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Then came more lofty grandmotherly elms, a dense hedge of every leaf that pricks, and then Lawford found himself standing at the small canopied gate of the queer old wooden house that the stranger of his talk had in part described. It stood square and high and dark in a small amphitheatre of verdure.
In a Book of Hours, at Munich, painted about 1500 A.D. for Jacques Cœur’s grandson (in part perhaps by Jean Bourdichon, the artist of the superb Book of Hours of Anne de Bretagne now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, or at least by some pupil or follower of his), there are three miniatures that seem of special interest in connection with Agnes Sorel. One is a representation of the Virgin of the Annunciation, and another that of the Madonna with the Holy Child. In both these the features of the Virgin Mother appear to faintly echo those of Agnes as we know her, as the crowned and ermined queen in the picture at Antwerp. Still more interesting is the third miniature, giving a view here used as a setting for the Procession to Calvary of the front of Jacques Cœur’s stately dwelling at Bourges. Here doubtless many a time Agnes and the king were entertained. Hither Jacques returned from sundry journeys to the East, laden with treasures to beautify his surroundings. Hence he fled, the victim of success. Over the principal entrance is a canopied recess, once sheltering an equestrian statue destroyed during the Revolution. This now empty space once held a statue of King Charles the Seventh, armed cap-
But, so canopied with loveliness, so besung with winged passion, so clothed that even with the heavenly delicacies enrounding them they blended harmoniously, their moonlit orchard was an island beat by the waves of war, its air would quiver and throb by fits, shaken with the roar of cannon, and might soon gleam around them with the whirring sweep of the troopers' broad blades; while all throughout the land, the hateful demon of party spirit tore wide into gashes the wounds first made by conscience in the best, and by prejudice in the good.
And over the great lake the sun burst out, on a flashing car and the door flung wide to Betty Harris's mother, flying with swift, sure foot up the great, stone steps.... "This way, ma'am she's in here her own room this way, ma'am." She was kneeling by the great canopied bed, her head bent very low.
Each of the strangers was invited to sit down; and there they were, two and twenty storm-beaten mariners, in worn and tattered garb, sitting on two and twenty cushioned and canopied thrones, so rich and gorgeous that the proudest monarch had nothing more splendid in his stateliest hall.
An extemporised arch of Union Jacks canopied Mr. Balfour in his carriage, which was drawn by hundreds of willing hands linked in long line.
The little girl was not in the room to hear him, and on returning later to the canopied bed, neither her mother nor the neighbor woman repeated his words. He was gone again, leaving only a few pellets to check a possible sinking-spell. For there was nothing else that could be done at the farm-house except wait and hope.
So country wenches pushed and strove amid the throng, and dainty ladies leaned from canopied galleries to shudder with dread or trill soft laughter; but each and every stared at one who stood alone, 'twixt armed guards, so young and fair and pale within her bonds, oft turning piteous face to heaven or looking with quailing eye where stake and chain and faggot menaced her with awful doom.
And the corpulent officer, sword in hand, looked hard at a church close to him, which he could see, but we, the crowd, could not. After a short delay, some monks were seen approaching to the scaffold from this church; and above their heads, coming on slowly and gloomily, the effigy of Christ upon the cross, canopied with black.
The smooth surfaces of glossy plants came out like weak, lidless eyes; there were strange faces and figures from expiring lights that had somehow wandered into the canopied obscurity; while now and then low peeps of the sky between the trunks were like sheeted shapes, and on the tips of boughs sat faint cloven tongues.
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