CHAPTER I.✦

(A CABLEGRAM.)

SEDAN, PROVINCE D’ARDENNES, FRANCE.

“To Lord Gilhooley, “Albemarle Hotel, “New York. U. S. A.

“The hermit of the Maison Maugis, Monzon, committed suicide to-day.

+Albert.+”

Apropos of the above, about ten days later I received a letter from which the following is an extract:

“He was found lying, entirely stripped, upon the floor. He had strangled himself with a cord, having previously broken up every article of furniture, gathered and burned in the huge fireplace every object of wearing apparel, all papers and everything movable, until the house was made absolutely bare. His death created a profound sensation, as it was rumored that he had in his possession some very old and curious manuscripts relating to the time of Charlemagne. An elaborate search of the premises failed to disclose anything, except some burned fragments of parchment in the ashes of the fireplace. He had jealously guarded his discovery during his life and was supposed to be somewhat demented, which may account for the lamentable destruction of these precious records. Now you are freed from your oath, give the world what you have.”

The past then came back to me, as plainly as if it had only occurred yesterday.

I could see in my mind that merry breakfast party, three months agone, in the great dining hall of the Château Baudelot at Haraucourt, in the valley of the Emmene, Ardennes, France. I could remember, as if it happened only this morning, when Albert said:

“It is very strange how things happen in this world. Life presents some threads so fearfully tangled that it often seems as if matters were hopeless; when lo, some little eddy in the tide of fortune swirls the knotted kinks apart and all is well once more.”

“Very good, Albert,” said I, “and this is apropos of what?”

“Oh, nothing,” answered he, “only the thought just came into my mind.”

“Perhaps,” said his sister Mathilde, “his omelette is not agreeing with him.”

“No,” exclaimed Louise, “that is not it—he is going to take cousin Frederick to Mouzon to-day, and it is there that some episode is to occur to put some new wrinkles in his existence.”

Said with smiles and laughter, these words were pathetic.

I shall never forget that day in Mouzon.

I recall how, just two hours later, we crossed the bridge over the river Meuse, and rolled through the old gateway into the ancient city, and how, shortly after, we were chatting with Professor Victor d’Alembert, the head schoolmaster.

“I have brought my cousin to see the city,” said Albert.

“Ah! Mouzon is a quaint place,” responded the professor, his face lighting up with interest. “It is a small city, but a very old one, and so very romantic. Come with me. I will show it to you.”

Then he took us up and down crooked streets, lined with mediæval buildings, heavily walled, with projecting stories, possessing all the quaintness of former ages, and it was while passing through a narrow street to a square in the heart of the city, where the houses seemed the oldest, the oddest and the grayest, that he pointed to a heavy oaken door set in a wall of unusual thickness.

“Look!” he said.

“At what?” inquired Albert.

“That is said to have been the home of Maugis, the famous warrior sorcerer.”

“Very interesting,” exclaimed I, “cannot we see the interior?”

“No, no!” replied the professor somewhat emphatically, “that would never do, its occupant resents intrusion bitterly.”

I can remember now, how a strange and unaccountable desire possessed me to see behind that door, but it was almost forgotten, when, a few minutes later, we were seated in the dim interior of the ancient cathedral with its lofty gothic arches floating over us in the obscurity, while the schoolmaster eloquently unrolled a story of vicissitude and romance rarely equaled, for he was a master of his subject.

Said he: “Begun by barbarians, built, beset, beleaguered, burned, built, beset, burned, and rebuilt, again and again; such is the alliterative history of this old city of Mouzon; the theater of wars barbarous, of wars religious, of wars civil, and wars international; besides of plague, pest, and famine.

“Mouzon has a history commencing far back into the shadows of the past and terminating the day before the battle of Sedan, when Colonel de Contrenson, at the head of the Fifth Regiment of French Cuirassiers, charged the entire German army on these heights nearby; charged time and again in the very teeth of their cannon, in the vain attempt to stop their resistless onward course to Sedan, five miles away, and only desisted when the gallant Fifth were literally reduced to a few shreds of shattered humanity; but that was only thirty years ago.”

