IN BEAUTY'S QUARREL
My young cock-a-hoop and I being left facing each other on the
pavement of the court, he said to me, with a terrific scowl in his
handsome bright young face:
"Who are you, sir?"
"Babache," said I. "Captain of Uhlans in the body-guard of Count
Saxe."
"Well, Babache," continues my young man, twirling his snuff-box as he
had probably seen some older man do, "you were infernally in my way
just now."
"Was I?" answered I. "Why did you not tell me at the time? I would
have gone and jumped into the Seine--" and as I spoke, I flipped the
snuff-box out of his hand. I never saw a youngster in a greater rage.
Like Mademoiselle Capello, a minute before, he hated to be treated
like a child.
"Sir," said he, "you shall eat your words."
"Sir," I replied, "I have supped already; and besides, I never had any
appetite for that dish."
With that he whipped out his sword, and I said, holding up my hand:
"My lad, I am willing to fight, if that is what you are after; but
being much older and wiser than you, I will tell you that our quarrel
must not in any way relate to the young lady who has just been
rescued from a very painful predicament. Suppose we quarrel about
Count Saxe?"
"With all my heart," responds Gaston Cheverny.
"He is, as you know, the greatest man that ever lived," said I.
"Monsieur," replied my young game chick, very politely, "I thought him
a great man up to this very moment and felt honored by his notice--for
I know him--but since I hear he is a friend and patron of yours, I
swear I think he is the veriest poltroon, the ugliest man, the
stupidest oaf I ever saw."
"Thank you," said I. "Kindly name the place and hour where a meeting
between us may be arranged."
"Why, here and now is the best time to arrange it. The garden of the
Temple is retired enough. The moon is now rising--and with two good
lanterns we can see to stick at each other--and we can each find an
acquaintance within this very building."
I was astonished at the youth's temerity--but I saw it was not
bloodthirstiness, but rather a youthful longing for a pickle-herring
tragedy. It was my lady Francezka over again. Having scolded that
young lady with the air of a patriarch, for her venturesomeness,
Gaston Cheverny proceeded to hunt up adventures of his own. I saw that
the notion of fighting by the light of flickering stable lanterns
mightily tickled his fancy. So I said, looking at the great clock in
the tower of the Temple:
"It is now ten o'clock. Shall we make it in an hour?"
"We can easily meet in half an hour."
"Certainly," I answered. "We must each find a friend and a lantern."
"Done," he cried--and turned off.
I was much more puzzled to find a friend and a lantern than I was at
the prospect of crossing swords with young Cheverny. The only human
being I could think of at hand was Jacques Haret--and I loathed the
thought of having him in that capacity. Just then, Jacques Haret came
out of the door and passed through the courtyard. The time was short,
so I stopped him, briefly stated the matter, and he accepted my cause,
laughing uproariously the meanwhile. I had told him, of course, that
Gaston Cheverny and I had quarreled about the greatness of Count
Saxe.
"I know Cheverny well," he cried. "When I was a gentleman, I, too, had
a place in Brabant. Old Peter, you must know, was a retainer of my
family, and served with my father under Marshal Villars, and that is
how, my estate being gone--bought by Regnard Cheverny, brother of
Gaston--and Peter coming to Paris, he took service with Peggy
Kirkpatrick. He had known the Capello family in Brabant."
Jacques Haret commonly told the truth about these things--and so I
knew it to be true. He told me he had finally disposed of the
children for the night, and proposed to get out of the way as
quickly as possible. There was but little money in the theater, he
said,--the cobbler's boy, his best actor, was so frightened at the
adventures of the evening that he would never be worth anything as
an actor again. Francezka would play no more; so he thought, on the
whole, he had better cut the entire business, especially as it was
possible the matter might come to Peggy Kirkpatrick's ears. Like
myself, he regarded the meeting with Gaston Cheverny very lightly. I
had my sword with me, and did not need to hire one as my adversary
did, for he had on merely a dress sword, unfit for work. We could not
lay hands on a surgeon, and I told Jacques Haret it mattered
not--I would only be amusing myself with my young man, and he was
only for saying that he crossed swords at a moment's warning, about
a young lady--and no one was likely to be hurt. We required a
lantern, however, and Jacques Haret proposing a wine shop as a
place likely to have a lantern for hire, we went in search of
one--and speedily found it. And we were also able to secure what I
knew would please my young cock mightily--one of those pieces of
black cloth which old custom decrees shall be carried to throw over
the corpse if either one of the combatants fall. It was no more
likely to be used than a babe's swaddling clothes, but it looked
tragic, and I saw that young Cheverny was bent upon being as
tragic as possible, under the circumstances.
At the appointed time we were at the rendezvous. The Temple gardens
were remote and retired, and at this hour of the night were perfectly
deserted, not even a watchman being about.
I found my young friend with another cavalier, some years older than
himself--a regular _petit-maitre_, Bellegarde by name, insipid beyond
words, and very fretful because Gaston Cheverny had insisted on
fighting at such a time.
Jacques Haret went through the affair with the most killing gravity.
Monsieur Bellegarde asked if an accommodation was possible. Jacques
Haret replied no, except upon the admission that Count Saxe was the
greatest man that ever lived. This Bellegarde earnestly besought
Gaston Cheverny to agree to, alleging that he knew of several persons
who were of that mind, and besides he was then due at a supper party.
Cheverny, however, persisted stoutly that Alexander the Great was a
more considerable man, and the supper party must wait until after the
meeting in question. Then Jacques Haret said there was no time to
lose. I never saw a youngster so pleased as Gaston Cheverny was at
that. He had come to Paris for adventures and here was one to his
exact taste. I think the fighting by the lantern-light filled his
boyish soul with rapture.
