It was upon one of those balmy evenings of November, which are only known in the valleys of Languedoc and among the mountains of Alsace, that two cavaliers might have been perceived by the naked eye threading one of the rocky and romantic gorges that skirt the mountain-land between the Marne and the Garonne. The rosy tints of the declining luminary were gilding the peaks and crags which lined the path, through which the horsemen wound slowly; and as these eternal battlements with which Nature had hemmed in the ravine which our travellers trod, blushed with the last tints of the fading sunlight, the valley below was gray and darkling, and the hard and devious course was sombre in twilight. A few goats, hardly visible among the peaks, were cropping the scanty herbage here and there. The pipes of shepherds, calling in their flocks as they trooped homewards to their mountain villages, sent up plaintive echoes which moaned through those rocky and lonely steeps; the stars began to glimmer in the purple heavens spread serenely overhead and the faint crescent of the moon, which had peered for some time scarce visible in the azure, gleamed out more brilliantly at every moment, until it blazed as if in triumph at the sun's retreat. 'Tis a fair land that of France, a gentle, a green, and a beautiful; the home of arts and arms, of chivalry and romance, and (however sadly stained by the excesses of modern times) 'twas the unbought grace of nations once, and the seat of ancient renown and disciplined valor.
And of all that fair land of France, whose beauty is so bright and bravery is so famous, there is no spot greener or fairer than that one over which our travellers wended, and which stretches between the good towns of Vendemiaire and Nivose. 'Tis common now to a hundred thousand voyagers: the English tourist, with his chariot and his Harvey's Sauce, and his imperials; the bustling commis-voyageur on the roof of the rumbling diligence; the rapid malle-poste thundering over the chaussee at twelve miles an hour--pass the ground hourly and daily now: 'twas lonely and unfrequented at the end of that seventeenth century with which our story commences.
Along the darkening mountain-paths the two gentlemen (for such their outward bearing proclaimed them) caracoled together. The one, seemingly the younger of the twain, wore a flaunting feather in his barret-cap, and managed a prancing Andalusian palfrey that bounded and curveted gayly. A surcoat of peach-colored samite and a purfled doublet of vair bespoke him noble, as did his brilliant eye, his exquisitely chiselled nose, and his curling chestnut ringlets.
Youth was on his brow; his eyes were dark and dewy, like spring-violets; and spring-roses bloomed upon his cheek--roses, alas! that bloom and die with life's spring! Now bounding over a rock, now playfully whisking off with his riding rod a floweret in his path, Philibert de Coquelicot rode by his darker companion.
His comrade was mounted upon a destriere of the true Norman breed, that had first champed grass on the green pastures of Aquitaine.
Thence through Berry, Picardy, and the Limousin, halting at many a city and commune, holding joust and tourney in many a castle and manor of Navarre, Poitou, and St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the warrior and his charger reached the lonely spot where now we find them.
The warrior who bestrode the noble beast was in sooth worthy of the steed which bore him. Both were caparisoned in the fullest trappings of feudal war. The arblast, the mangonel, the demiculverin, and the cuissart of the period, glittered upon the neck and chest of the war-steed; while the rider, with chamfron and catapult, with ban and arriere-ban, morion and tumbrel, battle-axe and rifflard, and the other appurtenances of ancient chivalry, rode stately on his steel-clad charger, himself a tower of steel. This mighty horseman was carried by his steed as lightly as the young springald by his Andalusian hackney.
"'Twas well done of thee, Philibert," said he of the proof-armor, "to ride forth so far to welcome thy cousin and companion in arms.""Companion in battledore and shuttlecock, Romane de Clos-Vougeot!"replied the younger Cavalier. "When I was yet a page, thou wert a belted knight; and thou wert away to the Crusades ere ever my beard grew.""I stood by Richard of England at the gates of Ascalon, and drew the spear from sainted King Louis in the tents of Damietta," the individual addressed as Romane replied. "Well-a-day! since thy beard grew, boy, (and marry 'tis yet a thin one,) I have broken a lance with Solyman at Rhodes, and smoked a chibouque with Saladin at Acre. But enough of this. Tell me of home--of our native valley--of my hearth, and my lady-mother, and my good chaplain--tell me of HER, Philibert," said the knight, executing a demivolt, in order to hide his emotion.
Philibert seemed uneasy, and to strive as though he would parry the question. "The castle stands on the rock," he said, "and the swallows still build in the battlements. The good chaplain still chants his vespers at morn, and snuffles his matins at even-song.
The lady-mother still distributeth tracts, and knitteth Berlin linsey-woolsey. The tenants pay no better, and the lawyers dun as sorely, kinsman mine," he added with an arch look.
"But Fatima, Fatima, how fares she?" Romane continued. "Since Lammas was a twelvemonth, I hear nought of her; my letters are unanswered. The postman hath traversed our camp every day, and never brought me a billet. How is Fatima, Philibert de Coquelicot?""She is--well," Philibert replied; "her sister Anne is the fairest of the twain, though.""Her sister Anne was a baby when I embarked for Egypt. A plague on sister Anne! Speak of Fatima, Philibert--my blue-eyed Fatima!""I say she is--well," answered his comrade gloomily.
"Is she dead? Is she ill? Hath she the measles? Nay, hath she had the small-pox, and lost her beauty? Speak; speak, boy!" cried the knight, wrought to agony.
