The Abbess Of Vlaye

INTRODUCTION.

A KING IN COUNCIL

Monsieur des Ageaux was a man of whom his best friends could not say that he shone, or tried to shine, in the pursuit of the fair sex. He was of an age, something over thirty, when experience renders more formidable the remaining charms of youth; and former conquests whet the sword for new emprises. And the time in which he lived and governed the province of Périgord for the King was a time in which the favour of ladies, and the good things to be gained thereby, stood for much, and morality for little. So that for the ambitious the path of dalliance presented almost as many chances of advancement as the more strenuous road of war.

Yet des Ageaux, though he was an ambitious man and one whose appetite success-and in his degree he had been very successful-had but sharpened, showed no inclination to take that path, or to rise by trifling. Nay, he turned from it; he shunned if he did not dislike the other sex. Whether he doubted his powers-he was a taciturn, grave man-or he had energy only for the one pursuit he loved, the government of men, the thing was certain. Yet he was not unpopular even at Court, the lax Court of Henry the Fourth. But he was known for a thoughtful, dry man, older than his years and no favourite with great ladies; of whom some dubbed him shy, and some a clown, and all-a piece of furniture.

None the less, where men were concerned, he passed for a man more useful than most; or, for certain, seeing that he boasted no great claims, and belonged to no great family, he had not been Governor of a province. Governors of provinces in those days were of the highest; cousins of the King, when these could be trusted, which was rare; peers and Marshals of France, great Dukes with vast hereditary possessions, old landed Vicomtes, and the like. Only at the tail of the list came some half-dozen men whom discretion and service, or the playfulness of fortune had-mirabile dictum-raised to office. And at the tail of all came des Ageaux; for Périgord, his province, land of the pie and the goose liver, was part of the King's demesne, the King was his own Governor in it, and des Ageaux bore only the title of "Lieutenant for the King in the country of Périgord."

Yet was it a wonderful post for such a man, and many a personage, many a lord well seen at Court, coveted it. All the same the burden was heavy; a thing not to be dismissed in a moment. The King found him no money, or little; no men, or few. Where greater Governors used their own resources he had to use-economy. And to make matters worse the man was just; it was part of his nature, it was part of his passion, to be just. So where they taxed not legally only, but illegally, he scrupled, he held his hand. And, therefore, though his dignity was almost as high as office could make it, and his power in his own country not small, no man who ever came to Court went with less splendour in the streets of Paris, or with a smaller following. Doubtless, as a result of this, a few despised him; a few even, making common cause with the Court ladies, and being themselves semi-royal, and above retort, flouted him as a thing negligible.

But, on the whole, he passed, though dry and grave, for a man to be envied, the ladies notwithstanding. And he held his own tolerably, and his post handsomely until a certain day in the summer of 1595, when word came to the young Governor to cross half France to meet the King at Lyons; where, in the early part of that year, Henry the Fourth lay, and was ill-content with a world which, on the surface, seemed to be treating him well.

But on the surface only. The long wars of religion, midway in which the Massacre of Bartholomew stands up, like some drear gibbet landmark in a waste, were, indeed, virtually over. Not only had Henry come to the throne, but Paris, his capital, was his at last; had he not bought it eighteen months before by that mass, that abjuration of Protestant errors, of which the world has heard so much? And not Paris only. Orleans and Bourges, and this good city of Lyons, and Rouen, all were his now, and in their Notre-Dames or St. – Etiennes had sung their Te Deums, and more or less heartily cried "God save the King!" At last, after six years of fighting, of wild horse forays, that flamed across the Northern corn-lands, after a thousand sleepless nights and as many days of buying and bartering-at last the lover of Gabrielle, who was also the most patient and astute of men, was King of France and of Navarre, lord of all this pleasant realm.

Or, not lord; only over-lord, as six times a day they made him know. Nor even that, of all. For in Brittany a great noble still went his own way. And in Provence a great city refused to surrender. And north-eastwards Spain still clung to his border. Nevertheless it was none of these things filled Henry, the King, with discontent. It was at none of these things that he swore in his beard as he sulked at the end of the long Council Table this June morning; while des Ageaux, from his seat near the bottom of the board, watched his face.

