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"Archibald," said he suddenly, in the midst of the echevin's plaudits, "what was the other toast of which you were thinking?"

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The Venus Dominie," replied the knight; "it is past eight o'clock."

"Come, Sir Bourgeois, the bottle is out and we thank you for your hospitality, which at another time we shall be proud to repay. Tell me, in the mean time, who is that man to whom you talked even now when my friend called you?" "Plague on it, are you gone already? Never talk of payment except in the case of an epitogium ab-ad-no, ab loquendum. But as for the man, he is a confidential agent of the Lord de Retz and that is all I know about him." "God be with you-we shall meet again if my auguries do not deceive me," and so saying, David drained his glass, even to the sinful dregs, and hurried away, followed by Sir Archibald.

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"The decent man!" said he, in a low voice, when they had left the house-"I should not wonder if that wine stood him a matter of three sous!"

They walked on for some time in silence, the knight leading the way, till they reached a very large and very handsome house, dimly seen in the moonlight.

"This is strange,” said the conductor, "all is dark, and the gate is shut: they must have changed their intention and set out this evening instead of to-morrow; I cannot comprehend it."

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Of whom talk you?"

"Of Orosmandel and the damsel of Laval."

"Holy St. Bride! And it was to them you recommended Hagar? Archibald, the man concerning whom I even now questioned the echevin, if I have any understanding within me, was your enemy-and mine!" The knight was thunderstruck. They made every inquiry that was possible in the neighbourhood; but of the very few inhabitants whose houses were still open, not one had observed the departure of the travellers. They then resolved to follow on the instant; and Sir Archibald, felicitating himself on possessing a friend who felt for him in the dilemma, precisely the same as if the case had been his own, they soon found themselves, late as the hour was, without the walls of Paris, and progressing at a steady trot on the road towards Brittany

CHAPTER IX.

Ar this period Brittany was under the sway of John V. a prince remarkable for neither courage nor talents, yet who had contrived, for some time past, to preserve his duchy in comparative tranquillity in the midst of all the storms which agitated the rest of Europe. The Bretons, from time immemorial, were a bold and turbulent race, engaged in almost perpetual wars and rebellions; and if, by some miracle of chance, there occurred a moment's breathing time at home, their youth were accustomed, like the Scots, to turn soldiers of fortune and carry their swords to foreign broils. Many of them, for instance, followed the Bastard into England, and were not forgotten when that famous brigand divided his booty. Norfolk and Suffolk fell to the lot of Raoul de Gaël; York to Alain Leroux; and other rich morsels of the opima spolia to their companions.

The same fierce and factious spirit animated the peasants; and it is a curious circumstance, and one not adverted to by any historian we remember, that in this country of heroines the signal for the servile wars was given by a woman. In the eleventh century, when Duke Geoffroi was hunting, his falcon stooped unbidden upon a chicken; when the amazon to whom it belonged instantly caught up a stone and whirled it at the head of the prince. The blow was fatal to the duke, and had nearly been so to the whole body of the nobles; for a general rising of the peasants took place immediately after, which the widow of the murdered prince, who according to the Breton custom led on the nobles in person, found much difficulty in putting down.

If the national character of the Bretons resembled that of the Scots, the history of the two countries, in like manner, presented various points of resemblance. From the year 1340, the little state was torn asunder by two powerful families, one wearing the ducal crown and one seizing every opportunity to grasp at it. The Montforts and Penthièvres of Brittany were the Stuarts and Douglases of Scotland; with this difference, that in the latter country the heroes of the two parties were men; in the former, women. of Flanders, commonly called the Countess de Montford, and her rival, Jane de Penthièvre, with the exception perhaps of the illustrious Virgin of Dom-Rémi, were no doubt the most remarkable of all the warrior-women mentioned in modern history.

Jane

France and England took part in this bloody feud; the former on the side of the pretending, and the latter on that of the reigning house. Brittany therefore became the battle-field of these two great powers, and the centre, in consequence, to which military adventurers and ruffians of all kinds flocked from the rest of Europe. Even when a truce took place in 1354, between the two rival kings, it was stipulated, strangely enough, that the struggle of the Montforts and Penthièvres was to go on as usual; and thus the country, when no longer the seat of national war, was torn in pieces by petty convulsions and ravaged by banditti instead of armies. Marauders of all nations traversed the soil from end to end, leaving the print of their footsteps in blood and ashes; and, whether in the pay of France or England, when compelled by the truce to relax their gripe from each other's throats, they threw themselves, shoulder to shoulder, upon the natives. An outrage committed by one of these brigands was eventually the cause of the famous Battle of the Thirty, a duel fought on foot between the English and Bretons, and decided in favour of the latter by one of their combatants betaking himself to his horse treason for which, in the purer times of chivalry, he would have lost his head.

