M. de Ribaumont made no answer, but sat wearily down and asked for

his little Eustacie.

'Little vixen!' exclaimed the Baroness, 'she is gone; her father

took her away with him.' And as her husband looked extremely

displeased, she added that Eustacie had been meddling with her

jewel cabinet and had been put in penitence. Her first impulse on

seeing her father had been to cling to him and poor out her

complaints, whereupon he had declared that he should take her away

with him at once, and had in effect caused her pony to be saddled,

and he had ridden away with her to his old tower, leaving his

brother, the Chevalier, to conduct the attack on the Huguenot

conventicle.

'He had no power or right to remove her,' said the Baron. 'How

could you let him do so in my absence? He had made over her

wardship to me, and has no right to resume it!'

'Well, perhaps I might have insisted on his waiting till your

return; but, you see, the children have never done anything but

quarrel and fight, and always by Eustacie's fault; and if ever they

are to endure each other, it must be by being separated now.'

'Madame,' said the Baron, gravely, 'you have done your utmost to

ruin your son's chances of happiness.'

That same evening arrived the King's passport permitting the Baron

de Ribaumont and his family to pay a visit to his wife's friends in

England. The next morning the Baron was summoned to speak to one of

his farmers, a Huguenot, who had come to inform him that, through

the network of intelligence kept up by the members of the

persecuted faith, it had become known that the Chevalier de

Ribaumont had set off for court that night, and there was little

doubt that his interference would lead to an immediate revocation

of the sanction to the journey, if to no severer measures. At

best, the Baron knew that if his own absence were permitted, it

would be only on condition of leaving his son in the custody of

either the Queen-mother or the Count. It had become impossible to

reclaim Eustacie. Her father would at once have pleaded that she

was being bred up in Huguenot errors. All that could be done was

to hasten the departure ere the royal mandate could arrive. A

little Norman sailing vessel was moored two evenings after in a

lonely creek on the coast, and into it stepped M. de Ribaumont,

with his Bible, Marot's Psalter, and Calvin's works, Beranger still

tenderly kissing a lock of Follet's mane, and Madame mourning for

the pearls, which her husband deemed too sacred an heirloom to

carry away to a foreign land. Poor little Eustacie, with her

cousin Diane, was in the convent of Bellaise in Anjou. If any one

lamented her absence, it was her father-in-law.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024