The early sun was shining on as beautiful a morning of the merry month of May as ever lover dreamed or poet sang, over a gentle pastoral scene in the sunny land of France. It was a little winding dale between soft, sloping hills, covered with the tenderest spring verdure, and dotted with small brakes and thickets of hawthorn and sweet-brier; the former all powdered over, as if by a snowstorm, with their sweet, white blossoms, and the others exhaling their aromatic perfume from every dew-spangled bud and leaflet.
To the right hand the narrow dale widened gradually as it took its way—worn, doubtless, in past days by the waters of the noisy brooklet which flowed along its bottom over a bed of many-colored pebbles, among thickets of willow, alder, and hazel—toward a broad and beautiful valley, through which flowed the majestic volume of a great, navigable river. To the left it decreased in width, and ascended rapidly between steep banks to the spring-head of the rivulet, a clear, cold well, covered by a canopy of Gothic architecture rudely chiselled in red sandstone.
Above this the gorge of the ravine—for into such the dell here degenerated—was thickly overshadowed by a grove of178 old tufted oak-trees, which might well have rung to the brazen trumpets of the Roman legions, and echoed the wild war-whoops of the barbarous Gauls in the days of the first C?sar. Sheltered and half-concealed by these, there stood a very small, old-fashioned chapel, in the earliest and rudest style of Norman architecture, exhibiting the short, massive, clustered columns and round-headed arches of that antique style. It had never spire or tower; but on the summit of the steep, peaked roof there was a little crypt or vaulted canopy, supported by four columns, and containing a bell proportioned to the dimensions of the humble village-chapel.
The larger valley presented all the usual beauties of rural landscape scenery at that remote and unscientific day, when lands were principally laid down in pasture, and husbandry consisted mainly in the tending of flocks and herds. There were wide expanses of common ground, dotted here and there with few arable fields now green as the pastures with their young crops of wheat and rye; there were woodlands bright in their new greenery, and apple-orchards, glowing with their fragrant blossoms. There were scattered farmhouses among the orchards; and an irregular hamlet scattered along a yellow road in the foreground, among shadowy elm-trees, all festooned with vines; and far off, on the farthest slope on the verge of the horizon, the towers and pinnacles of a tall, castellated building towered above the grand and solemn woods, which probably composed the chase of some feudal seigneur.
The little dale which I have described was traversed by two separate ways: one, a regular road, so far as any roads of the fourteenth century could be called regular, and adapted for horses and such rude vehicles as the age and the country required; the other, a narrow, winding foot-path, following the bends of the rivulet, which the other crossed by a picturesque wooden bridge, at about five hundred yards below the well-head179 and the chapel.
At the moment when my tale commences, the doors of the chapel were thrown wide open, and the little bell was tinkling with a merry chime that harmonized well with the gay aspect of nature—the music of the rejoicing birds which were filling the air with their glee, and the lively ripple of the stream fretting over its pebbly bed.
As if summoned by the joyous cadence of the bells, a numerous party was now seen coming up the foot-path by the edge of the rivulet, apparently from the hamlet in the larger valley, wending their way toward the chapel. It needed but a glance to discover the occasion. It was a bridal-procession, headed by the gray-haired village priest in full canonicals, and some of the elders of the village.
Behind these, lightly tripped six young girls, dressed in white, with crowns of May-flowers on their heads, and garlands of the same woven like scarfs across their bosoms. They were all singularly pretty, having been chosen probably for their beauty from among their playmates: they had all the rich, dark hair, flowing in loose ringlets down their backs; the fine, expressive, dark eyes; the peach-like bloom on the sunny cheeks, and the ripe, red lips, which constitute the peculiar beauty which is almost characteristic of the south of France. Each of these fair young beings carried on her arm a light wicker basket, filled with the bright field-flowers of that sunny land and season—the purple violet, the rich jonquil, and pale narcissus, the many-colored crocuses from the mead, the primrose from the hedgerow-bank, the lily of the valley from the cool, shadowy grove—and strewed them, as they passed along, before the footsteps of the bride; chanting, as they did so, in the quaint old Gascon tongue, the bridal strain:—
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“The roads should blossom, the roads should bloom, So fair a bride shall leave her home, Should blossom, should bloom with garlands gay, So fair a bride shall pass to-day!”
After these, followed by her bridesmaids, the bride stepped daintily and demurely along, the acknowledged beauty of the village, happy, and bright, and innocent—the young bride Marguerite.
