It was difficult to credit mademoiselle's tale, to believe that Mayenne
could ever be in a rage. In he came, big and calm and smiling, whatever
emotion he may have felt at Monsieur's arrival not only buried, but with
a flower-bed blooming over it. He greeted his guest with all the
courteous ease of an unruffled conscience and a kindly heart. Not till
his glance fell on me did he show any sign of discomposure.
"What, you!" he exclaimed brusquely.
"Your servant brought him hither," Monsieur said for me.
"I understood that one of your gentlemen had come with you. I sent for
him, deeming his presence might conduce to your ease, M. de St.
Quentin."
"I am at my ease, M. de Mayenne," my lord answered, with every
appearance of truth. "You may go, Félix."
"No," said Mayenne. "Since he is here, he may stay. He serves the
purpose as well as another."
He did not say what the purpose was, nor could I see for what he had
kept me, unless as a sign to Monsieur that he meant to play fair. I
began to feel somewhat heartened.
"You have guessed, M. de Mayenne, my errand?"
"Certainly. You have come to join the League."
Monsieur laughed out.
"On the contrary, M. de Mayenne, I have come to persuade you to join the
King."
"That was a waste of horse-flesh."
"My friend, you know as well as we do that before long you will come
over."
"I am not there yet, nor are my enemies scattered, nor is the League
dead."
"Dying, my lord. It will get its coup de grâce o' Sunday, when the king
goes to mass."
"St. Quentin," Mayenne made quiet answer, "when I am in such case that
nothing remains to me but to fall on my sword or to kneel to Henry, be
assured I shall kneel to Henry. Till then I play my game."
"Play it, then. We have the patience to wait for you, monsieur. Be
assured, in your turn, that when you do come on your knees to his
Majesty you will do well to have a friend or two at court."
"Morbleu," Mayenne cried, suddenly showing his teeth, "you will never go
back to him if I choose to stop you!"
Monsieur raised his eyebrows at him, pained by the unsuavity.
"Of course not, monsieur. I quite understood that when I entered the
gate. I shall never leave this house if you will otherwise."
"You will leave the house unharmed," Mayenne said curtly. "I shall not
treat you as your late master treated my brother."
"I thank your generosity, monsieur, and commend your good sense."
Mayenne looked for a moment as if he repented of both. Then he broke
into a laugh.
"One permits the insolences of the court jester."
Monsieur sprang up, his hand on his sword. But at once the quick flush
passed from his face, and he, too, laughed.
Mayenne sat as he was, in somewhat lowering silence. My duke made a
step nearer him, and spoke for the first time with perfect seriousness.
"My Lord Mayenne, it was no outrecuidance brought me here this morning.
There is the Bastille. There is the axe. I know that my course has been
offensive to you--your nephew proved me that. I know also that you do
not care to meddle with me openly. At least, you have not meddled.
Whether you will change your method--but I venture to believe not. I am
popular just now in Paris. I had more cheers as I came in this morning
than have met your ears for many a month. You have a great name for
prudence, M. de Mayenne; I believe you will not molest me."
I hardly thought my duke was making a great name for prudence. But then,
as he said, he had to work in his own way. Mayenne returned, with
chilling calm:
"You may find me, St. Quentin, less timid than you suppose."
"Impossible. Mayenne's courage is unquestioned. I rely not on his
timidity, but on his judgment."
"You take a great deal upon yourself in supposing that I wanted your
death on Tuesday and do not want it on Friday."
"The king is three days nearer the true faith than on Tuesday. His party
is three days stronger. On Tuesday it would have been a blunder to kill
me; on Friday it is three days worse a blunder."
"But not less a pleasure. I have had something of the kind in mind ever
since your master killed my brother."
"You should profit by that murderer's experience before you take a leaf
from his book, M. de Mayenne. Henry of Valois gained singularly little
when he slew Guise to make you head of the League."
Mayenne started, and then laughed to show his scorn of the flattery. But
I think he was, all the same, half pleased, none the less because he
knew it to be flattery. He said unexpectedly:
"Your son comes honestly by his unbound tongue."
"Ah, my son! Now that you mention him, we shall discuss him a little.
You have put my son, monsieur, in the Bastille."
"No; Belin and my nephew Paul, whom you know, have put him there."
"But M. de Mayenne can get him out if he choose."
"If he choose."
Monsieur sat down again, with the air of one preparing for an amiable
discussion.
"He is charged with the murder of one Pontou, a lackey. Of course he did
not commit it, nor would you care if he had. His real offence is making
love to your ward."
"Well, do you deny it?"
"Not the love, but the offence of it. Palpably you might do much worse
than dispose of the lady to my heir."
"I might do much better than bestow my time on you if that is all you
have to say."
"We have hardly opened the subject, M. de Mayenne--"
"I have no wish to carry it further."
"Monsieur, the king's ranks afford no better match than my heir."
"No maid of mine shall ever marry a Royalist."
"I swore no son of mine should ever marry a Leaguer, but I have come to
see the error of my ways, as you will see yours, Mayenne. It is for you
to choose where among the king's forces you will marry mademoiselle."
