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STUDIES IN
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
Life Narratives and

Youth Culture
Kate Douglas and Anna Poletti

Studies in Childhood and Youth
This series offers a multi-disciplinary perspective on exploring childhood
and youth as social phenomena that are culturally located, articulating
children’s and young people’s perspectives on their everyday lives. The
aim of the series will be to continue to develop these theoretical perspec-
tives through publishing both monographs and edited collections that
present cutting-edge research within the area of childhood studies. It will
provide a key locus for work within the field that is currently published
across a diverse range of outlets and will help consolidate and develop
childhood studies as a discrete field of scholarship.
More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14474
Kate Douglas • Anna Poletti
Life Narratives and

Youth Culture
Kate Douglas
Flinders University
Adelaide, Australia
Anna Poletti
Monash University
Clayton, Australia
Utrecht University
Utrecht, The Netherlands
Studies in Childhood and Youth

ISBN 978-1-137-55116-0 ISBN 978-1-137-55117-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-55117-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957998
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made.
Cover image © Tim Gainey / Alamy Stock Photo
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of sections of the Introduction (Chap. 1) was pub-

lished as “Rethinking ‘Virtual’ Youth: Young People and Life Writing”
in Mediated Youth Cultures, Andy Griffiths and Brady Robards (eds).
New York: Palgrave. 77–94. A version of Chap. 4 was published as “Ethical
Dialogues: Youth, Memoir, Trauma” in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 30.2
(2015): 271–288.
Materials from the Introduction and Chap. 6 were presented as con-
ference papers at International Auto/Biography Association Conference,
Australian National University (2012). Materials from Chaps. 4 and 7 were
presented at the International Auto/Biography Association Conference,
Banff (2014). Material from Chap. 8 was presented at the Auto/Biography
Association Americas Chapter Conference, Ann Arbor (2015).
We would like to acknowledge the supportive and rigorous environ-
ment of the International Auto/Biography Association, where many ele-
ments of this project were first explored. We thank our colleagues who
provided generous feedback on our presentations and support for the
project. We want to particularly thank Sarah Brophy, Kylie Cardell,
Leigh Gilmore, Craig Howes, Claire Lynch, Laurie McNeill, Aimée
Morrison, Julie Rak, Candida Rifkind, Sidonie Smith, Julia Watson,
Gillian Whitlock and John Zuern, who offered critique, useful advice
and tips that have proven invaluable to the project. The work of these
scholars has provided inspiration throughout.
v
vi Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the reviewers of the manuscript for their con-
sidered engagement with the project and its aims, and the staff at Palgrave
Macmillan, particularly Harriet Barker, for their support for the project.
Anna would like to thank Kate for proposing this collaboration, for
her generous questioning and her commitment to ethical scholarship.
Thank you to the archivists whose knowledge, expertise and patience
were fundamental to the research that informs this book: Lisa Darms
and Rachel Greer at the Fales Library at New York University, and Jenna
Freedman and Shannon O’Neill at Barnard College Library. Thanks also
to the artists who granted permission for their work to be reproduced:
Kathleen Hanna, Miriam Basilio, Emma D, Jami Sailor and Amanda. My
work on this project has benefited enormously from conversations with
and provocations from Paul Byron, Catherine Strong, Sara Rosa Espi,
Luke Sinclair, Shane McGrath, Thomas Blatchford, Jon Dale, Lauren
Berlant and Julie Rak. The support of my colleagues at Monash has been
vital; thank you to Ali Alizadeh, Robin Gerster, Sue Kossew, Melinda
Harvey and Simone Murray. Thanks must also go to the Faculty of Arts
at Monash University for financial support for this project.
A final thank you must go to Johannes Klabbers, who wrote his own
book alongside this one.
Kate would like to thank Anna for being a wonderful collaborator, and
generous and inspirational colleague throughout the development of this
project. Thank you to the Faculty of Education, Humanities and Law at
Flinders University for their financial support of this project. Thank you
to my Flinders colleagues and/or members of the Flinders Life Narrative
Research Group who have acted as readers, listened to presentations
or provided general encouragement along the way: Kylie Cardell, Lisa
Bennett, Pamela Graham, Tully Barnett, Emma Maguire, Hannah Kent,
Threasa Meads, Amy Matthews, Erin Sebo and Patrick Allington.
Finally, thank you to my partner Danni and to my children Ella, Josh
and Darcy who always provide the right dose of inspiration, distraction
and encouragement.
Contents
Part I Young Writers and Life Narrative Encounters 1
1 Introduction 3
Youth, Life Narrative and the Self(ie) 3
“Youth” and Young People: A Note on Terminology 9
Life Narrative as a Literary Form and Cultural Practice 11
Making Visible Young People’s Contribution to the Archive
of Life Writing: Three Spaces of Youth Life Writing 14
Private Written Forms 14
Public Literary Forms 19
Young People, Media and Identity 21
Life Narratives and Youth Cultures: Representation Agency
and Participation 25
A Brief Note on Method and the Ethics of Studying Youth 29
2 Youth and Revolutionary Romanticism: Young Writers

Within and Beyond the Literary Field 33
The Risky Business of Youth Life Narrative 34
Bourdieu and the Role of Generations in the Literary Field 37
The Contemporary Hierarchy of Genres: The Status of Life
Writing 44
vii
viii Contents
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Masculine

Position-Taking and Literary Revolution 48
Race, Class, Youth and the Literary Field: Gangsta Rap and
gangsta Memoir 56
Conclusion 59
Part II Writing War 61
3 War Diaries: Representation, Narration and Mediation 63

Children Writing the Holocaust: Youth and the Diary Form 65
Children of the Holocaust (1995); We Are Witnesses (1995);
and Salvaged Pages (2002) 70
Conclusion 87
4 Lost Boys: Child Soldier Memoirs and the Ethics of

Reading 89
Trauma and Ethical Scholarship 91
Life Writings of Trauma: African Child Soldier Memoirs 94
Mediated but Radical? Emmanuel Jal’s War Child 98
The Ethic of Verification: Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone 105
Memoir, Trauma and Youth: Towards an Ethics of
Scholarship 113
Part III Girlhoods Interrupted 119
5 The Riot Grrrl Epistolarium 121

Riot Grrrl: The Convergence of Youth, Gender and
Cultural Production 122
Letters as Life Writing 126
What Letters Can Tell Us About Riot Grrrl 127
Archiving Riot Grrrl: Positioning the Epistolarium 130
Contents ix
The Riot Grrrl Epistolarium 133

First Contact 135
Fan Grrrls 139
The Work of Articulation: Letters Between Friends 142
The Problem of Intimacy for/in Young Women’s Feminism 146
6 Impossible Subjects: Addiction and Redemption in

Memoirs of Girlhood 149
The “Bad Girls” of Memoir 149
Positioning “the Girl” 153
The Girl, the Memoir 157
Koren Zailckas: Smashed 158
Fury 167
Conclusion: Making the Impossible Subject Possible 171
Part IV Youth Publics 175
7 Zine Culture: A Youth Intimate Public 177

Zines: An Analogue Network 180
Materiality and Mediation: Reading Zine Culture as
a Public 181
Evidencing a World Online: The We Make Zines Ning 189
An Intimate Public: A Scene of Consolation and Discipline 190
Conclusion: Hope and the Juxtapolitical 200
8 Youth Activism Online: Publics, Practices and Archives 203

Malala Yousafzai 204
Gul Makai 208
Isadora Faber 214
Life Narrative and Participation: Controversy and Control 218
Conclusion 223
x Contents
9 Conclusion: Youth, Agency and Self-Representation:

What Cultural Work Can Life Writing Do? 225
Works Cited 233
Index 259
List of Figures
Fig. 5.1 Extract from a letter to Tammy Rae Carland from Miriam Basilio
(The Fales Library Riot Grrrl Collection, New York University.
Tammy Rae Carland “I (heart) Amy Carter” Riot Grrrl
Collection MSS 290, Series I Correspondence. Reproduced
with permission from the author) 142
Fig. 5.2 Letter from Kathleen Hanna to Johanna Fateman (The Fales
Library Riot Grrrl Collection, New York University. Johanna
Fateman Collection MSS 258, Series III Correspondence.
Reproduced with permission from the author) 144
Fig. 7.1 Excerpt from the zine Nearly Healthy (2010) by Emma D
(Reproduced with permission from the author) 193
Fig. 7.2 Excerpt from the zine Your Secretary #4 (n.d.) by Jami Sailor
(Reproduced with permission from the author) 197
xi
Part I
Young Writers and Life Narrative
Encounters
1
Introduction
Youth, Life Narrative and the Self(ie)

