Le Gardeur was too drunk to catch the full drift of the Intendant's
reference to the Bourgeois under the metaphor of Actaeon torn in pieces
by his own dog. He only comprehended enough to know that something was
intended to the disparagement of the Philiberts, and firing up at the
idea, swore loudly that “neither the Intendant nor all the Grand Company
in mass should harm a hair of the Bourgeois's head!”
“It is the dog!” exclaimed De Pean, “which the Company will hang, not
his master, nor your friend his son, nor your friend's friend the old
Huguenot witch! We will let them hang themselves when their time comes;
but it is the Golden Dog we mean to hang at present, Le Gardeur!”
“Yes! I see!” replied Le Gardeur, looking very hazy. “Hang the Golden
Dog as much as you will, but as to the man that touches his master, I
say he will have to fight ME, that is all.” Le Gardeur, after one or
two vain attempts, succeeded in drawing his sword, and laid it upon the
table.
“Do you see that, De Pean? That is the sword of a gentleman, and I will
run it through the heart of any man who says he will hurt a hair of the
head of Pierre Philibert, or the Bourgeois, or even the old Huguenot
witch, as you call Dame Rochelle, who is a lady, and too good to be
either your mother, aunt, or cater cousin, in any way, De Pean!”
“By St. Picot! You have mistaken your man, De Pean!” whispered Cadet.
“Why the deuce did you pitch upon Le Gardeur to carry out your bright
idea?”
“I pitched upon him because he is the best man for our turn. But I am
right. You will see I am right. Le Gardeur is the pink of morality when
he is sober. He would kill the devil when he is half drunk, but when
wholly drunk he would storm paradise, and sack and slay like a German
ritter. He would kill his own grandfather. I have not erred in choosing
him.”
Bigot watched this by-play with intense interest. He saw that Le Gardeur
was a two-edged weapon just as likely to cut his friends as his enemies,
unless skilfully held in hand, and blinded as to when and whom he should
strike.
“Come, Le Gardeur, put up your sword!” exclaimed Bigot, coaxingly; “we
have better game to bring down to-night than the Golden Dog. Hark! They
are coming! Open wide the doors, and let the blessed peacemakers enter!”
“The peacemakers!” ejaculated Cadet; “the cause of every quarrel among
men since the creation of the world! What made you send for the women,
Bigot?”
“Oh, not to say their prayers, you may be sure, old misogynist, but this
being a gala-night at the Palace, the girls and fiddlers were ordered
up by De Pean, and we will see you dance fandangoes with them until
morning, Cadet.”
“No you won't! Damn the women! I wish you had kept them away, that is
all. It spoils my fun, Bigot!”
“But it helps the Company's! Here they come!”
Their appearance at the door caused a hubbub of excitement among the
gentlemen, who hurried forward to salute a dozen or more women dressed
in the extreme of fashion, who came forward with plentiful lack of
modesty, and a superabundance of gaiety and laughter.
Le Gardeur and Cadet did not rise like the rest, but kept their seats.
Cadet swore that De Pean had spoiled a jolly evening by inviting the
women to the Palace.
These women had been invited by De Pean to give zest to the wild orgie
that was intended to prepare Le Gardeur for their plot of to-morrow,
which was to compass the fall of the Bourgeois. They sat down with the
gentlemen, listening with peals of laughter to their coarse jests, and
tempting them to wilder follies. They drank, they sang, they danced and
conducted, or misconducted, themselves in such a thoroughly shameless
fashion that Bigot, Varin, and other experts of the Court swore that the
petits appartements of Versailles, or even the royal fêtes of the Parc
aux cerfs, could not surpass the high life and jollity of the Palace of
the Intendant.
In that wild fashion Bigot had passed the night previous to his present
visit to Angélique. The Chevalier de Pean rode the length of the Grande
Allée and returned. The valet and horse of the Intendant were still
waiting at the door, and De Pean saw Bigot and Angélique still seated at
the window engaged in a lively conversation, and not apparently noticing
his presence in the street as he sat pulling hairs out of the mane of
his horse, “with the air of a man in love,” as Angélique laughingly
remarked to Bigot.
Her quick eye, which nothing could escape, had seen De Pean the first
time he passed the house. She knew that he had come to visit her,
and seeing the horse of the Intendant at the door, had forborne to
enter,--that would not have been the way with Le Gardeur, she thought.
He would have entered all the readier had even the Dauphin held her in
conversation.
Angélique was woman enough to like best the bold gallant who carries the
female heart by storm and puts the parleying garrison of denial to the
sword, as the Sabine women admired the spirit of their Roman captors and
became the most faithful of wives.
De Pean, clever and unprincipled, was a menial in his soul, as cringing
to his superiors as he was arrogant to those below him.
