“He shall buy a supper at the house of the scarlet witch.”
The command moved the company to frenzies of turbulent delight. Before
the bewildered abbé could protest or answer, strong hands had clapped
a bandage to his eyes, and knotted it so tightly behind his ears that
the whole of the strange vision of grotesque and grinning figures was
shut instantly from his view. He knew only that his pony was carrying
him rapidly through the forest, that the air became fresher as he
mounted to the higher places of the park, that he was led it might
have been for the space of ten minutes before his beast was stopped
and he was lifted gently to the ground. Never once, however, while the
procession moved, did the throng cease their unearthly monotone. The
chaunt rose ever like a voice of the night, the wail of spirits
wandering, or of phantoms at their pleasures. When it stopped at last
with a sudden crash, the abbé’s pony stopped too. A strong arm
encircled his waist; he was lifted from the saddle and bidden to
walk,--he knew that he was entering some room in a house,--a gentle
hand forced him into a seat, it removed his bandage; the abbé could
see again.
By this time the unhappy man was incapable of surprise. The scene in
the wood had robbed him of all power of reason. When they stripped him
of his bandage, and he was able to look about him, he neither spoke
nor wondered. Yet the spectacle was strange enough to have amazed a
bolder man. For the abbé sat at that moment in a room draped in
scarlet; and more than that, he sat in a high chair before a long
table lit pleasingly by the soft light of many wax candles, and so
weighed down with plate and exquisite cut glass that the scarlet
drapery below was hardly to be seen. As for the company, that also was
a scarlet company,--devils, demons, witches; their whitened faces now
hidden by crimson masks, their very hair appearing to be of the
brightest red. Even the walls were draped in the same glaring colours;
while the attendants, some in hideous masks, some garbed like scarlet
elves, capped the scheme fittingly. Yet this was the curious thing--no
word was spoken, no greeting given. The company sat like mutes. The
abbé shuddered again, for he could not altogether suppress the
thought that he might be supping with the risen dead.
Such a haunting suggestion was quick to pass. Though a grim foreboding
pursued him while he asked himself, “Where will it end, what did they
mean when they called me the Lord Bishop of Blois and said that I must
suffer?”--the abbé, good man that he was,--and there was none better
in France,--was like other men in possessing a healthy appetite. The
groaning table put some heart into him. “I have ridden far, and a well
boiled capon with a cup of Burgundy will not come amiss to me,” he
thought. And so, for the first time since he had entered the terrible
wood, he permitted himself to hope. “They will let me ride on when
supper is done,” he assured himself, “and I shall be in Paris, after
all, by the last day of the month. It would never do to be delayed
over to-morrow, for the king returns to Paris then, and Corinne will
see him and cheat me once more. Certainly, I must be in Paris
to-morrow. Meanwhile, I will see what sort of a supper it is, for I am
very hungry.”
One of the servants had set a plate before him now,--a plate upon
which was a little silver dish exquisitely garnished and served. So
tempting did the morsel look that the good abbé hastened to plunge
his fork into it--but at the first mouthful he made an ugly grimace
and was unable to withhold an exclamation.
“How now!” cried he, “that is nothing but bread-crumbs!”
He looked round the table appealingly, but no one in the masked
company vouchsafed to him an answer. All were busy upon similar
dishes, of which they appeared to partake with exceeding relish.
Indeed, they had finished their portions before the abbé had
recovered from his astonishment; and while he was still looking at
them, a lacquey, dressed in crimson, carried in a dish upon which was
a smoking fish of great size, and began to serve slices of it--to the
abbé first, and afterwards to the other suppers. At the same moment,
another attendant filled the abbé’s glass--a magnificent glass of the
rarest Venetian work--with wine from a crystal goblet, and then did a
similar service for the rest of the company. The action reassured the
hungry curé. For the second time he plunged a ready fork into the
dish before him. “Fish is fish,” he said to himself, while he smacked
his lips in famished anticipation. The assurance scarce had comforted
him when he broke out with a word which was neither ecclesiastical nor
abbatorial.
“Name of the devil!” he exclaimed, “but this is bread too.”
How it came to be, in what manner the cheat had been contrived, the
abbé knew no more than the dead. Yet there was the fish right enough,
and a second mouthful convinced him that it was made of nothing but
bread.
“Saint John,” cried he, sitting back in his chair, “who ever heard of
that--a fish made of bread-crumbs--and every one eating of it as
though it were a mullet from the king’s table! Body of Saint
Paul!--they are all mad.”
Mad or sane, the scarlet company appeared to enjoy the fish very much.
Their heads bent over their plates, the suppers varied their
occupation of eating only by the equally pleasant one of taking long
draughts from the crystal goblets before them. They did not appear so
much as to notice that the abbé was appealing to them. His words, his
exclamations, his questions fell alike upon deaf ears. Not a man
listened to him, not a woman raised her eyes to watch him. Nor did his
anger, which succeeded presently to his hunger, help him at all. That,
too, was absolutely unobserved. Had he roared like a bull, the masked
company would have remained oblivious of his presence.
“Ho, ho!” said he at last, while he leant back in his chair and raised
the goblet in his hand, “a plague upon the table which sets
bread-crumbs before a hungry man!”
He put the goblet to his lips and took a long draught from it. The
wine, he had said, would at any rate wash the tasteless bread from his
mouth--and so he held the cup long. When at length he put it down,
there was upon his face the most unclerical grimace that had ever sat
there.
“_Maledetto!_” cried he, “but that is water.”
He spoke loudly; nor did he look for an answer, being quite assured by
this time that he was dreaming, or if he were not, then that he had
become the victim of the strangest jest yet played in France. And he
was very much surprised when a voice behind him greeted him with the
first word he had heard since he entered the room. For the matter of
that, the voice was hardly raised before all the suppers leaped to
their feet and stood in an attitude of respectful attention.
“And what is the trouble of the Lord Bishop of Blois?” asked the
speaker, as he advanced to the abbé’s chair.
He was a man slightly above the medium height, and he wore a dress of
white velvet, upon which a lace-work of the whitest diamonds
glittered. The abbé observed that he was somewhat advanced in years,
and that his features were clear-cut and singularly handsome. He was
attended now by two pages, who wore trunk-hose of purple and purple
cloaks above them; while an officer in the blue uniform of the
Corsican legion stood at his heels as though expecting some command.
“Ho, ho,” thought the abbé, as he watched the stranger, “here then is
the rogue who has played this jest upon me. I will find a word for him
at any rate.” And so he spoke aloud.
“Sir,” said he, “who you may be I do not wish to know; but if this be
your house, permit me to tell you that I have been the victim of a
great liberty.”
The stranger feigned astonishment.
“What,” cried he, “have you not supped well, ’seigneur?”
“Sir,” answered the abbé, “I beseech you that you will not call me
‘’seigneur,’ for to such a title I have no claim. As for your
supper--I would not offer it to a dog.”
“But surely,” cried the other, feigning great astonishment, “that is
turbot which you eat, my friend--and do you not hold a cup of the wine
of Burgundy in your hand?”
“Monsieur,” said the abbé, with hungry dignity, “whoever has told you
that has lied. There is nothing but water here.”
“Oh, indeed,” cried the new-comer; “pray permit me to put it to my
lips, ’seigneur. You say that is water?--Saint Louis, I would like to
have a cellar full of such water as that!”
He tasted the draught as he spoke, and smacked his lips over it as
though it had been a delicious nectar. The abbé, staggered at the
action, was silent for some moments; but after a pause he took the cup
up in his hands, and did that which was a rare thing for him to do--he
lost his temper.
“My son,” he asked, “you declare that to be the wine of Burgundy?”
“Most certainly,” replied the stranger; “most admirable wine.”
“Then I pray you drink it,” exclaimed the abbé--and at the invitation
he threw the contents of his goblet into the new-comer’s face.
It was a deserved retort, perhaps, but the miserable curé, had he
foreseen that which was to follow, would have cut off his right hand
before he allowed his temper to carry him so far. Scarce was the thing
done when a cry of horror burst from the company about the table.
Fifty hands were raised as if to strike the cowering priest. Threats,
execrations, remonstrances were hurled at him until his head buzzed
with the clamour. The stranger alone appeared to be unmoved. He wiped
his face with a handkerchief of lace, and then turned to the Corsican
at his elbow.
“I am sorry,” said he, “but I must ask you to arrest monsieur, the
Bishop of Blois. You will take him to his room and keep him there
until my pleasure is known.”
“Your majesty is obeyed,” was the answer.
There was a great silence in the place now; and it lasted while the
Corsican stepped forward and bade the quaking priest follow him. As
for the abbé, he was like one petrified.
“Great Heaven!” he moaned, when they led him from the room, “it is the
king who speaks. And I have thrown my wine in his face. God help me,
for my day has surely come.”
All else was forgotten in this; the visions of the night, his purpose
in riding to Paris, even the offences of little Corinne, gave place to
the tremendous fear which his folly had brought upon him. He saw it
all now--mystery no longer perplexed him. The masquerade in the woods,
the horrible apparition, the flashing of the crimson fire--what was it
all but the work of the jesters at the palace of St. Cloud! They had
gone out to seek whom they could devour, and they had lighted upon the
curé of Yvette, he said. Then the king--he had heard, of course, of
their pastime, and had come to witness its consummation. And thus had
the abbé been led to the perpetration of a crime so terrible.
Nothing, not even religion, was held as sacred, in that year 1759, as
the body of the king. The abbé knew full well that unless mercy were
shown to him, he might spend the remaining years of his life in the
prison of Fort-l’Évêque or even in the Bastille. Men had come to
such a punishment for mere words--but to throw a goblet of wine in his
majesty’s face! The very memory of his offending compelled him to
shudder like one who was already doomed.
But the Corsican officer had led him to a bedroom now; a pretty room
lighted by many wax candles, and furnished with all the taste
characterising a period so tasteful. It was a large apartment, with a
cabinet giving off it--and the abbé observed in this smaller chamber
a supper-table decked prettily with lighted candles and flowers. For
this, however, he had no appreciating eyes. He felt at the moment as
though he could never eat again. Foreboding, real and stern, had set
his nerves itching. He began to question his conductor, hoping for
some little word of comfort.
“Monsieur,” he said with pitiable anxiety, “I beg you tell me--whose
house is this and where does it lie?”
“Readily,” answered the young officer. “This is the pavilion of Madame
Doublet de Persau. The villagers call it the House of the Scarlet
Witch. I regret, monseigneur, that your first acquaintance of it
should be made so unpropitiously. Saint Denis! who would have thought
that his majesty was unknown to you!”
“God help me,” answered the abbé, “I never saw him but once,
monsieur, and then it was from a bench in the Place Louis Quinze. Oh,
surely he will remember that!”