In December 2013, the New York Post ran a front-page story titled “Selfie-
ish: My Selfie with Brooklyn Bridge suicide dude.” A young woman had
apparently taken a photograph of herself in front of a suicidal man on
the bridge. The “selfie,” a now ubiquitous term and practice, refers to a
photograph taken of oneself, usually taken with a mobile device, posted
on social media sites (such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr,
etc.) which invites response from friends of followers.1 As many com-
mentators have noted, the term selfie is most often associated with the
photographs teenage girls post of themselves on social media sites as a
means for asserting agency and participating within culture (Hall 2013;
Harrod 2009; Losse 2013; Murphy 2013).
In the Brooklyn Bridge case, conveniently, someone was on hand to
snap a photo of the woman taking the photo. The New York Post’s story
went viral across mainstream and social media and wide condemnation
1
The term “selfie” was the Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2013; the term increased in
usage by 17,000% during 2013 (Freeland 2013).
© The Author(s) 2016 3

K. Douglas, A. Poletti, Life Narratives and Youth Culture,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-55117-7_1
4 Life Narratives and Youth Culture
followed.2 The media condemnation was levelled at the nameless woman,

but more vehemently at the wider culture of narcissism and self-obsession
that this woman came to symbolise. According to such commentary, this
modern age is turning many young people into heartless egomaniacs,
obsessed with their own photographic images and narratives.
There are a range of exaggerations and misconceptions here that pro-
vide inspiration for our inquiry in this book. First, let us start with the
idea that photographic self-portraiture is a new phenomenon. It simply
is not: self-portraiture has a long and varied history from daguerreotype
self-portraits of the nineteenth century, through to the many different
types of portable cameras (i.e. with timers) which emerged in the twenti-
eth century. The digital, portable camera has, in the past decade, found a
home in the omnipresent (and now with forward-facing option) mobile
phone camera. The photographic methods of using a mirror or an out-
stretched arm or hand to capture a self-portrait were practised through-
out the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, just as they are now.
Second is the suggestion of a crisis in youth self-representation. Self-
representation cannot simply be dismissed or explained away through
accusations of superficiality and narcissism. As many cultural commenta-
tors have noted (in relation to the selfie and more particularly the New
York Post example) selfies are also an act of socialisation; they reflect a
desire for social and cultural participation and connection, for visibil-
ity and affirmation (Jones 2013; Freeland 2013). Sharing selfies can also
provide an opportunity to take control of one’s self-image (e.g. consider
Instagram’s filtering and editing tools or Snapchat’s timed snaps).
But contemporary cultures, particularly in the Western domains of
the global north, have a deeply contradictory relationship with young
people engaging in public modes of self-representation, as Jonathan Jones
(2013) notes: “like so many cultural phenomena into which millions
throw themselves can be seen on the one hand, modern, democratic,
liberating instruments of progress and yet on the other hand, with equal
2
Jonathan Jones (2013) is suspicious of the timeliness and good quality of the photograph taken of
the woman taking the selfie. He raises the possibility of the whole incident being a sensationalist
“set up” to play on the notion that this is “the worst” of a broader social problem. The so-called bad
taste selfie is a wider phenomenon. For example, there is a well-known Tumblr blog “selfies at
funerals.” The Brooklyn Bridge selfie photographer was never publicly named perhaps because she
was only ever intended to be symbolic of a wider cultural concern.
1 Introduction 5
validity, as time-eating cybermats of the apocalypse.” Of course, the cor-

porate powers which heavily influence the cultural practices of young
people play a significant role in such perceptions. But the good/bad, pro-
ductive/time-wasting binaries suggested here are not useful, and as Jones
argues, high-profile public examples of self-representation gone bad—
like the Brooklyn Bridge selfie-taker—become a convenient scapegoat for
the ambivalent and often confused responses that critics have to young
people’s cultural agency and use of social media. These debates run con-
currently with broader cultural discussions around, and constructions of,
childhood innocence, and link into cultural anxieties and moral panics
around the need to protect children and youth from danger and harm
(Cockburn 2012; James and Prout 1990; James 2009).
Third is the prevalent misconception that there is something new and
unusual about a young person wanting to share his or her life story with
a public. While technologies have made self-representation much more
accessible, prevalent and popular, self-representation, through varied
cultural modes, has been happening for as long as people have lived.
Scholarship in life writing studies, sociology, anthropology and cogni-
tive science argues that self-representation and the telling of stories from
life are powerful components of and drivers of human communities and
cultures.3 What differs across time and context is the extent to which the
writing practice is self-directed—a private activity where the process is
driven by the need for self-understanding in the individual—or public-
directed, where a life writer records their life and what they see around
them with a real or imagined audience in mind. When considering how
a specific life writing text engages with privacy and publicness, we need to
think of these states existing on a continuum, rather than in a binary. As
we discuss further below and explore throughout this book, the audiences
for life writing are incredibly varied: they can be small and localised,
broad yet historically specific, or may be as grand as the historical record.
The communicative intention in life writing is thus wide and diverse,
and requires careful attention from the critic: life writers may bear wit-
ness to the life of others and to history, intervene in their community’s
3
See, for example, Paul John Eakin’s (1999) engagement with cognitive science and theories of
identity in How Our Lives Becomes Stories, and Kenneth Plummer’s (2001) analysis of “the sociol-
ogy of stories” in Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds.
dominant understanding of experience, offer themselves as representative

subjects or speak for marginalised communities. This intention is then
complicated by the contexts in which a text is circulated, where editorial
intervention, paratexts and republication for new markets bring the text
into different sites of reception.
Seen in this context, young people have not emerged as prolific life
storytellers simply because of mobile technologies; we argue, and will
show in this book, that young people have made a consistent and sig-
nificant contribution to various first-person genres throughout literary
and cultural histories. Allison James (2011) notes that “one of the most
important theoretical developments in the recent history of childhood
studies [has been] the shift to seeing children as social actors” (p. 34).
Their contributions to culture are worthy of study in their own right.
However, childhood and youth studies scholarship has highlighted a ten-
dency for childhood and youth experience to be homogenised, which
often denies diversity and individuality of childhood experiences (James
and James 2004; James and Christensen 2007; Liebel 2012). We want to
show the ways that life writing texts have represented diverse experiences
of youth over time, and have written these experiences into culture and
history. For example, the youthful behaviours, identities and, perhaps
most significantly, the texts produced by contemporary digital practices
can be situated in relation to a long textual history. This book makes vis-
ible a portion of the archive of young peoples’ life writing practices in
order to both provide context for current digital practices and examine
more closely the contributions young people have made to the field of life
writing both as practitioners and innovators.
We also consider how life narrative practices can be a means for young
writers and artists to increase their participation within their respective
cultures. We will demonstrate that the production of life writing for a
public is a means for asserting agency for many young people, in many
contexts. This means recognising that while young people may have
the means to produce cultural texts, it does not mean that they all feel
empowered to do so, or that these texts are responded to ethically by
those who receive them. Rather than thinking of self-representation as a
ubiquitous activity in contemporary youth culture, we situate it as a prac-
tice with a long and diverse history in which young writers have deployed
1 Introduction 7
life writing to communicate their experience, take charge of their own

self-image and show themselves to be “active participants in society”
(James 2011, p. 34). Life writing is a key strategy young people have used
to intervene in and reorganise how youth are perceived, and to create new
spaces for other young people to respond and represent the self.
Further, life writing often provides a way for young people to negotiate
and assert their citizenship. As Tom Cockburn (2012) notes “Children’s
contributions to society continue to be belittled and devalued, and not
accorded the respect and recognition of being involved in mutual esteem
and solidarity” (p. 201). Young people are active participants in and con-
tributors across different levels of society, culture and politics (James and
James 2004; Liebel 2012); and Cockburn argues for a “reinvigoration of
participatory forms of democracy” so that children’s voices “can be heard
more clearly and recognised” (2012, p. 201). As we discuss further below,
cultural participation plays a pivotal role in citizenship and youth life
writing. Life writing has been a way for young people to contribute to
discussion in the public sphere, and to put issues on to the wider public
agenda.
Youth is a widely thought of as “a time of experimentation with differ-
ent styles of communicating and articulating identity” (Stern 2007, p. 2).
However, traditionally, stories about young people’s lives, like young peo-
ple’s literature and culture, have been “written by adults, illustrated by
adults, edited by adults, marketed by adults, purchased by adults, and
often read by adults” (Jenkins 1998, p. 23). And within culture, more
broadly, as Henry A. Giroux (2000) contends, experiences of youth are
rarely narrated by the young. He writes:
Prohibited from speaking as moral and political agents, youth becomes an

empty category inhabited by the desires, fantasies and interests of the adult
world. This is not to suggest that youth don’t speak; they are simply
restricted from speaking in those spheres where public conversation shapes
social policy and refused the power to make knowledge consequential.
(p. 24)
Through authoring, sharing and responding to life writing young people