“Fellow!” said he to Bigot's groom, “how long has the Intendant been
here?”
“All the afternoon, Chevalier,” replied the man, respectfully uncovering
his head.
“Hum! and have they sat at the window all the time?”
“I have no eyes to watch my master,” replied the groom; “I do not know.”
“Oh!” was the reply of De Pean, as he suddenly reflected that it were
best for himself also not to be seen watching his master too closely.
He uttered a spurt of ill humor, and continued pulling the mane of his
horse through his fingers.
“The Chevalier de Pean is practising patience to-day, Bigot,” said she;
“and you give him enough time to exercise it.”
“You wish me gone, Angélique!” said he, rising; “the Chevalier de Pean
is naturally waxing impatient, and you too!”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed she; “he shall wait as long as I please to keep him
there.”
“Or as long as I stay. He is an accommodating lover, and will make an
equally accommodating husband for his wife's friend some day!” remarked
Bigot laughingly.
Angélique's eyes flashed out fire, but she little knew how true a word
Bigot had spoken in jest. She could have choked him for mentioning her
in connection with De Pean, but remembering she was now at his mercy, it
was necessary to cheat and cozen this man by trying to please him.
“Well, if you must go, you must, Chevalier! Let me tie that string,”
continued she, approaching him in her easy manner. The knot of his
cravat was loose. Bigot glanced admiringly at her slightly flushed cheek
and dainty fingers as she tied the loose ends of his rich steinkirk
together.
“'Tis like love,” said she, laughingly; “a slip-knot that looks tied
until it is tried.”
She glanced at Bigot, expecting him to thank her, which he did with
a simple word. The thought of Caroline flashed over his mind like
lightning at that moment. She, too, as they walked on the shore of the
Bay of Minas had once tied the string of his cravat, when for the first
time he read in her flushed cheek and trembling fingers that she loved
him. Bigot, hardy as he was and reckless, refrained from touching the
hand or even looking at Angélique at this moment.
With the quick perception of her sex she felt it, and drew back a step,
not knowing but the next moment might overwhelm her with an accusation.
But Bigot was not sure, and he dared not hint to Angélique more than he
had done.
“Thanks for tying the knot, Angélique,” said he at length. “It is a hard
knot, mine, is it not, both to tie and to untie?”
She looked at him, not pretending to understand any meaning he might
attach to his words. “Yes, it is a hard knot to tie, yours, Bigot,
and you do not seem particularly to thank me for my service. Have you
discovered the hidden place of your fair fugitive yet?” She said this
just as he turned to depart. It was the feminine postscript to their
interview.
Bigot's avoidance of any allusion to the death of Caroline was a
terrible mark of suspicion; less in reality, however, than it seemed.
Bigot, although suspicious, could find no clue to the real perpetrators
of the murder. He knew it had not been Angélique herself in person. He
had never heard her speak of La Corriveau. Not the smallest ray of light
penetrated the dark mystery.
“I do not believe she has left Beaumanoir, Bigot,” continued Angélique;
“or if she has, you know her hiding-place. Will you swear on my book of
hours that you know not where she is to be found?”
He looked fixedly at Angélique for a moment, trying to read her
thoughts, but she had rehearsed her part too often and too well to look
pale or confused. She felt her eyebrow twitch, but she pressed it with
her fingers, believing Bigot did not observe it, but he did.
“I will swear and curse both, if you wish it, Angélique,” replied he.
“Which shall it be?”
“Well, do both,--swear at me and curse the day that I banished Le
Gardeur de Repentigny for your sake, François Bigot! If the lady be
gone, where is your promise?”
Bigot burst into a wild laugh, as was his wont when hard-pressed. He
had not, to be sure, made any definite promise to Angélique, but he had
flattered her with hopes of marriage never intended to be realized.
“I keep my promises to ladies as if I had sworn by St. Dorothy,” replied
he.
“But your promise to me, Bigot! Will you keep it, or do worse?” asked
she, impatiently.
“Keep it or do worse! What mean you, Angélique?” He looked up in genuine
surprise. This was not the usual tone of women towards him.
“I mean that nothing will be better for François Bigot than to keep his
promise, nor worse than to break it, to Angélique des Meloises!” replied
she, with a stamp of her foot, as was her manner when excited.
She thought it safe to use an implied threat, which at any rate might
reach the thought that lay under his heart like a centipede under a
stone which some chance foot turns over.
But Bigot minded not the implied threat. He was immovable in the
direction she wished him to move. He understood her allusion, but would
not appear to understand it, lest worse than she meant should come of
it.
“Forgive me, Angélique!” said he, with a sudden change from frigidity to
fondness. “I am not unmindful of my promises; there is nothing better to
myself than to keep them, nothing worse than to break them. Beaumanoir
is now without reproach, and you can visit it without fear of aught but
the ghosts in the gallery.”