The Corsican shook his head, implying that he doubted.
“My Lord Bishop,” said he, “I am but a very humble servant of his
majesty, and Heaven forbid that I should anticipate his decision. If
you have friends, however, let me beg of you to write to them. It is
possible, should their influence be not delayed, that you may yet
atone for this offence with a year in the Bastille.”
“A year in the Bastille,” murmured the abbé, “a year--the Saints help
me--a year for a moment’s loss of temper! Oh, _mon Dieu_, will you not
plead for me, monsieur? I am no Lord Bishop, but only a poor curé,
who is friendless and helpless as you see, my son. I conjure you, of
your charity be a friend to me.”
“How!” cried the soldier, with a wondrous assumption of surprise, “you
tell me, my lord, that you are not the Bishop of Blois! Oh, surely,
this night’s work has robbed you of your memory. Think a little and
you will recall the circumstances. Here to-day you were riding to
Paris upon the business of your diocese when you fall into the hands
of Madame Doublet de Persau’s merry fellows, who bring you to this
house to supper. The king, learning of the jest, is driven over from
the palace to enjoy it, when you, losing your temper, throw a goblet
of wine in his majesty’s face, and so become my prisoner until your
sentence is delivered. I exhort you, my lord, hide none of these
things from yourself, but send at once to your friends and conjure
them to intercede for you.”
There was a wondrous air of honesty about the Corsican’s tale; and
although the abbé was more perplexed than ever when the soldier had
done, he determined to trust him, and to make a last effort to help
himself. Indeed, a sudden inspiration seized upon him, and when he
spoke his words came quickly and his white cheeks flushed scarlet.
“Monsieur,” he said, “I see it all plainly; they have mistaken me for
the Lord Bishop of Blois, and so this misfortune has fallen upon me. I
have but one friend in Paris, if, indeed, she be in Paris now. I speak
of my ward, Corinne de Montesson, who is to be found at the Hôtel
Beautreillis in the Rue St. Paul. Could you but convey a word to her
of my necessity, I know that it would not be unavailing. Indeed, she
is very gentle and loving to all, and never fails to help those who
are in adversity. Send to her, I beg of you, and tell her to come to
St. Cloud at once. Say that the Abbé Morellet implores her
assistance--”
“_Ciel!_” cried the Corsican, “I will tell her no such tale--for why
should she come to the help of the Abbé Morellet when it is
Monseigneur the Bishop of Blois whom she is to assist?”
“Sir,” said the abbé, with humble entreaty, “if you tell her that, I
am surely lost.”
“Courage,” said the Corsican, “you forget, monseigneur. In a little
time your memory will come back to you. I shall send to Paris at once.
Meanwhile you will pardon me if I must hold you under lock and key.
You heard the king’s command, my lord?”
“God help me,” cried the abbé, “I heard it too well.”
At this the Corsican withdrew and went downstairs to the supper-table.
The scarlet masks of the company were all laid aside now, and the
suppers no longer ate fish made of bread-crumbs. On the contrary, they
were very merry over flagons of rare red wine and goblets of
champagne, and trout from the Lake of Geneva, and dishes of carp’s
tongues and sturgeon and mullet, and legs of venison, and fat capons.
When they saw the officer, they cried out joyfully, and hastened to
ask how the abbé did.
“Grimod, Grimod, what does he say, what does he do--oh, tell us
quickly--we die with impatience--you have news, Grimod?”
The Corsican held up his hand for quiet. Then, addressing the scarlet
witch,--whose fresh and piquant face belied her rôle now that the
mask was laid aside,--he said,--
“_Ma foi!_ Mademoiselle Corinne, the abbé asks for you.”
“For me?” said the girl; “then you have told him, Grimod?”
“Upon my word, mademoiselle, I have told him nothing. He thinks you
are at the Hôtel Beautreillis, and he begs me to send a messenger
there.”
Corinne clapped her pretty hands.
“Oh,” she said, “how I love him! But he will not send me to a convent
after all.”
The idea that Corinne de Montesson would ever succumb to such a fate
seemed to amuse the masqueraders very much. They greeted her words
with extravagant enthusiasm. One love-sick swain--whose devil’s head
was set mockingly upon a plate before him--turned toward her, eyes
full of sheepish affection, and exclaimed,--
“Saint John, Corinne, if you go to the nuns at Charenton, you will
take half Paris with you.”
“We shall have to build a city there,” cried another.
“Such a place of worship will never have been seen,” said a third.
“I go as maid-in-waiting,” lisped a pretty boy, who was busy with a
dish of venison.
“And the king, what does he go as?” asked a demon, whose head was
tucked away under his chair.
“Yes,” cried Corinne, joyfully, “the king, where is he? Come forth,
sir, and let us see you.”
“_Sacrebleu!_” answered a voice from the further end of the table,
“the king is very well, thank you, mademoiselle--but he will be the
better when he has eaten this pasty.”
Could the abbé have seen the king at that moment his fears would have
vanished like the wind. Truth to tell, his majesty looked exceedingly
unkingly, seated as he was astride a small chair and holding a very
large pasty between his knees. But the wretched priest in the bedroom
above knew of none of these things. While the masqueraders below were
at the zenith of their merriment, the miserable abbé was pacing his
elegant prison; and every turn he took brought a fresh exclamation to
his lips.
“Oh,” he would moan, “a year in the Bastille at the least--that I
should have left my home for this! A year in the Bastille, where they
put you in cages so that your bones are bent; or in ditches, where the
floors are deep in slime! Heaven be merciful to me--I have thrown wine
in the king’s face! Fool that I was!--his dress should have taught me
better manners. And now they will punish me--oh, miserable day,
unhappy hour--what would I not give to be in my bed at Yvette again!”
He, good man, had lived so noble a life that fear had not in all his
years been an enemy to him. But now he feared exceedingly,--feared so
that for a long while he started at every whisper of the wind or creak
of board; feared until he forgot that he was hungry and had not
supped. By and by, however, one of his restless pacings carried him
into the cabinet which opened off the bed-chamber; and then he beheld
the little table with the flowers and the wax-lights and the flagon of
red wine and the well-dressed capon.
“Bah!” he exclaimed angrily, “the wine is but coloured water, the
capon is made of bread--they shall not befool me a second time.”
He thought it a cruel jest, and vowed he would not be the victim of
it; and so he began to pace the room again; but his steps carried him,
despite his resolution, straight into the cabinet again; and at the
third time of his coming, hunger and thirst so far prevailed that he
poured a little of the wine from the flagon and ventured to taste it.
“Oh,” cried he, filling a goblet to the brim, “can it be true?--upon
my word, this is very like the wine of Burgundy--Saint John! I have
never tasted a better imitation.”
There was almost a smile upon the abbé’s face now, and he began with
eager hands to help himself to the capon. A moment later he had seated
himself at the little table and was busy with a groaning plate. Only
when the meal was done did a haunting memory of his night’s work come
back to him--and at that, the wine was soured and the bread turned
bitter. He looked at the great carved bed, and told himself that sleep
was not for such as him. He heard a bell without strike the hour of
midnight, and the new-come day seemed to be the herald of his
misfortunes. Once or twice he went to the door of his prison-chamber
and listened, but could distinguish no sound, neither of voices nor of
steps.
“Holy Saints!” cried he, beginning to pace his room again, “if I could
only lie this night in my bed at Yvette!”
He sighed at the hopelessness of the desire; but, to his intense
amazement, his sigh was echoed from the opposite side of the room. And
he was very surprised when, upon turning round, he beheld, standing
there by a picture let into the panel of the wainscoting, two of the
masked men who had met him on the road earlier in the evening. Indeed,
the abbé rubbed his eyes to make sure that he did not dream; and it
was not until the tallest of the two spoke that he believed altogether
in the reality of that which he saw.
“My Lord Bishop,” said the stranger, “we have kept our promise, and
you see us again. Is it gladly?”
“Gentlemen,” cried the abbé, “gladly indeed--oh, Heaven knows! You
have heard of my misfortune?”
The masked man raised his hand.
“Hush,” said he; “a word may cost you your life. We know all, and have
come to save you. Follow me, ’seigneur, and say nothing, whatever you
may see or hear.”
With this, he laid his hand upon a button in the picture, and the
panel slid back noiselessly, showing a narrow aperture through which
the three men passed--and then, the dazed abbé! The aperture thus
disclosed gave access to a narrow flight of stairs, at the foot of
which was a little door opening at the back of the pavilion directly
upon the park of St. Cloud. Before the abbé had realised anything of
that which was being done, he found himself out upon the soft grass
with the bridle rein of a horse in his left hand and a groom at his
right hand waiting to assist him to mount. The two men in their turn
went to horses waiting for them, and all leaping into the saddles, the
leader said presently,--
“’Seigneur, mount, I beg of you. We ride to Blois for your life.”
“To Blois?” gasped the abbé.
But the groom had helped him into the saddle now, and the man having
sent the horse off to join the others with a lusty smack upon the
quarters, the abbé found himself, for good or ill, galloping wildly
through the park towards the road for Sèvres. So absorbed was he in
doubt and wonder that he failed to observe that a young girl now rode
with his guides--though she was masked as the others were. Indeed,
those with him never drew rein nor spoke a single word until dawn
broke in the sky and St. Cloud and its woods lay far behind them. Then
for the first time they permitted their foaming beasts to go at the
walk and the fresh wind of the morning to breathe upon their heated
faces.
The place was the summit of a hill some five miles from the town of
Rambouillet. Below them a valley stretched pleasantly, and in the far
distance the spire of the church at Yvette stood up like a needle
against the cloudless sky.
“My lord,” said the leader of the strangers as he halted suddenly at
the spot, “yonder is your home. As for us, our work is done. We have
but to give you this paper and to bid you make your way to Blois with
all speed. I doubt not that you will obey faithfully the king’s wish
that you shall not leave your new diocese for the space of one year.”
“My diocese--the king’s wish!” exclaimed the abbé, whose face was
bathed with perspiration and whose limbs were so sore that he could
scarce sit upon his horse.
“Certainly,” answered the masked man, pressing the paper into the
priest’s hands; “read that and all will be known to you.”
The abbé read the paper; then he raised his hands in an attitude of
humble thankfulness.
“Merciful Heaven be praised,” cried he, “they have made me Bishop of
Blois, me--the unworthy--the simple priest--the humble curé of
Yvette! Surely the king has forgiven me then. Gentlemen, I thank you
from my heart for this night’s work. Never shall your services be
forgotten. Tell me your names, I beg of you, that I may remember them
in my prayers.”
The first of the men removed his mask.
“’Seigneur,” said he, “they call me Bénoît, the swordsman.”
