CHAPTER II
AT THE GATE OF THE CHÂTEAU.
Pepin rubbed his ear ruefully, and sat looking at the bushes wherein the priest had disappeared.
"Dog of a Jesuit," he muttered, "if you had stayed"
He made an ugly grimace with the words, and finished what wine there was in the skin. Then, remembering that the others had now ridden out of hearing, he set spurs to his mule and galloped after them.
"So the priest boxed your ears?" said de Guyon, surveying him with some amusement.
"Parbleu! Excellency, he did but give me his benediction."
"I wish he had knocked some sense into your head."
"Would you cry 'A miracle!' mon maître?"
"I would cry anything you please if it would set me on the road again. I thought you knew every path in the forest. You told me so when I engaged you at the Barrière d'Enfer. "
"Aye, and that is so, sir. Every path I know, and yet which path is which, the devil take me if I can say. Look yonder now; there is a grove of yoke-elms with a wood of pines beyond it, and a brook hollow betwixt and between. I could name a hundred such within ten leagues from the Table du Roi. Oh, truly, mon maître, I know the forest as a horse knows the stable."
De Guyon, whose beast stumbled often upon the sandy track, and whose patience was fast ebbing, answered him with a fresh objurgation—long and lasting. It was now near to being full dark, and but for the light of the moonbeams, which fell soft upon copse and thicket and seemed to cast a snowy mantle—so white it was—upon every leaf and bush, the way would have been impossible. Yet the scene was one of exceeding beauty. The shiver of the aspen, the ripple of brook or stream, the long-drawn note of a night bird intensified the dreamy silence of the forest. Here and there when a horse forced his way through the bramble with a snap of twigs and a rustle of boughs, a wolf sprang out of his cover and raced across the sward. The shimmer of the light in many a glade showed stags browsing, or wild ponies herding. But of habitation there was no sign, nor of man.
The little troop must have left the priest twenty minutes before de Guyon resumed his conversation with the rogue who had led him on such a fool's errand. The stillness of the forest and the spell of the night, wedded to his fatigue, had quelled the words upon his lips, and compelled him to remember upon what emprise he was embarked. He began to wonder by what manner of cunning and tale he should lead "the little Huguenot," Gabrielle de Vernet, from her nest in the forest to the intrigues and dangers of the palace. He asked himself if all the stories of her wit and beauty were the mere fancies of her friends, or pretty realities which he must know and cope with. He remembered that he had met her once at Paris in the house of her cousin Claude Vernet, the painter; but that was two years ago, immediately after the death of her husband, Comte de Vernet, the uncompromising foe to the Catholic faith, and before she withdrew to the château to put into practice a creed built on the confession of the Savoyard Vicar, added to a certain orthodoxy which satisfied her fat kinsman, the Abbé Gondy, who regarded her possessions With the eyes of a father and a devout son of the Holy Church. The lieutenant could recall nothing of her features; he knew nothing of her life but such facts as were told in the gossip of the ramparts and the salon. Nor did he hold it possible that she would offer any objection to accompany him to the palace—there to set her views and opinions before his Majesty. Her views and opinions! What a play it was! And how the king would listen to the creed of such a piquant disciple! What a task the conversion would be. He began even to wonder who would marry her when the royal ears were weary of her platitudes, and the spell of debauchery had chilled her zeal.
With such thoughts for company, he rode on in silence. They had now come out upon park-like land, where great oaks cast black rings of shade; and a lake, harbouring many wild-fowl, shone like a mirror of silver. There was a great wood, black and seemingly impenetrable, upon the far shore of the lake, and when de Guyon observed this, he drew rein and surveyed his environment.
"Well, rogue," said he to Pepin, "where have you brought us now?"
"By the blood of John, that's what I begin to ask myself."
De Guyon looked at him for a moment with withering contempt in his glance.
"Unspeakable fool," said he, "I have the mind to box your ears as the priest did."
"Aye, that would be something; but look you, my master, a boxed ear will never make a full belly; and I have heard it said that patience is the father of plenty. There's fine ground for a bivouac here, if your Excellency commands. Lord, that I should bring you to bed of a fast!"
He sat scratching his head dolefully while the weary horses began to nibble at the grass and the men to mutter among themselves. Scarce, however, had de Guyon decided that, full or fasting, he could go no further, when the silence was broken of a sudden by the barking of dogs; a very babel of sound arising up, as it were, from the heart of the obstructing wood. Then lights appeared between the trees, and the voices of men were heard.
"Oh, glory be to God for the path that I have followed!" said Pepin, recovering from his momentary bewilderment. "Yonder, my master, is the Château aux Loups."
"It lies in the thicket, then?"
"Aye, as close surrounded with trees as a fine woman with petticoats. You could no more come up to it without guide than fly to heaven with half a paternoster. Blessed be the holy patron that hath brought me!"
But de Guyon no longer paid heed to him.
"Wind a blast on the horn," said he.
The sleeping forest echoed the music of the note, and the little troop rode on.