The hunchback seemed to take the laugh in good part. "Æsop is in love,
and you can give him his heart's desire. She was in Lagardere's keeping.
She is now in yours. Give her to me."
Gonzague almost reeled under the amazing impudence of the suggestion.
"Gabrielle de Nevers! Madman!"
He laughed as he spoke, but the hunchback interrupted his laugh. "Wait.
You have to walk over two dead women to touch the wealth of Nevers. I
offer to take one woman out of your way. Do not kill Gabrielle; give her
to me."
Gonzague stared for a while at the hunchback in silence. "I believe the
rogue is serious," he said, more as a reflection addressed to himself
than as a remark addressed to the hunchback.
But the hunchback answered it: "Yes, for I love her. Give her to me, and
I will take her far away from Paris, and you shall never hear of her
again. She will no longer be the daughter of Nevers; she will be the wife
of Æsop the hunchback."
The proposition was not unpleasing to Louis of Gonzague. It certainly
seemed to offer a way of getting rid of the girl without the necessity of
killing her, and Gonzague was too fastidious to desire to commit murder
where murder was wholly unnecessary, but the thing seemed impossible.
"She would never consent," he protested.
The hunchback laughed softly, a low laugh of self-confidence. "Look at
me, monseigneur," he said, "Æsop the hunchback, but do not laugh while
you look and damn me for an impossible gallant. Crooked and withered as I
am, I have power to make women love me. Let me try. If I fail to win the
girl, do what you please with her, and I will ask no more."
Gonzague looked keenly at the bowed, supplicating figure. "Are you
thinking of playing me false?" he murmured. "Do you dream of taking the
girl to give her to her mother?"
The hunchback laughed--a dry, strident laugh. "Would Æsop be a welcome
son-in-law to the Princess de Gonzague?"
Gonzague seemed to feel the force of the hunchback's reasoning. To marry
the girl to this malformed assassin was to destroy her more utterly, she
still living, than to destroy her by taking her life. "Well," he
said--"well, you shall try your luck. If she marries you, she is out of
my way. If she refuses you, you shall be avenged for her disdain. We can
always revert to my first intention."
A slight shudder seemed to pass over the distorted form of the hunchback,
but he responded with familiar confidence: "She will not disdain me."