CHAPTER IV.
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.
The reverend mother lingered till the beginning of summer, and it was ona lovely June evening, while the nightingales were singing in the conventgarden, that the holy life slipped away into the Great Unknown. She died asa child falls asleep, the saintly grey head lying peacefully on Angela'ssupporting arm, the last look of the dying eyes resting on that tendernurse with infinite love.
She was gone, and Angela felt strangely alone. Her contemporaries, thechosen friend who had been to her almost as a sister, the girls by whoseside she had sat in class, had all left the convent. At twenty-one years ofage, she seemed to belong to a former generation; most of the pupils hadfinished their education at seventeen or eighteen, and had returned totheir homes in Flanders, France, or England. There had been several Englishpupils, for Louvain and Douai had for a century been the seminaries forEnglish Romanists.
The pupils of to-day were Angela's juniors, with whom she had nothing incommon, except to teach English to a class of small Flemings, who werealmost unteachable.
She had heard no more from her father, and knew not where or with whom hemight have cast in his lot. She wrote to him under cover to her sister;but of late Hyacinth's letters had been rare and brief, only long enough,indeed, to apologise for their brevity. Lady Fareham had been in London orat Hampton Court from the beginning of the previous winter. There was talkof the plague having come to London from Amsterdam, that the Privy Councilwas sitting at Sion House, instead of in London, that the judges hadremoved to Windsor, and that the Court might speedily remove to Salisburyor Oxford. "And if the Court goes to Oxford, we shall go to Chilton," wroteHyacinth; and that was the last of her communications.
July passed without news from father or sister; and Angela grew daily moreuneasy about both. The great horror of the plague was in the air. It hadbeen raging in Amsterdam in the previous summer and autumn, and a nun hadbrought the disease to Louvain, where she might have died in the conventinfirmary but for Angela's devoted attention. She had assisted theover-worked infirmarian at a time of unusual sickness--for there was a gooddeal of illness among the nuns and pupils that summer--mostly engendered ofthe fear lest the pestilence in Holland should reach Flanders. Doctor andinfirmarian had alike praised the girl's quiet courage, and her instinctfor doing the right thing.
Remembering all the nun had told of the horrors of Amsterdam, Angelaawaited with fear and trembling for news from London; and as the summerwore on, every news-letter that reached the Ursulines brought tidings ofincreasing sickness in the great prosperous city, which was being graduallydeserted by all who could afford to travel. The Court had moved first toHampton Court, in June, and later to Salisbury, where again the FrenchAmbassador's people reported strange horrors--corpses found lying in thestreet hard by their lodgings--the King's servants sickening. The air ofthe cathedral city was tainted--though deaths had been few as compared withLondon, which was becoming one vast lazar-house--and it was thought theCourt and Ambassadors would remove themselves to Oxford, where Parliamentwas to assemble in the autumn, instead of at Westminster.
Most alarming of all was the news that the Queen-mother had fled withall her people, and most of her treasures, from her palace at SomersetHouse--for Henrietta Maria was not a woman to fly before a phantom fear.She had seen too much of the stern realities of life to be scared byshadows; and she had neither establishment nor power in France equal tothose she left in England. In Paris the daughter of the great Henry was adependent. In London she was second only to the King; and her Court wasmore esteemed than Whitehall.
"If she has fled, there must be reason for it," said the newly electedSuperior, who boasted of correspondents at Paris, notably a cousin in thatfamous convent, the Visitandines de Chaillot, founded by Queen Henrietta,and which had ever been a centre of political and religious intrigue, themost fashionable, patrician, exalted, and altogether worldly establishment.
Alarmed at this dismal news, Angela wrote urgently to her sister, but withno effect; and the passage of every day, with occasional rumours of anincreasing death-rate in London, strengthened her fears, until terrornerved her to a desperate resolve. She would go to London to see hersister; to nurse her if she were sick; to mourn for her if she were dead.
