Séverin departed, therefore, and rode for days, although it was the middle of winter, but he was going to see Lydorie again, and snow, frost and ice mattered little to him.
After twenty days of travel, he arrived in the town of Saint Quentin. It was a Sunday; his first concern was, devoutly, to go to hear holy mass at the principal church.
Now, a marriage was being celebrated, and Séverin’s heart beat faster at that sight, for he thought that he would soon see his pretty and beloved Lydorie in a bridal gown.
Jesus, my Savior, how he bride resembles her! If it were not for those garments of velvet and silk, and that that with golden points, a veritable Comtesse’s crown, he could believe that he was seeing Lydorie!
In his trouble he cleaved through the crowd and advanced as far as the altar. The men-at-arms guarding the choir, judging by his determined stride that he was one of their master’s officers—for he was dressed in the rich livery of the rubricator of the Archbishop of Rheims—let him pass freely.
Oh! It was Lydorie! There could be no doubt about it.
In the most poignant anguish that ever gripped a Christian on earth, he was gazing at the spectacle, which appeared to him to be a bad dream, when the priest celebrating the office dropped the nuptial ring.
Séverin launched himself forward impetuously to pick it up, and anticipated all the others.
He found the means, while he was getting up, to replace it with the annealed silver ring that he had once received from Lydorie, and as the celebrant placed it on the finger of the bride Séverin recited in a loud voice, of mocking bitterness:
“As long as that ring remains, Lydorie will be yours and will love you truly and endlessly.”
At the first words, Lydorie had raised her head, and, weeping hot tears, had hidden her face against the shoulder of Sire Eustache.
“Well said, handsome clerk of the Archbishop of Rheims,” said Sire Eustache, who had recognized the livery. “What recompense do you require for that diction? I will grant it to you, on the salvation of my soul.”
But Séverin drew away without listening, and no one gave him any further thought, for the vassals of the two spouses uttered cries of joy, and Sire Eustache de Lens squeezed Lydorie’s hand gently, who could not turn her languid and amorous eyes away from him.
One can still see, among the epitaphs of the canons of the church of Rheims, a stone that bears the name of Séverin Magalouffe, canon, died in his twenty-fifth year, six months after having received the canonical ermine.
THE RUBRICATOR
1325
The lady settled on that advice,
gathered her possessions as coyly and
as finely as she could, and left Paris
with her young son and the Earl of
Kent and marched toward Hainaut.
(Froissart, vol. 1. ch. XII)11
The curfew bell had finished tolling; it was the darkest of nights. Without the torches lit outside the house of pillars, it would not have been possible to see the low columns and Gothic arches of the palace of Prince Philippe de Valois, although it was built in an apparent place on the highest part of the strand, a sandy extent that descended in a steep slope all the way to the bed of the Seine.
A young man emerged from one of the houses adjacent to the palace. Throwing a section of his large cloak over his right shoulder, doubtless in order to be able to make free use of the iron-tipped staff he was holding in his hand, he started walking rapidly. Having gone along the river bank he passed opposite the convent and the Rue d’Hières, and went along the entire length of the Quai des Ormes, of which the Rue du Paon Blanc and the Rue de Frosgier-l’Anier formed the two limits.
There he finally slowed down and, out of breath, clapped his hands together twice.
The door of a house that was in front of him opened cautiously, and a young woman slipped out enveloped in a long mantilla; she advanced toward the young man and held out a tremulous hand to him.
“Henryot,” she said, in a faint voice, after a long silence, “my Henryot, this rendezvous is the last; it’s necessary for you to leave tomorrow, forever, for another country...for our love is no longer innocent and pure, as in the days of our childhood; it has become…Holy Virgin take pity on me! It has become adulterous!”
The young man proffered an inarticulate groan.
“Alas! Yes, my sweet Henryot, it’s necessary for us to quit one another for life...it’s necessary that henceforth, you expel from your mind the memory of Marguerite, as one rejects a bad thought of the evil spirit. Adieu, then! Adieu, adieu, Henryot!”
