you."

      The little petulant man of law had not time to reply, when the door was opened, and the whole party were marched into the presence of the Duke of Orleans, under the escort of half a dozen men-at-arms.

      The duke was seated in the little hall where Jean Charost had seen him on the preceding night, with his hair rough and disheveled, and his apparel neglected. His eyes were fixed upon the table before him, and he only raised them once or twice during the scene that followed; but a venerable-looking man who sat beside him, and who was, in fact, one of the judges of the Châtelet, kept his eyes fixed upon the little party which now entered with one of those cold, fixed, but piercing looks that seem to search the heart by less guarded avenues than the lips.

      "Ah, Maître Pierrot le Brun," he said, looking at the advocate, "I will deal with you, brother, first. Pray what was it brought you hither last night, and again this morning?"

      The advocate replied, but in a tone greatly subdued, as compared with that which he had used in the company of his fellow-prisoners. His case was soon proved, and he was suffered to depart, offering somewhat humiliating thanks for his speedy dismissal.

      The old soldier, however, maintained his surly tone, and when asked what brought him thither the night before and again that day, replied boldly, "I came to see if the Duke of Orleans would do something for a man-at-arms of Charles the Fifth. I fought for his father, and was one half ruined by my services to my king, the other half by such men as the СКАЧАТЬ