Read Chivalry: Dizain des Reines Page 24


  _The Story of the Navarrese_

  In the year of grace 1386, upon the feast of Saint Bartholomew (thusNicolas begins), came to the Spanish coast Messire Peyre de Lesnerac,in a war-ship sumptuously furnished and manned by many persons ofdignity and wealth, in order suitably to escort the Princess Jehaneinto Brittany, where she was to marry the Duke of that province. Therewere now rejoicings throughout Navarre, in which the Princess took buta nominal part and young Antoine Riczi none at all.

  This Antoine Riczi came to Jehane that August twilight in the hedgedgarden. "King's daughter!" he sadly greeted her. "Duchess of Brittany!Countess of Rougemont! Lady of Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and ofToufon and Guerche!"

  She answered, "No, my dearest,--I am that Jehane, whose only title isthe Constant Lover." And in the green twilight, lit as yet by onelow-hanging star alone, their lips and desperate young bodies clung,now, it might be, for the last time.

  Presently the girl spoke. Her soft mouth was lax and tremulous, andher gray eyes were more brilliant than the star yonder. The boy's armswere about her, so that neither could be quite unhappy, yet.

  "Friend," said Jehane, "I have no choice. I must wed with this deMontfort. I think I shall die presently. I have prayed God that I maydie before they bring me to the dotard's bed."

  Young Riczi held her now in an embrace more brutal. "Mine! mine!" hesnarled toward the obscuring heavens.

  "Yet it may be I must live. Friend, the man is very old. Is it wickedto think of that? For I cannot but think of his great age."

  Then Riczi answered: "My desires--may God forgive me!--have clutchedlike starving persons at that sorry sustenance. Friend! ah, fair,sweet friend! the man is human and must die, but love, we read, isimmortal. I am wishful to kill myself, Jehane. But, oh, Jehane! dareyou to bid me live?"

  "Friend, as you love me, I entreat you to live. Friend, I crave of theEternal Father that if I falter in my love for you I may be deniedeven the one bleak night of ease which Judas knows." The girl did notweep; dry-eyed she winged a perfectly sincere prayer towardincorruptible saints. Riczi was to remember the fact, and through longyears of severance.

  For even now, as Riczi went away from Jehane, a shrill singing-girlwas rehearsing, yonder behind the yew-hedge, the song which she was tosing at Jehane's bridal feast.

  Sang this joculatrix:

  "When the Morning broke before us Came the wayward Three astraying, Chattering in babbling chorus, (Obloquies of Aether saying),-- Hoidens that, at pegtop playing, Flung their Top where yet it whirls Through the coil of clouds unstaying, For the Fates are captious girls!"

  And upon the next day de Lesnerac bore young Jehane from Pampeluna andpresently to Saille, where old Jehan the Brave took her to wife. Shelived as a queen, but she was a woman of infrequent laughter.

  She had Duke Jehan's adoration, and his barons' obeisancy, and hisvillagers applauded her passage with stentorian shouts. She passedinterminable days amid bright curious arrasses and trod listlesslyover pavements strewn with flowers. She had fiery-hearted jewels, andshimmering purple cloths, and much furniture adroitly carven, and manytapestries of Samarcand and Baldach upon which were embroidered, bybrown fingers that time had turned long ago to Asian dust, innumerableasps and deer and phoenixes and dragons and all the motley inhabitantsof air and of the thicket; but her memories, too, she had, and for adreary while she got no comfort because of them. Then ambitionquickened.

  Young Antoine Riczi likewise nursed his wound as best he might; but atthe end of the second year after Jehane's wedding his uncle, theVicomte de Montbrison--a gaunt man, with preoccupied and troubledeyes--had summoned Antoine into Lyonnois and, after appropriatesalutation, had informed the lad that, as the Vicomte's heir, he wasto marry the Demoiselle Gerberge de Nerac upon the ensuing Michaelmas.

