THE vast Sylva Lida, which in the days of Charlemagne stretched far along the banks of the Seine, and formed a woody screen round the infant city of Paris, has now dwindled to a few thousand acres in the neighbourhood of St. Germain en Laye. Not so in the time of Louis the Thirteenth. It was then one of the most magnificent forests of France, and extending as far as the town of Mantes, took indifferently the name of the Wood of Mantes, or the Forest of Laye. That portion to the North of St. Germain has been long cut down: yet there were persons living, not many years since, who remembered some of the old trees still standing, bare, desolate, and alone, like parents who had seen the children of their hopes die around them in their prime.

Although much improvement in all the arts of life, and much increase of population had taken place during the latter years of Henry the Fourth, and under the regency of Mary de Medicis; yet at the time of their son Louis the Thirteenth, the country was still but thinly peopled, and far different from the gay, thronged land, that it appears to-day. For besides that it was in earlier days, there had been many a bitter and a heavy war, not only of France against her enemies, but of France against her children. Religious and political differences had caused disunion between man and man, had banished mutual confidence and social intercourse, and raised up those feuds and hatreds, which destroy domestic peace, and retard public improvement. Amidst general distrust and civil wars, industry had received no encouragement; and where stand at present many a full hamlet and busy village, where the vineyard yields its abundance, and the peasant gathers in peace the bounty of Nature, were then the green copses of the forest, the haunt of the wild boar and the deer. The savage tenants of the wood, however, did not enjoy its shelter undisturbed; for, in those days of suspicion, hunting was a safer sport than conversation, and the boughs of the oak a more secure covering than the gilded ceilings of the saloon.

To our pampered countrymen, long nurtured in that peculiar species of luxury called comfort, the roads of France even now must seem but rude and barbarous constructions, when compared with the smooth, joltless causeways over which they are borne in their own land; but in the time of Louis the Thirteenth, when all works of the kind were carried on by the Seigneur through whose estates they passed, few but the principal roads between one great town and another were even passable for a carriage. Those, however, which traversing the wood of Mantes, served as means of access to the royal residence of St. Germain, were of a superior kind, and would have been absolutely good, had the nature of the soil afforded a steady foundation: but this was not always to be found in the forest, and the engineer had shown no small ingenuity in taking advantage of all the most solid parts of the land, and in avoiding those places where the marshy or sandy quality of the ground offered no secure basis. By these circumstances, however, he was obliged to deviate sadly from those principles of direct progression, so dear to all Frenchmen; and the road from St. Germain to Mantes, as well as that which branched off from it to join the high-road to Chartres, instead of being one interminable, monotonous, straight line, with a long row of trees, like a file of grenadiers, on each side, went winding in and out with a thousand turnings amongst the old oaks of the forest, that seemed to stand forward, and stretch their broad branches across it, as if willing to shelter it from the obtrusive rays of the sun. Sometimes, climbing the side of a hill, it would suddenly display a wide view over the leafy ocean below, till the eye caught the towers and spires of distant cities breaking the far grey line of the horizon. Sometimes, descending into the depths of the forest, it would almost seem to lose itself amongst the wild groves and savannas, being itself the only trace of man’s laborious hand amidst the wilderness around.

In the heart of the wood, at that point where the two roads (which I have mentioned) divaricated from each other, stood the hut of a Woodman, and the abreuvoir where many a gay lord of the Court would stop when his hunting was over, and give his horse time to drink. There, too, many a traveller would pause to ask his way through the forest; so that Philip, the woodman, and his young family, were known to almost all whom business or pleasure brought through the wood of Mantes; and although during the course of this true history, princes and heroes may become the subjects of discourse, it is with Philip that we must commence our tale.

It was at that season of the year, when the first leaves of summer begin to leave the branches from which they sprang, like the bright and tender hopes of early years, that fade and fall before the autumn of life has fully commenced. The sun had abated but little of his force, and the days scarcely seemed to have contracted their span.

The time of day, too, was like the period of the year, “falling gently into the sear,” so that it was only a scarce perceptible shadow, stealing over the landscape, which told that the great power of light was quitting that quarter of the globe, to bestow the equal blessing of his smile on other nations and on distant climes. That shadow had been the signal for Philip the woodman to return towards his home, and he issued forth from one of the forest paths, near his dwelling, singing as he came the old hunting-song of Le bon roi Dagobert.[A]

Now St. Hubert, in all probability, is the only person who correctly knows how it happened, that the very unmeaning and inapplicable ditty of Le bon roi Dagobert, should have been appropriated exclusively to the noble exercise of hunting, to which it has no reference whatever; but so it has been, and even to the present day where is the chasseur who cannot, as he returns from the chace, blow the notes, or sing the words of Le bon roi Dagobert?

