"To exercise my calling," replied the priest, with a sly smile; "to exercise my calling in one of its various ways."

"I knew not that your calling had various ways," replied the count, his usual air of indifference verging into a look of supercilious contempt.

"Oh yes it has," replied the priest, well pleased, as it seemed to Bernard de Rohan, that he had piqued the count out of his apathy. "Our calling has various ways of exercising itself. We address ourselves to all grades and cla.s.ses. If I convert not the Lord of Ma.s.seran, I may convert his cook, you know. My efforts for the good of his soul may prove for the benefit of my own body; and the discourse that is held over venison and capons comes with a fervour and an unction which is marvellously convincing."

There was a sly and jocular smile upon the priest's countenance, especially while addressing the Count de Meyrand, that somewhat puzzled Bernard de Rohan, and evidently annoyed the count himself. It was not difficult to see that, in the most serious things he said--though, indeed, there were few that he did say which were serious at all--there was a lurking jest, that seemed pointed at something which the hearer did not clearly see, but which might or might not be something in his own character, purposes, or pursuits.

The significance of his tone towards the Count de Meyrand, however, did not pa.s.s without that gentleman's observation; and, after listening to him for several minutes more, while the party concluded their breakfast, he turned towards him as he rose, saying, "It seems to me, priest, that you would fain be insolent. Now let me tell you, that, though you are very reverend personages in Savoy, and men meddle with you warily, in France we have a way of curing clerical insolence, which is a good scourging with hunting-whips. Perhaps you do not know that this is the way French gentlemen treat those who are insolent."

"I know it well," replied the priest, turning upon him sharply, "I know it well, as I happen to be a French gentleman myself."

He instantly changed his tone, however, and added, with his wonted smile, "Nay, but now, Heaven forbid! that I should be insolent to the n.o.ble Count de Meyrand. He being a generous and well-bred gentleman, and, like every other gentleman, indifferent to all things upon earth, can never take offence where no offence is meant; but, as he looks furious, I will take myself out of harm's way. The blessing of a whole skin is great. Adieu, my son! adieu! We shall meet some time again, when I shall find you, I trust, restored to temper, and as lamb-like and meek as myself."

While he thus spoke, the priest gradually made his way to the door and issued forth; while the Count of Meyrand, calling one of his attendants to him, whispered something which Bernard de Rohan construed into an order unfavourable to the safety of the jovial priest's shoulders.

"Nay, nay, Meyrand," he said, "let him have his jest, for pity's sake.

Recollect he is a priest."

"His gown sha'n't save him," replied the count. "Those priests have too much immunity already in all parts of the world. But what do you now, de Rohan? Will you hunt with me to-day, and we will drive this Lord of Ma.s.seran's deer from one end of Savoy to the other? or do you go on to Paris at once, and deny me your good company?"

"I write to Paris," replied the cavalier, "and send off a messenger immediately. But I myself go up to seek this Lord of Ma.s.seran. I have despatches for him from the Marechal de Brissac, and also some orders to give by word of mouth."

"I hope they are not disagreeable orders," replied the count, turning towards the door of the inn; "for he is not one of those whom I should like to offend in his own castle."

"Oh no, I shall say nothing that should offend him," replied Bernard de Rohan. "But, besides that, I shall not go till after the arrival of the rest of my men, who come across the mountain this morning; and he might find it rather dangerous to do me harm."

"His ways of dealing with troublesome friends are various," replied the count. "I should love neither to dine nor to sleep in his dwelling. A word to the wise, good friend, a word to the wise! Now, my men, quick!

quick! get ready the horses, bring out the dogs. You will not be tempted, De Rohan?"

"I cannot now," replied his friend. "Another day, if I stay so long. I wish you sport, I wish you good sport;" and, turning towards his chamber, he caused a table to be brought, and materials for writing to be placed before him. He there remained for nearly an hour and a half, busily tracing upon paper those small black characters which, since some man--whether Cadmus, who, if he did it, may well be said to have sown dragons' teeth and reaped a harvest of strife, or whoever else the learned world may have it--those black characters, I say, which, since some man, not contented with what mischief the tongue can do, invented writing for the propagation thereof, have worked more of wo and mischief, as well as of happiness and prosperity, than any other invention that the prolific mind of man ever brought forth. At length the sound of a trumpet coming down the hill saluted his ear, and in a few minutes after it was announced to him that the rest of his train had arrived.

CHAPTER VI.