Until then he had stood there as if annihilated by despair, but when he saw her take a step to draw away he straightened up abruptly, and seized the hand that had just quit his own again.
“No!” he cried, “No, you belong to me! It’s me that you have espoused. In the time of my childhood, when we slept in the same cradle, did not our parents discuss quietly the project of our marriage? Did they not smile, shaking their head, when I would only allow my playthings to be agitated by the hand of my little Marguerite? When I left for Flanders in order to earn money as a painter of missals, was it not agreed that in four years’ time, on my return, our marriage would be celebrated? Did I not sense, in giving you the kiss of departure, your cheeks moist with large tears, your hand grip mine convulsively? And when you dreamed of me…then… Oh, they have broken their promise! They have forced you, poor and defenseless, to bow down to their parental power, in order to marry you, weeping, to a coarse mercenary. Holy Virgin, is the oath that binds you to him more sacred than the oath that binds you to me? Yes, you belong to me! Come, then! Come, then! Come, let’s flee! We’ll find a refuge in Hainaut were no one will be able to disturb us.”
Marguerite wept bitterly, and did not reply.
“Come…let’s go!” he added, impetuously.
She raised her head, which she had hidden in her hands and folded her arms across her chest. “Henryot,” she said, “is it really you who are saying such things to me? You, who told me—in happier times, alas, that: ‘True love is nothing but pure and holy virtue; outside of duty, no amour,’ Henryot, if I listened to your insensate pleas, how much time would go by before you looked at me with scorn, before my presence became for a you a heavy burden, a remorse, a chastisement of our sin? No, my friend, it’s necessary for us to part…for ever. Adieu! Adieu! Adieu!”
She drew away rapidly; and he watched her go with a stupid gaze, watched her draw away without proffering a single word, without making a single movement to retain her.
He was still there, immobile, with death in his heart, when a cry of distress extracted him from that frightful torpor. By a mechanical instinct of defense, he straightened up and took hold of his iron-tipped staff. The cries became more distinct, and he perceived, in the moonlight, a man who was defending himself against two others. Henryot ran to help the one who was being attacked in that cowardly fashion, but when he arrived one of the assassins was lying on the ground and the other took flight at the sight of the new assailant.
“May Saint George be your aid!” said the stranger, with a very pronounced English accent. “But for you they’d have done for me; but let’s make haste to get away. I fear that the fugitive might have gone for reinforcements to do me a bad turn that might rebound on you. Finish your good work by letting me lean on your arm as far as my dwelling, which isn’t far away, for the blood I’m losing is weakening me to the point that I can’t support myself... But what are you looking for there, near the cadaver?”
“My hat.”
“By God! Let’s decamp quickly, without delay! There are several people coming over there, and we might well find their arrival bad. Come…I’ll give you a thousand hats in exchange for that one...”
And, leaning on Henryot’s arm, the two of them drew away.
After a few moments’ march, Henryot and the stranger arrived at a door that the latter opened with precaution, and closed with no less care. After that they tra
versed a small courtyard and several large apartments, where complete darkness reigned. They finally found themselves in a room richly hung with tapestries, beneath the high fireplace of which a lady was standing whose physiognomy and bearing were full of nobility and melancholy.
At the sight of the pale stranger, weak and covered in blood, she uttered a loud scream, ran to him in extreme distress, with the least equivocal testaments of tenderness and despair.
“It’s nothing, Isabelle; my wound isn’t dangerous,” said Henryot’s companion, in English.
“Aymond, Aymond! What wretch could have tried to take your life?”
“Your brother the King of France, or at least, men-at-arms of his household. Two men bearing his livery attacked me unexpectedly. One of them made the acquaintance of my dagger; the other took flight, thanks to the aid that this young man gave me.”
The Queen darted an emotional glance at Henryot, which expressed a keen gratitude.