Philip, as woodman, had heard it echoed and re-echoed through the forest from his very infancy; and now, without even knowing that he did so, he sang it as a matter of habit, although his mind was occupied upon another subject: as men are always naturally inclined to employ their corporeal faculties on some indifferent object, when their mental ones are intensely engaged in things of deeper interest.

Philip advanced slowly along the road, with his brow knit in such a manner as to evince that his light song had no part in his thoughts. He was a man perhaps nearly fifty, still hale and athletic, though a life of labour had changed the once dark locks of his hair to grey. His occupation was at once denoted by his dress, which consisted simply of a long-bodied blue coat of coarse cloth, covered over, except the arms, with what is called in Britanny, a Peau de bicque, or goat-skin: a pair of leather breeches, cut off above the knee, with thick gaiters to defend his legs from the thorns, completed his dress below; and a round broad-brimmed hat was brought far over his eyes, to keep them from the glare of the declining sun. His apparel was girded round him by a broad buff belt, in the left of which hung his woodman’s knife; in the right he had placed the huge axe, which he had been using in his morning’s occupation: and thus accoutred, Philip would have been no insignificant opponent, had he met with any of those lawless rovers, who occasionally frequented the forest.

As he approached his dwelling, he suddenly stopped, broke off his song, and turning round, listened for a moment attentively; but the only noise to be heard was the discordant cry of the jay in the trees round about; and the only living things visible were a few wild birds overhead, slowly winging their flight from the distant fields and vineyards towards their forest home.

Philip proceeded, but he sang no more; and opening the cottage door, he spoke without entering. “Charles,” demanded he, “has the young gentleman returned, who passed by this morning to hunt?”

“No, father,” answered the boy coming forward; “nobody has passed since you went—I am sure no one has, for I sat on the old tree all the morning, carving you a sun-dial out of the willow branch you brought home yesterday;” and he drew forth one of those ingenious little machines, by means of which the French shepherds tell the time.

“Thou art a good boy,” said his father, laying his hand on his head, “thou art a good boy.” But still, as the Woodman spoke, his mind seemed occupied by some anxiety, for again he looked up the road and listened. “There are strange faces in the forest,” said Philip, not exactly soliloquizing, for his son was present, but certainly speaking more to himself than to the boy. “There are strange faces in the forest, and I fear me some ill deed is to be done. But here they come, thank God!—No! what is this?”

As he spoke, there appeared, just where the road turned into the wood, a sort of procession, which would have puzzled any one of later days, more than it did the Woodman. It consisted of four men on horseback, and four on foot, escorting a vehicle, the most elegant and tasteful that the age produced. The people of that day had doubtless very enlarged notions, and certainly the carriage I speak of would have contained any three of modern construction (always excepting that in which his most gracious Majesty the King of England appears on state occasions, and also that of the Lord Mayor of London City.)

Indeed the one in question was more like a state carriage than any other; broad at the top, low in the axle, all covered over with painting and gilding, with long wooden shafts for the horses, and green taffeta curtains to the windows: and in this guise it came on, swaying and swaggering about over the ruts in the road, not unlike the bloated Dutch pug of some over-indulgent dame, waddling slowly on, with its legs far apart, and its belly almost trailing on the ground.

When the carriage arrived at the abreuvoir, by the side of which Philip had placed himself, the footmen took the bridles from the horses’ mouths to give them drink, and a small white hand, from within, drew back the taffeta curtain, displaying to the Woodman one of the loveliest faces he had ever beheld. The lady looked round for a moment at the forest scene, in the midst of whose wild ruggedness they stood, and then raised her eyes towards the sky, letting them roam over the clear deepening expanse of blue, as if to satisfy herself how much daylight still remained for their journey.

“How far is it to St. Germain, good friend?” said she, addressing the Woodman, as she finished her contemplations; and her voice sounded to Philip like the warble of a bird, notwithstanding a slight peculiarity of intonation, which more refined ears would instantly have decided as the accent of Roussillon, or some adjacent province: the lengthening of the i, and the swelling roundness of the Spanish u, sounding very differently from the sharp precision peculiar to the Parisian pronunciation.

“I wish, Pauline, that you would get over that bad habit of softening all your syllables,” said an old lady who sat beside her in the carriage. “Your French is scarcely comprehensible.”

“Dear Mamma!” replied the young lady playfully, “am not I descended lineally from Clemence Isaure, the patroness of song and chivalry? And I should be sorry to speak aught but my own langue d’oc—the tongue of the first knights and first poets of France.—— But hark! what is that noise in the wood?”

