Lagardere turned to Saldagno, Pepe, and Pinto. "Ah, my bandits of Madrid,
who tried me, three to one."
Saldagno was more apologetic than Staupitz, with a Latin profusion of
gesture, as he explained: "That was for a wager, captain."
Lagardere shrugged his shoulders. "Which you did not win." He turned to
Joel de Jurgan. "Does your head still carry my cut?"
The Breton lifted a large hand to his bullet head and fumbled through the
thick hair for a familiar spot. "There is a scar," he admitted.
Lagardere turned to the Italian. "Do you still," he asked, "hold the
Italian school to be superior to the French?"
Faenza shook his head. "Not when you practise the French method," he
answered, politely.
There was a little pause, and then Æsop, who had by this time been
released from the embrace of Cocardasse, and had sheathed his sword, came
forward and faced Lagardere. "I desire acquaintanceship, Captain
Lagardere. Men call me Æsop."
Lagardere gazed at the hunchback, and a look of displeasure banished the
mirth from his eyes. "I have heard of you," he said, curtly. "A good
sword and a bad heart. I don't like the blend. You may go to the devil."
He turned away from Æsop and bent over the lad, who still crouched at his
feet. "Now, lad, you must promise not to hurt these gentlemen, for some
of them are friends of mine."
While the bravos tried not to appear annoyed by Lagardere's banter,
which, indeed, in its simplicity vexed their simple natures greatly, the
page rose to his feet and whispered softly to his rescuer, "I have a
letter for you from the Duke de Nevers."
Lagardere extended his hand. "Give it," he said.
The page produced the letter, of which Æsop had been so anxious to gain
possession, and handed it to Lagardere, whispering as he did so, "Save me
from these ogres. I carry another letter to a lady."
Lagardere smiled. "To Gabrielle de Caylus, I'll swear," he murmured in a
low voice which was calculated only to reach the page's ears. Then he
turned again to the swordsmen. "Sirs, this lad, more fastidious than I,
dislikes your society. Pray respect his prejudices." He pushed the page
gently towards the main door. "Hop, skip, jump!"
In a moment the page had glided out of the room. Æsop made a movement as
if he were inclined to follow, but any such intention was frustrated by
Lagardere, who shut the door after the boy and stood with his back
towards it. "Stay where you are, gentlemen," he said, and there was
something so persuasive in the way in which he said it that the gentlemen
stayed where they were. Then Lagardere, as if he had almost forgotten
their presence, slowly walking down the room till he paused in the
middle, opened the letter and began to read it. As he seemed absorbed by
its contents, Staupitz on the one side and Æsop on the other came
cautiously towards him with the intention of reading the letter over his
shoulder, but Lagardere's seeming forgetfulness of their presence
instantly changed. He looked up sharply, glancing right and left, and
Æsop and Staupitz fell back in confusion, while Lagardere spoke to them,
mocking them: "You will dub me eccentric; you will nickname me whimsical;
you will damn me for a finicking stickler, and all because I am such an
old-fashioned rascal as to wish to keep my correspondence to myself.
There, there, don't be crestfallen. This letter makes me so merry that
you shall share its treasure. But, first, fill and drink with me, a noble
toast."
To suggest drinking was to forge a link between the bravos and the man
who down-faced them so masterfully. The big jug seemed to jump from hand
to hand, every mug was full in a twinkling, and every face was fixed
steadfastly on Lagardere, waiting for his words. Lagardere lifted his
brimming beaker with a voice of joyous mockery that carried at once
defiance and respect to a distant man. "The health of Louis of Nevers!"
he said, and drained his green wine as cheerfully as if it had been the
elixir of the gods.
At his words blank astonishment spread over the faces of the Gascon and
the Norman. "He said 'Nevers,'" Cocardasse whispered to Passepoil, and
Passepoil whispered back, "He did." As for the other bravos, they had
been as much surprised as Cocardasse and Passepoil by Lagardere's
request, but they managed to conceal their surprise by lifting their
mugs, and now as they nodded and winked to one another, they tilted their
vessels and drank, shouting, "The health of Louis de Nevers!"
Cocardasse came nearer to Lagardere, and said in a voice that was almost
a whisper, "Why do you drink the health of Louis de Nevers?"
Lagardere looked for a moment annoyed at the presumption of Cocardasse in
questioning him, then the annoyance gave place to his familiar air of
tolerant amusement. "I don't love questions, but you have a kind of right
to query." He turned to the others. "You must know, sirs, that this pair
of rapiers were my fairy godfathers in the noble art of fence."
The Norman looked at Lagardere with a very loving expression. "You were a
sad little rag of humanity when first you came to our fencing-academy."
"You are right there," said Lagardere. "I was the poorest, hungriest
scrap of mankind in all Paris. I had neither kin nor friends nor pence,
nothing but a stout heart and a sense of humor. That is why I came to
your academy, old rogues."
Cocardasse was reminiscent. "Faith, you looked droll enough, with your
pale face and your shabby clothes. 'I want to be a soldier,' says you; 'I
want to use the sword.'"
Lagardere nodded. "That was my stubborn law. The world laughed at me, but
I laughed at the world, and I won my wish."
"Just think of it!" said Cocardasse. "Henri de Lagardere, a gentleman
born, without a decent relative, without a decent friend, without a
penny, making his livelihood as a strolling player in the booth of a
mountebank."
While Cocardasse was speaking, Lagardere seemed to listen like a man in a
dream. He forgot for the moment the reeking Inn room where he stood, the
beastly visages that surrounded him, the whimsy that had drifted him
thither. All these things were forgotten, and the man that was little
more than a boy in years was in fancy altogether a boy again, a
shivering, quivering slip of a boy that stood on the gusty high-road and
knuckled his eyelids to keep his eyes from crying. How long ago it
seemed, that time twelve years ago when a mutinous urchin fled from a
truculent uncle to seek his fortune as Heaven might please to guide!
Heaven guided an itinerant mime and mountebank that tramped France with
his doxy to a wet hedge-side where a famished, foot-sore scrap of a lad
lay like a tired dog, trying not to sob. The mountebank was curious, the
mountebank's doxy was kind; both applauded lustily the boy's resolve to
march to Paris, cost what it might cost, and make his fortune there. The
end of the curiosity and the kindness and the applause was that the
little Lagardere found himself at once the apprentice and the adopted son
of the mountebank, with his fortune as far off as the stars. But he
learned many things, the little Lagardere, under the care of that same
mountebank; all that the mountebank could teach him he learned, and he
invented for himself tricks that were beyond the mountebank's skill. How
long ago it seemed! Would ever space of time seem so long again? So the
young man mused swiftly, while Cocardasse told his tale; but ere
Cocardasse had finished, Lagardere was back in the tavern again, and,
when Cocardasse had finished, Lagardere caught him up: "Why not? Some
actors are as honest as bandits. I was no bad mummer, sirs. I could
counterfeit any one of you now so that your mother wouldn't know the
cheat. And my master made me an athlete, too; taught me every trick of
wrestling and tumbling and juggling with the muscles. That is why I was
able to tumble you about so pleasantly just now. I should have been a
mountebank to this day but for an accident."
Passepoil was curious. "What accident?" he asked.
Lagardere answered him: "A brawl over a wench with a bully. I challenged
him, though I was more at home with a toasting-fork than a sword. I
caught up an unfamiliar weapon, but he nicked the steel from my hand at a
pass and banged me with the flat of his blade. The girl laughed. The
bully grinned. I swore to learn swordcraft."
"And you did," said Passepoil. "In six months you were our best pupil."