For myself, I knew I was a good and experienced swordsman; and I meant
to use all my skill to give him the right sort and size of cut--not a
mere scratch, which would never have satisfied him--but one of those
cuts, trifling in themselves, but which produce a good deal of blood,
and which enable a fellow to carry his arm in a sling, and so win the
sympathy of the ladies. Just as I had loved the youth on first seeing
him, so I looked into his soul, and fancied his delight, his swagger,
his airs of consequence, at appearing in company with his arm in a
sling; and although I felt perfectly sure that he would die rather
than reveal the name of the young lady, or rather the child about whom
we had fallen out, I felt assured he could not keep to himself that he
had fought in beauty's quarrel. And the amusement Count Saxe would
have out of it!
We stripped off our coats, our swords were put into our hands, and I
went about to oblige my young friend. I found him a fairly good
swordsman for his age, but I could have disarmed him at any moment.
However, that would have broken his heart. So I clashed away
good-naturedly, making him think he was having a devil of a time,
until, beginning to feel a little winded, I thought it time to give
him the stroke he wanted.
I have a cut in tierce of which I have always had the mastery, and it
was this cut I was giving Cheverny, when suddenly the lantern back of
him went out. At the same moment his foot slipped; his guard gave way
completely, and my sword's point went exactly where I had never meant
it to go--into his left side. He dropped like a stone.
I was the first to reach him, and turned him over on his back.
Bellegarde, a silly popinjay, lost his head completely, and began to
howl for one of those new-fangled screw tourniquets which had been
invented by Jean Louis Petit, not so long before. But of course nobody
had one, or could get one, or knew how to use it, had it dropped from
heaven. Jacques Haret, as usual, kept his wits and disappeared in
search of a doctor and a coach.
I bound my mantle around Gaston Cheverny's body, told him to lie
still, meanwhile examining him to see if he was about to die. I
thought he was. His face was quite green, his extremities grew cold
and he was deathly sick. But his eye retained its undimmed brightness;
and while he was lying there on the ground, in this sad state, he
burst out into a feeble laugh.
"Babache, you are so damned ugly," he whispered.
Was it strange I loved the boy who was so much himself in such
circumstances, and would have given my right arm if that cursed
lantern had not gone out? I said to him:
"If you open your mouth again, I swear to leave you lying here on the
ground; and you will probably die of that hole I made in you."
His own sensations by that time must have shown him the seriousness of
his wound. He lay still and silent and greenish-gray and sick and
gasping; and I--I could not look at him for very anguish.
It was but half a quarter of an hour before Jacques Haret returned
with a physician and one of those sedan chairs which can be made into
a litter. The physician, an intelligent looking man, examined the rude
bandage I had made for the wounded man, and then silently motioned us
to lay him on the litter, which we did. His lodgings were close by, so
Bellegarde told us--and we bore our gruesome burden through the
street.
Gaston Cheverny's hurt was as much an accident as if it had been a
lightning bolt, but no man ever suffered more than I at the thought
that I had inflicted it. Arrived at his lodging--an excellent one in
the quarter of the Temple--we carried him into his bedchamber, laid
him on his bed, got his valet, and, except the valet, we were all
ordered to leave by the physician. As I turned away from the bed,
Gaston Cheverny managed to hold out his hand to me. I took it, and I
am not ashamed to say that, for the second time that night, tears came
into my eyes. Outside in the street I watched and waited. The night
grew sharp, and the darkness grew dense, and the city's throbbing
pulse grew still. I walked up and down the street, and only the
watchman's distant cry and my own quiet foot-fall, broke the midnight
silence. The inevitable thought came to me, whether, after all, there
be any such thing as chance in the world--or, whether all is chance. I
had paused that afternoon before the grille of an old garden, softly
called to stop by the scent of the lilacs--and because I had ever
loved the scent of lilacs a man might die that night.
No one came out of the house where Gaston Cheverny battled with death.
The lights burned steadily in the saloon which communicated with the
bedchamber where we had carried the wounded man, and the room remained
empty, so I knew Gaston Cheverny still lived. Some time after midnight
the valet came out running. I ran after him to ask how his master
fared.
"Very bad," replied the poor fellow. "I go for another physician
now."
After an hour a coach rumbled up--it was then the first gray and
ghastly moment of the dawn. Out of the coach got a court physician
whom I knew by sight. He remained a long while within the house, and
when he came out looked solemn. I asked him civilly how his patient
did, and he gave me the same answer as the valet--"Very bad." He
added, however, that the youth was young and strong, untainted by
dissipation, and if he lived twenty-four hours, would probably
survive. I was never one to give way to despair, and so I dwelt on
these hopeful words. I am not ashamed to say I stepped into the church
of the Temple, and made a prayer or two as well as I knew how for the
young man. There are, as I heard Madame Riano say some years
afterward, such things as praying rogues and swearing saints--but
though I prayed, I was not a rogue.
It may be imagined that I went not far from Gaston Cheverny's lodgings
during that twenty-four hours. I went to the Luxembourg once or twice,
where Count Saxe was lodged by the king's order, and I, of course,
next him, and asked if I was needed, but each time, Beauvais, the
valet, who was a fair writer, told me nay; and leaving word where I
was to be found, I returned to my vigil at Gaston Cheverny's door.
On the second sunrise after I had run him through, I heard the welcome
news from the physician that the wound was healing with the first
intention, that there was no fever, and that he had never known so
serious a case progress so well. I returned to the Luxembourg, left
word I was not to be called except by Count Saxe, and throwing myself
on my bed, slept ten hours without waking. I had dreams in those
hours--dreams of Mademoiselle Capello. It was on Friday night that I
had come so near giving Gaston Cheverny his death wound--and it was on
Sunday evening that I rose, after my sleep and my dreams, shaved,
bathed, dressed, and went in search of Count Saxe.