La Fosse led the way with me, his arm through mine, swearing that
he would be my second. He had such a stomach for a fight, had this
irresponsible, irrepressible rhymester, that it mounted to the heights
of passion with him, and when I mentioned, in answer to a hint dropped
in connection with the edict, that I had the King's sanction for this
combat, he was nearly mad with joy.
“Blood of La Fosse!” was his oath. “The honour to stand by you shall be
mine, my Bardelys! You owe it me, for am I not in part to blame for
all this ado? Nay, you'll not deny me. That gentleman yonder, with
the wild-cat moustaches and a name like a Gascon oath--that cousin of
Mironsac's, I mean--has the flair of a fight in his nostrils, and a
craving to be in it. But you'll grant me the honour, will you not?
Pardieu! It will earn me a place in history.”
“Or the graveyard,” quoth I, by way of cooling his ardour.
“Peste! What an augury!” Then, with a laugh: “But,” he added, indicating
Saint-Eustache, “that long, lean saint--I forget of what he is
patron--hardly wears a murderous air.”
To win peace from him, I promised that he should stand by me. But the
favour lost much of its value in his eyes when presently I added that
I did not wish the seconds to engage, since the matter was of so very
personal a character.
Mironsac and Castelroux, assisted by Saint-Eustache, closed the heavy
portecochere, and so shut us in from the observation of passers-by. The
clanging of those gates brought the landlord and a couple of his knaves,
and we were subjected to the prayers and intercessions, to the stormings
and ravings that are ever the prelude of a stable-yard fight, but which
invariably end, as these ended, in the landlord's withdrawal to run for
help to the nearest corps-de-garde.
“Now, my myrmillones,” cried La Fosse in bloodthirsty jubilation, “to
work before the host returns.”
“Po' Cap de Dieu!” growled Castelroux, “is this a time for jests, master
joker?”
“Jests?” I heard him retorting, as he assisted me to doff my doublet.
“Do I jest? Diable! you Gascons are a slow-witted folk! I have a taste
for allegory, my friend, but that never yet was accounted so low a thing
as jesting.”
At last we were ready, and I shifted the whole of my attention to the
short, powerful figure of Chatellerault as he advanced upon me, stripped
to the waist, his face set and his eyes full of stern resolve. Despite
his low stature, and the breadth of frame which argue sluggish motion,
there was something very formidable about the Count. His bared arms were
great masses of muscular flesh, and if his wrist were but half as
supple as it looked powerful, that alone should render him a dangerous
antagonist.
Yet I had no qualm of fear, no doubt, even, touching the issue. Not that
I was an habitual ferrailleur. As I have indicated, I had fought but one
man in all my life. Nor yet am I of those who are said to know no fear
under any circumstances. Such men are not truly brave; they are stupid
and unimaginative, in proof of which I will advance the fact that you
may incite a timid man to deeds of reckless valour by drugging him with
wine. But this is by the way. It may be that the very regular fencing
practice that in Paris I was wont to take may so have ordered my mind
that the fact of meeting unbaited steel had little power to move me.
Be that as it may, I engaged the Count without a tremor either of the
flesh or of the spirit. I was resolved to wait and let him open the
play, that I might have an opportunity of measuring his power and seeing
how best I might dispose of him. I was determined to do him no hurt,
and to leave him, as I had sworn, to the headsman; and so, either by
pressure or by seizure, it was my aim to disarm him.
But on his side also he entered upon the duel with all caution and
wariness. From his rage I had hoped for a wild, angry rush that should
afford me an easy opportunity of gaining my ends with him. Not so,
however. Now that he came with steel to defend his life and to seek
mine, he appeared to have realized the importance of having keen wits to
guide his hand; and so he put his anger from him, and emerged calm and
determined from his whilom disorder.
Some preliminary passes we made from the first engagement in the lines
of tierce, each playing warily for an opening, yet neither of us giving
ground or betraying haste or excitement. Now his blade slithered on
mine with a ceaseless tremor; his eyes watched mine from under lowering
brows, and with knees bent he crouched like a cat making ready for a
spring. Then it came. Sudden as lightning was his disengage; he
darted under my guard, then over it, then back and under it again, and
stretching out in the lunge--his double-feint completed--he straightened
his arm to drive home the botte.
But with a flying point I cleared his blade out of the line of my
body. There had been two sharp tinkles of our meeting swords, and now
Chatellerault stood at his fullest stretch, the half of his steel past
and behind me, for just a fraction of time completely at my mercy. Yet
I was content to stand, and never move my blade from his until he had
recovered and we were back in our first position once again.
I heard the deep bass of Castelroux's “Mordieux!” the sharp gasp of
fear from Saint-Eustache, who already in imagination beheld his friend
stretched lifeless on the ground, and the cry of mortification from La
Fosse as the Count recovered. But I heeded these things little. As
I have said, to kill the Count was not my object. It had been wise,
perhaps, in Chatellerault to have appreciated that fact; but he did not.
From the manner in which he now proceeded to press me, I was assured
that he set his having recovered guard to slowness on my part, never
thinking of the speed that had been necessary to win myself such an
opening as I had obtained.