“The danger I’ve escaped,” the stranger continued, still in English, “isn’t the only one that awaits us today. Frightened by the threats and won over by the gold of our mortal enemy, the minister Hugh Spencer, your brother Charles le Bel had just signed a treaty by which he surrenders you tomorrow to the vengeance of Edward II. You know what fate the hateful King of England has reserved for the spouse that has insulted him. As for me, this wound ought to tell you that they do not intend to take me with you to England, and that they’re in haste to inherit my earldom of Kent.”
“And how are we to escape such a danger?”
“Only one means remains, and even that is very risky. It’s necessary to flee tonight and try to reach Flanders. My faithful Harrys is waiting for me a short distance from Paris with fifteen or twenty armed Englishmen as devoted as he is. He took the initiative of assembling those brave men, whom fearful suspicion of your brother caused to lodge outside the walls of Paris. Once with them we’re safe; we’ll reach the court of the Comte de Hainaut without fear, where we can expect benevolence, aid and protection.
“Harrys had given me a guide to lead me through the streets of Paris to the place where the escort is waiting, but the wretch ran away at the sight of the assassins who attacked me.”
As he finished speaking, the Earl of Kent turned to Henryot and asked him in French whether he knew the streets of Paris well enough to guide them rapidly and reliably to the road to Flanders. “I’ll pay you well,” he added.
“I don’t need any recompense. I’ll take you quickly and reliably, as you request.”
“En route, then! And may God and Saint George aid us! You, Madame, go fetch your son and the richest of your jewels; I’ll go saddle a hack, and two horses.”
A few moments later, the Earl of Kent came back to announce that everything was ready. The Queen, who was carrying her son in her arms, followed him with Henryot, and all three of them set forth, at first slowly and with precaution, and then, shortly afterwards, at a gallop, at the top speed of their horses.
Day began to break when they had not yet begun to reduce the rapidity of their pace. Preoccupied by their chagrins or their perils, none of the three had proffered a word. As for the child, he continued to sleep profoundly.
The Queen was the first to interrupt the bleak silence. It was Henryot to whom she addressed herself.
“Now that we’re on the right road and doubtless close to our escort, it would be prudent for you to retrace your steps, for if anyone knew that you had favored our escape, it might cost you your life.”
“Life is no longer anything to me, Madame; I’ve lost forever that which could have made my happiness.”
“So young and unhappy, without hope! How can that be?”
Briefly, Henryot recounted his sad amour for Marguerite. The story made a profound impression on the Queen. That modest and ingenuous tenderness was a bitter reproach for her, whom passion had led astray to the extent of rendering two kingdoms witness to her culpable affection for her husband’s bother, Aymond, Earl of Kent.
And, her heart dolorously oppressed, she turned her tearful eyes to the man for love of whom she has lost repose, happiness, a throne, conscience and renown. She searched for some allegiance in the sight of that cherished lover...
Kent’s lips were contracted by a mocking smile, and he jeered at Henryot for the extreme tenderness that had made him prefer to quit Marguerite for life rather than cause her the remorse and the shame of having fled her husband’s roof.
On seeing the irony of his gaze and hearing the bitterness of his pleasantries, a frightful doubt took possession of the unfortunate Princess for the first time. She wondered if the Earl of Kent really loved her, whether the tenderness that had drawn his victim into so much shame and woe might not be a cold and ambitious calculation. Alas, she dared not deepen that dolorous examination; she turned her head in order not to see a sudden, horrible verity that was offered to her for the first time. Oh, she cruelly expiated then the sin that she had committed!
At that moment the travelers reached the escort that was waiting for them. The Queen gave Henryot a valuable ring, which she begged him to keep for love of her. The Earl of Kent took him gravely to one side. “Young man,” he said, “in coming to our aid you have done more for us than you think. I do not believe it prudent as yet to tell you who we are; but if Our Lady and Saint George aid us and do not abandon us, you will remember this day.”
