Part 45 (1/2)
Here Houmain, rising between them, laughing and staggering, said to the judge, slapping him on the shoulder.
”You are a long time coming to an understanding, friend; do-on't you know him of old? He's a very good fellow.”
”I? no!” cried Laubardemont, aloud; ”I never saw him before.”
At this moment, Jacques, who was protected by the drunkard and the smallness of the crowded chamber, sprang violently against the weak planks that formed the wall, and by a blow of his heel knocked two of them out, and pa.s.sed through the s.p.a.ce thus created. The whole side of the cabin was broken; it tottered, and the wind rushed in.
”Hallo! Demonio! Santo Demonio! where art going?” cried the smuggler; ”thou art breaking my house down, and on the side of the ravine, too.”
All cautiously approached, tore away the planks that remained, and leaned over the abyss. They contemplated a strange spectacle. The storm raged in all its fury; and it was a storm of the Pyrenees. Enormous flashes of lightning came all at once from all parts of the horizon, and their fires succeeded so quickly that there seemed no interval; they appeared to be a continuous flash. It was but rarely the flaming vault would suddenly become obscure; and it then instantly resumed its glare. It was not the light that seemed strange on this night, but the darkness.
The tall thin peaks and whitened rocks stood out from the red background like blocks of marble on a cupola of burning bra.s.s, and resembled, amid the snows, the wonders of a volcano; the waters gushed from them like flames; the snow poured down like dazzling lava.
In this moving ma.s.s a man was seen struggling, whose efforts only involved him deeper and deeper in the whirling and liquid gulf; his knees were already buried. In vain he clasped his arms round an enormous pyramidal and transparent icicle, which reflected the lightning like a rock of crystal; the icicle itself was melting at its base, and slowly bending over the declivity of the rock. Under the covering of snow, ma.s.ses of granite were heard striking against each other, as they descended into the vast depths below. Yet they could still save him; a s.p.a.ce of scarcely four feet separated him from Laubardemont.
”I sink!” he cried; ”hold out to me something, and thou shalt have the treaty.”
”Give it me, and I will reach thee this musket,” said the judge.
”There it is,” replied the ruffian, ”since the Devil is for Richelieu!”
and taking one hand from the hold of his slippery support, he threw a roll of wood into the cabin. Laubardemont rushed back upon the treaty like a wolf on his prey. Jacques in vain held out his arm; he slowly glided away with the enormous thawing block turned upon him, and was silently buried in the snow.
”Ah, villain,” were his last words, ”thou hast deceived me! but thou didst not take the treaty from me. I gave it thee, Father!” and he disappeared wholly under the thick white bed of snow. Nothing was seen in his place but the glittering flakes which the lightning had ploughed up, as it became extinguished in them; nothing was--heard but the rolling of the thunder and the dash of the water against the rocks, for the men in the half-ruined cabin, grouped round a corpse and a villain, were silent, tongue-tied with horror, and fearing lest G.o.d himself should send a thunderbolt upon them.
CHAPTER XXIII. ABSENCE
L'absence est le plus grand des maux, Non pas pour vous, cruelle!
LA FONTAINE.
Who has not found a charm in watching the clouds of heaven as they float along? Who has not envied them the freedom of their journeyings through the air, whether rolled in great ma.s.ses by the wind, and colored by the sun, they advance peacefully, like fleets of dark s.h.i.+ps with gilt prows, or sprinkled in light groups, they glide quickly on, airy and elongated, like birds of pa.s.sage, transparent as vast opals detached from the treasury of the heavens, or glittering with whiteness, like snows from the mountains carried on the wings of the winds? Man is a slow traveller who envies those rapid journeyers; less rapid than his imagination, they have yet seen in a single day all the places he loves, in remembrance or in hope,--those that have witnessed his happiness or his misery, and those so beautiful countries unknown to us, where we expect to find everything at once. Doubtless there is not a spot on the whole earth, a wild rock, an arid plain, over which we pa.s.s with indifference, that has not been consecrated in the life of some man, and is not painted in his remembrance; for, like battered vessels, before meeting inevitable wreck, we leave some fragment of ourselves on every rock.
Whither go the dark-blue clouds of that storm of the Pyrenees? It is the wind of Africa which drives them before it with a fiery breath.
They fly; they roll over one another, growlingly throwing out lightning before them, as their torches, and leaving suspended behind them a long train of rain, like a vaporous robe. Freed by an effort from the rocky defiles that for a moment had arrested their course, they irrigate, in Bearn, the picturesque patrimony of Henri IV; in Guienne, the conquests of Charles VII; in Saintogne, Poitou, and Touraine, those of Charles V and of Philip Augustus; and at last, slackening their pace above the old domain of Hugh Capet, halt murmuring on the towers of St. Germain.
”O Madame!” exclaimed Marie de Mantua to the Queen, ”do you see this storm coming up from the south?”
”You often look in that direction, 'ma chere',” answered Anne of Austria, leaning on the balcony.
”It is the direction of the sun, Madame.”
”And of tempests, you see,” said the Queen. ”Trust in my friends.h.i.+p, my child; these clouds can bring no happiness to you. I would rather see you turn your eyes toward Poland. See the fine people you might command.”
At this moment, to avoid the rain, which began to fall, the Prince-Palatine pa.s.sed rapidly under the windows of the Queen, with a numerous suite of young Poles on horseback. Their Turkish vests, with b.u.t.tons of diamonds, emeralds, and rubies; their green and gray cloaks; the lofty plumes of their horses, and their adventurous air-gave them a singular eclat to which the court had easily become accustomed. They paused for a moment, and the Prince made two salutes, while the light animal he rode pa.s.sed gracefully sideways, keeping his front toward the princesses; prancing and snorting, he shook his mane, and seemed to salute by putting his head between his legs. The whole suite repeated the evolution as they pa.s.sed. The Princesse Marie had at first shrunk back, lest they should see her tears; but the brilliant and flattering spectacle made her return to the balcony, and she could not help exclaiming:
”How gracefully the Palatine rides that beautiful horse! he seems scarce conscious of it.”
The Queen smiled, and said:
”He is conscious about her who might be his queen tomorrow, if she would but make a sign of the head, and let but one glance from her great black almond-shaped eyes be turned on that throne, instead of always receiving these poor foreigners with poutings, as now.”