The Superior did all she could to oppose this decision, and even assertedauthority over the pupil who, since her eighteenth year had been releasedfrom discipline, subject but to the lightest laws of the convent. As thegreat-niece and beloved child of the late Superior she had enjoyed allpossible privileges; while the liberal sum annually remitted for hermaintenance gave her a certain importance in the house.
And now on being told she must not go, her spirit rose against theSuperior's authority.
"I recognise no earthly power that can keep me from those I love in theirtime of peril!" she said.
"You do not know that they are in sickness or danger. My last letters fromParis stated that it was only the low people whom the contagion in Londonwas attacking."
"If it was only the low people, why did the Queen-mother leave? If it wassafe for my sister to be in London it would have been safe for the Queen."
"Lady Fareham is doubtless in Oxfordshire."
"I have written to Chilton Abbey as well as to Fareham House, and I can getno answer. Indeed, reverend mother, it is time for me to go to those towhom I belong. I never meant to stay in this house after my aunt's death. Ihave only been waiting my father's orders. If all be well with my sisterI shall go to the Manor Moat, and wait his commands quietly there. I amhome-sick for England."
"You have chosen an ill time for home-sickness, when a pestilence israging."
Argument could not touch the girl, whose mind was braced for battle. Thereverend mother ceded with as good a grace as she could assume, on the topof a very arbitrary temper. An English priest was heard of who was about totravel to London on his return to a noble friend and patron in the north ofEngland, in whose house he had lived before the troubles; and in this goodman's charge Angela was permitted to depart, on a long and weary journeyby way of Antwerp and the Scheldt. They were five days at sea, the voyagelengthened by the almost unprecedented calm which had prevailed all thatfatal summer--a weary voyage in a small trading vessel, on board whichAngela had to suffer every hardship that a delicate woman can be subjectedto on board ship: a wretched berth in a floating cellar called a cabin,want of fresh water, of female attendance, and of any food but thecoarsest. These deprivations she bore without a murmur. It was only theslowness of the passage that troubled her.
The great city came in view at last, the long roof of St. Paul's dominatingthe thickly clustered gables and chimneys, and the vessel dropped anchoropposite the dark walls of the Tower, whose form had been made familiar toAngela by a print in a History of London, which she had hung over many anevening in Mother Anastasia's parlour. A row-boat conveyed her and herfellow-traveller to the Tower stairs, where they landed, the priest beingduly provided with an efficient voucher that they came from a city free ofthe plague. Yes, this was London. Her foot touched her native soil for thefirst time after fifteen years of absence. The good-natured priest wouldnot leave her till he had seen her in charge of an elderly and mostreputable waterman, recommended by the custodian of the stairs. Then hebade her an affectionate adieu, and fared on his way to a house in thecity, where one of his kinsfolk, a devout Catholic, dwelt quietly hiddenfrom the public eye, and where he would rest for the night before settingout on his journey to the north.
After the impetuous passage through the deep, dark arch of the bridge, theboat moved slowly up the river in the peaceful eventide, and Angela's eyesopened wide with wonder as she looked on the splendours of that silenthighway, this evening verily silent, for the traffic of business andpleasure had stopped in the terror of the pestilence, like a clock that hadrun down. It was said by one who had seen the fairest cities of Europe that"the most glorious sight in the world, take land and water together, was tocome upon a high tide from Grav
esend, and shoot the bridge to Westminster;"and to the convent-bred maiden how much more astonishing was that prospect!
