The Knight of Malta

Stephanette preceded her mistress at once, directing her steps in all haste toward Maison-Forte.

The agitation of Reine des Anbiez was extreme. The relations which seemed to exist between the Bohemian and the unknown were too evident for her not to have the most painful suspicions of this young man whom the vagabond called the emir.

Many circumstances, which had not impressed her at the time, now made Reine believe that the Bohemian was an emissary of the unknown. No doubt it was the vagabond who had placed in her chamber the various objects which had caused her so much surprise. Adopting this hypothesis, there was, however, one objection which presented itself to her mind, – she had found the crystal vase and the miniature on vellum before the arrival of the vagabond.

Suddenly a ray of light entered her mind; she remembered that one day, in order to display his agility to Stephanette, the Bohemian had descended to the terrace by the balcony, upon which opened the window of her oratory, and that he had remounted by the same way. Another time he had slid down from the terrace on the rocks, which lined the shore, and had remounted from the rocks to the terrace, by the aid of the asperities of the wall and the plants which had taken root there.

Although he arrived for the first time at the castle with the recorder, might not this vagabond, before that day, have been hidden in the environage of La Ciotat? Could he not have entered Maison-Forte twice during the night, then, to avoid suspicion, returned in the recorder’s train, as if he had met it by chance?

These thoughts, reinforced by recent observations, soon assumed incontrovertible certainty in the mind of Reine. The stranger and his two companions were, without doubt, pirates, who, with false names and false credentials, had given out that they were Muscovites, and had thus imposed upon the credulity of the Marshal of Vitry.

The first idea of Reine, then, – an idea absolute and imperious, – was to forget for ever the man upon whom rested such terrible suspicion.

Religion, duty, and the will of her father were so many insurmountable and sacred obstacles which the young girl could not think of braving.

Up to that time, her youthful and lively imagination had found inexhaustible nourishment in the strange adventure of the rocks of Ollioules.

All the chaste dreams of her young girlhood were, so to speak, concentrated and realised in the person of Erebus, that unknown one, brave and timid at the same time, audacious and charming, who had saved the life of her father.

She could not help being touched by the delicate and mysterious persistence with which Erebus had always tried to recall himself to her memory. Doubtless she had never heard the voice of this stranger; doubtless she was ignorant of his mind and character, whether or not they responded to the graces of his person. But in these long reveries in which a young girl thinks of him who has fascinated her, does she not invest him with the most excellent qualities? does she not make him say all that she desires to hear?

Thus had Reine thought of Erebus. First she wished to banish him from her thought, but, unfortunately, to yield to a sentiment against which we have struggled is only to render it all the more powerful and irresistible.

Reine then loved Erebus, perhaps unconsciously, when the watchman’s fatal revelation showed the object of her love in such unattractive colours.

The grandeur of the sacrifice that she was required to make enlightened her as to the power of the affection with which she had, so to speak, played until the fatal moment arrived.

For the first time this sudden revelation taught her the depth of her love.

Impenetrable mysteries of the human heart! During the first phases of this mysterious love she had regarded her marriage with Honorât as possible.

From the moment in which she knew who the unknown one was, from that moment she felt that, notwithstanding the voice of duty ordered her to forget him, the memory of Erebus would henceforth dominate her whole existence, and she could never marry the chevalier.

She recognised the truth with terror, that, notwithstanding her efforts to master her feelings, her heart belonged to her no longer, and she was incapable of deceiving Honorât.

She wished to make a last sacrifice, to give up the rosary and portrait which she possessed, imposing this resolution upon herself as a sort of expiation of her reserve and reticence toward her father.

The young girl suffered much before she was able to fulfil this resolution.

In this mental struggle, Reine was walking on the edge of the comice formed by the rocks above the beach on which the waves of the sea were breaking.

She wore over her dress a sort of brown mantle with a hood turned up on the shoulders. This hood allowed her bare head to be seen, as well as her long brown curls that floated in the wind. Her countenance had an expression of sweet and resigned melancholy; sometimes, however, her blue eyes shone with a new brightness, and she lifted up her noble, beautiful head with an expression of wounded pride.