  "That I may not do," said Riczi; and since a chronicler that wouldtempt fortune should never stretch the fabric of his wares too thin(unlike Sir Hengist), I merely tell you these two dwelt together atMontbrison for a decade: and the Vicomte swore at his nephew andpredicted this or that disastrous destination as often as Antoinedeclined to marry the latest of his uncle's candidates,--in whom theVicomte was of an astonishing fertility.

  In the year of grace 1401 came the belated news that Duke Jehan hadclosed his final day. "You will be leaving me!" the Vicomte growled;"now, in my decrepitude, you will be leaving me! It is abominable, andI shall in all likelihood disinherit you this very night."

  "Yet it is necessary," Riczi answered; and, filled with no unhallowedjoy, he rode for Vannes, in Brittany, where the Duchess-Regent heldher court. Dame Jehane had within that fortnight put aside hermourning. She sat beneath a green canopy, gold-fringed and powderedwith many golden stars, when Riczi came again to her, and the risingsaps of spring were exercising their august and formidable influence.She sat alone, by prearrangement, to one end of the high-ceiled andradiant apartment; midway in the hall her lords and divers ladies weregathered about a saltatrice and a jongleur, who were diverting thecourtiers, to the mincing accompaniment of a lute; but Jehane satapart from these, frail, and splendid with many jewels, and a littlesad.

  And Antoine Riczi found no power of speech within him at the first.Silent he stood before her, still as an effigy, while meltingly thejongleur sang.

  "Jehane!" said Antoine Riczi, in a while, "have you, then, forgotten,O Jehane?"

  The resplendent woman had not moved at all. It was as though she weresome tinted and lavishly adorned statue of barbaric heathenry, and heher postulant; and her large eyes appeared to judge an immeasurablepath, beyond him. Now her lips fluttered somewhat. "I am the Duchessof Brittany," she said, in the phantom of a voice. "I am the Countessof Rougemont. The Lady of Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and ofToufon and Guerche!... Jehane is dead."

  The man had drawn one audible breath. "You are that Jehane, whose onlytitle is the Constant Lover!"

  "Friend, the world smirches us," she said half-pleadingly, "I havetasted too deep of wealth and power. I am drunk with a deadly wine,and ever I thirst--I thirst--"

  "Jehane, do you remember that May morning in Pampeluna when first Ikissed you, and about us sang many birds? Then as now you wore a gownof green, Jehane."

  "Friend, I have swayed kingdoms since."

  "Jehane, do you remember that August twilight in Pampeluna when last Ikissed you? Then as now you wore a gown of green, Jehane."

  "But I wore no such chain as this about my neck," the woman answered,and lifted a huge golden collar garnished with emeralds and sapphiresand with many pearls. "Friend, the chain is heavy, yet I lack the willto cast it off. I lack the will, Antoine." And now with a sudden shoutof mirth her courtiers applauded the evolutions of the saltatrice.

  "King's daughter!" said Riczi then; "O perilous merchandise! a godcame to me and a sword had pierced his breast. He touched the goldhilt of it and said, 'Take back your weapon.' I answered, 'I do notknow you.' 'I am Youth' he said; 'take back your weapon.'"

  "It is true," she responded, "it is lamentably true that afterto-night we are as different persons, you and I."

  He said: "Jehane, do you not love me any longer? Remember old yearsand do not break your oath with me, Jehane, since God abhors nothingso much as unfaith. For your own sake, Jehane,--ah, no, not for yoursake nor for mine, but for the sake of that blithe Jehane, whom, soyou tell me, time has slain!"

  Once or twice she blinked, as if dazzled by a light of intolerablesplendor, but otherwise she stayed rigid. "You have dared, messire, toconfront me with the golden-hearted, clean-eyed Navarrese that oncewas I! and I requite." The austere woman rose. "Messire, you swore tome, long since, eternal service. I claim my right in domnei.Yonder--gray-bearded, the man in black and silver--is the Earl ofWorcester, the King of England's ambassador, in common with whom thewealthy dowager of Brittany has signed a certain contract. Go you,then, with Worcester into England, as my proxy, and in that island, asmy proxy, become the wife of the King of England. Messire, youraudience is done."