We must now conduct the reader at once to the entrance of the castle of Ma.s.seran. The gate itself was shut, though the drawbridge was down and the portcullis was up. There was a little wicket, indeed, left ajar, showing the long, dark perspective of the heavy archway under the gate tower, gloomy and prison-like, and the large square court beyond, with its white stones glistening in the sun; while the gray walls of the castle and part of a window, as well as the door of the keep, appeared at the opposite side. On either side, under the archway, but scarcely to be seen in its gloomy shadow, was a long bench, and on the left hand a low door leading up to the apartments in the gate tower. The right-hand bench was occupied by one of the soldiers of the place, and at the door was the warder's wife talking to him, while our friend, the jovial priest, who had escaped without harm or hinderance, notwithstanding the threats of the Count de Meyrand, was waiting at the wicket, from time to time looking through into the court, and from time to time turning round and gazing upon the mountains, humming an air which was certainly not a canticle.

After a pause of some ten or fifteen minutes, the warder himself appeared, a heavy man, past the middle age, and dressed in rusty gray.

"He won't see you, Father Willand," he said. "He's walking in the inner court, and in a dangerous sort of mood. I would rather not be the man to cross him now."

"Poh! nonsense," replied Father Willand, laughing. "Go in again to him, good warder: tell him I have business of importance with him, and I know that this refusal is only one of his sweet jokes. He will see me, soft-hearted gentleman! Go and tell him--go and tell him, warder!"

"Faith, not I," replied the warder. "That business of last night seems to have galled him sorely, and he is just in the humour to fire a man out of a culverin, as we know his father once did; but in these days it won't do: culverins make too loud a report, you know. I will not go near him again."

"Then I will go myself," replied the priest. "He won't hurt me. Nay, warder, you would not squeeze the Church in the wicket gateway! By Heaven--or, as I should say less profanely, by the blessed rood--if you pinch my stomach one moment more you will pinch forth an anathema, which will leave you but a poor creature all your life."

"Well, be it on your head," cried the warder, with a grim smile; "though a two-inch cudgel or a fall from the battlements is the best thing to be hoped for you."

The priest was not to be deterred, however; and, making his way onward, he crossed the outer court, turned to the right, and, pa.s.sing through a long stone pa.s.sage, feeling damp and chilly after the bright sunshine, he entered a colonnade or sort of cloister which surrounded the inner court. It was a large, open s.p.a.ce of ground, with tall buildings overshadowing it on all sides. The sun seldom reached it; and there was a coldness and stillness about its aspect altogether--its gray stones, its small windows, its low-arched cloisters, its sunless air, and the want of even the keen activity of the mountain wind--which made most people shudder when they entered it.

But there was nothing the least chilly in the nature of Father Willand.

His heart was not easily depressed, his spirits not easily damped; and when he entered the cloister, and saw the Lord of Ma.s.seran walking up and down in the court, an irresistible inclination to laugh seized him, notwithstanding all the warder had said of his lord's mood at that moment.

It is true--although, from the description of the worthy officer of bolts and bars, one would have expected to see the Lord of Ma.s.seran acting some wild scene of pa.s.sion--he was, on the contrary, walking calmly and slowly backward and forward across the court, with his eyes bent on the ground, indeed, but with his countenance perfectly tranquil.

It was nothing in his demeanour, however, that gave the priest a desire to laugh, for he was very well aware that the pa.s.sions of the Lord of Ma.s.seran did not take the same appearances as those of other men, and he saw clearly that he was at that moment in a state of sullen fury, which might, very likely, have conducted any other man to some absurd excess.

His personal appearance, also, had nothing in it to excite mirth in any degree. He was a tall, thin, graceful-looking man of the middle age, with a nose slightly aquiline, eyes calm and mild, lips somewhat thin and pale, and a complexion, very common in the northern part of Italy, of a sort of clear, pale olive. His dress was handsome, but not ostentatious; and, on the whole, he looked very much the n.o.bleman and the man of the world of those times. The priest, however, laughed when he saw him; and, though he tried to smother it under the merry affectation of a cough, yet the effects were too evident upon his countenance to escape the eye of the Lord of Ma.s.seran as he approached.

"Ha! Father Willand," said the marquis, as their eyes met, "I told the warder to say that I did not wish to see you to-day."

"Ah, but, my excellent good lord," replied the priest, bowing his head low, with an air of mock humility and reverence, "it was I who wanted to see your lordship; so I e'en ventured to make my way in, though the warder--foul fall the villain--has so squeezed my stomach in the wicket, that, like a bruised tin pot, it will never again hold so much as it did before."

"You are somewhat of a bold man," said the marquis, with a cold, bitter, sidelong look at the priest; "you are somewhat of a bold man to make your way in here when I bid you stay out. You may come in once too often, Father Willand."

"Heaven forbid, my lord," replied the priest; "I shall never think it too often to serve your lordship, even though it should be at your funeral: a sad duty that, my lord, which we must perform very often for our best friends."

"I should imagine, priest," replied the marquis, somewhat sternly, "you would laugh at the funeral of your best friends."

"I will promise your lordship one thing," replied the priest, "to laugh at my own, if death will but let me. But surely, my lord, this is a time for merriment and gayety! Why, I came to congratulate your lordship upon your escape from those who attacked you last night--Ugh! ugh! ugh!"