“’Seigneur,” cried the second, unmasking in his turn, “I am the Comte
de Guibert--the oldest friend of your ward, Mademoiselle Corinne de
Montesson.”
It was the moment for the young girl now. Swiftly unmasking and
turning her pretty face upon the astonished abbé, she said,--
“And I, ’seigneur, am Corinne herself.”
The abbé sat as one dumfounded. Tears welled up in his eyes.
Gratitude choked his words.
“Corinne,” he said, “oh, it is to you that I owe my pardon and my
fortune then! God bless you a thousand times.”
“But not at Charenton,” cried Corinne, merrily.
“Heaven forbid,” cried the abbé. “Return to your home and carry an
old man’s blessing with you.”
* * * * *
The Bishop of Blois was wont to tell, even in his old age, how that at
St. Cloud he had once thrown a glass of wine in the king’s face. But
the knowing ones shook their heads.
“Bah!” said they among themselves, “it was one of pretty Corinne’s
jests. The only king our good bishop ever met was Lekain, the actor
from the king’s theatre.”
V.
THE PURPLE GLASS
The Chevalier Eugène Sabatier was accounted one of the handsomest
rogues in all Paris; but he looked neither handsome nor roguish when
he stood in the music-room of the Hôtel Beautreillis on the third day
of May in the year 1763, and reflected earnestly upon the strange tale
which Antonio, the physician, had just told him.
The glorious afternoon was coming to a close then, and the old gardens
in the Rue St. Paul began to be filled with the first sweetness of the
night. Trees laden with blossoms, bushes with roses, rustled gently as
the warm south wind breathed upon them; lengthening shadows upon the
grass waged war with the delaying patches of sunlight and drove them
inch by inch from the garden. The spires and turrets of the great
house shone radiant a little while with fiery beams which struck upon
their windows and copper domes and made them like burning beacons
above the surrounding streets. In the music-room itself, a soft
twilight prevailed; and this was in keeping with the gloom which had
come upon those in the chamber.
There were three persons in the great room at that hour; but the young
chevalier was the most prominent figure, standing as he did where the
deep red light of the setting sun could strike upon the gold and blue
of his dragoon’s uniform, and even send fire flashing from the heavy
brass helmet he held in his hand. As for Mademoiselle Corinne, the
mistress of the Hôtel Beautreillis, she sat in a low chair drawn so
far behind the curtain of the window that her pretty face was all in a
shadow; nor could you distinguish the colour of her robe nor the tint
of the lace which hid her exquisitely white neck. But it was plain
that she was very serious; and the same might have been said of her
old physician Antonio, who sat at a great writing table in the centre
of the apartment, and dipped his long quill pen into the ink-horn
before him with irritating regularity. Never once did he look at the
young officer, nor seem to remember the astonishment which a word of
his had just created. And this was the more surprising since that word
had told of the officer’s death.
“Monsieur,” he had said, “if you go to the Château Saint Mandé
to-night, you go to the house of a man who is waiting to kill you.”
The chevalier sprang from his chair, and standing a moment with the
crimson light flashing upon his young face, he appeared like one about
to resent a savage insult.
“_Dieu!_” cried he, “do you forget that I am going to the house of my
brother?”
“I forget nothing,” answered the old man, without looking up from his
paper. “Should you doubt my words, monsieur, it is easy to prove them
by continuing your journey immediately to the château. But the proof
will be with us--for your body will lie in the Marne before midnight.”
The prophecy was that of one who weighed his words well; but so
terrible was it to hear, that long minutes passed and no voice broke
the silence in the music-room. As for Eugène Sabatier, he might have
been stricken dumb. Doubt, dread, anger, fear--each of these played
upon his boyish face in their turn. Saying to himself at one moment
that the story was a hideous calumny, in the next he remembered the
untold wrongs he had suffered at his brother’s hand, and a voice
whispered in his ear, “The physician is right.” Corinne, meanwhile,
watched her guest with sad eyes and a troubled mind. There was
something beyond mere friendship in a glance like that. Had her
thoughts been uttered aloud, she would have said, “I love him.”
Happily for her, the curtain hid her face, and the pretty flush which
added ornament to it. When she spoke, there was scarce a ring of
tenderness in her voice.
“Eugène,” she said, for they had been children together, and no
formalities stood between them,--“Eugène, do not think that Antonio
would jest with you at such a moment. This is no new thing to him. He
has known your brother, the Count of Brives, for twenty years. I sent
for you to-night to save your life--repay me by forgetting everything
but the fortune and the future which to-night may bring you.”
The young soldier, distracted by a hundred thoughts, turned upon her a
glance full of affection yet hardly followed her words.
“Corinne,” cried he, “I know that my brother hates me--yet, that he
would kill me--_mon Dieu_, I cannot believe that.”
“Nevertheless,” chimed in the old physician, “he killed your brother
Gilbert.”
An exclamation almost of resentment broke from Sabatier.
“Monsieur,” he gasped, “you say--?”
“That your brother Gilbert was poisoned by the Count of Brives in the
Château Saint Mandé two years ago to-night.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Sabatier, sinking into a seat and burying his face in
his hands, “God grant that you are wrong!”
“Antonio is never wrong,” said Corinne, sadly. “If you ask him, he
will tell you that your brother was poisoned three weeks after he
became marshal of the palace--an appointment the Count of Brives had
applied for but had failed to obtain.”
“In the same way that you, monsieur,” added Antonio, “having been
ordered to Westphalia to supplant the count in a command there, will
be poisoned by him on the eve of your departure.”
The old man spoke with such deliberate emphasis and conviction, his
story was so plausible, that Sabatier could suffer it no longer.
“Corinne,” cried he, rising from his seat and suppressing the many
emotions which rushed upon his brain, “it is all like a terrible dream
to me. I must go home to reason with it. And if it be as you say, then
I thank God that my brother is saved from this new crime.”
He held out his hand to her; but she did not take it.
“Eugène,” she exclaimed, “before you go home to-night you have work
to do.”
“Which is, Corinne?”
“To avenge your brother Gilbert and to become the Count of Brives.”
Perplexed as he was, Sabatier smiled.
“Oh,” said he, “now you speak to me in riddles. What miracle shall
make me Count of Brives to-night?”
“Supper at the Château Saint Mandé is the only miracle necessary,
Eugène.”
The young man drew back with an impatient gesture.
“Corinne,” he cried, “is it an hour for jests?”
“I do not jest with you, Eugène,” she answered very tenderly. “Did
not I tell you that fortune and a future awaited you to-night? It is
for you to say whether you will take the gift or refuse it.”
She spoke very simply, though deep feeling gave a quaver to her voice.
As for Sabatier, he began to tell himself that he had lost his wits;
and he walked up and down the room like a man distracted.
“Come,” cried he, stopping suddenly at last; “what mystery is this?
You say that my brother will poison me, yet you tell me to sup with
him. I beseech you be plain with me--oh, do I not suffer enough that
you should add to my burden?”
He turned from one to the other appealingly, his distress being so
great that tears stood in his eyes, and his voice was husky and
broken. But it was the old physician who answered him.
“Monsieur,” said he, laying down his pen for the first time, “you
beseech me to be plain with you, and I will hasten to obey your wish.
Mademoiselle tells you truly that fortune and a future await you at
the Château Saint Mandé to-night; but if they are to be won, they
will be won by your own courage. The Count of Brives asks you to his
home that he may kill you as he killed your brother Gilbert. If you
turn back now, thinking to spare him the crime, you will dishonour
your father’s memory and add new shame to a house which knew shame for
the first time when your eldest brother was born to it. Let me conjure
you, then, to do no such thing, but to ride hence at once for the
Château--”
“Where they will poison me?” interrupted Sabatier, a little angrily.
“Exactly,” continued Antonio, “where they will poison you. But you, if
you are careful to do exactly as I bid you, you will awake presently
from the death you shall seem to die, and being awakened, will find
yourself in twenty hours Count of Brives and master of his fortune.”
Sabatier stood wonder-struck. The old man, excited now by the story he
was telling, raised his hand as in warning, and continued rapidly,--
“Monsieur, there is no other in the world who is called, as you are
now called, to be God’s messenger in this work of vengeance and of
right. Go, then, before the clock strikes again, to Saint Mandé; and
say to yourself as you enter, ‘I am come to avenge my brother
Gilbert.’ Whatever you see there, whatever may happen to you--fear
nothing. The eyes of those that send you to this work will watch you
even as you sit. I say no more--the minutes pass swiftly; and what
further counsel I can give is written here upon this parchment. Let me
exhort you to read every letter of that injunction--not once, but
twelve times, as you ride toward the château. For that writing is
life or death--as you remember or forget it.”
There was a great stillness in the room when the old man ceased to
speak. Sabatier, scarce knowing whether the words were real or the
echo of a dream, took with trembling hands the paper which the
physician thrust upon him. Then he turned questioningly to Corinne;
but she had now risen from her seat, and coming forward she laid her
pretty fingers caressingly upon his arm.
“Eugène,” she asked earnestly, “you will avenge your brother?”
“As God is my witness,” he answered, “I will know the truth this
night.”
The woods of Vincennes were very dark when Eugène Sabatier passed
through them on his way to his brother’s house. But his head was too
full of terrible thoughts to permit him to notice the state of the
night or even the dangers of the road. For the matter of that he had
ridden at a hand-gallop from Mademoiselle Corinne’s courtyard; and
skirting the right bank of the Seine, he drew rein but twice before
the grim and forbidding home of the Count of Brives stood up in the
valley before him. Then, indeed, with a little shiver of fear he
permitted his horse to walk, while he took off his heavy brass helmet
and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“_Ciel!_” he said to himself, “what an errand to go upon! That my
brother should be a poisoner. Bah, I will not believe it! Corinne has
been too clever for once. That old fool of a physician has deceived
her with his nonsense. As well might I expect to be Pope as to step
into Charles’s shoes and become Count of Brives to-morrow. Yet I
cannot forget that poor Gilbert’s body was found in the river the
morning after he supped at Saint Mandé. God help me--what am I to
think?”
He was riding at that moment through a wood of shivering aspens; and
what with the strange, haunting music of their leaves, and the
darkness of the thicket, and the weird light playing upon the river,
whose course he could mark, like a great silver vein of the valley, he
began to be more fearful than ever he had been in all his life. And
this was surprising, since there was no braver man in Condé’s legion
than Eugène Sabatier; none readier with the rapier, or more skilled
in all those arts which are a soldier’s boast. It was the hidden
danger--the death in the cup--that now made his heart beat so loudly.
He could not hide it from himself that this old man, who had warned
him, might be a fool and a boaster. How, he asked himself, if the
scheme should fail and his own body be found to-morrow in the Marne?
