_Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a puzzle.
It joined with another and a larger road at right angles. David
stood, uncertain, for a while, and then took the road to the
right._
Whither it led he knew not, but he was resolved to leave Vernoy far
behind that night. He travelled a league and then passed a large
_château_ which showed testimony of recent entertainment. Lights
shone from every window; from the great stone gateway ran a tracery
of wheel tracks drawn in the dust by the vehicles of the guests.
Three leagues farther and David was weary. He rested and slept for a
while on a bed of pine boughs at the roadside. Then up and on again
along the unknown way.
Thus for five days he travelled the great road, sleeping upon
Nature's balsamic beds or in peasants' ricks, eating of their black,
hospitable bread, drinking from streams or the willing cup of the
goatherd.
At length he crossed a great bridge and set his foot within the
smiling city that has crushed or crowned more poets than all the
rest of the world. His breath came quickly as Paris sang to him in a
little undertone her vital chant of greeting--the hum of voice and
foot and wheel.
High up under the eaves of an old house in the Rue Conti, David paid
for lodging, and set himself, in a wooden chair, to his poems. The
street, once sheltering citizens of import and consequence, was now
given over to those who ever follow in the wake of decline.
The houses were tall and still possessed of a ruined dignity, but
many of them were empty save for dust and the spider. By night there
was the clash of steel and the cries of brawlers straying restlessly
from inn to inn. Where once gentility abode was now but a rancid and
rude incontinence. But here David found housing commensurate to his
scant purse. Daylight and candlelight found him at pen and paper.
One afternoon he was returning from a foraging trip to the lower
world, with bread and curds and a bottle of thin wine. Halfway up
his dark stairway he met--or rather came upon, for she rested on the
stair--a young woman of a beauty that should balk even the justice
of a poet's imagination. A loose, dark cloak, flung open, showed a
rich gown beneath. Her eyes changed swiftly with every little shade
of thought. Within one moment they would be round and artless like
a child's, and long and cozening like a gypsy's. One hand raised
her gown, undraping a little shoe, high-heeled, with its ribbons
dangling, untied. So heavenly she was, so unfitted to stoop, so
qualified to charm and command! Perhaps she had seen David coming,
and had waited for his help there.
Ah, would monsieur pardon that she occupied the stairway, but the
shoe!--the naughty shoe! Alas! it would not remain tied. Ah! if
monsieur _would_ be so gracious!
The poet's fingers trembled as he tied the contrary ribbons. Then he
would have fled from the danger of her presence, but the eyes grew
long and cozening, like a gypsy's, and held him. He leaned against
the balustrade, clutching his bottle of sour wine.
"You have been so good," she said, smiling. "Does monsieur, perhaps,
live in the house?"
"Yes, madame. I--I think so, madame."
"Perhaps in the third story, then?"
"No, madame; higher up."
The lady fluttered her fingers with the least possible gesture of
impatience.
"Pardon. Certainly I am not discreet in asking. Monsieur will
forgive me? It is surely not becoming that I should inquire where he
lodges."
"Madame, do not say so. I live in the--"
"No, no, no; do not tell me. Now I see that I erred. But I cannot
lose the interest I feel in this house and all that is in it. Once
it was my home. Often I come here but to dream of those happy days
again. Will you let that be my excuse?"
"Let me tell you, then, for you need no excuse," stammered the poet.
"I live in the top floor--the small room where the stairs turn."
"In the front room?" asked the lady, turning her head sidewise.
"The rear, madame."
The lady sighed, as if with relief.
"I will detain you no longer then, monsieur," she said, employing
the round and artless eye. "Take good care of my house. Alas! only
the memories of it are mine now. Adieu, and accept my thanks for
your courtesy."
She was gone, leaving but a smile and a trace of sweet perfume.