In truth Henry was discovering, that, having bought, he must pay; that so great was the mortgage he had put on his kingdom, the profits belonged to others. Overlord he was-lord, no; except perhaps in Lyons where he lay, and where for that reason the Governor had to mind his manners. But in smiling Provence to south of him? Not a whit. The Duke of Epernon ruled the land of Roses, and would rule until the young Duke of Guise, to whom His Majesty had given commission, put him out; and then Guise would rule. In Dauphiny the same. In Languedoc, the great middle province of the south, Montmorency, son to the old Constable, was King in fact; in Guienne old Marshal Matignon. In Angoumois-here Epernon again; so firmly fixed that he deigned only to rule by quarterly letters from his distant home. True in Poitou was an obedient Governor, but the house of Trémouille from their red castle of Thouars outweighed his governorship. And in rocky Limousin the Governor could keep neither the King's peace nor his own.

So it was everywhere through the wide provinces of France; and Henry, who loved his people, knew it, and sulkily fingered the papers that told of it. Not that he had need of the papers. He knew before he cast eye on them in what a welter of lawlessness and disorder, of private feud and public poverty, thirty years of civil war had left his kingdom. One province was in arms, torn asunder by a feud between two great houses. Another laboured in the throes of a peasant rising, its hills alight night after night with the flames of burning farmsteads. A third was helpless in the grip of a gang of brigands, who held the roads. A fourth was beset by disbanded soldiers. The long wars of religion had dissolved all ties. Everywhere monks who had left their abbeys and nuns who had left their convents swarmed on the roads, with sturdy beggars, homeless peasants, broken gentry. Everywhere, beyond the walls of the great cities, the law was paralysed, the great committed outrage, the poor suffered wrong, the excesses of war enured, and, in this time of fancied peace, took grimmer shape.

He whom God had set over France, to rule it, knew these things and sat hopeless, brooding over the papers; hampered on the one side by lack of money, on the other by the grants of power that in evil days had bought a nominal allegiance. He began to see that he had won only the first bout of a match which must last him his life. Nor would it have consoled him much to know that in the college of Navarre that day played a little lad, just ten years old, whose frail white hand would one day right these things with a vengeance.

His people cried to him, and he longed to help them and could not. From a thousand market-places, splayed wooden shelters, covering each its quarter-acre of ground, their cry came up to him: "Give us peace, give us law!" and he could not. No wonder that he brooded over the papers, while the clerks looked askance at him, and the great lords who had won what he had lost whispered or played tric-trac at the board. Those who sat lower, and among these M. des Ageaux, were less at their ease. They wondered where the storm would break, and feared each for his own head.

Presently M. de Joyeuse, one of the great nobles, precipitated the outburst. "You have heard," said he, twiddling a pen between his delicate fingers, "what they call these peasants who are ravaging Poitou, sire?"

Before the King could answer the Governor of Poitou protested from his place lower down the table. "They are none of mine," he said. "It is in the Limousin next door to me that they are at work. I wash my hands of them!"

"They are as bad on your side as on mine!" he of the barren Limousin retorted.

"They started with you!" Poitou rejoined. "Who kindles a fire should put it out."

The King raised his hand for silence. "No matter who is responsible, the fact remains!" he said.

"But you have not heard the jest, sire," Joyeuse struck in. His thin handsome face, pale with excess, belied eyes thoughtful and dreamy, eyes that saw visions. He had been a King's favourite, he had spent years in a convent, he had come forth again, now he was head of the great Joyeuse house, lord of a third of Languedoc. By turns "Father Angel" – for he had been a noted preacher-and Monseigneur, there were those who predicted that he would some day return to the cloister and die in his hood. "They call them the Tards-Avisés," he continued, "because they were foolish enough to rise when the war was over."

"God pity them!" the King said.

"Morbleu! Your Majesty is pitiful of a sudden!" The speaker was the Constable de Montmorency. He was a stout, gruff, choleric man, born, as the Montmorencys were, a generation too late.

"I pity them!" the King answered a trifle sharply. "But you" – he spoke to the table-"neither pity them nor put them down."

"You are speaking, sire," one asked, "of the Crocans?" It was so; from the name of a village in their midst, they called these revolted peasants of the Limousin of whom more will be said.

