Max Pemberton

“ You ask me if I will go to the palace? I answer you by another question—does the dove go willingly to the cage, the deer to the stable? Does the man who has breathed God's air upon the hills sleep at his ease in a cellar? Here, with the children who love me, with the forest for my home, with the worship of God in Jesus Christ for my occupation, I find life rich in treasure, as she is always rich to those that deal well with her. Think you that I would surrender these my pleasures at the nod of any king—even at the nod of the well-beloved? Oh, Monsieur de Guyon, you know that I would not. ”

“ Even to a man accustomed to the gaudy pictures of life at Court, the scene was no unworthy one. The green coats and feathered hats of the woodlanders, the changing beauties of the forest; the baying of the hounds, the winding blast of horns, the thud of hoofs upon the rich green turf braced his mind to exhilaration in the sport. And when to this there was added that fascination which the company of Gabrielle de Vernet already cast upon him, his heart went out to the spirit of the morning, and all the burning fevers of intrigue and ambition and debauchery seemed to leave him. ”

“ And her riding-dress showed her pretty figure to exceeding advantage; the quaint round hat in which she had gone to the hunt gave piquancy to the freshness of her young face. He said to himself that the wonder was, not that the king now desired to see her, but that she had not been lured to the palace long ago. Yet he trembled at the thought of her being there; found himself in some way posing mentally as her protector from ills which it seemed a crime to think upon.
The nook in which they were to breakfast was the one she called her bower. In part it was of nature's making ”