My failure to run him through in that moment of jeopardy inspired
him with a contempt of my swordplay. This he now made plain by the
recklessness with which he fenced, in his haste to have done ere we
might chance to be interrupted. Of this recklessness I suddenly availed
myself to make an attempt at disarming him. I turned aside a vicious
thrust by a close--a dangerously close--parry, and whilst in the act of
encircling his blade I sought by pressure to carry it out of his hand. I
was within an ace of succeeding, yet he avoided me, and doubled back.
He realized then, perhaps, that I was not quite so contemptible an
antagonist as he had been imagining, and he went back to his earlier and
more cautious tactics. Then I changed my plans. I simulated an attack,
and drove him hard for some moments. Strong he was, but there were
advantages of reach and suppleness with me, and even these advantages
apart, had I aimed at his life, I could have made short work of him. But
the game I played was fraught with perils to myself, and once I was
in deadly danger, and as near death from the sword as a man may go and
live. My attack had lured him, as I desired that it should, into making
a riposte. He did so, and as his blade twisted round mine and came
slithering at me, I again carried it off by encircling it, and again I
exerted pressure to deprive him of it. But this time I was farther from
success than before. He laughed at the attempt, as with a suddenness
that I had been far from expecting he disengaged again, and his point
darted like a snake upwards at my throat.
I parried that thrust, but I only parried it when it was within some
three inches of my neck, and even as I turned it aside it missed me as
narrowly as it might without tearing my skin. The imminence of the
peril had been such that, as we mutually recovered, I found a cold sweat
bathing me.
After that, I resolved to abandon the attempt to disarm him by pressure,
and I turned my attention to drawing him into a position that might lend
itself to seizure. But even as I was making up my mind to this--we were
engaged in sixte at the time--I saw a sudden chance. His point was held
low while he watched me; so low that his arm was uncovered and my point
was in line with it. To see the opening, to estimate it, and to take my
resolve was all the work of a fraction of a second. The next instant I
had straightened my elbow, my blade shot out in a lightning stroke and
transfixed his sword-arm.
There was a yell of pain, followed by a deep growl of fury, as, wounded
but not vanquished, the enraged Count caught his falling sword in his
left hand, and whilst my own blade was held tight in the bone of his
right arm, he sought to run me through. I leapt quickly aside, and then,
before he could renew the attempt, my friends had fallen upon him and
wrenched his sword from his hand and mine from his arm.
It would ill have become me to taunt a man in his sorry condition, else
might I now have explained to him what I had meant when I had promised
to leave him for the headsman even though I did consent to fight him.
Mironsac, Castelroux, and La Fosse stood babbling around me, but I paid
no heed either to Castelroux's patois or to La Fosse's misquotations of
classic authors. The combat had been protracted, and the methods I had
pursued had been of a very exhausting nature. I leaned now against the
porte-cochere, and mopped myself vigorously. Then Saint-Eustache, who
was engaged in binding up his principal's arm, called to La Fosse.
I followed my second with my eyes as he went across to Chatellerault.
The Count stood white, his lips compressed, no doubt from the pain his
arm was causing him. Then his voice floated across to me as he addressed
La Fosse.
“You will do me the favour, monsieur, to inform your friend that this
was no first blood combat, but one a outrance. I fence as well with my
left arm as with my right, and if Monsieur de Bardelys will do me the
honour to engage again, I shall esteem it.”
La Fosse bowed and came over with the message that already we had heard.
“I fought,” said I in answer, “in a spirit very different from that by
which Monsieur de Chatellerault appears to have been actuated. He made
it incumbent upon me to afford proof of my courage. That proof I have
afforded; I decline to do more. Moreover, as Monsieur de Chatellerault
himself must perceive, the light is failing us, and in a few minutes it
will be too dark for sword-play.”
“In a few minutes there will be need for none, monsieur,” shouted
Chatellerault, to save time. He was boastful to the end.
“Here, monsieur, in any case, come those who will resolve the question,”
I answered, pointing to the door of the inn.
As I spoke, the landlord stepped into the yard, followed by an officer
and a half-dozen soldiers. These were no ordinary keepers of the peace,
but musketeers of the guard, and at sight of them I knew that their
business was not to interrupt a duel, but to arrest my erstwhile
opponent upon a much graver charge.
The officer advanced straight to Chatellerault.
“In the King's name, Monsieur le Comte,” said he. “I demand your sword.”
It may be that at bottom I was still a man of soft heart, unfeeling
cynic though they accounted me; for upon remarking the misery and
gloom that spread upon Chatellerault's face I was sorry for him,
notwithstanding the much that he had schemed against me. Of what
his fate would be he could have no shadow of doubt. He knew--none
better--how truly the King loved me, and how he would punish such
an attempt as had been made upon my life, to say nothing of the
prostitution of justice of which he had been guilty, and for which alone
he had earned the penalty of death.
He stood a moment with bent head, the pain of his arm possibly forgotten
in the agony of his spirit. Then, straightening himself suddenly, with
a proud, half scornful air, he looked the officer straight between the
eyes.