have found ways to make their knowledge and experience consequential.
Life narrative has, and continues to be, a powerful and effective means for
young people to engage with and respond to the discourses that construct
them. These authors have sought and constructed diverse audiences for
their life narratives, from peer groups, intimate publics, the historical
record and public literary culture. However, the utilisation of life narra-
tive as a means of making knowledge and experience consequential brings
certain tradeoffs, and this book explores how young people seeking to
have their stories heard through professional publishing, subcultural and
online environments must adhere to generic expectations and discursive
structures that make their identities and experiences intelligible to their
chosen audience. The case studies examined in this book elaborate the
wide diversity of texts young people produce, and the complex negotia-
tions and possibilities for producing alternative and conforming stories of
young lives. Young people’s life narrative has played a role in establishing
“youth” as a distinctive speaking position. In using life narrative for this
purpose, young people are not alone, as a large variety of individuals and
groups have deployed life narrative as a means of making visible their
experiences and histories: indigenous communities and oppressed racial
and ethnic minorities, women, refugees, Holocaust survivors, gays and
lesbians, survivors of rape and child abuse. In recent decades, as scholars
such as Leigh Gilmore (2001b), Julie Rak (2013) and Sidonie Smith and
Julia Watson (1996, 2001, 2010) have observed, life narrative has moved
from being a cultural form associated with the lives of “great men” to
being a dynamic and influential means for people and communities to
write themselves into culture and history.
Our study is significant because it is the first project to bring the
disciplines of life writing and childhood and youth studies together. It
addresses two gaps in scholarly practice: the largely neglected status of
youth-generated writing in the study of life writing, and the broader lack
of close textual analysis of the texts produced by young people in the
sociology/cultural studies of youth. How can a historical understand-
ing of youth and life narrative contribute to our understanding of the
current practices of life narrative in youth cultures and in online envi-
ronments? In bringing an historically informed focus to the textual prac-
tices in contemporary youth cultures, our aim is to make a significant
contribution to the knowledge base in a number of fields (particularly
1 Introduction 9
life narrative studies, literary studies, cultural studies, history and youth
studies), and make available important historical knowledge of youth
self-representations that predates and is contemporaneous with the
Internet and electronic mass media culture. We use life narrative meth-
ods to draw attention to the practices of authorship and textuality behind
texts that have more commonly been analysed and explained through
youth cultural practices or identity markers. We have chosen a selection
of case studies to present and complicate the notions of private and pub-
lic self-representation. We aim to show a snapshot of the contemporary
practices, cultures, genres and spaces available for youth self-representa-
tion, and then, look more widely to consider these acts of self-representa-
tion as a means of asserting cultural agency.
“Youth” and Young People: A Note