&n
bsp; Riczi said this: "Can you hurt me any more, Jehane?--no, even in hellthey cannot hurt me now. Yet I, at least, keep faith, and in your faceI fling faith like a glove--old-fashioned, it may be, but clean,--andI will go, Jehane."

  Her heart raged. "Poor, glorious fool!" she thought; "had you but thewit even now to use me brutally, even now to drag me from thisdais--!" Instead he went away from her smilingly, treading through thehall with many affable salutations, while the jongleur sang.

  Sang the jongleur:

  "There is a land those hereabout Ignore ... Its gates are barred By Titan twins, named Fear and Doubt. These mercifully guard That land we seek--the land so fair!-- And all the fields thereof, Where daffodils flaunt everywhere And ouzels chant of love,-- Lest we attain the Middle-Land, Whence clouded well-springs rise, And vipers from a slimy strand Lift glittering cold eyes.

  "Now, the parable all may understand, And surely you know the name of the land! Ah, never a guide or ever a chart May safely lead you about this land,-- The Land of the Human Heart!"

  And the following morning, being duly empowered, Antoine Riczi sailedfor England in company with the Earl of Worcester; and upon SaintRichard's day the next ensuing was, at Eltham, as proxy of Jehane,married in his own person to the bloat King Henry, the fourth of thatname to reign. This king was that same squinting Harry of Derby(called also Henry of Lancaster and Bolingbroke) who stole hiscousin's crown, and about whom I have told you in the preceding story.First Sire Henry placed the ring on Riczi's finger, and then spokeAntoine Riczi, very loud and clear:

  "I, Antoine Riczi,--in the name of my worshipful lady, Dame Jehane,the daughter of Messire Charles until lately King of Navarre, theDuchess of Brittany and the Countess of Rougemont,--do take you, SireHenry of Lancaster, King of England and in title of France, and Lordof Ireland, to be my husband; and thereto I, Antoine Riczi, in thespirit of my said lady"--the speaker paused here to regard the grosshulk of masculinity before him, and then smiled very sadly--"inprecisely the spirit of my said lady, I plight you my troth."

  Afterward the King made him presents of some rich garments of scarlettrimmed with costly furs, and of four silk belts studded with silverand gold, and with valuable clasps, of which the owner might well beproud, and Riczi returned to Lyonnois. "Depardieux!" his uncle said;"so you return alone!"

  "I return as did Prince Troilus," said Riczi--"to boast to you ofliberal entertainment in the tent of Diomede."

  "You are certainly an inveterate fool," the Vicomte considered after aprolonged appraisal of his face, "since there is always a deal ofother pink-and-white flesh as yet unmortgaged--Boy with my brother'seyes!" the Vicomte said, in another voice; "I have heard of the taskput upon you: and I would that I were God to punish as is fitting! Butyou are welcome home, my lad."

  So these two abode together at Montbrison for a long time, and in thepurlieus of that place hunted and hawked, and made sonnets once in awhile, and read aloud from old romances some five days out of theseven. The verses of Riczi were in the year of grace 1410 made public,not without acclamation; and thereafter the stripling Comte deCharolais, future heir to all Burgundy and a zealous patron of rhyme,was much at Montbrison, and there conceived for Antoine Riczi suchadmiration as was possible to a very young man only.

  In the year of grace 1412 the Vicomte, being then bedridden, diedwithout any disease and of no malady save the inherencies of his age."I entreat of you, my nephew," he said at last, "that always you useas touchstone the brave deed you did at Eltham. It is necessary for agentleman to serve his lady according to her commandments, but youperformed the most absurd and the most cruel task which any woman everimposed upon her lover and servitor in domnei. I laugh at you, and Ienvy you." Thus he died, about Martinmas.

  Now was Antoine Riczi a powerful baron, but he got no comfort of hislordship, because that old incendiary, the King of Darkness, dailyadded fuel to a smouldering sorrow until grief quickened into vaultingflames of wrath and of disgust.

