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

the King, to request your aid in a matter that touches me nearly.

‘His Majesty shall be obeyed. Come you from him?

He was forced to reply to her inquiries after the poor King’s health before she opened the letter, taking it under her veil to read it; so that as he stood, trembling, almost sickening with anxiety, and scarcely able to breathe, he could see nothing but the black folds; and at her low murmured exclamation he started as if at a cannon-shot.

‘De Ribaumont!’ she said; ‘can it be—the child—of—of—out poor dear little pensionnaire at Bellaise?

‘It is—it is!’ cried Berenger. ‘O Madame, you knew her at Bellaise?

‘Even so,’ replied the Prioress, who was in fact the Soeur Monique so loved and regretted by Eustacie. ‘I loved and prayed for her with all my heart when she was claimed by the world. Heaven’s will be done; but the poor little thing loved me, and I have often thought that had I been still at Bellaise when she returned she would not have fled. But of this child I have no knowledge.

‘You took charge of the babes of La Sablerie, Madame,’ said Berenger, almost under his breath.

‘Her infant among those poor orphans!’ exclaimed the Prioress, more and more startled and amazed.

‘If it be anywhere in this life, it is in your good keeping, Madame,’ said Berenger, with tears in his eyes. ‘Oh! I entreat, withhold her no longer.

‘But,’ exclaimed the bewildered nun, ‘who would you then be, sir?

‘I—her husband—widower of Eustacie—father of her orphan!’ cried Berenger. ‘She cannot be detained from me, either by right or law.

‘Her husband,’ still hesitated Monique. ‘But he is dead. The poor little one—Heaven have mercy on her soul—wrote me a piteous entreaty, and gave large alms for prayers and masses for his soul.

The sob in his throat almost strangled his speech. ‘She mourned me to the last as dead. I was borne away senseless and desperately wounded; and when I recovered power to seek her it was too late! O Madame! have pity—let me see all she has left to me.

‘Is it possible?’ said the nun. ‘We would not learn the parentage of our nurslings since all alike become children of Mother Church. Then, suddenly bethinking herself, ‘But, surely, Monsieur cannot be a Huguenot.

It was no doubt the first time she had been brought in contact with a schismatic, and she could not believe that such respectful courtesy could come from one. He saw he must curb himself, and explain. ‘I am neither Calvinist nor Sacrementaire, Madame. I was bred in England, where we love our own Church. My aunt is a Benedictine Sister, who keeps her rule strictly, though her convent is destroyed; and it is to her that I shall carry my daughter. Ah, Lady, did you but know my heart’s hunger for her!

The Prioress, better read in the lives of the saints than in the sects of heretics, did not know whether this meant that he was of her own faith or not; and her woman’s heart being much moved by his pleadings, she said, ‘I will heartily give your daughter to you, sir, as indeed I must, if she be here; but you have never seen her?

‘No; only her empty cradle in the burnt house. But I MUST know her. She is a year old.

‘We have two babes of that age; but I fear me you will scarce see much likeness in either of them to any one you knew,’ said the Prioress, thoughtfully. ‘However, there are two girls old enough to remember the parentage of their companions, though we forbade them to mention it. Would you see them, sir?

‘And the infants, so please you, reverend Mother,’ exclaimed Berenger.

She desired him to wait, and after an interval of suspense there was a pattering of little sabots behind the partition, and through the grating he beheld six little girls in blue serge frocks and tight white caps. Of the two infants, one with a puny, wizen, pinched face was in the arms of the Prioress; the other, a big, stout, coarse child, with hard brown cheeks and staring black-eyes, was on its own feet, but with a great basket-work frame round its head to save it from falls. There were two much more prepossessing children of three or four, and two intelligent-looking girls of perhaps eight and ten, to the elder of whom the Prioress turned, saying, ‘Agathe, I release you from my command not to speak of your former life, and desire you to tell this gentleman if you know who were the parents of these two little ones.

‘Yes, reverend Mother,’ said Agathe, readily; ‘the old name of Claire’ (touching the larger baby) ‘was Salome Potier: her mother was the washerwoman; and Nannonciade, I don’t know what her name was, but her father worked for Maitre Brassier who made the kettles.

Philip felt relieved to be free from all doubt about these very uninviting little ones, but Berenger, though sighing heavily, asked quickly, ‘Permit me, Madame, a few questions.—Little maid, did you ever hear of Isaac Gardon?

‘Maitre Isaac! Oh yes, sir. We used to hear him preach at the church, and sometimes he catechized us,’ she said, and her lip quivered.

‘He was a heretic, and I abjure him,’ added the other girl, perking up her head.

‘Was he in the town? What became of him?’ exclaimed Berenger.

‘He would not be in the town,’ said the elder girl. ‘My poor father had sent him word to go away.

‘Eh quoi?

‘Our father was Bailli la Grasse,’ interposed the younger girl, consequentially. ‘Our names were Marthe and Lucie la Grasse, but Agathe and Eulalie are much prettier.

‘But Maitre Gardon?’ still asked Berenger.

‘He ought to be take and burnt,’ said the new Eulalie; ‘he brought it all on us.

‘How was it? Was my wife with him—Madame de Ribaumont? Speak, my child.

‘That was the name,’ said one girl.

‘But Maitre Gardon had no great lady with him,’ said the other, ‘only his son’s widow and her baby, and they lodged with Noemi Laurent, who made the patisserie.

‘Ah!’ cried Berenger, lighting up with the new ray of hope. ‘Tell me, my dear, that they fled with him, and where.

‘I do not know of their going,’ said Agathe, confused and overborne by his eagerness.

‘Curb yourself, sir,’ said the Prioress, ‘they will recollect themselves and tell you what they can.

‘It was the little cakes with lemoned sugar,’ suggested the younger girl. ‘Maitre Tressan always said there would be a judgment on us for our daintiness. Ah! he was very cross about them, and after all it was the Maitre of Lucon who ate fifteen of them all at once; but then he is not a heretic.

Happily for Berenger, Agathe unraveled this speech.

‘Mademoiselle