on Terminology
We use the term “youth” in recognition of its unique status as a cultur-
ally and socially constructed category which is relational to the changing
definitions of childhood and adulthood. The terms “youth” and “young”
evoke a range of images, stereotypes and definitions. These terms have, at
once, positive and negatives connotations, as Gill Jones (2009) outlines,
“youthfulness”
conveys qualities such as strength, beauty, idealism and energy, which are
seen as desirable and coveted by older groups, but on the other hand is also
associated with ‘inferior’ characteristics of inexperience, lack of wisdom,
hot-headedness, experimentation, naivety, greenness, and lack of maturity
and sense. (p. 2)
For example, as Johanna Wyn and Rob White (1997) note, “youth” was
commonly masculinised (and often racialised) in the UK and USA in the
1950s to refer to research on young men from working-class backgrounds
(p. 18). However, in the 2000s, “youth” has emerged—through cultural
texts and scholarship—as a much more complex, and plural categorisa-
tion. It is now more commonly used to signify an important stage in
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M. de Vesson’s rank and character intended no lawless violence if he
could accomplish his ends without it. He saw now that the two
Vessons were father and son, for there was a marked likeness,
although the elder man had a face of far more force and nobility.
The four noblemen wore the rich dresses suited to their condition,
and were in strange contrast to their bound and dishevelled captive,
although Péron measured them with a glance of proud contempt.
There was a significant silence for a few moments after the arrival of
the prisoner and his guards, and then the elder Vesson, who seemed
to be not only the senior but the leader of the party, spoke,
addressing Péron in a tone of haughty command.
“Young man,” he said, “you are known to be a spy and a go-between
for one you wot of. If you will make a full confession of the whole
matter and give up any papers or information which you have,
without further delay, you need fear no personal injury; but if you
continue your stubborn resistance, you must take the
consequences.”
He paused, waiting for the prisoner’s reply; but Péron, by force, was
silent, and he assumed an air of sullen obstinacy to suit his
speechlessness. The cavaliers around M. de Vesson were manifestly
impatient and dissatisfied because any leniency was shown, and that
nobleman’s son interrupted the pause.
“He is a stubborn devil as well as a braggart and a bully,” he
remarked scornfully, the recollections of Péron’s treatment of him
having left a sting that rankled. “You will get nothing from him
unless you break his neck.”
Convinced that Péron did not intend to make terms by any act of
treachery, the elder Vesson made a sign to his guards.
“Search him, Guerin,” he said sharply, “and be thorough, for we deal
with one as cunning as a fox in his devices to obtain messages with
impunity.”
The two soldiers did not need his injunctions, and they did their
work so thoroughly that Péron feared that they would even find the
cardinal’s ring in its hiding-place in the lining of his coat, but they did
not; and more to their astonishment there were no papers, not a
scrap of writing on his person. They searched his stockings and his
boots, but in vain, and the noblemen looked on in evident disgust.
“He carries the message in his mind,” remarked M. de Vesson, in a
tone of sharp disappointment.
“Then it is best to make short work of his head and the message as
well,” replied one of the others, fiercely.
“Perhaps he can be bought,” suggested another, in an undertone.
Vesson shook his head. “Nay,” he rejoined in the same low voice,
“trust monsignor for knowing his man; and that young fellow is not
made of the stuff which is easily corrupted.”
“He claimed to be a Calvisson,” said the younger Vesson; “did you
hear him at the inn?”
“I did not heed him,” returned his father, and then added, after a
sharp look at Péron: “Pardieu! Can it be possible? I see a likeness
now—the likeness that has troubled me since I first saw the fellow.
Can it be?—after all these years?”
This conversation was held apart, but Péron saw the change in their
looks and gestures and marvelled at it. Meanwhile, Neff had made a
curious discovery which caused him to stare open-mouthed from the
prisoner to his own superiors.
“M. de Vesson, I have found the token on his person!” he cried,
holding up Renée’s watch in evident amazement.
There was an exclamation of surprise from all the others except M.
de Vesson, who received the statement calmly.
“Yes,” he said, “I remember; it was the token that led to the error at
St. Gudule.”
This speech was all that was needed to convince Péron that these
men were the same he had met in the house of Marie de’ Medici,
and he kept his lips resolutely closed although Père Matthieu’s ball
pressed hard into his tongue.
There was another low-voiced consultation between the leaders, the
three younger evidently urging a course of which M. de Vesson did
not approve, and after some dispute he prevailed.
“To horse!” he said. “A day’s journey without breakfast may do much
to moderate this fellow’s obstinacy. Forward therefore, gentlemen,
without delay.”
Following his instructions, they resumed their journey, Péron again
penned in his litter, like a sick woman, and not allowed speech with
any one. Thus they rode through Beauvais, without halting, and took
the way to St. Denis with all speed. At midday they halted to eat and
to bait their horses, and then it was that Péron was surprised by the
actions of Guerin Neff. Since the discovery of mademoiselle’s watch
the fellow had shown a certain awe and respect for his captive, and
now when he alone was on guard, he took the opportunity to thrust
the trinket into Péron’s hand.
“Take it,” he said gruffly. “I know not how you came by it, but I will
not meddle with it. I have seen more than one honest man lose his
head for meddling with the business of Madame la Mère; I will none
of it.”
Péron took the trinket without reply; he had the cardinal’s message
again in his mouth and could not speak, if he would, and Neff
interpreted his silence as a mere continuance of his sullen mood.
After that, the prisoner was left undisturbed; only once was any food
thrust into the litter, and that also was given by Guerin Neff. It was a
weary journey, but Péron had cause to congratulate himself on his
success: no one as yet even suspected the cause of his persistent
silence, and but for the discomfort of the device, it seemed an easy
and simple means of duping the enemy. All things come to an end,
however, and he could not avoid some dreary speculations upon the
probable termination of his adventure. Shut in as he was, he could
not discover their road or where they intended to go, except that the
general direction was toward Paris; and he was aware that they
finally crossed the Seine not far from Rouen, which showed that they
had quitted the road to St. Denis, taking a more westerly course. He
had nothing to expect but imprisonment or death. He reflected that
they were not likely to let him escape to bear the tidings of his
capture to Cardinal Richelieu, and to give him the information which
they had failed to take from him. Cramped with his bonds, and
weary from need of sleep which he dared not take, he lay, at last,
indifferent to fate and merely awaiting the end.
It was night when the party finally halted before a château, and
after a brief delay Péron was roused from his despair by hearing the
others dismount and seeing the flare of torches about his litter.
Evidently they had reached their destination, and he rallied his
drooping energy to meet the climax. After some time he was taken
from the litter and unbound. He shook himself with almost the joy of
an animal at feeling his limbs free, and looked about him. They were
in a courtyard at the rear of a large house, and the place was quite
lively and noisy from the sudden arrival of so large a party. Two
torches served to partially dispel the gloom, and he saw that there
were several grooms and hostlers running about among the horses
and that the light streamed out from the open door of the château.
Before he could observe more he was taken by his two guardians
and led up the steps into the house. Here were the others, M. de
Vesson, his son, and his friends, standing in a group in the center of
the hall, talking to a young and beautiful woman, whose brilliant
dress showed in the light of many tapers. Péron caught his breath;
to his amazement he recognized the proud face and golden hair of
Renée de Nançay. In a moment he understood the détour around St
Denis; they had come to Nançay, being relatives and fellow-
conspirators of the marquis. After the first shock of surprise Péron
fixed his eyes on mademoiselle, wondering what would be the
outcome of the strange trick of destiny which made him now
virtually her prisoner. But Renée made no sign; she was no longer
the defiant girl of the Rue St. Thomas du Louvre, or the plucky little
conspirator who had defied him at the house of the Image de Notre
Dame. She was the haughty demoiselle, the great lady of the
château; she looked at him without recognition, with cold hauteur
and indifference. He heard her reply to M. de Vesson’s request for
some place to bestow the prisoner.
“Certainly, monsieur,” she said in a clear voice, without another
glance at the young musketeer; “the cell in the west wing, near the
north tower, is the strongest; my steward will direct your men where
to bestow him according to your pleasure.”
Her back was toward Péron now, nor did she turn her head when he
was led away to go through long halls and down two flights of stairs
and to be locked at last a prisoner in a cell in his father’s house.
Thus he was securely locked and bolted in the narrow room and left
to reflect upon the strange trick of fate which made him a captive
where he should have ruled as master.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE DUNGEON OF THE CHÂTEAU
THE room in which the prisoner was confined was a small one in the
cellar of the Château de Nançay, and was strong enough to resist his
greatest efforts to effect an escape. That had been his first thought,
and, as soon as the bolts were shot and his guards departed, he
devoted himself to an exhaustive but unprofitable examination of the
place. He was provided with a rushlight, and was thus enabled to
make his observations with comparative ease. However, a few
moments sufficed to convince him that it was fruitless to look for a
possible means of egress. There was but one door, that by which he
had entered, and which was sufficiently secure to resist twenty men
as well as one, unprovided as he was with any lever to force the
bolts and bars; and the only window, situated too high for him to
look out of, was two feet long by ten inches in height and barred.
Through it an occasional gust of night air chilled the room and made
the rushlight flicker. He noticed with some surprise—and strange
thoughts of mademoiselle’s charity—that there was only a bench in
the cell, and that too short and narrow for a man to lie on. If he
slept to-night it must be on the floor; and he was already almost
overcome with physical exhaustion from his unremitting
watchfulness. A pitcher of water and a bowl of soup had been put
upon the bench, and he ate the pottage with good appetite, for his
fast had been almost unbroken since he left Amiens. He experienced
a sensation of relief, at escaping the vigilance which had tormented
him, and being secure of a few hours in which to rest without
holding that hard ball between the roof of his mouth and his tongue.
He wasted no further time in speculations as to the morrow; he ate
his food and drank from his pitcher of water, and then, having
hidden Père Matthieu’s message as securely as he could in his
clothing, he made a pillow of his cloak and stretched himself on the
hard stone floor with a sigh of comfort. There is no sleep sweeter
than that which comes to the weary, and he had earned a right to
unbroken slumber. However, unconsciousness did not come so
quickly as he had expected; he lay for a long while thinking of
Mademoiselle de Nançay’s manifest indifference to his fate, and the
ease with which she consigned a political enemy to a comfortless
dungeon. He could not reconcile this apparent cruelty with the
kindness that had given him a token which, in all probability, had
saved his life. He was visited, too, by other thoughts and with the
recollection of Madame Michel’s description of the manner in which
he had been saved, when a helpless infant, from his father’s enemy.
He thought, too, of his visit, when a boy, to the château with
Jacques des Horloges, of his prayer in his dead mother’s room, of
Renée and her bunch of violets on the terrace. As he lay there on
the dungeon floor he fancied that he could hear the bell of the great
jacquemart, which Michel regulated, ringing for eleven o’clock, and
from that his mind went back to the chimes in the little shop on the
Rue de la Ferronnerie and of his childhood and M. de Turenne. At
this his thoughts trailed off into unconsciousness, and the exhausted
musketeer slept the sleep of the tired and the innocent.
He did not know how long he had slumbered, but it seemed scarcely
an hour, when he was awakened by the opening of the door of his
cell. The bolts were rusty, and they slipped back with a grating
sound which roused him at once. His rushlight had gone out, but the
persons who opened his door bore a taper which served to reveal
them to his startled eyes. He had expected Guerin Neff or one of the
