Chapter I.

If you would know the story of the great invasion of 1814, even as the old hunter, Frantz of Hengst, related it to me, you must accompany me to the village of Charmes, in the Vosges. Thirty cottages, ranged along the bank of the Sarre, and roofed with slate and dark green moss, compose the hamlet; you can see the gables garlanded with ivy and withered honeysuckle--for winter is approaching--and the leafless hedges separating the little gardens from each other.

To the left, crowning a lofty mountain, rise the ruins of the ancient castle of Falkenstein, a fortalice, dismantled and demolished two hundred years ago by the Swedes. It is now but a scattered heap of stones, only approached by an old _schlitte_, or road for transporting felled trees, which pierces the forest. To the right, on the mountain-side, is seen the farm of Bois-de-Chênes, with its barns, stables, and sheds, on the flat roofs of which are placed great stones, to enable them to resist the furious northern blasts. A few cattle stray upon the heather, and a few goats clamber among the rocks.

Everything is silent. Children in gray trousers, bare-headed and bare-footed, are warming themselves around little fires, kindled near the edge of the wood, and the blue smoke curls slowly through the air; heavy white and gray clouds hang motionless over the valley, and far above these rise the sterile peaks of Grosmann and Donon.

You must know that the last house of the village--that with two glazed dormer windows upon the slanting roof, and the low door opening upon the muddy street--belonged, in 1813, to Jean-Claude Hullin, an ancient volunteer of '92; but since his return from the wars, the shoe, or, rather, sabot-maker of the village, and enjoying a large share of the esteem of the mountaineers. {19} He was a stout, strongly built man, with gray eyes, thick lips, a short nose, and heavy, grizzled eyebrows. He was jovial and tender-hearted, and unable to refuse anything to his adopted daughter, Louise, whom he had obtained, when an infant, from a band of those miserable gypsies who, without hearth or home themselves, wander from door to door, soldering spoons and pans, and mending broken china. He, however, looked upon her as his own daughter, and never remembered her as the child of a strange race.

Besides this, his affection for his little girl, stout Jean-Claude had a few others. Next in order, he loved his cousin, the venerable mistress of Bois-de-Chênes, Catherine Lefevre, and her son, Gaspard, a fine young fellow, betrothed to Louise, but whom the conscription had carried off, leaving the two families to await the end of the campaign and his return.

Hullin often recalled, and always with enthusiasm, his campaigns of the Sambre-and-Meuse, of Italy and of Egypt. He often mused upon them, and sometimes at evening, when his day's work was done, he would wander to the saw-mill of Valtin, a gloomy building, formed of logs covered with the bark, which you see yonder at the bottom of the gorge. There he would sit, in the midst of coal-burners and wood-cutters, before the huge fire made of saw-dust, and while the heavy wheel kept turning, the sluice thundering, and the saw cutting, would he discourse of Hoche, of Kleber, and of General Bonaparte, whom he had seen a hundred times, and whose thin face, piercing eyes, and aquiline nose he drew over and over again.

Such was Jean-Claude Hullin, one of the old Gallic stock, loving strange adventures and deeds of heroic emprise, but bound by the feeling of duty to his toil from New-Year's day to Saint Sylvester's.

Louise, his gypsy daughter, was slight and graceful, with long, delicate hands, and eyes of so tender a blue that their glance seemed to melt their way to the depths of your soul; her skin was white as snow, her hair a gold-shot flaxen, soft as silk, and her shoulders drooped like those of some sweet sculptured saint at prayer. Her guileless smile, her musing brow, her whole form, seemed to recall the antique lay of Erhart the Minnesinger, wherein he says: "I saw a ray of light flash by, and mine eyes are yet dazed with its lustre. Was it the moon glancing through the leaves? Was it morning smiling beneath the woods? No, no! It was Edith, my love, who passed; and still mine eyes are dazed."

Louise loved the fields, the gardens, and the flowers. In spring she eagerly listened for the first notes of the lark, or sought the bluebells beneath the bushes, or watched for the return of the sparrows to the corners of the windows on the roof. She was ever the child of the wandering gypsies, only a little less wild than they; but Hullin forgave everything; he understood her nature, and often cried, laughing:

"My poor Louise, with the booty you bring us--your bunches of flowers and little birds--we should all die of hunger in a week."

But she would only smile, and he, as he returned to his work, exclaim:

"Bah! why should I scold? She is right to love the sunlight, and Gaspard will labor for both!"

So reasoned the good man, and days, weeks, and months rolled by in patient waiting for Gaspard's return.

But Gaspard returned not, and now for two months they had had no tidings of him.

