For that most amiable of Gascon cadets, Monsieur de Castelroux, I have
naught but the highest praise. In his every dealing with me he revealed
himself so very gallant, generous, and high-minded a gentleman that it
was little short of a pleasure to be his prisoner. He made no inquiries
touching the nature of my interview with those two gentlemen at the
Hotel de la Couronne, and when at the moment of leaving I requested him
to deliver a packet to the taller of those same two he did so without
comment or question. That packet contained the portrait of Mademoiselle
de Marsac, but on the inner wrapper was a note requesting Lesperon not
to open it until he should be in Spain.
Neither Marsac nor Lesperon did I see again before we resumed our
journey to Toulouse.
At the moment of setting out a curious incident occurred. Castelroux's
company of dragoons had ridden into the courtyard as we were mounting.
They lined up under their lieutenant's command, to allow us to pass;
but as we reached the porte-cochere we were delayed for a moment by a
travelling-carriage, entering for relays, and coming, apparently, from
Toulouse. Castelroux and I backed our horses until we were in the midst
of the dragoons, and so we stood while the vehicle passed in. As it
went by, one of the leather curtains was drawn back, and my heart was
quickened by the sight of a pale girl face, with eyes of blue, and brown
curls lying upon the slender neck. Her glance lighted on me, swordless
and in the midst of that company of troopers, and I bowed low upon the
withers of my horse, doffing my hat in distant salutation.
The curtain dropped again, and eclipsed the face of the woman that had
betrayed me. With my mind full of wild surmisings as to what emotions
might have awakened in her upon beholding me, I rode away in silence
at Monsieur de Castelroux's side. Had she experienced any remorse? Any
shame? Whether or not such feelings had been aroused at sight of me, it
certainly would not be long ere she experienced them, for at the Hotel
de la Couronne were those who would enlighten her.
The contemplation of the remorseful grief that might anon beset her when
she came to ponder the truth of matters, and, with that truth, those
things that at Lavedan I had uttered, filled me presently with regret
and pity. I grew impatient to reach Toulouse and tell the judges of the
mistake that there had been. My name could not be unknown to them, and
the very mention of it, I thought, should suffice to give them pause and
lead them to make inquiries before sending me to the scaffold. Yet I was
not without uneasiness, for the summariness with which Castelroux had
informed me they were in the habit of dealing with those accused of high
treason occasioned me some apprehensive pangs.
This apprehension led me to converse with my captor touching those
trials, seeking to gather from him who were the judges. I learnt then
that besides the ordinary Tribunal, a Commissioner had been dispatched
by His Majesty, and was hourly expected to arrive at Toulouse. It would
be his mission to supervise and direct the inquiries that were taking
place. It was said, he added, that the King himself was on his way
thither, to be present at the trial of Monsieur le Duc de Montmorency.
But he was travelling by easy stages, and was not yet expected for some
days. My heart, which had leapt at the news, as suddenly sank again
with the consideration that I should probably be disposed of before the
King's arrival. It would behoove me, therefore, to look elsewhere for
help and for some one to swear to my identity.
“Do you know the name of this King's Commissioner?” I asked.
“It is a certain Comte de Chatellerault, a gentleman man said to stand
very high in His Majesty's favour.”
“Chatellerault!” I cried in wondering joy.
“You know him?”
“Most excellently!” I laughed. “We are very intimately acquainted.”
“Why, then, monsieur, I augur you this gentleman's friendship, and that
it may pilot you through your trouble. Although--” Being mercifully
minded, he stopped short.
But I laughed easily. “Indeed, my dear Captain, I think it will,”
said I; “although friendship in this world is a thing of which the
unfortunate know little.”
But I rejoiced too soon, as you shall hear.
We rode diligently on, our way lying along the fertile banks of the
Garonne, now yellow with the rustling corn. Towards evening we made our
last halt at Fenouillet, whence a couple of hours' riding should bring
us to Toulouse.
At the post-house we overtook a carriage that seemingly had halted for
relays, but upon which I scarce bestowed a glance as I alighted.
Whilst Castelroux went to arrange for fresh horses, I strode into the
common room, and there for some moments I stood discussing the viands
with our host. When at last I had resolved that a cold pasty and a
bottle of Armagnac would satisfy our wants, I looked about me to take
survey of those in the room. One group in a remote corner suddenly
riveted my attention to such a degree that I remained deaf to the voice
of Castelroux, who had just entered, and who stood now beside me. In
the centre of this group was the Comte de Chatellerault himself, a
thick-set, sombre figure, dressed with that funereal magnificence he
affected.
But it was not the sight of him that filled me with amazement. For that,
Castelroux's information had prepared me, and I well understood in what
capacity he was there. My surprise sprang rather from the fact
that amongst the half-dozen gentlemen about him--and evidently in
attendance--I beheld the Chevalier de Saint-Eustache. Now, knowing as I
did, the Chevalier's treasonable leanings, there was ample cause for my
astonishment at finding him in such company. Apparently, too, he was
on very intimate terms with the Count, for in raising my glance I
had caught him in the act of leaning over to whisper familiarly in
Chatellerault's ear.