retainers of Nançay, but instead of these he saw two women: one,
short and thick, held the taper which shone in her face—it was
Ninon; the other, smaller and slighter, he recognized with surprise as
Renée de Nançay. At the first sound he had started to his feet, and
he stood now regarding them in much perplexity, but without
uneasiness in regard to his trust; of two women he had no need to
be afraid. Mademoiselle’s treatment of him in the hall had been such
that he gravely waited for her to speak. They came in, however,
without a word, and closed the door behind them; then he saw that
Renée held a sword and a pistol in her hands as well as a mask. All
these things she laid upon the bench before she spoke. She was
evidently surprised at her reception, and her face flushed deeply as
she turned to address him.
“Sieur de Calvisson,” she said haughtily, “yonder are weapons and a
mask: assume them and prepare to follow Ninon, who will let you
out of the château. I would have you know, monsieur, that it was no
petty spirit of revenge which made me send you to this comfortless
den. I chose it because, forsooth, I could the more easily release
you.”
“Mademoiselle, you but increase my gratitude,” Péron replied, in a
low voice. “Your trinket saved me, as I believe, upon the road, and
now you are my liberator; your justice to the messenger will
doubtless have its weight with monsignor.”
She turned upon him with sparkling eyes.
“Monsieur,” she said proudly, “I do not care a jot for M. le Cardinal; I
would not move my finger to serve him or his cause, but no man
shall suffer wrong in the Château de Nançay while Renée is mistress
here. I pray you take your weapons and begone, for I cannot
promise protection should my relatives overtake you in your flight.”
“Mademoiselle, I thank you for the warning; but with my sword and
pistol in the open I trust to shift for myself,” he replied, not without
feeling; but he obeyed her, knowing himself to be an unwelcome
guest.
She watched him in silence while he assumed the weapons and his
cloak and mask, and something in the expression of his face
softened her mood. When he was ready she signed to Ninon to open
the door, and then she turned for her last words to him.
“Ninon will guide you, monsieur,” she said, not unkindly, “and you
will find your own horse, saddled and bridled, by the wall on the
highroad. They brought it from Amiens, the better to carry out the
farce they acted at the Rose Couronnée. One of my own trusted
grooms holds the horse now against your coming. Mount him and
make good speed to Paris, for at morning they will be looking for
you. That is all—except, monsieur, beware of the Golden Pigeon at
Poissy; some of the party may be there to-night.”
She lighted her taper at Ninon’s and started as if to leave them; but,
before she could prevent it, Péron knelt on one knee at her feet and
kissed her hand.
“Mademoiselle de Nançay,” he said softly, “believe that I am not
ungrateful—or ignorant of the risk you take to aid me.”
“Monsieur,” she replied, and for the first time her voice faltered, “I
have done nothing but that which my father’s honor demanded.”
She spoke with dignity; but Péron saw the tears shining in her dark
eyes, and moved by an impulse he pressed her hand to his lips again
as he rose to his feet. She drew it away with a deep blush.
“Go, monsieur,” she said shortly; “there is not a moment to lose, it is
nearly two o’clock.” And with these words she left them.
Ninon lost no time in fulfilling her mistress’ instructions. She signed
to Péron to follow her, and in silence they went through the winding
labyrinth of the cellars until they came to a postern, which she
opened cautiously; after looking out to see if all was quiet, she
extinguished her taper and led the way into the rose garden of the
château. The night was intensely dark, and Péron stumbled more
than once in making his way among the thorny bushes; but at last
they came to a terrace, and descending it found themselves by a low
stone wall. As they reached this spot Péron heard a horse neigh and
Ninon paused.
“Climb the wall, monsieur,” she said curtly, “and on the other side is
your horse.—Adieu!”
She left him without waiting to listen to his thanks; and he did not
linger, but vaulting over the low wall found his horse held by a
groom, as Renée had said. In the darkness he could not see the
man’s features, but he was expected.
“From Mademoiselle de Nançay?” asked the servant.
Péron replied in the affirmative and in a moment more was in the
saddle, a free man again with his sword by his side. He took one last
look at the dark outlines of the château, in which one light shone
from the western tower, and then he set his face toward Paris, with
a lighter heart than he had carried in his bosom since he left
Brussels.
He made good progress, although he had to make a détour at Poissy
to avoid the Golden Pigeon, and he did not halt until he reached
Ruel, where he stopped only long enough to ascertain that the
cardinal was in Paris. The ride was uneventful; and it was evident
that mademoiselle had deluded his captors, for there were no signs
of pursuit, and he rode down the Rue St. Honoré at last, with the
message from Brussels safe in his bosom.
He did not pause even to arrange his disordered dress, but went at
once to Richelieu to discharge his trust. The cardinal listened to his
account with a grim smile.
“You erred in following—from idle motives—the stranger at St.
Gudule,” he said calmly; “from that probably arose your troubles,
which were a just and legitimate retribution. Otherwise you have
done well and deserve well at my hands. You have to-day placed in
my hands evidence that will convict the enemies of the state, that
will open the eyes of the king to the peril in which we have stood,
and show him whom he can trust. M. de Calvisson, there are two
ways for a man to die: in doing his duty, or for betraying it—always
choose the former.”
Two hours later Péron had again assumed the scarlet uniform of the
cardinal’s musketeers and was making his way to the shop at the
sign of Ste. Geneviève with a light heart, having successfully
executed his commission and conscious that he stood well with
Richelieu, who was ever chary of his praise, though quick to censure
neglect and unforgiving of disobedience.
It was the fête of St. Barnabas, and the shop on the Rue de la
Ferronnerie was empty when Péron entered it, but at the sound of
his footsteps Jacques des Horloges came out of the inner room
followed by Madame Michel. In both their honest, kindly faces Péron
read disappointment and surprise as they saw him in his old
uniform; these simple folk longed to hail him by his proper title, to
see him in his father’s place, and they could not understand what
seemed to them his lack of ambition. However, they greeted him
with their accustomed cordiality and affection, and the shop being
vacant, the three sat down amid the tall clocks and the short clocks,
which stood in the same close tiers as in the days of Péron’s
childhood; and as the cat, a gray one too, came out from behind the
jacquemart and rubbed himself against them, it seemed to the
musketeer that the years had not been, and that he was still the
clockmaker’s adopted child, with his speculations about the
mysterious attic and his legends of the many clocks; and his eyes
rested dreamily on the cross-shaped watch of M. de Guise. He was
not permitted to enjoy this revery; for they had a hundred questions
to ask, and he strove to answer them to their satisfaction, for his
heart was warm with grateful affection for this faithful couple. They
heard all that he felt at liberty to tell them of his journey,—its perils
and its happy termination. Madame listened between tears and
smiles, clasping her hands and murmuring an occasional
thanksgiving as she heard of his narrow escape. Jacques was
differently affected. He had been reared a soldier, and the account of
such adventures stirred his blood; there was a gleam in his eye, a
tightening of the lips that told, more plainly than words, how he
wished he had been there to strike a good blow at the opportune
moment. The scene in the old shop was full of homely interest, the
beautiful and quaint clocks forming a picturesque setting for the
three figures,—the stalwart clockmaker leaning on the counter, his
gray head a little bent as he listened, Madame Michel sitting in a low
chair, her hands clasped and her broad, brown face illumined with
affection and amazement under the white wings of her wide cap,
and opposite the graceful figure in its scarlet uniform and the
handsome face of the musketeer, who held the gray cat on his knee
absently caressing it as he talked. When he told of mademoiselle’s
trinket, Jacques immediately showed a new interest and asked to
see it; he held it a moment in his hand, looking at it attentively, and
then he smiled.
“I know this watch well,” he said; “I made it myself.”
“I thought I knew something of watches,” Péron remarked, “and I
took that for one of the Valois period.”
“That shows my skill,” replied the clockmaker, in an amused tone. “It
is a copy of a Valois watch belonging to the queen-mother. I made
twenty of these, though I only dimly divined their purpose, and all
have this secret spring.” As he spoke he pressed the side of the
watch and it opened to reveal a miniature. With a smile he held it
out to Péron, “You know its secret virtue now,” he said.
The miniature, though exceedingly small, was an excellent
representation of the Italian features and round eyes of Marie de’
Medici.
“I should never have made this discovery,” Péron said, “nor do I
think that Guerin Neff opened it.”
“There was no need,” rejoined Jacques, pointing to the cover; “they
all bear that tiny fleur-de-lis upon them, and are all of exactly the
same size and shape.”
The trinket had to be handed to Madame Michel to examine, and
while she was marvelling at her husband’s skill, he went on to speak
of other things.
“M. de Vesson is a half-brother of Pilâtre de Nançay,” he said, “and
like enough to be up to the elbows in the same business. ’Tis
strange that monsignor let that rogue go.”
“What rogue?” asked Péron quickly.
Both Jacques and his wife looked up in surprise.
“Did you not know that M. de Nançay had been set at liberty?” asked
the clockmaker. “I saw him yesterday on the Rue St. Martin with an
escort of gay gentlemen. There was much gossip, so says
Archambault, about the arrest and the release; ’tis thought that
monsignor but baits his trap for larger game.”
Péron was silent, perplexed and uneasy at this turn of events. It was
impossible, however, for any man to probe the cardinal’s purposes; it
was not unusual for him to let a victim apparently escape from his
toils for the sole purpose of more deeply involving him. It might be
so with M. de Nançay; it had been so with Chalais; but Péron could
not understand, and it presented matters in a new light: it bore
directly on his own future.
“I cannot forgive him for letting the rascal go,” Madame Michel
remarked, breaking in on the thread of his meditations; “if a man
ever deserved to lose his head it is Pilâtre de Marsou, sometimes
called Marquis de Nançay. Mère de Dieu! I wonder that his flesh
does not creep at the name, for verily ’twas he who murdered your
father and would have murdered you. Ah, I have not forgotten that
night in the woods, and how I prayed and wept with the poor
fatherless baby in my arms. I know that the bon Dieu will reward
him according to his merits. I recollect how I said over and over the
words of the psalm: ‘Qu’une ruine imprévue accable mon enemi;
qu’il le prenne au piège qu’il a dressé lui-même, et qu’il tombe dans
les embûches qu’il m’a préparées.’ And I believe that it will be so, for
even Père Antoine, who is an angel of forgiveness, says that
retribution comes surely upon the wicked—either at seedtime or
harvest.”
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CARDINAL’S RING
IN the Rue des Bons Enfans, behind the gardens of the Palais
Cardinal, Péron had his lodgings. He had long since outgrown the
proportions of his little room over the clockmaker’s shop; the old
house at the sign of Ste. Geneviève was too small to accommodate
the three grown people and the apprentices, and he had taken up
his quarters near the scene of his daily employment. He had two
upper rooms in a house but a little way from the rear of
Archambault’s pastry shop; his means were limited and his
requirements few and simple, so the apartments were plainly and
neatly furnished. He had left the little room on the Rue de la
Ferronnerie untouched; it was to him full of tender recollections of
his childhood, and he knew it was dear to the motherly heart of
good Madame Michel, who looked upon him almost as her own son.
It was in these rooms on the Rue des Bons Enfans that he made a
discovery which amazed and alarmed him. He had been twenty-four
hours in Paris before he recollected the cardinal’s ring, which he had
hidden in the lining of his coat, and when he went to look for it, to
his surprise, it was not to be found. He remembered that it had
escaped the vigilance of M. de Vesson’s searchers, and he could not
account for the loss. In his anxiety, he cut the lining entirely away
from his coat, but revealed nothing. It was dusk when he made this
discovery of his mishap, and he lighted a taper and kneeled on the
floor, searching with patience and exhaustive scrutiny every corner
and crevice of the room. The furniture was scanty, and the light
shone into the most remote spots, but showed nothing. He was
convinced that the ring was in the coat when he took it off to
assume his uniform, nor could it get out of its own accord. He had