The boat passed in front of Lord Arundel's sumptuous mansion, with itsspacious garden, where marble statues showed white in the midst ofquincunxes, and prim hedges of cypress and yew; past the Palace of theSavoy, with its massive towers, battlemented roof, and double line ofmullioned windows fronting the river; past Worcester House, where LordChancellor Hyde had been living in a sober splendour, while his princelymansion was building yonder on the Hounslow Road, or that portion thereoflately known as Piccadilly. That was the ambitious pile of which Hyacinthhad written, a house of clouded memories and briefest tenure; foredoomedto vanish like a palace seen in a dream; a transient magnificence,indescribable; known for a little while opprobriously as Dunkirk House, thesupposed result of the Chancellor's too facile assistance in the surrenderof that last rag of French territory. The boat passed before Rutland Houseand Cecil House, some portion of which had lately been converted into theMiddle Exchange, the haunt of fine ladies and Golconda of gentlewomenmilliners, favourite scene for assignations and intrigues; and so by DurhamHouse, where in the Protector Seymour's time the Royal Mint had beenestablished; a house whose stately rooms were haunted by tragicassociations, shadows of Northumberland's niece and victim, hapless JaneGrey, and of fated Raleigh. Here, too, commerce shouldered aristocracy, andthe New Exchange of King James's time competed with the Middle Exchangeof later date, providing more milliners, perfumers, glovers, barbers, andtoymen, and more opportunity for illicit loves and secret meetings.
Before Angela's eyes those splendid mansions passed like phantom pictures.The westering sunlight showed golden above the dark Abbey, while she satsilent, with awe-stricken gaze, looking out upon this widespread city thatlay chastened and afflicted under the hand of an angry God. The beautiful,gay, proud, and splendid London of the West, the new London of CoventGarden, St. James's Street, and Piccadilly, whose glories her sister's penhad depicted with such fond enthusiasm, was now deserted by the rabble ofquality who had peopled its palaces, while the old London of the East, thehistoric city, was sitting in sackcloth and ashes, a place of lamentations,a city where men and women rose up in the morning hale and healthy, and atnight-fall were carried away in the dead-cart, to be flung into the pitwhere the dead lay shroudless and unhonoured.
How still and sweet the summer air seemed in that sunset hour; how placidthe light ripple of the incoming tide; how soothing even the silence of thecity! And yet it all meant death. It was but a few months since the fatalinfection had been brought from Holland in a bundle of merchandise: and,behold, through city and suburbs, the pestilence had crept with slow andstealthy foot, now on this side of a street, now on another. The history ofthe plague was like a game at draughts, where man after man vanishes offthe board, and the game can only end by exhaustion.
"See, mistress, yonder is Somerset House," said the boatman, pointing toone of the most commanding facades in that highway of palaces. "That is thepalace which the Queen-mother has raised from the ashes of the ruins herfolly made, for the husband who loved her too well. She came back to usno wiser for years of exile--came back with her priests and her Italiansinging-boys, her incense-bearers and golden candlesticks and gaudy rags ofRome. She fled from England with the roar of cannon in her ears, and thefear of death in her heart. She came back in pride and vain-glory, andboasted that had she known the English people better, she would never havegone away; and she has squandered thousands in yonder palace, upon floorsof coloured woods, and Italian marbles--the people's money, mark you, moneythat should have built ships and fed sailors; and she meant to end her daysamong us. But a worse enemy than Cromwell has driven her out of the housethat she made beautiful for herself; and who knows if she will ever seeLondon again?"
"Then those were right who told me that it was for fear of the plague herMajesty left London?" said Angela.
"For what else should she flee? She was loth enough to leave, you may besure, for she had seated herself in her pride yonder, and her Court was assplendid, and more looked up to than Queen Catherine's. The Queen-mother isthe prouder woman, and held her head higher than her son's wife has everdared to hold hers; yet there are those who say King Charles's widow hasfallen so low as to marry Lord St. Albans, a son of Belial, who wouldhazard his immortal soul on a cast of the dice, and lose it as freely as hehas squandered his royal mistress's money. She paid for Jermyn's feastingand wine-bibbing in Paris, 'tis said, when her son and his friends were onshort commons."
"You do wrong to slander that royal lady," remonstrated Angela. "She is ofall widows the saddest and most desolate--ever the mark of evil fortune.Even in the glorious year of her son's restoration sorrow pursued her, andshe had to mourn a daughter and a son. She is a most unhappy lady."
