“It is a pity that she must cry presently.”
But Corinne knew nothing of his thoughts. She was telling herself that
the visit of this doddering old man, whose gallant antics had amused
her so often, was a misfortune of an already troublesome day. How long
was he going to stop? Why was he at the Hôtel Beautreillis at all?
“You come from the palace, monsieur?” she asked, when the Grand
Marshal had ceased for a moment to ogle her.
“From the palace, mademoiselle.”
“And of whom were they talking?”
“Of the Count of Brives, _chère_ Corinne.”
Corinne’s face flushed crimson. The Grand Marshal turned away his
head.
“I would give half my riches if she would flush for me like that,” he
thought.
“And what did they say of the Count of Brives?” asked Corinne, making
a violent effort to conceal her emotion.
“They were very sorry for him, mademoiselle.”
“Sorry, monsieur, for Eugène--that is, for Monsieur le Comte?”
“Certainly, my child; but have you not heard the news?”
“Did you not tell me there was no news?”
“Yes; but how should I know that this would be news--to Corinne de
Montesson?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, tell me!” she exclaimed, rising and stamping
with a pretty gesture of impatience. “Tell me, Monsieur le Marquis,
what are they saying of Eugène Sabatier?”
The Grand Marshal shrugged his shoulders.
“She is going to cry,” he thought, “and I forgot to bring a second
lace handkerchief.” But Corinne persisted.
“Mademoiselle,” he said at last, “I thought you would have known.
Madame has prevailed with the king, and the Count of Brives will be in
the Bastille to-morrow.”
A cry escaped her lips; Corinne’s cheeks were rosy no more. She stood,
white as marble; a blow would not have hurt her more than the tidings
which the Grand Marshal carried.
“Oh, it cannot be! it cannot be!” she cried. “Eugène--the
Bastille--oh, I will not believe it!--what crime has he
committed--whom has he wronged--is he not the king’s friend,
monsieur?”
“Without doubt, all that is true, my child; but there are other
friends, and they are more powerful. It has been the misfortune of
Monsieur le Comte to offend one of those friends. He who puts honesty
against a pretty face fights a losing battle, Corinne. When that
pretty face has for its neighbour the ear of a king, poor honesty is
already worsted. Your friend the count is young, or he would know that
the compliments we pay a woman are the apologies for the slander we
shall put about when that woman’s back is turned. He is also very
foolish to be so many months at the palace without finding a word of
flattery for its mistress.”
He chuckled, for he was grown old in the practice of polished
mendacities. But Corinne was thinking--her quick brain was already at
work; one idea possessed her--she must save Eugène Sabatier.
“Tell me,” she cried with sudden impatience, “did the king wish this,
monsieur?” And then, without waiting for his answer,--
“Oh, I do not believe it; the king is his friend; if Eugène could
speak for himself, it would never be. They have told lies about him;
it is the work of Madame du Barry--she has hated him from the first;
it is her triumph, but it will not last--I shall prevent it, Monsieur
le Marquis, I, Corinne de Montesson--”
Her face was crimson again, but it was with excitement. Old Chamillart
watched her with chuckling admiration. His little eyes danced; he
leered and ogled like some old man of the sea who found himself,
clothed in satin and jewels and fine lace, in some welcome garden of
delights.
“_Ma foi_,” he cried enthusiastically, “who would not have such a
deliverer! Of course you will save him. It is for that I am come here.
You will begin work now--to-day, this instant.”
She stared at him with a new surprise, but began to listen intently.
“Hark to this,” continued the Grand Marshal, with new gravity, “the
Count of Brives is now at his château by the Weeping Rock of Ussy. If
he could be warned to-day, to-night--if he could be warned by one who
would tell him to ride for his life to the palace and there to see the
king without a moment’s delay, the letter which Villefort, the Captain
of the Gendarmerie, now carries to Ussy, might yet be powerless to
harm him--”
“They have sent Villefort, then!” exclaimed Corinne.