dressed hastily to attend the cardinal to mass at his parish church of
St. Nicholas des Champs, and in his hurry he had forgotten the ring.
No one had entered the rooms in his absence, for the doors were
both secure and the keys in his pocket. Then he recollected the
windows. There were three; the two in the front room overlooked
the street and were inaccessible, but the one in the inner room
opened within three feet of the slanting roof of the adjoining house,
which, however, appeared to be unoccupied. If any one had entered
his rooms, it must have been through that window, but he saw no
signs of it. It was possible for a man to walk along on the roofs of
the other buildings and come down on the roof opposite his
quarters, but why should any one suspect him of carrying the ring,
and know where to find it? If the men of Vesson’s party had seen it,
they surely would not have hesitated to take it. What had become of
the circlet? It could not effect its own escape, that was certain, and
he could not imagine that it had fallen from its place, so securely
had he fastened it. Moreover, he was not alone confronted with
anxiety at the loss; he was liable to be called upon to produce it at
any moment by Richelieu, who had for the time overlooked it, but
who never forgot. His ceaseless vigilance noted all things, small and
great, with the same untiring energy and patience. It was with
profound anxiety, therefore, that Péron continued his search, and it
was only when he was absolutely certain of its fruitlessness that he
ceased to look in every possible spot where the precious ring could
have been mislaid. At last, he was compelled to go on duty again to
attend the cardinal to the Louvre, whither he went like a man in a
dream. He was too full of his own perplexities to observe the gay
scenes in the galleries of the palace, where M. le Grand was at the
height of his power and arrogance, unconscious that Richelieu’s web
was already about him. Père Matthieu had sent from Brussels
evidence of M. le Grand’s correspondence with the Vicomte de
Fontrailles, who had already been selected as the messenger that
the conspirators were to send to Madrid to conclude a treaty in the
name of Monsieur. For Péron had aided in the first steps to expose
the plot of Cinq Mars, which was already partially woven. In the
Louvre, too, Péron came face to face with his old patron, the Prince
de Condé, who greeted him kindly, recalling with a smile the victory
over Choin in the tennis court and saying that monsignor had spoken
highly of the musketeer’s courage and address. The prince’s
condescension and his mention of the cardinal’s commendation
suggested to Péron the possibility that his real station in life was
already known among a few, and that M. de Nançay’s strange
liberation had some secret meaning. But all these thoughts did not
allay his anxiety over his loss, which might be attended with such
serious results, the bearer of that ring being able to gain easy access
to the house of the iron cross, and perhaps to fool even Père
Matthieu. Yet a vision rising before him of the stern-faced, keen-
eyed priest afforded him some reassurance, for it would be difficult
indeed to outwit him.
It was midnight when Péron was at last at liberty to return to his
lodgings. He was weary and abstracted, and made his way through
the gardens of the Palais Cardinal to the Rue des Bons Enfans. At his
own door he found a little ragged boy of the street sitting on the
stone step, and thought the child had selected this spot to sleep; but
at his approach the small figure rose. It was too dark for either one
of them to distinguish the features of the other, and only the lantern
which hung above the door revealed the ragged outline of the boy.
He peered through the darkness at Péron as he came up.
“Are you M. de Calvisson?” he asked.
“I am,” replied Péron, surprised at the recognition. “What do you
want of me at this hour, child?”
“I have a letter for you,” he replied, thrusting a note into Péron’s
hands and turning away at once.
“Not so fast,” exclaimed the musketeer, intending to detain the
messenger; but the boy was fleet of foot and had fled away in the
darkness, without pausing to hear what Péron had to say.
Annoyed and amused by the little vagabond’s manner of delivering
missives, Péron had no resource but to enter the house and get a
light by which he could read the letter so strangely sent to him. The
contents startled him more than the manner in which he had
received it. The writing was delicate, like that of a woman, and he
recognized the seal. The note was brief and to the point; it ran:—
“M. de Calvisson,—If you will meet the writer at the stone
bridge by the Cours la Reine, you will receive the ring
which was lately stolen from you. If you come not by nine
o’clock on Thursday morning, you will lose the opportunity
forever—and the ring.
R. de N.”
The seal and the initials were those of Renée de Nançay; yet Péron
was not only perplexed, but doubtful. He had never seen
mademoiselle’s writing, but something in the letter raised his doubts;
he suspected a trap. This was Tuesday; he had therefore one day in
which to endeavor to fathom this mystery, and he resolved to use it.
Of one thing he was no longer uncertain: the ring had been stolen.
As it was already past midnight and he could accomplish nothing for
the next few hours, he wisely spent those in an effort to rest; but he
slept little, for now, in addition to his anxiety in regard to the
cardinal’s ring, was the fresh perplexity of the note, which might and
might not be from mademoiselle. Péron did not misunderstand her;
he knew that what she did was prompted rather by her disgust at
the treachery that she saw about her than from any kindness toward
him, though once or twice he had thought that with all her hauteur
Renée was not wholly indifferent to his fate. He knew that in her
eyes there was a great gulf fixed between them, which not even her
love or his could span. Mademoiselle, the daughter of a marquis,
one of the grand demoiselles of France, could scarcely afford to lose
her heart to the cardinal’s musketeer. Péron, conscious of his own
noble birth, watched the young girl’s proud defiance with a pang at
the thought that the revelation of his rank would but widen the
breach. As for the note, the appointment at the lonely spot was
unlike a woman. On one side of the Cours la Reine, the road to the
king’s hunting-lodge at Versailles divided it from the Seine; on the
other were ditches which ran between the promenade and a barren
plain; and across these ditches was, at one place, a small stone
bridge. A spot more lonely at that hour of the morning could
scarcely be found, and it seemed wholly unsuited to a visit from a
young woman, yet it had the one advantage of being isolated and
little visited by those who would be likely to recognize Mademoiselle
de Nançay. Whichever way Péron regarded the matter, he found it
perplexing, but he never thought of failing to keep the tryst. There
was no risk save to himself, and he was not one to hesitate because
of personal danger. It lent a zest to every adventure, and he would
have lamented its absence.
He devoted some time the following day to a fruitless endeavor to
probe the mystery. It was of course impossible to discover the
bearer of the letter, and he found it equally difficult to obtain any
other information beyond the bare fact that Mademoiselle de Nançay
had been in Paris the previous day, at her father’s house on the Rue
St. Thomas du Louvre. This lent a color of possibility to the incident.
Further than this, Péron was unable to push his investigations, and
at nightfall on Wednesday he knew as little as ever, but he had fully
determined to go to the stone bridge on the following morning,
taking only the precaution to wear his hallecrèt and to go well armed
and prepared for any emergency.
He supped with Madame Michel at the clockmaker’s shop,—a custom
to which he always adhered unless on duty at the Palais Cardinal,—
but he returned early to his rooms on the Rue des Bons Enfans. He
had kept a persistent watch there since the loss of the ring, having
some fancies about the window, which he still suspected as the way
by which his quarters had been entered. It was after nightfall, and
he had lighted his tapers and sat down at his table to read; for Père
Antoine’s early training had cultivated his taste for books. It was
while he was thus quietly engaged that he became aware of light
footsteps on the stairs outside his door, and the rustle of a woman’s
garments. He stopped in surprise and listened, his eyes upon the
door. In a moment he heard a whispered consultation, and then
something brushed against the panels. He said nothing, waiting to
see the sequel or to hear it. Presently there was a timid knock,
followed by the low murmur of voices. He waited no longer, for his
curiosity was fully roused, and undoing the latch he threw open the
door, revealing two cloaked and masked women on the other side.
Without hesitation, the smaller of the two entered the room,
followed by the other, and signed to him to close the door. He did so
in surprise and bewilderment, and was not sure of his recognition
until Mademoiselle de Nançay removed her mask. She was very pale,
but her eyes sparkled with excitement and resolution, and she
scarcely heeded Péron’s salutation.
“M. de Calvisson,” she said, with quiet dignity of manner, “you must
think it strange indeed for me to come here—and in this manner—
but I learned only an hour since of the snare that had been set for
you; that my name had been used for a cruel deception, and I could
not rest until I set it right. Monsieur, you received a note purporting
to come from me and summoning you to keep a tryst at the stone
bridge by the Cours la Reine. That letter was a tissue of falsehood.”
Péron bowed gravely. “Mademoiselle,” he said quietly, “I never
believed that the letter was yours, but I should have kept the
appointment.”
“Mon Dieu!” she cried with sudden emotion, “you would have kept it
to your death—and I should have been the means of it!”
She pressed her hands before her face, shaken by an emotion too
deep to conceal. Péron watched her with a strange confusion of
feeling, his heart beating high with sudden hope.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, too low for any ears but hers, “if my death
would cause you regret, it would be robbed of much bitterness.”
She looked at him with startled eyes, a beautiful blush mounting to
her fair hair, and then she drew back haughtily.
“I came here from a sense of duty, monsieur,” she murmured in a
strange voice. “I could do no less—I know not what you think of
me!”
“That you are an angel, mademoiselle,” he replied, “too noble and
too just to let a man’s life be sacrificed by the use of your name.”
She gave him a questioning glance, as though she doubted the
sincerity of his words and feared that he misunderstood her motives.
Her pride was up in arms and she put on her mask, securing it with
trembling fingers.
“There is no more to tell, monsieur,” she said coldly; “if you go to the
Cours la Reine, you will meet your death—and I did not write that
letter—that is all. Come, Ninon, we must away.”
Péron could not delay her, but he picked up his sword.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “permit me at least to attend you through
the streets.”
She halted at the door, confused; her woman had gone out upon the
stairs, and the two stood face to face.
“You cannot go, monsieur,” she said, with a falter in her voice; “your
attendance upon me would lead to worse trouble for you—and for
me!”
“If it touches you, mademoiselle, I will not stir,” he replied;
“otherwise, I pray you not to deny me the small privilege of
attending one who has thrice saved my life.”
“It would be my peril, Sieur de Calvisson,” she said softly. “Adieu!”
She hesitated on the threshold, her mask hiding her face; then she
held out her hand and he took it in both his.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, very low, “I would cheerfully give my life to
defend yours, and the time may come when I pray you to remember
that I will accept no benefit which shall be to your detriment.”
He thought he saw surprise in her eyes; but he pressed her hand to
his lips, and in a moment she was gone and he heard her light
footfall on the stairs. Flushed with emotion, and with a hundred
conflicting thoughts, he moved to the window to watch her leave the
house; but as he saw her come out on the step below, he heard
some one in the hall, and looking up, saw Ninon on the threshold.
“Mademoiselle dropped her handkerchief, I think,” she said,
pretending to search upon the floor.
Péron took the taper from the table to aid her, and the two stooping
down to look beneath the table came very near together. It was then
that the woman found her opportunity.
“Be wary, monsieur,” she whispered, giving up the pretended search;
“they know who you are—and I do, though mademoiselle does not—
and they mean mischief.”
In a flash the truth burst upon him, the Nançay faction knew whose
son he was.
“Ninon,” he said earnestly, “I pray you not to tell mademoiselle!”
She was at the door again, and she gave him a strange look.
“Do not be a fool, monsieur,” she said with blunt kindness;
“mademoiselle has been betrothed to M. de Bièvre for a
twelvemonth; and her father—ah, M. le Marquis is a devil!”
With these words Ninon hurried from the room and ran down the
stairs after her mistress, leaving Péron standing in the middle of the
room, like a man turned to stone.
CHAPTER XXV
ARCHAMBAULT’S INFORMATION
NINON’S announcement, coming with unexpected force and with