“Now help, for the love of God!” cried the Woodman, snatching forth his axe, and turning to the horsemen who accompanied the carriage; “murder is doing in the forest. Help, for the love of God!”

But as he spoke, the trampling of a horse’s feet was heard, and in a moment after, a stout black charger came down the road like lightning; the dust springing up under his feet, and the foam dropping from his bit.

Half falling from the saddle, half supported by the reins, appeared the form of a gallant young Cavalier; his naked sword still clasped in his hand, but now fallen powerless and dragging by the side of the horse; his head uncovered and thrown back, as if consciousness had almost left him, and the blood flowing from a deep wound in his forehead, and dripping amongst the thick curls of his dark brown hair.

The charger rushed furiously on; but the Woodman caught the bridle as he passed, and with some difficulty reined him in; while one of the footmen lifted the young gentleman to the ground, and placed him at the foot of a tree.

The two ladies had not beheld this scene unconcerned; and were descending from the carriage, when four or five servants in hunting livery were seen issuing from the wood at the turn of the road, contending with a very superior party of horsemen, whose rusty equipments and wild anomalous sort of apparel, bespoke them free of the forest by not the most honourable franchise.

“Ride on, ride on!” cried the young lady to those who had come with her: “Ride on and help them;” and she herself advanced to give aid to the wounded Cavalier, whose eyes seemed now closed for ever.

He was as handsome a youth as one might look upon: one of those forms which we are fond to bestow upon the knights and heroes that we read of in our early days, when unchecked fancy is always ready to give her bright conceptions “a local habitation and a name.” The young lady, whose heart had never been taught to regulate its beatings by the frigid rules of society, or the sharp scourge of disappointment, now took the wounded man’s head upon her knee, and gazed for an instant upon his countenance, the deadly paleness of which appeared still more ghastly from the red streams that trickled over it from the wound in his forehead. She then attempted to staunch the blood, but the trembling of her hands defeated her purpose, and rendered her assistance of but little avail.

The elder lady had hitherto been giving her directions to the footmen, who remained with the carriage, while those on horseback rode on towards the fray. “Stand to your arms, Michel!” cried she. “You take heed to the coach. You three, draw up across the road, each with his arquebuse ready to fire. Let none but the true men pass.—Fie! Pauline; I thought you had a firmer heart.” She continued, approaching the young lady, “Give me the handkerchief.—That is a bad cut in his head, truly; but here is a worse stab in his side.” And she proceeded to unloose the gold loops of his hunting-coat, that she might reach the wound. But that action seemed to recall, in a degree, the senses of the wounded Cavalier.

“Never! never!” he exclaimed, clasping his hand upon his side, and thrusting her fingers away from him, with no very ceremonious courtesy,—“never, while I have life.”

“I wish to do you no harm, young Sir, but good,” replied the old lady;—“I seek but to stop the bleeding of your side, which is draining your heart dry.”

The wounded man looked faintly round, his senses still bewildered, either by weakness from loss of blood, or from the stunning effects of the blow on his forehead. He seemed, however, to have caught and comprehended some of the words which the old lady addressed to him, and answered them by a slight inclination of the head, but still kept his hand upon the breast of his coat, as if he had some cause for wishing it not to be opened.

The time which had thus elapsed more than sufficed to bring the horsemen, who had accompanied the carriage, (and who, as before stated, had ridden on before) to the spot where the servants of the Cavalier appeared contending with a party, not only greater in number, but superior in arms.

The reinforcement which thus arrived, gave a degree of equality to the two parties, though the freebooters might still have retained the advantage, had not one of their companions commanded them, in rather a peremptory manner, to quit the conflict. This personage, we must remark, was very different, in point of costume, from the forest gentry with whom he herded for the time. His dress was a rich livery suit of Isabel and silver; and indeed he might have been confounded with the other party, had not his active co-operation with the banditti (or whatever they might be) placed the matter beyond a doubt.

Their obedience, also, to his commands showed, that if he were not the instigator of the violence we have described, at least his influence over his lawless companions was singularly powerful; for at a word from him they drew off from a combat in which they were before engaged with all the hungry fury of wolves eager for their prey; and retreated in good order up the road, till its windings concealed them from the view of the servants to whom they had been opposed.

These last did not attempt to follow, but turning their horses, together with those who had brought them such timely aid, galloped up to the spot where their master lay. When they arrived, he had again fallen into a state of apparent insensibility, and they all flocked round him with looks of eager anxiety, which seemed to speak more heartfelt interest than generally existed between the murmuring vassal and his feudal lord.