Angélique feared no ghosts, but she did fear that the Intendant's words
implied a suggestion of one which might haunt it for the future, if
there were any truth in tales.
“How can you warrant that, Bigot?” asked she dubiously.
“Because Pierre Philibert and La Corne St. Luc have been with the King's
warrant and searched the château from crypt to attic, without finding a
trace of your rival.”
“What, Chevalier, searched the Château of the Intendant?”
“Par bleu! yes, I insisted upon their doing so; not, however, till they
had gone through the Castle of St. Louis. They apologized to me for
finding nothing. What did they expect to find, think you?”
“The lady, to be sure! Oh, Bigot,” continued she, tapping him with her
fan, “if they would send a commission of women to search for her, the
secret could not remain hid.”
“No, truly, Angélique! If you were on such a commission to search for
the secret of her.”
“Well, Bigot, I would never betray it, if I knew it,” answered she,
promptly.
“You swear to that, Angélique?” asked he, looking full in her eyes,
which did not flinch under his gaze.
“Yes; on my book of hours, as you did!” said she.
“Well, there is my hand upon it, Angélique. I have no secret to tell
respecting her. She has gone, I cannot tell WHITHER.”
Angélique gave him her hand on the lie. She knew he was playing with
her, as she with him, a game of mutual deception, which both knew to be
such. And yet they must, circumstanced as they were, play it out to
the end, which end, she hoped, would be her marriage with this
arch-deceiver. A breach of their alliance was as dangerous as it would
be unprofitable to both.
Bigot rose to depart with an air of gay regret at leaving the company
of Angélique to make room for De Pean, “who,” he said, “would pull every
hair out of his horse's mane if he waited much longer.”
“Your visit is no pleasure to you, Bigot,” said she, looking hard at
him. “You are discontented with me, and would rather go than stay!”
“Well, Angélique, I am a dissatisfied man to-day. The mysterious
disappearance of that girl from Beaumanoir is the cause of my
discontent. The defiant boldness of the Bourgeois Philibert is another.
I have heard to-day that the Bourgeois has chartered every ship that is
to sail to France during the remainder of the autumn. These things are
provoking enough, but they drive me for consolation to you. But for
you I should shut myself up in Beaumanoir, and let every thing go
helter-skelter to the devil.”
“You only flatter me and do not mean it!” said she, as he took her hand
with an over-empressement as perceptible to her as was his occasional
coldness.
“By all the saints! I mean it,” said he. But he did not deceive her. His
professions were not all true, but how far they were true was a question
that again and again tormented her, and set her bosom palpitating as he
left her room with his usual courteous salute.
“He suspects me! He more than suspects me!” said she to herself as Bigot
passed out of the mansion and mounted his horse to ride off. “He would
speak out plainer if he dared avow that that woman was in truth the
missing Caroline de St. Castin!” thought she with savage bitterness.
“I have a bit in your mouth there, François Bigot, that will forever
hold you in check. That missing demoiselle, no one knows as you do where
she is. I would give away every jewel I own to know what you did with
the pretty piece of mortality left on your hands by La Corriveau.”
Thus soliloquized Angélique for a few moments, looking gloomy and
beautiful as Medea, when the step of De Pean sounded up the broad stair.
With a sudden transformation, as if touched by a magic wand, Angélique
sprang forward, all smiles and fascinations to greet his entrance.
The Chevalier de Pean had long made distant and timid pretensions to her
favor, but he had been overborne by a dozen rivals. He was incapable of
love in any honest sense; but he had immense vanity. He had been barely
noticed among the crowd of Angélique's admirers. “He was only food for
powder,” she had laughingly remarked upon one occasion, when a duel on
her account seemed to be impending between De Pean and the young Captain
de Tours; and beyond doubt Angélique would have been far prouder of him
shot for her sake in a duel than she was of his living attentions.
She was not sorry, however, that he came in to-day after the departure
of the Intendant. It kept her from her own thoughts, which were bitter
enough when alone. Moreover, she never tired of any amount of homage and
admiration, come from what quarter it would.
De Pean stayed long with Angélique. How far he opened the details of
the plot to create a riot in the market-place that afternoon can only
be conjectured by the fact of her agreeing to ride out at the hour
designated, which she warmly consented to do as soon as De Pean informed
her that Le Gardeur would be there and might be expected to have a
hand in the tumult raised against the Golden Dog. The conference over,
Angélique speedily dismissed De Pean. She was in no mood for flirtation
with him. Her mind was taken up with the possibility of danger to Le
Gardeur in this plot, which she saw clearly was the work of others, and
not of himself, although he was expected to be a chief actor in it.