"Yes."

"They are not in my government," the speaker replied. "Nor in mine!"

"Nor mine!" And so all, except the Governor of the Limousin and the Governor of Poitou, who sat sulkily silent.

Another of the great ones, Marshal Matignon, nodded approval. "Let every man shoe his own ass," he said, pursing up his lips. He was a white-haired, red-faced, apoplectic man of sixty, who thought that in persuading the Estates of Bordeaux to acknowledge Henry he had earned the right to go his own way. "Otherwise we shall jostle one another," he continued, "and be at blows before we know it, sire! They are in the Limousin; let the Governor put them down. It is his business and no other's."

"Except mine," the King replied, with a frown of displeasure. "And if he cannot, what then?"

"Let him make way, sire, for one who can," the Constable answered readily. "Your Majesty will not have far to look for him," he continued in a playful tone. "My nephew, for instance, would like a government."

"A truce to jesting," Henry said. "The trouble began, it is true, in the Limousin, but it has spread into Poitou and into the Angoumois" – he looked at Epernon's agent, for the Duke of Epernon was so great a man he had not come himself. "Gentlemen," the King continued, sitting back in his great chair, "can you not come to some agreement? Can you not mass what force you have, and deal with them shortly but mercifully? The longer the fire burns, the more trouble will it be to extinguish it, and the greater the suffering."

"Why not let it burn out, sire?" Epernon's agent muttered with thinly veiled impudence. "It will then burn the more rubbish, with your Majesty's leave!"

But, the words said, he quailed. For, under his aquiline nose, the King's mustaches curled with rage. There were some with whom he must bear, lords who had brought him rich cities, wide provinces; and others whose deeds won them licence. But this man? "There spoke the hireling!" he cried. And the stroke went home, for the man was the only one at the table who had no government of his own. "I will spare your attendance, sir," the King continued, with a scornful gesture. "M. de Guise will answer such questions as arise on your master's late government-of Provence. And for his other government-"

"I represent him there also," the man muttered sulkily.

"Then you can represent his absence," Henry retorted with quick wit, "since he is never there! I need you not. Go, sir, and see that within three hours you are without the walls of Lyons!"

The man rose, divided between fear of the King and fear of the master to whom he must return. He paused an instant, then went down the room slowly, and went out.

"Now, gentlemen," Henry continued, with hard looks, "understand. You may shoe each his own ass, but you must shoe mine also. There must be an end put to this peasant rising. Who will undertake it?"

"The man who should undertake it," Matignon answered, "for the ass is of his providing, is the gentleman who has gone out."

"He is naught!"

"He is for much in this."

"How? Sometimes," the King continued irritably, "I think the men are shod, and the asses come to my Council Table!"

This was a stroke of wit on a level with the Constable's discernment; he laughed loudly. "Nevertheless," he said, "Matignon's right, sire. That man's master is for a good deal in this. If he had kept order his neighbour's house would not be on fire."

For the first time M. des Ageaux ventured a word from the lower end of the table. "Vlaye!" he muttered.

The Constable leaned forward to see who spoke. "Ay, you've hit on it, my lad, whoever you are. Vlaye it is!" And he looked at Matignon, who nodded his adhesion.

Henry frowned. "I am coming to the matter of Vlaye," he said.

"It is all one, sire," Matignon replied, his eyes half shut. He wheezed a little in his speech.

"How?"

The Constable explained. He leant forward and prodded the table with a short, stout finger-not overclean according to the ideas of a later time. "Angoumois is there," he said. "See, your Majesty. And Poitou is here" – with a second prod an inch from the first. "And the Limousin is here! And Périgord is there! And see, your Majesty, where their skirts all meet in this corner-or as good as meet-is Vlaye! Name of God, a strong place, that!" He turned for assent to old Matignon, who nodded silently.

"And you mean to say that Vlaye-"

"Has been over heavy handed, your Majesty. And the clowns, beginning to find the thing beyond a joke, began by hanging three poor devils of toll gatherers, and the thing started. And what is on everybody's frontier is nobody's business."

"Except mine," the King muttered drily. "And Vlaye is Epernon's man?"

