The Knight of Malta

In a few words the old man told his daughter and Honorât de Berrol how the stranger had saved him from certain death.

Many times during this recital the blue eyes of Reine met the black eyes of Erebus; if she slowly turned her glance away to fix it on her father with adoration, it was not because the manner of this young man was bold or presumptuous; on the contrary, a tear moistened his eyes, and his charming face expressed the most profound emotion. He contemplated this pathetic scene with a sublime pride. When the old man opened his arms to him with paternal affection, he threw himself into them with inexpressible delight, pressed him many times to his heart, as if he had been attracted to the old gentleman by a secret sympathy, as if this young heart, still noble and generous, had anticipated the throbs of another noble and generous heart.

Suddenly Trimalcyon and Pog, who, twenty steps distant, had witnessed this scene from the height of the rock where they were resting, cried out to their young companion some words in a foreign language.

Erebus started, the baron, his daughter, and Honorât de Berrol turned their heads quickly.

Trimalcyon looked at the baron’s daughter with a sort of vulgar and sneering admiration.

The strange physiognomy of these two men surprised the baron, while his daughter and Honorât regarded them with an instinctive terror.

A skilful painter would have found wealth of material in this scene. Imagine a profound solitude in the midst of tremendous rocks of reddish granite, whose summit only was lighted by the last rays of the sun. On the first plane, almost on the edge of the torrent bed, the baron with his left arm around Reine, grasping in his right hand the hand of Erebus, and fixing an anxious, surprised look on Pog and Trimalcyon.

These two, on the second plane, the other side of the golf, standing up side by side, with their arms crossed, outlining a characteristic silhouette upon the azure sky, distinctly perceptible across the ragged edges of the rocks.

Lastly, a few steps from the baron, stood Honorât de Berrol, holding his horse and Reine’s nag, and farther still the two servants, one of whom was occupied in readjusting the harness of Mistraon.

At the first words of the strangers, the beautiful features of Erebus expressed a sort of distressed impatience; he seemed to be undergoing an inward struggle; his face, which awhile ago was radiant with noble passions, gradually grew sombre, as if he were submitting to a mysterious and irresistible influence.

But when Trimalcyon, in a shrill and bantering voice, again uttered a few words, as he designated Reine by an insolent glance, when the lord Pog had added a biting sarcasm in the same language, unintelligible to the other actors in this scene, the features of Erebus completely changed their expression.

With an almost disdainful gesture, he roughly repulsed the hand of the old man, and fixed an impudent stare on Mlle, des Anbiez. This time the girl blushed and dropped her eyes.

This sudden metamorphosis in the manners of the stranger was so striking that the baron recoiled a step. Nevertheless, after a silence of a few seconds, he said to Erebus, in a voice deeply moved:

“How shall I acknowledge, sir, the service you have just rendered me?”

“Oh, sir,” added Reine, overcoming the peculiar emotion which the last look on the part of Erebus had inspired, “how shall we ever be able to prove our gratitude to you?”

“By giving me a kiss, and this pin as a remembrance of you,” replied the impudent young man.

He had scarcely uttered these words, when his mouth touched Reine’s virginal lips, and his bold hand tore away the little pin enamelled with silver, which was fastened in the young girl’s waist.

After this double larceny, Erebus, with wonderful agility, again cleared the gulf behind him, and rejoined his companions, with whom he soon disappeared behind a mass of rocks.

Reine’s fright and emotion were so violent that she turned deathly pale, her knees gave way, and she fell fainting in the arms of her father.

The next day after this scene, the three Muscovites took leave of the marshal, Duke of Vitry, departed from Marseilles with their attendants, and proceeded on their way to Languedoc.

CHAPTER III. THE WATCHMAN

The gulf of La Ciotat, equally distant from Toulon and Marseilles, lies in between the two capes of Alon and l’Aigle. The latter rises on the west of the bay.

