Æsop answered, gravely, with an amazing question: "Gentlemen, do you
believe in ghosts?" And the gravity of his voice and the strangeness of
his question forced his hearers, surprised and uneasy, in spite of
themselves, to laugh disdainfully.
Æsop accepted their laughter composedly. "Of course not. No one believes
in ghosts at noonday, on the crowded street, though perhaps some do at
midnight when the world is over-still. But here, to-night, in all this
glitter and crowd and noise and color, the king is perturbed and the
guards are doubled because of a ghost--the ghost of a man who has been
dead these seventeen years."
The Baron de la Hunaudaye, bluff old soldier of the brave days of the
dawning reign, was interested in the hunchback's words. "Of whom do you
speak?" he asked.
Æsop turned to the new-comers, and addressed them more respectfully than
he had been addressing the partisans of Gonzague: "I speak of a gallant
gentleman--young, brave, beautiful, well-beloved. I speak to men who knew
him. To you, Monsieur de la Hunaudaye, who would now be lying under
Flemish earth if his sword had not slain your assailant; to you, Monsieur
de Marillac, whose daughter took the veil for love of him; to you,
Monsieur de Barbanchois, who fortified against him the dwelling of your
lady love; to you, Monsieur de la Ferte, who lost to him one evening your
Castle of Senneterre; to you, Monsieur de Vauguyon, whose shoulder should
still remember the stroke of his sword."
As Æsop spoke, he addressed in turn each of the elder men, and as he
spoke recognition of his meaning showed itself in the face of each man
whom he addressed.
Hunaudaye nodded. "Louis de Nevers," he said, solemnly.
Instantly Æsop uncovered. "Yes, Louis de Nevers, who was assassinated
under the walls of the Castle of Caylus twenty years ago."
Chavernay came over to Æsop. "My father was a friend of Louis de
Nevers."
Æsop looked from the group of old men to the group of young men. "It is
the ghost of Nevers that troubles us to-night. There were three Louis in
those days, brothers in arms. Louis of France did all he could to find
the assassin of Nevers. In vain. Louis de Gonzague did all he could to
find the assassin of Nevers. In vain. Well, gentlemen, would you believe
it, to-night Louis of France and Louis de Gonzague will be told the name
of the assassin of Nevers?"
"And the name?" asked Chavernay.
Choisy plucked him impatiently by the sleeve. "Don't you see that the
humpbacked fool is making game of us?"
Æsop shrugged his shoulders. "As you please, sirs, as you please; but
that is why the guards are doubled."
He turned on his heel, and walked leisurely away from the two groups of
gentlemen. The elders, having little in common with Gonzague's friends,
followed his example, and drifted off together, talking to one another in
a low voice of the gallant gentleman whose name had suddenly been
recalled to their memories at that moment. Gonzague's gang stared at one
another, feeling vaguely discomfited.
"The man is mad," said Gironne.
"There seems a method in his madness," said Chavernay, dryly.