The Queen"s smile grew broader; the King began to grin. Some of the circle, watching them closely, ventured to smile also. "Come, my friend," Henry said, almost with good humour, "this is all very well.
But this inmate of yours--was a very recent one."
"Was, in fact, I suppose, the rebellious little wench of whom you knew nothing yesterday!" the Queen cried harshly, and with an air of open triumph. "There can be no stealing of stolen goods, sir; and if M.
Pimentel, who had at least as much right as you to the girl--and more, for I am her guardian--has carried her off, you have small ground to complain."
"But, Madame," I said, with an air of bewilderment, "I really do not--it must be my fault, but I do not understand."
Two or three sn.i.g.g.e.red, seeing me apparently checkmated and at the end of my resources. And the King laughed out with kindly malice. "Come, Grand Master," he said, "I think that you do. However, if Pimentel has carried off the damsel, there, it seems to me, is an end of the matter."
"But, sire," I answered, looking sternly round the grinning circle, "am I mad, or is there some mystery here? I a.s.sured your Majesty yesterday that Mademoiselle D"Oyley was not in my house. I say the same to-day.
She is not; your officers may search every room and closet. And for the woman whom M. Pimentel has carried off, she is no more Mademoiselle D"Oyley than I am; she is one of my wife"s waiting-maids. If you doubt me," I continued, "you have only to send and ask. Ask the Portuguese himself."
The King stared at me. "Nonsense!" he said, sharply. "If Pimentel has carried off anyone, it must be Mademoiselle D"Oyley."
"But it is not, sire," I answered with persistence. "He has broken into my house, and abducted my servant. For Mademoiselle, she is not there to be stolen."
"Let some one go for Pimentel," the King said curtly.
But the Portuguese, as it happened, was at the door even then, and being called, had no alternative but to come forward. His face and mien as he entered and reluctantly showed himself were more than enough to dissipate any doubts which the courtiers had hitherto entertained; the former being as gloomy and downcast as the latter was timid and cringing. It is true he made some attempt at first, and for a time, to face the matter out; stammering and stuttering, and looking piteously to the Queen for help. But he could not long delay the crisis, nor deny that the person he had so cunningly abducted was one of my waiting-women; and the moment that this confession was made his case was at an end, the statement being received with so universal a peal of laughter, the King leading, as at one and the same time discomfited him, and must have persuaded any indifferent listener that all, from the first, had been in the secret.
After that he would have spent himself in vain, had he contended that Mademoiselle D"Oyley was at my house; and so clear was this that he made no second attempt to do so, but at once admitting that his people had made a mistake, he proffered me a handsome apology, and desired the King to speak to me in his behalf.
This I, on my side, was pleased to take in good part; and having let him off easily with a mild rebuke, turned from him to the Queen, and informed her with much respect that I had learned at length where Mademoiselle D"Oyley had taken refuge.
"Where, sir?" she asked, eyeing me suspiciously and with no little disfavour.
"At the Ursulines, Madame," I answered,
She winced, for she had already quarrelled with the abbess without advantage. And there for the moment the matter ended. At a later period I took care to confess all to the King, and he did not fail to laugh heartily at the clever manner in which I had outwitted Pimentel.
But this was not until the Portuguese had left the country and gone to Italy, the affair between him and Mademoiselle D"Oyley (which resolved itself into a contest between the Queen and the Ursulines) having come to a close under circ.u.mstances which it may be my duty to relate in another place.
X.
FARMING THE TAXES.
In the summer of the year 1608, determining to take up my abode, when not in Paris, at Villebon, where I had lately enlarged my property, I went thither from Rouen with my wife, to superintend the building and mark out certain plantations which I projected. As the heat that month was great, and the dust of the train annoying, I made each stage in the evening and on horseback, leaving my wife to proceed at her leisure.
In this way I was able, by taking rough paths, to do in two or three hours a distance which her coaches had scarcely covered in the day; but on the third evening, intending to make a short cut by a ford on the Vaucouleurs, I found, to my chagrin, the advantage on the other side, the ford, when I reached it at sunset, proving impracticable. As there was every prospect, however, that the water would fall within a few hours, I determined not to retrace my steps; but to wait where I was until morning, and complete my journey to Houdan in the early hours.
There was a poor inn near the ford, a mere hovel of wood on a brick foundation, yet with two storeys. I made my way to this with Maignan and La Trape, who formed, with two grooms, my only attendance; but on coming near the house, and looking about with a curious eye, I remarked something which fixed my attention, and, for the moment, brought me to a halt. This was the spectacle of three horses, of fair quality, feeding in a field of growing corn, which was the only enclosure near the inn. They were trampling and spoiling more than they ate; and, supposing that they had strayed into the place, and the house showing no signs of life, I bade my grooms fetch them out. The sun was about setting, and I stood a moment watching the long shadows of the men as they plodded through the corn, and the att.i.tudes of the horses as, with heads raised, they looked doubtfully at the newcomers.
Suddenly a man came round the corner of the house, and seeing us, and what my men were doing, began to gesticulate violently, but without sound. The grooms saw him too, and stood; and he ran up to my stirrup, his face flushed and sullen.