Her hair was of the very deepest shade of brown—so dark, that at first thought you would have deemed it black; but when you looked again, you discovered, by the absence of the cold, metallic gloss upon its wavy surface, and by the rich, warm hue with which it glowed under the sunlight, what was its true color. Her forehead was not very high, but broad and beautifully formed, and as smooth as ivory; while her arched eyebrows showed as black as night, and as soft and smooth as though they had been stripes of sable Genoa velvet. Her nose, if not absolutely faultless—for it had the slight upward turn which was so charming in Roxabara—added an arch and sprightly expression to features which were otherwise passive and voluptuous rather than mirthful; but her eyes, her eyes were wonderful—like to no eyes on earth that have ever met my gaze, save thine, incomparable——, which still shine upon my soul, though long unseen, and far away, never, never to be forgotten!—not star-like, but like wells of living, loving, languid lustrousness—brown of the deepest shade, filled with a humid, rapturous tenderness, yet brighter than the brightest, but with a soft, voluptuous, luminous brightness; not flashing, not sparkling, but penetrating and imbuing the beholder with love at once and magic light. They were fringed, too, with lashes so long and dark, that, when her lids were lowered, they showed like fringes of raven-hued silk against the delicate blush of her round cheek. Her mouth, though perhaps rather wide, was exquisitely shaped, with the arched upper lip and full, pouting lower lip, of the color of the ripe clove-carnation,181 that woos the kiss so irresistibly; with teeth as bright as mother-of-pearl, and a breath sighing forth sweeter than Indian summer.
Such was the face of Marguerite, the bride of that May morning; nor was her form inferior to it. Modelled in the fullest and roundest mould that is consistent with symmetry and grace, her figure was the very perfection, the beau-ideal of voluptuous, full-blown, yet youthful womanhood. The broad, falling shoulders; the fully-developed, glowing bust, swelling into twin hills of panting snow; the round, shapely arms, bare to the shoulder; the graceful and elastic waist; the rich curve of the arched hips, and the wavy outlines of her lower limbs, suggesting, by the rustling folds of her draperies as she walked the dewy greensward like a queen, the beauty of their unseen symmetry: these, combined with the exquisite features, the singular expression uniting, what would appear to be incongruous and contradictory, much roguish archness, something that was almost sensual in the wreathed smile, and yet withal the most perfect modesty and innocence, rendered Marguerite, the May-bride of Castel de Roche d’or, one of the loveliest, if not the very loveliest creature that ever walked to church with her affianced lover in that fair land of France.
She wore, like her bridesmaids—who, all pretty girls, were utterly eclipsed by her radiant beauty—a May-wreath on her head, and a large bouquet of fresh violets on the bosom of her low-cut white dress, which was looped up at one side with bunches of narcissus and violets, to show an under-skirt of pale peach-colored silk, the tints of which showed faintly through the thin draperies of her tunic; but, unlike them, she wore a long gauze veil, intertwined with silver threads, floating down among her luxuriant tresses, below her shapely waist.
Never was there seen in that region a lovelier, a purer, or a happier bride. Immediately behind the bridesmaids, supported182 in his turn by an equal number of tall, sinewy, well-formed youths, dressed in their best attire, half-agricultural, half-martial, as feudal vassals of their lord, bound to man-service in the field, came on the stalwart bridegroom. He was a tall, athletic, well-made man of twenty-nine or thirty years, erect as a quarter-staff, yet showing in every motion an elastic pliability and grace, which, although in reality the mere result of nature, appeared to be the consequence either of innate gentility or of long usance to the habits of the upper classes.
His complexion was that of the south—rich, sunny olive, without a tinge of color in the clear, dark cheek; his hair black as the raven’s wing, and his eyes of that wild, fiery shade of black which perhaps indicates a taint of Moorish blood. His features were very regular, and very calm in their regularity, though there was nothing pensive nor anything very grave in their expression. It was the calmness of latent passions, not the calmness of controlling principles—the stillness which precedes the thunderburst, not the stillness of the subsident and overmastered storm: for the firmly-compressed lips, the square outlines of the hard, massive jaw, the immense muscular development of the neck, and the deeply-indented frown between the eyebrows, intersecting a furrow crossing the forehead from brow to brow, would have indicated at once to the physiognomist that Maurice Champrèst was a man of the fiercest and most fiery energy and passions, concealed but not controlled—existing perhaps unsuspected, but utterly unchecked by any principle—and certain to start into a blaze at the first spark that should enkindle them.