She loved passionately, but without hope, and she was going to throw to the winds the feeble tokens of this impossible love.

At her feet, far, far below her, broke the raging waves of the sea.

She drew the rosary from her bosom, looked at it a moment with bitterness, pressed it to her heart, then, extending her white and delicate hand above the abyss, she held it motionless a moment, and the rosary fell into the waves below.

She tried to follow it with her eyes, but the edge of the cornice was too sharp to allow her a view.

She sighed profoundly, took the portrait of the unknown, and contemplated it a long time in sad admiration. Nothing could be purer or more enchanting than the features of Erebus; his large brown eyes, soft and proud at the same time, reminded her of the look, full of purity and dignity, which he cast upon Raimond V. after having saved his life. The smile of this portrait, full of serenity, had nothing of that satirical smile and bold expression which had so startled her on the eventful day.

For a few moments she struggled with her resolution, then reason asserted her empire; blushing, she pressed her lips to the medallion, then on the brow of the portrait, and then – threw it suddenly into space.

This painful sacrifice accomplished, Reine felt less oppressed; she believed that she would have committed a wrong in preserving these memorials of a foolish love.

Then she felt free to abandon herself to the thoughts locked in the depths of her heart.

She walked a long time on the beach, absorbed in these thoughts.

On returning to Maison-Forte she learned that Raimond V. had not yet returned from the chase.

Night was fast falling, and Reine, followed by Stephanette, entered her apartment What was her amazement, her terror —

She found on the table the portrait and rosary that two hours before she had thrown into the depths of the sea.

CHAPTER XXI. OUR LADY OF SEVEN SORROWS

We will abandon for awhile Maison-Forte of the Baron des Anbiez, and the little city of La Ciotat, in order to conduct the reader on board the galley of the commander Pierre des Anbiez.

The tempest had forced this vessel to take refuge in the little port of Tolari, situated on the east of Cape Corsica, a northerly point of the island of the same name.

The bell of the galley had just sounded six o’clock in the morning.

The weather was gloomy and the sky veiled with black and threatening clouds; frequent and violent squalls of wind were raising a strong swell within the port.

On whichever side one might turn, nothing could be seen but the barren, solemn mountains of Cape Corsica, at the feet of which the steep road wound its way.

The sea was heavy in the interior of the basin, but it seemed almost calm when compared to the surging waves which beat upon a girdle of rocks at the narrow entrance of the port.

These rocks, almost entirely submerged, were covered with a dazzling foam, which, whipped by the wind, vented itself in a soft white mist.

The sharp cries of sea-gulls and sea-mews scarcely rose above the thundering noise of the sea in its fury, as it rushed into the channel which it was necessary to cross in order to enter the road of Tolari.

A few wretched-looking fishermen’s huts, built on the beach where their dried boats were moored, completed the wild and solitary scene. Tossed by this heavy swell, Our Lady of Seven Sorrows, sometimes rising on the waves, would strain her cables almost to breaking, and sometimes seemed to sink into a bed between two billows.

Nothing could be severer or more funereal than the aspect of this galley painted like a cenotaph.

A hundred and sixty-six feet long, eighteen feet wide, narrow, slender, and scarcely rising above the level of the sea, she resembled an immense black serpent, sleeping in the midst of the waves. In front of the parallelogram which constituted the body of the galley, was scarfed a sharp and projecting beak-head, six feet in length.

At the rear of the same parallelogram was a rounded stern, the roof of which inclined toward the prow.

Under this shelter, called the stem carriage, lodged the commander, the patron, the prior, and the king of the chevaliers of Malta.

The masts of the galley, hauled down at its entrance into harbour, had been placed in the waist, a narrow passage which ran through the entire length of the galley.

On each side of this passage were ranged the benches of the galley-slaves. Below the stem carriage, attached to a black staff, floated the standard of religion, red, quartered with white, and below the standard a bronze beacon designated the grade of the commander.