“For me,” said the King, “these depositions were not necessary. Your
word, my dear Marcel, would have sufficed. For the courts, however,
perhaps it is well that you have had them taken; moreover, they form
a valuable corroboration of the treason which you lay to the charge of
Monsieur de Saint-Eustache.”
We were standing--at least, La Fosse and I were standing, Louis XIII
sat--in a room, of the Palace of Toulouse, where I had had the honour of
being brought before His Majesty. La Fosse was there, because it would
seem that the King had grown fond of him, and could not be without him
since his coming to Toulouse.
His Majesty was, as usual, so dull and weary--not even roused by the
approaching trial of Montmorency, which was the main business that had
brought him South that even the company of this vapid, shallow, but
irrepressibly good-humoured La Fosse, with his everlasting mythology,
proved a thing desirable.
“I will see,” said Louis, “that your friend the Chevalier is placed
under arrest at once, and as much for his attempt upon your life as for
the unstable quality of his political opinions, the law shall deal
with him--conclusively.” He sighed. “It always pains me to proceed to
extremes against a man of his stamp. To deprive a fool of his head seems
a work of supererogation.”
I inclined my head, and smiled at his pleasantry. Louis the just rarely
permitted himself to jest, and when he did his humour was as like unto
humour as water is like unto wine. Still, when a monarch jests, if you
are wise, if you have a favour to sue, or a position at Court to seek or
to maintain, you smile, for all that the ineptitude of his witless wit
be rather provocative of sorrow.
“Nature needs meddling with at times,” hazarded La Fosse, from behind
His Majesty's chair. “This Saint-Eustache is a sort of Pandora's box,
which it is well to close ere--”
“Go to the devil,” said the King shortly. “We are not jesting. We have
to do justice.”
“Ah! Justice,” murmured La Fosse; “I have seen pictures of the lady.
She covers her eyes with a bandage, but is less discreet where the other
beauties of her figure are in question.”
His Majesty blushed. He was above all things a chaste-minded man, modest
as a nun. To the immodesty rampant about him he was in the habit of
closing his eyes and his ears, until the flagrancy or the noise of it
grew to proportions to which he might remain neither blind nor deaf.
“Monsieur de la Fosse,” said he in an austere voice, “you weary me, and
when people weary me I send them away--which is one of the reasons why
I am usually so much alone. I beg that you will glance at that
hunting-book, so that when I have done with Monsieur de Bardelys you may
give me your impressions of it.”
La Fosse fell back, obedient but unabashed, and, moving to a table by
the window, he opened the book Louis had pointed out.
“Now, Marcel, while that buffoon prepares to inform me that the book has
been inspired by Diana herself, tell me what else you have to tell.”
“Naught else, Sire.”
“How naught? What of this Vicomte de Lavedan.”
“Surely Your Majesty is satisfied that there is no charge--no heedful
charge against him?”
“Aye, but there is a charge--a very heedful one. And so far you have
afforded me no proofs of his innocence to warrant my sanctioning his
enlargement.”
“I had thought, Sire, that it would be unnecessary to advance proofs of
his innocence until there were proofs of his guilt to be refuted. It
is unusual, Your Majesty, to apprehend a gentleman so that he may show
cause why he did not deserve such apprehension. The more usual course
is to arrest him because there are proofs of his guilt to be preferred
against him.”
Louis combed his beard pensively, and his melancholy eyes grew
thoughtful.
“A nice point, Marcel,” said he, and he yawned. “A nice point. You
should have been a lawyer.” Then, with an abrupt change of manner, “Do
you give me your word of honour that he is innocent?” he asked sharply.
“If Your Majesty's judges offer proof of his guilt, I give you my word
that I will tear that proof to pieces.”
“That is not an answer. Do you swear his innocence?”
“Do I know what he carries in his conscience?” quoth I still fencing
with the question. “How can I give my word in such a matter? Ah, Sire,
it is not for nothing that they call you Louis the Just,” I pursued,
adopting cajolery and presenting him with his own favourite phrase. “You
will never allow a man against whom there is no shred of evidence to be
confined in prison.”
“Is there not?” he questioned. Yet his tone grew gentler. History, he
had promised himself, should know him as Louis the Just, and he would
do naught that might jeopardize his claim to that proud title. “There is
the evidence of this Saint-Eustache!”
“Would Your Majesty hang a dog upon the word of that double traitor?”
“Hum! You are a great advocate, Marcel. You avoid answering questions;
you turn questions aside by counter-questions.” He seemed to be talking
more to himself than tome. “You are a much better advocate than
the Vicomte's wife, for instance. She answers questions and has a
temper--Ciel! what a temper!”