His dress was the usual attire of a man in his station at the period, though of finer materials than was ordinary, consisting of a dark forest-green gambison, or short tunic of fine cloth, not very different in form from the blouse of the modern Frenchman, gathered about his waist by a broad belt of black leather,183 fastened in front by a brazen buckle, and supporting on one side a heavy, buckhorn-hilted wood-knife, and on the other a large pouch or purse of black cordovan, bound with silver; his hose were of the same color with the tunic, fitting close to the shapely thigh, and above these he wore long boots of russet-tawny leather. His black hair fell in two heavy clubs or masses over each ear, nearly to the collar of his doublet, from beneath the cover of a small cap of black velvet, set jauntily on one side, and adorned with a single white-cock’s feather.
His appearance on the whole, though he was very far inferior in regard of personal beauty to the exquisite creature whom he was so soon to call his wife, was manly and imposing; while the character of his dress and equipments, as well as the decorations of Marguerite and her attendant maidens, showed at once that they were all of a quality and station to the serfs employed in the cultivation of the lands of the great seigneurs, and indeed to that of the ordinary armed vassals and feudal tenants of the day.
In truth, Maurice Champrèst was not only the richest farmer, but the highest military vassal under the fief of Raoul de Canillac, the marquis of Roche d’or, his ancestor having been banner-bearer to the first lord of the name, and his people having held and cultivated the same farm for many a century, bound only to homage and free man-service in the field under the banner of his lord, to which in war he was held to bring five spearsmen and as many archers in full bodynge, as it was then technically termed, and effeyre-of-war. He was, in short, though not noble, nor what could be exactly termed a gentleman, of the very highest of feudal territorial vassals, not far removed from the class which were in England designated as franklins, although with fewer privileges and smaller real freedom, France having always been more rigidly feudal than the neighboring island, owing to the absence of the large admixture of Saxon184 blood and Saxon liberty, the latter of which soon began to preponderate in the white-rocked isle of ocean. His beautiful bride Marguerite, though not his equal in birth—for her grandfather and grandmother, nay, her father himself, in his early youth, had been serfs—was a free-born and a gently-nurtured woman; the old people having been manumitted and presented with a few acres of land, in consequence of the gallantry with which he had rescued the then seigneur of Roche d’or, when unhorsed and at the mercy of the German communes at the bloody battle of Bovines, stricken between Philip the August and his rebellious barons.
This event had taken place years before the birth of Marguerite, and in fact when her father was a mere stripling; and, as her mother was a woman of free lineage, neither serf nor villeyn, she was, of course, beyond the reach of cavil. Nay, more than this, the unusual courage of the old man on that dreadful day, and the consideration always manifested toward him by the then marquis and his immediate successor, had won for him a far higher standing than was usually accorded to manumitted serfs by the class next above them. Her family, moreover, in both the last generations, had prospered in worldly wealth, for the old serf was shrewd and wary, had hoarded money, and increased the extent of his rural demesne, till Marguerite, who was an only daughter, was not only a beauty but an heiress; and probably, with the exception of her husband, would be, on the death of her parents, the richest person in the hamlet. She had received, moreover, advantages at that period very unusual indeed; for having, when a mere child, attracted the attention of the late marchioness de Canillac by her grace, her beauty, and the artless na?veté of her manners, she had been selected to attend, rather as a companion than a servant, on Mademoiselle de Roche d’or, a girl a few years her senior.
185 The young lady had become much attached to Marguerite, and on being sent to a convent in the principal town of the department for her education, as was usual, had obtained permission that Marguerite might attend her still; so that the young peasant had enjoyed all the advantages of mental culture granted to the high-born damsel; had profited by them to the utmost; and had parted from her orphaned mistress only when, after the death of her parents, she was removed with her brother, the present marquis, to the guardianship of their next relative, the prince of Auvergne. In the meantime, while the marquis and his sister had breathed the atmosphere of courts and large cities, far away from their native province, Marguerite had returned to the humble home of her parents which she had filled with happiness by the light of her loving eyes, and the harmonies of her soft, low voice; had expanded from the bud into the full-blown flower, admired and beloved of all; had burst from the frail and graceful girl into the exquisite and complete woman; and, having long been loved of Maurice Champrèst, and bestowed upon him all the tenderness and truth of her maiden affections, was now about to surrender her hand also to him unto whom she had been during the whole of the last year affianced.
