PASQUEDIEU!
St. Georges was not, however, destined to arrive at Marly on that
night, nor to see Louis and lay his story before him.
On quitting Louvois he made his way swiftly along the corridor leading
from the chamber on the ground floor in which he had been received to
the courtyard, no interruption being attempted, as was natural enough,
considering that he was leaving instead of seeking to enter the
building. The soldiers, gendarmerie and the Suisses as well as the
Mousquetaires Gris--whose turn it was at the present moment to be in
attendance at the Louvre--were lounging about the guard room and the
great gateway, and they not only did not offer any opposition to his
passage, but, instead, seeing about him the signs of a cavalry
officer--the gorget, long cut-and-thrust sword, great boots, and
gantlets--saluted him.
Therefore he passed out into the street--since known in the present
century as the Rue de Rivoli--and regained his horse from the _guet_
in whose custody he had left it.
That he recognised the danger--the awful danger--in which he had now
placed himself, who can doubt? He was a soldier, and he had threatened
the assassination of the chief--under the king--of the army. Moreover,
he was a soldier who had just been dismissed from that army for
failing in his duty, for allowing private affairs--harrowing as they
were!--to come between him and that duty. Now he was cooler; he became
more clear sighted; he knew that he had done a thing which would
destroy any claim that he might make for the king's sympathy with him.
"I am ruined," he murmured, looking up and down the street, not knowing
which way to direct his horse's steps; "have ruined myself. Louis will
never forgive this when he hears Louvois's story--never see me nor hear
me. Fool, fool that I am! I have destroyed everything--above all, my one
chance of regaining Dorine!"
What was he to do? That was the question he asked himself. He had, it
was true, avoided instant arrest within the precincts of the palace,
but how long could he avoid arrest in whatever part of Paris he might
endeavour to shelter himself now?
"What have other men done," he pondered, "placed as I am--as I have
placed myself? What shall I, a broken, ruined soldier, do? What? what?
Turn bully, as he accused me of being, and cutthroat, bravo, or
thief--haunter of gambling hells and tripots? No! no! no! I am a
gentleman, have always lived like one; so let me continue to the end.
Yet, what to do now?"
He threaded his way through the streets, still filled with their
crowds of saltimbanques and quacks, though the fashionable world,
having seen _Le Roi Soleil_, had gone or was going home, for the
wintry evening was setting in. And as he rode slowly, for his poor
beast was now quite spent, he tried to think of what he should do--go
to Marly at once, that evening, as he had said to Louvois (although
with scarcely the intention of doing so, since he doubted seeing the
king without preparation), or find a roof for himself and a stall for
his horse for the night.
Then he decided suddenly, promptly, that the former was what he would
do. If he could get the king's ear first, before Louvois, he might
save himself. Louis was great of heart, in spite of his childish
belief in his kingly attributes, of his love of splendour, and his
vanity. Who could tell? A word with him--above all, a word breathed as
to whom St. Georges believed himself to be--and he was safe. His
father had been Louis's companion; he would not slay the son.
Safe--even though dismissed the army and stripped of his
commission--able to stay in France, to return to Troyes, to seek and
find his darling again!
He was resolved; he would go to Marly that night.
Only--how to get there. Marly lay beyond Versailles, four leagues from
Paris, and his horse could go no further. The marvel was that it had
done so much, and it was only by the most assiduous care and merciful
treatment--by sometimes walking mile after mile by its side, and by
resting it hourly--that St. Georges had been able to assist it to
reach Paris. Now it could do no more.
However, ere long he espied an _ecurie_ and found that the owner had
horses for hire, while one, a red roan with a shifty eye and
bright-blooded nostril, took St. Georges's fancy. He knew a good horse
the moment he saw one, and read by this creature's points that it
would be troublesome for the first mile, and then carry him swiftly
for the remainder of his journey. So, leaving his own horse--though
not before he had seen it attended to, fed, and rubbed down, and taken
into a comfortable, fresh-littered stall--he set out once more, tired,
worn, and travel-sore as he was, for his fresh destination. Yet he
knew his object, if he could attain it, would be worth a hundred times
the extra fatigue. And when it was attained he could rest. Time enough
then.
The red roan behaved exactly as he expected it would: it first of all
bounded half across the road when once he was in the saddle, knocking
down a scaramouche and a toothdrawer in doing so--the latter,
fortunately, having no customer in his hands at the moment; it next
proceeded sideways up the street, and then, finding it had a master to
deal with, danced along in a canter until the West Gate of Paris was
reached, after which, and being now sure that its exuberance was
useless, it settled down into a long, easy stride, and bore its rider
as smoothly as a carriage might toward his goal.
The moon, which a few nights back had shown beneath its young rays the
corpse hanging on the gibbet outside the city of Troyes, lit up now
the road along which he passed, disturbing on his way sometimes a deer
in a thicket, sometimes a scurrying rabbit--they disturbing, too, the
fiery creature he bestrode, and frightening it into a swifter pace.
Still, each moment brought him nearer to his destination, to the
arbiter in whose hands his destiny was held; and, for the rest, he sat
like a rock upon its back. Its gambades could not unseat him.
So the twelve English miles were nearly passed; he was on the new road
that branched off to Marly--the strangest route that any man living in
those days ever, perhaps, rode along. On either side it was bordered
by small forests of enormous trees, mostly covered with dead branches,
since these trees had died unnaturally long months ago, when
transported from Compiegne to where they now stood. Also he saw
beneath the moon's gleams fountains from which no water could be
forced to flow--great basins to which water could not be brought, or
only brought by depriving Versailles of its natural supply. Louis had
thought that he could force Nature--uproot trees from one spot, where
they had flourished for a hundred years and cause them to flourish
equally well in another; had imagined that even the waters on which
his gondolas, brought from Venice, might float, could be forced into
existence at his command. It was a monstrous impertinence offered to
Nature, and it cost him four million and a half of livres, with but
little profit to any but the frogs and toads.