“You have seen the Vicomtesse?” I exclaimed, and I grew cold with
apprehension, knowing as I did the licence of that woman's tongue.
“Seen her?” he echoed whimsically. “I have seen her, heard her,
well-nigh felt her. The air of this room is still disturbed as a
consequence of her presence. She was here an hour ago.”
“And it seemed,” lisped La Fosse, turning from his hunting-book, “as if
the three daughters of Acheron had quitted the domain of Pluto to take
embodiment in a single woman.”
“I would not have seen her,” the King resumed as though La Fosse had not
spoken, “but she would not be denied. I heard her voice blaspheming in
the antechamber when I refused to receive her; there was a commotion at
my door; it was dashed open, and the Swiss who held it was hurled
into my room here as though he had been a mannikin. Dieu! Since I have
reigned in France I have not been the centre of so much commotion. She
is a strong woman, Marcel the saints defend you hereafter, when she
shall come to be your mother-in-law. In all France, I'll swear, her
tongue is the only stouter thing than her arm. But she's a fool.”
“What did she say, Sire?” I asked in my anxiety.
“Say? She swore--Ciel! how she did swear! Not a saint in the calendar
would she let rest in peace; she dragged them all by turns from their
chapter-rolls to bear witness to the truth of what she said.”
“That was--”
“That her husband was the foulest traitor out of hell. But that he was a
fool with no wit of his own to make him accountable for what he did, and
that out of folly he had gone astray. Upon those grounds she besought
me to forgive him and let him go. When I told her that he must stand his
trial, and that I could offer her but little hope of his acquittal,
she told me things about myself, which in my conceit, and thanks to you
flatterers who have surrounded me, I had never dreamed.
“She told me I was ugly, sour-faced, and malformed; that I was
priest-ridden and a fool; unlike my brother, who, she assured me, is a
mirror of chivalry and manly perfections. She promised me that Heaven
should never receive my soul, though I told my beads from now till
Doomsday, and she prophesied for me a welcome among the damned when my
time comes. What more she might have foretold I cannot say. She wearied
me at last, for all her novelty, and I dismissed her--that is to say,”
he amended, “I ordered four musketeers to carry her out. God pity you,
Marcel, when you become her daughter's husband!”
But I had no heart to enter into his jocularity. This woman with her
ungovernable passion and her rash tongue had destroyed everything.
“I see no likelihood of being her daughter's husband,” I answered
mournfully.
The King looked up, and laughed. “Down on your knees, then,” said he,
“and render thanks to Heaven.”
But I shook my head very soberly. “To Your Majesty it is a pleasing
comedy,” said I, “but to me, helas! it is nearer far to tragedy.”
“Come, Marcel,” said he, “may I not laugh a little? One grows so sad
with being King of France! Tell me what vexes you.”
“Mademoiselle de Lavedan has promised that she will marry me only when
I have saved her father from the scaffold. I came to do it, very full of
hope, Sire. But his wife has forestalled me and, seemingly, doomed him
irrevocably.”
His glance fell; his countenance resumed its habitual gloom. Then he
looked up again, and in the melancholy depths of his eyes I saw a gleam
of something that was very like affection.
“You know that I love you, Marcel,” he said gently. “Were you my own son
I could not love you more. You are a profligate, dissolute knave, and
your scandals have rung in my ears more than once; yet you are different
from these other fools, and at least you have never wearied me. To have
done that is to have done something. I would not lose you, Marcel; as
lose you I shall if you marry this rose of Languedoc, for I take it
that she is too sweet a flower to let wither in the stale atmosphere
of Courts. This man, this Vicomte de Lavedan, has earned his death. Why
should I not let him die, since if he dies you will not wed?”
“Do you ask me why, Sire?” said I. “Because they call you Louis the
Just, and because no king was ever more deserving of the title.”
He winced; he pursed his lips, and shot a glance at La Fosse, who was
deep in the mysteries of his volume. Then he drew towards him a sheet of
paper, and, taking a quill, he sat toying with it.
“Because they call me the Just, I must let justice take its course,” he
answered presently.
“But,” I objected, with a sudden hope, “the course of justice cannot
lead to the headsman in the case of the Vicomte de Lavedan.”
“Why not?” And his solemn eyes met mine across the table.
“Because he took no active part in the revolt. If he was a traitor, he
was no more than a traitor at heart, and until a man commits a crime
in deed he is not amenable to the law's rigour. His wife has made his
defection clear; but it were unfair to punish him in the same measure as
you punish those who bore arms against you, Sire.”
“Ah!” he pondered. “Well? What more?”
“Is that not enough, Sire?” I cried. My heart beat quickly, and my
pulses throbbed with the suspense of that portentous moment.
He bent his head, dipped his pen and began to write.