"You would scarcely say as much, young madam, had you seen her in her pompand power yonder. And as for Lord St. Albans, if he is not her husband--!Well, thou art a young innocent thing--so I had best hold my peace. Bothpalaces are empty and forsaken, both Whitehall and Somerset House. The ratsand the spiders can take their own pleasure in the rooms that were full ofmusic and dancing, card-playing and feasting, two or three months ago. Why,there was no better sight in London, after the dead-cart, than to watch thetrain of carriages and horsemen, carts and wagons, upon any of the greathigh-roads, carrying the people of London away to the country, as if thewhole city had been moving in one mass like a routed army."
"But in palaces and noblemen's houses surely there would be littledanger?" said Angela. "Plagues and fevers are the outcome of hunger anduncleanliness, and all such evils as the poor have to suffer."
"Nay, but the pestilence that walketh in darkness is no respecter ofpersons," answered the grim boatman. "I grant you that death has dealthardest with the poor who dwell in crowded lanes and alleys. But now thevery air reeks with poison. It may be carried in the folds of a woman'sgown, or among the feathers of a courtier's hat. They are wise to go whocan go. It is only such as I, who have to work for my grandchildren'sbread, that must needs stay."
"You speak like one who has seen better days," said Angela.
"I was a sergeant in Hampden's regiment, madam, and went all through thewar. When the King came back I had friends who stood by me, and bought methis boat. I was used to handle an oar in my boyhood, when I lived ona little bit of a farm that belonged to my father, between Reading andHenley. I was oftener on the water than on the land in those days. Thereare some who have treated me roughly because I fought against the lateKing; but folks are beginning to find out that the Brewer's disbandedred-coats can be honest and serviceable in time of peace."
After passing the Queen-mother's desolate palace the boat crept along nearthe Middlesex shore, till it stopped at the bottom of a flight of stonesteps, against which the tide washed with a pleasant rippling sound, andabove which there rose the walls of a stately building facing south-west;small as compared with Somerset and Northumberland houses, midway betweenwhich it stood, yet a spacious and noble mansion, with a richly decoratedriver-front, lofty windows with sculptured pediments, floriated cornice,and two side towers topped with leaded cupolas, the whole edifice gilded bythe low sun, and very beautiful to look upon, the windows gleaming as ifthere were a thousand candles burning within, a light that gave a falseidea of life and festivity, since that brilliant illumination was only areflected glory.
"This, madam, is Fareham House," said the boatman, holding out his hand forhis fee.
He charged treble the sum he would have asked half a year ago. In this timeof evil those intrepid spirits who still plied their trades in the taintedcity demanded a heavy fee for their labour; and it would have been hard todispute their claim, since each man knew that he risked his life, and thatthe limbs which toiled to-day might be lifeless clay to-night. There wasan awfulness about the time, a taste and odour of death mixed with all thecommon things of daily life, a morbid dwelling upon thoughts of corruption,a feverish expectancy of the end of all thi
ngs, which no man can rightlyconceive who has not passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Angela paid the man his price without question. She stepped lightly fromthe boat, while he deposited her two small leather-covered trunks on thestone landing-place in front of the Italian terrace which occupied thewhole length of the facade. She went up a flight of marble steps, to a doorfacing the river. Here she rang a bell which pealed long and loud over thequiet water, a bell that must have been heard upon the Surrey shore. Yet noone opened the great oak door; and Angela had a sudden sinking at the heartas the slow minutes passed and brought no sound of footsteps within, noscrooping of a bolt to betoken the opening of the door.
"Belike the house is deserted, madam," said the boatman, who had mooredhis wherry to the landing-stage, and had carried the two trunks to thedoorstep. "You had best try if the door be fastened or no. Stay!" he criedsuddenly, pointing upwards, "Go not in, madam, for your life! Look at thered cross on the door, the sign of a plague-stricken house."