"Do you want to see us all ruined?" he muttered. And he begged me to call my men out of the corn.
"You are more likely to be ruined that way," I answered, looking down at him. "Why, man, is it the custom in your country to turn horses into the half-ripe corn?"
He shook his fist stealthily. "G.o.d forbid!" he said. "But the devil is within doors, and we must do his bidding."
"Ah!" I replied, my curiosity aroused "I should like to see him."
The boor shaded his eyes, and looked at me sulkily from under his matted and tangled hair. "You are not of his company?" he said with suspicion.
"I hope not," I answered, smiling at his simplicity. "But your corn is your own. I will call the men out." On which I made a sign to them to return. "Now," I said, as I walked my horse slowly towards the house, while he tramped along beside me, "who is within?"
"M. Gringuet," he said, with another stealthy gesture.
"Ah!" I said, "I am afraid that I am no wiser."
"The tax-gatherer."
"Oh! And those are his horses?" He nodded.
"Still, I do not see why they are in the corn?"
"I have no hay."
"But there is gra.s.s."
"Ay," the inn-keeper answered bitterly.
"And he said that I might eat it. It was not good enough for his horses. They must have hay or corn; and if I had none, so much the worse for me."
Full of indignation, I made in my mind a note of M. Gringuet"s name; but at the moment I said no more, and we proceeded to the house, the exterior of which, though meagre, and even miserable, gave me an impression of neatness. From the inside, however, a hoa.r.s.e, continuous noise was issuing, which resolved itself as we crossed the threshold into a man"s voice. The speaker was out of sight, in an upper room to which a ladder gave access, but his oaths, complaints, and imprecations almost shook the house. A middle-aged woman, scantily dressed, was busy on the hearth; but perhaps that which, next to the perpetual scolding that was going on above, most took my attention was a great lump of salt that stood on the table at the woman"s elbow, and seemed to be evidence of greater luxury--for the GABELLE had not at that time been reduced--than I could easily a.s.sociate with the place.
The roaring and bl.u.s.tering continuing upstairs, I stood a moment in sheer astonishment. "Is that M. Gringuet?" I said at last.
The inn-keeper nodded sullenly, while his wife stared at me. "But what; is the matter with him?" I said.
"The gout. But for that he would have been gone these two days to collect at Le Mesnil."
"Ah!" I answered, beginning to understand. "And the salt is for a bath for his feet, is it?"
The woman nodded.
"Well," I said, as Maignan came in with my saddlebags and laid them on the floor, "he will swear still louder when he gets the bill, I should think."
"Bill?" the housewife answered bitterly, looking up again from her pots. "A tax-gatherer"s bill? Go to the dead man and ask for the price of his coffin; or to the babe for a nurse-fee! You will get paid as soon. A tax-gatherer"s bill? Be thankful if he does not take the dish with the sop!"
She spoke plainly; yet I found a clearer proof of the slavery in which the man held them in the perfect indifference with which they regarded my arrival--though a guest with two servants must have been a rarity in such a place--and the listless way in which they set about attending to my wants. Keenly remembering that not long before this my enemies had striven to prejudice me in the King"s eyes by alleging that, though I filled his coffers, I was grinding the poor into the dust--and even, by my exactions, provoking a rebellion I was in no mood to look with an indulgent eye on those who furnished such calumnies with a show of reason. But it has never been my wont to act hastily; and while I stood in the middle of the kitchen, debating whether I should order the servants to fling the fellow out, and bid him appear before me at Villebon, or should instead have him brought up there and then, the man"s coa.r.s.e voice, which had never ceased to growl and snarl above us, rose on a sudden still louder. Something fell on the floor over our heads and rolled across it; and immediately a young girl, barefoot and short-skirted, scrambled hurriedly and blindly down the ladder and landed among us.
She was sobbing, and a little blood was flowing from a cut in her lip; and she trembled all over. At sight of the blood and her tears the woman seemed to be transported. s.n.a.t.c.hing up a saucepan, she sprang towards the ladder with a gesture of rage, and in a moment would have ascended if her husband had not followed and dragged her back. The girl also, as soon as she could speak, added her entreaties to his, while Maignan and La Trape looked sharply at me, as if they expected a signal.
All this while, the bully above continued his maledictions. "Send that s.l.u.t back to me!" he roared. "Do you think that I am going to be left alone in this hole? Send her back, or--" and he added half-a-dozen oaths of a kind to make an honest man"s blood boil. In the midst of this, however, and while the woman was still contending with her husband, he suddenly stopped and shrieked in anguish, crying out for the salt-bath.
But the woman, whom her husband had only half-pacified, shook her fist at the ceiling with a laugh of defiance. "Shriek; ay, you may shriek, you wretch!" she cried. "You must be waited on by my girl, must you--no older face will do for you--and you beat her? Your horses must eat corn, must they, while we eat gra.s.s? And we buy salt for you, and wheaten bread for you, and are beggars for you! For you, you thieving wretch, who tax the poor and let the rich go free; who--"