"That is it, sire," the Constable answered. "Epernon put him in the castle six years back for standing by him when the Angoulême people rose on him. But the man is no Vlaye, you understand. M. de Vlaye was in that business and died of his wounds. He had no near heirs, and the man whom Epernon put in took the lordship as well as the castle, the name and all belonging to it. They call him the Captain of Vlaye in those parts."

The King looked his astonishment.

"Oh, I could give you twenty cases!" the Constable continued, shrugging his shoulders. "What do you expect, sire, in such times as these?"

"Ventre St. Gris!" Henry swore. "And not content with what he has got, he robs the poor?"

"And the rich, too," Joyeuse murmured with a grin, "when he gets them into his net!"

Henry looked sternly from one to another. "But what do you while this goes on?" he said. "For shame! You, Constable? You, Matignon?" He turned from one to the other.

Matignon laughed wheezily. "Make me Governor in Epernon's place, sire," he said, "and I will account for him. But double work and single pay? No, no!"

The Constable laughed as at a great joke. "I say the same, sire," he said. "While Epernon has the Angoumois it is his affair."

The King looked stormily at the Governor of Poitou. But Poitou shook his head. "It is not in my government," he said moodily. "I cannot afford, sire, to get a hornets' nest about my ears for nothing."

He of the Limousin fidgeted. "I say the same, sire," he muttered. "Vlaye has three hundred spears. It would need an army to reduce him. And I have neither men nor money for the task."

"There you have, sire," the delicate-faced Joyeuse cried gaily, "three hundred and one good reasons why the Limousin leaves the man alone. For the matter of that" – he tried to spin his pen like a top-"there is a government as deeply concerned in this as any that has been named."

"Which?" Henry asked. He was losing patience. That which was so much to him was nothing to these.

"Périgord," Joyeuse answered with a bow. And at that several laughed softly-but not the King. He was himself, as has been said, Governor of Périgord.

Here at last, however, was one on whom he could vent his displeasure; and he would vent it! "Stand up, des Ageaux!" he cried harshly. And he scowled as des Ageaux, who was somewhat like him in feature, rose from his seat. "What have you to say, man?" Henry cried. "For yourself and for me! Speak, sir!" But before des Ageaux could answer, the King broke out anew-with abuse, with reproaches, giving his passion rein; while the great Governors listened and licked their lips, or winked at one another, when the King hit them a side blow. Presently, when des Ageaux would have defended himself, alleging that he was no deeper in fault than others,

"Ventre St. Gris! No words, sir!" Henry retorted. "I find kings enough here, I want not you in the number! I made not you that I might have your nobility cast in my teeth! You are not of the blood royal, nor even," leaning a little on the word, "Joyeuse or Epernon! Man, I made you! And not for show, I have enough of that-but to be of use and service, for common needs and not for parade-like the gentleman," bitterly, "who deigns to represent me in the Limousin, or he who is so good as to sign papers for me in Poitou! Man alive, it might be thought you were peer and marshal, from your way of idling here, while robbers ride your marches, and my peasants are driven to revolt. Go to, do you think you are one of these?" He indicated by a gesture the great lords who sat nearest him. "Do you think that because I made you, I cannot unmake you?"

The man on whom the storm had fallen bore it not ignobly. It has been said that he featured Henry himself, being prominent of nose, with a grave face, a brown beard, close-cropped, and a forehead high and severe. Only in his eyes shone, and that rarely, a gleam of humour. Now the sweat stood on his brow as he listened-they were cruel blows, the position a cruel one. Nevertheless, when the King paused, and he had room to answer, his voice was steady.

"I claim, sire," he said, "no immunity. Neither that, nor aught but the right of a soldier, who has fought for France-"

"And gallantly!" struck in one, who had not yet spoken-Lesdiguières, the Huguenot, the famous Governor of Dauphiny. He turned to the King. "I vouch for it, sire," he continued. "And M. de Joyeuse, who has the better right, will vouch for it, too."

But Joyeuse, who was sulkily prodding the table with his spoiled pen, neither lifted his eyes nor gave heed. He was bitterly offended by the junction of his name with that of Epernon, who, great and powerful as he was, had had a notary for his father. He was silent.

