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قراءة كتاب Richelieu: A Tale of France, v. 1/3
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
Richelieu: A Tale of France, v. 1/3
[A] This song of Le bon roi Dagobert is in the original very long, and contains a great deal of witty ribaldry, unfit to be inserted here. The above is a somewhat free translation of the first verse, which stands thus in the French:
Mettoit ses culottes à renvers.
Le bon St. Eloi
Lui dit, Oh mon Roy!
Que votre Majesté
Est bien mal culotté.
Eh bien, dit ce bon Roy,
Je consens qu’on les mête à l’endroit.”
Now St. Hubert, in all probability, is the only person who correctly knows how it happened, that the very unmeaning and inapplicable ditty of Le bon roi Dagobert, should have been appropriated exclusively to the noble exercise of hunting, to which it has no reference whatever; but so it has been, and even to the present day where is the chasseur who cannot, as he returns from the chace, blow the notes, or sing the words of Le bon roi Dagobert?
Philip, as woodman, had heard it echoed and re-echoed through the forest from his very infancy; and now, without even knowing that he did so, he sang it as a matter of habit, although his mind was occupied upon another subject: as men are always naturally inclined to employ their corporeal faculties on some indifferent object, when their mental ones are intensely engaged in things of deeper interest.
Philip advanced slowly along the road, with his brow knit in such a manner as to evince that his light song had no part in his thoughts. He was a man perhaps nearly fifty, still hale and athletic, though a life of labour had changed the once dark locks of his hair to grey. His occupation was at once denoted by his dress, which consisted simply of a long-bodied blue coat of coarse cloth, covered over, except the arms, with what is called in Britanny, a Peau de bicque, or goat-skin: a pair of leather breeches, cut off above the knee, with thick gaiters to defend his legs from the thorns, completed his dress below; and a round broad-brimmed hat was brought far over his eyes, to keep them from the glare of the declining sun. His apparel was girded round him by a broad buff belt, in the left of which hung his woodman’s knife; in the right he had placed the huge axe, which he had been using in his morning’s occupation: and thus accoutred, Philip would have been no insignificant opponent, had he met with any of those lawless rovers, who occasionally frequented the forest.
As he approached his dwelling, he suddenly stopped, broke off his song, and turning round, listened for a moment attentively; but the only noise to be heard was the discordant cry of the jay in the trees round about; and the only living things visible were a few wild birds overhead, slowly winging their flight from the distant fields and vineyards towards their forest home.
Philip proceeded, but he sang no more; and opening the cottage door, he spoke without entering. “Charles,” demanded he, “has the young gentleman returned, who passed by this morning to hunt?”
“No, father,” answered the boy coming forward; “nobody has passed since you went—I am sure no one has, for I sat on the old tree all the morning, carving you a sun-dial out of the willow branch you brought home yesterday;” and he drew forth one of those ingenious little machines, by means of which the French shepherds tell the time.
“Thou art a good boy,” said his father, laying his hand on his head, “thou art a good boy.” But still, as the Woodman spoke, his mind seemed occupied by some anxiety, for again he looked up the road and listened. “There are strange faces in the forest,” said Philip, not exactly soliloquizing, for his son was present, but certainly speaking more to himself than to the boy. “There are strange faces in the forest, and I fear me some ill deed is to be done. But here they come, thank God!—No! what is this?”
As he spoke, there appeared, just where the road turned into the wood, a sort of procession, which would have puzzled any one of later days, more than it did the Woodman. It consisted of four men on horseback, and four on foot, escorting a vehicle, the most elegant and tasteful that the age produced. The people of that day had doubtless very enlarged notions, and certainly the carriage I speak of would have contained any three of modern construction (always excepting that in which his most gracious Majesty the King of England appears on state occasions, and also that of the Lord Mayor of London City.)
Indeed the one in question was more like a state carriage than any other; broad at the top, low in the axle, all covered over with painting and gilding, with long wooden shafts for the horses, and green taffeta curtains to the windows: and in this guise it came on, swaying and swaggering about over the ruts in the road, not unlike the bloated Dutch pug of some over-indulgent dame, waddling slowly on, with its legs far apart, and its belly almost trailing on the ground.
When the carriage arrived at the abreuvoir, by the side of which Philip had placed himself, the footmen took the bridles from the horses’ mouths to give them drink, and a small white hand, from within, drew back the taffeta curtain, displaying to the Woodman one of the loveliest faces he had ever beheld. The lady looked round for a moment at the forest scene, in the midst of whose wild ruggedness they stood, and then raised her eyes towards the sky, letting them roam over the clear deepening expanse of blue, as if to satisfy herself how much daylight still remained for their journey.
“How far is it to St. Germain, good friend?” said she, addressing the Woodman, as she finished her contemplations; and her voice sounded to Philip like the warble of a bird, notwithstanding a slight peculiarity of intonation, which more refined ears would instantly have decided as the accent of Roussillon, or some adjacent province: the lengthening of the i, and the swelling roundness of the Spanish u, sounding very differently from the sharp precision peculiar to the Parisian pronunciation.
“I wish, Pauline, that you would get over that bad habit of softening all your syllables,” said an old lady who sat beside her in the carriage. “Your French is scarcely comprehensible.”
“Dear Mamma!” replied the young lady playfully, “am not I descended lineally from Clemence Isaure, the patroness of song and chivalry? And I should be sorry to speak aught but my own langue d’oc—the tongue of the first knights and first poets of France.—— But hark! what is that noise in the wood?”
“Now help, for the love of God!” cried the Woodman, snatching forth his axe, and turning to the horsemen who accompanied the carriage; “murder is doing in the forest. Help, for the love of God!”
But as he spoke, the trampling of a horse’s feet was heard, and in a moment after, a stout black charger came down the road like lightning; the dust springing up under his feet, and the foam dropping from his bit.
Half falling from the saddle, half supported by the reins, appeared the form of a gallant young Cavalier; his naked sword still clasped in his hand, but now fallen powerless and dragging by the side of the horse; his head uncovered and thrown back, as if consciousness had almost left him, and the blood flowing from a deep wound in his forehead, and dripping amongst the thick curls of his dark