The Scourge of God: A Romance of Religious Persecution

Chapter I

AWAITING THE TRAVELLER.

With all the pomp and ceremony that should accompany the dying hours of a great lady of France, the Princesse de Rochebazon—Marquise du Gast d'Ançilly, Comtesse de Montrachet, Baronne de Beauvilliers, and possessor of many other titles, as well as the right to the tabouret—drew near her end.

A great lady of France, yet a woman against whom scandal had never breathed a word; a woman whose name had never been coupled with that of any courtier in a manner disadvantageous to her fame, but who instead, since first she came into the family a bride, had always been spoken highly of. As a saint by some—nay, by many; as a Christian by all; as a good servant of the Church. Now, the priests said, she was about to reap her reward in another existence, where her exalted rank would count as nothing and the good deeds of her life as everything.

Below, in the courtyard of her great hotel—which was situated in the Rue Champfleury, still called by many La Rue Honteuse because of what had gone on in that street hundreds of years before—the huge Suisse stood at the open gateway, leaning on his silver-headed cane, which he no longer dared to thump vigorously on the ground for fear of disturbing his dying mistress, stood and gazed forth into the long though narrow street. Perhaps to see that none intruded within the crimson cord set in front of the porte-cochère of the Hôtel de Rochebazon; perhaps to observe—with that pride which the menial takes in the greatness of his employers—how all the noble and illustrious callers on his mistress had to leave their coaches and their chairs outside of that barrier, and advance on foot for some yards along the filthy chaussée ere they could enter the courtyard; also, perhaps, to tell himself, with a warm glow of satisfaction, that none below royalty who had ever approached their end in Paris had been inquired after by more illustrious visitors.