By order of the council of the town of La Ciotat, a sentry-box for the use of a watchman had been erected on the summit of this promontory. It was the duty of this man to watch for the coming of pirates from Barbary, and to signal their approach by kindling a fire which could be seen all along the coast.

The scene we are about to describe occurred at the foot of this sentry-box about the middle of the month of December, 1633.

An impetuous northwest wind, the terrible mistraon of Provence, was blowing with fury. The sun, half-obscured by great masses of gray clouds, was slowly sinking in the waves, whose immense dark green curve was broken by a wide zone of reddish light, which diminished in proportion as the black clouds extended over the horizon.

The summit of Cape l’Aigle, where the watchman’s box was situated, commanded the entire circumference of the gulf; the last limestone spurs of the whitish mountains of Sixfours, and Notre Dame de la Garde, descending like an amphitheatre to the edge of the gulf, here joined themselves to little cliffs formed of fine white sand, which, lifted up by the south wind, invaded a part of the coast. A little farther, on the declivity of a series of hills, shone the lights of several quicklime ovens, whose black smoke increased the gloomy aspect of the sky. Almost at the foot of the cape of l’Aigle, at the entrance of the bay, backed up against the mountains, could be seen, as the crow flies, the island Verte and the little town La Ciotat, belonging to the diocese of Marseilles and the jurisdiction of Aix.

The town formed almost a trapezium, the base of which rested on the port This port held a dozen small vessels, called polacres and caravels, laden with wines and oil, waiting for favourable weather to return to the coast of Italy. About thirty boats designed for sardine fishing, called essanguis by the inhabitants of Provence, were moored in a little bay of the gulf, named the cove of La Fontaine. The belfries of the churches and of the convent of the Ursulines were the only things which broke the monotony of the dwellings, almost entirely covered with tiles.

On the hillsides which commanded the town, fields of olive-trees could be seen, several clusters of green oak and hillocks of vines, and at the extreme horizon the pine-covered summits of the chain of Roquefort mountains.

At the eastern limit of the bay of La Ciotat, between the points Carbonières and Seques, the ancient Roman ruins, called Torrentum, could be distinguished, and farther and farther toward the north several windmills, thrown here and there upon the heights, served as seamarks to the vessels which came to anchor in the gulf.

Outside, and west of the cape of L’Aigle, almost upon the edge of the sea, rose a fortified mansion named Les Anbiez, of which we will speak later.

The summit of the cape of L’Aigle formed a tableland fifty feet in circumference. Almost everywhere was the same precipitous rock of yellowish sandstone, variegated with brown; sea-broom, heather, and clover crossed it here and there; the watchman’s sentry-box was erected under the cover of two stunted oaks and a gigantic pine, which had braved the fury of the tempests for two or three centuries.

When the wind was very violent, although the promontory was more than three hundred feet above the level of the sea, one could hear the muttering thunder of the surf, as the waves broke themselves against its base.

The watchman’s box, solidly built of large blocks of stone, was covered over with slabs taken from the same quarry, so that the massive construction was able to resist the most violent winds.

The principal opening of this cabin looked toward the south, and from it the horizon was completely in view.

Near the door was a wide and deep square kiln, made of iron grating placed on layers of masonry. This kiln was kept filled with vine branches and fagots of olive-wood, ready to produce a tall and brilliant flame, which could be seen at a great distance. The furniture of this cabin was very poor, with the exception of a carved ebony casket, ornamented with the coat of arms and the cross of Malta, which treasure contrasted singularly with the modest appearance of this little habitation. A walnut chest contained a few marine books, quite eagerly sought after by the learned of our day, among others “The Guide of the Old Harbour Pilot” and “The Torch of the Sea.” From the rough lime-plastered walls hung a cutlass, a battle-axe, and a wheel-lock musket.