  "What now avail my riches?" said the Vicomte. "How much wealthier wasI when I was loved, and was myself an eager lover! I relish no otherpleasures than those of love. I am Love's sot, drunk with a deadlywine, poor fool, and ever I thirst. All my chattels and my acresappear to me to be bright vapors, and the more my dominion and mypower increase, the more rancorously does my heart sustain itsbitterness over having been robbed of that fair merchandise which isthe King of England's. To hate her is scant comfort and to despise hernone at all, since it follows that I who am unable to forget thewanton am even more to be despised than she. I will go into Englandand execute what mischief I may against her."

  The new Vicomte de Montbrison set forth for Paris, first to do homagefor his fief, and secondly to be accredited for some plausible missioninto England. But in Paris he got disquieting news. Jehane's husbandwas dead, and her stepson Henry, the fifth monarch of that name toreign in Britain, had invaded France to support preposterous claimswhich the man advanced to the crown of that latter kingdom; and as theearth is altered by the advent of winter, so was the appearance ofFrance transformed by King Henry's coming, and everywhere the nobleswere stirred up to arms, the castles were closed, the huddled citieswere fortified, and on every side arose entrenchments.

  Thus through this sudden turn was the new Vicomte, the dreamer and therecluse, caught up by the career of events, as a straw is borne awayby a torrent, when the French lords marched with their vassals toHarfleur, where they were soundly drubbed by the King of England; asafterward at Agincourt.

  But in the year of grace 1417 there was a breathing space fordiscredited France, and presently the Vicomte de Montbrison was sentinto England, as ambassador. He got in London a fruitless audience ofKing Henry, whose demands were such as rendered a renewal of the warinevitable; and afterward got, in the month of April, about the day ofPalm Sunday, at the Queen's dower-palace of Havering-Bower, aninterview with Queen Jehane.[*]

  [*Nicolas unaccountably omits to mention that during the Frenchwars she had ruled England as Regent with signal capacity,--althoughthis fact, as you will see more lately, is the pivot of hischronicle.]

  A curled pert page took the Vicomte to where she sat alone, byprearrangement, in a chamber with painted walls, profusely lighted bythe sun, and made pretence to weave a tapestry. When the page had goneshe rose and cast aside the shuttle, and then with a glad and wordlesscry stumbled toward the Vicomte. "Madame and Queen--!" he coldly said.

  His judgment found in her a quite ordinary, frightened woman, agingnow, but still very handsome in these black and shimmering gold robes;but all his other faculties found her desirable: and with a containedhatred he had perceived, as if by the terse illumination of athunderbolt, that he could never love any woman save the woman whom hemost despised.

  She said: "I had forgotten. I had remembered only you, Antoine, andNavarre, and the clean-eyed Navarrese--" Now for a little, Jehanepaced the gleaming and sun-drenched apartment as a bright leopardessmight tread her cage. Then she wheeled. "Friend, I think that GodHimself has deigned to avenge you. All misery my reign has been. FirstHotspur, then prim Worcester harried us. Came Glyndwyr afterward toprick us with his devils' horns. Followed the dreary years that linkedme to the rotting corpse which God's leprosy devoured while the poorfurtive thing yet moved, and endured its share in the punishment ofManuel's poisonous blood. All misery, Antoine! And now I live beneatha sword."

  "You have earned no more," he said. "You have earned no more, OJehane! whose only title is the Constant Lover!" He spat it out.

  She came uncertainly toward him, as though he had been some notimplacable knave with a bludgeon. "For the King hates me," sheplaintively said, "and I live beneath a sword. The big, fierce-eyedboy has hated me from the first, for all his lip-courtesy. And now helacks the money to pay his troops, and I am the wealthiest personwithin his realm. I am a woman and alone in a foreign land. So I mustwait, and wait, and wait, Antoine, till he devises some trumped-upaccusation. Friend, I live as did Saint Damoclus, beneath a sword.
Antoine!" she wailed--for now the pride of Queen Jehane was shatteredutterly--"I am held as a prisoner for all that my chains are of gold."

  "Yet it was not until of late," he observed, "that you disliked themetal which is the substance of all crowns."

