A Ladder of Swords
I
If you go to Southampton and search the register of the Walloon
church there, you will find that in the summer of 157- “_Madame Vefue
de Montgomery with all her family and servants were admitted to the
Communion_”--“_Tous ceux ci furent Reçus là à Cêne du 157-, comme
passans, sans avoir Rendu Raison de la foi, mes sur la tesmognage de
Mons. Forest, Ministre de Madame, qui certifia qui ne cognoisoit Rien
en tout ceux la pó quoy Il ne leur deust administré la Cêne s’il
estoit en lieu pó la ferre._”
There is another striking record, which says that in August of the
same year Demoiselle Angèle Claude Aubert, daughter of Monsieur de
la Haie Aubert, Councillor of the Parliament of Rouen, was married to
Michel de la Forêt, of the most noble Flemish family of that name.
* * * * *
When I first saw these records, now grown dim with time, I fell to
wondering what was the real life-history of these two people.
Forthwith, in imagination, I began to make their story piece by
piece; and I had reached a romantic _dénoûment_ satisfactory to
myself and in sympathy with fact, when the Angel of Accident stepped
forward with some “human documents.” Then I found that my tale, woven
back from the two obscure records I have given, was the true story of
two most unhappy yet most happy people. From the note struck in my
mind, when my finger touched that sorrowful page in the register of
the Church of the Refugees at Southampton, had spread out the whole
melody and the very book of the song.
One of the later-discovered records was a letter, tear-stained,
faded, beautifully written in old French, from Demoiselle Angèle
Claude Aubert to Michel de la Forêt at Anvers in March of the year
157-. The letter lies beside me as I write, and I can scarcely
believe that three and a quarter centuries have passed since it was
written, and that she who wrote it was but eighteen years old at the
time. I translate it into English, though it is impossible adequately
to carry over either the flavor or the idiom of the language:
“_Written on this May Day of the year 157-, at the place hight Rozel
in the Minor called of the same of Jersey Isle, to Michel de la
Forêt, at Anvers in Flanders._
