Lagardere smiled reassuringly. "Evil he may be," he said, "but not
dangerous--no, not dangerous. Indeed, I am inclined to think he will be
more useful to us than otherwise."
"But he seemed to threaten you," the girl protested.
Lagardere admitted the fact. "He was a little threatening at first," he
agreed, "but I have managed to pacify him, and he will not trouble us any
more."
He took the girl's cold hand and kissed it reverentially. "Gabrielle," he
said, "we go to Paris to-day, but till I come for you and tell you it is
time for us to depart I want you to remain in this chamber. You will do
this for me, will you not?"
"I will always do whatever you wish," the girl answered, and her eyes
filled with tears.
Lagardere was filled with the longing to clasp her in his arms, but he
restrained himself, again kissed her hand with the same air of tender
devotion, and motioned to her to enter her room. When she had closed the
door he returned to his own room, and there, with amazing swiftness,
divested himself of his outer garments and substituted for them those of
the dead Æsop.
Producing a small box from a battered portmantle that stood in a corner,
he produced certain pigments from it, and, facing a cracked fragment of
unframed looking-glass that served for a mirror, proceeded with the skill
of an experienced actor to make certain changes in his appearance.
His curiously mobile face he distorted at once into an admirable likeness
to the hunchback, and then, this initial likeness thus acquired, he
heightened and intensified it by few but skilful strokes of coloring
matter. Then he dexterously rearranged his hair to resemble the
hunchback's dishevelled locks, compelling its curls to fall about his
transformed face and shade it. Finally he surmounted all with the
hunchback's hat, placed well forward on his forehead. He gave a smile of
satisfaction at the result of his handiwork, and the smile was the malign
smile of Æsop.
"That is good enough," he murmured, "to deceive a short-sighted fellow
like Peyrolles, and as for his Highness of Gonzague, he has not seen me
for so many years that there will be no difficulty with him."
He glanced at his new raiment with an expression of distaste. "When I get
to Paris," he mused, "I will shift these habiliments. It is all very well
to play the bird of prey, but it is somewhat unpleasant to wear the
bird's own feathers."