Guard. It is a great thing, if you propose so; especially as you are very young, and some years’ experience is necessary for the high office which you aim at.”
“Perhaps I may have thought on some such thing,” said Durward, carelessly; “but if I did, the fancy is off.”
“How so, young man?” said the Frenchman, something sternly, “Do you speak thus of a charge which the most noble of your countrymen feel themselves emulous to be admitted to?”
“I wish them joy of it,” said Quentin, composedly. “To speak plain, I should have liked the service of the French King full well; only, dress me as fine and feed me as high as you will, I love the open air better than being shut up in a cage or a swallow’s nest yonder, as you call these same grated pepper boxes. Besides,” he added, in a lower voice, “to speak truth, I love not the Castle when the covin tree bears such acorns as I see yonder.”
[The large tree in front of a Scottish castle was sometimes called so. It is difficult to trace the derivation; but at that distance from the castle the laird received guests of rank, and thither he conveyed them on their departure. S.]
“I guess what you mean,” said the Frenchman; “but speak yet more plainly.”
“To speak more plainly, then,” said the youth, “there grows a fair oak some flight shot or so from yonder Castle – and on that oak hangs a man in a gray jerkin, such as this which I wear.”
“Ay and indeed!” said the man of France – “Pasques dieu! see what it is to have youthful eyes! Why, I did see something, but only took it for a raven among the branches. But the sight is no ways strange, young man; when the summer fades into autumn, and moonlight nights are long, and roads become unsafe, you will see a cluster of ten, ay of twenty such acorns, hanging on that old doddered oak. – But what then? – they are so many banners displayed to scare knaves; and for each rogue that hangs there, an honest man may reckon that there is a thief, a traitor, a robber on the highway, a pilleur and oppressor of the people the fewer in France. These, young man, are signs of our Sovereign’s justice.”
“I would have hung them farther from my palace, though, were I King Louis,” said the youth. “In my country, we hang up dead corbies where living corbies haunt, but not in our gardens or pigeon houses. The very scent of the carrion – faugh – reached my nostrils at the distance where we stood.”
“If you live to be an honest and loyal servant of your Prince, my good youth,” answered the Frenchman, “you will know there is no perfume to match the scent of a dead traitor.”
“I shall never wish to live till I lose the scent of my nostrils or the sight of my eyes,” said the Scot. “Show me a living traitor, and here are my hand and my weapon; but when life is out, hatred should not live longer. – But here, I fancy, we come upon the village, where I hope to show you that neither ducking nor disgust have spoiled mine appetite for my breakfast. So my good friend, to the hostelrie, with all the speed you may. – Yet, ere I accept of your hospitality, let me know by what name to call you.”
“Men call me Maitre Pierre,” answered his companion. “I deal in no titles. A plain man, that can live on mine own good – that is my designation.”
“So be it, Maitre Pierre,” said Quentin, “and I am happy my good chance has thrown us together; for I want a word of seasonable advice, and can be thankful for it.”
While they spoke thus, the tower of the church and a tall wooden crucifix, rising above the trees, showed that they were at the entrance of the village.
But Maitre Pierre, deflecting a little from the road, which had now joined an open and public causeway, said to his companion that the inn to which he intended to introduce him stood somewhat secluded, and received only the better sort of travellers.
“If you mean those who travel with the better filled purses,” answered the Scot, “I am none of the number, and will rather stand my chance of your flayers on the highway, than of your flayers in the hostelrie.”
“Pasques dieu!” said his guide, “how cautious your countrymen of Scotland are! An Englishman, now, throws himself headlong into a tavern, eats and drinks of the best, and never thinks of the reckoning till his belly is full. But you forget, Master Quentin, since Quentin is your name, you forget I owe you a breakfast for the wetting which my mistake procured you. – It is the penance of my offence towards you.”
“In truth,” said the light hearted young man, “I had forgot wetting, offence, and penance, and all. I have walked my clothes dry, or nearly so, but I will not refuse your offer in kindness; for my dinner yesterday was a light one, and supper I had none. You seem an old and respectable burgess, and I see no reason why I should not accept your courtesy.”
The Frenchman smiled aside, for he saw plainly that the youth, while he was probably half famished, had yet some difficulty to reconcile himself to the thoughts of feeding at a stranger’s cost, and was endeavouring to subdue his inward pride by the reflection, that, in such slight obligations, the acceptor performed as complaisant a part as he by whom the courtesy was offered.
In the meanwhile, they descended a narrow lane, overshadowed by tall elms, at the bottom of which a gateway admitted them into the courtyard of an inn of unusual magnitude, calculated for the accommodation of the nobles and suitors who had business at the neighbouring Castle, where very seldom, and only when such hospitality was altogether unavoidable, did Louis XI permit any of his court to have apartments. A scutcheon, bearing the fleur de lys, hung over the principal door of the large irregular building; but there was about the yard and the offices little or none of the bustle which in those days, when attendants were maintained both in public and in private houses, marked that business was alive, and custom plenty. It seemed as if the stern and unsocial character of the royal mansion in the neighbourhood had communicated a portion of its solemn and terrific gloom even to a place designed according to universal custom elsewhere, for the temple of social indulgence, merry society, and good cheer.
Maitre Pierre, without calling any one, and even without approaching the principal entrance, lifted the latch of a side door, and led the way into a large room, where a faggot was blazing on the hearth, and arrangements made for a substantial breakfast.
“My gossip has been careful,” said the Frenchman to the Scot. “You must be cold, and I have commanded a fire; you must be hungry, and you shall have breakfast presently.”
He whistled and the landlord entered – answered Maitre Pierre’s bon jour with a reverence – but in no respect showed any part of the prating humour properly belonging to a French publican of all ages.
“I expected a gentleman,” said Maitre Pierre, “to order breakfast – hath he done so?”
In answer the landlord only bowed; and while he continued to bring, and arrange upon the table, the various articles of a comfortable meal, omitted to extol their merits by a single word. And yet the breakfast merited such eulogiums as French hosts are wont to confer upon their regales, as the reader will be informed in the next chapter.
CHAPTER IV: THE DEJEUNER
Sacred heaven! what masticators! what bread!
We left our young stranger in France situated more comfortably than he had found himself since entering the territories of the ancient Gauls. The breakfast, as we hinted in the conclusion of the last chapter, was admirable. There was a pate de Perigord, over which a gastronome would have wished to live and die, like Homer’s lotus eaters [see the Odyssey, chap. ix, where Odysseus arrives at the land of the Lotus eaters: “whosoever