He had little to hope for in life, for he was a penniless soldier, who
must make his own future; but so long as he could treasure up in his
heart love for little Corinne, he was content to live, and to dream of
a day when there should be no gulf of wealth and station between them.
That day would come quickly enough if his brother, the Count of
Brives, were to die, since the count had neither wife nor child; and
title and lands would then descend to him. He remembered that Corinne
had promised that all this should happen twenty hours after he had sat
down to supper at the château; and he laughed again at the absurdity
of her promise. Only when he remembered poor Gilbert did his own
courage come back to him; and riding quickly out of the wood he swore
that the truth should be hidden no longer.
He was not more than a hundred yards from the gloomy house now; and he
could hear the voices of boatmen rising up from the river’s bank.
Behind him lay Paris, her lights beginning to shine brightly as in joy
of the newly come night; before him the road sloped gently toward the
Seine, meeting it at last at a point where the Marne flows into the
greater stream. He could see his brother’s château, which had the
shape of an old-time fortress, standing up black and threatening
almost at the water’s edge. In the distance it appeared to be the
stronghold of the hamlet which lay in its shadow; a hamlet of tumbling
cottages, with an old Norman church, red-roofed, squat, yet withal
picturesque. But when you rode into the one street of this village,
you observed that a meadow lay between the great house and its humbler
children; and that the former was girded about with a wood of poplars.
Indeed, it was a very lonely house, and all the villagers shunned it,
as they shunned its melancholy, silent, solitude-loving master, the
Count Charles of Brives.
These villagers were all going to their beds when the young captain of
Condé’s legion rode at a canter through their hamlet. He, on his
part, took little notice of them or of their dwellings, so entirely
did apprehension of the peril to come play upon his mind. Twice
already had he perused the slip of parchment which old Antonio
intrusted to him with so solemn a warning; but now, at the mouth of
the village, he drew rein for the third time, and holding the paper so
that the light from the lantern of the inn fell upon it, he read every
word of it again and again; and having read it, he repeated it twenty
times aloud, to be sure that his memory had it. There were but three
lines of writing in all--done clearly, in great bold characters; and
Eugène soon knew them so well that he could say them backwards or
forwards as he pleased:--
BEWARE OF THE PURPLE GLASS
THE HALF OF THAT WITHIN IT IS LIFE
THE WHOLE IS DEATH.
“Bah!” said he, tearing the paper into shreds and letting the night
wind scatter it, “they tell a tale to frighten children--not men. What
an injustice to believe this of my brother until I have something
beyond an old man’s cackle to go upon. How should he know of a purple
glass, and how can there be both life and death within it? I will
listen to no such slander, but sup with the count as brother should.”
This was all very well in promise, but the performance was a different
matter. Though Sabatier kept telling himself that he had nothing to
fear, his heart beat wildly when ultimately he stood at the gate of
the château and heard the great bell booming in the tower above him.
What, he asked, if that gate, which now shut behind him with such an
ominous clang, should never open to his knock again! How if the morn
should find his body lapped upon by the waters yonder, sedge grass
hiding his face, and the reeds trying vainly to clothe him with
warmth! He could not suppress a shudder when a voice whispered in his
ear--“All this is possible.” Nor did the croaking welcome of the
evil-eyed, stooping, lank old servant, Armand, reassure him.
“The count, my master, awaits you in the salon, monsieur,” said he. “I
pray you be careful of the steps--they are, like all else here, a
little grown in age. Shall Germain bed your horse, or do you ride away
to-night?”
“Ay, surely, Armand; I leave Paris to-morrow, and must be in my own
bed before midnight is struck,” answered Eugène, merrily--though his
heart sank lower and lower at the gloomy aspect of all he saw about
him. “Let the horse have a mouthful of sweet hay and a loosened
girth,” he added presently; “who knows that my hand will be steady
enough to saddle him when I have done supping with the count!”
The old servant, who had thrown the reins to the lad Germain, looked
up quickly at this remark, his toothless mouth opening in a horrid
smile.
“Who knows, monsieur?” he said; “there was never one of your race that
refused a flask of Armagnac yet. And there is none better in France
than the wine in my master’s cellars. I pray you follow me lest the
supper be already cold.”
With this, he took up his lantern and mounted a steep, tortuous narrow
staircase, above which the great black walls of the château loomed
forbiddingly. There was a wicket in an old iron-sheathed door at the
stair’s head, and when they had passed through it, they stood in a
vast hall, the walls of which were covered with rusting armour. But
the place was forsaken and unlighted, save for the poor rays which
fell from the candle in the lantern; and, indeed, the whole house was
full of a silence as of the silence of death. It was a tremendous
relief to Eugène when at last he entered the great salon and beheld
his brother standing near the door to receive him. Every suspicion,
every doubt, all the horrid stories he had heard at the Hôtel
Beautreillis, were forgotten in a moment. Kinship, even affection,
succeeded to them during the instant of warm welcome.
“Brother,” he said, coming forward with a light step, and stooping to
kiss the count upon the cheeks,--“brother, it is good to see you
again.”
Count Charles suffered rather than returned the greeting. He was a man
perhaps of forty years of age: his face pitted with the small-pox; his
nose squat and up-turned; his beard short and stubby; his eyes very
bright and very small. He wore a suit of black velvet with ruffles of
white lace; but his vest was embroidered with silver, and the buttons
of it were picked out with diamonds.
“My brother,” said he, his restless eyes blinking the while, “I heard
that you were named for a command in Westphalia. It was natural that I
should wish to see you before you go.”
It sounded almost like an apology; but Eugène, refusing to notice the
hesitation and halting manner, became frankness itself.
“It is true,” he answered, “that I have a command, Charles--though
there is little hope left to us of the war. I am sure you wish me
God-speed, for I am to have your old company in Condé’s legion.”
The count shrugged his shoulders.
“Pah!” said he, curtly, “if you can make those rats fight, you are a
clever man. They ran at Minden like deer from the dogs. Let us sit to
supper and forget them.”
He led the way to an adjoining dining-room, even a larger chamber than
the one they quitted; and they sat together at the end of a long
table, feebly lit by eight wax lights. The toothless old man, Armand,
waited upon them, like a ghostly image from the gloom in which the
greater part of the room was plunged. For a while, neither of the
brothers spoke a word, eating silently and scarce looking at one
another. The supper itself was of the plainest--a capon, a dish of
spinach, some tender slices of venison--and for drink, champagne in
long goblets of sparkling cut glass. Eugène said to himself for the
second time when he lifted such a goblet and drank deeply of the
foaming draught, that old Antonio, the physician to Mademoiselle
Corinne, was a fool. There was no such thing as a purple glass upon
the table. How, then, could he avoid that within it? They had told him
a hag’s tale. Surely it was one of pretty Corinne’s jests. For a
truth, he was half of a mind to hint to his brother the cruel slander
put abroad about him; but restraining himself, he began to talk of the
Hôtel Beautreillis and of its fascinating mistress.
“You have seen Corinne lately?” he asked indifferently.
The count looked up quickly.
“You speak of Mademoiselle de Montesson?” said he.
“Certainly I do; but I thought you were such good friends.”
Count Charles shrugged his shoulders.
“I know her a little,” said he, with assumed nonchalance, “and you--”
“Oh,” said Eugène, with whole-hearted energy, “I know her very well
indeed, brother.”
The count put out his glass that Armand might fill it with champagne.
The action helped him to conceal from Eugène the deep flush upon his
face, and the angry brightness of his eyes. But he said no word to
betray himself, and began cleverly to talk of other subjects with a
loquacity quite foreign to him. As for the younger man, though he was
quite content now to believe that Corinne had told him a silly story,
none the less did the influence of his surroundings weigh heavily upon
him. His heart was dark as the great room in which he sat; and just as
in that chamber eight candles cast an aureole of light at its centre,
so in his own heart was there a glow of light when he remembered his
love for pretty Corinne. “Shall I ever see her again?” he asked. A
relentless foreboding warned him that he might not. Danger seemed all
about him. He knew that his brother hated him--hated him because his
mother had loved him; hated him for his looks, his friends, his
successes. But he knew then that he hated him most of all because of
the word which he had spoken about little Corinne.
Supper was done now; and the count, pushing back his chair from the
table, seemed to be in a more generous mood.
“Armand,” he cried to the toothless old serving man, “bring a flask of
Armagnac and set glasses. You can go to the lodge then.”
Eugène was surprised at the request.
“Do you live here alone, brother?” he asked.
“Certainly,” replied the count; “am I not a soldier who has been alone
all my life?”
It was a bitter question, and Eugène shuddered--he knew not why. Far
from fearing his brother now, he pitied him, and would have been very
glad to say so; but just when the word was upon his lips, Armand
returned with the flask of the wine of Armagnac and two long glasses,
which he wiped and set carefully upon the table. Eugène observed
their colour immediately. They were of a deep purple tint. “_Ciel!_”
he murmured to himself, while his heart beat fast and the blood rushed
to his brain, “_the purple glass_.” In the same instant, Armand left
the room; and a little while after a gate in the courtyard was shut
with a loud clang. The brothers were alone in the house of gloom.
The count was the first to speak. He had the flask of wine in his
hand; and Eugène, who watched him like one fascinated, observed that
his arm trembled when he raised it.
“Come,” said he, in a thick, unnatural voice, “there is no finer
Armagnac in Paris than this. Let me give you some.”
Eugène bowed his head. His face was almost livid now. For that which
he must suffer, he cared nothing. He would sooner have died there and
then than make sure of so horrible a truth. “My brother a poisoner,”
he said to himself a a hundred times, “oh, what shame, what
dishonour!”
The count filled his glass and pushed it over to him. Eugène was
surprised to see that his brother helped himself also to the wine,
drinking the half of a glass at a draught. The action reassured him.
“They have told me a lie,” he said to himself for the twentieth
time--and with this upon his lips and the warning of old Antonio
ringing in his ears like a knell, he lifted the purple glass and drank
from it. “The half is life,” said the voice. Eugène drank exactly one
half and put the glass upon the table. The count did not appear to
notice the action.
“So you leave Paris to-morrow?” said he, pleasantly.
The dragoon answered incoherently. A strange joy began to quicken the
blood in his veins. He had looked to fall senseless after drinking the
wine, but to his amazement nothing happened. Rather he felt elated,
eager to talk nonsense, light-headed as a child. “Pish,” said he to
himself, “what a calumny to spread!” The reaction was terrible,
overwhelming. He had the desire to rise and embrace his brother. He
spoke of little Corinne freely--even of his love for her. The count
replied in monosyllables. He, too, was watching, but the light of long
years of hate was in his eyes. The moment of his vengeance had come,
he said.
