THE SUITORS OF YVONNE
Being a Portion of the Memoirs of the Sieur Gaston de Luynes
By Rafael Sabatini
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. OF HOW A BOY DRANK TOO MUCH WINE, AND WHAT CAME OF IT
II. THE FRUIT OF INDISCRETION
III. THE FIGHT IN THE HORSE-MARKET
IV. FAIR RESCUERS
V. MAZARIN, THE MATCH-MAKER
VI. OF HOW ANDREA BECAME LOVESICK
VII. THE CHÂTEAU DR CANAPLES
VIII. THE FORESHADOW OF DISASTER
IX. OF HOW A WHIP PROVED A BETTER ARGUMENT THAN A TONGUE
X. THE CONSCIENCE OF MALPERTUIS
XI. OF A WOMAN'S OBSTINACY
XII. THE RESCUE
XIII. THE HAND OF YVONNE
XIV. OF WHAT BEFELL AT REAUX
XV. OF MY RESURRECTION
XVI. THE WAY OF WOMAN
XVII. FATHER AND SON
XVIII. OF HOW I LEFT CANAPLES
XIX. OF MY RETURN TO PARIS
XX. OF HOW THE CHEVALIER DE CANAPLES BECAME A FRONDEUR
XXI. OF THE BARGAIN THAT ST. AUBAN DROVE WITH MY LORD CARDINAL
XXII. OF MY SECOND JOURNEY TO CANAPLES
XXIII. OF HOW ST. AUBAN CAME TO BLOIS
XXIV. OF THE PASSING OF ST. AUBAN
XXV. PLAY-ACTING
XXVI. REPARATION
CHAPTER I. OF HOW A BOY DRANK TOO MUCH WINE, AND WHAT CAME OF IT
Andrea de Mancini sprawled, ingloriously drunk, upon the floor. His legs
were thrust under the table, and his head rested against the chair from
which he had slipped; his long black hair was tossed and dishevelled;
his handsome, boyish face flushed and garbed in the vacant expression of
idiocy.
“I beg a thousand pardons, M. de Luynes,” quoth he in the thick,
monotonous voice of a man whose brain but ill controls his tongue,--“I
beg a thousand pardons for the unseemly poverty of our repast. 'T is
no fault of mine. My Lord Cardinal keeps a most unworthy table for
me. Faugh! Uncle Giulio is a Hebrew--if not by birth, by instinct. He
carries his purse-strings in a knot which it would break his heart to
unfasten. But there! some day my Lord Cardinal will go to heaven--to the
lap of Abraham. I shall be rich then, vastly rich, and I shall bid
you to a banquet worthy of your most noble blood. The Cardinal's
health--perdition have him for the niggardliest rogue unhung!”
I pushed back my chair and rose. The conversation was taking a turn that
was too unhealthy to be pursued within the walls of the Palais Mazarin,
where there existed, albeit the law books made no reference to it, the
heinous crime of lèse-Eminence--a crime for which more men had been
broken than it pleases me to dwell on.
“Your table, Master Andrea, needs no apology,” I answered carelessly.
“Your wine, for instance, is beyond praise.”
“Ah, yes! The wine! But, ciel! Monsieur,” he ejaculated, for a moment
opening wide his heavy eyelids, “do you believe 't was Mazarin provided
it? Pooh! 'T was a present made me by M. de la Motte, who seeks my
interest with my Lord Cardinal to obtain for him an appointment in
his Eminence's household, and thus thinks to earn my good will. He's
a pestilent creature, this la Motte,” he added, with a hiccough,--“a
pestilent creature; but, Sangdieu! his wine is good, and I'll speak to
my uncle. Help me up, De Luynes. Help me up, I say; I would drink the
health of this provider of wines.”
I hurried forward, but he had struggled up unaided, and stood swaying
with one hand on the table and the other on the back of his chair. In
vain did I remonstrate with him that already he had drunk overmuch.
“'T is a lie!” he shouted. “May not a gentleman sit upon the floor from
choice?”
To emphasise his protestation he imprudently withdrew his hand from the
chair and struck at the air with his open palm. That gesture cost him
his balance. He staggered, toppled backward, and clutched madly at the
tablecloth as he fell, dragging glasses, bottles, dishes, tapers, and a
score of other things besides, with a deafening crash on to the floor.
Then, as I stood aghast and alarmed, wondering who might have overheard
the thunder of his fall, the fool sat up amidst the ruins, and filled
the room with his shrieks of drunken laughter.
“Silence, boy!” I thundered, springing towards him. “Silence! or we
shall have the whole house about our ears.”
And truly were my fears well grounded, for, before I could assist him
to rise, I heard the door behind me open. Apprehensively I turned, and
sickened to see that that which I had dreaded most was come to pass. A
tall, imposing figure in scarlet robes stood erect and scowling on the
threshold, and behind him his valet, Bernouin, bearing a lighted taper.
Mancini's laugh faded into a tremulous cackle, then died out, and with
gaping mouth and glassy eyes he sat there staring at his uncle.
Thus we stayed in silence while a man might count mayhap a dozen; then
the Cardinal's voice rang harsh and full of anger.
“'T is thus that you fulfil your trust, M. de Luynes!” he said.
“Your Eminence--” I began, scarce knowing what I should say, when he cut
me short.
“I will deal with you presently and elsewhere.” He stepped up to Andrea,
and surveyed him for a moment in disgust. “Get up, sir!” he commanded.
“Get up!”
The lad sought to obey him with an alacrity that merited a kinder fate.
Had he been in less haste perchance he had been more successful. As it
was, he had got no farther than his knees when his right leg slid from
under him, and he fell prone among the shattered tableware, mumbling
curses and apologies in a breath.
