THE CARDINAL’S RING
IN the Rue des Bons Enfans, behind the gardens of the Palais Cardinal,
Péron had his lodgings. He had long since outgrown the proportions of
his little room over the clockmaker’s shop; the old house at the sign
of Ste. Geneviève was too small to accommodate the three grown people
and the apprentices, and he had taken up his quarters near the scene of
his daily employment. He had two upper rooms in a house but a little
way from the rear of Archambault’s pastry shop; his means were limited
and his requirements few and simple, so the apartments were plainly
and neatly furnished. He had left the little room on the Rue de la
Ferronnerie untouched; it was to him full of tender recollections of
his childhood, and he knew it was dear to the motherly heart of good
Madame Michel, who looked upon him almost as her own son.
It was in these rooms on the Rue des Bons Enfans that he made a
discovery which amazed and alarmed him. He had been twenty-four hours
in Paris before he recollected the cardinal’s ring, which he had hidden
in the lining of his coat, and when he went to look for it, to his
surprise, it was not to be found. He remembered that it had escaped
the vigilance of M. de Vesson’s searchers, and he could not account
for the loss. In his anxiety, he cut the lining entirely away from his
coat, but revealed nothing. It was dusk when he made this discovery of
his mishap, and he lighted a taper and kneeled on the floor, searching
with patience and exhaustive scrutiny every corner and crevice of the
room. The furniture was scanty, and the light shone into the most
remote spots, but showed nothing. He was convinced that the ring was in
the coat when he took it off to assume his uniform, nor could it get
out of its own accord. He had dressed hastily to attend the cardinal
to mass at his parish church of St. Nicholas des Champs, and in his
hurry he had forgotten the ring. No one had entered the rooms in his
absence, for the doors were both secure and the keys in his pocket.
Then he recollected the windows. There were three; the two in the
front room overlooked the street and were inaccessible, but the one in
the inner room opened within three feet of the slanting roof of the
adjoining house, which, however, appeared to be unoccupied. If any
one had entered his rooms, it must have been through that window, but
he saw no signs of it. It was possible for a man to walk along on the
roofs of the other buildings and come down on the roof opposite his
quarters, but why should any one suspect him of carrying the ring, and
know where to find it? If the men of Vesson’s party had seen it, they
surely would not have hesitated to take it. What had become of the
circlet? It could not effect its own escape, that was certain, and he
could not imagine that it had fallen from its place, so securely had
he fastened it. Moreover, he was not alone confronted with anxiety
at the loss; he was liable to be called upon to produce it at any
moment by Richelieu, who had for the time overlooked it, but who never
forgot. His ceaseless vigilance noted all things, small and great, with
the same untiring energy and patience. It was with profound anxiety,
therefore, that Péron continued his search, and it was only when he
was absolutely certain of its fruitlessness that he ceased to look in
every possible spot where the precious ring could have been mislaid. At
last, he was compelled to go on duty again to attend the cardinal to
the Louvre, whither he went like a man in a dream. He was too full of
his own perplexities to observe the gay scenes in the galleries of the
palace, where M. le Grand was at the height of his power and arrogance,
unconscious that Richelieu’s web was already about him. Père Matthieu
had sent from Brussels evidence of M. le Grand’s correspondence with
the Vicomte de Fontrailles, who had already been selected as the
messenger that the conspirators were to send to Madrid to conclude a
treaty in the name of Monsieur. For Péron had aided in the first steps
to expose the plot of Cinq Mars, which was already partially woven.
In the Louvre, too, Péron came face to face with his old patron, the
Prince de Condé, who greeted him kindly, recalling with a smile the
victory over Choin in the tennis court and saying that monsignor had
spoken highly of the musketeer’s courage and address. The prince’s
condescension and his mention of the cardinal’s commendation suggested
to Péron the possibility that his real station in life was already
known among a few, and that M. de Nançay’s strange liberation had some
secret meaning. But all these thoughts did not allay his anxiety over
his loss, which might be attended with such serious results, the bearer
of that ring being able to gain easy access to the house of the iron
cross, and perhaps to fool even Père Matthieu. Yet a vision rising
before him of the stern-faced, keen-eyed priest afforded him some
reassurance, for it would be difficult indeed to outwit him.