Five minutes had passed now since Eugène drank the wine; five minutes
which he declared were the happiest in his life. But, of a sudden, his
joy was turned to great fear; his words were broken on his lips; cold
sweat started to his forehead; his heart quickened with a pulse of
weakness. In that instant he knew that the old physician had not
cheated him. Death himself seemed to have touched him upon the
forehead. A dreamy, irresistible sleep stole upon him, surely.
Everything in the room was still clear to his eyes; but the power of
action and of speech was becoming less every moment. He felt that he
was sinking down into unconsciousness. “Oh,” he moaned, “I shall never
see little Corinne again.” All his love for her was magnified a
thousand times at the thought. He clenched his hands and swore that he
would not die. With a last effort, and a last loud cry, he raised
himself from his chair--only to fall headlong at his brother’s feet;
and to lie there, seeing all, hearing all, but unable to move a limb
or utter a word.
The Count of Brives, who had waited for the moment, rose for the first
time since his brother had drunk the wine. Eugène, lying there in the
trance which the poison put upon him, could observe all the other’s
actions--and he watched him as a prisoner may watch a captor from whom
he has no hope of mercy. Deliberately and with all the nerve of a man
grown callous to crime, the count began to finish his work. He put out
the lights upon the table one by one, until a single candle alone
lighted the vast chamber. Then, taking this candle in his hand, he
bent over the body before him and looked at it with a malignity woeful
to see.
“Pah!” he said, placing the light upon the table again, “Condé’s
legion will want a captain to-morrow, and Corinne a lover. He brought
it upon himself--why should I pity him?”
The dragoon heard the words very plainly, and the hate in them added
to that which he suffered. It was true, then, as Antonio had told him,
that his brother meant to kill him when he asked him to the Château
Saint Mandé. He recollected at the same time that the old man had
prophesied things which he did not understand at the moment of their
utterance. “You will awake presently from the death you shall seem to
die, and being awakened, will find yourself in twenty hours Count of
Brives and master of his fortunes.” Or again: “The eyes of those that
send you to this work will watch you even as you lie.” Would he,
indeed, he asked himself, wake again from this paralysis which had
fallen upon heart and tongue and limb? Did some friendly eyes indeed
watch him as he lay there in all the agony of a trance? He could not
answer; could do nothing but think of little Corinne and pray that he
might see her once again.
The Count of Brives had opened the window of the salon now, and the
cool air of the May night flooded the chamber refreshingly. Eugène
heard his brother pass out into the garden beyond, and when he
returned to the table he had a lantern in his hand. Nerved by all the
resolution of daring and cruelty, he was quick to act, that his crime
might be hidden from men and from his own eyes. Ever and anon Eugène
could observe his pale face as he moved swiftly about the room, or
listened with strained ear to catch any sound in the house. But the
silence of ultimate night reigned in the château. No human thing
moved there. Not a clock ticked, not a door creaked. The wind moaned
its song of solitude in the poplars of the garden--but the count was
alone with his victim.
Twice he walked up to the body of the man he believed to be dead;
twice he drew back with a tremor of nerve and a gesture of repugnance.
When at last his iron will conquered, he stooped quickly, and bringing
all his great strength to the work, he began to drag the body toward
the window. It was a horrid effort even for him; and he had but begun
it when a loud sound, like the sound of a door shutting in a chamber
above, caused him to spring up with a great cry, and to stagger from
the room as though unnumbered phantoms had come about him to proclaim
the deed. Eugène heard the sound well enough, and began to hope for
the second time. “They watch me, they watch me!” he cried,--“oh, how I
need my courage!--if they should be too late!” The thought was
unbearable, almost maddening; the agony of the bondage of helplessness
greater than any man could conceive. He prayed for unconsciousness,
even for death--but these were denied to him. The drug had quickened
his life--and yet had robbed him of all that which life is.
In this the mood of fear unspeakable, he lay and listened while his
brother passed quickly from room to room, opening and shutting the
doors loudly, and often crying “Who goes there?” as though he was sure
that some one else had entered the château. Nor was the count content
until he had searched even the garrets, and had told himself a hundred
times that the wind cheated him in his alarm. When at last he returned
to the dining-room, his step was stronger and his will more sure. He
picked up the body now as though it had been a common burden, and
staggering from step to step down the stairs upon which the window
opened, he dragged it into the garden, and so out into the moonlight,
which fell plenteously upon the damp grass. There for a moment he
stood panting for his breath and shading his eyes, that he might see
more clearly into the garden. As for Eugène, he had felt the strength
of the arms which clasped him so surely; and now when he lay stiff and
voiceless upon the grass, he said that death had become his neighbour.
“He means to throw my body in the Seine,” he thought; “they will come
too late--they have left me to die--what cruelty!--what a night of
suffering!” Had a voice then been given to him, he would have screamed
in his terror. But the drug had tied his tongue; the trance held him
too surely--he was dead, yet suffered as the living rarely have
suffered.
Once more the count stooped to his dreadful work. The spot whereon he
stood was scarce a hundred yards from the black waters of the Seine.
There was to be no delay this time. Turning his
[Illustration: He picked up the Body and staggered down.]
eyes away that he might not look upon his brother’s face again, he
gripped him by the left arm and began to drag him toward the river.
Two paces he took; his foot was raised for a third--when the second
omen of the night sent him staggering back from his burden like one
stricken with a mortal sickness. The omen was nothing less than the
sound of his name uttered from a window high up in the looming wall of
the château. Clear above the river’s moaning and the song of the
poplars, the call came:--
“Monsieur le Comte, Monsieur le Comte, where is your brother Eugène?”
The count turned round on his heel--a cry frothed upon his lips--he
reeled backward, backward, saying that the judgment of God was upon
him. The château, which had been dark when he left it five minutes
before, was now blazing with light. Every room on the upper story shed
bright golden rays from its windows. Seen in the strong moonlight, the
great house had become like a palace of the fairies. The panes of
glass were so many stars shining in a setting of black stone; the very
attics were beacons to guide those far away in the valley. More than
all, a man clothed from head to foot in black stood plain to be seen
at a casement above the salon; and he it was who called to Count
Charles,--
“Monsieur le Comte, Monsieur le Comte, where is your brother Eugène?”
The count heard the call, and for a moment terror convulsed him. But
fury was quick to prevail above fear; and with a great oath upon his
lips, he drew a dagger and ran back to the château. In the same
instant, the man in black disappeared from the window; and Eugène,
watching it all with a hope not to be described, observed that the
bushes near to him on the lawn opened suddenly, and that men came out
of them. The face of the first of these new-comers was hidden by a
mask; but when the man stooped presently to pour the contents of a
phial upon the dragoon’s lips, the mask slipped and Eugène knew that
old Antonio was at his side.
“My son,” said the old man, watching the red drops fall upon the
feverish lips, “awake--and sleep.”
“_Ciel!_ is it thou, Antonio?” murmured Eugène, knowing that the
trance had passed from him the moment the drops fell, “Oh, blessed be
God--I live--I live!”
That minute was the most exquisite of his life; but scarce had he
realised the meaning of it when a sweet unconsciousness stole upon
him, and he slept. And so sleeping, the men raised him in their arms
and carried him quickly out of the garden.
The afternoon of the following day was drawing to its close when
Eugène Sabatier awoke from his deep sleep. A ray of burning sunlight
striking down through the open window of his room in the Rue Charles
V., fell at length upon his eyes, and caused him to turn uneasily upon
his bed. A moment later, he sat upright and began to stare about him
with the air of one who is not quite sure either of the hour or of his
environment. In which operation, he encountered the gaze of his
servant Barnardin, who stood at the bed’s head as though he had long
been awaiting the moment.
“Sir,” said the valet, advancing with his master’s clothes, “it is
five o’clock, and you know that we leave Paris at eight. Will you be
pleased to rise?”
“_Diavolo!_” cried Eugène, springing from the bed with a light
step--and he was very much surprised to find how strong he was--“have
I slept long, Barnardin?”
Barnardin shook his head.
“You were away from home when I left here at ten o’clock last night,
my master,” said he; “but when I brought your coffee at eight o’clock
this morning you slept so soundly that I could not wake you.”
The dragoon began to dress himself quickly, remembering only that he
had orders to leave Paris at eight o’clock that night.
“_Sang-bleu!_” muttered he to himself, “I must have supped in some
cabaret--and drunk too much Armagnac. What a thing to dream--that my
brother poisoned me! Pah! it was a fool’s sleep, and I am paid for my
folly. And yet I could swear that I talked with Corinne at her house
yesterday, and that she promised to make me Count of Brives in twenty
hours. _Dame!_ I am like to wait long for that!”
The reflection made him a little gloomy, reminding him as it did how
small had been fortune’s gifts to him, and how childish was his hope
that he might ever speak to Corinne of his love for her. Were he Count
of Brives, then would it be a very different thing; for he could hurry
back from the war and make haste to deal with those estates which
Count Charles treated so ill. But he told himself again and again that
all his visions of the night had been phantoms of sleep come to
torment him with illusions and vain words. He was still Eugène, the
dragoon--with scarce ten gold pieces in his pocket and no prospect for
the future save that which the war offered to him. Little Corinne
remained the mistress of the Hôtel Beautreillis and of the great
station which her possessions gave to her. What folly to dream that he
might ever tell her that he loved her!
Saying this to himself, he made a hurried meal; and all being ready,
set out for the Barrière du Trône when the clocks of Paris were
striking half-past six. His baggage had gone already in the waggons of
the regiment, which he was to join at Chalons; and he rode now
accompanied only by his servant Barnardin, who led his second charger.
Many turned in the streets to look at the handsome dragoon in the
sky-blue uniform; many muttered, “There goes that rogue Sabatier to
the wars;” but Eugène noticed none of them. A deep depression weighed
him down; his accustomed gaiety and readiness of speech had forsaken
him; he struck again into the heart of the woods of Vincennes, and the
silence of the thickets was like balm to his weary mind. He was
absolutely convinced that the events of the dreadful night were the
events of a dream. He remembered that he must pass his brother’s
château on his way to Chalons. “I will call and ask a God-speed of
him,” said he to himself; “I owe him that for allowing myself ever to
repeat so cruel a calumny.”
He had come by this time to that little place upon the hill whence he
could look down to the Seine, and observe the gloomy towers of his
brother’s house. Here, despite his resolution, a shudder of fear
trembled upon all his limbs. Strange as he thought it, the dream
seemed more real with every mile he rode. He could have sworn that he
stood last night upon that very spot; he remembered the blood-red
light upon the river; the shiver of the aspens; the foreboding which
possessed him. Angry with himself that these thoughts prevailed, he
set spurs to his horse, and rode at a gallop toward the village.