Mazarin stood gazing at him with an eye that was eloquent in scorn, then
bending down he spoke quickly to him in Italian. What he said I know
not, being ignorant of their mother tongue; but from the fierceness of
his utterance I'll wager my soul 't was nothing sweet to listen to. When
he had done with him, he turned to his valet.
“Bernouin,” said he, “summon M. de Mancini's servant and assist him to
get my nephew to bed. M. de Luynes, be good enough to take Bernouin's
taper and light me back to my apartments.”
Unsavoury as was the task, I had no choice but to obey, and to stalk on
in front of him, candle in hand, like an acolyte at Notre Dame, and in
my heart the profound conviction that I was about to have a bad quarter
of an hour with his Eminence. Nor was I wrong; for no sooner had we
reached his cabinet and the door had been closed than he turned upon me
the full measure of his wrath.
“You miserable fool!” he snarled. “Did you think to trifle with the
trust which in a misguided moment I placed in you? Think you that, when
a week ago I saved you from starvation to clothe and feed you and give
you a lieutenancy in my guards, I should endure so foul an abuse as
this? Think you that I entrusted M. de Mancini's training in arms to you
so that you might lead him into the dissolute habits which have dragged
you down to what you are--to what you were before I rescued you--to what
you will be to-morrow when I shall have again abandoned you?”
“Hear me, your Eminence!” I cried indignantly. “'T is no fault of mine.
Some fool hath sent M. de Mancini a basket of wine and--”
“And you showed him how to abuse it,” he broke in harshly. “You have
taught the boy to become a sot; in time, were he to remain under your
guidance, I make no doubt but that he would become a gamester and a
duellist as well. I was mad, perchance, to give him into your care; but
I have the good fortune to be still in time, before the mischief has
sunk farther, to withdraw him from it, and to cast you back into the
kennel from which I picked you.”
“Your Eminence does not mean--”
“As God lives I do!” he cried. “You shall quit the Palais Royal this
very night, M. de Luynes, and if ever I find you unbidden within half a
mile of it, I will do that which out of a misguided sense of compassion
I do not do now--I will have you flung into an oubliette of the
Bastille, where better men than you have rotted before to-day. Per Dio!
do you think that I am to be fooled by such a thing as you?”
“Does your Eminence dismiss me?” I cried aghast, and scarce crediting
that such was indeed the extreme measure upon which he had determined.
“Have I not been plain enough?” he answered with a snarl.
I realised to the full my unenviable position, and with the realisation
of it there overcame me the recklessness of him who has played his last
stake at the tables and lost. That recklessness it was that caused me to
shrug my shoulders with a laugh. I was a soldier of fortune--or should I
say a soldier of misfortune?--as rich in vice as I was poor in virtue;
a man who lived by the steel and parried the blows that came as best he
might, or parried them not at all--but never quailed.
“As your Eminence pleases,” I answered coolly, “albeit methinks that for
one who has shed his blood for France as freely as I have done, a little
clemency were not unfitting.”
He raised his eyebrows, and his lips curled in a malicious sneer.
“You come of a family, M. de Luynes,” he said slowly, “that is famed for
having shed the blood of others for France more freely than its own.
You are, I believe, the nephew of Albert de Luynes. Do you forget the
Marshal d'Ancre?”
I felt the blood of anger hot in my face as I made haste to answer him:
“There are many of us, Monseigneur, who have cause to blush for the
families they spring from--more cause, mayhap, than hath Gaston de
Luynes.”
In my words perchance there was no offensive meaning, but in my tone and
in the look which I bent upon the Cardinal there was that which told him
that I alluded to his own obscure and dubious origin. He grew livid, and
for a moment methought he would have struck me: had he done so, then,
indeed, the history of Europe would have been other than it is to-day!
He restrained himself, however, and drawing himself to the full height
of his majestic figure he extended his arm towards the door.
“Go,” he said, in a voice that passion rendered hoarse. “Go, Monsieur.
Go quickly, while my clemency endures. Go before I summon the guard and
deal with you as your temerity deserves.”
I bowed--not without a taint of mockery, for I cared little what might
follow; then, with head erect and the firm tread of defiance, I stalked
out of his apartment, along the corridor, down the great staircase,
across the courtyard, past the guard,--which, ignorant of my disgrace,
saluted me,--and out into the street.
Then at last my head sank forward on my breast, and deep in thought I
wended my way home, oblivious of all around me, even the chill bite of
the February wind.
In my mind I reviewed my wasted life, with the fleeting pleasures and
the enduring sorrows that it had brought me--or that I had drawn from
it. The Cardinal said no more than truth when he spoke of having saved
me from starvation. A week ago that was indeed what he had done. He
had taken pity on Gaston de Luynes, the nephew of that famous Albert de
Luynes who had been Constable of France in the early days of the late
king's reign; he had made me lieutenant of his guards and maître d'armes
to his nephews Andrea and Paolo de Mancini because he knew that a better
blade than mine could not be found in France, and because he thought it
well to have such swords as mine about him.
A little week ago life had been replete with fresh promises, the gates
of the road to fame (and perchance fortune) had been opened to me anew,
and now--before I had fairly passed that gate I had been thrust rudely
back, and it had been slammed in my face because it pleased a fool to
become a sot whilst in my company.
There is a subtle poetry in the contemplation of ruin. With ruin itself,
howbeit, there comes a prosaic dispelling of all idle dreams--a hard, a
grim, a vile reality.
Ruin! 'T is an ugly word. A fitting one to carve upon the tombstone of a
reckless, godless, dissolute life such as mine had been.
Back, Gaston de Luynes! back, to the kennel whence the Cardinal's hand
did for a moment pluck you; back, from the morning of hope to the night
of despair; back, to choose between starvation and the earning of a
pauper's fee as a master of fence!