A vague uneasiness, a fear which he would not own a fear, crept into
Mayenne's eyes. He studied the face before him, a face of gay challenge,
and said, at length, not quite confidently himself:
"You speak with a confidence, St. Quentin."
"Why, to be sure."
Mayenne jumped heavily to his feet.
"What mean you?"
"I mean that mademoiselle's marrying is in my hands. Where is your ward,
M. de Mayenne?"
"Mordieu! Have you found her?"
"You speak sooth."
"In your hôtel--"
"No, eager kinsman. In a place whither you cannot follow her."
Mayenne looked about, as if with some instinctive idea of seeking a
weapon, of summoning his soldiers.
"By God's throne, you shall tell me where!"
"With pleasure. She is at St. Denis."
Mayenne cried helplessly, as numbed under a blow:
"St. Denis! But how--"
"How came she there? On foot, every step. I suppose she never walked
two streets in her life before, has she, M. de Mayenne? But she tramped
to St. Denis through the dark, to knock at my door at one in the
morning."
Mayenne seized Monsieur's wrist.
"She is safe, St. Quentin? She is safe?"
"As safe, monsieur, as the king's protection can make her."
"Pardieu! Is she with the king?"
"She is at my lodgings, in the care of the saddler's wife who lets them.
I left a staunch man in charge--I have no doubt of him."
"You answer for her safety?" Mayenne cried huskily; his breath coming
short. He was flushed, the veins in his forehead corded.
"When she came last night, it happened that the king was there,"
Monsieur went on. "Her loveliness and her misery moved him to the
heart."
"Thousand thunders of heaven! You, with your son, shall be hostages for
her safe return."
"The king," Monsieur went on, as immovably as Mayenne himself at his
best, "with that warm heart of his pitying beauty in distress, is eager
for mademoiselle's marriage with her lover Mar. But he did not favour my
venture here; he called it a silly business. He said you would clap me
in jail, and he told me flat I might rot my life out there before he
would give up to you Mlle. de Montluc."
"Well, then, pardieu, we'll try if he means it!"
"He gave me to understand that he meant it. The St. Quentins out of the
way, there is Valère, stout Kingsman, to succeed. The king loses
little."
"Then are you gone mad that you put yourself in my grasp?"
"I was never saner. I come, my friend, to make you listen to sanity."
I had waited from moment to moment Mayenne's summons to his soldiers.
But he had not rung, and now he flung himself down again in his
arm-chair.
"What, to your understanding, is sanity?"
"If you send me to join my son, monsieur, you leave mademoiselle without
a protector, friendless, penniless, in the midst of a hostile army
cursing the name of Mayenne. Have you reared her delicately, tenderly,
for that?"
Mayenne sat silent, his face a mask. It was impossible to tell whether
the shot hit. Monsieur went on:
"You can of course hold us in durance, torture us, kill us; but you must
answer for it to the people of Paris."
Still was Mayenne silent, drumming on the edge of the table. Finally he
said roughly, as if the words were dragged from him against his will:
"I shall not torture you. I never meant to torture Mar. The arrest was
not my work. Since it was done, I meant to profit by it to keep him
awhile out of my way--only that. I threatened my cousin otherwise in
heat of passion. But I shall not torture him. I shall not kill him."
"Monsieur--"
"I put a card in your hand," Mayenne said curtly. His pride ill brooked
to concede the point, but he could not have it supposed that he did not
see what he was doing. "I give you a card. Do what you can with it."
"Monsieur, you show what little surprises me--knightly generosity. It is
to that generosity I appeal."
"Is the horse of that colour? But now you were frightening my prudence."
"Ah, but how fortunate the man to whom generosity and prudence point the
same path!"
It may have been but pretence, this smiling bonhomie of Monsieur's.
Mayenne doubtless gauged it as such, but, at any rate, he suffered it to
warm him. He regained of a sudden all the amiability with which he had
greeted his guest. Smiling and calm, he answered:
"St. Quentin, I care little for either your threats or your cajoleries.
They amuse me alike, and move me not. But I have a care for my sweet
cousin. Since you threaten me with her danger, you have the whiphand."
Now it was Monsieur's turn to sit discreetly silent, waiting.
"I went last night to tell the child I would not harm her lover. Lo! she
had flown. I had a regiment searching Paris for her. I was in the
streets myself till dawn."
"Monsieur, she made her way to us at St. Denis to offer herself to our
torture did you torture Mar."
"Morbleu!" Mayenne cried, half rising.
"God's mercy, we're not ruffians out there! I tell it to show you to
what the maid was strung."
"I never thought it great matter whom one married," Mayenne said
slowly: "one boy is much like another. I should have mated her as
befitted her station--I thought she would be happy enough. And she was
good about it: I did not see how deep she cared. She was docile till I
drove her too hard. She's a loving child. You are fortunate in your
daughter, St. Quentin."
Monsieur sprang up radiant, advancing on him open-armed. Mayenne added,
with his cool smile:
"You need not flatter yourself, Monsieur, that it is your doing. I laugh
at your threats. 'Twere sport to me to clap you behind bars, to say to
your king, to the mob you brag of, 'Come, now, get him out.'"