“What punishment would you have me mete out to him?” he asked as he
wrote. “Come, Marcel, deal fairly with me, and deal fairly with him--for
as you deal with him, so shall I deal with you through him.”
I felt myself paling in my excitement. “There is banishment, Sire--it
is usual in cases of treason that are not sufficiently flagrant to be
punished by death.”
“Yes!” He wrote busily. “Banishment for how long, Marcel? For his
lifetime?”
“Nay, Sire. That were too long.”
“For my lifetime, then?”
“Again that were too long.”
He raised his eyes and smiled. “Ah! You turn prophet? Well, for how
long, then? Come, man.”
“I should think five years--”
“Five years be it. Say no more.”
He wrote on for a few moments; then he raised the sandbox and sprinkled
the document.
“Tiens!” he cried, as he dusted it and held it out to me. “There is my
warrant for the disposal of Monsieur le Vicomte Leon de Lavedan. He is
to go into banishment for five years, but his estates shall suffer no
sequestration, and at the end of that period he may return and enjoy
them--we hope with better loyalty than in the past. Get them to execute
that warrant at once, and see that the Vicomte starts to-day under
escort for Spain. It will also be your warrant to Mademoiselle de
Lavedan, and will afford proof to her that your mission has been
successful.”
“Sire!” I cried. And in my gratitude I could say no more, but I sank on
my knee before him and raised his hand to my lips.
“There,” said he in a fatherly voice. “Go now, and be happy.”
As I rose, he suddenly put up his hand.
“Ma foi, I had all but forgotten, so much has Monsieur de Lavedan's fate
preoccupied us.” He picked up another paper from his table, and tossed
it to me. It was my note of hand to Chatellerault for my Picardy
estates.
“Chatellerault died this morning,” the King pursued. “He had been asking
to see you, but when he was told that you had left Toulouse, he dictated
a long confession of his misdeeds, which he sent to me together with
this note of yours. He could not, he wrote, permit his heirs to enjoy
your estates; he had not won them; he had really forfeited his own
stakes, since he had broken the rules of play. He has left me to deliver
judgment in the matter of his own lands passing into your possession.
What do you say to it, Marcel?”
It was almost with reluctance that I took up that scrap of paper. It had
been so fine and heroic a thing to have cast my wealth to the winds of
heaven for love's sake, that on my soul I was loath to see myself master
of more than Beaugency. Then a compromise suggested itself.
“The wager, Sire,” said I, “is one that I take shame in having entered
upon; that shame made me eager to pay it, although fully conscious that
I had not lost. But even now, I cannot, in any case, accept the forfeit
Chatellerault was willing to suffer. Shall we--shall we forget that the
wager was ever laid?”
“The decision does you honour. It was what I had hoped from you. Go now,
Marcel. I doubt me you are eager. When your love-sickness wanes a little
we shall hope to see you at Court again.”
I sighed. “Helas, Sire, that would be never.”
“So you said once before, monsieur. It is a foolish spirit upon which
to enter into matrimony; yet--like many follies--a fine one. Adieu,
Marcel!”
“Adieu, Sire!”
I had kissed his hands; I had poured forth my thanks; I had reached the
door already, and he was in the act of turning to La Fosse, when it came
into my head to glance at the warrant he had given me. He noticed this
and my sudden halt.
“Is aught amiss?” he asked.
“You-you have omitted something, Sire,” I ventured, and I returned
to the table. “I am already so grateful that I hesitate to ask an
additional favour. Yet it is but troubling you to add a few strokes of
the pen, and it will not materially affect the sentence itself.”
He glanced at me, and his brows drew together as he sought to guess my
meaning.
“Well, man, what is it?” he demanded impatiently.
“It has occurred to me that this poor Vicomte, in a strange land, alone,
among strange faces, missing the loved ones that for so many years he
has seen daily by his side, will be pitiably lonely.”
The King's glance was lifted suddenly to my face. “Must I then banish
his family as well?”
“All of it will not be necessary, Your Majesty.”
For once his eyes lost their melancholy, and as hearty a burst of
laughter as ever I heard from that poor, weary gentleman he vented then.
“Ciel! what a jester you are! Ah, but I shall miss you!” he cried, as,
seizing the pen, he added the word I craved of him.
“Are you content at last?” he asked, returning the paper to me.
I glanced at it. The warrant now stipulated that Madame la Vicomtesse de
Lavedan should bear her husband company in his exile.
“Sire, you are too good!” I murmured.
“Tell the officer to whom you entrust the execution of this warrant
that he will find the lady in the guardroom below, where she is being
detained, pending my pleasure. Did she but know that it was your
pleasure she has been waiting upon, I should tremble for your future
when the five years expire.”