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Jane de Penthièvre's husband at length died, peace was proclaimed, and Brittany remained the vassal of France. Duguesclin relieved the country of many of the brigands, who were now called the Great Companies, by carrying them off to attempt the conquest of Spain, but some new contentions began between France and England, and in consequence new troubles in Brittany, new massacres, new burnings, and at the sound of the first trumpet of war new banditti arose as suddenly in the land as the host of Rhoderick Dhu. Among them, perhaps, should be reckoned the famous, or rather infamous, Olivier de Clisson, who carried fire and sword through the country on his own account.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century John V. ascended the ducal throne, vacant by the assassination of his father, and for many years his reign was as calamitous as those of his ancestors. At one time he was himself carried off bodily by the Penthièvres, but his party getting the upper hand, this powerful family was at length crushed. His friendship, it may be supposed, was now courted by the French as well as English, the affairs of both in France being in a very critical state. But John, taught by experience, and perhaps benefitting even by a want of strength in his character, treated with both, and acted as little as

possible for either. At the epoch of our story, therefore, the curious spectacle was presented of this little state which had so long been the shuttlecock of two mighty nations playing the coquette between them, and of John V. who possessed nothing in his character remarkable in one way or other, setting the example to succeeding sovereigns of that subtle species of policy which since his time has so frequently been practised on a larger scale.

Sometimes the ostensible ally of England, and sometimes of France, Brittany was the place of refuge both for French and English, and the recruiting officers of both nations might be seen plying their trade in the same villages. As for the system of brigandage, although not put down, it was at least kept in check; and altogether, the country, if not quiet, was at least as much so as could be expected where so many elements of disorder existed.

Douglas and Armstrong found little difficulty in traversing the French territory through which their road lay; for, since the victory of Montereau, all this part of the country was in the hands of Charles VII. But they had no sooner crossed the frontiers than the scene changed. Sometimes they were challenged as they passed a solitary château, and sometimes even detained to answer questions, the real drift of which was, probably, nothing else than to discover whether they were worth robbing. Their appearance in the villages excited suspicion and distrust, and occasionally they found that they were dogged by one of the peasants till he had seen them fairly out of the district.

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The two friends, however, were 'canny Scots." They took things as quietly as they could, talking companionably to the men and making themselves at home in the cottages, where David joked in scholar-like fashion with the young women, and, like King Alfred, helped the old wife to toast her cakes. When all this would not do, they made no scruple of taking by force what was necessary for their own and their horses' subsistence; for the laws of Black Archibald of Douglas were no more attended to in cases of necessity on the Scottish borders than on the borders of Brittany. It would have been hard to tell, indeed, for which mode of "living on the road" the friends were best calculated, since they were at once courteous and brave, gentle, social, and good-tempered, yet

"Steady of heart, and stout of hand,

As ever drove prey from Cumberland!"

They had been able to preserve the whole way the track

of the damsel of Laval, which they had found soon after leav ing Paris; and David's mind was relieved by the certainty that Hagar was of the party, while Prelati was not. Soon after entering the Angevine territory, they had found themselves in the midst of the endless estates of the Lord de Retz; and the hopes of the young knight, as he gazed around him, grew colder and colder at every step. They passed Champtocé, one of the most celebrated strongholds of the family, the gaunt ruins of which still look down upon the road between Angers and Nantes. They traversed the town of Ingrande, one half of which was in Anjou, and the other half in Brittany; and yet still found that everything around them-town and country-belonged to the Lord de Retz. After entering Brittany, his possessions still continued to present themselves, one after another; and almost every question they asked respecting the ownership of a tower or fortress was answered with the words "a domain of the Lord de Retz."

It may be supposed that the progress through the country of the daughter of a house like this, attended by an escort of two hundred men at arms, excited no small sensation. All Brittany, in fact, seemed to be astir; the motions of the fair traveller were as publicly known as those of the sun in full day; and our two adventurers, receiving fresh information at every step, were able to continue their course at the exact distance of the small number of miles which they judged it proper to leave between them and the object of their espial.

By carefully comparing notes, Sir Archibald and his friend had come to the unavoidable conclusion, that the Black Knight, as Pauline had proposed to style him—and whom David, in his own mind, identified with Prelati was actually in the country, and by the connivance of Orosmandel himself. He was employed in the confidential affairs of the Lord de Retz; he was even in the habit, as might have been gathered from his conversation with the echevin-tailor, of residing at the château. It was impossible, however, that the Lord de Retz could know that he was the same individual who had attempted to carry off his daughter; and the philosopher, therefore, was guilty of at least culpable deceit towards his employer. On a former occasion, this old man had suffered himself to be led into a dangerous mistake, by the amiable prejudices of blood and family. Might not this be the case again? The knight, who was one of those men who may be said to be constitutionally generous, made the inquiry doubtfully; but the suspicion

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