“He left Paris at four o’clock; he carries the king’s warrant for the
arrest of Eugène Sabatier; he will arrive at Ussy at midnight. After
that hour, _chère_ Corinne, no one in all France can save Monsieur le
Comte from the woman he has insulted, and whose hour of vengeance has
come. But you will act before then--you will be on the road before the
clock strikes again--you will find a plan. _Ma foi_, it will be a
strange day when Corinne de Montesson, the cleverest woman in Paris,
is outwitted by Villefort, the buffoon of the guard, the lumberer, the
ape! But she will not be outwitted; to-morrow I shall hear a good
story. It will be the story of the confusion of Captain Villefort--”
But Corinne was listening to him no longer. The great silver gong at
her side already gave out its mellow note warningly; Bénoît, her
kinsman, the first swordsman in Paris, came hurrying to her side.
“Where is Yerut?” she asked, utterly unable to suppress her
excitement. “Send Yerut to me, and then let them bring horses. We ride
to Ussy before the sun sets.”
“Bravo! bravo!” cried the Grand Marshal, as he rose to go. “It is my
own Corinne after all; to-morrow all Paris shall laugh at the Captain
of the Guard and his twenty men--”
“You said twenty, monsieur?”
“No more, no less; twenty and one against the prettiest wits in Paris.
It is good to have the friendship of those pretty wits, _chère_
Corinne--but, blood of Paul, who comes here?”
He started, clutching his cane convulsively, for there came of a
sudden to the bower a figure so strange that nothing like to it had
been seen by any one in Paris. It was the figure of Yerut, the dwarf.
Hideous, stunted, with hair shaggy as the fur of a bear, with hands
like claws, with deep-set shining eyes, agile and quick, ready to leap
or dance--Corinne de Montesson had no more faithful servant in all her
great house than Yerut. And now she knew that the life of her lover
depended upon the sagacity and the fidelity of this poor creature.
“Yerut,” she said, “you know Villefort, the Captain of the Guard?”
A grunt of assent seemed to come from the heart of the dwarf.
“He has ridden from Paris to arrest the Count of Brives. He will pass
the Weeping Rock before midnight. You must overtake him at the Inn of
Ussy and detain him there until we come. Take the swiftest Arab we
have--you understand?”
Yerut bowed low. He vanished from the garden like an arrow from a bow.
“To horse! to horse!” cried Corinne, clapping her hands impatiently.
“There is not an instant to lose.”
But old Chamillart hobbled away to his coach with a heavy heart.
“I should have postponed the day of my birth for thirty years,” he
said to himself. “Certainly, she will never cry ‘to horse’ for me.”
And that was another observation not to be contested.
* * * * * * *
The great clock in the tower of the monastery of Franchard struck
eleven when Villefort, the Captain of the King’s Guard, found himself
at the foot of the Roche qui Pleure. He could hear the strange note of
that watery bell, melodious as the sound of weird music, in the
silence of the vast forest of Fontainebleau. Winter or summer, drought
or flood, the great rock would shed its silver tear musically into the
pearly shell below it. Guides listened for the splash of the water,
and went on gladly because of it; peasants worshipped before the
heavenly well, and quenched their thirst at the pure fount of
miracles. But to Villefort it was no more than the signal that his
work was almost accomplished; that when another hour had passed he
would lay his hands upon the traitor, Eugène Sabatier.
He rode slowly, his twenty men following with heavy eyes and hard
words for a task which brought them to the forest when they should
have been in their comfortable beds in Paris. The glory of the hour
was nothing to Henri de Villefort. The enchanting light which fell
upon the mighty thickets, the moonbeams playing upon the rippling
lake, the lengthening shadows, with all their suggestion of elves and
spirits, had no enchantment for him. For Henri de Villefort was
afraid--afraid of the dark places of the wood, afraid of the silence,
afraid of the hag’s tales which his men had not failed to recite to
him during their ride from the Barrière d’Enfer.
“Bah!” he had said, spurring his horse in anger. “Who would believe
such things, at this time of day? I shall follow the great road to
Ussy; there are twenty men with me. I care not a crown for all the
devils in the legends. Saint John be my witness, I fear no living
man.”