Their eyes--indeed, for that matter the eyes of the entire company--were
turned in my direction.
Perhaps it was not a surprising thing that Chatellerault should gaze
upon me in that curious fashion, for was it not probable that he had
heard that I was dead? Besides, the fact that I was without a sword, and
that at my side stood a King's officer, afforded evidence enough of
my condition, and well might Chatellerault stare at beholding me so
manifestly a prisoner.
Even as I watched him, he appeared to start at something that
Saint-Eustache was saying, and a curious change spread over his face.
Its whilom expression had been rather one of dismay; for, having
believed me dead, he no doubt accounted his wager won, whereas seeing me
alive had destroyed that pleasant conviction. But now it took on a look
of relief and of something that suggested malicious cunning.
“That,” said Castelroux in my ear, “is the King's commissioner.”
Did I not know it? I never waited to answer him, but, striding across
the room, I held out my hand over the table--to Chatellerault.
“My dear Comte,” I cried, “you are most choicely met.”
I would have added more, but there was something in his attitude that
silenced me. He had turned half from me, and stood now, hand on hip, his
great head thrown back and tilted towards his shoulder, his expression
one of freezing and disdainful wonder.
Now, if his attitude filled me with astonishment and apprehension,
consider how these feelings were heightened by his words.
“Monsieur de Lesperon, I can but express amazement at your effrontery.
If we have been acquainted in the past, do you think that is a
sufficient reason for me to take your hand now that you have placed
yourself in a position which renders it impossible for His Majesty's
loyal servants to know you?”
I fell back a pace, my mind scarce grasping yet the depths of this
inexplicable attitude.
“This to me, Chatellerault?” I gasped.
“To you?” he blazed, stirred to a sudden passion. “What else did you
expect, Monsieur de Lesperon?”
I had it in me to give him the lie, to denounce him then for a low,
swindling trickster. I understood all at once the meaning of this
wondrous make-believe. From Saint-Eustache he had gathered the mistake
there was, and for his wager's sake he would let the error prevail, and
hurry me to the scaffold. What else might I have expected from the man
that had lured me into such a wager--a wager which the knowledge he
possessed had made him certain of winning? Would he who had cheated at
the dealing of the cards neglect an opportunity to cheat again during
the progress of the game?
As I have said, I had it in my mind to cry out that he lied--that I was
not Lesperon; that he knew I was Bardelys. But the futility of such an
outcry came to me simultaneously with the thought of it. And, I fear
me, I stood before him and his satellites--the mocking Saint-Eustache
amongst them--a very foolish figure.
“There is no more to be said,” I murmured at last.
“But there is!” he retorted. “There is much more to be said. You shall
render yet an account of your treason, and I am afraid, my poor rebel,
that your comely head will part company with your shapely body. You and
I will meet at Toulouse. What more is to be said will be said in the
Tribunal there.”
A chill encompassed me. I was doomed, it seemed. This man, ruling the
province pending the King's arrival, would see to it that none came
forward to recognize me. He would expedite the comedy of my trial, and
close it with the tragedy of my execution. My professions of a mistake
of identity--if I wasted breath upon them would be treated with disdain
and disregarded utterly. God! What a position had I got myself into, and
what a vein of comedy ran through it--grim, tragic comedy, if you will,
yet comedy to all faith. The very woman whom I had wagered to wed had
betrayed me into the hands of the very man with whom I laid my wager.
But there was more in it than that. As I had told Mironsac that night in
Paris, when the thing had been initiated, it was a duel that was being
fought betwixt Chatellerault and me--a duel for supremacy in the King's
good graces. We were rivals, and he desired my removal from the Court.
To this end had he lured me into a bargain that should result in my
financial ruin, thereby compelling me to withdraw from the costly life
of the Luxembourg, and leaving him supreme, the sole and uncontested
recipient of our master's favour. Now into his hand Fate had thrust a
stouter weapon and a deadlier: a weapon which not only should make him
master of the wealth that I had pledged, but one whereby he might
remove me for all time, a thousandfold more effectively than the mere
encompassing of my ruin would have done.
I was doomed. I realized it fully and very bitterly.
I was to go out of the ways of men unnoticed and unmourned; as a rebel,
under the obscure name of another and bearing another's sins upon my
shoulders, I was to pass almost unheeded to the gallows. Bardelys the
Magnificent--the Marquis Marcel Saint-Pol de Bardelys, whose splendour
had been a byword in France--was to go out like a guttering candle.
The thought filled me with the awful frenzy that so often goes with
impotency, such a frenzy as the damned in hell may know. I forgot in
that hour my precept that under no conditions should a gentleman give
way to anger. In a blind access of fury I flung myself across the table
and caught that villainous cheat by the throat, before any there could
put out a hand to stop me.