{20}

One day, toward the middle of December, 1813, between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, Hullin, bent over his work-bench, was finishing a pair of spiked sabots for Rochart, the wood-cutter. Louise had placed her flowers near the little stove which crackled on the hearth, while the monotonous tick-tack of the old village clock marked the seconds as they flew, and occasionally the tramp of clogs upon the frozen earth was heard without, and a head covered with a hat or wrapped in a hood passed the window. At length, Hullin, glancing through the panes of the window, suddenly stopped his labor, and stood with both eyes wide open, as one gazing at some unusual sight.

At the corner of the street, just opposite the tavern of the Three Pigeons, a strange figure was advancing, surrounded by a crowd of jumping, laughing boys, each vying with the other in shouting at the top of his voice: "King of Diamonds! King of Diamonds!" In truth, a stranger figure could scarcely be imagined. Fancy a man with a grave face and red beard; a gloomy eye, straight nose, eyebrows meeting, a circlet of tin upon his head, an iron-gray shepherd dog-skin flapping upon his back, the two fore-paws knotted around his neck; his breast covered with little copper crosses, his legs with a sort of gray stuff trousers, and his feet bare. A large raven with lustrous black wings was perched upon his shoulder. One might think, from the majesty of his air and gait, that an ancient Merovingian king had come back to earth; and, indeed, he carried a short stick cut to the shape of a sceptre, while with his right hand he gesticulated magnificently, pointing to the skies and apostrophizing his attendants.

Every door opened as he passed, and curious faces were pressed against every window-pane. A few old women upon the outside stairs of their cottages called to him, but he deigned no reply; others descended to the street and would have barred his passage, but he, with head erect and brows haughtily raised, waved them aside.

"Hold!" said Hullin, "here is Yegof. I did not expect to see him again this winter, it is contrary to his habit; and what can he mean by returning in such weather as this?"

Louise, laying aside her distaff, ran to look at the King of Diamonds; for the appearance of the fool in the beginning of winter was quite an event, and the source of amusement to many who were glad to kill time in the taverns, listening to the story of his imaginary power and glory; others, especially women, felt a vague fear of him; for the ideas of fools, as everybody knows, are sometimes drawn from another world than this--to them is confided the knowledge of the past and future; the only difficulty is in understanding them, for their words have always a double sense--one for the ears of the coarse and vulgar, and one, far different, for wise and lofty souls. Moreover, the thoughts of Yegof, above those of all other fools, were extraordinary--not to say sublime. No one knew whence he came, whither he went; he wandered through the land like a soul in pain; he vaunted the greatness of long extinct nations, and called himself Emperor of Austrasia, of Polynesia, and other far-off places. Volumes might be written of the strength and beauty of his castles, his fortresses, and his palaces, the number and grandeur of which he related with an air of much modesty and simplicity. He spoke of his stables, his coursers, the officers of his crown, his ministers, counsellors, and intendants, and never did he mistake their names or attribute the particular merits of one to another; but he complained bitterly of having been dethroned by an accursed race, and Sapience Coquelin, the wise old woman of the village, as well as others, wept whenever he referred to the subject. Then would he, lifting his hand toward heaven, cry out:

{21}

"Be mindful, O women! The hour is at hand! The spirit of darkness flees afar! The ancient race, the masters of your masters, come sweeping on like the billows of the sea!"

Every spring he wandered for weeks among the ruins which crown the Vosges at Nideck, Geroldseck, Lutzelbourg, and Turkestein--former dwellings of the great ones of earth, but now the refuge of bats and owls. There would he declaim on the long past splendor of his realms, and plan the subjection of his revolted people.

Jean-Claude Hullin laughed at all this, not being fond of approaching the invisible world; but the fool's words troubled Louise exceedingly, especially when the hoarse voice and flapping wings of the raven added to their wild effect.

Yegof marched majestically down the street, turning neither to the right nor the left, and the girl, seeing that his eyes were fixed upon her habitation, exclaimed:

"Father, father! he is coming here!"

"Very likely," replied Hullin. "He, no doubt, needs a pair of sabots in a cold like this, and if he asks them I should be sorry to refuse."

Yegof was some fifty paces from the cottage, and the tumult continued to increase. The boys, pulling at his strange garment, shouted, "Diamonds! Spades! Clubs!" till they were hoarse, when, suddenly turning round, he raised his sceptre, and cried furiously, though still with an air of majesty:

"Away! accursed race! away--or my dogs shall tear ye!"