David climbed the stairs as one in slumber. But he awoke from it,
and the smile and the perfume lingered with him and never afterward
did either seem quite to leave him. This lady of whom he knew
nothing drove him to lyrics of eyes, chansons of swiftly conceived
love, odes to curling hair, and sonnets to slippers on slender feet.
Poet he must have been, for Yvonne was forgotten; this fine, new
loveliness held him with its freshness and grace. The subtle perfume
about her filled him with strange emotions.
On a certain night three persons were gathered about a table in a
room on the third floor of the same house. Three chairs and the
table and a lighted candle upon it was all the furniture. One of the
persons was a huge man, dressed in black. His expression was one of
sneering pride. The ends of his upturned moustache reached nearly to
his mocking eyes. Another was a lady, young and beautiful, with eyes
that could be round and artless, as a child's, or long and cozening,
like a gypsy's, but were now keen and ambitious, like any other
conspirator's. The third was a man of action, a combatant, a bold
and impatient executive, breathing fire and steel. He was addressed
by the others as Captain Desrolles.
This man struck the table with his fist, and said, with controlled
violence:
"To-night. To-night as he goes to midnight mass. I am tired of the
plotting that gets nowhere. I am sick of signals and ciphers and
secret meetings and such _baragouin_. Let us be honest traitors. If
France is to be rid of him, let us kill in the open, and not hunt
with snares and traps. To-night, I say. I back my words. My hand
will do the deed. To-night, as he goes to mass."
The lady turned upon him a cordial look. Woman, however wedded to
plots, must ever thus bow to rash courage. The big man stroked his
upturned moustache.
"Dear captain," he said, in a great voice, softened by habit, "this
time I agree with you. Nothing is to be gained by waiting. Enough of
the palace guards belong to us to make the endeavour a safe one."
"To-night," repeated Captain Desrolles, again striking the table.
"You have heard me, marquis; my hand will do the deed."
"But now," said the huge man, softly, "comes a question. Word must
be sent to our partisans in the palace, and a signal agreed upon.
Our stanchest men must accompany the royal carriage. At this hour
what messenger can penetrate so far as the south doorway? Ribouet is
stationed there; once a message is placed in his hands, all will go
well."
"I will send the message," said the lady.
"You, countess?" said the marquis, raising his eyebrows. "Your
devotion is great, we know, but--"
"Listen!" exclaimed the lady, rising and resting her hands upon the
table; "in a garret of this house lives a youth from the provinces
as guileless and tender as the lambs he tended there. I have met him
twice or thrice upon the stairs. I questioned him, fearing that he
might dwell too near the room in which we are accustomed to meet. He
is mine, if I will. He writes poems in his garret, and I think he
dreams of me. He will do what I say. He shall take the message to
the palace."
The marquis rose from his chair and bowed. "You did not permit me to
finish my sentence, countess," he said. "I would have said: 'Your
devotion is great, but your wit and charm are infinitely greater.'"
While the conspirators were thus engaged, David was polishing some
lines addressed to his _amorette d'escalier_. He heard a timorous
knock at his door, and opened it, with a great throb, to behold her
there, panting as one in straits, with eyes wide open and artless,
like a child's.
"Monsieur," she breathed, "I come to you in distress. I believe you
to be good and true, and I know of no other help. How I flew through
the streets among the swaggering men! Monsieur, my mother is dying.
My uncle is a captain of guards in the palace of the king. Some one
must fly to bring him. May I hope--"
"Mademoiselle," interrupted David, his eyes shining with the desire
to do her service, "your hopes shall be my wings. Tell me how I may
reach him."
The lady thrust a sealed paper into his hand.
"Go to the south gate--the south gate, mind--and say to the guards
there, 'The falcon has left his nest.' They will pass you, and you
will go to the south entrance to the palace. Repeat the words, and
give this letter to the man who will reply 'Let him strike when he
will.' This is the password, monsieur, entrusted to me by my uncle,
for now when the country is disturbed and men plot against the
king's life, no one without it can gain entrance to the palace
grounds after nightfall. If you will, monsieur, take him this letter
so that my mother may see him before she closes her eyes."