Angela looked up with awe and horror. A great cross was smeared upon thedoor with red paint, and above it some one had scrawled the words, "Lord,have mercy upon us!"
And the sister she loved, and the children whose faces she had never seen,were within that house, sick and in peril of death, perhaps dying--or dead!She did not hesitate for an instant, but took hold of the heavy iron ringwhich served as a handle for the door and tried to open it.
"I have no fear for myself," she said to the boatman; "I have nursed thesick and the fever-stricken, and am not afraid of contagion--and there arethose within whom I love. Good night, friend."
The handle of the door turned somewhat stiffly in her hand, but it didturn, and the door opened, and she stood upon the threshold looking into avast hall that was wrapped in shadow, save for a shaft of golden light thatstreamed from an oval window on the staircase. Other windows there were oneach side of the door, shuttered and barred.
Seeing her enter the house, the old Cromwellian shrugged his shoulders,shook his head despondently, shoved the two trunks hastily over thethreshold, ran back to his boat, and pushed off.
"God guard thy young life, mistress!" he cried, and the wherry shot outinto the stream.
There had been silence on the river, the silence of a deserted cityat eventide; but that had seemed as nothing to the stillness of thismarble-paved hall, where the sunset was reflected on the dark oak panellingin one lurid splash like blood.
Not a mortal to be seen. Not a sound of voice or footstep. A crowd of godsand goddesses in draperies of azure and crimson, purple and orange, lookeddown from the ceiling. Curtains of tawny velvet hung beside the shutteredwindows. A great brazen candelabrum, filled with half-consumed candles,stood tall and splendid at the foot of a wide oak staircase, thebanister-rail whereof was cushioned with tawny velvet. Splendour of fabric,wood and marble, colour and gilding, showed on every side; but of humanitythere was no sign.
Angela shuddered at the sight of all that splendour, as if death wereplaying hide and seek in those voluminous curtains, or were lurking in thedeep shadow which the massive staircase cast across the hall. She lookedabout her, full of fear, then seeing a silver bell upon the table, she tookit up and rang it loudly. Upon the same carved ebony table there lay aplumed hat, a cane with an amber handle, and a velvet cloak neatly folded,as if placed ready for the master of the house, when he went abroad; butlooking at these things closely, even in that dim light, she saw thatcloak and hat were white with dust, and, more even than the silence, thatspectacle of the thick dust on the dark velvet impressed her with the ideaof a deserted house.
She had no lack of courage, this pupil of the Flemish nuns, and herfootstep did not falter as she went quickly up the broad staircase untilshe found herself in a spacious gallery, and amidst a flood of light, forthe windows on this upper or noble floor were all unshuttered, and thesunset streamed in through the lofty Italian casements. Fareham House wasbuilt upon the plan of the Hotel de Rambouillet, of which the illustriousCatherine de Vivonne was herself at once owner and architect. Thestaircase, instead of being a central feature, was at the western end ofthe house, allowing space for an unbroken suite of rooms communicating onewith the other, and terminating in an apartment with a fine oriel windowlooking east.
The folding doors of a spacious saloon stood wide open, and Angela entereda room whose splendour was a surprise to her who had been accustomed tothe sober simplicity of a convent parlour and the cold grey walls of therefectory, where the only picture was a pinched and angular Virgin byMemling, and the only ornament a crucifix of ebony and brass.