“A plague upon it,” said he, “it was a dream, a silly dream. I did not
sup with my brother, and never shall I be Count of Brives--fool that I
am to think of it!”
“Monsieur,” said a voice at his side, “permit me to tell you that you
are mistaken.”
Eugène checked his horse and looked round quickly. He saw to his
astonishment that a man who wore a rich dress of black cloth, and a
black plumed hat, rode at his side upon a magnificent beast who kept
pace with the other as easily as though he had been walking for the
show of it in the Place Louis Quinze.
“Monsieur,” said the dragoon, civilly, “you said--?”
“That you are very much mistaken, sir,--you did sup with your brother
last night, and you will be Count of Brives before the clock strikes
again.”
The words were spoken with such a fine air that Sabatier began to ask
himself if this were some new apparition come to cheat him as the
others had done.
“Oh,” cried he, impatiently, “what mystery is all this! Am I in my
senses, or do I still sleep?”
He reined in his horse, and the stranger came close up to his side.
“Monsieur,” said he, “you neither sleep nor dream. Ask yourself no
such silly question. It is quite true that your brother attempted to
poison you last night with a flask of Armagnac in which, as the
physician Antonio would tell you, there were four grains of one of the
most deadly drugs known to the East. You, however, remembering the
warning, drank but a half of the glass set before you--and so you
become Count of Brives.”
“I?” cried Eugène, impatiently, “I become Count of Brives?”
“Exactly,” said the other; “you have only to ride to yonder château
to make it your own.”
The dragoon laughed scornfully.
“Pah!” said he, “how could the wine have been poisoned when my brother
drank of it; and how could your physician know what the flask
contained?”
The man in the plumed hat betrayed no sign of impatience.
“Monsieur,” said he, slowly, “you ask me two questions, and I will
answer them. We knew what the wine contained because Armand, your
brother’s servant, has long been good enough to sell us for money an
account of your brother’s life. Three weeks ago the Count of Brives
was offered by an agent of my mistress, Mademoiselle Corinne, a
preparation of the poppy leaf brought from Yezd. So fatal is this to
those whose bodies are not fortified against it by the continued and
gradual habit of eating the drug, that two-thirds of a grain will kill
the strongest man. You, however, drinking but a half of that which was
offered to you, suffered but a passing loss of your senses. It is
obvious to you that the count, having been long in the East and
accustomed to the use of opium, could drink that which would mean the
death of another not so prepared. The draught last night steeled his
will to the dreadful crime he sought to commit. You, however,
succumbed to it; and never, I swear, did the living wear the cloak of
the dead as you wore it in the Château Saint Mandé.”
Sabatier groaned at the remembrance. It seemed to him that he began to
suffer the terror of the garden for the second time.
“_Ciel!_” cried he, “it is all a miracle--I cannot believe it--I
cannot.”
“It is no miracle,” said the stranger, solemnly; “it is the hand of
Almighty God avenging your brother who was slain. Go then to the
château--but go alone, that the eyes of no other may witness the deed
which must be. I wait here until yonder church bell shall tell me that
you are Count of Brives.”
He pointed with outstretched arm to the gate of the darkening house
upon whose blackened walls the last crimson rays of the setting sun
were dying down quickly. As Eugène rode away, he remembered that he
had seen the stranger before, and he said--it was he who called from
the window last night--“Monsieur le Comte, Monsieur le Comte, where is
your brother Eugène?” Drawn on at the recollection as by a fatality,
eager to prove, to make sure, now buoyed up with hope, now trembling
with excitement, he galloped through the street of the village, and
never drew rein until his hand was upon the bell at the outer gate of
the château and the birds were winging upward at his clamorous peal.
As it had been last night--that night of nights--so was it to-day. The
toothless old Armand gave him welcome; the lad Germain held his horse.
Nothing seemed altered in the great house; nothing of its silence nor
of its mystery. But Sabatier’s heart beat until his whole body shook
with the pulsations; and so great was his dread that he could scarce
frame the question--
“Where is my brother, the count?”
“Monsieur,” said the old man, with a horrible leer, “your brother
awaits you in the garden.”
Bidding him stay where he was, Sabatier ascended the rotting staircase
and passed rapidly through the hall. “I will know the truth, I will
learn all,” he said to himself--determined now that the mystery should
blind him no more. Many as were his sensations while he strode across
the great dining-room to the garden beyond, he quitted them all in the
greater doubt--“Can this thing have been?” And doubting of it to the
last, he opened the window and so beheld his brother.
The count was dressed as he had been on the previous evening; but his
eyes were now bloodshot and inflamed; his step halting and restless;
his hair dishevelled. When Sabatier saw him thus, he was walking, with
bent head, to and fro upon the grass plot by the bushes; but his
glance was ever upon the ground, and he muttered unceasingly, “Where
is my brother Eugène?” This haunting cry had been upon his lips
through every hour of that dreadful night. He had never left the scene
of his crime--had touched no food, had spoken no word. From the moment
when he discovered that some unseen eye watched him in his horrid
task--the Count of Brives lost his reason.
“Oh, my God!” cried Eugène, aloud, moved to exceeding pity by a sight
so woeful, “my brother is mad.”
The count heard the cry and looked up. For one long-drawn instant he
stood quite still; then, with a moan upon his lips, he began to walk
backwards down the garden. But at the third step, he fell heavily upon
the grass.
“Brother,” said Eugène, running to his side,--“brother, I forgive.”
It was a word of surpassing love--but the heart of the Count of Brives
had ceased to beat when it was spoken.
When Eugène Sabatier rode from the Château Saint Mandé that night
to join the army at Chalons, the villagers cried after him,--
“_Bon soir_, Monsieur le Comte.”
And the bells of the little church soon told all Paris that Charles,
Count of Brives, was no more.
VI.
THE KINGDOM OF BOURGORIEAU
The Feast of the Precious Blood, on the fourth day of July, in the
year 1763, sent many of Old Paris to the gardens of the _Courtille des
Porcherons_, famous at that time for the great sign-board upon which
Master Ramponeau, the host of the _guinguette_, was depicted, sitting
astride a hogshead, and therefrom beckoning all the city to taste of
his unsurpassable wines. Other _courtilles_, it is true, waged a good
fight against the booths and bazaars of the _Tambour Royal_, as old
Ramponeau’s house was called; but the fame of his tavern was built
upon the rock of a royal patronage, and rare was the day when some
masquerader from the palace did not drive to that place of arbours and
of shade in quest of adventure which should oil his tongue at Trianon.
Thither, too, went the butter girls from the Quai de Gesvres, ready
with their pretty patois to answer the dragoons of the guard--thither,
as rumour said, Madame herself had gone under the escort of the Duc de
Richelieu. Bourgeois or aristocrat, priest or clerk, student or
philosopher, trooper or captain,--it mattered not in the gardens of
Ramponeau. He had the same welcome for all--the same witty greeting,
the same civility. And he knew more of the secrets of Paris than the
Canons of Notre Dame themselves. “Oh, ce bon Ramponeau, comme il est
drôle,” said the women. The men spoke of his wines. There were no
better in Paris. To drink them you could suffer even the music of
Ramponeau’s fiddler and the dust of the drive to the Porcherons.
The Feast of the Precious Blood was a day of sun and heat; but a cool
breeze came up with the evening, and many masqueraders gathered at the
hour of eight o’clock in the shady avenues of the _Tambour Royal_.
Ramponeau, whose long neck twisted unrestingly in his greetings to
this great man or to that, was hoarse with proclaiming the merits of
his wine of Burgundy and of his Armagnac. The weary fiddler in the
great tent beat his instrument savagely, as though angry with it and
the world which compelled him. The jaded dancers had abandoned the
more stately steps of the Basque for the fever of the Poitou jig.
Everywhere in the cool of the gardens the lovers walked--here a wit of
Trianon impatient at the slow understanding of a Corydon; there a
dragoon, who told himself that the masked unknown who clung timorously
to his arm must certainly be a duchess. Uniforms, gorgeous in gold and
lace, were to be observed through a tracery of boughs and leaves still
green--the scarlet of the gendarmerie, the blue of the Corsican
legion, the towering brass helmets of Condé’s men. Even cassocked
priests took pleasure with circumspection, and drank the wines of
Italy served from dainty flasks. So great was the press of aristocrat
and of citizen that a table apart was a possession of great price. One
man alone in all the throng commanded such a privilege and was not
denied. He was Bourgorieau, the king’s swordsman.
A man of small stature, slightly pock-marked yet pleasant of
countenance, with a beard trimmed in the Spanish fashion, and a suit
of violet cloth to cover a frame of iron,--such was Bourgorieau, the
swordsman. Many turned to look at him when they passed, but none so
long as to draw upon himself the gaze of one who was the master even
of the masters of his art. At any other time, perhaps, in the garden
of the Tuileries or the theatre of the palace, it had been possible to
exchange a greeting with this man of Nantes, whose sword had cut for
him such a broad road to fame. But at the _Tambour Royal_, such a
thing was not to be thought of. Even Ramponeau would cease to twist
his long neck, and to speak of Armagnac when he approached the arbour
of wild roses before the doors of which the _maître d’armes_ sat.
Swaggering troopers ceased to swagger when they beheld the pock-marked
face and the suit of violet. Even a dancing girl had not the temerity
to thrust out her tambourine for the sous of Bourgorieau. He sat
alone, silent, asking friendship of none nor seeking it.
It was seven o’clock when Bourgorieau entered the tavern of old
Ramponeau; it was half past eight before he remembered that Javotte,
his daughter, would be waiting for him in the little house upon the
island of St. Louis. She would have supper prepared against his
coming. He was not one who cared very much for the hospitality of
taverns; nor would he have gone to the _Tambour Royal_ at all had not
the vanity of his art compelled him. While men said that he was a
sullen rogue who sat apart because of the grim shadows upon his life,
he, in turn, was telling himself that it was good to observe the fear
of his fellows and to assert, wherever it might be, that title of
mastership which his sword had won for him so readily in Paris. For
the poltroons who passed swiftly by his table he felt nothing but
contempt; but the contempt was a thought of gain; and he reminded
himself often that it would be a bad day for him when men ceased to
remark his coming or to give him the chief seats in the _guinguette_.
For the rest, the tipsy masquerader, the hollow wit, the glitter of
colour and the music of fiddlers, he cared not at all. His life lay in
his house, in the love of child and home. His arm had quivered many a
time when he stood to the encounter and told himself that he might
never see Javotte again. Yet the world said he did not know fear. He
laughed at the world and kept his secret.
