[Illustration: Brought it with a Crash upon the Head of Henri de
Villefort.]
and enraged beyond endurance, drew his sword and confronted the dwarf.
“Dog!” he roared, “I will teach you manners. That is the tenth time
you have insulted me this night.”
“The eleventh, monsieur,” said Yerut, who still squatted upon the
table. “The eleventh, as I live; and you do well to count, for I am
going to make it twelve.”
Leaping up with a cat-like agility, the dwarf seized a flagon of wine
and brought it with a crash upon the head of Henri de Villefort. So
terrible was the blow, that the Captain of the Guard reeled back to
the wall; and, while the liquor still poured down his gaudy vest and
dripped from his lank hair, the drug they had given him did its work,
and he fell senseless upon the sanded floor.
Two minutes later the Chevalier Guibert and Yerut the singer rode from
the courtyard of the inn. To the troopers, gathered round them
inquiringly, they said,--
“Another flask to the health of the Captain of the Guard!”
And so, throwing crowns upon the flags, they galloped from Ussy, and
soon were lost to view in the labyrinth of the forest.
* * * * * * *
Dawn, grey-garbed and melancholy, was hovering above the valley of the
Seine when the Count of Brives and Bénoît, who rode with him, drew
rein at the parting of the ways beyond Essonne. A mist of morning lay
upon the awakening pastures; the rushes bent to the flood of the
swirling waters; night answered reluctantly to the heralds of the
lagging sun. Dew lay thick upon the brown-burnt grasses; the air was
chill and searching as a breath of winter.
“They do not come,” said Bénoît, whose horse, like that of the
other, was white with foam. “God grant that Yerut has not failed us.”
“I think of mademoiselle,” said the count, impatiently. “What is it to
me that I am upon the road to Versailles if misfortune has overtaken
her at Ussy?”
“_Ma foi_, you complain too soon, count. Hark to that music; it is the
ring of hoofs behind us!”
They listened a little while, and then were sure. The sounds magnified
and became clearer; care passed from the boyish face of Eugène
Sabatier.
“It is Corinne,” he cried joyfully. “Oh, God be thanked!”
Two figures loomed up from the mists; two horses were reined back upon
their haunches.
“Eugène, is it thou?”
“Corinne, beloved!”
But Yerut the dwarf was looking at the river, and Bénoît, the
kinsman of mademoiselle, became so blind of a sudden that he could
scarce see the mane of his horse.
Henri de Villefort entered the gardens of Versailles at three o’clock
of the afternoon. He still wore a coat upon which purple patches spoke
of the inn at Ussy. His high boots were brown with the dust; his head
was bandaged and his walk uncertain. Side by side with him walked
Chamillart, Marquis de la Suze.
“You have failed, monsieur,” exclaimed Chamillart, with assumed
astonishment, “yet the Count of Brives was at his château last
night.”
Villefort ground his teeth.
“His friends surprised me,” he stammered; “I crossed swords with one
of them, and was wounded. There is fresh blood upon my coat now, and
it was fifteen hours ago--”
He was about to continue his apologies when from a tree upon his right
hand there came that haunting demoniacal cry he had heard in the
forest of Fontainebleau when Yerut the singer had confronted him. It
rose and fell like the wailing of the wind; it froze the words upon
the lips of Henri de Villefort.
“Thousand devils!” he yelled, “it is the man monkey again--”
“At your service, Monsieur de Villefort--you seek the Count of Brives;
he is yonder with the king, who has just given him a command.”
The dwarf was perched upon the branch of the tree. His lap was full of
sweetmeats; he grinned like a cat, but fell presently to laughing
incontrollably, as he had laughed in the forest.
“Ho, ho, ho, ho!--you crossed swords with one of the count’s friends,
Monsieur de Villefort! Body of Paul, it was with the wine bottle that
you fought--”
“You lie,” retorted Villefort; “I fought with the Chevalier Guibert--”
“Who is yonder with the count?--but he wears a petticoat this morning,
my captain. What a thing to tell in the palace that Henri de Villefort
was worsted by a woman!”
“Dog!” roared Villefort, “it is to you that I owe this, to you and
your lies--you who were to bury the master of Ussy--”
“_Tais-toi, tais-toi_,” answered the dwarf, “look at yon pair, and
tell me if my mistress is not also master of Ussy, _cher_ Monsieur de
Villefort. But the Chevalier Guibert we buried last night. A truth, a
truth! And now they laugh at you, captain. The king laughs. The queen
laughs. I, Yerut, laugh.”
Villefort could stand it no more. He strode away with the dwarf’s
horrid laughter still ringing in his ears; but old Chamillart, who
watched Corinne and the count pacing the distant avenue by the side of
Louis the Well-beloved, chuckled horribly.
“I said she would fool him,” he muttered; “I said that she would save
her lover--Saint John, if she would but look into my eyes like that!”
“Ho, ho!” said the dwarf in the tree, “she can look into the eyes of a
wolf every day.”