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                                BERTRAND
                              OF BRITTANY

                             [Illustration]


                                   BY
                            WARWICK DEEPING
                               AUTHOR OF
                    “A WOMAN’S WAR” “THE SLANDERERS”
                        “BESS OF THE WOODS” ETC.

                             [Illustration]

                          NEW YORK AND LONDON
                      HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
                                MCMVIII




                 Copyright, 1908, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
                                  ———
                         _All rights reserved._
                         Published April, 1908.




                                Contents

            Book I     Youth and the Silver Swan
            Book II    “How a Man May Find His Soul Again”
            Book III   “The Oak of Mivoie”

       Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.




                                   TO
                             MY DEAR FRIEND
                               JULIA ORD




                          Bertrand of Brittany




                                 BOOK I


                       YOUTH AND THE SILVER SWAN




                                   I

IT had always been said in the Breton lands that Sieur Robert du
Guesclin was a brave man, save in the presence of that noble lady,
Jeanne de Malemains, his wife.

Now Dame Jeanne was a handsome, black-browed woman with a resolute mouth
and a full, white chin. The Norman apple-trees had lost their bloom, so
sang the romancers, when Gleaquim by the sea had stolen her as the
sunlight from Duke Rollo’s lands. The Lady Jeanne had brought no great
dowry to her husband, save only her smooth and confident beauty, and the
perilous blessings of a splendid pride. She had borne Sieur Robert
children, fed them at her own breast as babes, and whipped them with the
stern sense of her responsibility heavy in her hand. It was well in
those days for a wife to watch strong sons growing into manhood about
her husband’s table. One fist the more, and the surer was the mother’s
honor when enemies might speak with her good man at his gate.

Proud, lovely, and masterful, the Lady Jeanne had looked to see her
majesty repeated in her children. It had been but the legitimate and
expectant vanity of a mother to dower her first-born with all the grace
and beauty of a Roland. Poor dame, the thing had seemed as ugly as sin
when it first kicked and squalled in her embroidered apron; bristling
hair, a pug of a nose, crooked limbs, skin like a pig’s! Every passing
month had brought the brat into more obvious disfavor. Its temper
appeared as ugly as its body. It would bite and yell with a verve and
fierceness that made the nurse vow it was an elf’s child, a changeling,
or some such monstrosity. The Lady Jeanne had grieved, prayed to the
saints, and yet been at a loss to discover why her motherhood should
have been shamed by such a child.

Years passed, and still mother and son were no better accorded. Jeanne,
proud lady, had no joy or pleasure in her eldest child. His ugliness
increased: he was wild as a passage hawk, rebellious, passionate, yet
very sullen. The younger children went in terror of him; the servants
felt his fists and teeth; he fought with the village lads, and came home
bloody and most whole-heartedly unclean. Sieur Robert might break many a
good ash stick over Master Bertrand’s body. His mother might storm,
scold, clout, and zealously declaim; the ugly whelp defied her and her
gentlewomen. He had no more respect for a lady than for Huon, the
miller, whose apples he stole, and whose son he tumbled into the
mill-pool.

Poor Jeanne du Guesclin! The fault was with her pride—and with no other
virtue. She could not love the child, and nature, as though in just
revenge, mocked with the clumsiness of the son the vanity of the mother.
Young Bertrand was starved of all affection. His very viciousness was
but a protest against the indifference of those who made him. Cuffed,
chided, sneered at, he grew up like a dwarfed and misshapen oak that has
been lopped unwisely by the forester’s bill. He was slighted and ignored
for Olivier, the second son, whose prettiness atoned with Jeanne for her
first-born’s snub nose and ugly body. It was Olivier whom the mother
loved, the sleek and clean-faced Jacob