The tavern clock chimed the hour; the throng was increasing in the
grove when the king’s swordsman drained his glass of Chianti and began
to feel in his pocket for a crown wherewith to pay the score of old
Ramponeau. He was upon the point of rising from the table when an
exclamation uttered by one who passed by caused him to look up quickly
and to discover that he was no longer alone in the arbour. A young
man, shabbily dressed in a suit of brown cloth and carrying a
traveller’s bundle upon his shoulder, had left the ranks of the
masqueraders to trespass upon that forbidden ground which all Paris
had conceded to the Kingdom of Bourgorieau. So quick had the action
been, so little expected, that none put out a hand to touch the youth
upon the shoulder or to tell him whither he went. Seeming to know
nothing of the place or the people, the stranger advanced boldly to
the sacred table, upon which he cast his bundle with the air of one
very much fatigued. Then he fell rather than sat in the chair which
awaited any person fortunate enough to enjoy the hospitality of the
_maître d’armes_. The half-suppressed exclamation of anger which the
swordsman uttered was lost upon him. He saw nothing of the gaping
amazement of those who stood in the shadow of the trees; he did not
hear the words of sympathy and surprise which the women uttered.
“_Oh, c’est ben_,” he exclaimed, as he sat, and his idiom was that of
Eastern France. “I have walked far, monsieur, and there is dust upon
the road to Strasbourg. You will let me sit a little while at your
table and drink a cup of wine with you?”
Bourgorieau looked upon the lad as upon some curiosity fallen from the
heavens at his feet. His first thought had been to call for a cudgel
and to thrash the impertinent fellow soundly; but the music of the
young man’s voice, his soft, pleasing, almost girlish face, his
tremendous ignorance, stayed the other’s hand. He glanced quickly to
that place between the trees where the carousal was at its height, and
saw that many waited for him to act. How if he did not humour them? he
asked himself. It was a pleasing whim, this idea of suffering the
stranger at his table. And if any came to question him he would know
how to answer.
“So you are from Strasbourg, _mon vieux_,” he said, surprised not a
little at the sound of his own voice, “and yet you come in by the
Porte St. Denis?”
“I live by the lodge of Neuilly,” answered the youth, simply;
“to-morrow, if all goes well, I shall see my home again--but first I
have my work to do in Paris, and it is for that I am come to this
tavern. Oh, surely, sir, these are very great people, and I shall hear
from them of him whom I seek. Is not this the house of Maître
Ramponeau, whom even the queen has honoured? They said so out yonder.
‘You will find him,’ they said, and I know they speak well. To-morrow
I shall go on again--the work will be done, it must be done, for God
has willed it.”
He laid his head upon his arms wearily, as though all the light and
music of the house could not keep sleep from his eyes. Bourgorieau
knew not what chord of sympathy was struck at the note of the young
man’s voice, but somehow he began to think of Javotte waiting for him
at home. He said that they would make a pretty pair--this curly headed
lad of Strasbourg who talked so blithely of having work to do and the
little maid of his own house who alone in all Paris could find love
for him. He was half a mind to bid the stranger follow him to the
island of St. Louis and there to share his supper; but first he asked
a question, and the answer to it was a word to set him laughing as he
had not laughed since he left the _salle d’armes_ of old Andrea at
Nantes.
“You say, lad, that you are looking for some one in Paris? Who is he
that his business should bring him to this tavern?”
“I seek Bourgorieau, he whom they call the king’s swordsman. You know
him, monsieur?”
Bourgorieau leaned back in his chair and stared, open-mouthed, at the
speaker.
“If I know him--what then?”
“Be so good as to tell me where I may find the man who murdered my
father.”
Bourgorieau laughed so loudly that many came out of the grove to
listen. “It is his son who has returned,” said some; others, that he
had drunk overmuch Burgundy. But the stranger neither laughed with the
_maître d’armes_ nor observed those who watched him so curiously.
“I am Lucien,” he continued, “the son of Georges Duroc, who was killed
in this tavern eight years ago, monsieur. I was a boy then, but to-day
I am a man. I come to Paris to do the work appointed to me. Laugh as
you please, I know well that God sends me here, and that my journey
will not be in vain. To-morrow Bourgorieau will be dead and I shall be
in my mother’s house again.”
He spoke neither loudly nor with a boaster’s voice. In his eyes there
was a light as of a spiritual force working in his mind and creating
visions for him. Bourgorieau laughed no longer. The frail and prettily
rounded arms, the white skin, the gentle face of the youth were
forgotten by him. He recalled, rather, the day when he had killed
Georges Duroc in that very garden. Some trivial excuse of insult had
served for the deed of that night. And this was the man’s son--sent,
as he said, by God to demand a reckoning. Bourgorieau tried to laugh
scornfully at all superstitions. He told himself that he could fight
this lad of Strasbourg with a bandage over his eyes. But his mouth was
parched when he sought to answer the youth; and he called to one near
him to send another flask of Chianti.
“So you are Lucien Duroc,” he said, when he had drunk a deep draught,
“and you come here to settle with old Bourgorieau? _Ma foi!_ you have
a fine conceit, my friend.”
Lucien sipped at the wine offered to him and began to bind his bundle
more securely.
“Monsieur,” he replied very earnestly, “you do not understand me; I do
not know if I understand these things myself, for they are God’s
mysteries. It is true, as you say, that Maître Bourgorieau is the
first blade in Paris; we have heard even in Strasbourg of the things
he has done and the favour he has won. For myself, I have not held a
sword in my hand but two or three times in all my life. How then, you
ask, shall I bring such a one to his account? Sir, I know not what
answer I can make if it be not to tell you of all the things I have
heard and seen in the long nights of this last year at Strasbourg. Oh,
monsieur, the gate of heaven has been opened for me, and I have heard
the Divine voice commanding me that I should arise and go to Paris and
do this thing. Often in my dreams have I heard the voices bidding me
to leave the city and to delay no longer. ‘Seek and you shall find,
and the angels shall keep watch over you,’ they said always. Sir,
should I fear any man because I have listened to the message and have
come here as I am commanded? Am I not right to say that to-morrow the
justice of Heaven will fall upon him who killed my father, and that I
shall go back to my mother’s house and tell her to mourn no more for
him whom we loved, but to be glad because justice has been done? I am
young, and I know that my life is before me. I have seen gardens of
flowers in my sleep, and have walked there with those who will be with
me to my life’s end. I have stood upon the banks of a great river, and
the sweet breezes have blown upon my face, and I have heard the
message that I shall follow the river to the new country of my dreams.
Life is sweet to me, for I am young; but I shall not lose my life
because God sends me to Paris; there is none that can harm me while I
go to my duty and defend my father’s honour. Think not, monsieur, that
I boast when I say that to-morrow Bourgorieau will be dead. The king
himself could not save him now; it is written in the book of fate, and
no human hand shall blot that writing out.”
He rose from the table at the words and took up his bundle as though
the rest were in itself the enemy of his mission. Bourgorieau, who had
sat white and silent while he spoke, now awoke as from a spell and
touched the speaker upon the arm.
“Sit,” he said in a low voice,--“sit and tell me more of these dreams
of yours, my friend. Who knows that this meeting is not written also
in the book you name!”
Lucien rested his bundle upon the table. Bourgorieau saw that his
hands trembled; there was in his eyes the light of the mystic
awakened, of the dreamer made strong by the fevers of dreams.
“What will it serve me to tell you if you cannot bring me face to face
with the man I seek?” he asked.
“Has he no love of life too?” asked Bourgorieau, upon whose forehead
heavy drops of sweat were starting. “Has he no home to which he would
return; is there none there to welcome his coming or to mourn if he
should not go back? Would you make me the servant of his murderer,
Monsieur Lucien? Nay, how shall I answer to his child--how shall I
tell her--?”
“You shall say that you are the servant of a servant of God, monsieur.
Yet do not think that I compel you if your will is not in this matter.
The same hand which beckoned me from Strasbourg will point the way
still. I seek the aid of none--the friendship of none. I need no
courage nor skill. To-morrow my work will be done, for the voices have
promised so--to-morrow Paris will know of it. And the world will be a
better world for the death of this man, monsieur.”
He bowed with the grace of one born to high place, and before the
other could arrest him, disappeared in the grove. For many minutes
after he had gone, Bourgorieau sat staring at the masqueraders as
though some after-thought would send the youth back to him and permit
that opportunity of defence and argument of which surprise had robbed
him. But the throng passed on, the music of the fiddlers waxed more
discordant, the laughter was shriller and more brutal; and still the
old swordsman sat alone. There were moments, in truth, when he
believed that he had dreamed of the youth’s coming and of the words he
remembered so distinctly. But this did not help him to shake off the
strange foreboding which now began to possess him. It seemed to him
that some miracle must have sent the lad to the gardens of the
_Tambour Royal_. He recalled the boyish face, the dreamy eyes, the
spiritual enthusiasm of Lucien’s quest. He remembered his confession,
that he knew nothing of the sword, and fell to uttering the names of
those great fencers who had fallen in a brawl with the untutored or
the unskilled. Minute by minute his fear magnified. How if this were,
indeed, the justice of God come to overtake him, he asked himself.
None had dared to tell him hitherto that Paris would be a better city
for his death. The words which Lucien had uttered so solemnly echoed
in his ears--“it is written in the book.” All the superstitions of the
superstitious West crowded upon his mind. He laughed aloud to think of
them, yet racked his brain the more for any omen of the past which
would explain away the mystery of the night. When he left the garden
at last, he staggered through the press blindly, caring nothing for
the muttered curses which followed him. At the gate of the tavern he
told himself that he was already a rich man, and had promised himself
some day a home in Nantes among his own people and the children of his
boyhood.
The great clock of Notre Dame was striking eleven when Bourgorieau
crossed the moonlit Pont Mairie and beheld again the lamp set in the
latticed window of his house upon the island. Crooked and gabled and
lofty, the neighbour of the little church of Saint Louis of the Isle,
leaning against other houses which had looked down upon the Paris of
the dark ages, the tumbling building, nevertheless, was to him a
palace of palaces. Here he could forget the intrigue of court and
camp; the slights of those before whom he must cringe; the slanders of
his unnumbered enemies. Here all pomp and ceremony were forgotten;
here, it was not his to serve nor to remember the darker side of
service. At this hour of night, the city around him was hushed in the
silence of sleep. So clear was the sky that the stars seemed to have
come down very near to the earth, and to hang like golden lamps in the
grey vault of the night. The swirling river lapped rhythmically upon
the piles of the old bridge. By here and there, a belated citizen
clattered across the flags and went tipsily to his home. The guard
paced his beat with measured and echoing steps.