The trooper addressed shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.
“They do not live, captain,” he said gloomily. “They are the dead who
died a thousand years ago; they breathe upon you cold breath, and your
skin dries up with fever. You go mad and leave your bones for them to
lie upon. I heard it at Franchard when I was a singing boy there. God
bring us all back to Paris again, is my word.”
Villefort swore a big oath, and rode on in silence. He did not speak
again until the music of the Weeping Rock was a melodious echo, but
thereafter he began to learn that it was no great highway which led to
the Château of Ussy. Through dreadful copse and darkened brake, by
paths overhung with trailing creeper and thorny bramble, in the gloom
of mighty oaks and spreading chestnuts,--so must this hostile
pilgrimage be made. The glory of the moonbeams, sparkling upon the
dewy grass, did but light up weirdly the tangled heart of the deeper
forest. The fireflies glowing in the woods were for him the evil eyes
of the elves he could not see. The nightingale sang warningly. It was
as though unseen enemies peopled the groves about him. He thought
every minute to feel the touch of a hand upon his shoulder.
And this was his state of mind when a dreadful cry, like the cry of a
soul in agony, came without warning out of the thicket upon his left
hand and seemed to freeze the very blood of the twenty-one who rode to
Ussy.
“Saints and angels, hark to that!” cried Villefort, drawing rein with
trembling hands.
Again the cry arose--again and again. The troopers sat still as
statues in the moonlight. Villefort could hear his heart beating; the
fiend himself, he thought, was at his elbow.
“Pish!” he said presently, though the words seemed to choke him, “it
is a wolf at supper, and that is the cry of the dish. Are we all
women, to draw rein at shadows?”
“Not at all, Monsieur de Villefort, not at all,” answered a voice from
the thicket whence the cry came; “I will stake my life that there is
not a woman among you, or if there be, why then she wears a better
face than the Captain of the King’s Guard.”
A deep laugh, like the boom of a merry bell, followed the words. The
guards were still listening to it when, with a great snapping of twigs
and bursting of bramble, the speaker forced his horse from the covert
and confronted Monsieur de Villefort.
“Holy Michael, defend us from all devils this night!” groaned
Villefort, while cold sweat stood upon his brow and his quaking hand
closed nervously about the butt of his pistol.
Yerut, the dwarf, for it was he who had raised the cry and had
answered the Captain of the Guard, was clothed from head to foot in
scarlet. Great boots, which appeared to be almost as large as the
wearer, dangled from his saddle-flaps nearly to the ground. He wore a
three-cornered cap cocked on the side of his shaggy head, and rode an
Arab horse which still champed at his bit, though spurred from Paris
to the Weeping Rock. Never did a stranger apparition confront man.
“Amen to your prayer, Monsieur de Villefort,” cried the dwarf,
gaily,--“amen and amen. The holy saints save us from all devils, and
give us the light of their lamps to follow the road to Ussy.”
“You go to Ussy, monsieur?” asked Villefort, taking heart a little
when he saw the diamonds glistening upon the hilt of the stranger’s
sword. At the same time he said to himself, “Here is a brother of all
the fiends.”
The dwarf did not answer the question put so directly to him, but fell
instead into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. The very woods rang
with his merriment; he reeled in his saddle until his forehead touched
the mane of his horse.
“Ho, ho, ho, ho!” he laughed, “how you amuse me, Monsieur de
Villefort!”
“Amuse _you_,” exclaimed Villefort, losing his temper; “who the devil
are _you_ that you should be amused?”
“A cat may laugh at a king, monsieur, and I am the cat. Is it not good
to laugh? If it come to that, I have as good a reason to laugh as the
Captain of the King’s Guard to cry.”
“As good a reason--?” gasped Villefort.
“Certainly, since I go to Ussy to bury its master.”
Villefort reined in his horse with a gesture as much of surprise as of
will.
“To bury its master, monsieur!” he stammered, “but he is not dead. How
can you bury a man who is not dead?”