He was a heavy man, if a short one, and the strength of his thick-set
frame was a thing abnormal. Yet at that moment such nervous power did
I gather from my rage, that I swung him from his feet as though he had
been the puniest weakling. I dragged him down on to the table, and there
I ground his face with a most excellent good-will and relish.
“You liar, you cheat, you thief!” I snarled like any cross-grained
mongrel. “The King shall hear of this, you knave! By God, he shall!”
They dragged me from him at last--those lapdogs that attended him--and
with much rough handling they sent me sprawling among the sawdust on
the floor. It is more than likely that but for Castelroux's intervention
they had made short work of me there and then.
But with a bunch of Mordieus, Sangdieus, and Po' Cap de Dieus, the
little Gascon flung himself before my prostrate figure, and bade them in
the King's name, and at their peril, to stand back.
Chatellerault, sorely shaken, his face purple, and with blood streaming
from his nostrils, had sunk into a chair. He rose now, and his first
words were incoherent, raging gasps.
“What is your name, sir?” he bellowed at last, addressing the Captain.
“Amedee de Mironsac de Castelroux, of Chateau Rouge in Gascony,”
answered my captor, with a grand manner and a flourish, and added, “Your
servant.”
“What authority have you to allow your prisoners this degree of
freedom?”
“I do not need authority, monsieur,” replied the Gascon.
“Do you not?” blazed the Count. “We shall see. Wait until I am in
Toulouse, my malapert friend.”
Castelroux drew himself up, straight as a rapier, his face slightly
flushed and his glance angry, yet he had the presence of mind to
restrain himself, partly at least.
“I have my orders from the Keeper of the Seals, to effect the
apprehension of Monsieur de Lesperon; and to deliver him up, alive or
dead, at Toulouse. So that I do this, the manner of it is my own affair,
and who presumes to criticize my methods censoriously impugns my honour
and affronts me. And who affronts me, monsieur, be he whosoever he may
be, renders me satisfaction. I beg that you will bear that circumstance
in mind.”
His moustaches bristled as he spoke, and altogether his air was very
fierce and truculent. For a moment I trembled for him. But the Count
evidently thought better of it than to provoke a quarrel, particularly
one in which he would be manifestly in the wrong, King's Commissioner
though he might be. There was an exchange of questionable compliments
betwixt the officer and the Count, whereafter, to avoid further
unpleasantness, Castelroux conducted me to a private room, where we took
our meal in gloomy silence.
It was not until an hour later, when we were again in the saddle
and upon the last stage of our journey, that I offered Castelroux an
explanation of my seemingly mad attack upon Chatellerault.
“You have done a very rash and unwise thing, monsieur,” he had commented
regretfully, and it was in answer to this that I poured out the whole
story. I had determined upon this course while we were supping, for
Castelroux was now my only hope, and as we rode beneath the stars of
that September night I made known to him my true identity.
I told him that Chatellerault knew me, and I informed him that a wager
lay between us--withholding the particulars of its nature--which had
brought me into Languedoc and into the position wherein he had found and
arrested me. At first he hesitated to believe me, but when at last I
had convinced him by the vehemence of my assurances as much as by
the assurances themselves, he expressed such opinions of the Comte de
Chatellerault as made my heart go out to him.
“You see, my dear Castelroux, that you are now my last hope,” I said.
“A forlorn one, my poor gentleman!” he groaned.
“Nay, that need not be. My intendant Rodenard and some twenty of my
servants should be somewhere betwixt this and Paris. Let them be sought
for monsieur, and let us pray God that they be still in Languedoc and
may be found in time.”
“It shall be done, monsieur, I promise you,” he answered me solemnly.
“But I implore you not to hope too much from it. Chatellerault has it in
his power to act promptly, and you may depend that he will waste no time
after what has passed.”
“Still, we may have two or three days, and in those days you must do
what you can, my friend.”
“You may depend upon me,” he promised.
“And meanwhile, Castelroux,” said I, “you will say no word of this to
any one.”
That assurance also he gave me, and presently the lights of our
destination gleamed out to greet us.
That night I lay in a dank and gloomy cell of the prison of Toulouse,
with never a hope to bear company during those dark, wakeful hours.
A dull rage was in my soul as I thought of my position, for it had not
needed Castelroux's recommendation to restrain me from building false
hopes upon his chances of finding Rodenard and my followers in time
to save me. Some little ray of consolation I culled, perhaps, from my
thoughts of Roxalanne. Out of the gloom of my cell my fancy fashioned
her sweet girl face and stamped it with a look of gentle pity, of
infinite sorrow for me and for the hand she had had in bringing me to
this.
That she loved me I was assured, and I swore that if I lived I would
win her yet, in spite of every obstacle that I myself had raised for my
undoing.