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

The cream tarts with pepper in them.—ARABIAN NIGHTS.

Hope, spring, and recovery carried the young Baronde Ribaumont on his journey infinitely better than his companions had dared to expect. He dreaded nothing so much as being overtaken by those tidings which would make King Charles’s order mere waste paper; and therefore pressed on with little regard to his own fatigue, although happily with increasing strength, which carried him a further stage every day.

Lucon was a closely-guarded, thoroughly Catholic city, and his safe-conduct was jealously demanded; but the name of Ribaumont silenced all doubt. ‘A relation, apparently, of M. de Nid de Merle,’ said the officer on guard, and politely invited him to dinner and bed at the castle; but these he thought it prudent to decline, explaining that he brought a letter from the King to the Mother Prioress.

The convent walls were pointed out to him, and he only delayed at the inn long enough to arrange his dress as might appear to the Abbess most respectful, and, poor boy, be least likely to startle the babe on whom his heart was set. At almost every inn, the little children had shrieked and run from his white and gashed face, and his tall, lank figure in deep black; and it was very sadly that he said to Philip, ‘You must come with me. If she turns from me as an ogre, your bright ruddy face will win her.

The men were left at the inn with charge to let Guibert speak for them, and to avoid showing their nationality. The three months of Paris, and the tailors there, had rendered Philip much less conspicuous than formerly; but still people looked at him narrowly as he followed his brother along the street. The two lads had made up their minds to encumber themselves with no nurses, or womanfolk. The child should be carried, fondled, and fed by her boy-father alone. He believed that, when he once held her in his arms, he should scarcely even wish to give her up to any one else; and, in his concentration of mind, had hardly thought of all the inconveniences and absurdities that would arise; but, really, was chiefly occupied by the fear that she would not at first let him take her in his arms, and hold her to his heart.

Philip, a little more alive to the probabilities, nevertheless was disposed to regard them as ‘fun and pastime.’ He had had many a frolic with his baby-sisters, and this would be only a prolonged one; besides, it was ‘Berry’s’ one hope, and to rescue any creature from a convent was a good work, in his Protestant eyes, which had not become a whit less prejudiced at Paris. So he was quite prepared to take his full share of his niece, or more, if she should object to her father’s looks, and he only suggested halting at an old woman’s stall to buy some sweetmeats by way of propitiation—a proceeding which much amazed the gazing population of Lucon. Two reports were going about, one that the King had vowed a silver image of himself to St. Ursula, if her Prioress would obtain his recovery by their prayers; the other that he was going to translate her to the royal Abbey of Fontevrault to take charge of his daughter, Madame Elisabeth. Any way, high honour by a royal messenger must be intended to the Prioress, Mere Monique, and the Luconnais were proud of her sanctity.

The portress had already heard the report, and opened her wicket even before the bell could be rung, then eagerly ushered him into the parlour, the barest and most ascetic-looking of rooms, with a boarded partition across, unenlivened except by a grated hollow, and the outer portion empty, save of a table, three chairs, and a rugged woodcut of a very tall St. Ursula, with a crowd of pigmy virgins, not reaching higher than the ample hem of her petticoat.

‘Did Aunt Cecily live in such a place as this?’ exclaimed Philip, gazing round; ‘or do they live on the fat among down cushions inside there?

‘Hush—sh,’ said Berenger, frowning with anxiety; for a rustling was heard behind the screen, and presently a black veil and white scapulary appeared, and a sweet calm voice said, ‘Peace be with you, sir; what are your commands?

Berenger bowed low, and replied, ‘Thanks, reverend Lady; I bring a letter from