And now, with pipe and tabor, with the old, time-honored bridal-chorus, with flowers scattered along the way, and garlands swinging from the hedgerows by which she was to pass, and decorating the rude pillars and stern arches of the old Gothic church in which she was to wed, with all the village in her train, carolling and rejoicing at so suitable, so sweet a bridal, Marguerite, the bride of May, was led to the ceremony that should of the twain make one for ever and for ever, of which the word of God himself declared that whom he hath united no man shall put asunder.
Merrily, with louder strains and blither minstrelsey, they wound up the little dell among the oaks, paused for a moment at the rustic fount to cross their brows with its holy waters,186 and entered the low portals of the village-chapel. The bells ceased tinkling; the brief ceremony was performed by the old priest who had baptized them both; the hand of the down-eyed, blushing bride, still sparkling and smiling amid her happy, soft confusion, was placed in the ardent grasp of Maurice, and she was now her own no longer, but a wedded wife.
She was wept over, blessed, caressed, and kissed, by half the company, and many a fervent prayer was breathed for the happiness, the complete and perfect bliss of Marguerite, the bride of May—alas for human hopes and the vain prayers of mortals!—and then, while the bells struck up a livelier, louder chiming, and the bride-maidens trolled the chorus forth more cheerily—
“The roads should blossom, the roads should bloom, So fair a bride shall leave her home, Should blossom, should bloom with garlands gay, So fair a bride shall pass to-day!”—
with many a manly voice swelling more lustily the nuptial cadence, they passed the little green descending to the horse-road, Marguerite clinging now to his supporting arm and looking tenderly up into his with eyes suffused with happy tears and cheeks radiant with dimpled smiles and rosy blushes.
But at the moment when the bridal-train was wheeling down toward the road, and had now nearly reached the point of its intersection with the foot-path, the loud and noisy trampling of many horses, and the jingling clash of the harness of armed riders, was distinctly heard above the swelling chorus of the hymenean, above the chiming of the wedding-bells; and within a few seconds, two or three horsemen crossed the brow of the eastern hill, at a gentle trot, and were followed by a company of some fifty men-at-arms, under the guidance of an old officer, whose beard and hair, as white as snow, fell down over his gorget from beneath the small, black-velvet cap, which alone187 covered his head, for his helmet hung at his saddle-bow. The troopers were all armed point-device, in perfect steel, with long, pennoned lances in their hands, two-handed broadswords slung across their shoulders from the left to the right, and battle-axe and mace depending on this side or that from the pommels of their steel-plated saddles. Their horses, too—strong, powerful brutes of the Norman stock, crossed with some lighter strain of higher blood—were barded, as it was termed, with chamfronts and neck-plates, poitrels on the breast, and the bards proper covering the loins and croup; and all were arrayed under a broad, square banner, blazoned, as if every eye of the bridal-party could at once distinguish, with the bearings of the lords of Castel de Roche d’or.
No sooner had they discovered this, than they halted, and formed a line along the edge of the road, anxious to testify their respect to their young lord—who now, recently of age, was returning, after years of absence, from the chateau of his guardian—and eager to observe the passage of the cavalcade.
The persons who led the approaching band were three in number, two of whom rode a few horse-lengths in advance of the third, and were evidently of rank superior to the rest; while something seemed to indicate, though it was indefinite, and not very obvious how far it did so, that even between these two there subsisted no perfect equality.
He to the left was the elder by many years; a finely-formed and not ill-favored man, of some forty-five or fifty years; magnificently apparelled in a suit of rich half-armor, with russet-leather boots meeting the taslets or thigh-pieces at the knee; accoutred with heavy gilded spurs, and wearing on his head a crimson-velvet mortier, adorned by a massive gold chain, and a lofty plume of white feathers.
And he it was, who, although in his outward show he was the more splendid—though he bestrode his steed with an air188 of pride so manifest, that you might have fancied he bestrode the universe—though he addressed all his inferiors with intolerable haughtiness, and appeared to look upon all his equals as inferiors—yet, by his demeanor toward the youth who reined his Arab courser by his side, and by his almost servile watching of his every motion, and lowering his voice at his every word, appeared to be oppressed in his presence by a sense of the utmost unworthiness, and scarcely to hold himself entitled to have an opinion of his own until sanctioned by that of the young marquis de Roche d’or.