  And now the woman lifted toward him her massive golden necklace,garnished with emeralds and sapphires and with many pearls, and in thesunlight the gems were tawdry things. "Friend, the chain is heavy, andI lack the power to cast it off. The Navarrese we know of wore no suchperilous fetters. Ah, you should have mastered me at Vannes. You couldhave done so, very easily. But you only talked--oh, Mary pity us! youonly talked!--and I could find only a servant where I had sore need tofind a master. Let all women pity me!"

  But now came many armed soldiers into the apartment. With spirit QueenJehane turned to meet them, and you saw that she was of royal blood,for now the pride of many emperors blazed and informed her body aslight occupies a lantern. "At last you come for me, messieurs?"

  "Whereas," the leader of these soldiers read from aparchment--"whereas the King's stepmother, Queen Jehane, is accused bycertain persons of an act of witch-craft that with diabolical andsubtile methods wrought privily to destroy the King, the said DameJehane is by the King committed (all her attendants being removed) tothe custody of Sir John Pelham, who will, at the King's pleasure,confine her within Pevensey Castle, there to be kept under Sir John'scontrol: the lands and other properties of the said Dame Jehane beinghereby forfeit to the King, whom God preserve!"

  "Harry of Monmouth!" said Jehane,--"ah, my tall stepson, could I butcome to you, very quietly, with a knife--!" She shrugged hershoulders, and the gold about her person glittered in the sunlight."Witchcraft! ohime, one never disproves that. Friend, now are youavenged the more abundantly."

  "Young Riczi is avenged," the Vicomte said; "and I came hitherdesiring vengeance."

  She wheeled, a lithe flame (he thought) of splendid fury. "And in thegutter Jehane dares say what Queen Jehane upon the throne might neversay. Had I reigned all these years as mistress not of England but ofEurope,--had nations wheedled me in the place of barons,--young Riczihad been none the less avenged. Bah! what do these so-little personsmatter? Take now your petty vengeance! drink deep of it! and know thatalways within my heart the Navarrese has lived to shame me! Know thatto-day you despise Jehane, the purchased woman! and that Jehane lovesyou! and that the love of proud Jehane creeps like a beaten cur towardyour feet, in the sight of common men! and know that Riczi isavenged,--you milliner!"

  "Into England I came desiring vengeance--Apples of Sodom! O bitterfruit!" the Vicomte thought; "O fitting harvest of a fool's assiduoushusbandry!"

  They took her from him: and that afternoon, after long meditation, theVicomte de Montbrison entreated a second private audience of KingHenry, and readily obtained it. "Unhardy is unseely," the Vicomte saidat this interview's conclusion. The tale tells that the Vicomtereturned to France and within this realm assembled all such lords asthe abuses of the Queen-Regent Isabeau had more notoriouslydissatisfied.

  The Vicomte had upon occasion an invaluable power of speech; and now,so great was the devotion of love's dupe, so heartily, so hastily, didhe design to remove the discomforts of Queen Jehane, that now hiseloquence was twin to Belial's insidious talking when that fiendtempts us to some proud iniquity.

  Then presently these lords had sided with King Henry, as did theVicomte de Montbrison, in open field. Next, as luck would have it,Jehan Sans-Peur was slain at Montereau; and a little later the newDuke of Burgundy, who loved the Vicomte as he loved no other man, hadshifted his coat, forsaking France. These treacheries brought down thewavering scales of warfare, suddenly, with an aweful clangor; and nowin France clean-hearted persons spoke of the Vicomte de Montbrison asthey would speak of Ganelon or of Iscariot, and in every market-placewas King Henry proclaimed as governor of the realm.

  Meantime Queen Jehane had been conveyed to prison and lodged therein.She had the liberty of a tiny garden, high-walled, and of two scantilyfurnished chambers. The brace of hard-featured females whom Pelham hadprovided for the Queen's attendance might speak to her of nothing thatoccurred without the gates of Pevensey, and she saw no other personssave her confessor, a triple-chinned Dominican; had men already lainJehane within the massive and gilded coffin of a queen the outer worldwould have made as great a turbulence in her ears.

