The Line of Love. Dizain des Mariages

'You speak like a very sensible girl,' said Sieur Raymond, complacently. 'However, so that he find her no Guinevere or Semiramis or other loose-minded trollop of history, I dare say Monsieur de Puysange will hold to his bargain with indifferent content. Look you, niece, he, also, is buying—though the saying is somewhat rustic—a pig in a poke.'

Matthiette glanced quickly toward the mirror which hung in her apartment. The glass reflected features which went to make up a beauty already be-sonneted in that part of France; and if her green gown was some months behind the last Italian fashion, it undeniably clad one who needed few adventitious aids. The Demoiselle Matthiette at seventeen was very tall, and was as yet too slender for perfection of form, but her honey-colored hair hung heavily about the unblemished oval of a countenance whose nose alone left something to be desired; for this feature, though well shaped, was unduly diminutive. For the rest, her mouth curved in an irreproachable bow, her complexion was mingled milk and roses, her blue eyes brooded in a provoking calm; taking matters by and large, the smile that followed her inspection of the mirror's depths was far from unwarranted. Catherine de Vaucelles reanimate, you would have sworn; and at the abbey of Saint Maixent-en-Poitou there was a pot-belly monk, a Brother Francois, who would have demonstrated it to you, in an unanswerable ballad, that Catherine's daughter was in consequence all that an empress should be and so rarely is. Harembourges and Bertha Broadfoot and white Queen Blanche would have been laughed to scorn, demolished and proven, in comparison (with a catalogue of very intimate personal detail), the squalidest sluts conceivable, by Brother Francois.

But Sieur Raymond merely chuckled wheezily, as one discovering a fault in his companion of which he disapproves in theory, but in practice finds flattering to his vanity.

'I grant you, Monsieur de Puysange drives a good bargain,' said Sieur Raymond. 'Were Cleopatra thus featured, the Roman lost the world very worthily. Yet, such is the fantastic disposition of man that I do not doubt the vicomte looks forward to the joys of to-morrow no whit more cheerfully than you do: for the lad is young, and, as rumor says, has been guilty of divers verses,—ay, he has bearded common-sense in the vext periods of many a wailing rhyme. I will wager a moderate amount, however, that the vicomte, like a sensible young man, keeps these whimsies of flames and dames laid away in lavender for festivals and the like; they are somewhat too fine for everyday wear.'

Sieur Raymond sipped the sugared wine which stood beside him. 'Like any sensible young man,' he repeated, in a meditative fashion that was half a query.

Matthiette stirred uneasily. 'Is love, then, nothing?' she murmured.

'Love!' Sieur Raymond barked like a kicked mastiff. 'It is very discreetly fabled that love was brought forth at Cythera by the ocean fogs. Thus, look you, even ballad-mongers admit it comes of a short-lived family, that fade as time wears on. I may have a passion for cloud-tatters, and, doubtless, the morning mists are beautiful; but if I give rein to my admiration, breakfast is likely to grow cold. I deduce that beauty, as represented by the sunrise, is less profitably considered than utility, as personified by the frying-pan. And love! A niece of mine prating of love!' The idea of such an occurrence, combined with a fit of coughing which now came upon him, drew tears to the Sieur d'Arnaye's eyes. 'Pardon me,' said he, when he had recovered his breath, 'if I speak somewhat brutally to maiden ears.'

Matthiette sighed. 'Indeed,' said she, 'you have spoken very brutally!' She rose from her seat, and went to the Sieur d'Arnaye. 'Dear uncle,' said she, with her arms about his neck, and with her soft cheek brushing his withered countenance, 'are you come to my apartments to-night to tell me that love is nothing—you who have shown me that even the roughest, most grizzled bear in all the world has a heart compact of love and tender as a woman's?'

The Sieur d'Arnaye snorted. 'Her mother all over again!' he complained; and then, recovering himself, shook his head with a hint of sadness.

He said: 'I have sighed to every eyebrow at court, and I tell you this moonshine is—moonshine pure and simple. Matthiette, I love you too dearly to deceive you in, at all events, this matter, and I have learned by hard knocks that we of gentle quality may not lightly follow our own inclinations. Happiness is a luxury which the great can very rarely afford. Granted that you have an aversion to this marriage. Yet consider this: Arnaye and Puysange united may sit snug and let the world wag; otherwise, lying here between the Breton and the Austrian, we are so many nuts in a door-crack, at the next wind's mercy. And yonder in the South, Orleans and Dunois are raising every devil in Hell's register! Ah, no, ma mie; I put it to you fairly is it of greater import that a girl have her callow heart's desire than that a province go free of Monsieur War and Madame Rapine?'

'Yes, but—' said Matthiette.

Sieur Raymond struck his hand upon the table with considerable heat. 'Everywhere Death yawps at the frontier; will you, a d'Arnaye, bid him enter and surfeit? An alliance with Puysange alone may save us. Eheu, it is, doubtless, pitiful that a maid may not wait and wed her chosen paladin, but our vassals demand these sacrifices. For example, do you think I wedded my late wife in any fervor of adoration? I had never seen her before our marriage day; yet we lived much as most couples do for some ten years afterward, thereby demonstrating—'

He smiled, evilly; Matthiette sighed.

'—Well, thereby demonstrating nothing new,' said Sieur Raymond. 'So do you remember that Pierre must have his bread and cheese; that the cows must calve undisturbed; that the pigs—you have not seen the sow I had to-day from Harfleur?—black as ebony and a snout like a rose-leaf!—must be stied in comfort: and that these things may not be, without an alliance with Puysange. Besides, dear niece, it is something to be the wife of a great lord.'

A certain excitement awoke in Matthiette's eyes. 'It must be very beautiful at Court,' said she, softly. 'Masques, fetes, tourneys every day;—and they say the new King is exceedingly gallant—'

Sieur Raymond caught her by the chin, and for a moment turned her face toward his. 'I warn you,' said he, 'you are a d'Arnaye; and King or not—'

He paused here. Through the open window came the voice of one singing to the demure accompaniment of a lute.

'Hey?' said the Sieur d'Arnaye.

Sang the voice:

'When you are very old, and I am gone, 
Not to return, it may be you will say— 
Hearing my name and holding me as one 
Long dead to you,—in some half-jesting way 
Of speech, sweet as vague heraldings of May 
Rumored in woods when first the throstles sing— 
'He loved me once.' And straightway murmuring 
My half-forgotten rhymes, you will regret 
Evanished times when I was wont to sing 
So very lightly, 'Love runs into debt.''

'Now, may I never sit among the saints,' said the Sieur d'Arnaye, 'if that is not the voice of Raoul de Prison, my new page.'

'Hush,' Matthiette whispered. 'He woos my maid, Alys. He often sings under the window, and I wink at it.'

Sang the voice:

'I shall not heed you then. My course being run 
For good or ill, I shall have gone my way, 
And know you, love, no longer,—nor the sun, 
Perchance, nor any light of earthly day, 
Nor any joy nor sorrow,—while at play