“Oh! rare, old Mouzon!” exclaimed he, “do you not claim the highest regard of the lover of romance? the home of Maugis, the great warrior sorcerer, and the scene of the rebellious warfares of those gallant sons d’Aymon, those immortal knights Renaud, Alard, Guichard and Richard, and of their redoubtable enemy, the princely Roland, all of them men whose names are now a byword in history!”

“Mouzon,” continued the professor, apostrophizing, “the resort for centuries of the high and mighty of the earth, your ancient streets have witnessed the pageants of popes and kings, cardinals and princes, have echoed with merry shout at carnival time, with solemn chant of cowled monk, with cry of battle and shriek of the dying. They have resounded with the tread of the barbarian, have known plague and famine, and have often been illumined by the ruddy glare of fire. All this, as time passed, has been added to the panorama of which you have been the stage. A city situated in a battlefield, or in a spot that has been a battlefield of Europe, through all the centuries from the time of the Romans to the battle of Sedan.”

I can now remember, as we sat there, listening, that the voice of the professor grew dramatic and echoed in the vast interior of the cathedral with a solemn effect.

“Mouzon,” continued he, “the historic, the romantic has no mention in guide books, it has no visitors or tourists, because it is out of the traveled route. Even children in the streets gaze with curiosity on the stranger. It has neither gained nor lost in population, as the centuries rolled on and the events of history have thundered over it, even from the time when this magnificent cathedral was commenced, which, though often ruined in the wars, is, as now restored, one of the finest specimens of Norman architecture in the world.

“Mouzon was a fortress in 247 B.C., then on the borders of France, and was the scene of many a battle of the Visigoths and other barbarians with the French kings. In 486 A.D. the great King Clovis wrested it from the Visigoths and gave it, and the beautiful surrounding country, which included the historic battlefield of Sedan, into the possession of the good monk, St. Remy, who built and maintained a great abbey here. For centuries thereafter it was controlled by the Catholic Church and became a great ecclesiastical center. Prior to this time the Romans had penetrated throughout this region, bringing their rare civilization, building magnificent roads, fortresses and temples, remains of which exist to-day.

“This beautiful province in northern France has been the theater of the most tremendous events in the history of France and the history of Europe.

“Ah! Those were terrible centuries, when the good monks lived with the prayer book in one hand and the sword in the other.

“Then there were the great lords, or seigneurs, who divided the country around among themselves and were always quarreling and fighting. It was hereabouts that Charlemagne waged war against the great sorcerer, Maugis, and his brave companions, about whom so much has come down to us in romance and song. Nearby is the plain of Marcel, where three young noblemen, brothers, and their retainers, fought a fratricidal duel with each other to the death, until the ground was red with blood, so that to this day no living thing will grow upon it, and even now, at midnight, by putting the ear to the ground, the peasantry believe that the sounds of battle, the crash of arms, and the shrieks of the wounded and dying may be heard.

“It was in the immense forests, part of which now remain, that Charlemagne had his hunting lodge, for he was a lover of the chase. It was nearby that Maugis, the oldest son of Aymon, built the Château de Montfort, and in it, with his doughty brothers, stubbornly resisted the king, until finally driven out by treachery. The fortress was then razed to the ground, so that not a trace of it remains to-day.

“Thus the history of Mouzon has been that of war and vicissitude. It was held by the Spanish in the middle ages for a long time, and specimens of their peculiar architecture may yet be seen in these ancient streets.

“In 1672 the great abbey was pillaged by the iconoclasts and its vast store of precious manuscripts was destroyed and scattered. I am still unearthing them from all sorts of queer hiding places.”

The voice of the schoolmaster now ceased. Its echoes died away in the dim interior. Albert and he arose to visit the organ loft, but I remained seated, musing. The western sun shone softly through the lofty, stained glass windows, shooting subdued colored pencils of light across the worn pavement that finally rested upon and glorified the recumbent figure of a warrior on a tomb near at hand, and then falling at my feet, illumined a half-effaced epitaph: