At the sight of the two men, the ruffians at the table set up a roar of
welcome and bumped their mugs lustily upon the board to a chorus of
greeting, in which the names of Cocardasse and Passepoil were repeated in
a variety of accents from German to Italian, from Portuguese to Biscayan,
from Spanish to Breton, but in all cases with the same degree of
enthusiasm and admiration. The big, gaudy fellow, patently pleased by the
tribute, struck a magnificent attitude and extended a benedictory hand
towards the drinkers. "Courage, chanticleers!" he shouted--"comrades
all," and, advancing towards the table, gave Staupitz a lusty slap on the
back, while Passepoil, following nervously behind him, whispered beneath
his breath and behind his lifted hand a timid "Greeting, gentlemen,"
which was hardly audible in the buzz of voices. But while Cocardasse was
busy engaging clasps of the hand with the men of many nationalities who
had been waiting for him, the attention of Passepoil was entirely
diverted by the appearance of the Inn maid, Martine, who at that moment
appeared upon the scene with a fresh pitcher of wine in honor of the
fresh arrivals. The lean and pale man blushed and sighed as he saw her.
Those in the room that knew the Norman were well aware that love of woman
was his weakness, and they paid no heed to his attempted philandering,
taking it, so far as they thought of it at all, as a matter of course and
honest Passepoil's way.
Though Martine was as little comely as need be, she was still a woman,
and a woman Passepoil had never seen before, and, sidling towards her, he
endeavored to enter into amicable conversation, which was received but
indifferently well. By this time Cocardasse had finished his greetings,
and, drawing back a step or two, surveyed the company with a look of
satisfaction not unmingled with astonishment.
"Why, Papa Staupitz," he said, "here we have many friends and all fine
blades. This is indeed a pleasure party." His eyes travelled from the
table to the window, where the man in black still sat and read quite
unconcernedly. Something like surprise puckered Cocardasse's rubicund
face. "You here, Æsop?" he questioned.
The man whom he called Æsop looked up for a moment from his book and
shrugged his shoulders. "Devil knows why!" he said. "If they want me,
they don't want the others. If they want the others, they don't want
me."
His remarks were interrupted by a slight scuffle between Passepoil and
Martine. Passepoil had so far conquered his natural timidity as to go to
the length of soliciting a kiss from the Inn maid. She had successfully
repulsed him with a slap on each of his cheeks, and had slipped from the
room. While Passepoil was rubbing his face ruefully, Æsop went on,
sardonically:
"What do you think of it, friend Cocardasse? Here we are, nine of us,
nine picked swordsmen, and we are going to fight one man."
Cocardasse had returned to the table and filled himself a monstrous
measure of wine. He was thirsty, an habitual state with him, and he eyed
the rough wine lovingly.
"Who is the giant who is going to fight nine of us?" he asked as he
lifted his cup from the board.
Passepoil, who, enjoying like his comrade an abiding drought, had
followed his example, hoping to find consolation in wine for the
disappointments of love, also expressed his surprise.
"Every man of us can fight three men at a time," he whispered, timidly,
and he, too, lifted his glass.
"Who is the man, anyhow?" said Cocardasse, cheerfully, making the wine
swing in the vessel; and Staupitz answered him, slowly:
"Louis, Duke of Nevers."
The effect of this simple speech upon the new-comers was exceedingly
remarkable. Cocardasse seemed suddenly to forget his thirst, for he set
down his untasted mug upon the table. Passepoil did the like. "Oh!" said
Cocardasse, solemnly. "Ah!" said Passepoil, gloomily.
For a few appreciable seconds of strained excitement to those that
watched them the pair remained rigid, staring at their rejected
wine-cups, as if the liquor they contained had some monstrous Medusa-like
property of stiffening into stone all those that presumed to drink of it.
Then the Gascon, slowly turning his head, gazed steadfastly at the
Norman; and the Norman, slowly turning his head, gazed steadfastly at the
Gascon, and then the pair, so gazing, both wagged their polls very
solemnly indeed, and puckered their eyebrows and betrayed many other very
visible signs of dissatisfaction, not to say of discomfort. Then
Cocardasse muttered to his comrade the words "Louis de Nevers," as if
they were not at all to his liking, and Passepoil, in his turn, repeated
the words, as if they were not at all to his liking, and then they both
sighed and grunted and were silent.
The look of stupefaction, not to say consternation, on the faces of the
new arrivals was patent to every man in the room--most patent and most
unpalatable to the leader of the gang. Staupitz thrust his red, Teutonic
face forward with a mocking look and a mocking voice as he grunted:
"Seems to me you don't relish the job."
Cocardasse nodded at him with perfect affability, and patted his shoulder
with a massive, red hand. "Papa Staupitz," he said, good-humoredly, "you
read me like a book."
"In the largest print," added Passepoil, who generally supplemented any
remark of his comrade with some approving comment of his own.
Staupitz swung round in his chair, upsetting a tankard in his angry
movement, as he glared, all rage, at the strangely assorted pair. "Are
you afraid?" he asked, with guttural contempt.
Cocardasse grinned and showed his large, dog-like teeth. "I am not afraid
of you, Papa Staupitz," he said, quite cheerfully, "nor of any man in
this room, nor of all the men in this room."
Passepoil added, stammering in his speech, blinking his pink eyelids
rapidly: "If any gentleman doubts the point, there is a pleasant bit of
kitchen garden outside where we can adjourn and argue the matter
pleasantly together, as gentlemen should."
Nobody present seemed inclined to pick a quarrel either with the
ebullient Gascon or the hesitating Norman. The six bullies at the table
knew well enough, and savage, masterful Æsop at the window knew well
enough, that the swaggering Gascon was the first fencing-master in Paris,
and that his colleague, the Norman, for all his air of ineffable
timidity, was only second to him in skill with the weapon and readiness
to use it. There was a moment's silence, and then Cocardasse observed:
"I'm afraid of just two men in the world."
"The same with me," added Passepoil, humbly.
Cocardasse resumed his interrupted speech: "And one of them is Louis de
Nevers."
Staupitz's puzzled, angry face travelled round the room, ranging over the
Gascon, the Norman, the Spaniard, the Portuguese, the Biscayan, the
Breton, and the hunchback. "Thunder and weather!" he cried; "is not nine
to one good enough odds for you?"
The others, with the exception of Æsop, who still seemed to read as
peacefully in his book as if he were alone in the room, appeared inclined
to applaud the question of their chief, but Cocardasse was not in the
least impressed by the retort. He replied to Staupitz's query with
another--"Have you never heard of the secret thrust of Nevers?"
A new silence seemed to fall upon the company, and for the second time
since the Gascon and the Norman had entered the room the hunchback took a
part in the conversation, closing his book as he did so, but carefully
keeping a finger between the pages to mark the place. "I don't believe in
secret thrusts," he said, decisively.
The Gascon moved a little away from Staupitz and a little nearer to Æsop,
whom he looked at fixedly. The hunchback sustained his gaze with his
habitual air of cold indifference. Cocardasse spoke: "You will, if you
ever face Louis de Nevers. Now, Passepoil, here, and I, we are, I
believe, held in general repute as pretty good swordsmen--"
Passepoil interrupted, stuttering furiously in his excitement: "But he
touched us with that secret thrust in our own school in Paris--"
Cocardasse completed his friend's statement: "Three times, here on the
forehead, just between the eyes."
Passepoil labored his point: "Devil take us if we could find a parry for
it."
Cocardasse summed up his argument, gloomily: "They say it has never been
parried, never will be parried."
Again an awkward silence reigned. With a shrug of his shoulders, Æsop
resumed his studies, finding Aretino more diverting than such nonsense.
Breton stared at Teuton; Italian interrogated Spaniard; Portuguese
questioned Biscayan. The affairs of the party seemed to be at a
dead-lock. The fact was that Staupitz and his little band of babies, as
he was pleased to call them, were not really of the same social standing
in the world of cutthroats as Gascon Cocardasse and Norman Passepoil.
Cocardasse and his companion were recognized fencing-masters in Paris,
well esteemed, if not of the highest note, whereas Staupitz was no better
than an ordinary bully-broker, and his so-styled children no more than
provincial rascallions. It was not for them, and they knew it, to display
such knowledge of the great world as might be aired by Cocardasse and
Passepoil, and when Cocardasse spoke with so much significance about the
thrust of Nevers, and questioned them with so much insistence about the
thrust of Nevers, it was plain that he spoke from the brimmings of a
wisdom richer than their own. Staupitz, who was in some sense a son of
Paris, if only an adopted son, and that, indeed, by process of
self-adoption, knew enough of Olympian matters to be aware that there was
an illustrious gentleman that was Duke of Nevers, whom he was equally
willing to aid with his sword or slay with his sword, if occasion served.
Now occasion seemed to demand that Staupitz should follow the latter
course. He was employed to kill somebody, and Æsop had assured him that
this somebody was Louis, Duke de Nevers. Staupitz had not cared who it
was; it was all one to him, but honestly he was troubled now by the
patent trouble of Cocardasse and his ominous mutterings about the thrust
of Nevers.
Passepoil broke the silence, surveying the puzzled faces around him. "No
wonder there's such a crowd of us." And for the first time there was
something like the sound of audacity in his voice and a glance of
audacity on his visage.
"Faith," said Cocardasse, emphatically, "I'd rather face an army than
face Louis de Nevers."
Again there was a silence. The gentlemen of the sword seemed to be at a
loss for conversation. Again Passepoil broke the silence, this time with
a question: "Why are we after Louis de Nevers?"
Nobody seemed to be able to answer him. Even Staupitz, who was
responsible to the others for this gathering of the company, was baffled.
He had been told to supply nine swords, and he had supplied them. He had
been told by his employer the purpose for which the nine swords were
wanted--he had been told by Æsop against whom those nine swords were to
be drawn--and that was the extent of his knowledge. This time the
hunchback, in his favorite character of know-all, took the lead. He put
his book in his pocket, as if he perceived that further study was to be
denied him that afternoon, with so much noise and bustle of curiosity
about him, and rose from his chair. Holding his long rapier behind his
back with both his hands, he advanced into the middle of the room, where
he proceeded to harangue his fellow-guardsmen.
"I can tell you," he said, harshly, "if you would care to hear the
story."
Now bravos, swashbucklers, spadassins, and such soldiers of fortune are
like children in this regard--as indeed in many another--that they love a
good yarn well spun. If something in the dominating, masterful manner of
Æsop compelled their attention, something also in the malicious smile
that twitched his lips seemed to promise plenitude of entertainment. A
grave quiet settled upon the ragamuffins, their sunburned faces were
turned eagerly towards the hunchback, their wild eyes studied his mocking
face; they waited in patience upon his pleasure. Pleased with the
humility of his audience, Æsop began his narrative.
"There are," he said, "now living three noble gentlemen in the first
flush of youth, in the first flight of greatness, young, handsome,
brilliant, more like brothers than friends. They are known in the noble
world of the court as the three Louis, because by a curious chance each
of these splendid gentlemen carries Louis for a Christian name. Humorists
have been known to speak of them as the three Louis d'or. The first is
none other than our good king's person, Louis of Bourbon, thirteenth
monarch of his name; the second is Louis, Duke of Nevers; the third is
his cousin, Louis of Mantua, Prince of Gonzague."
He paused for a moment, looking with the satisfaction of a tale-teller at
the expectant faces before him, and as he paused an approving murmur from
his audience urged him to continue. Æsop resumed his narration.
"You will ask how the Italianate Mantuan comes to be a cousin of our
French Nevers, and I will tell you. Nevers's father, Louis de Nevers, the
twelfth duke, had a very beautiful sister, who was foolish enough, or
wise enough, as you may choose to take it, to fall in love with a needy
Italian nobleman that came adventuring to Paris in the hope of making a
rich marriage. He made a rich marriage, or perhaps it would be more
accurate to say that he thought he made a rich marriage. He married
Mademoiselle de Nevers."
Again Æsop halted, employing one of the familiar devices of rhetoricians,
who lure their hearers to keener interest by such judicious pauses in the
course of their exposition. The listening ruffians were as attentive as
babes at a day-school, and Æsop, with a hideous distortion of his
features, which he intended for a pleased smile, went on with his story:
"Mademoiselle de Nevers had some fortune of her own, of course, but it
was not large; it was not the feast for which the amative Mantuan had
hungered. The Nevers's fortune was in the duke's hands, and remained in
the duke's hands, for the duke married at much the same time as his
sister; and the duke's wife and Gonzague's wife were brought to bed much
about the same time, and each bore a son, and each son was named Louis
after the twelfth duke, out of the affection his wife bore him, out of
the affection his sister bore him, and out of the affection that sister's
Mantuan husband pretended, in his sly Italian manner, to bear him."
A belated patriotism stirring vaguely in Faenza's muddled mind tempted
him to resent the hunch-back's slights upon the land which had been
unlucky enough to mother him.
"All men of Italy are not knaves," he growled, huskily, and, half rising
from his seat with crimsoned visage, he was busying himself to say more,
when Staupitz, who was as interested as the others in Master Æsop's
scandalous chronicle, clapped one bear's paw on Faenza's shoulder and
another bear's paw across Faenza's mouth, and thus forced him at once, by
sheer effort of brute strength, to a sitting posture and to silence. This
action on the part of the man whom for the time being he had consented to
accept as his general, combined with the cold glance of cruelty and scorn
which Æsop gave him, served to cool Faenza's hot blood. He heard Æsop
say, dryly, "Some men of Italy are fools," and might perchance have
flamed again, to his misluck, but that Staupitz, breathing thickly in his
ear, whispered: "Idiot, he mocks a Mantuan. Are not you Naples born and
bred?" Faenza, recovering his composure, resolved himself swiftly from an
Italian in general to a Neapolitan in particular, with a clannish
antagonism to alien states. He spat upon the floor. "Damn all Mantuans!"
he muttered, and did no more to interrupt the flow of Æsop's discourse.
"As I was saying, this princeling of Gonzague affected a great show of
friendship for his ducal brother of Nevers, and this same friendship he
left--it was, indeed, wellnigh all he had to leave--to his only son and
only child, the present prince of Gonzague."
He made a momentary halt, as if he were observing curiously the effect of
his words upon his hearers, then resumed:
"The young Louis de Gonzague and the young Louis de Nevers were almost of
an age. Each was an only child, each was an only son, each was clever,
each was courageous, each was comely, each was the chosen heart's friend
of a namesake king, each was much a lover of ladies, each was much loved
by ladies."
Æsop grinned hideously as he said these words, and his left hand fumbled
lovingly at the little volume that lay hid in the breast of his doublet,
but he did not delay the flow of his words.
"The chief difference between the two young men who were bound so
closely by ties of blood and yet more closely by ties of personal
affection was that while Louis de Nevers was the heir to all the
treasures of his house, Louis of Gonzague was heir to little more than a
rotting palace and a hollow title. And yet, by the irony of nature that
seemed to deny long life to any of the stock of Nevers, Louis de Gonzague
was the next of kin to his cousin, and the heir to all his wealth if by
any ill chance the dear young duke should die unmarried."
Here Æsop deliberately shut his mouth for several seconds, while the
listening bandits, persuaded that some thrilling news was toward, nudged
each other with their elbows and riddled the watchful hunchback with
imploring glances that entreated him to proceed. Thus mutely importuned,
Æsop opened his mouth again:
"But the difference in the youths' fortunes never made any difference in
their friendship. The purse of the rich Nevers was always open to the
fingers of the poor Gonzague, and the poor Gonzague had always too true
an appreciation of the meaning of friendship to deny his heart's brother
the privilege of ministering to his needs. And as the young Nevers did
not hint at the slightest inclination to marry and settle down, but
always declared himself and approved himself the most vagrant of lovers
and the most frivolous of libertines, there seemed no reason for the good
Gonzague to be uneasy as to his possible heritage. Moreover, the young
Duke of Nevers was something delicate of constitution, as it would seem,
for all his skill as a soldier and swordsman and his fame as a lady's
man. Once when he was the guest of his cousin of Gonzague in Mantua he
fell ill of a strange fever that came near to ending his days, and was
only saved by his French physician, who tended him day and night and took
him back to France in the first dawn of his convalescence."
