A Gentleman of France

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Before I could answer, the lady to whom I had first addressed
myself interposed. 'Stop, sir!' she cried. What is this--a
tale, a jest, a game, or a forfeit?'

'An adventure, madam,' I answered, bowing low.

'Of gallantry, I'll be bound,' she exclaimed. 'Fie, Madame de
Bruhl, and you but six months married!'

Madame de Bruhl protested, laughing, that she had no more to do
with it than Mercury. 'At the worst,' she said, 'I carried the
POULETS! But I can assure you, duchess, this gentleman should be
able to tell us a very fine story, if he would.'

The duchess and all the other ladies clapping their hands at
this, and crying out that the story must and should be told, I
found myself in a prodigious quandary; and one wherein my wits
derived as little assistance as possible from the bright eyes and
saucy looks which environed me. Moreover, the commotion
attracting other listeners, I found my position, while I tried to
extricate myself, growing each moment worse, so that I began to
fear that as I had little imagination I should perforce have to
tell the truth. The mere thought of this threw me into a cold
perspiration, lest I should let slip something of consequence,
and prove myself unworthy of the trust which M. de Rosny had
reposed in me.

At the moment when, despairing of extricating myself, I was
stooping over Madame de Bruhl begging her to assist me, I heard,
amid the babel of laughter and raillery which surrounded me--
certain of the courtiers having already formed hands in a circle
and sworn I should not depart without satisfying the ladies--a
voice which struck a chord in my memory. I turned to see who the
speaker was, and encountered no other than M. de Bruhl himself;
who, with a flushed and angry face, was listening to the
explanation which a friend was pouring into his ear. Standing at
the moment with my knee on Madame de Bruhl's stool, and
remembering very well the meeting on the stairs, I conceived in a
flash that the man was jealous; but whether he had yet heard my
name, or had any clew to link me with the person who had rescued
Mademoiselle de la Vire from his clutches, I could not tell.
Nevertheless his presence led my thoughts into a new channel.
The determination to punish him began to take form in my mind,
and very quickly I regained my composure. Still I was for giving
him one chance. Accordingly I stooped once more to Madame de
Bruhl's ear, and begged her to spare me the embarrassment of
telling my tale. But then, finding her pitiless, as I expected,
and the rest of the company growing more and more insistent, I
hardened my heart to go through with the fantastic notion which
had occurred to me.

Indicating by a gesture that I was prepared to obey, and the
duchess crying for a hearing, this was presently obtained, the
sudden silence adding the king himself to my audience. 'What is
it?' he asked, coming up effusively, with a lap-dog in his arms.
'A new scandal, eh?'

'No, sire, a new tale-teller,' the duchess answered pertly. 'If
your Majesty will sit, we shall hear him the sooner.'

He pinched her ear and sat down in the chair which a page
presented. 'What! is it Rambouillet's GRISON again?' he said
with some surprise. 'Well, fire away, man. But who brought you
forward as a Rabelais?'

There was a general cry of 'Madame de Bruhl!' whereat that lady
shook her fair hair, about her face, and cried out for someone to
bring her a mask.

'Ha, I see!' said the king drily, looking pointedly at M. de
Bruhl, who was as black as thunder. 'But go on, man.'

The king's advent, by affording me a brief respite, had enabled
me to collect my thoughts, and, disregarding the ribald
interruptions, which at first were frequent, I began as follows:
'I am no Rabelais, sire,' I said, 'but droll things happen to the
most unlikely. Once upon a time it was the fortune of a certain
swain, whom I will call Dromio, to arrive in a town not a hundred
miles from Blois, having in his company a nymph of great beauty,
who had been entrusted to his care by her parents. He had not
more than lodged her in his apartments, however, before she was
decoyed away by a trick, and borne off against her will by a
young gallant, who had seen her and been smitten by her charms.
Dromio, returning, and finding his mistress gone, gave way to the
most poignant grief. He ran up and down the city, seeking her in
every place, and filling all places with his lamentations; but
for a time in vain, until chance led him to a certain street,
where, in an almost incredible manner, he found a clew to her by
discovering underfoot a knot of velvet, bearing Phyllida's name
wrought on it in delicate needlework, with the words, "A moi!"'

'Sanctus!' cried the king, amid a general murmur of surprise,
'that is well devised! Proceed, sir. Go on like that, and we
will make your twenty men twenty-five.'

'Dromio,' I continued, 'at sight of this trifle experienced the
most diverse emotions, for while he possessed in it a clew to his
mistress's fate, he had still to use it so as to discover the
place whither she had been hurried. It occurred to him at last
to begin his search with the house before which the knot had
lain. Ascending accordingly to the second-floor, he found there
a fair lady reclining on a couch, who started up in affright at
his appearance. He hastened to reassure her, and to explain the
purpose of his coming, and learned after a conversation with
which I will not trouble your Majesty, though it was sufficiently
diverting, that the lady had found the velvet knot in another
part of the town, and had herself dropped it again in front of
her own house.'

