Stanley Weyman - The Abbess Of Vlaye

Monsieur des Ageaux was a man of whom his best friends could not say that he shone, or tried to shine, in the pursuit of the fair sex. He was of an age, something over thirty, when experience renders more formidable the remaining charms of youth; and former conquests whet the sword for new emprises. And the time in which he lived and governed the province of Périgord for the King was a time in which the favour of ladies, and the good things to be gained thereby, stood for much, and morality for little. So that for the ambitious the path of dalliance presented almost as many chances of advancement as the more strenuous road of war.

Yet des Ageaux, though he was an ambitious man and one whose appetite success-and in his degree he had been very successful-had but sharpened, showed no inclination to take that path, or to rise by trifling. Nay, he turned from it; he shunned if he did not dislike the other sex. Whether he doubted his powers-he was a taciturn, grave man-or he had energy only for the one pursuit he loved, the government of men, the thing was certain. Yet he was not unpopular even at Court, the lax Court of Henry the Fourth. But he was known for a thoughtful, dry man, older than his years and no favourite with great ladies; of whom some dubbed him shy, and some a clown, and all-a piece of furniture.

None the less, where men were concerned, he passed for a man more useful than most; or, for certain, seeing that he boasted no great claims, and belonged to no great family, he had not been Governor of a province. Governors of provinces in those days were of the highest; cousins of the King, when these could be trusted, which was rare; peers and Marshals of France, great Dukes with vast hereditary possessions, old landed Vicomtes, and the like. Only at the tail of the list came some half-dozen men whom discretion and service, or the playfulness of fortune had- mirabile dictum -raised to office. And at the tail of all came des Ageaux; for Périgord, his province, land of the pie and the goose liver, was part of the King's demesne, the King was his own Governor in it, and des Ageaux bore only the title of "Lieutenant for the King in the country of Périgord."

Yet was it a wonderful post for such a man, and many a personage, many a lord well seen at Court, coveted it. All the same the burden was heavy; a thing not to be dismissed in a moment. The King found him no money, or little; no men, or few. Where greater Governors used their own resources he had to use-economy. And to make matters worse the man was just; it was part of his nature, it was part of his passion, to be just. So where they taxed not legally only, but illegally, he scrupled, he held his hand. And, therefore, though his dignity was almost as high as office could make it, and his power in his own country not small, no man who ever came to Court went with less splendour in the streets of Paris, or with a smaller following. Doubtless, as a result of this, a few despised him; a few even, making common cause with the Court ladies, and being themselves semi-royal, and above retort, flouted him as a thing negligible.

But, on the whole, he passed, though dry and grave, for a man to be envied, the ladies notwithstanding. And he held his own tolerably, and his post handsomely until a certain day in the summer of 1595, when word came to the young Governor to cross half France to meet the King at Lyons; where, in the early part of that year, Henry the Fourth lay, and was ill-content with a world which, on the surface, seemed to be treating him well.

But on the surface only. The long wars of religion, midway in which the Massacre of Bartholomew stands up, like some drear gibbet landmark in a waste, were, indeed, virtually over. Not only had Henry come to the throne, but Paris, his capital, was his at last; had he not bought it eighteen months before by that mass, that abjuration of Protestant errors, of which the world has heard so much? And not Paris only. Orleans and Bourges, and this good city of Lyons, and Rouen, all were his now, and in their Notre-Dames or St. – Etiennes had sung their Te Deums , and more or less heartily cried "God save the King!" At last, after six years of fighting, of wild horse forays, that flamed across the Northern corn-lands, after a thousand sleepless nights and as many days of buying and bartering-at last the lover of Gabrielle, who was also the most patient and astute of men, was King of France and of Navarre, lord of all this pleasant realm.

Or, not lord; only over-lord, as six times a day they made him know. Nor even that, of all. For in Brittany a great noble still went his own way. And in Provence a great city refused to surrender. And north-eastwards Spain still clung to his border. Nevertheless it was none of these things filled Henry, the King, with discontent. It was at none of these things that he swore in his beard as he sulked at the end of the long Council Table this June morning; while des Ageaux, from his seat near the bottom of the board, watched his face.

In truth Henry was discovering, that, having bought, he must pay; that so great was the mortgage he had put on his kingdom, the profits belonged to others. Overlord he was-lord, no; except perhaps in Lyons where he lay, and where for that reason the Governor had to mind his manners. But in smiling Provence to south of him? Not a whit. The Duke of Epernon ruled the land of Roses, and would rule until the young Duke of Guise, to whom His Majesty had given commission, put him out; and then Guise would rule. In Dauphiny the same. In Languedoc, the great middle province of the south, Montmorency, son to the old Constable, was King in fact; in Guienne old Marshal Matignon. In Angoumois-here Epernon again; so firmly fixed that he deigned only to rule by quarterly letters from his distant home. True in Poitou was an obedient Governor, but the house of Trémouille from their red castle of Thouars outweighed his governorship. And in rocky Limousin the Governor could keep neither the King's peace nor his own.

So it was everywhere through the wide provinces of France; and Henry, who loved his people, knew it, and sulkily fingered the papers that told of it. Not that he had need of the papers. He knew before he cast eye on them in what a welter of lawlessness and disorder, of private feud and public poverty, thirty years of civil war had left his kingdom. One province was in arms, torn asunder by a feud between two great houses. Another laboured in the throes of a peasant rising, its hills alight night after night with the flames of burning farmsteads. A third was helpless in the grip of a gang of brigands, who held the roads. A fourth was beset by disbanded soldiers. The long wars of religion had dissolved all ties. Everywhere monks who had left their abbeys and nuns who had left their convents swarmed on the roads, with sturdy beggars, homeless peasants, broken gentry. Everywhere, beyond the walls of the great cities, the law was paralysed, the great committed outrage, the poor suffered wrong, the excesses of war enured, and, in this time of fancied peace, took grimmer shape.

He whom God had set over France, to rule it, knew these things and sat hopeless, brooding over the papers; hampered on the one side by lack of money, on the other by the grants of power that in evil days had bought a nominal allegiance. He began to see that he had won only the first bout of a match which must last him his life. Nor would it have consoled him much to know that in the college of Navarre that day played a little lad, just ten years old, whose frail white hand would one day right these things with a vengeance.

His people cried to him, and he longed to help them and could not. From a thousand market-places, splayed wooden shelters, covering each its quarter-acre of ground, their cry came up to him: "Give us peace, give us law!" and he could not. No wonder that he brooded over the papers, while the clerks looked askance at him, and the great lords who had won what he had lost whispered or played tric-trac at the board. Those who sat lower, and among these M. des Ageaux, were less at their ease. They wondered where the storm would break, and feared each for his own head.