This threat only redoubled the cries and shouts of laughter; but at this moment, Hullin appearing at the door with a long rod, and promising its speedy application to the backs of five or six of the noisiest, the band soon dispersed in terror, for many of them had felt its weight. Then turning to the fool, he said:

"Come in, Yegof, and take a seat by the fire."

"Call me not Yegof," replied the latter, with a look of offended dignity. "I am Luitprand, King of Austrasia and Polynesia."

"True, true, I remember," said Jean-Claude; "but, Yegof, or Luitprand, come in. It is cold; try to warm yourself."

"I will enter," answered the fool, "for reasons of state--to form an alliance between two most puissant nations."

"Good! Let us talk over it."

Yegof, stooping in the doorway, entered dreamily, and saluted Louise by lowering his sceptre. But the raven refused to follow. Spreading his broad black wings, he swept around the cottage and then dashed against the windows, as if to break them.

"Hans!" cried the fool, "beware! I am coming."

But the bird of ill omen fastened its pointed talons in the leaden sash, and flapped its wings until the window shook, as long as his master remained within. Louise gazed affrightedly at both. Yegof seated himself in the large leathern armchair behind the stove as on a throne, and throwing haughty glances around, said:

"I come straight from Jerome to conclude an alliance with thee, Hullin. Thou art not ignorant that the face of thy daughter hath pleased me. I am here to demand her in marriage."

{22}

Louise blushed, and Hullin burst into a peal of laughter.

"You laugh!" cried the fool angrily. "You will live to regret it! This alliance alone can save thee from the ruin which threatens thee and thine. Even now my armies are advancing; they cover the earth, numberless as the forest leaves in summer. What will avail the might of thy people against that of mine? Ye will be conquered, crushed, enslaved, as for centuries you were, for I, Luitprand, King of Austrasia and Polynesia, have willed it. All things shall be as they were, and then--remember me!"

He lifted his hand solemnly on high.

"Remember the past. You were beaten, despised serfs; and we--the old nations of the north--we trod your necks beneath our feet. We burdened your backs with heavy stones that our strong castles and deep dungeons might be built. We yoked you to our ploughs; you fled before us like chaff before the tempest. Remember, and tremble!"

"I remember it all well," replied Hullin, still laughing, "but you know we had our revenge."

"Ay," said the fool, knitting his brows, "but that time has passed. My warriors outnumber the sands of the shore, and your blood shall flow like rivers to the ocean. I know ye, and for a thousand years have marked ye!"

"Bah!" said Hullin.

"Yes, this arm vanquished ye when we first sought the hearts of your forests. This hand bent your necks to the yoke, and will again. Because you are brave, you think that you will be for ever masters of France; but we have divided your fair land, and will again divide it between ourselves. Alsace and Lorraine shall again be German; Brittany and Normandy shall again belong to the Northmen; Flanders and the South, to Spain. France will be a petty kingdom girdling Paris, with one of the ancient race its king, and you will not dare to murmur--you will be very patient-- ha! ha! ha!"

Yegof laughed loudly in his turn.

Hullin, who knew little of history, was astounded at the fool's learning.

"Bah!" he exclaimed again. "Enough of this, Yegof. Try a little soup to warm your blood."

"I do not ask for food," replied the fool; "I ask your daughter in marriage. Give her willingly, and I will raise you to the foot of my throne; refuse, and my armies shall take her by force."

As he spoke, the poor wretch gazed on Louise with looks of the deepest admiration.

"How beautiful she is!" he murmured. "How her brow will grace a crown! Rejoice, sweet maiden, for thou shalt be Queen of Austrasia."

"Listen, Yegof," said Hullin: "I am flattered by your preference; and it shows that you know how to appreciate beauty; but my daughter is already betrothed to Gaspard Lefevre."

"Enough!" cried the fool, rising angrily, "we will now speak no more of it; but, Hullin," he continued, resuming his solemn tone, "this is my first demand. I will twice renew it. Hearest thou? Twice! If you persist in your obstinacy, woe, woe to thee and thy race!"

"Will you not take your soup, then, Yegof?"

"No!" shouted the fool; "I will accept nothing from you until you have consented--nothing!" And waving his sceptre, he sallied forth.

Hullin burst into another peal of laughter.

{23}

"Poor fellow!" he exclaimed; "his eyes turned toward the pot in spite of himself; his teeth are chattering; but his folly is stronger than even cold and hunger."

"He frightens me," said Louise, blushing, notwithstanding, as she thought of his strange request.

Yegof kept on the Valtin road. Their eyes followed him as his distance from them grew greater. Still his stately march, his grave gestures, continued, though no one was now near to observe him. Night was falling fast; and soon the tall form of the King of Diamonds was blended with and lost in the winter twilight.