The Chaplet of Pearls

'Is that Scripture?' asked Eustacie. 'Ah! sir, sir, tell me more! You are giving me all-all-my child! I will be-I am-a Huguenot like her father! and, when my vassals come, I will make them ride with you to La Rochelle, and fight in your cause!'

'Nay,' said Maitre Gardon, taken by surprise; 'but, Lady, your vassals are Catholic.'

'What matters it? In my cause they shall fight!' said the feudal Lady, 'for me and my daughter!'

And as the pastor uttered a sound of interrogative astonishment, she continued-

'As soon as I am well enough, Blaise will send out messages, and they will meet me at midnight at the cross- roads, Martin and all, for dear good Martin is quite well now, and we shall ride across country, avoiding towns, wherever I choose to lead them. I had thought of Chantilly, for I know M. de Montmorency would stand my friend against a Guisard; but now, now I know you, sir, let me escort you to La Rochelle, and do your cause service worthy of Nid de Merle and Ribaumont!' And as she sat up on her bed, she held up her little proud head, and waved her right hand with the grace and dignity of a queen offering an alliance of her realm.

Maitre Gardon, who had hitherto seen her as a childish though cheerful and patient sufferer, was greatly amazed, but he could not regard her project as practicable, or in his conscience approve it; and after a moment's consideration he answered, 'I am a man of peace, Lady, and seldom side with armed men, nor would I lightly make one of those who enroll themselves against the King.'

'Not after all the Queen-mother had done!' cried Eustacie.

'Martyrdom is better than rebellion,' quietly answered the old man, folding his hands. Then he added 'Far be it from me to blame those who have drawn the sword for the faith; yet, Lady, it would not be even thus with your peasants; they might not follow you.'

'Then,' said Eustacie, with flashing eyes, 'they would be traitors.'

'Not to the King,' said the pastor, gently. 'Also, Lady, how will it be with their homes and families-the hearths that have given you such faithful shelter?'

'The women would take to the woods,' readily answered she; 'it is summer-time, and they should be willing to bear something for my sake. I should grieve indeed,' she added, 'if my uncle misused them. They have been very good to me, but then they belong to me.'

'Ah! Lady, put from you that hardening belief of seigneurs. Think what their fidelity deserves from their Lady.'

'I will be good to them! I do love them! I will be their very good mistress,' said Eustacie, her eyes filling.

'The question is rather of forbearing than of doing,' said the minister.

'But what would you have me do?' asked Eustacie, petulantly.

'This, Lady. I gather that you would not return to your relations.'

'Never! never! They would rend my babe from me; they would kill her, or at least hide her for ever in a convent-they would force me into this abhorrent marriage. No-no-no-my child and I would die a hundred deaths together rather than fall into the hands of Narcisse.'

'Calm yourself, Lady; there is no present fear, but I deem that the safest course for the little one would be to place her in England. She must be heiress to lands and estates there; is she not?'

'Yes; and in Normandy.'

'And your husband's mother lives? Wherefore then should you not take me for your guide, and make your way-more secretly than would be possible with a peasant escort-to one of your Huguenot towns on the coast, whence you could escape with the child to England?'

'My belle-mere has re-married! She has children! I would not bring the daughter of Ribaumont as a suppliant to be scorned!' said Eustacie, pouting. 'She has lands enough of her own.'

'There is no need to discuss the question now,' said M. Gardon, gravely; for a most kind offer, involving much peril and inconvenience to himself, was thus petulantly flouted. 'Madame will think at her leisure of what would have been the wishes of Monsieur le Baron for his child.'