It was midnight when Péron was at last at liberty to return to his
lodgings. He was weary and abstracted, and made his way through the
gardens of the Palais Cardinal to the Rue des Bons Enfans. At his own
door he found a little ragged boy of the street sitting on the stone
step, and thought the child had selected this spot to sleep; but at his
approach the small figure rose. It was too dark for either one of them
to distinguish the features of the other, and only the lantern which
hung above the door revealed the ragged outline of the boy. He peered
through the darkness at Péron as he came up.
“Are you M. de Calvisson?” he asked.
“I am,” replied Péron, surprised at the recognition. “What do you want
of me at this hour, child?”
“I have a letter for you,” he replied, thrusting a note into Péron’s
hands and turning away at once.
“Not so fast,” exclaimed the musketeer, intending to detain the
messenger; but the boy was fleet of foot and had fled away in the
darkness, without pausing to hear what Péron had to say.
Annoyed and amused by the little vagabond’s manner of delivering
missives, Péron had no resource but to enter the house and get a
light by which he could read the letter so strangely sent to him. The
contents startled him more than the manner in which he had received it.
The writing was delicate, like that of a woman, and he recognized the
seal. The note was brief and to the point; it ran:--
“M. DE CALVISSON,--If you will meet the writer at the stone bridge by
the Cours la Reine, you will receive the ring which was lately stolen
from you. If you come not by nine o’clock on Thursday morning, you
will lose the opportunity forever--and the ring.
R. DE N.”
The seal and the initials were those of Renée de Nançay; yet Péron was
not only perplexed, but doubtful. He had never seen mademoiselle’s
writing, but something in the letter raised his doubts; he suspected a
trap. This was Tuesday; he had therefore one day in which to endeavor
to fathom this mystery, and he resolved to use it. Of one thing he
was no longer uncertain: the ring had been stolen. As it was already
past midnight and he could accomplish nothing for the next few hours,
he wisely spent those in an effort to rest; but he slept little, for
now, in addition to his anxiety in regard to the cardinal’s ring, was
the fresh perplexity of the note, which might and might not be from
mademoiselle. Péron did not misunderstand her; he knew that what she
did was prompted rather by her disgust at the treachery that she saw
about her than from any kindness toward him, though once or twice he
had thought that with all her hauteur Renée was not wholly indifferent
to his fate. He knew that in her eyes there was a great gulf fixed
between them, which not even her love or his could span. Mademoiselle,
the daughter of a marquis, one of the grand demoiselles of France,
could scarcely afford to lose her heart to the cardinal’s musketeer.
Péron, conscious of his own noble birth, watched the young girl’s
proud defiance with a pang at the thought that the revelation of his
rank would but widen the breach. As for the note, the appointment at
the lonely spot was unlike a woman. On one side of the Cours la Reine,
the road to the king’s hunting-lodge at Versailles divided it from the
Seine; on the other were ditches which ran between the promenade and a
barren plain; and across these ditches was, at one place, a small stone
bridge. A spot more lonely at that hour of the morning could scarcely
be found, and it seemed wholly unsuited to a visit from a young woman,
yet it had the one advantage of being isolated and little visited
by those who would be likely to recognize Mademoiselle de Nançay.
Whichever way Péron regarded the matter, he found it perplexing, but
he never thought of failing to keep the tryst. There was no risk save
to himself, and he was not one to hesitate because of personal danger.
It lent a zest to every adventure, and he would have lamented its
absence.
He devoted some time the following day to a fruitless endeavor to
probe the mystery. It was of course impossible to discover the bearer
of the letter, and he found it equally difficult to obtain any other
information beyond the bare fact that Mademoiselle de Nançay had
been in Paris the previous day, at her father’s house on the Rue St.
Thomas du Louvre. This lent a color of possibility to the incident.
Further than this, Péron was unable to push his investigations, and
at nightfall on Wednesday he knew as little as ever, but he had fully
determined to go to the stone bridge on the following morning, taking
only the precaution to wear his hallecrèt and to go well armed and
prepared for any emergency.
He supped with Madame Michel at the clockmaker’s shop,--a custom to
which he always adhered unless on duty at the Palais Cardinal,--but he
returned early to his rooms on the Rue des Bons Enfans. He had kept a
persistent watch there since the loss of the ring, having some fancies
about the window, which he still suspected as the way by which his
quarters had been entered. It was after nightfall, and he had lighted
his tapers and sat down at his table to read; for Père Antoine’s early
training had cultivated his taste for books. It was while he was thus
quietly engaged that he became aware of light footsteps on the stairs
outside his door, and the rustle of a woman’s garments. He stopped in
surprise and listened, his eyes upon the door. In a moment he heard a
whispered consultation, and then something brushed against the panels.
