In Truth, He Was But A Small Descendant From Such Great Warriors.
When
you looked at their bluff visages and brawny limbs, as depicted in
their portraits, and then at the
Little Marquis, with his spindle
shanks; his sallow lanthern visage, flanked with a pair of powdered
ear-locks, or ailes de pigeon, that seemed ready to fly away with it;
you would hardly believe him to be of the same race. But when you
looked at the eyes that sparkled out like a beetle's from each side of
his hooked nose, you saw at once that he inherited all the fiery spirit
of his forefathers. In fact, a Frenchman's spirit never exhales,
however his body may dwindle. It rather rarefies, and grows more
inflammable, as the earthly particles diminish; and I have seen valor
enough in a little fiery-hearted French dwarf, to have furnished out a
tolerable giant.
When once the Marquis, as he was wont, put on one of the old helmets
that were stuck up in his hall; though his head no more filled it than
a dry pea its pease cod; yet his eyes sparkled from the bottom of the
iron cavern with the brilliancy of carbuncles, and when he poised the
ponderous two-handled sword of his ancestors, you would have thought
you saw the doughty little David wielding the sword of Goliath, which
was unto him like a weaver's beam.
However, gentlemen, I am dwelling too long on this description of the
Marquis and his chateau; but you must excuse me; he was an old friend
of my uncle's, and whenever my uncle told the story, he was always fond
of talking a great deal about his host. - Poor little Marquis! He was
one of that handful of gallant courtiers, who made such a devoted, but
hopeless stand in the cause of their sovereign, in the chateau of the
Tuilleries, against the irruption of the mob, on the sad tenth of
August.
He displayed the valor of a preux French chevalier to the last;
flourished feebly his little court sword with a sa-sa! in face of a
whole legion of sans-culottes; but was pinned to the wall like a
butterfly, by the pike of a poissarde, and his heroic soul was borne up
to heaven on his ailes de pigeon.
But all this has nothing to do with my story; to the point then: -
When the hour arrived for retiring for the night, my uncle was shown to
his room, in a venerable old tower. It was the oldest part of the
chateau, and had in ancient times been the Donjon or stronghold; of
course the chamber was none of the best. The Marquis had put him there,
however, because he knew him to be a traveller of taste, and fond of
antiquities; and also because the better apartments were already
occupied. Indeed, he perfectly reconciled my uncle to his quarters by
mentioning the great personages who had once inhabited them, all of
whom were in some way or other connected with the family. If you would
take his word for it, John Baliol, or, as he called him, Jean de
Bailleul, had died of chagrin in this very chamber on hearing of the
success of his rival, Robert the Bruce, at the battle of Bannockburn;
and when he added that the Duke de Guise had slept in it during the
wars of the League, my uncle was fain to felicitate himself upon being
honored with such distinguished quarters.
The night was shrewd and windy, and the chamber none of the warmest. An
old, long-faced, long-bodied servant in quaint livery, who attended
upon my uncle, threw down an armful of wood beside the fire-place, gave
a queer look about the room, and then wished him bon repos, with a
grimace and a shrug that would have been suspicious from any other than
an old French servant. The chamber had indeed a wild, crazy look,
enough to strike any one who had read romances with apprehension and
foreboding. The windows were high and narrow, and had once been
loop-holes, but had been rudely enlarged, as well as the extreme
thickness of the walls would permit; and the ill-fitted casements
rattled to every breeze. You would have thought, on a windy night, some
of the old Leaguers were tramping and clanking about the apartment in
their huge boots and rattling spurs. A door which stood ajar, and like
a true French door would stand ajar, in spite of every reason and
effort to the contrary, opened upon a long, dark corridor, that led the
Lord knows whither, and seemed just made for ghosts to air themselves
in, when they turned out of their graves at midnight. The wind would
spring up into a hoarse murmur through this passage, and creak the door
to and fro, as if some dubious ghost were balancing in its mind whether
to come in or not. In a word, it was precisely the kind of comfortless
apartment that a ghost, if ghost there were in the chateau, would
single out for its favourite lounge.
My uncle, however, though a man accustomed to meet with strange
adventures, apprehended none at the time. He made several attempts to
shut the door, but in vain. Not that he apprehended any thing, for he
was too old a traveller to be daunted by a wild-looking apartment; but
the night, as I have said, was cold and gusty, something like the
present, and the wind howled about the old turret, pretty much as it
does round this old mansion at this moment; and the breeze from the
long dark corridor came in as damp and chilly as if from a dungeon. My
uncle, therefore, since he could not close the door, threw a quantity
of wood on the fire, which soon sent up a flame in the great
wide-mouthed chimney that illumined the whole chamber, and made the
shadow of the tongs on the opposite wall, look like a long-legged
giant.
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