"Give it me," said David, eagerly. "But shall I let you return home
through the streets alone so late? I--"
"No, no--fly. Each moment is like a precious jewel. Some time," said
the lady, with eyes long and cozening, like a gypsy's, "I will try
to thank you for your goodness."
The poet thrust the letter into his breast, and bounded down the
stairway. The lady, when he was gone, returned to the room below.
The eloquent eyebrows of the marquis interrogated her.
"He is gone," she said, "as fleet and stupid as one of his own
sheep, to deliver it."
The table shook again from the batter of Captain Desrolles's fist.
"Sacred name!" he cried; "I have left my pistols behind! I can trust
no others."
"Take this," said the marquis, drawing from beneath his cloak a
shining, great weapon, ornamented with carven silver. "There are
none truer. But guard it closely, for it bears my arms and crest,
and already I am suspected. Me, I must put many leagues between
myself and Paris this night. To-morrow must find me in my _château_.
After you, dear countess."
The marquis puffed out the candle. The lady, well cloaked, and the
two gentlemen softly descended the stairway and flowed into the
crowd that roamed along the narrow pavements of the Rue Conti.
David sped. At the south gate of the king's residence a halberd was
laid to his breast, but he turned its point with the words; "The
falcon has left his nest."
"Pass, brother," said the guard, "and go quickly."
On the south steps of the palace they moved to seize him, but again
the _mot de passe_ charmed the watchers. One among them stepped
forward and began: "Let him strike--" but a flurry among the guards
told of a surprise. A man of keen look and soldierly stride suddenly
pressed through them and seized the letter which David held in his
hand. "Come with me," he said, and led him inside the great hall.
Then he tore open the letter and read it. He beckoned to a man
uniformed as an officer of musketeers, who was passing. "Captain
Tetreau, you will have the guards at the south entrance and the
south gate arrested and confined. Place men known to be loyal in
their places." To David he said: "Come with me."
He conducted him through a corridor and an anteroom into a spacious
chamber, where a melancholy man, sombrely dressed, sat brooding in a
great, leather-covered chair. To that man he said:
"Sire, I have told you that the palace is as full of traitors and
spies as a sewer is of rats. You have thought, sire, that it was my
fancy. This man penetrated to your very door by their connivance. He
bore a letter which I have intercepted. I have brought him here that
your majesty may no longer think my zeal excessive."
"I will question him," said the king, stirring in his chair. He
looked at David with heavy eyes dulled by an opaque film. The poet
bent his knee.
"From where do you come?" asked the king.
"From the village of Vernoy, in the province of Eure-et-Loir, sire."
"What do you follow in Paris?"
"I--I would be a poet, sire."
"What did you in Vernoy?"
"I minded my father's flock of sheep."
The king stirred again, and the film lifted from his eyes.
"Ah! in the fields!"
"Yes, sire."
"You lived in the fields; you went out in the cool of the morning
and lay among the hedges in the grass. The flock distributed itself
upon the hillside; you drank of the living stream; you ate your
sweet, brown bread in the shade, and you listened, doubtless, to
blackbirds piping in the grove. Is not that so, shepherd?"
"It is, sire," answered David, with a sigh; "and to the bees at the
flowers, and, maybe, to the grape gatherers singing on the hill."
"Yes, yes," said the king, impatiently; "maybe to them; but surely
to the blackbirds. They whistled often, in the grove, did they not?"
"Nowhere, sire, so sweetly as in Eure-et-Loir. I have endeavored to
express their song in some verses that I have written."
"Can you repeat those verses?" asked the king, eagerly. "A long time
ago I listened to the blackbirds. It would be something better than
a kingdom if one could rightly construe their song. And at night you
drove the sheep to the fold and then sat, in peace and tranquillity,
to your pleasant bread. Can you repeat those verses, shepherd?"
