Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 it was opened, two soldiers appeared upon the threshold, stationed to prevent all egress of the inhabitants; and one of them, placing his arquebuse across the door-stall, cried, in a rude voice —

      "On ne passe pas."

      The two women drew back in alarm.

      CHAPTER IV

      "Sweet Isabel, take my part;

      Lend me your knees, and all my life to come

      I'll lend you all my life to do you service."

Shakspeare.

      "Your suit's unprofitable; stand up, I say."

Idem.

      Again the scene changes to the palace of the Louvre, where so many dark intrigues surrounded the rich chamber of the dying king; where, instead of the sympathy of friends, and the tears of relations, jarring ambition, and rivalry, and hatred, between brethren and kindred, between mother and children, escorted him on his passage to the tomb, and darkened the last hours of his reign. Such might have been supposed by a moralist to be the punishment, inflicted, even upon this earth, on him, who, if he did not instigate, ordained and prosecuted the horrible massacre of St Bartholomew.

      The state of the miserable Charles grew hourly worse, and he rapidly approached his last moments. None knew better than his heartless mother, as she had herself admitted, that he must die; but yet, with so much artifice and intrigue did she envelope in mystery his lost condition, that, even in the Palace of the Louvre, his own nearest relations were ignorant how near approached the hour, which, by leaving the crown as heirloom to a successor far away in a distant country, opened a field to the ambitious designs of so many struggling parties in the state.

      Unconscious, as many others, of the rapid advance of that fatal event, sat in her chamber Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre, the sister of the dying king. Her beautiful head was reclined languidly against the tapestry of the wall, the dark colours of which formed an admirable background to that brilliant and bejewelled portrait. A lute, of the fashion of the day, lay upon her lap; music, dresses, scraps of poetry in her own handwriting, caskets with jewellery, manuscripts, and illuminated volumes, were littered in various parts of the room. A handsome spaniel slumbered at her feet; whilst two of her ladies sat on chests at a respectful distance, occupied in embroidery. A look of soft pensiveness pervaded the delicate and highly expressive features of the young Queen; but her thoughts were not bent, at that moment, either on her suffering brother, or on those ambitious views for her husband, which, spite of her little affection for him, she entertained, partly out of a sort of friendship for the man she esteemed, although her hand had been so unwillingly bestowed upon him; partly out of that innate ambition and love of intrigue, which formed, more or less one ingredient in the character of all the children of the crafty Catherine de Medicis. No! they rambled unrestrained upon the souvenir of an object of woman's preference and princess's caprice, who for some time past had no more crossed her path. It was on that account her brow was clouded, and that a trait of sadness shaded her smiling mouth.

      As she still lay thus languidly, one of the ladies was called by an officer from the room, and shortly returned to announce that there was a young girl without, who besought, with earnest supplication, to see her Majesty.

      Although astonished at this request, Margaret, eager for any subject of passing occupation that might enliven, even for a moment, an hour's ennui, desired that she might be admitted; and shortly after a simply dressed girl, whose sunken head could not conceal her exquisite beauty, was ushered in. Her step as ill-assured and trembling; her face was deadly pale.

      "What would you, maiden, with the Queen of Navarre?" said Margaret kindly. "How came you here?"

      The girl raised her head, but still struggled with her emotion before she could speak.

      "Ah! I remember me," pursued the princess with a smile. "You are the pretty Jocelyne, the fair grand-daughter of my brother Charles's favourite old nurse, Dame Perrotte; you are she of whom all our gallants spake with so much praise, to the great detriment and neglect of all our ladies of the court. Nay, blush not – or rather blush – blush, it becomes your pale face well, my dainty one. But I thought that you had left the court with Dame Perrotte, the sturdy Huguenot, ever since. Oh yes! I recall it all now," she continued, checking herself with a sort of shudder. "But what brings you hither? Speak. Have you any favour to ask that the Queen of Navarre can grant?"

      "I would speak with you, madam, and alone, upon a matter of urgency and importance," stammered Jocelyne.

      The thought, that as the fair girl before her belonged to a Huguenot family, she might have been used by the Calvinist party as a secret agent to convey her some intelligence connected with the various plots ripe at that СКАЧАТЬ