The dwarf burst again into a merry fit of laughter.
“Ho, ho, ho, ho!” he roared, “what a dull fellow you are, Monsieur de
Villefort! It is lucky for you that we met this night.”
“Lucky?” exclaimed Villefort.
“As I say, lucky. For what is luck but gain, monsieur, and what is
gain but happiness, and what is happiness but laughter, and what is
laughter but wine,--which, by my faith, carries us back _ex argumento_
to this, that wine is luck, and that Monsieur de Villefort of the
King’s Guard is a fool.”
Villefort spluttered with rage; the dwarf touched his Arab lightly
with his spurs, and began to hum the popular ballad,--_Voilà la
taverne à la mode_.
“Name of the devil!” said Villefort, when he had found his tongue, “I
have the mind to write my answer upon your back, _coquin_--”
The dwarf turned in his saddle, and showed a face so horrible that the
Captain of the Guard felt his blood run cold. It was like the face of
a Barbary ape. Villefort crossed himself instinctively; he prayed to
all the saints to bring him quickly out of the cursed wood.
“Monsieur,” snarled the dwarf, chattering horribly, “he who writes
upon the back of Yerut the singer will read his own epitaph.”
Villefort shuddered; the twenty behind him rode with white faces and
prayers upon the bloodless lips.
“Yerut the singer,” said the Captain of the Guard, in a very humble
voice; “you sing then, monsieur?”
“Like Lucifer himself,” answered the dwarf; and then he fell into a
strange, weird chaunt in a voice so harsh and grating that the very
leaves of the thicket seemed to tremble--
“De tous les corps de métiers,
Voilà ce fléau redoutable.”
“Sing!” he continued, breaking off suddenly; “have I not the charm of
Levasseur and the style of Legros? Do you not admit that, Monsieur de
Villefort?”
“Certainly he is mad,” muttered Villefort, in a low voice, but not so
low that the dwarf did not hear him.
“Mad,” he repeated, “ay, surely, as mad as Monsieur de Villefort, who
goes to Ussy and blows a horn to tell all that he is coming.”
“A horn,--I blow no horn,” cried de Villefort.
“Let us not chop words. And I will tell you this, monsieur, that if
you think to arrest the Count of Brives you are a fool for your
pains.”
“Pah!” said Villefort, “I ride with one of his friends.”
“With so good a friend that at dawn I shall sing a requiem for him.”
Villefort pricked up his ears.
“How can that be?” he asked.
“_Ma foi_,” answered the dwarf, “it is no good asking you riddles, my
captain. A wench at a book would be quicker. Do you not see that if I
am to sing a requiem for the Count of Brives at dawn, some one must
kill him to-night?”
“Ho, ho!” cried Villefort, “it is a duel, then?”
“Exactly, a duel.”
“He goes out with you, monsieur?”
“With me?--pah, I do not kill men with swords.”
Villefort bit his lip. His head was clearer now, and fear of the
forest possessed him no longer. They had passed from the darkness of
the wood by this time, and the lights of an inn shone through the
vista of the trees. The Captain of the Guard was perplexed. He did not
know what to make of the dwarf or of his story.
“Come,” he said after a pause, “there will be no duel to-night; I
shall prevent it.”
“_You!_” replied the dwarf, who did not attempt to conceal his
contempt. “_You_ will prevent it, Monsieur de Villefort!”
“Certainly; I shall arrest the Count of Brives.”
The dwarf roared with laughter.
“Ho, ho, ho, ho!” he laughed; “we will kiss the sun, we will walk with
the moon, we will put the stars in our pockets.”
Villefort ground his teeth.
“You think that I cannot arrest him?” he snarled.
“Think? I think nothing, monsieur; it is for the count to say. Were
there no eyes in yon wood when we rode through? Were there none to
cry, ‘Here comes the fat Villefort to arrest our master’?--none to
gallop to Ussy and give news of you? Body of Paul! if you think that
you came unheralded to the château, you have not the wits of a German
mountebank.”
Villefort swore lustily.
“I never thought of that,” said he. “You mean that he has been warned
of my coming?”