  But in the year of grace 1422, upon the feast of Saint Bartholomew,and about vespers--for thus it wonderfully fell out,--one of thosegrim attendants brought to her the first man, save the fat confessor,whom the Queen had seen within five years. The proud, frail womanlooked and what she saw was the inhabitant of all her dreams.

  Said Jehane: "This is ill done. Time has avenged you. Be contentedwith that knowledge, and, for Heaven's sake, do not endeavor tomoralize over the ruin which Heaven has made, and justly made, ofQueen Jehane, as I perceive you mean to do." She leaned backward inthe chair, very coarsely clad in brown, but knowing that her coloringwas excellent, that she had miraculously preserved her figure, andthat she did not look her real age by a good ten years. Suchreflections beget spiritual comfort even in a prison.

  "Friend," the lean-faced man now said, "I do not come with suchintent, as my mission will readily attest, nor to any ruin, as yourmirror will attest. Instead, madame, I come as the emissary of KingHenry, now dying at Vincennes, and with letters to the lords andbishops of his council. Dying, the man restores to you your libertyand your dower-lands, your bed and all your movables, and six gowns ofsuch fashion and such color as you may elect."

  Then with hurried speech he told her of five years' events: of howwithin that period King Henry had conquered France, and had marriedthe French King's daughter, and had begotten a boy who would presentlyinherit the united realms of France and England, since in the supremehour of triumph King Henry had been stricken with a mortal sickness,and now lay dying, or perhaps already dead, at Vincennes; and of howwith his penultimate breath the prostrate conqueror had restored toQueen Jehane all properties and all honors which she formerly enjoyed.

  "I shall once more be Regent," the woman said when the Vicomte hadmade an end; "Antoine, I shall presently be Regent both of France andof England, since Dame Katharine is but a child." Jehane stoodmotionless save for the fine hands that plucked the air. "Mistress ofEurope! absolute mistress, and with an infant ward! now, may God havemercy on my unfriends, for they will soon perceive great need of it!"

  "Yet was mercy ever the prerogative of royal persons," the Vicomtesuavely said, "and the Navarrese we know of was both royal and verymerciful, O Constant Lover."

  The speech was as a whip-lash. Abruptly suspicion kindled in hershrewd gray eyes. "Harry of Monmouth feared neither man nor God. Itneeded more than any death-bed repentance to frighten him intorestoring my liberty." There was a silence. "You, a Frenchman, come asthe emissary of King Henry who has devastated France! are there noEnglish lords, then, left alive of his, army?"

  The Vicomte de Montbrison said; "There is at all events no personbetter fitted to patch up this dishonorable business of yourcaptivity, in which no clean man would care to meddle."

  She appraised this, and said with entire irrelevance: "The world hassmirched you, somehow. At last you have done something save considerhow badly I treated you. I praise God, Antoine, for it brings younearer."

  He told her all. King Henry, it appeared, had dealt with him atHavering in perfect frankness. The King needed money for his wars inFrance, and failing the seizure of Jehane's enormous wealth, hadexhausted every resource. "And France I mean to have," the King said."Now the world knows you enjoy the favor of the Comte de Charolais; soget me an alliance with Burgundy against my imbecile brother ofFrance, and Dame Jehane shall repossess her liberty. There you have myprice."

  "And this price I paid," the Vicomte sternly said, "for 'Unhardy isunseely,' Satan whispered, and I knew that Duke Philippe trusted me.Yea, all Burgundy I marshalled under your stepson's banner, and forthree years I fought beneath his loathed
banner, until at Troyes wehad trapped and slain the last loyal Frenchman. And to-day in Francemy lands are confiscate, and there is not an honest Frenchman butspits upon my name. All infamy I come to you for this last time,Jehane! as a man already dead I come to you, Jehane, for in Francethey thirst to murder me, and England has no further need ofMontbrison, her blunted and her filthy instrument!"

  The woman nodded here. "You have set my thankless service above yourlife, above your honor. I find the rhymester glorious and very vile."