While the priest, unable to restrain himself, thus laughed aloud, the marquis bit his lip, and eyed him askance, with a look which certainly boded no great good to the merry ecclesiastic. They were at that moment close to a spot where a door opened from one of the ma.s.ses of building into the cloister, and the Lord of Ma.s.seran, raising his voice a little, exclaimed, in a sweet Italian tone, "Geronimo!"

For a moment the priest laughed more heartily than before; but, seeing the marquis about to repeat his call, he recovered himself, and, laying his finger on the n.o.bleman's arm, said, "Stay a moment, my lord, stay a moment before you call him. First, because the sweet youth must not exercise his ministry upon me. It would make too much noise, you know, and every one in the valley is aware that I have come hither. Next, because there are certain friends of mine looking for me at the bottom of the slope, and expecting me within half an hour, so that I cannot enjoy your Geronimo's conversation--"

"It is, in general, very short," said the marquis.

"And, thirdly," continued the priest, "because I have come up to tell you two or three things which require no witnesses. I am here upon a friendly errand, my good lord, and you are such a n.i.g.g.ard that you refuse me my laugh. However, I must have it, be it at you, at myself, or at any one else; and now, if you behave well and civilly, I will tell you tidings that you may like well to hear. If you don't want to hear them, I will take myself away again, and then neither priest nor warder is much to blame. Shall I go?"

He spoke seriously now, and the Lord of Ma.s.seran replied, in a somewhat more placable tone, a moment's reflection showing him that the priest, in all probability, would not have come thither except upon some important errand: "No, do not go," he said, "but speak to me, at least, seriously." He looked down upon the ground for a moment, and then added, "You may well think that I am angry, after all that took place last night; for you, who hear everything, have doubtless heard of that also."

As he spoke, he suddenly raised his keen dark eyes to the countenance of the priest, as if inquiring how much he really did know of the matter in question.

"Oh yes," replied Father Willand, "I do hear everything, my good lord, and I knew all that had happened to you last night before I sat down to my breakfast this morning: I heard of your happy deliverance, too, from the hands of the daring villains who captured you, for which gracious interposition I trust that you will keep a candle burning perpetually before the shrine of Saint Maurice."

The priest spoke in a serious tone, but still there was an expressive grin upon his countenance; and, after pausing for a moment or two more, he added, as the marquis was about to reply, "You think I am jesting, or that I do not understand what I am talking about; but I know the whole business as well as you do yourself, and somewhat better. I tell you, therefore, that it is a great deliverance that you have met with, though perhaps you think it less a deliverance than an interruption."

The priest paused as if for the marquis to reply; but the Lord of Ma.s.seran was silent also, regarding his companion with a quiet, sly, inquiring air, which, perhaps, could be a.s.sumed by no other countenance upon earth than that of an Italian. It might be interpreted to say, "You are more in my secrets than I thought. A new bond of fellowship is established between us."

As he remained actually silent, however, the priest went on to say, "What I come to talk to you about is this very matter; for you may chance be outwitted, my good lord, even where you are putting some trust. But what I have to say," he continued, "had better not be said among so many windows and doors."

"Come with me! come with me!" said the Lord of Ma.s.seran; and leading the way through the cloisters, he thridded several long and intricate pa.s.sages, none of them more than dimly lighted, and many of them profoundly dark. He was followed by the priest, who kept his hand in the bosom of his robe, and, if the truth must be said, grasped somewhat firmly the hilt of a dagger, never feeling perfectly sure what was to be the next of the Marquis of Ma.s.seran's sweet courtesies. Nothing occurred, however, to interrupt him in his course, and at length the lord of the castle stopped opposite to a doorway, over which a glimmering light found its way. As soon as it was opened, the bright beams of the day rushed in, and the marquis led the way into a wide garden, which sloped down the side of the hill, and lay between the walls of the castle itself and an outwork thrown forward to command one of the pa.s.ses of the mountain. It was walled on all sides, and nothing could be seen beyond it; but in itself it offered a beautiful contrast to the wild scenery round, being cultivated with great care and neatness, and arranged in the Italian style of gardening, which was then very little known in France, where it had been first introduced some years before by Catharine de Medicis. Long and broad terraces, connected together by flights of steps, formed the part of the garden nearest to the chateau, while below appeared many a formal walk, sheltered, even in that mountain scene, by rows of tall cypresses and hedges of other evergreen plants.

"Here we can speak undisturbed," said the marquis, as soon as he had taken a few steps in advance. "Now what is it you have to tell me, priest?"

"Did you ever hear of such a person as Bernard de Rohan?" demanded the priest, fixing his eyes upon the countenance of the Lord of Ma.s.seran.

"I have--I have heard of him," replied the marquis, turning somewhat pale. "What of him? what of him? Is he not still beyond the Alps?"