With those words he rejoined the escort and Henryot took the road to Paris again.
In the epoch in which the events we are recounting occurred—in 1325—under the reign of King Charles IV, nicknamed le Bel because he was, one chronicler says, a man of commanding appearance and had a great appetite for amour. Painters limited themselves to a scrupulous, cold and gauche imitation of nature.
What is lacking most of all in the very small number of paintings made in that epoch is movement. None of the faces is animated; a glacial impassivity is spread over the regular features, perfect but soulless. The artist has tried to reproduce life, but death is imprinted everywhere; he has sought to make his subjects active, but they have remained stiff and compassed beneath his brush. Curbed, leaning forward, the gaze fixed and dull, one might think them figures of wax, which resemble death all the more because the artist has applied himself to imitating life, or those seated Egyptian statues, which, with their hands on their knees, sustain with their heads the slender shaft of a tall column.
In the fourteenth century, painters were only employed, most of the time, in the embellishment of manuscripts. In that sort of miniature, the patience and skill of the rubricator produce results that attained a truly marvelous point of perfection. When one leafs through the precious and rare volumes that remain to us from that epoch, one is astonished by the rich ornaments that extend over the margin, scintillating on the capital letters, surrounding them with a sort of gauze of gold and azure, extending between the two columns of the page and terminating in sharp culs-de-lampe. The most vivid colors are married there with tints that, although not as bright, nevertheless cast a sort of reflection that modern painting does not reproduce; finally, the dazzled gaze would be wounded by so much glare if it did not have for repose the spacious margins of a blank vellum.
Ordinarily, the artist puts at the head of each of the chapters a miniature that represents some pious subject or one related to the seigneur by whose orders he is confecting the manuscript. Sometimes, it is a saint whose head is surrounded by an aureole produced by a gilded layer that would be difficult to imitate now; or one sees a tourney, with its knights, its field-judges, its ladies, its banners and its lists. In other places, the rubricator has painted the author of the book; with both knees on the ground, he is presenting his work to a pope with a benign face, who is giving him his benediction with two fingers raised. There are some in which it is a suzerain with long straight hair with a short robe quartered with his arms and motto, receives the homage of scholastic labors while his fool, with a jay on his wrist in the guise of a falcon is
standing behind the feudal armchair among the officers and varlets, of whom not one has been omitted.
But in the same way that the faces in the paintings lack life, the groups offer nothing picturesque or true, and the faces there are immobile and stupid. Finally, men-at-arms, châteaux, the sky and rivers, nothing is detached by the magic of perspective; all the objects are crowded together on the parchment, where they are stacked grotesquely.
A manuscript was a precious treasure. Sixty-five years after the time of which we speak, Charles VI only possessed six volumes in his library. A double lock prevented them from being opened, and when some sire of high lineage came to the King’s court, he obtained the favor of seeing the precious volumes. He waxed ecstatic before the wooden cover surmounted by silver figures and enriched with topazes and emeralds. Then, on returning to his feudal manor, he recounted to his amazed chatelaine how a price of gold had been paid for the work of some obscure serf or monk, embellished by so many riches, which he, a noble and powerful seigneur, would have blushed at being unable to read.
The profession of rubricator was very lucrative, given that in the fourteenth century a man who knew how to read passed for a scholar, and it was only given to him after long and serious study to be able to trace with perfection the paintings of manuscripts.
A few moments after returning home, Henryot had sat down at a large table on which were disposed brushes, colors, little plates of copper and all the utensils necessary to his profession. But he tried to work in vain; the memory of the strange events that had happened to him since the previous day had taken possession of his imagination and held him plunged in the most profound reverie when the cries of a large crowd assembled outside his door finally extracted him from it. At the same moment, archers threw themselves upon him, bound him tightly, and he was taken to prison, in the midst of the insults and outrages of a furious population, who were calling him wretch and murderer.
The Angel Asrael Page 8