There rose now before his eyes--where the road branched off in
different directions, on the right to Versailles, and, a little to the
left, to Marly--the white-washed walls of an auberge known as _Le Bon
Pasteur_, a place soon to be pulled down, since Louis had bought out
the owner, and was about to build a pavilion upon it. But it stood up
to this time untouched, as it had done since the days of Henri
III--long, low, thatched, and weather-beaten, three old poplar trees
in front of it, a mounting-block also, and, of course, the usual heap
of filth by its side where the stables were.
Approaching it, he felt the roan stagger beneath him, halt in its
strides, then falter; and, shrewd horseman as he was, knew that it had
either cast a shoe, or had got a stone in one. And as he dismounted
close by the inn, though still some twoscore yards from the
mounting-block, he heard behind him the clatter of other hoofs coming
on, and the light laugh of a woman, also the deeper tones of a man.
"_Pasquedieu!_" he heard the latter say--and started both at the
exclamation and the voice--"you may laugh, _ma mie_, yet I tell you
'tis so. He will marry her, spend her money on other women as I spend
mine on you--_Morbleu!_ whom have we here?" and the man riding along
the road with his female companion pulled up his own horse, as the
woman did hers, on seeing another traveller dismounted by the side of,
and examining, his animal.
"Whom?" exclaimed that traveller, looking up--"whom? One perhaps whom
you know. One whose name is Georges St. Georges." Then, vaulting back
into his saddle--not meaning to be taken at a disadvantage--he bent
forward and looked into the newcomer's face. "Did you ever hear that
name before, monsieur?" he asked.
The face into which he gazed was that of a young, good-looking man,
close shaven and with gray eyes that looked at him, as he thought,
with terror. He was well dressed, too, in a riding costume of the
period, while the woman who sat her horse, peering at him out of the
eyelets of her mask, was also smartly arrayed in a female riding coat
of the day, her head covered with a hood.
"Answer, monsieur," said St. Georges.
"Never," the other replied. "How should I know the name of
every--person--I meet on the road?"
St. Georges bent forward over his saddle so that his own face was now
nearer by a foot to the man with the gray eyes; then he said:
"Monsieur de Roquemaure, you are a liar! And more, a thief, a
kidnapper; also, a would-be assassin. I know you and this, your
wanton, here. You have to answer to me to-night for all you have done
against me and mine in the past two weeks."
"_Mon Dieu_!" he heard the woman hiss beneath her mask. "Kill him,
Raoul, kill him! God! that you should let him live and utter such
things!" And as she so hissed she leaned down and struck at his face
with her riding whip.
"Hound!" she exclaimed, "you apply that word to me? To me?"
"The woman speaks well," St. Georges said, warding off the blow with
his arm while his eye rested on her for a moment; "it is a matter of
killing. Either you or I have to be killed. To-night! Do you hear, or
are you struck dumb with fear?"
"No," the other replied, at last, with amazement. "Who are you who,
under a name I know not, dare to assault me thus with such opprobrious
words? Nay," turning to the masked woman, who was again muttering in
his ear, "have no fear. I will have his blood for it. If he is a
gentleman with whom I can cross swords, we fight ere another hour
passes."
"Also," St. Georges broke in, "you are, I perceive, a coward, besides
the other things I have charged you with. You know who I am well
enough. If not--if your memory is as treacherous as your courage seems
poor, let me remind you. I am the man whom you attacked with five
others at Aignay-le-Duc; the man whose child you sought to slay; the
father of the child whom your woman and your man-servant seized away
from one who had it in his possession, and whom they slew also, you
not appearing on the scene. You are careful of yourself, Monsieur de
Roquemaure! In the first treacherous attack you shielded your head as
none other's head was shielded; in the second you employed a woman and
a man-servant to do that which, perhaps, you feared to do yourself."
Every word he uttered was studied insult, every word was weighed
before it was delivered, substituted for any other which rose to his
lips if not deemed by him sufficiently galling. He had sworn to kill
this man if ever he encountered him again, and he meant to kill him
to-night now he had met him. Therefore, since he was resolved he
should have no loophole of escape from crossing swords with him, he so
phrased his remarks that he must fight or acknowledge himself the
veriest poltroon that breathed.
"But," he continued, "if you still value your hide so much that you
dare not meet me, now at once, tell me where you and this woman--if it
be the same, as I suppose--have hidden my child; lead me to her, and
then you shall go free. Only choose, and choose at once."
He heard the woman mutter to De Roquemaure: "Who is the woman he
speaks of, who, Raoul?" while also he saw her eyes glisten again
through the mask; then, as he strove to catch her companion's reply,
that companion turned on him, and said:
"Monsieur St. Georges, as you term yourself, be very sure I intend to
slay you to-night. I do not know you, but your insults to me and
to--this--lady, although the utterances of a madman, have to be wiped
out at once. As to the child you mention, and its kidnapping by a
servant of mine and a woman--bah!--I know not of what you speak."
"Do you deny that you are Monsieur de Roquemaure?"
"I neither deny nor assert. Under that name you have chosen to waylay
and insult me. Under that name, since you will have it, I intend to
have reparation."
"Do you deny the assault at Aignay-le-Duc?"
"I deny nothing, assert nothing."
"So be it," St. Georges said. "I have made no mistake. You _are_ the
man. Your voice, your expression condemn you. Your face, though you
have shaved off your beard"--and he saw the other start as he
mentioned this--"condemns, convicts you. Deny, therefore, these two
things or draw your sword. We have wasted enough time."
"We have," the other answered, and as he spoke he dismounted from his
horse, St. Georges doing the same.