Lord Montagu's Page. G. P. R. James

      At length the officer reappeared, with the passport in its case. He returned it to the young gentleman with a polite bow, saying, "Sir, your safe-conduct seems in good form, and signed by the cardinal himself."

      There he paused for a moment, and Edward replied, "Then I suppose I am at liberty to proceed. Now you see, sir, how much better it would have been for me to ride on straight to Niort, where in half an hour I could have had a good supper and a bottle of wine."

      "Your pardon, sir," said the other. "We can give you the bottle of wine here—though all you can have for supper, I am afraid, will be some sardines, d'Olonne, and bread. But, as to proceeding, you will have to make a little turn out of your way and go to Nantes. You will have four soldiers out of my troop for protection—merely for protection."

      "As a prisoner, in short," said Edward, gravely. "I had thought the cardinal's name was more potent in France."

      "It is very potent," replied the officer, with a smile. "But he knows his signature better than we do; and the truth is, although the seal is certainly official, we had an intimation yesterday, about three o'clock, that a young English gentleman, with three attendants, would endeavor to pass the lines, and that it was necessary to stop him, as he was an agent of the enemy. You have but one attendant; but your pass says three, and you have yourself acknowledged that you have left two behind."

      "This is the work of some private enemy," said Master Ned, gravely; for the situation was not at all pleasant. "The intimation, of course, came from Rochelle?"

      The officer nodded. "Then," continued the youth, "you put faith in your enemies rather than in the signature of your own prime minister."

      "Jargeau," whispered Pierrot. But the officer cut discussion short, saying, "I act under orders, gentlemen, and can only say further that you do not exactly go as prisoners, and may regulate your marches as you please. You can set out at once if you please, or you can wait till daybreak."

      "At once," said Edward, somewhat sternly: "the end of my journey is Geneva or Savoy, and I am anxious to get out of a country as soon as possible where even a regular passport does not protect one from detention."

      "But the wine and the sardines?" said Pierrot.

      "They can be brought while the men are making ready," replied the officer; and, with a polite bow, he left them still under guard.

      The wine and the sardines d'Olonne were brought and rapidly consumed. Their horses' feet were heard before the door, and, mounting, Pierrot and Master Ned, with four soldiers accompanying them, rode away in the direction of Nantes. It is a long and rather dreary ride at all times, and to Edward it was particularly unpleasant, for he had to remember a fact which the reader has probably forgotten, namely, that people who took advantage without right of other people's safe-conducts were in those days very frequently hanged. Now, Master Ned had a mortal aversion to hemp. All depends upon the application of things. An old saw well applied is excellent, detestable when wrongly introduced. A Burgundy-pitch plaster on the chest is a capital remedy for incipient bronchitis, but has quite a contrary effect when applied to the mouth and nose. It is all the same with hemp. Used in rigging a ship, it is all very well; in the abstract it is a soft though somewhat tenacious fibre, which would not much hurt a fly; but when twisted into several strands and used as a tight cravat it is unpleasant, and often dangerous. In this light it was viewed by Edward Langdale; but he had run a good many hair's-breadth risks since he had been Lord Montagu's page, and the idea of the hemp did not exclude from his mind the idea of Lucette. (There are two "ideas" in the last sentence, which the verbal critics may call tautologous; but I will let them both stand, for it were well if there were as many ideas in most people's noddles.)

      However, as it is a very dreary road from Mauzé toward Nantes, and as the reflections of poor Edward Langdale were drearier still, I will not pause upon the details, but merely say that thought after thought followed each other through his head—sometimes of the danger which he himself ran, sometimes of the dangers which surrounded Lucette, and sometimes of the chances of making his escape. This continued for some three hours, during which time the body was suffering hardly less than the mind. Barely recovered from severe illness, he had quitted Rochelle too early: he had since undergone the fatigues of a storm at sea, a long anxious ride, a short imprisonment, and now a three hours' journey, with little food and only one hour's sleep out of thirty-six, upon the banks of the Sevre Niortaise. As day began faintly to dawn, fatigue and drowsiness overpowered him; and twice he swung to the side of his horse as if he were about to fall.

      The soldier who rode by his side, and who was well aware that his superiors had considerable doubt as to whether they were right or wrong in sending the young gentleman to Nantes at all, seeing his state, addressed him civilly, telling him that two miles in advance there was the village of Le Breuil Bertin, where he would find a good clean cabaret and could both have an excellent breakfast and repose for a few hours in comfort.

      "I thought we were to go to Nantes as fast as we could," said Master Ned.

      "Monsieur is the master," replied the man. "I was only told to see you safe to Nantes and show you all attention on the road. So I shall certainly take your orders as to where we shall stop, and how long. At all events, we must feed the horses at Le Breuil."

      "Well, then, I will stay and rest there," said Edward, very glad to obtain time for somewhat clearer and more composed reflection than the state of his brain had heretofore permitted; and at Le Breuil they accordingly paused.

      In the two hundred and odd revolutions of the great humming-top which have since taken place, Le Breuil Bertin, which was then a very flourishing village, with a pretty church, a very tolerable inn, and, at a little distance, a royal abbey, has become a mere hamlet; but then the cabaret appeared a blessed haven of repose to Edward Langdale: every thing had a clean and smiling air, and the very sight was a refreshment. He ordered breakfast, which was in those days always accompanied by wine, and, though he ate little, he felt stronger for the meal. Then, after calling Pierrot apart and admonishing him in regard to brandy, he said he should like to rest for a few hours, and was shown to a chamber where was a bed of wool as soft as down. It is true that there was but one staircase leading to the room assigned him, and that, Le Breuil being built upon a gentle hill, and the inn upon the edge of the hill, the window had a fall of thirty feet below it—quite as good, under all ordinary circumstances, as iron bars. But Edward did not meditate escape just then, and all he expected was thought and repose.

      Weariness and wakefulness are sometimes strangely combined. "Too tired to sleep," say people very often; and they say rightly; but it generally happens—at least in my own case—that fatigue of mind has been added to fatigue of body when we cannot woo to our pillow "tired nature's sweet restorer." We have in short been spurring both horses so hard that their sides are sore. So it was with Edward Langdale. He could not close an eye: he could not think—at least collectedly. His mind went rambling about, first to one subject of consideration, then to another, without resting upon any. This continued for about two hours; but when the sergeant, corporal, lunce prisade, or whatever he was, looked in to see whether he would like to go to mass, the young gentleman was as sound asleep as he could be, and did not hear the opening or closing door.

      Now, the soldier was a native of Le Breuil Bertin, and, moreover, he had been brought up a Protestant—born a Protestant, I had better have said; for I fear me much that, both in regard to religion and politics, birth has a good deal to do with the matter. However, being but an indifferent controversialist, and meeting with a wise Catholic priest, and having some interest in the army, and the greater part of the population being of the Romish Church, he had four good reasons for being converted; and he was so. But the worthy man was mild in his apostasy, and, as a native of Le Breuil, did not care how long a gentleman, whether Huguenot or Papist, kept him there, nor whether he went to mass or conventicle.

      Thus Edward was suffered to slumber undisturbed from nine till one, when he turned on his other side without waking, and then from one till six, when a little noise about the inn made some impression on his senses.

      The sun by this time was so far down as to have left an eye of gray in the sky; but it was not yet dark; and Edward had just swung