United States or Chad ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
For Mère Royaume's act hit marvellously the public fancy, and, passing from mouth to mouth, and from generation to generation, is still the first, the best loved, and the most picturesque of the legends of Geneva. And Messer Blondel? Did he evade the penalty of his act? Ask any man in the streets of Geneva, even to-day, and he will tell you the fate of Philibert Blondel, Fourth Syndic.
Her anxiety lest he should take lodging there and add one more to the chances of espial, one more to the witnesses of her misery; her secret nods and looks, and that gently checked outburst of excitement on Madame Royaume's part, which even at the time had seemed odd all were plain now.
A log smouldered on the hearth, and below the great black pot which hung over it two or three pans and pipkins sat deep among the white ashes. Save for these there was no sign in the room of a woman's hand or use. And he wondered. Certainly the young man who had departed so hurriedly had said it was Madame Royaume's. There could be no mistake. Well, he would go and come again.
For his mother had many children, and his father still lived. But these two, his heart told him as he held Madame Royaume's shrivelled hand in his, were alone. They had each but the other, and lived each in the other, in this room under the tiles with the deep-set dormer windows that looked across the Pays de Gex to the Jura.
He weighed the possibility of Madame Royaume's death before the arrest; surely, then, he could save the girl, and they two, young, active and of ordinary aspect, might escape some whither? Again, he thought of appealing to Beza, the aged divine, whom Geneva revered and Calvinism placed second only to Calvin.
At such an hour, with such sounds of terror filling the night, with such a glare dancing on the ceiling the first attack had come on, years before. Then the alarm had been fictitious; to-night the calamity which the poor woman had imagined, was happening with every circumstance of peril and alarm. But Madame Royaume's face, though anxious and serious, retained to an astonishing extent its sanity.
For hitherto Madame Royaume's attacks had come on in the night only. With a regularity not unknown in the morbid world they occurred about midnight, an hour when her daughter could attend to her and when the house below lay wrapped in sleep. A change in this respect doubled the danger, therefore.
Nor did Madame Royaume's first words dispel the impression. "They hold out?" she asked, grasping her daughter's hand and pressing it. "They hold out?" "Yes, yes, they hold out," Anne answered, hoping to soothe her. And she patted the hand that clasped hers. "Have no fear, dear, all will go well."
"Yes, Messer Syndic," Louis answered, overpowered by the honour of the great man's address, and still wondering what evil was in store for him. "The Mère Royaume's?" "Yes, Messer Syndic." "Then you can do me or rather" with an expression of growing severity "you can do the State a service. Step this way, and listen to me, young man!"
For how much that prospect of vale and mountain stood in their lives, how often they rose to it from the same bed, how often looked at it in sunshine and shadow with the house still and quiet below them, he seemed to know to guess. He had a swift mental vision of their lives, and then Madame Royaume's voice recalled him to himself. "You are newly come to Geneva?" she said, gazing at him.
Word Of The Day