"Then," cried Monsieur, "I must value my sweet daughter more than ever."
He was standing over Mayenne with outstretched hand, but the chief
delayed taking it.
"Not quite so fast, my friend. If I yield up the Duc de St. Quentin, the
Comte de Mar, and Mlle. Lorance de Montluc, I demand certain little
concessions for myself."
"By all means, monsieur. You stamp us churls else."
My duke sat again, his smile a shade uneasy. Which Mayenne perceived
with quiet enjoyment, as he went on blandly: "Nothing that I could ask
of you, M. de St. Quentin, could equal, could halve, what I give. Still,
that the knightliness may not be, to your mortification, all on one
side, I have thought of something for you to grant."
"Name it, monsieur."
"Another point in your favour I had forgot," Mayenne observed, with his
usual reluctance to show his cards even when the time had come to spread
them. "Last night I laid on this table a packet, just arrived, which I
was told belonged to you. When I had time to think of it again, it had
vanished. I accused my lackeys, but later it occurred to me that Mlle.
de Montluc, arming for battle, had purloined it."
"Your shrewdness does you credit."
"You see you have scored a fourth point, though again by no prowess of
your own. Therefore am I emboldened to demand what I want."
"Even to half my fortune--"
"No, not your gear. Save that for your Béarnais's itching palm."
"Then what the devil is it you want? You will not get my name in the
League."
"I am glad my nephew Paul bungled that affair of his," Mayenne went on
at his own pace. "It might have been a blunder to kill you; it had
certainly been a pity. Though we Lorraines have two murders to avenge, I
have changed my mind about beginning with yours."
"You are wise, monsieur. I am, after all, a harmless creature."
Mayenne laughed.
"Natheless have you done your best here in Paris to undermine me. Did I
let you carry on your little works unhindered, they might in time annoy
me. Therefore I request that so long as I stay in Paris you stay out."
"Oh, I don't like that!"
The naïveté amazed while it amused Mayenne.
"Possibly not, but you will consent to it. You will ride out of my
court, when we have finished some necessary signing of papers, straight
to the St. Denis gate. And you will pledge me your honour to make no
attempt hereafter to enter so long as the city is mine."
Mayenne was smiling broadly, Monsieur frowning. He relished the
condition little. He was enjoying himself much in Paris, his dangers,
his successes, his biting his thumb at the power of the League. To be
killed at his post was nothing, but to be bundled away from it to
inglorious safety, that stuck in his gorge. For a moment he actually
hesitated. Then he began to laugh at his own hesitation.
"Well, ma foi! what do I expect? To walk, a rabbit, into the lion's den
and make my own terms to Leo? I am happy to accept yours, M. de Mayenne,
especially since, do I refuse, you will none the less pack me off."
"You mistake, St. Quentin. You are welcome to spend the rest of your
days with me."
"In the Bastille?"
"Or in the League."
"The former is preferable."
"You may count yourself thrice fortunate, then, that a third alternative
is given you."
"It needs not the reminder. You have treated me as a prince indeed. Be
assured the St. Quentins will not forget."
"Every one forgets."
"Perhaps. But when you need our good offices we shall not have had time
to forget."
"Pardieu, St. Quentin, you have good courage to tell me to my head my
course is run!"
"My dear Mayenne, none punishes the maunderings of the court jester."
Monsieur laughed out with a gay gusto; after a moment Mayenne laughed
too. My duke cried quickly, rising and walking the length of the table
to his host:
"You have dealt with me munificently, Mayenne. You have kept back but
one thing I want. That is yourself. You know you must come over to us
sooner or later. Come now!"
The other did not flame out at Monsieur, but answered coldly:
"I have no taste to be Navarre's vassal."
"Better his than Spain's."
Mayenne shrugged his shoulders, his face at its stolidest.
"Well, I am no astrologer to read the future."
Monsieur laid an emphatic hand on his host's shoulder.
"But I read it, my friend. I see a French land under a French king, a
Catholic and a gallant fellow, faithful to old friends, friendly to old
foes. I see the dear land at peace at last, the looms humming, the mills
clacking, wheat growing thick on the battle-fields."
Mayenne looked up with a grim smile.
"I have still a field or two to water for that wheat. My compliments to
your new master, St. Quentin; you may tell him from me that when I
submit, I submit. When I have made my surrender, from that hour forth am
I his hound to lick his hand, to guard and obey him. Till then, let him
beware of my teeth! While I have one pikeman to my back, one sou in my
pouch, I fight my cause."
"And when you have none, you yet have three pairs of hands at Henry's
court to pull you up out of the mire."
"I thank their graciousness, though I shall never need their offices,"
Mayenne said grandly. He stood there stately and proud and confident,
the picture of princeliness and strength. Last night at St. Denis it had
seemed to me that no power could defy my king. Now it seemed to me that
no king could nick the power of my Lord Mayenne. When suddenly,
precisely like a mummer who in his great moment winks at you to let you
know it is make-believe, the general-duke's dignity melted into a smile.
"After all," he said, "it's as well to lay an anchor to windward."