Quentin Durward by Walter Scott (popular ebook readers .txt) 📗
- Author: Walter Scott
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“Good—my squire—but you spoke of my daughter—my daughter is, I trust, safe in my house in Liege—where I wish her father was, with all my heart and soul.”
“This lady,” said Durward, “will call you father while we are in this place.”
“And for my whole life afterwards,” said the Countess, throwing herself at the citizen's feet, and clasping his knees.
“Never shall the day pass in which I will not honour you, love you, and pray for you as a daughter for a father, if you will but aid me in this fearful strait.—Oh, be not hard hearted! Think, your own daughter may kneel to a stranger, to ask him for life and honour—think of this, and give me the protection you would wish her to receive!”
“In troth,” said the good citizen, much moved with her pathetic appeal, “I think, Peter, that this pretty maiden hath a touch of our Trudchen's sweet look—I thought so from the first, and that this brisk youth here, who is so ready with his advice, is somewhat like Trudchen's bachelor—I wager a groat, Peter, that this is a true love matter, and it is a sin not to further it.”
“It were shame and sin both,” said Peter, a good natured Fleming, notwithstanding all his self conceit, and as he spoke he wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his jerkin.
“She shall be my daughter, then,” said Pavillon, “well wrapped up in her black silk veil and if there are not enough of true hearted skinners to protect her, being the daughter of their Syndic, it were pity they should ever tug leather more.—But hark ye—questions must be answered—How if I am asked what should my daughter make here at such an onslaught?”
“What should half the women in Liege make here when they followed us to the castle?” said Peter. “They had no other reason, sure, but that it was just the place in the world that they should not have come to. Our yung frau Trudchen has come a little farther than the rest—that is all.”
“Admirably spoken,” said Quentin, “only be bold, and take this gentleman's good counsel, noble Meinheer Pavillon, and, at no trouble to yourself, you will do the most worthy action since the days of Charlemagne.—Here, sweet lady, wrap yourself close in this veil” (for many articles of female apparel lay scattered about the apartment)—“be but confident, and a few minutes will place you in freedom and safety. Noble Sir,” he added, addressing Pavillon, “set forward.”
“Hold—hold—hold a minute,” said Pavillon, “my mind misgives me!—This De la Marck is a fury, a perfect boar in his nature as in his name, what if the young lady be one of those of Croye?—and what if he discover her, and be addicted to wrath?”
“And if I were one of those unfortunate women,” said Isabelle, again attempting to throw herself at his feet, “could you for that reject me in this moment of despair? Oh, that I had been indeed your daughter, or the daughter of the poorest burgher!”
“Not so poor—not so poor neither, young lady—we pay as we go,” said the citizen.
“Forgive me, noble sir,” again began the unfortunate maiden.
“Not noble, nor sir, neither,” said the Syndic, “a plain burgher of Liege, that pays bills of exchange in ready guilders.—But that is nothing to the purpose.—Well, say you be a countess, I will protect you nevertheless.”
“You are bound to protect her, were she a duchess,” said Peter, “having once passed your word.”
“Right, Peter, very right,” said the Syndic “it is our old Low Dutch fashion, ein wort, ein man [a man of his word], and now let us to this gear. We must take leave of this William de la Marck, and yet I know not, my mind misgives me when I think of him, and were it a ceremony which could be waived, I have no stomach to go through it.”
“Were you not better, since you have a force together, to make for the gate and force the guard?” said Quentin.
But with united voice, Pavillon and his adviser exclaimed against the propriety of such an attack upon their ally's soldiers, with some hints concerning its rashness, which satisfied Quentin that it was not a risk to be hazarded with such associates.
They resolved, therefore, to repair boldly to the great hall of the castle, where, as they understood, the Wild Boar of Ardennes held his feast, and demand free egress for the Syndic of Liege and his company, a request too reasonable, as it seemed, to be denied. Still the good burgomaster groaned when he looked on his companions, and exclaimed to his faithful Peter, “See what it is to have too bold and too tender a heart! Alas! Peterkin, how much have courage and humanity cost me! and how much may I yet have to pay for my virtues, before Heaven makes us free of this damned Castle of Schonwaldt!”
As they crossed the courts, still strewed with the dying and dead, Quentin, while he supported Isabelle through the scene of horrors, whispered to her courage and comfort, and reminded her that her safety depended entirely on her firmness and presence of mind.
“Not on mine—not on mine,” she said, “but on yours—on yours only. Oh, if I but escape this fearful night, never shall I forget him who saved me! One favour more only, let me implore at your hand, and I conjure you to grant it, by your mother's fame and your father's honour!”
“What is it you can ask that I could refuse?” said Quentin, in a whisper.
“Plunge your dagger in my heart,” said she, “rather than leave me captive in the hands of these monsters.”
Quentin's only answer was a pressure of the young Countess's hand, which seemed as if, but for terror, it would have returned the caress. And, leaning on her youthful protector, she entered the fearful hall, preceded by Pavillon and his lieutenant, and followed by a dozen of the Kurschenschaft, or skinner's trade, who attended as a guard of honour on the Syndic.
