Quentin Durward by Walter Scott (good romance books to read TXT) 📖

France and Burgundy, and that, unwilling to deliver them up to my fair cousin of Burgundy, I am desirous they should secretly depart from my dominions.”

“They will demand to be conveyed to England,” said Oliver “and we shall have her return to Flanders with an island lord, having a round, fair face, long brown hair, and three thousand archers at his back.”

“No—no,” replied the king; “we dare not (you understand me) so far offend our fair cousin of Burgundy as to let her pass to England. It would bring his displeasure as certainly as our maintaining her here. No, no—to the safety of the Church alone we will venture to commit her; and the utmost we can do is to connive at the Ladies Hameline and Isabelle de Croye departing in disguise, and with a small retinue, to take refuge with the Bishop of Liege, who will place the fair Isabelle for the time under the safeguard of a convent.”

“And if that convent protect her from William de la Marck, when he knows of your Majesty's favourable intentions, I have mistaken the man.”

“Why, yes,” answered the King, “thanks to our secret supplies of money, De la Marck hath together a handsome handful of as unscrupulous soldiery as ever were outlawed; with which he contrives to maintain himself among the woods, in such a condition as makes him formidable both to the Duke of Burgundy and the Bishop of Liege. He lacks nothing but some territory which he may call his own; and this being so fair an opportunity to establish himself by marriage, I think that, Pasques dieu! he will find means to win and wed, without more than a hint on our part. The Duke of Burgundy will then have such a thorn in his side as no lancet of our time will easily cut out from his flesh. The Boar of Ardennes, whom he has already outlawed, strengthened by the possession of that fair lady's lands, castles, and seigniory, with the discontented Liegeois to boot, who, by may faith, will not be in that case unwilling to choose him for their captain and leader—let Charles then think of wars with France when he will, or rather let him bless his stars if she war not with him.—How dost thou like the scheme, Oliver, ha?”

“Rarely,” said Oliver, “save and except the doom which confers that lady on the Wild Boar of Ardennes.—By my halidome, saving in a little outward show of gallantry, Tristan, the Provost Marshal, were the more proper bridegroom of the two.”

“Anon thou didst propose Master Oliver the barber,” said Louis; “but friend Oliver and gossip Tristan, though excellent men in the way of counsel and execution, are not the stuff that men make counts of.—Know you not that the burghers of Flanders value birth in other men precisely because they have it not themselves?—A plebeian mob ever desire an aristocratic leader. Yonder Ked, or Cade, or—how called they him?—in England, was fain to lure his rascal rout after him by pretending to the blood of the Mortimers [Jack Cade was the leader of Cade's Rebellion. Calling himself Mortimer, and claiming to be a cousin of Richard, Duke of York, in 1450, at the head of twenty thousand men, he took formal possession of London. His alleged object was to procure representation for the people, and so reduce excessive taxation.]. William de la Marck comes of the blood of the Princes of Sedan, as noble as mine own.—And now to business. I must determine the ladies of Croye to a speedy and secret flight, under sure guidance. This will be easily done—we have but to hint the alternative of surrendering them to Burgundy. Thou must find means to let William de la Marck know of their motions, and let him choose his own time and place to push his suit. I know a fit person to travel with them.”

“May I ask to whom your Majesty commits such an important charge?” asked the tonsor.

“To a foreigner, be sure,” replied the King, “one who has neither kin nor interest in France, to interfere with the execution of my pleasure; and who knows too little of the country and its factions, to suspect more of my purpose than I choose to tell him—in a word, I design to employ the young Scot who sent you hither but now.”

Oliver paused in a manner which seemed to imply a doubt of the prudence of the choice, and then added, “Your Majesty has reposed confidence in that stranger boy earlier than is your wont.”

“I have my reasons,” answered the King. “Thou knowest” (and he crossed himself) “my devotion for the blessed Saint Julian. I had been saying my orisons to that holy Saint late in the night before last, wherein (as he is known to be the guardian of travellers) I made it my humble petition that he would augment my household with such wandering foreigners as might best establish throughout our kingdom unlimited devotion to our will; and I vowed to the good Saint in guerdon, that I would, in his name, receive, and relieve; and maintain them.”

“And did Saint Julian,” said Oliver, “send your Majesty this long legged importation from Scotland in answer to your prayers?”

Although the barber, who well knew that his master had superstition in a large proportion to his want of religion, and that on such topics nothing was more easy than to offend him—although, I say, he knew the royal weakness, and therefore carefully put the preceding question in the softest and most simple tone of voice, Louis felt the innuendo which it contained, and regarded the speaker with high displeasure.

“Sirrah,” he said, “thou art well called Oliver the Devil, who darest thus to sport at once with thy master and with the blessed Saints. I tell thee, wert thou one grain less necessary to me, I would have thee hung up on yonder oak before the Castle, as an example to all who scoff at things holy—Know, thou infidel slave, that mine eyes were no sooner closed; than the blessed Saint Julian was visible to me, leading a young man whom he presented to me, saying that his fortune should be to escape the sword, the cord, the river, and to bring good fortune to the side which he should espouse, and to the adventures in which he should be engaged. I walked out on the succeeding morning and I met with this youth, whose image I had seen in my dream. In his own country he hath escaped the sword, amid the massacre of his whole family, and here within the brief compass of two days, he hath been strangely rescued from drowning and from the gallows, and hath already, on a particular occasion, as I but lately hinted to thee, been of the most material service to me. I receive him as sent hither by Saint Julian to serve me in the most difficult, the most dangerous, and even the most desperate services.”