"They run this way, sire," said David, with respectful ardour:
"'Lazy shepherd, see your lambkins
Skip, ecstatic, on the mead;
See the firs dance in the breezes,
Hear Pan blowing at his reed.
"Hear us calling from the tree-tops,
See us swoop upon your flock;
Yield us wool to make our nests warm
In the branches of the--'"
"If it please your majesty," interrupted a harsh voice, "I will ask
a question or two of this rhymester. There is little time to spare.
I crave pardon, sire, if my anxiety for your safety offends."
"The loyalty," said the king, "of the Duke d'Aumale is too well
proven to give offence." He sank into his chair, and the film came
again over his eyes.
"First," said the duke, "I will read you the letter he brought:
"'To-night is the anniversary of the dauphin's death. If he
goes, as is his custom, to midnight mass to pray for the soul
of his son, the falcon will strike, at the corner of the Rue
Esplanade. If this be his intention, set a red light in the
upper room at the southwest corner of the palace, that the
falcon may take heed.'
"Peasant," said the duke, sternly, "you have heard these words. Who
gave you this message to bring?"
"My lord duke," said David, sincerely, "I will tell you. A lady gave
it me. She said her mother was ill, and that this writing would
fetch her uncle to her bedside. I do not know the meaning of the
letter, but I will swear that she is beautiful and good."
"Describe the woman," commanded the duke, "and how you came to be
her dupe."
"Describe her!" said David with a tender smile. "You would command
words to perform miracles. Well, she is made of sunshine and deep
shade. She is slender, like the alders, and moves with their grace.
Her eyes change while you gaze into them; now round, and then half
shut as the sun peeps between two clouds. When she comes, heaven
is all about her; when she leaves, there is chaos and a scent of
hawthorn blossoms. She came to see me in the Rue Conti, number
twenty-nine."
"It is the house," said the duke, turning to the king, "that we have
been watching. Thanks to the poet's tongue, we have a picture of the
infamous Countess Quebedaux."
"Sire and my lord duke," said David, earnestly, "I hope my poor
words have done no injustice. I have looked into that lady's eyes.
I will stake my life that she is an angel, letter or no letter."
The duke looked at him steadily. "I will put you to the proof," he
said, slowly. "Dressed as the king, you shall, yourself, attend mass
in his carriage at midnight. Do you accept the test?"
David smiled. "I have looked into her eyes," he said. "I had my
proof there. Take yours how you will."
Half an hour before twelve the Duke d'Aumale, with his own hands,
set a red lamp in a southwest window of the palace. At ten minutes
to the hour, David, leaning on his arm, dressed as the king, from
top to toe, with his head bowed in his cloak, walked slowly from
the royal apartments to the waiting carriage. The duke assisted him
inside and closed the door. The carriage whirled away along its
route to the cathedral.
On the _qui vive_ in a house at the corner of the Rue Esplanade was
Captain Tetreau with twenty men, ready to pounce upon the
conspirators when they should appear.
But it seemed that, for some reason, the plotters had slightly
altered their plans. When the royal carriage had reached the Rue
Christopher, one square nearer than the Rue Esplanade, forth from
it burst Captain Desrolles, with his band of would-be regicides,
and assailed the equipage. The guards upon the carriage, though
surprised at the premature attack, descended and fought valiantly.
The noise of conflict attracted the force of Captain Tetreau,
and they came pelting down the street to the rescue. But, in the
meantime, the desperate Desrolles had torn open the door of the
king's carriage, thrust his weapon against the body of the dark
figure inside, and fired.
Now, with loyal reinforcements at hand, the street rang with cries
and the rasp of steel, but the frightened horses had dashed away.
Upon the cushions lay the dead body of the poor mock king and poet,
slain by a ball from the pistol of Monseigneur, the Marquis de
Beaupertuys.