Quentin Durward

“He also is a Bohemian!” said the ladies to each other. “Holy Mary, will the King again place confidence in these outcasts?”

“I will question the man, if it be your pleasure,” said Quentin, “and assure myself of his fidelity as I best may.”

Durward, as well as the Ladies of Croye, had recognised in this man’s dress and appearance the habit and the manners of those vagrants with whom he had nearly been confounded by the hasty proceedings of Trois Eschelles and Petit Andre, and he, too, entertained very natural apprehensions concerning the risk of reposing trust in one of that vagrant race.

“Art thou come hither to seek us?” was his first question. The stranger nodded. “And for what purpose?”

“To guide you to the Palace of Him of Liege.”

“Of the Bishop?”

The Bohemian again nodded.

“What token canst thou give me that we should yield credence to thee?”

“Even the old rhyme, and no other,” answered the Bohemian.

“The page slew the boar,
The peer had the gloire.”

“A true token,” said Quentin, “lead on, good fellow – I will speak farther with thee presently.”

Then falling back to the ladies, he said, “I am convinced this man is the guide we are to expect, for he hath brought me a password, known, I think, but to the King and me. But I will discourse with him farther, and endeavour to ascertain how far he is to be trusted.”

CHAPTER XVI: THE VAGRANT

I am as free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

    THE CONQUEST OF GRENADA

While Quentin held the brief communication with the ladies necessary to assure them that this extraordinary addition to their party was the guide whom they were to expect on the King’s part, he noticed (for he was as alert in observing the motions of the stranger, as the Bohemian could be on his part) that the man not only turned his head as far back as he could to peer at them, but that, with a singular sort of agility, more resembling that of a monkey than of a man, he had screwed his whole person around on the saddle so as to sit almost sidelong upon the horse, for the convenience, as it seemed, of watching them more attentively.

Not greatly pleased with this manoeuvre, Quentin rode up to the Bohemian and said to him, as he suddenly assumed his proper position on the horse, “Methinks, friend, you will prove but a blind guide, if you look at the tail of your horse rather than his ears.”

“And if I were actually blind,” answered the Bohemian, “I could not the less guide you through any county in this realm of France, or in those adjoining to it.”

“Yet you are no Frenchman,” said the Scot.

“I am not,” answered the guide.

“What countryman, then, are you,” demanded Quentin.

“I am of no country,” answered the guide.

“How! of no country?” repeated the Scot.

“No,” answered the Bohemian, “of none. I am a Zingaro, a Bohemian, an Egyptian, or whatever the Europeans, in their different languages, may choose to call our people, but I have no country.”

“Are you a Christian?” asked the Scotchman.

The Bohemian shook his head.

“Dog,” said Quentin (for there was little toleration in the spirit of Catholicism in those days), “dost thou worship Mahoun?”

[Mahoun: Mohammed. It was a remarkable feature of the character of these wanderers that they did not, like the Jews whom they otherwise resembled in some particulars, possess or profess any particular religion, whether in form or principle. They readily conformed, as far as might be required, with the religion of any country in which they happened to sojourn, but they did not practise it more than was demanded of them… S.]

“No,” was the indifferent and concise answer of the guide, who neither seemed offended nor surprised at the young man’s violence of manner.

“Are you a Pagan, then, or what are you?”

“I have no religion,” answered the Bohemian.

Durward started back, for though he had heard of Saracens and Idolaters, it had never entered into his ideas or belief that any body of men could exist who practised no mode of worship whatever. He recovered from his astonishment to ask his guide where he usually dwelt.

“Wherever I chance to be for the time,” replied the Bohemian. “I have no home.”

“How do you guard your property?”

“Excepting the clothes which I wear, and the horse I ride on, I have no property.”

“Yet you dress gaily, and ride gallantly,” said Durward. “What are your means of subsistence?”

“I eat when I am hungry, drink when I am thirsty, and have no other means of subsistence than chance throws in my Way,” replied the vagabond.

“Under whose laws do you live?”

“I acknowledge obedience to none, but an it suits my pleasure or my necessities,” said the Bohemian.

“Who is your leader, and commands you?”

“The father of our tribe – if I choose to obey him,” said the guide, “otherwise I have no commander.”

“You are, then,” said the wondering querist, “destitute of all that other men are combined by – you have no law, no leader, no settled means of subsistence, no house or home. You have, may Heaven compassionate you, no country – and, may Heaven enlighten and forgive you, you have no God! What is it that remains to you, deprived of government, domestic happiness, and religion?”

“I have liberty,” said the Bohemian “I crouch to no one, obey no one – respect no one – I go where I will – live as I can – and die when my day comes.”

“But you are subject to instant execution, at the pleasure of the Judge?”

“Be it so,” returned the Bohemian, “I can but die so much the sooner.”

“And to imprisonment also,” said the Scot, “and where, then, is your boasted freedom?”

“In my thoughts,” said the Bohemian, “which no chains can bind, while yours, even when your limbs are free, remain fettered by your laws and your superstitions, your dreams of local attachment, and your fantastic visions of civil policy. Such as I are free in spirit when our limbs are chained. – You are imprisoned in mind even when your limbs are most at freedom.”

“Yet the freedom of your thoughts,” said the Scot, “relieves not the pressure of the gyves on your limbs.”

“For a brief time that may be endured,” answered the vagrant, “and if within that period I cannot extricate myself, and fail of relief from my comrades, I can always die, and death is the most perfect freedom of all.”