“What else could I mean?”
“Then I have ridden upon a fool’s errand.”
“Could you ride upon any other, Monsieur de Villefort? I beg you, if
you can employ those great ears of yours, to listen to that music. It
is a horn winded in the park of the Château of Ussy. What think you
now of your journey?”
The clarion note of a horn rang out musically in the stillness of the
night. It echoed from copse to copse, and thicket to thicket, as
though phantom horsemen hunted in the purlieus of the forest.
“Thousands devils!” exclaimed Villefort, “I am too late.”
“There is no doubt of that, my dear captain. And being too late, you
will do well to draw rein awhile at yonder tavern, where I shall
introduce you presently to the Count of Brives himself.”
“The Count of Brives is coming _here_?”
“Unquestionably he is. He will come before the clock strikes again, to
fight my master, who stands before the door there. Meanwhile let me
present you to the Chevalier Guibert.”
They rode up to the tavern door with a great clatter of spur and
caparison. Villefort, on his part, did not know whether he stood on
his head or his heels; he was saying to himself that the Count of
Brives had escaped him after all. While he did not believe the dwarf’s
story, and was still determined to search the château, he had the
wish, nevertheless, to hear what the stranger might say, and to delay
for that purpose while the host of the _auberge_ could water the
horses of his men and bring cups of wine. The troopers, glad in their
turn to leave the darkness of the wood behind them, dismounted
joyously, and were soon swarming in the little courtyard, to the great
delight of the wenches of the inn, and the great confusion of its
master.
There were two horsemen before the door of the _auberge_; one a big
fellow dressed in black velvet, the other possessing a figure so
fragile and so pretty, so slim and boyish, that passers-by might well
have called it the figure of a girl. A group of servants, heavily
armed and mounted on magnificent bay horses, stood apart, awaiting the
pleasures of the travellers, the younger of whom was dressed in a suit
of purple silk, and carried a sword in a scabbard frosted with
diamonds of exceeding brilliancy. It was to the latter that Yerut the
dwarf now presented Monsieur de Villefort.
“My master, the Chevalier Guibert--the Chevalier Guibert, my servant,”
he said, with a gesture of self-importance not to be described.
“Your servant!” roared Villefort. “Body of Paul, I have the mind to
write that upon your tongue!”
The dwarf grinned horribly.
“You could not spell it, Monsieur de Villefort,” said he.
Corinne, for she it was who wore the purple dress, silenced Yerut with
a look.
“Monsieur,” she said very sweetly, “you must forgive one who, though
young in years, is old in liberties. That will be easier to do, since
I am able to be of some service to you to-night.”
“To be of service to me, monsieur?”
“As I say, to be of service to you. Have you not come to Ussy to
arrest Eugène Sabatier?”
Villefort regarded the questioner closely.
“You know that, monsieur?”
“Undoubtedly, I know it; and since I alone can help you to succeed,
you may not think it a waste of time to drink a cup of wine with me.”
Villefort bowed stiffly, and entered the house with her. At the same
moment, the dwarf was deep in talk with Gaspard, the rider in black,
who had turned his horse towards the forest.
“We shall keep him an hour, if that be possible,” said the dwarf. “The
men will be drunk before then. Let the count ride for his life to
Versailles; if time serve, he will find us at the cross-road beyond
Essonne.”
“The devil dry their throats!” muttered Bénoît, giving rein to his
horse. “I count upon you, Yerut, in all things. Hold yon booty but an
hour, and no woman in France shall keep Eugène Sabatier from the
king.”
The dwarf stood to watch the darkness of the forest enshroud the
galloping figure. Then he returned to the inn and found that Villefort
and the Chevalier Guibert, his mistress, were already busy over a
flask of wine, set out in a little room upon the first floor. But
while the mock chevalier was comfortable in a low wooden chair, the
Captain of the Guard paced the room as one who delays but an instant,
and that unwillingly.
“Chevalier,” he was saying, “it may be true that the Count of Brives
is warned of my coming; yet if that be so, what madness will carry him
to this inn when he should be upon the road to the frontier?”