One sprightly boy, who appeared to be his page, sprang like lightning from the saddle, and kneeling by his side, gazed intently on his face, as if to seek some trace of animation. “They have killed him!” he cried at length, “I fear me they have killed him!”

“No, he is not dead,” answered the old lady; “but I wish, Sir Page, that you would prevail on your master to open his coat, that we may staunch that deep wound in his side.”

“No, no! that must not be,” cried the boy quickly; “but I will tie my scarf round the wound.” So saying, he unloosed the rich scarf of blue and gold, that passing over his right shoulder crossed his bosom till it nearly reached the hilt of his sword, where forming a large knot it covered the bucklings of his belt. This he bound tightly over the spot in his master’s side from whence the blood flowed; and then asked thoughtfully, without raising his eyes, “But how shall we carry him to St. Germain?”

“In our carriage,” said the young lady; “we are on our way thither, even now.”

The sound of her voice made the Page start, for since his arrival on the spot, he had scarcely noticed any one but his master, whose dangerous situation seemed to occupy all his thoughts: but now there was something in that sweet voice, with its soft Languedocian accent, which awakened other ideas, and he turned his full sunny face towards the lady who spoke.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed she, as that glance showed her a countenance not at all unfamiliar to her memory: “Is not this Henry de La Mothe, son of our old farmer Louis?”

“No other indeed, Mademoiselle Pauline,” replied the boy; “though, truly, I neither hoped nor expected to see you at such a moment as this.”

“Then who”—demanded the young lady, clasping her hands with a look of impatient anxiety—“in the name of heaven, tell me who is this!”

For an instant, and but for an instant, a look of arch meaning played over the boy’s countenance; but it was like a flash of lightning on a dark cloud, lost as quickly as it appeared, leaving a deep gloom behind it, as his eye fell upon the inanimate form of his master. “That, Madam,” said he, while something glistened brightly, but sadly, in his eye, “that is Claude Count de Blenau.”

Pauline spoke not, but there was a deadly paleness come upon her face, which very plainly showed, how secondary a feeling is general benevolence, compared with personal interest.

“Is it possible?” exclaimed the elder lady, her brow darkening thoughtfully. “Well, something must be done for him.”

The Page did not seem particularly well pleased with the tone in which the lady spoke, and, in truth, it had betrayed more pride than compassion.

“The best thing that can be done for him, Madame la Marquise,” answered he, “is to put him in the carriage and convey him to St. Germain as soon as possible, if you should not consider it too much trouble.”

“Trouble!” exclaimed Pauline; “trouble! Henry de La Mothe, do you think that my mother or myself would find any thing a trouble, that could serve Claude de Blenau, in such a situation?”

“Hush, Pauline!” said her mother. “Of course we shall be glad to serve the Count—Henry, help Michel and Regnard to place your master in the carriage.—Michel, give me your arquebuse; I will hold it till you have done.—Henry, support your master’s head.”

But Pauline took that post upon herself, notwithstanding a look from the Marchioness, if not intended to forbid, at least to disapprove. The young lady, however, was too much agitated with all that had occurred to remark her mother’s looks, and following the first impulse of her feelings, while the servants carried him slowly to the carriage, she supported the head of the wounded Cavalier on her arm, though the blood continued to flow from the wound in his forehead, and dripped amidst the rich slashing of her Spanish sleeves, dabbling the satin with which it was lined.

“Oh Mademoiselle!” said the Page, when their task was accomplished, “this has been a sad day’s hunting. But if I might advise,” he continued, turning to the Marchioness, “the drivers must be told to go with all speed.”

“Saucy as a page!” said the old lady, “is a proverb, and a good one. Now, Monsieur La Mothe, I do not think the drivers must go with all speed; for humbly deferring to your better opinion, it would shake your master to death.”

The Page bit his lip, and his cheek grew somewhat red, in answer to the high dame’s rebuke, but he replied calmly, “You have seen, Madam, what has happened to-day, and depend on it, if we be not speedy in getting out of this accursed forest, we shall have the same good gentry upon us again, and perhaps in greater numbers. Though they have wounded the Count, they have not succeeded in their object; for he has still about him that which they would hazard all to gain.”

“You are in the right, boy,” answered the lady: “I was over-hasty. Go in, Pauline. Henry, your master’s horse must carry one of my footmen, of whom the other three can mount behind the carriage—thus we shall go quicker. You, with the Count’s servants, mix with my horsemen, and keep close round the coach; and now bid them, on, with all speed.” Thus saying, she entered the vehicle; and the rest having disposed themselves according to her orders, the whole cavalcade was soon in motion on the road to St. Germain.