"Then answer me as I wish."
"I am all attention."
"His Majesty referred to his humble servant?"
"Certainly—I have his words in my mind now. 'I shall know how to deal with my friend, the Abbé,' he said; what more would you want?"
"But that—Holy Virgin, that may mean anything. He would say the same if he sent me to the Bastille."
"Possibly."
"And he added nothing to it?"
"The devil a word."
The Abbé groaned, sinking back in his chair. Pepin continued to quaff huge draughts of the luscious wine, and to plume himself upon the lies he was telling. "Ho, ho," thought he, "the Abbé would cudgel his servant, would he? But we shall see."
"Monsieur Pepin," said the Abbé after a pause, "I am like to come to trouble with the king, I fear. There has been some bungling here. I shall set out for the château this very night, with you for my guide. A word from me will make all straight."
"Aye, that it will."
"You are prepared to accompany me?"
"My fee is ten crowns, holy father."
The Abbé sighed.
"Very well, then," said he, "I will order the horses for sunset."
CHAPTER X
THE WOMAN AND THE PRIEST.
Gabrielle spent the afternoon of her Sunday in prayer and thought. Her young face was deep stained with tears when the vesper bell rang out over the forest; and for the first time since she had come to the château, the villagers remarked that she was not in church. But she had no heart to appear among them; and when the sun began to sink over the western woods, she was still pacing her chamber; at one moment chiding herself for the evil which had befallen; at the next, taking courage of her impulse to save her lover.
Child that she was, this conviction that she alone could save de Guyon gained strength every hour. It was the one substantial conviction chosen of all the confusing ideas which came upon her. Until this time, perhaps, she had scarce realised that she loved; but now passion broke the bonds, and stood before her questioningly. A deep longing to kiss the lips of her lover again, to stand with him where he should stand, to suffer with him when he should suffer, overwhelmed her. A week ago she would have laughed to scorn the suggestion that any man thus should come between her and the path she had chosen. But destiny was playing with her; it remained to be seen if it would crush her.
Until the dusk fell, she warred with the many devices which her brain wrought—rejecting this scheme, dallying with that. Her earliest impulse had been to write to the king, declaring her love boldly; concealing nothing in the hope that sincerity would prove the best of weapons. Anon, the impossibility of stirring any generous emotions in the heart of the "Well-Beloved" turned her to thoughts of her cousin Claude and of his influence. In any other case, she said, that influence would help her; but what would be its worth when pitted against the king's will! Nor had she other kinsman at the Court, but must come back to the remembrance of her slight relationship to the Marquis de Monnier, and to the fact that he was then at Nancy. The old President would befriend her if she could gain his ear; yet how would de Guyon fare in the between- while? Had not Pepin said that he would be in the Bastille before the week was out?
The vesper bell had ceased to boom in the tower of the chapel; the chanting of the choir in court and cloister was like the echo of some sweet celestial hymn; the cattle in the park were going down to the waters; the birds were roosting, when at length the mistress of the château made up her mind. If she had been tempted at one time to open her heart to the Abbé, who posed as her governor, she resolved when dusk had come that she would seek other counsel. The thought had come to her as an inspiration while she had been listening at her window to the music of the choir. In all the country round, she remembered that she had only one friend—and he was an exile and an outcast. But she would go to him in her need, and in his words would find consolation.
Nerved to the resolution by the dominating love which had come so swiftly, so stealthily into her life, she resolved also that she would go alone. Her girlhood shrank from any confidences. If de Guyon were to be saved, it would not be by proclaiming urbi et orbi that she loved him. Any sacrifice that she could make she would offer cheerfully. There were wild moments when she said that she would even yield to the king, if thereby she might help her lover; but this thought she was quick to repent and to beat from her mind. All her purity of soul revolted at it. She knew that if once Louis's lips touched her own, that never again could she bear de Guyon's kisses, or suffer his embrace.
It was dusk when she took her resolution; it was nearly dark when at last she quitted the château, hiding her face in the folds of a black cloak, and fleeing with light step to the distant woods. There was not a path in all the forest round that was unfamiliar to her; scarce a thicket she had not penetrated; a copse she had not explored. Darkness could not hinder her, nor the shades of night deter. Like some fairy of the glens, she passed now through unfrequented meadows; now through ravines hid in the darkness; now by black pools and bubbling streamlets. Often she would pause to listen to the snapping of the twigs or the rustle of the branches—but her ear told her that no human thing was near. She walked alone—a worthy child of the forest she loved.
Once in her flight, she passed the hut of some woodlanders who had grouped themselves about a fire of logs. They started up with oaths upon their lips when they heard her footstep; but observing her young face, they crossed themselves and called upon the saints. Or, again, she came of a sudden upon a rough fellow, a worthy tenant of the Caverne des Brigands, which she was approaching; and for a moment a savage thought possessed him, and he made a step towards her. But she looked him full in the face, and recognising her, he slunk away into the bramble like a boy that has been beaten. The little Huguenot was not as other women to such a one; she was a child of mystery, a guardian spirit breathing benevolence and charity and love; a creature of the heavens sent to do battle with devils stalking the forest. There was not a woodlander about the precincts of the château who did not in some way associate her with the Blessed Virgin. They called her sometimes a "daughter of Mary." And this was rather the outcome of their love than of their ignorance.
At the distance of half-a-mile or less from that dark place of the forest known as the Cave of the Brigands, Gabrielle began for the first time to find trouble of the way. She was now in the heart of an almost impenetrable wood, a wood where thorn and briar were knitted about the serried trunks, and sweet-smelling creepers twined ropes across her path. So heavy was the canopy of branches, so close did the bushes grow, that the dark of a moonless night reigned in all the grove. Even the cloudless sky above was hidden by the leaves; no path trodden of man was to be seen; the only note upon the silence was the ceaseless music of the nightingale, or the howling of the wolves. And through this wood, onward to its depths, the girl must pick her steps; often tearing her arms in the bramble, often feeling some beast or bird stirring at her very feet, often despairing of her mission.
In the heart of the grove, and when Gabrielle had told herself that she had mistaken the way and must retrace her steps, she came suddenly upon a little lawn of grass, and at this she cried aloud with pleasure. Hid in the trees upon the opposite side of the sward was a hut of logs, from the open door of which an aureole of light fell upon the grass, shining as a beacon of the wood warningly. And the girl's cry was heard and answered; scarce had it escaped her lips when the outcast Jesuit, who had warned de Guyon as he went to the château, stood in the doorway of the hut asking, "Who goes?"
"It is I, Gabrielle," she said, trembling in spite of herself.
"Merciful God, you!" cried the priest, holding his lantern high, that its rays might fall upon her face.
"Yes," she said, recovering