  "All vile," he answered; "and outworn! King's daughter, I swore toyou, long since, eternal service. Of love I freely gave you yonder inNavarre, as yonder at Eltham I crucified my innermost heart for yourdelectation. Yet I, at least, keep faith, and in your face I flingfaith like a glove--outworn, it may be, and God knows, unclean! Yet I,at least, keep faith! Lands and wealth have I given, up for you, Oking's daughter, and life itself have I given you, and lifelongservice have I given you, and all that I had save honor; and at thelast I give you honor, too. Now let the naked fool depart, Jehane, forhe has nothing more to give."

  While the Vicomte de Montbrison spoke thus, she had leaned upon thesill of an open casement. "Indeed, it had been better," she said,still with her face averted, and gazing downward at the tree-topsbeneath, "it had been far better had we never met. For this love ofours has proven a tyrannous and evil lord. I have had everything, andupon each feast of will and sense the world afforded me this love hasswept down, like a harpy--was it not a harpy you called the bird inthat old poem of yours?--to rob me of delight. And you have hadnothing, for he has pilfered you of life, giving only dreams inexchange, my poor Antoine, and he has led you at the last to infamy.We are as God made us, and--I may not understand why He permits thisdespotism."

  Thereafter, somewhere below, a peasant sang as he passed supperwardthrough the green twilight, lit as yet by one low-hanging star alone.

  Sang the peasant:

  "King Jesus hung upon the Cross, 'And have ye sinned?' quo' He,--. 'Nay, Dysmas, 'tis no honest loss When Satan cogs the dice ye toss, And thou shall sup with Me,-- Sedebis apud angelos, Quia amavisti!'

  "At Heaven's Gate was Heaven's Queen, 'And have ye sinned?' quo' She,-- 'And would I hold him worth a bean That durst not seek, because unclean, My cleansing charity?-- Speak thou that wast the Magdalene, Quia amavisti!'"

  "It may be that in some sort the jingle answers me!" then said Jehane;and she began with an odd breathlessness, "Friend, when King Henrydies--and even now he dies--shall I not as Regent possess such poweras no woman has ever wielded in Europe? can aught prevent this?"

  "It is true," he answered. "You leave this prison to rule over Englandagain, and over conquered France as well, and naught can prevent it."

  "Unless, friend, I were wedded to a Frenchman. Then would the sternEnglish lords never permit that I have any finger in the government."She came to him with conspicuous deliberation and rested her handsupon his breast. "Friend, I am weary of these tinsel splendors. Whatare this England and this France to me, who crave the real kingdom?"

  Her mouth was tremulous and lax, and her gray eyes were more brilliantthan the star yonder. The man's arms were about her, and of the man'sface I cannot tell you. "King's daughter! mistress of half Europe! Iam a beggar, an outcast, as a leper among honorable persons."

  But it was as though he had not spoken. "Friend, it was for this Ihave outlived these garish, fevered years, it was this which made meglad when I was a child and laughed without knowing why. That I mightto-day give up this so-great power for love of you, my all-incapableand soiled Antoine, was, as I now know, the end to which the EternalFather created me. For, look you," she pleaded, "to surrender absolutedominion over half Europe is a sacrifice. Assure me that it is asacrifice, Antoine! O glorious fool, delude me into the belief that Isurrender much in choosing you! Nay, I know it is as nothing besidewhat you have given up for me, but it is all I have--it is all I have,Antoine!"

  He drew a deep and big-lunged breath that seemed to inform his beingwith an indomitable vigor; and grief and doubtfulness went quite awayfrom him. "Love leads us," he said, "and through the sunlight of theworld Love leads us, and through the filth of it Love leads us, butalways in the end, if we but follow without swerving, Love leadsupward. Yet, O God upon the Cross! Thou that in the article of deathdidst pardon Dysmas! as what maimed warriors of life, as what bemiredtravellers in muddied byways, must we presently come to Thee!"

  "Ah, but we will come hand in hand," she answered; "and He willcomprehend."

  THE END OF THE NINTH NOVEL