A Gentleman of France | Page 5

leave to
enter.
I was beginning to explain, with some diffidence the stillness of the
room sobering me--that I wished to see the king, when he who had
advanced took me up sharply with, 'The king? the king? He is not here,
man. He is hunting at St. Valery. Did they not tell you so outside?'
I thought I recognised the speaker, than whom I have seldom seen a
man more grave and thoughtful for his years, which were something
less than mine, more striking in presence, or more soberly dressed. And
being desirous to evade his question, I asked him if I had not the

honour to address M. du Plessis Mornay; for that wise and courtly
statesman, now a pillar of Henry's counsels, it was.
'The same, sir,' he replied, abruptly, and without taking his eyes from
me. 'I am Mornay. What of that?'
'I am M. de Marsac,' I explained. And there I stopped, supposing that,
as he was in the king's confidence, this would make my errand clear to
him.
But I was disappointed. 'Well, sir?' he said, and waited impatiently.
So cold a reception, following such treatment as I had suffered outside,
would have sufficed to have dashed my spirits utterly had I not felt the
king's letter in my pocket. Being pretty confident, however, that a
single glance at this would alter M. du Mornay's bearing for the better,
I hastened, looking on it as a kind of talisman, to draw it out and
present it to him.
He took it, and looked at it, and opened it, but with so cold and
immovable an aspect as made my heart sink more than all that had
gone before. 'What is amiss?' I cried, unable to keep silence. ''Tis from
the king, sir.'
'A king in motley!' he answered, his lip curling.
The sense of his words did not at once strike home to me, and I
murmured, in great disorder, that the king had sent for me.
'The king knows nothing of it,' was his blunt answer, bluntly given.
And he thrust the paper back into my hands. 'It is a trick,' he continued,
speaking with the same abruptness, 'for which you have doubtless to
thank some of those idle young rascals without. You had sent an
application to the king, I suppose? Just so. No doubt they got hold of it,
and this is the result. They ought to be whipped.'
It was not possible for me to doubt any longer that what he said was
true. I saw in a moment all my hopes vanish, all my plans flung to the

winds; and in the first shock of the discovery I could neither find voice
to answer him nor strength to withdraw. In a kind of vision I seemed to
see my own lean, haggard face looking at me as in a glass, and, reading
despair in my eyes, could have pitied myself.
My disorder was so great that M. du Mornay observed it. Looking more
closely at me, he two or three times muttered my name, and at last said,
'M. de Marsac? Ha! I remember. You were in the affair of Brouage,
were you not?'
I nodded my head in token of assent, being unable at the moment to
speak, and so shaken that perforce I leaned against the wall, my head
sunk on my breast. The memory of my age, my forty years, and my
poverty, pressed hard upon me, filling me with despair and bitterness. I
could have wept, but no tears came.
M. du Mornay, averting his eyes from me, took two or three short,
impatient turns up and down the chamber. When he addressed me again
his tone was full of respect, mingled with such petulance as one brave
man might feel, seeing another so hard pressed. 'M. de Marsac,' he said,
'you have my sympathy. It is a shame that men who have served the
cause should be reduced to such. straits. Were it, possible for me, to
increase my own train at present, I should consider it an honour to have
you with me. But I am hard put to it myself, and so are we all, and the
King of Navarre not least among us. He has lived for a month upon a
wood which M. de Rosny has cut down. I will mention your name to
him, but I should be cruel rather than kind were I not to warn you that
nothing can come of it.'
With that he offered me his hand, and, cheered as much by this mark of
consideration as by the kindness of his expressions, I rallied my spirits.
True, I wanted comfort more substantial, but it was not to be had. I
thanked him therefore as becomingly as