The features of this man were certainly well-favored rather than the reverse—for the brow, the eyes, the outlines, were all good; and yet the expressions they assumed, as he was moved by varying passions, were so odious and detestable, that on a nearer view, a close observer would probably have styled him hideous, and avoided his advances. Pride, of the haughtiest and most intolerant form, would at one time writhe his lip and deform his every lineament; at another, it would yield to the basest, the most abject servility. Cruelty alone sat fixed and permanent in the thick, massive, animal jaw, the low and somewhat receding forehead, and the oblique glances of the cold, clear, gray eye; but sensuality, and sneering sarcasm, and utter want of veneration or belief for anything high or holy, had left their hateful traces in the lines about his mouth and nostrils: nor were these odious, ineradicable signs of an atrocious character redeemed by the evident presence of high intellect and pervading talents, for that intellect was of a shrewd, keen, cunning caste, and was in no wise akin to anything of an imaginative, a noble, or a virtuous type.
Such was the appearance, such the aspect, of a man renowned in his day far and wide through France, but renowned for evil only. Such was Canillac le fou—a soubriquet which he had won throughout his province, for the insane, frantic, and unnatural189 vice and crime which had marked his whole career from boyhood. Canillac the madman!—and with good reason did the vassals of the old house of Roche d’or shrink upon themselves, and draw instinctively one toward the other, like wild-fowl when they see the shadow of the soaring falcon, with a foreboding of peril near at hand, when they beheld this fierce, voluptuous, pitiless monster—whose favorite boast it was that he had never spared a woman in his passion, nor a man in his hatred—riding at the bridle-rein of their young lord, as his chosen friend and companion, and probably as the arbiter of his pleasures, instigator of his vices!
And of a truth they had good cause to shrink and tremble, an’ had they but then known that which was even now impending, to curse the very hour in which he or they were born—he to inflict, they to endure the last, worst outrages of feudal tyranny and wrong!
But they as yet knew nothing, nor, save instinctively, foreboded anything; but he, with his keen, furtive, ever-roving glances, noted (what none less sly, suspicious, and acute, would have suspected) the secret and intuitive horror with which the peasantry of Castel de Roche d’or regarded him, and vowed at once within his secret soul that they should have good cause to curse him, and that speedily.
His comrade, the young marquis, was, to the outward eye, a very different personage. Having barely reached his twenty-first year, he was as graceful and finely-framed a youth as ever sat a charger. His face, too, was very fine and regular, with the large, liquid, dark eyes, and deep, clear, olive tint, which are so common in the south of France. His hair was black as the raven’s wing, with the same purplish, metallic lustre gleaming over its glossy surface, and fell in long, wavy, uncurled masses over the collar of the quilted gambison of rose-colored silk, which he wore under a shirt of flexible chain-mail, polished190 so brilliantly, that it flashed and sparkled in the morning sunbeams like a network of diamonds.
The ordinary expression of his countenance was grave, calm, and melancholy; yet it was impassive and cold, rather than thoughtful and imaginative, while there was an occasional flashing light in the sleepy eye, and a gleam of almost fierce intelligence in all the features, and a strange, animal curl of the pale lips, which seemed to tell that there lurked beneath that cold exterior a volcano of fierce and fiery passions, ready at any instant to leap into life, and consume whosoever should oppose his will.
The keen observer of humanity would have pronounced him one cold, rather than collected; selfish at once, and careless of the rights and happiness of others; sluggish, perhaps, and difficult to arouse, but, once aroused, impetuous, and of indomitable will—truly a fearful combination!
When the company had arrived within thirty or forty paces of the bridal-party, the villagers threw up their caps into the air, and raised a loud and joyous exclamation—“Vive Canillac! vive Canillac! Vive le beau marquis de Roche d’or!”—and, for the moment, the boy’s face lighted up with a gleam of warm and honest feeling—gratification at the welcome of his people, and something of real sympathy with their condition.
But just as he had determined to ride forward and return their kindly greeting with words of cheer and promise of protection, the young and fiery Arab on which he was mounted, terrified by the shoutings, and the caps tossed into the air, reared bolt upright, made a prodigious bound forward, and then, wheeling round, yerked out his heels violently, and dashed away with such fury, that before the young rider, who sat as firmly in his saddle as though he had been a portion of the animal, could arrest him, they were almost among the men-at-arms.
191 The whole passed in a minute; but that minute was of fearful import to many there assembled, many both innocent and guilty. Even in the point of time when the wild horse was plunging forward to the bridal-party, the young lord’s eye, undiverted by the sense of his own keen peril, had fallen upon the lovely face and exquisite symmetry o............