The Chaplet of Pearls by Charlotte M. Yonge (i am reading a book .txt) 📕

that cause, I would ask you to come to me again. It does me good. It is like a breath from Montpipeau—the last days of hope—before the frenzy—the misery.

‘Whenever your Majesty does me the honour—-’ began Berenger, forgetting all except the dying man.

‘I am not so senseless,’ interrupted the King sharply; ‘it would be losing the only chance of undoing one wrong. Only, Ribaumont,’ he added fervently, ‘for once let me hear that one man has pardoned me.

‘Sire, Sire,’ sobbed Berenger, totally overcome, ‘how can I speak the word? How feel aught but love, loyalty, gratitude?

Charles half smiled again as he said in sad meditation—‘Ah! it was in me to have been a good king if they had let me. Think of me, bid your friend Sidney think of me, as I would have been—not as I have been—and pray, pray for me.’ Then hiding his face in his handkerchief, in a paroxysm of grief and horror, he murmured in a stifled tone, ‘Blood, blood, deliver me, good Lord!

In effect, there was so sudden a gush of blood from mouth and nose that Berenger sprang to his feet in dismay, and was bona fide performing the part of assistant to the surgeon, when, at the Queen’s cry, not only the nurse Philippe hurried in, but with her a very dark, keen-looking man, who at once began applying strong essences to the King’s face, as Berenger supported his head. In a few moments Pare looked up at Berenger, and setting him free, intimated to him, between sign and whisper, to go into Philippe’s room and wait there; and it was high time, for though the youth had felt nothing in the stress of the moment, he was almost swooning when he reached the little chamber, and lay back in the nurse’s chair, with closed eyes, scarcely conscious how time went, or even where he was, till he was partly aroused by hearing steps returning.

‘The poor young man,’ said Philippe’s kind voice, ‘he is fainting. Ah! no wonder it overcame any kind heart.

‘How is the King?’ Berenger tried to say, but his own voice still sounded unnatural and far away.

‘He is better for the time, and will sleep,’ said Pare, administering to his other patient some cordial drops as he spoke. ‘There, sir; you will soon be able to return to the carriage. This has been a sore trial to your strength.

‘But I have gained all—all I could hope,’ said Berenger, looking at his precious papers. ‘But, alas! the poor King!

‘You will never, never let a word of blame pass against him,’ cried Philippe earnestly. ‘It is well that one of our people should have seen how it really is with him. All I regret is that Maitre Rene thrust himself in and saw you.

‘Who?’ said Berenger, who had been too much engrossed to perceive any one.

‘Maitre Rene of Milan, the Queen-mother’s perfume. He came with some plea of bringing a pouncet-box from her, but I wager it was as a spy. I was doing my best to walk him gently off, when the Queen’s cry called me, and he must needs come in after me.

‘I saw him not,’ said Berenger; ‘perhaps he marked not me in the confusion.

‘I fear,’ said Pare gravely, ‘he was more likely to have his senses about him than you. M. le Baron; these bleedings of the King’s are not so new to us familiars to the palace. The best thing now to be done is to have you to the carriage, if you can move.

Berenger, now quite recovered, stood up, and gave his warm thanks to the old nurse for her kindness to him.

‘Ah! sir,’ she said, ‘you are one of us. Pray, pray that God will have mercy on my poor child! He has the truth in his heart. Pray that it may save him at the last.

Ambroise, knowing that she would never cease speaking while there was any one to hear her, almost dragged Berenger out at the little secret door, conveyed him safely down the stairs, and placed him again in the carriage. Neither spoke till the surgeon said, ‘You have seen a sad sight, Monsieur le Baron: I need not bid you be discreet.

‘There are some things that go too deep for speech,’ sighed the almost English Berenger; then, after a pause, ‘Is there no hope for him? Is he indeed dying?

‘Without a miracle, he cannot live a month. He is as truly slain by the St. Bartholomew as ever its martyrs were,’ said Pare, moved out of his usual cautious reserve towards one who had seen so much and felt so truly. ‘I tell you, sir, that his mother hath as truly slain her sons, as if she had sent Rene there to them with his drugs. According as they have consciences and hearts, so they pine and perish under her rule.

Berenger shuddered, and almost sobbed, ‘And hath he no better hope, no comforter?’ he asked.

‘None save good old Flipote. As you heard, the Queen-mother will not suffer his own Church to speak to him in her true voice. No confessor but one chosen by the Cardinal of Lorraine may come near him; and with him all is mere ceremony. But if at the last he opens his ear and heart to take in the true hope of salvation, it will be from the voice of poor old Philippe.

And so it was! It was Philippe, who heard him in the night sobbing over the piteous words, ‘My God, what horrors, what blood!’ and, as she took from his tear-drenched handkerchief, spoke to him of the Blood that speakth better things than the blood of Abel; and it was she who, in the final agony, heard and treasured these last words, ‘If the Lord Jesus will indeed receive me into the company of the blest!’ Surely, never was repentance deeper than that of Charles IX.—and these, his parting words, were such as to inspire the trust that it was not remorse.

All-important as Berenger’s expedition had been, he still could think of little but the poor King; and, wearied out as he was, he made very little reply to the astonished friends who gathered round him on his return. He merely told Philip that he had succeeded, and then lay almost without speaking on his bed till the Ambassador made his evening visit, when he showed him the two papers. Sir Francis could hardly believe his good fortune in having obtained this full attestation of the marriage, and promised to send to the English Ambassador in Germany, to obtain the like from Father Meinhard. The document itself he advised Berenger not to expose to the dangers of the French journey, but to leave it with him to be forwarded direct to Lord Walwyn. It was most important, both as obviating any dispute on the legitimacy of the child, if she lived; or, if not, it would establish those rights of Berenger to the Nid de Merle estates, of which he had heard from the King. This information explained what were the claims that the Chevalier was so anxious to hush up by a marriage with Madame de Selinville. Berenger, as his wife’s heir, was by this contract the true owner of the estates seized by the Chevalier and his son, and could only be ousted, either by his enemies proving his contract to Eustacie invalid and to be unfulfilled, or by his own voluntary resignation. The whole scheme was clear to Walsingham, and he wasted advice