The King, as he thus expressed himself, doffed his hat, and selecting from the numerous little leaden figures with which the hat band was garnished that which represented Saint Julian, he placed it on the table, as was often his wont when some peculiar feeling of hope, or perhaps of remorse, happened to thrill across his mind, and, kneeling down before it, muttered, with an appearance of profound devotion, “Sancte Juliane, adsis precibus nostris! Ora, ora, pro nobis! [St. Julian, give heed to our prayers. Plead, plead for us!]”

This was one of those ague fits of superstitious devotion which often seized on Louis in such extraordinary times and places, that they gave one of the most sagacious monarchs who ever reigned the appearance of a madman, or at least of one whose mind was shaken by some deep consciousness of guilt.

While he was thus employed, his favourite looked at him with an expression of sarcastic contempt which he scarce attempted to disguise. Indeed, it was one of this man's peculiarities, that in his whole intercourse with his master, he laid aside that fondling, purring affectation of officiousness and humility which distinguished his conduct to others; and if he still bore some resemblance to a cat, it was when the animal is on its guard,—watchful, animated, and alert for sudden exertion. The cause of this change was probably Oliver's consciousness that his Master was himself too profound a hypocrite not to see through the hypocrisy of others.

“The features of this youth, then, if I may presume to speak,” said Oliver, “resemble those of him whom your dream exhibited?”

“Closely and intimately,” said the King, whose imagination, like that of superstitious people in general, readily imposed upon itself. “I have had his horoscope cast, besides, by Galeotti Martivalle, and I have plainly learned, through his art and mine own observation, that, in many respects, this unfriended youth has his destiny under the same constellation with mine.”

Whatever Oliver might think of the causes thus boldly assigned for the preference of an inexperienced stripling, he dared make no farther objections, well knowing that Louis, who, while residing in exile, had bestowed much of his attention on the supposed science of judicial astrology, would listen to no raillery of any kind which impeached his skill. He therefore only replied that he trusted the youth would prove faithful in the discharge of a task so delicate.

“We will take care he hath no opportunity to be otherwise,” said Louis; “for he shall be privy to nothing, save that he is sent to escort the Ladies of Croye to the residence of the Bishop of Liege. Of the probable interference of William de la Marck he shall know as little as they themselves. None shall know that secret but the guide; and Tristan or thou must find one fit for our purpose.”

“But in that case,” said Oliver, “judging of him from his country and his appearance, the young man is like to stand to his arms as soon as the Wild Boar comes on them, and may not come off so easily from the tusks as he did this morning.”

“If they rend his heart strings,” said Louis, composedly, “Saint Julian, blessed be his name! can send me another in his stead. It skills as little that the messenger is slain after his duty is executed, as that the flask is broken when the wine is drunk out.—Meanwhile, we must expedite the ladies' departure, and then persuade the Count de Crevecoeur that it has taken place without our connivance; we having been desirous to restore them to the custody of our fair cousin, which their sudden departure has unhappily prevented.”

“The Count is perhaps too wise, and his master too prejudiced, to believe it.”

“Holy Mother!” said Louis, “what unbelief would that be in Christian men! But, Oliver, they shall believe us. We will throw into our whole conduct towards our fair cousin, Duke Charles, such thorough and unlimited confidence, that, not to believe we have been sincere with him in every respect, he must be worse than an infidel. I tell thee, so convinced am I that I could make Charles of Burgundy think of me in every respect as I would have him, that, were it necessary for silencing his doubts, I would ride unarmed, and on a palfrey, to visit him in his tent, with no better guard about me than thine own simple person, friend Oliver.”

“And I,” said Oliver, “though I pique not myself upon managing steel in any other shape than that of a razor, would rather charge a Swiss battalion of pikes, than I would accompany your Highness upon such a visit of friendship to Charles of Burgundy, when he hath so many grounds to be well assured that there is enmity in your Majesty's bosom against him.”

“Thou art a fool, Oliver,” said the King, “with all thy pretensions to wisdom—and art not aware that deep policy must often assume the appearance of the most extreme simplicity, as courage occasionally shrouds itself under the show of modest timidity. Were it needful, full surely would I do what I have said—the Saints always blessing our purpose, and the heavenly constellations bringing round in their course a proper conjuncture for such an exploit.”

In these words did King Louis XI give the first hint of the extraordinary resolution which he afterwards adopted in order to dupe his great rival, the subsequent execution of which had very nearly proved his own ruin.

He parted with his counsellor, and presently afterwards went to the apartment of the Ladies of Croye. Few persuasions beyond his mere license would have been necessary to determine their retreat from the Court of France, upon the first hint that they might not be eventually protected against the Duke of Burgundy; but it was