He then held himself aloof, knowing that it was not well for her health, mental or bodily, to talk any more, and a good deal perplexed himself by the moods of his strange little impetuous convert, if convert she could be termed. He himself was a deeply learned scholar, who had studied all the bearings of the controversy; and, though bound to the French Reformers who would gladly have come to terms with the Catholics at the Conference of Plassy, and regretted the more decided Calvinism that his party had since professed, and in which the Day of St. Bartholomew confirmed them. He had a strong sense of the grievous losses they suffered by their disunion from the Church. The Reformed were less and less what his ardent youthful hopes had trusted to see them; and in his old age he was a sorrow-stricken man, as much for the cause of religion as for personal bereavements. He had little desire to win proselytes, but rather laid his hand to build up true religion where he found it suffering shocks in these unsettled, neglected times; and his present wish was rather to form and guide this little wilful warm-hearted mother-whom he could not help regarding with as much affection as pity-to find a home in the Church that had been her husband's, than to gain her to his own party. And most assuredly he would never let her involve herself, as she was ready to do, in the civil war, without even knowing the doctrine which grave and earnest men had preferred to their loyalty.

He could hear her murmuring to her baby, 'No, no, little one, we are not fallen so low as to beg our bread among strangers.' To live upon her own vassals had seemed to her only claiming her just rights, but it galled her to think of being beholden to stranger Huguenots; and England and her mother-in-law, without Berenger, were utterly foreign and distasteful to her.

Her mood was variable. Messages from Blaise and Martin came and went, and it became known that her intended shelter at Chollet, together with all the adjacent houses, had been closely searched by the younger Ribaumont in conjunction with the governor; so that it was plain that some treachery must exist, and that she only owed her present freedom to her detention in the ruined temple; and it would be necessary to leave that as soon as it was possible for her to attempt the journey.

The plan that seemed most feasible to the vassals was, that Rotrou should convey her in a cart of fagots as far as possible on the road to Paris; that there his men should meet her by different roads, riding their farm-horses-and Martin even hoped to be able to convey her own palfrey to her from the monastery stable, and thence, taking a long stretch across country, they trusted to be able to reach the lands of a dependant of the house of Montmorency, who would not readily yield her up to a Guise's man. But, whether instigated by Perrine, or by their own judgment, the vassals declared that, though Madame should be conducted wherever she desired, it was impossible to encumber themselves with the infant. Concealment would be impossible; rough, hasty rides would be retarded, her difficulties would be tenfold increased, and the little one would become a means of tracing her. There was no choice but to leave it with Simonette.

Angrily and haughtily did Eustacie always reject this alternative, and send fresh commands back by her messenger, to meet the same reply in another form. The strong will and practical resolution of the stout farmers, who were about to make a terrible venture for her, and might reasonably think they had a right to prescribe the terms that they thought best. All this time Maitre Gardon felt it impossible to leave her, still weak and convalescent, alone in the desolate ruin with her young child; though still her pride would not bend again to seek the counsel that she had so much detested, nor to ask for the instruction that was to make her 'believe like her husband.' If she might not fight for the Reformed, it seemed as if she would none of their doctrine!

But, true lady that she was, she sunk the differences in her intercourse with him. She was always prettily and affectionately grateful for every service that he rendered her, and as graciously polite as though she had been keeping house in the halls of Ribaumont. Then her intense love for her child was so beautiful, and there was so much sweetness in the cheerful patience with which she endured the many hardships of her situation, that he could not help being strongly interested in the wilful, spirited little being.

And thus time passed, until one night, when Martin ventured over the farm with a report so serious that Rotrou, at all risks, brought him up to communicate his own tidings. Some one had given information, Veronique he suspected, and the two Chevaliers were certainly coming the next day to search with fire the old buildings of the temple. It was already dawning towards morning, and it would be impossible to do more at present than to let Rotrou build up the lady in a vault, some little way off, whence, after the search was over, she could be released, and join her vassals the next night according to the original design. As to the child, her presence in the vault was impossible, and Martin had actually brought her intended nurse, Simonette, to Rotrou's cottage to receive her.

'Never!' was all Eustacie answered. 'Save both of us, or neither.'

'Lady,' said M. Gardon as she looked towards him, 'I go my way with my staff.'