As they approached the hall, the yells of acclamation and bursts of wild laughter which proceeded from it, seemed rather to announce the revel of festive demons, rejoicing after some accomplished triumph over the human race, than of mortal beings who had succeeded in a bold design. An emphatic tone of mind, which despair alone could have inspired, supported the assumed courage of the Countess Isabelle, undaunted spirits, which rose with the extremity, maintained that of Durward, while Pavillon and his lieutenant made a virtue of necessity, and faced their fate like bears bound to a stake, which must necessarily stand the dangers of the course.
CHAPTER XXII: THE REVELLERS Cade.—Where's Dick, the butcher of Ashford? Dick.—Here, sir. Cade.—They fell before thee like sheep and oxen, and thou behavedst thyself as if thou hadst been in thine own slaughter house. SECOND PART OF KING HENRY V.
There could hardly exist a more strange and horrible change than had taken place in the castle hall of Schonwaldt since Quentin had partaken of the noontide meal there, and it was indeed one which painted, in the extremity of their dreadful features, the miseries of war—more especially when waged by those most relentless of all agents, the mercenary soldiers of a barbarous age—men who, by habit and profession, had become familiarized with all that was cruel and bloody in the art of war, while they were devoid alike of patriotism and of the romantic spirit of chivalry.
Instead of the orderly, decent, and somewhat formal meal, at which civil and ecclesiastical officers had, a few hours before, sat mingled in the same apartment, where a light jest could only be uttered in a whisper, and where, even amid superfluity of feasting and of wine, there reigned a decorum which almost amounted to hypocrisy, there was now such a scene of wild and roaring debauchery as Satan himself, had he taken the chair as founder of the feast, could scarcely have improved.
At the head of the table sat, in the Bishop's throne and state, which had been hastily brought thither from his great council chamber, the redoubted Boar of Ardennes himself, well deserving that dreaded name in which he affected to delight, and which he did as much as he could think of to deserve.
His head was unhelmeted, but he wore the rest of his ponderous and bright armour, which indeed he rarely laid aside. Over his shoulders hung a strong surcoat, made of the dressed skin of a huge wild boar, the hoofs being of solid silver and the tusks of the same. The skin of the head was so arranged, that, drawn over the casque, when the Baron was armed, or over his bare head in the fashion of a hood, as he often affected when the helmet was laid aside, and as he now wore it, the effect was that of a grinning, ghastly monster, and yet the countenance which it overshadowed scarce required such horrors to improve those which were natural to its ordinary expression.
The upper part of De la Marck's face, as Nature had formed it, almost gave the lie to his character, for though his hair, when uncovered, resembled the rude and wild bristles of the hood he had drawn over it, yet an open, high, and manly forehead, broad ruddy cheeks, large, sparkling, light coloured eyes, and a nose which looked like the beak of the eagle, promised something valiant and generous. But the effect of these more favourable traits was entirely overpowered by his habits of violence and insolence, which, joined to debauchery and intemperance, had stamped upon the features a character inconsistent with the rough gallantry which they would otherwise have exhibited. The former had, from habitual indulgence, swollen the muscles of the cheeks and those around the eyes, in particular the latter; evil practices and habits had dimmed the eyes themselves, reddened the part of them that should have been white, and given the whole face a hideous likeness of the monster which it was the terrible Baron's pleasure to resemble. But from an odd sort of contradiction, De la March, while he assumed in other respects the appearance of the Wild Boar, and even seemed pleased with the name, yet endeavoured, by the length and growth of his beard, to conceal the circumstance that had originally procured him that denomination. This was an unusual thickness and projection of the mouth and upper jaw, which, with the huge projecting side teeth, gave that resemblance to the bestial creation, which, joined to the delight that De la Marck had in hunting the forest so called, originally procured for him the name of the Boar of Ardennes. The beard, broad, grisly, and uncombed, neither concealed the natural horrors of the countenance, nor dignified its brutal expression.
The soldiers and officers sat around the table, intermixed with the men of Liege, some of them of the very lowest description, among whom Nikkel Blok the butcher, placed near De la Marck himself, was distinguished by his tucked up sleeves, which displayed arms smeared to the elbows with blood, as was the cleaver which lay on the table before him. The soldiers wore, most of them, their beards long and grisly, in imitation of their leader, had their hair plaited and turned upwards, in the manner that ought best improve the natural ferocity of their appearance, and intoxicated, as many of them seemed to be, partly with the sense of triumph, and partly with the long libations of wine which they had been quaffing, presented a spectacle at once hideous and disgusting. The language which they held, and the songs which they sang, without even pretending to pay each other the compliment of listening, were so full of license and blasphemy, that Quentin blessed God that the extremity of the noise prevented them from being intelligible to his companion.
It only remains to say of the better class of burghers who were associated with William de la Marck's soldiers in this fearful revel that the wan faces and anxious mien of the greater part showed that they either disliked their entertainment, or feared their companions, while some of lower education, or a nature more brutal, saw only in the excesses of the soldier a gallant bearing, which they would willingly imitate, and the tone of which they endeavoured to catch so far as was possible, and stimulated themselves to the task, by swallowing immense draughts of wine and schwarzbier [black beer]—indulging a vice 'which at all times was too common in the Low Countries.
The preparations for the feast had been as disorderly as the quality of the company.
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