The Exiles | Page 8

enchanting contrast. His was one of
those melodious countenances which even when silent speak and attract
us. And yet, on marking it attentively, the incipient blight might have
been detected which comes of a great thought or a passion, the faint
yellow tinge that made him seem like a young leaf opening to the sun.
No contrast could be greater or more startling than that seen in the
companionship of these two men. It was like seeing a frail and graceful
shrub that has grown from the hollow trunk of some gnarled willow,
withered by age, blasted by lightning, standing decrepit; one of those
majestic trees that painters love; the trembling sapling takes shelter
there from storms. One was a god, the other was an angel; one the poet
that feels, the other the poet that expresses--a prophet in sorrow, a
levite in prayer.
They went out together without speaking.
"Did you mark how he called him to him?" cried the sergeant of the
watch when the footsteps of the couple were no longer audible on the
strand. "Are not they a demon and his familiar?"
"Phooh!" puffed Jacqueline. "I felt smothered! I never marked our two
lodgers so carefully. 'Tis a bad thing for us women that the Devil can
wear so fair a mien!"
"Ay, cast some holy water on him," said Tirechair, "and you will see
him turn into a toad.--I am off to tell the office all about them."
On hearing this speech, the lady roused herself from the reverie into
which she had sunk, and looked at the constable, who was donning his
red-and-blue jacket.
"Whither are you off to?" she asked.
"To tell the justices that wizards are lodging in our house very much
against our will."
The lady smiled.
"I," said she, "am the Comtesse de Mahaut," and she rose with a dignity
that took the man's breath away. "Beware of bringing the smallest
trouble on your guests. Above all, respect the old man; I have seen him
in the company of your Lord the King, who entreated him courteously;
you will be ill advised to trouble him in any way. As to my having been
here--never breathe a word of it, as you value your life."
She said no more, but relapsed into thought.
Presently she looked up, signed to Jacqueline, and together they went

up into Godefroid's room. The fair Countess looked at the bed, the
carved chairs, the chest, the tapestry, the table, with a joy like that of
the exile who sees on his return the crowded roofs of his native town
nestling at the foot of a hill.
"If you have not deceived me," she said to Jacqueline, "I promise you a
hundred crowns in gold."
"Behold, madame," said the woman, "the poor angel is confiding--here
is all his treasure."
As she spoke, Jacqueline opened a drawer in the table and showed
some parchments.
"God of mercy!" cried the Countess, snatching up a document that
caught her eye, on which she read, /Gothofredus Comes Gantiacus/
(Godefroid, Count of Ghent).
She dropped the parchment, and passed her hand over her brow; then,
feeling, no doubt, that she had compromised herself by showing so
much emotion, she recovered her cold demeanor.
"I am satisfied," said she.
She went downstairs and out of the house. The constable and his wife
stood in their doorway, and saw her take the path to the landing- place.
A boat was moored hard by. When the rustle of the Countess' approach
was audible, a boatman suddenly stood up, helped the fair laundress to
take her seat in it, and rowed with such strength as to make the boat fly
like a swallow down the stream.
"You are a sorry fellow," said Jacqueline, giving the officer's shoulder a
familiar slap. "We have earned a hundred gold crowns this morning."
"I like harboring lords no better than harboring wizards. And I know
not, of the two, which is the more like to bring us to the gallows,"
replied Tirechair, taking up his halbert. "I will go my rounds over by
Champfleuri; God protect us, and send me to meet some pert jade out
in her bravery of gold rings to glitter in the shade like a glow-worm!"
Jacqueline, alone in the house, hastily went up to the unknown lord's
room to discover, if she could, some clue to this mysterious business.
Like some learned men who give themselves infinite pains to
complicate the clear and simple laws of nature, she had already
invented a chaotic romance to account for the meeting of these three
persons under her humble roof. She hunted through the chest, examined
everything, but could find nothing extraordinary. She saw nothing on

the table but a writing-case and some sheets of parchment; and as she
could