truthfulness, dashed Péron’s new-born hopes to the ground.
Mademoiselle’s flashes of tenderness and emotion were but the
whims of a coquette, who found amusement and flattery even in the
admiration of an inferior. The Renée that he knew, with her varying
moods of anger and disdain interspiced with glimpses of soft-
heartedness, was doubtless very different from the fiancée of M. de
Bièvre. Péron tried to recall what he knew of the man, a cousin, he
thought, of the Prince de Condé, and a man of some wealth and
pretensions,—not an unsuitable match for mademoiselle in family
and rank, but by repute a brainless young courtier and something of
a roué. Yet, after all, that was Renée’s affair, not Péron’s. He thought
that he had seen him once or twice at the Palais Cardinal or the
Louvre, and that he bore a strong likeness in dress and manner to
the younger de Vesson. Doubtless she was accustomed to men of
this stamp and preferred them to a soldier of fortune—a musketeer.
In the half-hour after mademoiselle left, Péron had these thoughts
and many others more bitter, and called himself a fool many times
for having yielded to the charm of a fair face and two bright eyes.
He had known from the first of a barrier between them that should
be impassable, yet he had let a tenderness grow in his heart, and
deserved punishment for his folly. So completely did mademoiselle’s
betrothal fill his mind that he forgot the cardinal’s ring, forgot his
surroundings, the taper burning low on the table, forgot the
unbolted door, until he heard a step on the stairs and rose to fasten
his latch. He was too late; before he reached it the door was opened
softly and the round face of the pastry cook was thrust into the
space. Seeing that Péron was alone, Archambault came in, and
shutting the door behind him with his shoulder, advanced to the
table, where he set down a large frosted cake with an air of
satisfaction.
“Pardieu!” he said, rubbing his hands, “I had to have an errand, and
I brought you one of the cakes that you used to love. You would run
all the way from the Rue de la Ferronnerie for one of these when
you were eight years old; ay, when you were a big boy of fourteen
and with M. de Condé, you had still an affection for my cakes.”
“I thank you, Archambault, not only for the present but for the old
times,” Péron replied smiling, though he wondered what had brought
the fat pastry cook up all those steps for so flippant an errand.
“You are welcome enough, M. Jehan,” Archambault said; “but give
me a chair, I am marvellously short of breath of late, and I hurried,
having something of weight to say.”
When he was seated he clasped his fat little hands on his knee and
waited placidly while his host lighted another taper and closed the
shutters on the street. When Péron sat down at last, his guest was
smiling and complacent, the same round little man who for forty
years had catered for and flattered the wealthy coterie of the Marais,
and was one of the most famous cooks of Paris. It was said, in the
next reign, that Vatel learned his trade from him, as he had learned
it of Zamet. His dress was far richer than the young nobleman’s.
Péron wore the uniform of monsignor’s guards; the cook wore a suit
of black velvet with ruffles of Flemish lace, a chain of gold around
his neck, buckles that were gemmed with jewels at his knees and on
his shoes. He cast a glance not unseasoned with pity at the bare
room.
“Mon Dieu!” he said, “what a place for a marquis.”
The exclamation was so genuine and involuntary that Péron laughed
outright.
“My tastes are more simple than yours, Archambault,” he said.
The pastry cook shrugged his shoulders.
“It makes my heart ache, M. Jehan,” he replied heartily, “for I
remember who you are and what is your due. But ’tis the vulgar who
gain nowadays; monsignor has no love for the grandees. However,
that is not here nor there; I came for another matter. You have lost a
ring?”
Péron looked at him in amazement.
“By St. Denis!” he said, “there is witchcraft in it. Yes, I have lost a
ring. What more?”
Archambault looked at him placidly, his round eyes showing neither
amazement nor curiosity.
“The ring is in the hands of M. de Nançay,” he said calmly.
Péron rose from his chair with a sharp exclamation.
“I fear I am ruined!” he cried; “tell me all you know, Archambault.”
The pastry cook rubbed his hands together with a certain unctuous
enjoyment of the situation.
“They were at my shop,” he said, with a deliberation that tormented
his auditor; “M. de Nançay, M. de Vesson, and another, a relative, I
take it, of M. de Bouillon. They had a private room, and—” he
stopped, looking a little abashed under Péron’s searching eyes.
“Well, monsieur,” he went on with a shrug, “what would you? I have
found it useful to keep an eye on my guests; I have known many
things. In that same room I heard the challenge discussed of the
famous duel on the Place Royale, for which M. de Bouteville and M.
de Chapelles suffered,—monsignor’s example to enforce his edict. I
—”
“Ciel, Archambault, go on!” cried Péron in despair.
“I am going on,” the pastry cook replied aggrieved. “I have a peep-
hole—un œil-de-bœuf—concealed in the partition, you understand,
M. Jehan, and there I overheard the story of the cardinal’s ring.
They sent a man into your rooms here through some window—” the
narrator stopped again to look for it—“Ah, bah! do you not see that
roof? He found the ring in your coat and they have it. There is
mischief brewing; they would ruin you with the cardinal,—for I think
they suspect your identity,—and they would ruin the cardinal’s
schemes. They start to-morrow with that ring for Brussels; doubtless
you know more of what they can do with it than I do.”
He stopped, gazing at Péron eager for enlightenment, but he
received none. His host was on his feet in a moment looking at
sword and pistols and gathering some necessaries together.
Archambault looked on in aggrieved amazement; he had that natural
love for gossip that belongs to his class and character.
“What will you do, M. Jehan?” he asked blankly.
“If they go to Brussels to-morrow I go to-night,” Péron replied
decisively; “and look you, Archambault, I will give you a letter to
Père Antoine, he must go for me to monsignor; I cannot lose an
hour, nay, not a minute.”
“You cannot go alone!” Archambault cried, with agitation. “Mère de
Dieu! there will be four or six of them—you are mad.”
“So much the better—one can more easily outstrip four or six in a
race for Flanders,” Péron replied, changing his uniform for a dark suit
and a hallecrèt, while he talked.
“Ah, I see, you would be first in Brussels,” Archambault exclaimed;
“but it will not do—one man cannot outwit them.”
He fell into meditation, sitting cross-legged on the high wooden
stool; with all his flippancy and selfish greed, the pastry cook had
still something of manhood left, and no little wit of a low order but
keen enough to serve his ends.
“I have it,” he said, looking up and waving his hands. “Choin is at my
place, a little tipsy, I believe, but in the morning he will be on his
feet. The great hulk was asleep on the kitchen floor, and but for my
haste to come here I would have had him thrown into monsignor’s
gardens to cool; but, parbleu! he is the very man.”
“The man, if sober,” Péron replied, smiling, “but drunk—he is as
useless as the figures on Maître Jacques’s great jacquemart!”
“He will be sober in the morning, and so will Matthieu and Jeannot,”
said the pastry cook; “by your leave, therefore, M. Jehan, I will send
them after you post-haste.”
“A useless trouble, good Archambault,” Péron replied, picking up his
cloak and sword, being now fully equipped for his journey; “they
would scarcely overtake me, and would doubtless get into a drunken
brawl by the way.”
The cook shook his head. “Nay,” he said, “I have noticed that Choin
does not drink when he has work; you used him before, and you
may use him again. I can send him at daybreak, for I will set my
fellows to work upon him with cold water enough to drown the fires
out of his brain and belly.”
Péron was not untouched by the honest man’s anxiety.
“I thank you, friend,” he said, shaking the other’s hand, “but it is
useless; I can make shift with a good horse to outstrip these plotters
on the road, and I am off at once. There is the letter for Père
Antoine; and for the cake—why, keep it against my return.”
“Which road do you take, M. Jehan?” persisted the pastry cook, as
they went down the narrow stairs together.
“By the way of Amiens, though I shall avoid the town,” Péron
replied; “but I shall cross the Somme at the Blanche Tache.”
No more was said; Péron believed that he had discouraged the
cook’s well-meant scheme, and hastened to the stables for his horse,
knowing well that every hour counted and that he must reach
Brussels before the conspirators, or all would be lost. The stable-
boys were asleep and he saddled and bridled his own horse, thinking
once or twice that he heard something stir in the straw in the next
stall, but putting it down to the credit of the rats.
It had been an eventful evening; at nightfall mademoiselle came to
warn him, later Archambault told his story, and at midnight he was
riding along the Rue St. Denis on his way to Flanders. His future,
and perhaps his life, depended upon the four feet of his horse and
his own wit. In spite of the stirring occurrences of the last few
weeks, in spite of his disappointment at the tidings of
mademoiselle’s betrothal, he was calm and alert as he went out on
his dangerous and uncertain errand. He not only wished to save his
own honor, but he believed that there was peril to France in the
plotting of these conspirators. He knew that on a little thing hangs
sometimes the fate of an empire, and he understood something of
the web that the cardinal was ever weaving with the patience and
the skill of a spider. Yet with all these reflections, with the weight of
this anxiety upon him, he longed greatly to settle an account with M.
de Bièvre, and the face of mademoiselle haunted him. He thought
with a smile, however, of the party waiting with fruitless patience at
the stone bridge of the Cours la Reine.
CHAPTER XXVI
IN THE FOREST OF CHANTILLY
IT was one o’clock when Péron rode through St. Denis, and a light
spring rain was falling; through the mist he saw the blurred lights of
the guardhouse and he heard the tolling of the abbey bell. It was
dreary enough, and so were his meditations; at the very moment
when he seemed to have succeeded, misfortune again assailed him.
He had staked his honor and his life upon the mission to Brussels,
and he had executed it only to lose all that he had gained by this
last trick of fate. It seemed as if peril, conspiracy, and murder had
tracked his footsteps ever since the night when good Madame Michel
had held him in her arms in the woods of Nançay, praying and
weeping by turns over the bereaved infant. His peaceful childhood
on the Rue de la Ferronnerie, the happiness of his boyhood with
Condé, were after all but intervals in the drama of his eventful life.
The hour, the rain, the lonely road, all depressed his usually buoyant
spirits and chilled his blood; he recalled a story which Jacques des
Horloges was fond of reciting—of a noble family in which every male
died a violent death. It required an effort to shake off his lethargy, to
direct his attention to his horse, which stumbled more than once in
the mire, and to concentrate his mind upon his errand. If
Archambault’s story was true, he had seven or eight hours the start
of the conspirators, and it would go hard with him if he did not
defeat them; in any event, there was a hope left, and that a strong
one, that Père Matthieu would never be outwitted.
With all this, fate beset Péron on every side. He had been willing to
sacrifice himself for Renée de Nançay, to endure an injustice rather
than crush her with the shame of her father’s villainy, but was he
prepared to do the same for Madame de Bièvre? And why not? Had
he ever dreamed of wedding mademoiselle? Surely not; to wed her
he must proclaim his rank; and if he proclaimed it, they would be
separated forever. Then, he argued, if he could not marry her,
doubtless she would have married in any case, and why should he
find it hard to shield her as a wife? Ah, but he did! The difference
was there, and sharp enough to make him wince.
In the midst of these reflections there came a more common-place
anxiety. His horse stumbled again and went lame. He had saddled
the beast in the dark, without making any examination of him, and
he now realized his error; for if anything went wrong with the horse,
he would meet with disastrous delays. He dismounted and tried to
discover the trouble, but in vain; he was without means of making a
light, and could not see. There was no alternative therefore but to
resume his seat in the saddle and go on with caution until daybreak;
but he no longer dared to keep up the pace at which he had started,
no matter how much he chafed under the delay. To change horses
on the road was no part of his design, especially since the horse left
behind would prove an excellent clew by which he could be tracked.
This compelled him to spare the animal, and he was further impeded
by the soft condition of the roads, still muddy from the heavy
weather; so he made but poor progress, and was still a league from
Chantilly when the black rain-clouds lifted in the east showing a
keen line of silver, like the edge of a naked sword, where dawn cut
the night in twain. Before him the woods of Chantilly took fantastic
shapes through the mist, and around him the meadows were
undulated like the gray billows of the ocean. The estate of Chantilly,
once the property of the house of Montmorency, had been forfeited
by the rebellion of the last unfortunate duke and was now in the
hands of the Princesse de Condé, a gift from the king.
As soon as the light was sufficient, Péron found that his horse was
suffering from a loose shoe on one of his forefeet, and that the
animal must be attended to before he could proceed on his journey
to Flanders. This made it imperative for him to stop at the town in
search of a smith, much against his own wishes; for he would be
readily recognized if he came across any of the retainers of Condé,
who were all more or less acquainted with the former protégé of the
prince. However, there was no help for it, and making the best of a
bad business he turned his horse’s head toward the spot where he
remembered that there used to be a smithy. He had no difficulty in
finding the forge, but there was no fire; and the blacksmith was
evidently asleep over his shop, for the place was quiet. Péron
knocked so loudly, however, that he finally succeeded in rousing the
inmates, and the smith came down with reluctance to answer his
summons, having no wish to go to work so early.
“No horses will be shod here for two good hours,” he said bluntly,
eying his visitor from head to foot with a scowl of disapproval.
He was a big, brawny fellow; a Gascon from his tongue, and the
smut on his face added to his natural ugliness; but Péron
remembered him as a not ill-natured retainer of Condé. A delay of
two hours would be fatal to the musketeer’s interests, and he did
not hesitate to use every argument at his command.
“Do you not know me, Ferré?” he said; “you taught me once to shoe
a horse, and it was from you that I first learned to strike a straight
blow from the shoulder.”
“Pardieu, ’tis monseigneur’s boy!” exclaimed the smith, with a
change of expression. “I did not know you, Péron, in your black
cloak, and with the air you have of a great gentleman. So, ’tis you
that cannot shoe your horse? You have forgotten some useful
lessons, and I am minded to let you wait for your pains; I have had
no breakfast, and I am not the man to work on an empty stomach.”
“Yet do me this favor, good Ferré, for old times’ sake,” Péron urged;
“I am bound on a pressing errand, and if I delay there may be bad
results—for me.”
The smith still hesitated, looking from the musketeer to his horse.
“Leave the beast with me,” he said gruffly, “and get a new horse at
the inn; you dress like a man with a purse.”
“But it does not suit me to change horses,” Péron replied; “and
though I am not the rich man you take me for, I will pay well for this