'Pourquoi?' the king asked, interrupting me.

'The swain, sire,' I answered, 'was too much taken up with his
own troubles to bear that in mind, even if he learned it. But
this delicacy did not save him from misconception, for as he
descended from the lady's apartment he met her husband on the
stairs.'

'Good!' the king exclaimed, rubbing his hands in glee. 'The
husband!' And under cover of the gibe and the courtly laugh
which followed it M. de Bruhl's start of surprise passed
unnoticed save by me.

'The husband,' I resumed, 'seeing a stranger descending his
staircase, was for stopping him and learning the reason of his
presence; But Dromio, whose mind was with Phyllida, refused to
stop, and, evading his questions, hurried to the part of the town
where the lady had told him she found the velvet knot. Here,
sire, at the corner of a lane running between garden-walls, he
found a great house, barred and gloomy, and well adapted to the
abductor's purpose. Moreover, scanning it on every side, he
presently discovered, tied about the bars of an upper window, a
knot of white linen, the very counterpart of that velvet one
which he bore in his breast. Thus he knew that the nymph was
imprisoned in that room!'

'I will make it twenty-five, as I am a good Churchman!' his
Majesty exclaimed, dropping the little dog he was nursing into
the duchess's lap, and taking out his comfit-box. 'Rambouillet,'
he added languidly, 'your friend is a treasure!'

I bowed my acknowledgments, and took occasion as I did so to step
a pace aside, so as to command a view of Madame de Bruhl, as well
as her husband. Hitherto madame, willing to be accounted a part
in so pretty a romance, and ready enough also, unless I was
mistaken, to cause her husband a little mild jealousy, had
listened to the story with a certain sly demureness. But this I
foresaw would not last long; and I felt something like
compunction as the moment for striking the blow approached. But
I had now no choice. 'The best is yet to come, sire,' I went on,
'as I think you will acknowledge in a moment. Dromio, though he
had discovered his mistress, was still in the depths of despair.
He wandered round and round the house, seeking ingress and
finding none, until at length, sunset approaching, and darkness
redoubling his fears for the nymph, fortune took pity on him. As
he stood in front of the house he saw the abductor come out,
lighted by two servants. Judge of his surprise, sire,' I
continued, looking round and speaking slowly, to give full effect
to my words, 'when he recognised in him no other than the husband
of the lady who, by picking up and again dropping the velvet
knot, had contributed so much to the success of his search!'

'Ha! these husbands!' cried the king. And slapping his knee in
an ecstasy at his own acuteness, he laughed in his seat till he
rolled again. 'These husbands! Did I not say so?'

The whole Court gave way to like applause, and clapped. their
hands as well, so that few save those who stood nearest took
notice of Madame de Bruhl's faint cry, and still fewer understood
why she rose up suddenly from her stool and stood gazing at her
husband with burning cheeks and clenched hands. She took no heed
of me, much less of the laughing crowd round her, but looked only
at him with her soul in her eyes. He, after uttering one hoarse
curse, seemed to have no thought for any but me. To have the
knowledge that his own wife had baulked him brought home to him
in this mocking fashion, to find how little a thing had tripped
him that day, to learn how blindly he had played into the hands
of fate, above all to be exposed at once to his wife's resentment
and the ridicule of the Court--for he could not be sure that I
should not the next moment disclose his name--all so wrought on
him that for a moment I thought he would strike me in the
presence.

His rage, indeed, did what I had not meant to do. For the king,
catching sight of his face, and remembering that Madame de Bruhl
had elicited the story, screamed suddenly, 'Haro!' and pointed
ruthlessly at him with his finger. After that I had no need to
speak, the story leaping from eye to eye, and every eye settling
on Bruhl, who sought in vain to compose his features. Madame,
who surpassed him, as women commonly do surpass men, in self-
control, was the, first to recover herself, and sitting down as
quickly as she had risen, confronted alike her husband and her
rivals with a pale smile.

For a moment curiosity and excitement kept all breathless, the
eye alone busy. Then the king laughed mischievously. 'Come, M.
de Bruhl,' he cried, 'perhaps you will finish the tale for us?'
And he threw himself back in his chair, a sneer on his lips.

'Or why not Madame de Bruhl?' said the duchess, with her head on
one side and her eyes glittering over her fan. 'Madame would, I
am sure, tell it so well.'

But madame only shook her head, smiling always that forced smile.
For Bruhl himself, glaring from face to face like a bull about to
charge, I have never seen a man more out of countenance, or more
completely brought to bay. His discomposure, exposed as he was
to the ridicule of all present, was such that the presence in
which he stood scarcely hindered him from some violent attack;
and his eyes, which had wandered from me at the king's word,
presently returning to me again, he so far forgot himself as to
raise his hand furiously, uttering at the same time a savage
oath.