He said nothing, waiting to see the sequel or to hear it. Presently
there was a timid knock, followed by the low murmur of voices. He
waited no longer, for his curiosity was fully roused, and undoing
the latch he threw open the door, revealing two cloaked and masked
women on the other side. Without hesitation, the smaller of the two
entered the room, followed by the other, and signed to him to close the
door. He did so in surprise and bewilderment, and was not sure of his
recognition until Mademoiselle de Nançay removed her mask. She was very
pale, but her eyes sparkled with excitement and resolution, and she
scarcely heeded Péron’s salutation.
“M. de Calvisson,” she said, with quiet dignity of manner, “you must
think it strange indeed for me to come here--and in this manner--but I
learned only an hour since of the snare that had been set for you; that
my name had been used for a cruel deception, and I could not rest until
I set it right. Monsieur, you received a note purporting to come from
me and summoning you to keep a tryst at the stone bridge by the Cours
la Reine. That letter was a tissue of falsehood.”
Péron bowed gravely. “Mademoiselle,” he said quietly, “I never believed
that the letter was yours, but I should have kept the appointment.”
“Mon Dieu!” she cried with sudden emotion, “you would have kept it to
your death--and I should have been the means of it!”
She pressed her hands before her face, shaken by an emotion too deep
to conceal. Péron watched her with a strange confusion of feeling, his
heart beating high with sudden hope.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, too low for any ears but hers, “if my death
would cause you regret, it would be robbed of much bitterness.”
She looked at him with startled eyes, a beautiful blush mounting to her
fair hair, and then she drew back haughtily.
“I came here from a sense of duty, monsieur,” she murmured in a strange
voice. “I could do no less--I know not what you think of me!”
“That you are an angel, mademoiselle,” he replied, “too noble and too
just to let a man’s life be sacrificed by the use of your name.”
She gave him a questioning glance, as though she doubted the sincerity
of his words and feared that he misunderstood her motives. Her pride
was up in arms and she put on her mask, securing it with trembling
fingers.
“There is no more to tell, monsieur,” she said coldly; “if you go to
the Cours la Reine, you will meet your death--and I did not write that
letter--that is all. Come, Ninon, we must away.”
Péron could not delay her, but he picked up his sword.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “permit me at least to attend you through the
streets.”
She halted at the door, confused; her woman had gone out upon the
stairs, and the two stood face to face.
“You cannot go, monsieur,” she said, with a falter in her voice; “your
attendance upon me would lead to worse trouble for you--and for me!”
“If it touches you, mademoiselle, I will not stir,” he replied;
“otherwise, I pray you not to deny me the small privilege of attending
one who has thrice saved my life.”
“It would be my peril, Sieur de Calvisson,” she said softly. “Adieu!”
She hesitated on the threshold, her mask hiding her face; then she held
out her hand and he took it in both his.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, very low, “I would cheerfully give my life to
defend yours, and the time may come when I pray you to remember that I
will accept no benefit which shall be to your detriment.”
He thought he saw surprise in her eyes; but he pressed her hand to his
lips, and in a moment she was gone and he heard her light footfall
on the stairs. Flushed with emotion, and with a hundred conflicting
thoughts, he moved to the window to watch her leave the house; but as
he saw her come out on the step below, he heard some one in the hall,
and looking up, saw Ninon on the threshold.
“Mademoiselle dropped her handkerchief, I think,” she said, pretending
to search upon the floor.
Péron took the taper from the table to aid her, and the two stooping
down to look beneath the table came very near together. It was then
that the woman found her opportunity.
“Be wary, monsieur,” she whispered, giving up the pretended search;
“they know who you are--and I do, though mademoiselle does not--and
they mean mischief.”
In a flash the truth burst upon him, the Nançay faction knew whose son
he was.
“Ninon,” he said earnestly, “I pray you not to tell mademoiselle!”
She was at the door again, and she gave him a strange look.
“Do not be a fool, monsieur,” she said with blunt kindness;
“mademoiselle has been betrothed to M. de Bièvre for a twelvemonth; and
her father--ah, M. le Marquis is a devil!”
With these words Ninon hurried from the room and ran down the stairs
after her mistress, leaving Péron standing in the middle of the room,
like a man turned to stone.