Des Ageaux, who had looked at him as hoping something, lifted his eyes. "Your Majesty will do me the justice to remember," he said, "that I had your order to have a special care of my province; and to mass what force I could in Périgueux. Few men as I have-"

"You build them up within walls!" Henry retorted.

"But if I lost Périgueux-"

The King snarled.

"Or aught happened there?"

"You would lose your head!" Henry returned. He was thoroughly out of temper. "By the Lord," he continued, "have I no man in my service? Must I take this fellow of Vlaye into hire because I have no honest man with the courage of a mouse! You call yourself Lieutenant of Périgord, and this happens on your border. I have a mind to break you, sir!"

Henry seldom let his anger have vent; and the man who stood before him knew his danger. From a poor gentleman of Brittany with something of pedigree but little of estate, he had risen to this post which eight out of ten at that table grudged him. He saw it slipping away; nay, falling from him-falling! A moment might decide his fate.

In the pinch his eyes sought Joyeuse, and the appeal in them was not to be mistaken. But the elegant sulked, and would not see. It was clear that, for him, des Ageaux might sink. For himself, the Lieutenant doubted if words would help him, and they might aggravate the King's temper. He was bravely silent.

It was Lesdiguières, the Huguenot, who came to the rescue. "Your Majesty is a little hard on M. des Ageaux," he said. And the King's lieutenant in Périgord knew why men loved the King's Governor in Dauphiny.

"In his place," Henry answered wrathfully, "I would pull down Vlaye if I did it with my teeth. It is easy for you, my friend, to talk," he continued, addressing the Huguenot leader. "They are not your peasants whom this rogue of a Vlaye presses, nor your hamlets he burns. I have it all here-here!" he repeated, his eyes kindling as he slapped with his open hand one of the papers before him, "and the things he has done make my blood boil! I swear if I were not King I would turn Crocan myself! But these things are little thought of by others. M. d'Epernon supports this man, and" – with a sudden glance at Matignon-"the Governor of Guienne makes use of his horses when he travels to see the King."

Matignon laughed something shamefacedly. "Well, sire, the horses have done no harm," he said. "Nor he in my government. He knows better. And things are upside down thereabouts."

"It is for us to right them!" Henry retorted. And then to des Ageaux, but with less temper. "Now, sir, I lay my order on you! I give you six weeks to rid me of this man, Vlaye. Fail, and I put in your place a man who will do it. You understand, Lieutenant? Then do not fail. By the Lord, I know not where I shall be bearded next!"

He turned then, but still muttering angrily, to other business. Matignon and the Constable were not concerned in this; and as soon as the King's shoulder was towards them they winked at one another. "Your nephew will not have long to wait," Matignon whispered, "if a lieutenancy will suit him."

"'Twould be a fair start," the Constable answered. "But a watched pot-you know the saying."

"This pot will boil at the end of six weeks," Matignon rejoined with a fat chuckle. "Chut, man, with his wage a year in arrear, and naught behind his wage, where is he to find another fifty men, let alone three or four hundred? He will need five and twenty score for this, and he dare not move a man!"

"He might squeeze his country?" the Constable objected.

"Pooh! He is a fool of the new school! He will go back to his cabbages before he will do that! I tell you," he continued, laying his hand on the other's knee, "he has got Périgord, the main part of it, into order! Ay, into order! And if he don't go, we shall have to mend our manners," with a grin, "and get our governments into order, too!"

"By the Lord, there is no finger wags in my country unless I will it!" the Constable rejoined with some tartness. "Since he" – he indicated Joyeuse-"came over to us, at any rate! Don't think it! But there it is. If there were no whifflesnaffles here and there, and no blood-letting, it would not suit us very well, would it? You don't want to go to cabbage planting, Marshal, more than I do?"

The Marshal smiled.

Late that night the young Duke of Joyeuse, leaving his people at the end of the street, went by himself to the house in which des Ageaux lodged in Lyons. A woman answered his summons, and not knowing the young grandee-for he was cloaked to the nose-fetched the Bat, an old, lean, lank-visaged captain who played squire of the body to des Ageaux. The Bat knew the Duke in spite of his cloak; perhaps he had him for a certain reason in his mind. And he bowed his long, stiff back before him, and would have fetched lights; yet with a glum face. But the Duke answered him shortly that he wanted no more than a word with his master, and would say it there.