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There are strange news from that country they say La Marck hath married Hameline, the elder Countess of Croye." "That old fool was so mad on marriage that she would have accepted the hand of Satan," said the King; "but that La Marck, beast as he is, should have married her, rather more surprises me."
I must go seek him, and also the young Countess of Croye." "The Countess you told us you had left her at Saint Bridget's" "Ay, but I was obliged," said the Count, "to send for her express, by the Duke's orders; and she has been brought hither on a litter, as being unable to travel otherwise.
After a few words respecting the honour and trust which were about to be reposed in him, which made Quentin internally afraid that they were again about to propose to him such a watch as he had kept upon the Count of Crevecoeur, or perhaps some duty still more repugnant to his feelings, he was not relieved merely, but delighted, with hearing that he was selected, with the assistance of four others under his command, one of whom was a guide, to escort the Ladies of Croye to the little Court of their relative, the Bishop of Liege, in the safest and most commodious, and, at the same time, in the most secret manner possible.
A heterogeneous jumble of low, half-timbered houses and mud-plastered hovels; dirty, unpaved streets, a mean-looking market-place, where the shrill clamor of huckstering never seemed to cease; some pretentious-looking public buildings, with stuccoed fronts; outside of all, the inevitable earth rampart, topped by a palisade and pierced by sally-ports at the cardinal points such was Croye, the principal city of this western hemisphere in the year 2015, or ninety since the Great Change.
"Well," resumed the Burgomaster, "I have but one word to say, and that is that Trudchen, who is as sorry to part with yonder pretty lady as if she had been some sister of hers, wants you to take some other disguise, for there is word in the town that the Ladies of Croye travel the country in pilgrim's dresses, attended by a French life guardsman of the Scottish Archers, and it is said one of them was brought into Schonwaldt last night by a Bohemian after we had left it, and it was said still farther, that this same Bohemian had assured William de la Marck that you were charged with no message either to him or to the good people of Liege, and that you had stolen away the young Countess, and travelled with her as her paramour.
"Surely among so many people there must be some chance for a livelihood there is work " "Not of the honest kind and for such as you," he retorted. "Must I make you understand? Look at yourself, then, in the glass behind you." Suddenly he took her hand between both his own. "Who would dare hint at work to those fingers so slimly white? But one may live delicately, even in Croye."
"My invention is exhausted, Sire," said the counsellor; "I can remember no one who, as husband to the Countess of Croye, would be likely to answer your Majesty's views.
The Duke of Burgundy farther requires the King of France to send back to his dominions without delay, and under a secure safeguard, the persons of Isabelle Countess of Croye, and of her relation and guardian the Countess Hameline, of the same family, in respect the said Countess Isabelle, being, by the law of the country and the feudal tenure of her estates, the ward of the said Duke of Burgundy, hath fled from his dominions, and from the charge which he, as a careful guardian, was willing to extend over her, and is here maintained in secret by the King of France and by him fortified in her contumacy to the Duke, her natural lord and guardian, contrary to the laws of God and man, as they ever have been acknowledged in civilized Europe.
"Your kinswoman!" repeated Quentin, awakened to recollections to which the young Countess was a stranger, and which the rapid succession of perilous and stirring events had, as matters of nearer concern, in fact banished from his memory. "Ay my aunt the Countess Hameline of Croye know you aught of her?" said the Countess Isabelle. "I trust she is now under the protection of the Burgundian banner.
"'Does this seem an old and hardly remembered tale to you, Anthony Hugolin, Councillor Primus of Croye, and a rich man, if one may judge from the yearly tax rate that stands opposite your name in Dom Gillian's head list? Withal, you are still my brother, and you must listen to what I have now to say, the first and the last word from me to you.
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