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She remained six days in the town. At last, on the 15th of the month, after the saddest adieus to her family, accompanied by Messieurs d'Aumale, d'Elboeuf, and Damville, with many nobles, among whom were Brantome and Chatelard, she embarked in M. Mevillon's galley, which was immediately ordered to put out to sea, which it did with the aid of oars, there not being sufficient wind to make use of the sails.
And I shall teach Indian children to speak French as elegantly as Brantôme wrote it, and knit nurses' caps for the good squaws. . . . Faith, Anne, dear, if I did not love you, the Henri IV could not carry me back to France quick enough." Madame leaned from the window and sniffed the forest perfumes. "You will be here six months, then." "That will give certain personages in France time to forget."
We learn to live with her, as people learn to live with fretful or violent spouses: we dwell lovingly on what is good, and shut our eyes against all that is bleak or inharmonious. We learn, also, to come to each place in the right spirit. The traveller, as Brantome quaintly tells us, 'fait des discours en soi pour se soutenir en chemin.
Behind the seventy mules which led the procession there pranced sixteen handsome battle-horses, led by equerries who marched alongside; these were followed by eighteen hunters ridden by eighteen pages, who were about fourteen or fifteen years of age; sixteen of them were dressed in crimson velvet, and two in raised gold cloth; so elegantly dressed were these two children, who were also the best looking of the little band, that the sight of them gave rise to strange suspicions as to the reason for this preference, if one may believe what Brantome says.
"When the hour of her death had arrived," says Brantôme, "Mademoiselle sent for her valet, Julian, who could play the violin to perfection. 'Julian, quoth she, 'take your violin and play on it until you see me dead for I am going the Defeat of the Swiss, and play it as well as you know how; and when you shall reach the words "tout est perdu," play it over four or five times as piteously as you can: which the other did. And when he came to 'tout est perdu' she sang it over twice; then turning to the other side of the couch, she said to those who stood around: 'Tout est perdu
The splendid pages of Froissart, with his heart-stirring and eye-dazzling descriptions of war and of tournaments, were among his chief favourites; and from those of Brantome and De la Noue he learned to compare the wild and loose, yet superstitious, character of the nobles of the League with the stern, rigid, and sometimes turbulent disposition of the Huguenot party.
The traveller, as Brantôme quaintly tells us, "fait des discours en soi pour se soutenir en chemin"; and into these discourses he weaves something out of all that he sees and suffers by the way; they take their tone greatly from the varying character of the scene; a sharp ascent brings different thoughts from a level road; and the man's fancies grow lighter as he comes out of the wood into a clearing.
Brantome says the fencing masters of Italy kept their secrets in their own hands, giving their services only on the condition that you should never reveal what you had learnt even to your dearest friends. Some instructors would never allow a living soul in the room where they were giving lessons to a pupil.
"I don't know how late it was when Madame Normand popped her head out of the balcony door." "'Who was then surprised? It was the lady, as dear old Brantome says?" "It was everybody. The company had gone and Mélanie the bonne was putting out the candles. "'Miss Stewart and I have just discovered that we are very nearly related, said he. "'But how delightful, said Madame, thoroughly annoyed."
"Why don't you eat your dinner?" she asked David. "I am interested," he replied rather hoarsely. "At what? I was wondering what right I had to inflict all this on you. I suppose when I came in you were talking of something worth while." She turned again to Brantome. "And Marco Polo?" "The best tone poem since Don Quixote," he said, rising and making her a bow. "As far as it has gone.
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