Here for the first time she beheld a saloon for whose decoration palaceshad been ransacked and churches desecrated--the stolen treasures of many anancestral mansion, spoil of rough soldiery or city rabble, things that hadbeen slyly stowed away by their possessors during the stern simplicity ofthe Commonwealth, and had been brought out of their hiding-places and soldto the highest bidder. Gold and silver had been melted down in the GreatRebellion; but art treasures would not serve to pay soldiers or to buyammunition; so these had escaped the melting-pot. At home and abroad thestorehouses of curiosity merchants had been explored to beautify LadyFareham's reception-rooms; and in the fading light Angela gazed uponhangings that were worthy of a royal palace, upon Italian crystals andIndian carvings, upon ivory and amber and jade and jasper, upon tables ofFlorentine mosaic, and ebony cabinets incrusted with rare agates, and uponpictures in frames of massive and elaborate carving, Venetian mirrors whichgave back the dying light from a thousand facets, curtains and portieres ofsumptuous brocade, gold-embroidered, gorgeous with the silken semblance ofpeacock plumage, done with the needle, from the royal manufactory of theCrown Furniture at the Gobelins.
She passed into an ante-room, with tapestried walls, and a divan coveredwith raised velvet, a music desk of gilded wood, and a spinet, on whichwas painted the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Beyond this there was thedining-room, more soberly though no less richly furnished than the saloon.Here the hangings were of Cordovan leather, stamped and gilded with_fleur-de-lys_, suggesting a French origin, and indeed these very hangingshad been bought by a Dutch Jew dealer in the time of the Fronde, hadbelonged to the hated minister Mazarin, and had been sold among other ofhis effects when he fled from Paris: to vanish for a brief season behindthe clouds of public animosity, and to blaze out again, an elderly phoenix,in a new palace, adorned with new treasures of art and industry that maderoyal princes envious.
Angela gazed on all this splendour as one bewildered. In front of thatgilded wall, quivering in mid-air, as if it had been painted upon the shaftof light that streamed in from the tall window, her fancy pictured theblood-red cross and the piteous legend, "Lord, have mercy on us!" writtenin the same blood colour. For herself she had neither horror of thepestilence nor fear of death. Religion had familiarised her mind with theimage of the destroyer. From her childhood she had been acquainted with thegrave, and with visions of a world beyond the grave. It was not for herselfshe trembled, but for her sister, and her sister's children; for LordFareham, whose likeness she recalled even at this moment, the grave darkface which Hyacinth had shown her on the locket she wore upon her neck, theface which Sir John said reminded him of Strafford.
"He has just that fatal look," her father had told her afterwards when theytalked of Fareham, "the look that men saw in Wentworth's face when he camefrom Ireland, and in his Majesty's countenance, after Wentworth's murder."
While she stood in the dying light, wavering for a moment, doubtful whichway to turn--since the room had no less than three tall oak doors, two ofthem ajar--there came a pattering upon the polished floor, a scampering offeet that were lighter and quicker than those of the smallest child, andthe first living creature Angela saw in that silent house came runningtowards her. It was only a little black-and-tan spaniel, with long silkyhair and drooping ears, and great brown eyes, fond and gentle, a verytoy and trifle in the canine kingdom; yet the sight of that living thingthrilled h
er awe-stricken heart, and her tears came thick and fast as sheknelt and took the little dog in her arms and pressed him against herbosom, and kissed the cold muzzle, and looked, half laughing, half crying,into the pathetic brown eyes.
"At least there is life near. This dog would not be left in a desertedhouse," she thought, as the creature trembled against her bosom and lickedthe hand that held him.
The pattering was repeated in the adjoining room, and another spaniel,which might have been twin brother of the one she held, came throughthe half open door, and ran to her, and set up a jealous barking whichreverberated in the lofty room, and from within that unseen chamber on theother side of the door there came a groan, a deep and hollow sound, as ofmortal agony.
She set down the dog in an instant, and was on her feet again, tremblingbut alert. She pushed the door a little wider and went into the nextapartment, a bedroom more splendid than any bed-chamber her fancy had everdepicted when she read of royal palaces.