Bourgorieau stood for a long while watching the light in his house. He
could see Javotte as
[Illustration: “It is thou, Dear Father.”]
she waited at the window; a childish figure, weary with the vigil. He
knew that the sound of his steps would animate that figure presently,
would bring laughter to the sleepy eyes. He pictured the moment when
he would hold her in his arms and read the joy of love written upon
her face; the face of the one being in Paris who was sad at his going;
who counted the hours that should bring him back again. And watching
her, he heard, as though a voice answered from the shadows, the words
of Lucien Duroc in the gardens of Ramponeau, “Arise and go.” Even as
the voices had spoken to the lad, so now they warned him. “To-morrow,”
he said, “it would be too late. Javotte would wait at the window as of
old time, but the vigil would be eternal. Never again would the joy of
her love shine in the eyes of the child; never again--”
Bourgorieau hurried on. The guard standing in the shadow of the church
heard a child’s voice, sweet and melodious, above the murmur of the
river,--
“It is thou, dear father; oh, how long I have watched for thee, how
long--”
* * * * * * *
At ten o’clock upon the following morning, a horseman rode at a gallop
into the great courtyard of Versailles. To the many who asked him what
news, he answered only, “He is gone; the wager is won.” But to the Duc
de Richelieu who waited for him in the gardens of Trianon he told a
better story.
“All Paris talks of nothing else,” he said. “The king must hear of it
at once. Last night at the house of Ramponeau, Mademoiselle Corinne of
the Hôtel Beautreillis wagered that she would drive Bourgorieau, the
bully, from the city before twenty hours had passed. She dressed as a
lad of Strasbourg and prated of a divine mission. This morning, the
man set out for Nantes, taking his daughter with him. He will come
here no more, Monsieur le Duc--Saint John, that I should be the first
with such news--”
The duke stopped in his walk and gazed open-mouthed at the messenger.
“How--Bourgorieau is gone--you say he will not come back--”
“I say well, or if he come it will be his last visit. Paris knows now
that he is a coward, and twenty blades will be ready for him. We live
in a day of miracles, and this is one of them. But I go to the king
lest others be before me. A thousand crowns--_ma foi_, she should have
won ten thousand!”
* * * * * * *
Bourgorieau heard of the jest in his home at Nantes. He answered those
who told him by showing them the house he had built and the garden he
had planted. They heard Javotte singing there, yet wondered at his
indifference.
“I care not,” he said, “for she who was sent came to me from God.”
VII.
THE DEVIL’S BOWL AND THE
STRANGE AFFAIR AT
FONTENAY
Corinne de Montesson leant back in her coach and sighed. Paris
seemed so far off; the woods of Fontenay were so dark and gloomy that
she began to think the sun would never shine for her again.
“Antonio,” she said, speaking to the old physician who sat opposite to
her, and asking him a question which she had asked ten times since
they were driven through the deserted street of Noisy le
Grand--“Antonio, what time is it?”
Antonio, who was making what use he could of the passing daylight to
complete a calculation which engrossed him, put down his book and
began to observe the surrounding woods very closely.
“Mademoiselle,” said he presently, “it is the hour of sunset on the
third day of April in the year 1764.”
Corinne laughed when she heard this very precise statement, and
nestling her ruddy cheeks against the cushion of the coach, she fell
to watching Antonio, who dipped his pen regularly into an ink-horn
slung at his waist, and held his book close to the window that the
last rays of the sinking sun might fall upon it. When she had watched
him a little while, and, after that, had counted the trees which
flashed by as the coach rolled down the hill of Fontenay until she had
numbered three hundred, she spoke again,--
“Antonio, you know where we are?”
The old physician stopped in the middle of shaping an 8 and put his
head out of the window.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “we are half of a league from the town of
Fontenay at the spot known as the Gorge of the Three Gibbets,
reminding us that very lately his Majesty has caused three rogues to
be hanged in this place.”
Corinne laughed again.
“My dear Antonio,” she said, “what a guide you would make!”
Antonio picked up his pen.
“My child,” said he, “unless we observe the signposts as we go, life
is likely to show us a heavy road. For my part, I forget nothing when
I am assured that it is worth remembering.”
“You would say that of Fontenay, Antonio?”
“Certainly, mademoiselle, I would say that of Fontenay. Strange
indeed, if I forgot the place where they robbed and killed my poor
friend the Count of Charny.”
Corinne shuddered. She remembered that dreadful story well. The
darkening woods around her, the silence of the gloomy plantations, the
phantom-like shape of tree and bush, compelled her to realise very
forcibly in what a dangerous place she was, and how pleased she would
be to see the lights of Paris again.
“Oh,” she said, “you are a poor comforter, Antonio--to speak of that
affair now, when Bénoît remains at Gros Bois and we ride alone.”
Antonio closed his book with a snap, for the light no longer permitted
him to read.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “do you say that you ride alone when I am
with you?”
“Not at all, my dear Antonio; I said that _we_ ride alone--and lack
any protector save the good will which some of these men bear to me.
What a poor thing is that to rely upon! I am sure that I was very
foolish to leave Bénoît behind. The sword is with thieves a better
weapon than a thief’s charity, _mon ami_. And was there ever such a
swordsman as Bénoît?”
Antonio shrugged his shoulders.
“All that you claim for our kinsman, that I will admit,” said he; “yet
when you would praise the sword as a weapon, mademoiselle, then you
speak as one who knows nothing of the greater mysteries. I, who am a
child with the rapier in my hand, can become the equal of thousands of
armies when I turn to those allies which exist neither in matter nor
in the schools--but here, in thought, in conception, in, if you will,
my dreams.
“To-night you ask for your kinsman and his strong arm, yet, believe
me, my daughter, should misfortune overtake us, I, who have no weapon
but my book, no ally but my visions, will prove the better friend. Not
that I anticipate any such necessity. Another hour will see us at the
barrier; we shall pass Fontenay itself before the clock strikes again.
Take courage, then, mademoiselle, and forget that the sun no longer
shines, and that night is in the woods.”
Corinne, who never ceased to enjoy the pompous self-assurance and the
egotistical pronouncements of old Antonio, laughed in her sleeve now,
and, having laughed, she buried her head in the cushions, and suffered
stoically the terrible lurchings and rollings of the rut-tossed coach.
After all, she said, her name was a great name amongst the robbers
about Paris, and he would be a daring fellow who would venture to stop
her carriage. She recalled again how she had won a pardon for the
notorious Coq le Roi, who had narrated the deed in a hundred taverns
since then, and had made of her, all unwillingly, a very _déesse_
among patrons.
Should any one now attack her, she thought that it would be sufficient
if her lacqueys mentioned her name. Nor did she rely at all upon the
mysterious boasts and promises of the old physician, who had forgotten
them already, and slept soundly with his half-open book lying
neglected at his feet.
The coach rolled on deeper and deeper into the hollow of the night. By
here and there the trees were so thick that the lantern which a
lacquey had kindled scarce saved them from the ditch. At other times
you could see a little way into the clearings of the thickets, or espy
dark and noxious pools suggesting solitude and terrible deeds and the
gloomy mystery of woodland life.
Corinne needed all her courage to banish the thoughts suggested by the
scenes, but she had a mind powerful in obedience, and when her first
alarms had passed, she compelled herself to think of the gaiety and
life of Paris, and of all she would do during her long summer there.
Indeed, she had made some very pretty plans for herself, and was in
fancy dancing a minuet with the king, when a loud report of a musket,
followed by a great clamour of question and answer and the sudden
stopping of the coach, awoke her from her dream; and all her little
castles came tumbling on the ground.
“Antonio, Antonio!” she cried, “do you not hear it?--they have stopped
the coach, Antonio--make haste to tell them who I am. Oh, if I had not
left Bénoît at Gros Bois!”
Antonio, who woke with a start, stopped a moment to pick up his book;
then he put his head out of the window, but drew it back upon the
instant.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, “there are three men, and they are tying your
lacqueys to the trees.”
Corinne, ashamed of her first alarms, attempted to laugh, but the
laugh had a quaver of fear in it.
“My dear Antonio,” she exclaimed, “pray make haste to tell the
gentlemen whose coach it is.”
Antonio, thus commanded, put his head out of the window for the second
time, and began to address the robbers.
“Sirs,” said he, “I beg a word with you. This is the coach of
Mademoiselle Corinne de Montesson, whose name, I make sure, is very
well known to you.”
To the physician’s surprise the three men made him no answer at all,
but continued quietly to bind the hands of the lacqueys and then to
tie them to the nearest trees. When they had done their work, the
tallest of the three, who was dressed in black and silver and wore a
mask upon his face, came up to the door of the coach and opened it. At
the same time he doffed his cap and bowed with the dignity of a
courtier.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, addressing Corinne, “a thousand pardons for
the liberty we have taken. Be assured that I know your name well and
that it is held in great reverence here. But I have laid a wager of a
thousand crowns that you shall sup with me to-night at the house of
the Silver Birch, and that I shall kiss you on both cheeks afterwards.
Accord me, I beg of you, a favour so trifling, and earn the lasting
gratitude of Claude Brissac.”
He stood up, a fine figure even in the sombre flare of the two torches
which his companions had kindled, and now held aloft that Corinne
might see to alight. Very bright eyes shone humorously beneath the
velvet mask; diamonds sparkled upon the ample ruffles of lace at his
wrist and throat.
Corinne had heard his name often. It was that of one of the most
gallant and successful highwaymen upon the eastern roads to Paris. “La
Force” they called him, for his unquenchable energy and his unfailing
boldness. Corinne knew that such a man would allow nothing to turn him
from his purpose, and she trembled a little when she answered him.
“Monsieur,” she said in her own pretty way, “I cannot think that you
would compel me against my will. I would eat of your supper very
gladly, did you choose other opportunity to invite me. But I must be
in Paris to-night, and I rely upon you to hasten my journey thither.
Indeed, I am sure that you will do so.”
“Saint Denis!” replied the man, “and gladly would I help you. Yet,
mademoiselle, if you will but reflect a little, you will see how
reasonable is my request. It must be plain to you, since your lacqueys
are now keeping company with yonder trees, while your coachman is
shedding tears in the ditch, that you cannot arrive in Paris before
dawn at any rate. What more pleasant occupation, then, than a little
supper--where, be assured, the homage due to so great a name shall be
fully paid. Let this old man hasten to get out of the coach, that I
may have the pleasure of feeling your pretty hand upon my arm.”
He held his plumed hat still in his hand, and his manner was in all
things the manner of Trianon. Corinne did not fail to see that no
words of hers would turn him from his purpose; but old Antonio was by
no means so willing to surrender readily.
“Sir,” cried he, “you are a very impertinent fellow; if you do not
have a care, all Paris will come presently to see you hang at your own
door.”
“Saint John!” said the robber, grimly, “if that day come, old man,
surely I will ask for the halter which thou hast worn. Get down, lest
I hasten thy steps with my boot.”