Two coarse, illuminated engravings, representing St. Elmo, the patron of mariners, and the portrait of the grand master of the hospitable order of St. John of Jerusalem, then existing, were nailed above the ebony casket. To conclude the inventory of furniture, on the floor near the fireplace, where a large log of olive wood was slowly burning, a rush matting, covered over with an old Turkish carpet, formed a moderately good bed, for the inhabitant of this isolated retreat was not wholly indifferent to comfort.

The watchman on the cape of L’Aigle was attentively examining all the points of the horizon, with the aid of a Galileo spy-glass, at that time known by the name of long-view. The setting sun pierced the thick curtain of clouds, and with its last rays gilded the red trunk of the tall pine, the rough ridges of the little cabin walls, and the corners of the brown rock upon which the watchman was leaning.

The calm, intelligent face of this man was now lighted with intense interest.

His complexion, burned by the wind and tanned by the sun, was the colour of brick, and here and there showed deep wrinkles. The hood of his long-sleeved mantle, hiding his white hair, shaded his black eyes and eyebrows; his long, gray moustache fell considerably below his lower lip, where it mingled with a heavy beard, which covered the whole of his chin.

A red and green woollen girdle fastened his sailor trousers around his hips; straps supported his leather gaiters above his knees; a bag of richly embroidered stuff, hanging from his belt by the side of a long knife in its sheath, contained his tobacco, while his cachim-babaou, or long Turkish pipe with an earthen bowl, lay against the outer wall of his cabin.

For ten years Bernard Peyrou had been watchman on the cape of L’Aigle. He had recently been elected assignee of the overseer fishers of La Ciotat, who held their session every Sunday when there was matter for consideration. The watchman had served as patron seaman on the galleys of Malta for more than twenty years, never in all his navigations having left the Commander Pierre des Anbiez, of the venerable nation of Provence, and brother of Raimond V., Baron des Anbiez, who lived on the coast in the fortified house of which we have spoken. On each of these voyages to France the commander never failed to visit the watchman. Their interviews lasted a long time, and it was observed that the habitual melancholy of the commander increased after these conversations.

Peyrou, a lifelong sufferer from serious wounds, and unfit for active service on the sea, had been, at the recommendation of his old captain, chosen watchman by the council of the town of La Ciotat. When on Sunday he presided at the consultation of the overseers, an experienced sailor supplied his place at the sentry-box. Naturally endowed with a sense of right and justice, and living ten years in solitude, between the sky and the sea, Peyrou had added much to his intelligence by meditation. Already possessing the nautical and astronomical knowledge necessary to an officer on a galley of the seventeenth century, he continued to learn by a constant study of the great phenomena of nature always before his eyes.

Thanks to his experience, and his habit of comparing cause and effect, no one knew better than himself how to predict the beginning, the duration, and the end of the storms which prevailed on the coast.

He announced the calm and the tempest, the disastrous hurricanes of the mistraon, as the northwester was named in Provence, the gentle, fruitful rains of the miegion, or south wind, and the violent tornado of the labechades, or wind from the southwest; in fact, the form of the clouds, the soft or brilliant azure of the sky, the various colours of the sea, and all those vague, deep, and undefined noises which occasionally spring up in the midst of the silence of the elements were for him so many evident signs, from which he deduced the most infallible conclusions.

Never a captain of a merchantman, never a cockswain of a bark, put to sea without having consulted Master Peyrou.

Men ordinarily surround with a sort of superstitious reverence and halo those who live apart from the rest of the world.

Peyrou was no exception to the rule.

As his predictions about the weather were almost invariably realised, the inhabitants of La Ciotat and the environs soon persuaded themselves that a man who knew so much of the things in the sky could not be ignorant of the things on the earth.

Without passing exactly as a sorcerer, the hermit of the cape of L’Aigle, consulted in so many important circumstances, became the depositary of many secrets.

A dishonest man would have cruelly abused this power, but Peyrou took advantage of it to encourage, sustain, and defend the good, and to accuse, confound, and intimidate the wicked.