“You desire my sword, monsieur?” he inquired.
The musketeer bowed respectfully.
“Saint-Eustache, will you do me the favour to give it to me?”
And while the Chevalier picked up the rapier from the ground where it
had been flung, that man waited with an outward calm for which at the
moment I admired him, as we must ever admire a tranquil bearing in one
smitten by a great adversity. And than this I can conceive few
greater. He had played for much, and he had lost everything. Ignominy,
degradation, and the block were all that impended for him in this world,
and they were very imminent.
He took the sword from the Chevalier. He held it for a second by the
hilt, like one in thought, like one who is resolving upon something,
whilst the musketeer awaited his good pleasure with that deference which
all gentle minds must accord to the unfortunate.
Still holding his rapier, he raised his eyes for a second and let them
rest on me with a grim malevolence. Then he uttered a short laugh, and,
shrugging his shoulders, he transferred his grip to the blade, as if
about to offer the hilt to the officer. Holding it so, halfway betwixt
point and quillons, he stepped suddenly back, and before any there could
put forth a hand to stay him, he had set the pummel on the ground and
the point at his breast, and so dropped upon it and impaled himself.
A cry went up from every throat, and we sprang towards him. He rolled
over on his side, and with a grin of exquisite pain, yet in words of
unconquerable derision “You may have my sword now, Monsieur l'Officier,”
he said, and sank back, swooning.
With an oath, the musketeer stepped forward. He obeyed Chatellerault to
the letter, by kneeling beside him and carefully withdrawing the sword.
Then he ordered a couple of his men to take up the body.
“Is he dead?” asked some one; and some one else replied, “Not yet, but
he soon will be.”
Two of the musketeers bore him into the inn and laid him on the floor of
the very room in which, an hour or so ago, he had driven a bargain with
Roxalanne. A cloak rolled into a pillow was thrust under his head,
and there we left him in charge of his captors, the landlord,
Saint-Eustache, and La Fosse the latter inspired, I doubt not, by that
morbidity which is so often a feature of the poetic mind, and which
impelled him now to witness the death-agony of my Lord of Chatellerault.
Myself, having resumed my garments, I disposed myself to repair at once
to the Hotel de l'Epee, there to seek Roxalanne, that I might set her
fears and sorrows at rest, and that I might at last make my confession.
As we stepped out into the street, where the dusk was now thickening,
I turned to Castelroux to inquire how Saint-Eustache came into
Chatellerault's company.
“He is of the family of the Iscariot, I should opine,” answered the
Gascon. “As soon as he had news that Chatellerault was come to Languedoc
as the King's Commissioner, he repaired to him to offer his services
in the work of bringing rebels to justice. He urged that his thorough
acquaintance with the province should render him of value to the King,
as also that he had had particular opportunities of becoming acquainted
with many treasonable dealings on the part of men whom the State was far
from suspecting.”
“Mort Dieu!” I cried, “I had suspected something of such a nature. You
do well to call him of the family of the Iscariot. He is more so than
you imagine: I have knowledge of this--ample knowledge. He was
until lately a rebel himself, and himself a follower of Gaston
d'Orleans--though of a lukewarm quality. What reasons have driven him to
such work, do you know?”
“The same reason that impelled his forefather, Judas of old. The desire
to enrich himself. For every hitherto unsuspected rebel that shall be
brought to justice and whose treason shall be proven by his agency, he
claims the half of that rebel's confiscated estates.”
“Diable!” I exclaimed. “And does the Keeper of the Seals sanction this?”
“Sanction it? Saint-Eustache holds a commission, has a free hand and a
company of horse to follow him in his rebel-hunting.”
“Has he done much so far?” was my next question.
“He has reduced half a dozen noblemen and their families. The wealth he
must thereby have amassed should be very considerable, indeed.”
“To-morrow, Castelroux, I will see the King in connection with this
pretty gentleman, and not only shall we find him a dungeon deep and
dank, but we shall see that he disgorges his blood-money.”
“If you can prove his treason you will be doing blessed work,” returned
Castelroux. “Until tomorrow, then, for here is the Hotel de l'Epee.”
From the broad doorway of an imposing building a warm glow of light
issued out and spread itself fanwise across the ill-paved street.
In this--like bats about a lamp--flitted the black figures of gaping
urchins and other stragglers, and into this I now passed, having taken
leave of my companions.
I mounted the steps and I was about to cross the threshold, when
suddenly above a burst of laughter that greeted my ears I caught the
sound of a singularly familiar voice. This seemed raised at present to
address such company as might be within. One moment of doubt had I--for
it was a month since last I had heard those soft, unctuous accents.
Then I was assured that the voice I heard was, indeed, the voice of
my steward Ganymede. Castelroux's messenger had found him at last, it
seemed, and had brought him to Toulouse.
I was moved to spring into the room and greet that old retainer for
whom, despite the gross and sensuous ways that with advancing years were
claiming him more and more, I had a deep attachment. But even as I was
on the point of entering, not only his voice, but the very words that
he was uttering floated out to my ears, and they were of a quality that
held me there to play the hidden listener for the second time in my life
in one and the same day.