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Organizing political parties : representation,

Biota Grow 2C gather 2C cook Loucas

Democracy in Poland: Representation, participation,

Education and Youth Agency Qualitative Case Studies in

Understanding Youth Participation Across Europe: From

Youth Identities, Education and Employment: Exploring

Becoming Beauvoir A Life Kate Kirkpatrick

Youth Studies in Transition Culture Generation and New

Life Narratives and

Kate Douglas and Anna Poletti

More information about this series at

Life Narratives and

Studies in Childhood and Youth

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957998

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Cover image © Tim Gainey / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

An earlier version of sections of the Introduction (Chap. 1) was pub-

Part I Young Writers and Life Narrative Encounters 1

2 Youth and Revolutionary Romanticism: Young Writers

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Masculine

Part II Writing War 61

3 War Diaries: Representation, Narration and Mediation 63

4 Lost Boys: Child Soldier Memoirs and the Ethics of

Part III Girlhoods Interrupted 119

5 The Riot Grrrl Epistolarium 121

The Riot Grrrl Epistolarium 133

6 Impossible Subjects: Addiction and Redemption in

Part IV Youth Publics 175

7 Zine Culture: A Youth Intimate Public 177

8 Youth Activism Online: Publics, Practices and Archives 203

9 Conclusion: Youth, Agency and Self-­Representation:

Youth, Life Narrative and the Self(ie)

© The Author(s) 2016 3

followed.2 The media condemnation was levelled at the nameless woman,

validity, as time-eating cybermats of the apocalypse.” Of course, the cor-

dominant understanding of experience, oﬀer themselves as representative

life writing to communicate their experience, take charge of their own

Prohibited from speaking as moral and political agents, youth becomes an

Through authoring, sharing and responding to life writing young people

“Youth” and Young People: A Note

NINON’S announcement, coming with unexpected force and with

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Part I Young Writers and Life Narrative Encounters 1

2 Youth and Revolutionary Romanticism: Young Writers

Part II Writing War 61

3 War Diaries: Representation, Narration and Mediation 63

4 Lost Boys: Child Soldier Memoirs and the Ethics of

Part III Girlhoods Interrupted 119

5 The Riot Grrrl Epistolarium 121

The Riot Grrrl Epistolarium 133

6 Impossible Subjects: Addiction and Redemption in

Part IV Youth Publics 175

7 Zine Culture: A Youth Intimate Public 177

8 Youth Activism Online: Publics, Practices and Archives 203

9 Conclusion: Youth, Agency and Self-Representation: