A Gentleman of France: Being the Memoirs of Gaston de Bonne Sieur de Marsac by - (best love novels of all time .txt) 📕

darkness, and uncertain, perhaps, of the position of the door; but in a little while I heard him move forward again, my mother’s fragile form, clasped as it was in my embrace, quivering with each step he took, as though his weight stirred the house. He tapped at the door.

I had thought, while I listened and wondered, of more than one whom this might be: the leech, Simon Fleix, Madame Bruhl, Fresnoy even. But as the tap came, and I felt my mother tremble in my arms, enlightenment came with it, and I pondered no more, I knew as well as if she hail spoken and told me. There could be only one man whose presence had such power to terrify her, only one whose mere step, sounding through the veil, could drag her back to consciousness and fear! And that was the man who had beggared her, who had traded so long on her terrors.

I moved a little, intending to cross the floor softly, that when he opened the door he might find me face to face with him; but she detected the movement, and, love giving her strength, she clung to my wrist so fiercely that I had not the heart, knowing how slender was her hold on life and how near the brink she stood, to break from her. I constrained myself to stand still, though every muscle grew tense as a drawn bowstring, and I felt the strong rage rising in my throat and choking me as I waited for him to enter.

A log on the hearth gave way with a dull sound startling in the silence. The man tapped again, and getting no answer, for neither of us spoke, pushed the door slowly open, uttering before he showed himself the words, ‘Dieu vous benisse!’ in a voice so low and smooth I shuddered at the sound. The next moment he came in and saw me, and, starting, stood at gaze, his head thrust slightly forward, his shoulders bent, his hand still on the latch, amazement and frowning spite in turn distorting his lean face. He had looked to find a weak, defenceless woman, whom he could torture and rob at his will; he saw instead a strong man armed, whose righteous anger he must have been blind indeed had he failed to read.

Strangest thing of all, we had met before! I knew him at once—he me. He was the same Jacobin monk whom I had seen at the inn on the Claine, and who had told me the news of Guise’s death!

I uttered an exclamation of surprise on making this discovery, and my mother, freed suddenly, as it seemed, from the spell of fear, which had given her unnatural strength, sank back on the bed. Her grasp relaxed, and her breath came and went with so loud a rattle that I removed my gaze from him, and bent over her, full of concern and solicitude. Our eyes met. She tried to speak, and at last gasped, ‘Not now, Gaston! Let him—let him—’

Her lips framed the word ‘go,’ but she could not give it sound. I understood, however, and in impotent wrath I waved my hand to him to begone. When I looked up he had already obeyed me. He had seized the first opportunity to escape. The door was closed, the lamp burned steadily, and we were alone.

I gave her a little Armagnac, which stood beside the bed for such an occasion, and she revived, and presently opened her eyes. But I saw at once a great change in her. The look of fear had passed altogether from her face, and one of sorrow, yet content, had taken its place. She laid her hand in mine, and looked up at me, being too weak, as I thought, to speak. But by-and-by, when the strong spirit had done its work, she signed to me to lower my head to her mouth.

‘The King of Navarre,’ she murmured-you are sure, Gaston—he will retain you is your—employments?’

Her pleading eyes were so close to mine, I felt no scruples such as some might have felt, seeing her so near death; but I answered firmly and cheerfully, ‘Madame, I am assured of it. There is no prince in Europe so trustworthy or so good to his servants.’

She sighed with infinite content, and blessed him in a feeble whisper. ‘And if you live,’ she went on, ‘you will rebuild the old house, Gaston. The walls are sound yet. And the oak in the hall was not burned. There is a chest of linen at Gil’s, and a chest with your father’s gold lace—but that is pledged,’ she added dreamily. ‘I forgot.’

‘Madame,’ I answered solemnly, ‘it shall be done—it shall be done as you wish, if the power lie with me.’

She lay for some time after that murmuring prayers, her head supported on my shoulder. I longed impatiently for the nurse to return, that I might despatch her for the leech; not that I thought anything could be done, but for my own comfort and greater satisfaction afterwards, and that my mother might not die without some fitting attendance. The house remained quiet, however, with that impressive quietness which sobers the heart at such times, and I could not do this. And about six o’clock my mother opened her eyes again.

‘This is not Marsac,’ she murmured abruptly, her eyes roving from the ceiling to the wall at the foot of the bed.

No, Madame,’ I answered, leaning over her, ‘you are in Blois. But I am here—Gaston, your son.’

She looked at me, a faint smile of pleasure stealing over her pinched face. ‘Twelve thousand livres a year,’ she whispered, rather to herself than to me, ‘and an establishment, reduced a little, yet creditable, very creditable.’ For a moment she seemed to be dying in my arms, but again opened her eyes quickly and looked me in the face. ‘Gaston?’ she said, suddenly and strangely. ‘Who said Gaston? He is with the King—I have blessed him; and his days shall be long in the land!’ Then, raising herself in my arms with a last effort of strength, she cried loudly, ‘Way there! Way for my son, the Sieur de Marsac!’

They were her last words. When I laid her down on the bed a moment later, she was dead, and I was alone.

Madame de Bonne, my mother, was seventy at the time of her death, having survived my father eighteen years. She was Marie de Loche de Loheac, third daughter of Raoul, Sieur de Loheac, on the Vilaine, and by her great-grandmother, a daughter of Jean de Laval, was descended from the ducal family of Rohan, a relationship which in after-times, and under greatly altered circumstances, Henry Duke of Rohan condescended to acknowledge, honouring me with his friendship on more occasions than one. Her death, which I have here recorded, took place on the fourth of January, the Queen-Mother of France, Catherine de Medicis, dying a little after noon on the following day.

In Blois, as in every other town, even Paris itself, the Huguenots possessed at this time a powerful organisation; and with the aid of the surgeon, who showed me much respect in my bereavement, and exercised in my behalf all the influence which skilful and honest; men of his craft invariably possess, I was able to arrange for my mother’s burial in a private ground about a league beyond the walls and near the village of Chaverny. At the time of her death I had only thirty crowns in gold remaining, Simon Fleix, to whose fate I could obtain no clue, having carried off thirty-five with the horses. The whole of this residue, however, with the exception of a handsome gratuity to the nurse and a