John Bloundelle-Burton - In the Day of Adversity

As it always was – to the credit of humanity – the sight of the little helpless thing sleeping on its father's arm roused this man's sympathy as it had roused that of all others.

" Ma foi! " he said, stooping to gaze at it as it lay on that arm, "a rude cradle for la petite . Yet – there is no hostess; the landlord's wife is dead. And why – why – do you leave it? Why not stay yourself?"

"I have to present myself to the Marquise de Roquemaure at her manoir. Where is that manoir? Heaven grant I have not passed it on the road!"

"Half a league outside the city – to the north, on the Paris road. If you have come from the south, you have not passed it."

"So! It is from the south I come. Now, quick, can I leave the child here – in safety?"

"I will see. Wait." And he went away toward the kitchen, leaving St. Georges standing by his horse easing its saddle, and then holding a bucket of water, which he had picked up, to its thirsty mouth with his disengaged hand.

Presently the man came back, followed by one of the young women whom St. Georges had seen waiting on the company – a dark girl with her arms bare – a girl whose face looked kind and honest. And again with her, as with the others, her heart went out to the little child in the great man's arms. The sense of helplessness, of dependence on so unusual a nurse, touched all those hearts, especially feminine ones.

Briefly as might be he explained to her what it was he required – a night's shelter for and watchfulness over the child, he having to visit the Manoir de Roquemaure. Also, he said, he would come back early in the morning to fetch it away.

"If," said the girl, a little hesitatingly, for she was but a waitress at the inn, "monsieur will intrust the child to me – it is a pretty thing, and see – see – how tired it is! – how it yawns! – then I will do my best. It may sleep with me, and I am used to children. I have several little sisters whom I saw to after my mother's death and before I took service."

"I will intrust it to you most thankfully," St. Georges replied. "Your face is honest, my girl, and true."

So – telling her, as he had told others on his road, that the child was motherless – he kissed it, and bade it good-night, saying inwardly, as he ever said when he parted from it, a little prayer that God would guard and have it in his keeping, and so let the waitress take it away. But, because something told him he was in a dangerous neighbourhood, he impressed upon her that she should in no way leave it more than was absolutely necessary; above all, he begged her and the hostler, who was a witness to the proceedings, to remember that they need say nothing about a child having been left in her care. And they, with many protestations that they would not chatter, assured him that he need be under no apprehension.

"I take my rest," the girl said, "at the close of day. The child shall not leave me till I rise at dawn, nor, indeed, until monsieur returns. I promise."

Then he let her go away with it, and busied himself next with his horse, seeing that it was rubbed down and freshened with a feed. "For," said he, patting its flank, "you have another league to do, my friend, ere your rest comes." And the animal being refreshed, he gave the hostler a piece of silver as earnest of more in the morning if he found he had not been chattering, and so made for the North Gate.

"And now," he said to himself as he passed out, "for the house of the woman De Vannes loved, the house of the man who, I believe, thirsts for my life and the life of my child."

"La plus cruelle de toutes les voies par laquelle le roi fut instruit bien des années fut celle de l'ouverture des lettres. Il est incroyable combien des gens de toutes les sortes en fureut plus ou moins perdus."

A fortnight before St. Georges had set out upon his long and, as it had already proved, hazardous ride from Pontarlier to Paris, four men were busily employed in a small, neatly furnished cabinet at Versailles – a little apartment that partook more of the appearance of a bureau, or office, than aught else.

Two were seated at a table facing each other; behind each of these was one of the others, who handed them papers rapidly drawn from portfolios which they carried. Of the men who were seated, the one with his hat on and wearing a costume of brown velvet – because already the days were very cold – was Louis the Fourteenth; the other, whose manner was extremely rough and coarse – indeed brutal, except when addressing the king himself – was Louvois, the Minister of War, ostensibly, but in reality the one minister who had his fingers in all the business of the state. Those standing behind each of the others were Pajot and Rouillier, who farmed the postal service from the crown.

" Finissons ," said Louis, in the low clear voice that expressed, according to all reports, more authority than even the trumpet tones of many of his great commanders – " finissons . The morning wears away. What remains to be done?" Then in a rich murmur he said: "It has not been too interesting to-day. My subjects are losing the art of letter-writing."

On the table there lay five large portfolios bound in purple leather and impressed with a crown and the letters L. R. Also upon each was stamped a description of its contents. On one was inscribed, in French of course, "Letters opened at the Post"; another "Conduct of Princes and Lords"; a third bore upon it "Private Life of Bishops and Prelates"; a fourth, "Private Life of Ecclesiastics"; and the fifth, "Report of the Lieutenant of the Police."

Furnished thus with these five reports, which reached his august hands and were inspected weekly by his august eyes, Louis considered that the whole of his subjects' existences were, if not known to him, at least very likely at some period or other to come under his supervision. What he did not know, however, was that Louvois, who was the originator of the odious system of opening letters sent through the post, did not always show to him those epistles which came first into his own hands. Therefore in this case, as in many others before and after the days of Louis le Dieudonné , the valet was a greater man than his master.

It was the case now – as it had often been! – the king had seen some threescore letters marked with the senders' names or initials; and there was one he had not seen.

He seemed a little weary this morning – nay, had he not been so great a king, as well as a man who had almost every impulse under control, it would almost have appeared that he was a little irritated at the contents of the first portfolio, that one inscribed "Letters opened at the Post." "For," he continued, after descanting on the art of letter-writing which his subjects appeared to have lost, "the responsibility given to the masters of our royal post seems to me, my good Louvois, to be greater than their minds – provincial in most cases – appear able to sustain. They mark letters from the local seigneurs as worthy of perusal by us in Paris ere being forwarded to their destination, which, in truth, are barren of interest. To wit," he went on, with that delicate irony for which he was noted, "we have opened fifty-five letters, and in not one of them is there the slightest hint of even murmuring against our royal authority, no suggestion of resisting our, or the seigniorial, imposts, not even the faintest suggestion of an attack against our royal person. They are harmless, and consequently wearisome."

"I regret," replied Louvois, softening his raucous voice to the tones absolutely necessary when addressing Louis, "that your Majesty finds the system so barren of interest. But, I may with all deference suggest, perhaps, that it has one gratifying result. All these letters are from the most important persons among your Majesty's subjects, yet there is, as your Majesty observes, no one word hostile to your rule or sacred person. The system – my system – testifies at least to that agreeable fact."