The walls were hung with Mortlake tapestries, representing in four greatpanels the story of Perseus and Andromeda, and the Rape of Proserpine.To her who knew not the old Greek fables those figures looked strangelydiabolical. Naked maiden and fiery dragon, flying horse and Greek hero,Demeter and Persephone, hell-god and chariot, seemed alike demonaic andunholy, seen in the dim light of expiring day. The high chimney-piece, withits Oriental jars, blood-red and amber, faced her as she entered the room,and opposite the three tall windows stood the state bed, of carved ebony,the posts adorned with massive bouquets of chased silver flowers, thecurtains of wine coloured velvet, heavy with bullion fringes. One curtainhad been looped back, showing the amber satin lining, and on this bed ofstate lay a man, writhing in agony, with one bloodless hand plucking at thecambric upon his bosom, while with the other he grasped the ebony bed-postin a paroxysm of pain.
Angela knew that dark and powerful face at the first glance, though thefeatures were distorted by suffering. This sick man, the sole occupant of adeserted mansion, was her brother-in-law, Lord Fareham. A large high-backedarmchair stood beside the bed, and on this Angela seated herself. Sherecollected the Superior's injunction just in time to put one of theanti-pestilential lozenges into her mouth before she bent over thesufferer, and took his clammy hand in hers, and endured the acrimony of hispoisonous breath. That anxious gaze, the dark yellow complexion, and thosegreat beads of sweat that poured down the pinched countenance too plainlyindicated the disease which had desolated London. The Moslem's invisibleplague-angel had entered this palace, and had touched the master with hisdeadly lance. That terrible Presence, which for the most part had beenfound among the dwellings of the poor, was here amidst purple and finelinen, here on this bed of state, enthroned in ebony and silver, hung roundwith velvet and bullion. She needed not to discover the pestilential spotsbeneath that semi-diaphanous cambric which hung loose upon the muscularframe, to be convinced of the cruel fact. Here, abandoned and alone, laythe master of the house, with nothing better than a pair of spaniels forhis companions, and neither nurse nor watcher, wife nor friend, to help himtowards recovery, or to comfort his passing soul.
One of the little dogs leapt on the bed, and licked his master's face againand again, whining piteously between whiles.
The sick man looked at Angela with awful, unseeing eyes, and then burstinto a wild laugh--
"See them run, the crop-headed clod-hoppers!" he cried. "Ride afterthem--mow them down--scatter the rebel clot-pols! The day is ours!" Andthen, passing from English to French, from visions of Lindsey and Rupertand the pursuit at Edgehill to memories of Conde and Turenne, he shoutedwith the voice that was like the sound of a trumpet, "_Boutte-selle!boutte-selle! Monte a cheval! monte a cheval! a l'arme, a l'arme!_"
He was in the field of battle again. His wandering wits had carried himback to his first fight, when he was a lad in his father's company ofhorse, following the King's fortunes, breathing gunpowder, and splashedwith human blood for the first time--when it was not so long since he hadbeen blooded at the death of his first fox. He was a young man again, withthe Prince, that Bourbon prince and hero whom he loved and honoured farabove any of his own countrymen.
"_O, la folle entreprise du Prince de Conde_," he sang, waving his handabove his head, while the spaniels barked loud and shrill, adding theirclamour to his. He raved of battles and sieges. He was lying in thetrenches, in cold and rain and wind--in the tempestuous darkness. He wasmounting the breach at Dunkirk against the Spaniard; at Charenton in ahand-to-hand fight with Frondeurs. He raved of Chatillon and Chanleu, andthe slaughter of that fatal day when Conde mourned a friend and each sidelost a leader. Fever gave force to gesture and voice; but in the midst ofhis ravings he fell back, half fainting, upon the pillow, his heart beatingin a tumult which fluttered the lace upon the bosom of his shirt, whilethe acrid drops upon his brow gathered thicker than poisonous dew. Angelaremembered how last year in Holland these death-like sweats had not alwayspointed to a fatal result, but in some cases had afforded an outlet to thepestilential influences, though in too many instances they had served onlyto enfeeble the patient, the fire of disease still burning, while the dampsof approaching dissolution oozed from the fevered body--flame within andice without.
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