“SHE SCANNED THE SEA FOR A SAIL”

See p. 10

A
LADDER OF SWORDS
A TALE OF LOVE, LAUGHTER
AND TEARS

BY
GILBERT PARKER

“On every height there lies repose, and so must we still be climbing, but alas! I have been climbing a ladder of swords these many years”

(From a woman’s letter)

ILLUSTRATED BY THE KINNEYS

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1904

Copyright, 1904, by Gilbert Parker.
All rights reserved.
Published September, 1904.

To
The Countess of Darnley
Whose Home Contains Many Relics and
Memories of the Spacious Times of
Queen Elizabeth, the Friend
of Michel and Angèle

A Note

There will be found a few anachronisms in this tale, but none so important as to give a wrong impression of the events of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.

Illustrations

Island of Jersey

J Hort Scalp

A Ladder of Swords

I

IF you go to Southampton and search the register of the Walloon church there, you will find that in the summer of 157- “Madame Vefue de Montgomery with all her family and servants were admitted to the Communion”—“Tous ceux ci furent Reçus là à Cêne du 157-, comme passans, sans avoir Rendu Raison de la foi, mes sur la tesmognage de Mons. Forest, Ministre de Madame, qui certifia qui ne cognoisoit Rien en tout ceux la pó quoy Il ne leur deust administré la Cêne s’il estoit en lieu pó la ferre.”

There is another striking record, which says that in August of the same year Demoiselle Angèle Claude Aubert, daughter of Monsieur de la Haie Aubert, Councillor of the Parliament of Rouen, was married to Michel de la Forêt, of the most noble Flemish family of that name.

When I first saw these records, now grown dim with time, I fell to wondering what was the real life-history of these two people. Forthwith, in imagination, I began to make their story piece by piece; and I had reached a romantic dénoûment satisfactory to myself and in sympathy with fact, when the Angel of Accident stepped forward with some “human documents.” Then I found that my tale, woven back from the two obscure records I have given, was the true story of two most unhappy yet most happy people. From the note struck in my mind, when my finger touched that sorrowful page in the register of the Church of the Refugees at Southampton, had spread out the whole melody and the very book of the song.

One of the later-discovered records was a letter, tear-stained, faded, beautifully written in old French, from Demoiselle Angèle Claude Aubert to Michel de la Forêt at Anvers in March of the year 157-. The letter lies beside me as I write, and I can scarcely believe that three and a quarter centuries have passed since it was written, and that she who wrote it was but eighteen years old at the time. I translate it into English, though it is impossible adequately to carry over either the flavor or the idiom of the language:

“Written on this May Day of the year 157-, at the place hight Rozel in the Minor called of the same of Jersey Isle, to Michel de la Forêt, at Anvers in Flanders.

“Michel,—Thy good letter by safe carriage cometh to my hand, bringing to my heart a lightness it hath not known since that day when I was hastily carried to the port of St. Malo, and thou towards the King his prison. In what great fear have I lived, having no news of thee and fearing all manner of mischance! But our God hath benignly saved thee from death, and me He hath set safely here in this isle of the sea.

“Thou hast ever been a brave soldier, enduring and not fearing; thou shalt find enow to keep thy blood stirring in these days of trial and peril to us who are so opprobriously called Les Huguenots. If thou wouldst know more of my mind thereupon, come hither. Safety is here, and work for thee—smugglers and