Æsop stopped and blinked at his hearers viciously, looking like some
school-master that wonders how much or how little of what he has been
saying his pupils have understood. Cocardasse was the first to show
intelligence and to give it tongue.
"I'll wager," he cried, and swore a great Gascon oath, "that I can hazard
a pretty guess as to the name of our employer in to-night's work."
Æsop leered at him with a pitying benignity.
"You were always a great brain for deduction, friend Cocardasse," he
said. "And who should you say was the honest gentleman who wanted our
swords for this present business?"
"Why," answered Cocardasse, shaking his head gloomily, "though I hate to
think it, and hate to say it, it seems to me that the man who has most to
gain from this little meeting and its inevitable result is none other
than the third Louis, your Italian of Gonzague."
Æsop nodded, and a ferocious smile illuminated his evil face.
"You have come to a very creditable conclusion, friend Cocardasse. It
looks very much as if Jonathan wanted to kill David, as if Patroclus
yearned to slaughter Achilles, as if Pythias wanted to extinguish
Damon."
Master Æsop prided himself upon his scholarship and his felicity in
classical allusion--a felicity wholly wasted upon his present audience.
Cocardasse was still curious. "Why does Louis de Gonzague want to kill
his friend, Louis of Nevers, just at this particular moment, and why here
in this heaven-forgotten hole of a place, in this heaven-forgotten corner
of the world?"
Æsop explained: "Because Louis de Gonzague, having tried once, with good
reason, and failed, tries again with better reason and means to succeed
this time, believing much steel to do better than a little poison.
Because, in a few words, Louis de Gonzague wants to marry the beautiful
Gabrielle, daughter of old Caylus of the castle there, who is wealthy,
too."
Passepoil, who was always interested in affairs of the heart, put in his
word. "Why doesn't he marry her?"
Æsop was ready to explain that matter also: "Because Gabrielle de Caylus
is already secretly married to Louis de Nevers. They were married one
year ago in the chapel of Caylus, and the only witnesses were Louis de
Gonzague and his factotum, Monsieur Peyrolles, who has summoned us to
this tryst."
"Why were they secretly married?" asked the amorous Passepoil.
Æsop answered him: "An old family feud between the houses of Nevers and
Caylus. The marquis would rather kill his daughter than let her marry
Louis de Nevers. So they were wedded secretly, without his knowledge, and
Louis de Gonzague, that could deny his dear friend and cousin, Louis de
Nevers, nothing, helped him to his wife."
"That was generous, at least," Passepoil sighed.
Æsop sneered. "He hoped, as he believed with reason, that there would be
no issue of the marriage, and that by-and-by he would come to what he
called his own. But three months ago a daughter was born to the nuptials
of Nevers, and that is why we are here to-night. Monsieur Peyrolles would
pretend that it is the old marquis who is using us, the old marquis who
is suspicious of an amour between his daughter and Nevers. But I know
better."
"How do you know all this?" Cocardasse inquired.
Æsop shrugged his shoulders. "My good fellow," he said, "it is my
business to know everything that is worth knowing in my trade. There are
very few noble houses in France that can hope to hold any secrets from
me. You may take my word for it--that is how matters stand."
Staupitz and his five swordsmen sat silent and puzzled, leaving the ball
of conversation to be tossed between Cocardasse, Passepoil, and Æsop.
Cocardasse spoke next: "An ugly job. There's only one man alive to match
Louis de Nevers."
Something almost approaching a human smile distorted the wrinkled face
of Æsop and made it appear more than usually repulsive. "You mean me," he
said, and the smirk deepened, only to dissipate quickly as Cocardasse
replied:
"Devil a bit. I mean the little Parisian, Henri de Lagardere."
"The best swordsman in Paris!" Passepoil cried, enthusiastically.
"The best swordsman in France!" Cocardasse shouted.