“The same madness which makes the lark sing at dawn and the sun set at
eve, monsieur,” chimed in the dwarf, who squatted upon the table and
raised a flagon merrily; “the madness of the cow for the moon; the
howl of the dog when the horn is winded--the folly of Monsieur de
Villefort who chases the stag--_ma foi_, the quest of a wench’s pretty
lips, and hey, for her eyes in the dark.”
Villefort stopped in his walk. The flickering light of spluttering
candles fell upon his angry face weirdly.
“Heaven deliver me from this madman!” he cried.
“Monsieur,” said the dwarf, “it is the duty of fools to be sane. Would
you have me dull my wits until they were no brighter than those of
Henri de Villefort? And there you fall upon a plain tale, and shall
see how truly I am mad. For if Nature teaches the lark to call for his
mate, and sheds the dew upon the thirsty ground, shall she less
befriend the man who, learning that the wench is at the inn, has the
mind to sample the lips of yesterday! God’s truth, my captain, it is
writ as large as the nose on your ugly face.”
Villefort raised his fist as though to strike the dwarf, but Corinne
stood between them.
“Hold your tongue, Yerut,” she said. “Indeed, monsieur, I know not how
to excuse him, unless it be that with it all he tells you the truth.
The Count of Brives would go a hundred miles to avoid this inn if he
knew that the Chevalier Guibert awaited him here; but he would ride a
hundred miles to reach it if one told him that Corinne de Montesson
was to make it a house of call.”
Villefort forgot his anger.
“You mean to say that he will come here to-night to meet her?”
“As he thinks, monsieur. My servant has even now ridden to the
château to tell him that you have turned back to Franchard, and that
Corinne de Montesson is here with news which will save his life.”
Villefort roared with laughter. The dwarf roared, too; so that the
very rafters rang with their shouts.
“Ho, ho, ho!” laughed Henri de Villefort, “you tell him that his
mistress is here, and when he comes you will cut his throat. How you
love him, Chevalier!”
“How I love him!” muttered Corinne; and she meant every word she said.
“How he loves him!” roared the dwarf, choking with laughter and with
wine.
But Corinne’s heart beat wildly. She was asking herself if the tale
had, indeed, borne such good fruit. She looked at the clock and saw
that they had been already twenty minutes in the inn. She said that
Bénoît was at the château, now; they were saddling the horses,--oh,
for an hour, for an hour yet to win her lover’s liberty!
Villefort ceased to laugh and went to the window.
“Saint John!” said he, “if the Count of Brives rides towards the inn,
I will even go a little way to meet him,” and then he bawled to his
troops: “ho, there, you sots!--do you hear me calling?”
The dwarf leaped from the table and put his grinning head beside that
of the captain.
“Ho, there, you sots,” he repeated; “another bottle apiece to the
health of the Chevalier Guibert!”
The troopers, who had come out into the moonlight, went, shouting,
back to the kitchen of the inn--
“Ho, there, another bottle apiece to the health of the Chevalier
Guibert!”
Yerut pulled Monsieur de Villefort from the window and shut it.
Corinne’s heart seemed to stand still.
“Upon my word, Monsieur de Villefort,” said the dwarf, “you are a very
foolish man. Would you tell all Ussy that you lie here this night? For
Heaven’s sake, hold your tongue, or if you cannot do that, bury it in
this flagon.”
He pushed a flagon of wine toward the Captain of the Guard. Villefort
did not notice the curious taste of the liquor; but when he had drunk,
his head swam and the candles danced before his eyes.
“I shall go to Ussy,” he cried doggedly. “It is a plot to detain me
here.”
The dwarf took a pack of cards from his pocket and began to cut it.
Corinne looked at the clock. Would the great hand never reach the
hour? It seemed so to her.
“Go or stay,” cried Yerut, with indifference, “it is the same to me
and to my master; and I will tell you this, captain, that if we did
not wish to see the Count of Brives very much we would not rest
another hour with so impertinent a fellow.”