The king cried out angrily, 'Have a care, sir!' But Bruhl only
heeded this so far as to thrust aside those who stood round him
and push his way hurriedly through the circle.

'Arnidieu!' cried the king, when he was gone. 'This is fine
conduct! I have half a mind to send after him and have him put
where his hot blood would cool a little. Or--'

He stopped abruptly, his eyes resting on me. The relative
positions of Bruhl and myself as the agents of Rosny and Turenne
occurred to him for the first time, I think, and suggested the
idea, perhaps, that I had laid a trap for him, and that he had
fallen into it. At any rate his face grew darker and darker, and
at last, 'A nice kettle of fish this is you have prepared for us,
sir!' he muttered, gazing at me gloomily.

The sudden change in his humour took even courtiers by surprise.
Faces a moment before broad with smiles grew long again. The
less important personages looked uncomfortably at one another,
and with one accord frowned on me. 'If your Majesty would please
to hear the end of the story at another time?' I suggested
humbly, beginning to wish with all my heart that I had never said
a word.

'Chut!' he answered, rising, his face still betraying his
perturbation, 'Well, be it so. For the present you may go, sir.
Duchess, give me Zizi, and come to my closet. I want you to see
my puppies. Retz, my good friend, do you come too. I have
something to say to you. Gentlemen, you need not wait. It is
likely I shall be late.'

And, with the utmost abruptness, he broke up the circle.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE JACOBIN MONK.

Had I needed any reminder of the uncertainty of Court favour, or
an instance whence I might learn the lesson of modesty, and so
stand in less danger of presuming on my new and precarious
prosperity, I had it in this episode, and in the demeanour of the
company round me. On the circle breaking up in confusion, I
found myself the centre of general regard, but regard of so
dubious a character, the persons who would have been the first to
compliment me had the king retired earlier, standing farthest
aloof now, that I felt myself rather insulted than honoured by
it. One or two, indeed, of the more cautious spirits did
approach me; but it was with the air of men providing against a
danger particularly remote, their half-hearted speeches serving
only to fix them in my memory as belonging to a class, especially
abhorrent to me--the class, I mean, of those who would run at
once with the hare and the hounds.

I was rejoiced to find that on one person, and that the one whose
disposition towards me was, next to the king's, of first
importance, this episode had produced a different impression,
Feeling, as I made for the door, a touch on my arm, I turned to
find M. de Rambouillet at my elbow, regarding me with a glance of
mingled esteem and amusement; in fine, with a very different look
from that which had been my welcome earlier in the evening. I
was driven to suppose that he was too great a man, or too sure of
his favour with the king, to be swayed by the petty motives which
actuated the Court generally, for he laid his hand familiarly on
my shoulder, and walked on beside me.

'Well my friend,' he said,' you have distinguished yourself
finely! I do not know that I ever remember a pretty woman making
more stir in one evening. But if you are wise you will not go
home alone to-night.'

'I have my sword, M. le Marquis,' I answered, somewhat proudly.
'Which will avail you little against a knife in the back!' he
retorted drily. 'What attendance have you?'

'My equerry, Simon Fleix, is on the stairs.'

'Good, so far, but not enough,' he replied, as we reached the
head of the staircase. 'You had better come home with me now,
and two or three of my fellows shall go on to your lodging with
you. Do you know, my friend,' he continued, looking at me
keenly, 'you are either a very clever or a very foolish man?'

I made answer modestly. 'Neither the one, I fear, nor the other,
I hope sir,' I said.

'Well, you have done a very pertinent thing,' he replied, 'for
good or evil. You have let the enemy know what he has to expect,
and he is not one, I warn you, to be despised. But whether you
have been very wise or very foolish in declaring open war remains
to be seen.'

'A week will show,' I answered.

He turned and looked at me. 'You take it coolly,' he said.

'I have been knocking about the world for forty years, marquis,'
I rejoined.

He muttered something about Rosny having a good eye, and then
stopped to adjust his cloak. We were by this time in the street.
Making me go hand in hand with him, he requested the other
gentlemen to draw their swords; and the servants being likewise
armed and numbering half a score or more, with pikes and torches,
we made up a very formidable party, and caused, I think, more
alarm as we passed through the streets to Rambouillet's lodging
than we had any reason to feel. Not that we had it all to
ourselves, for the attendance at Court that evening being large,
and the circle breaking up as I have described more abruptly than
usual, the vicinity of the castle was in a ferment, and the
streets leading from it were alive with the lights and laughter
of parties similar to our own.

At the door of the marquis's lodging I prepared to take leave of
him with many expressions of gratitude, but he would have me
enter and sit down with him to a light refection, which it was
his habit to take before retiring. Two of his gentlemen sat down
with us, and a valet, who was in his confidence, waiting on us,
we made very merry over the scene in the presence. I learned
that M. de Bruhl was far from popular at Court; but being known
to possess some kind of hold over the king, and enjoying besides
a great reputation for recklessness and skill with the sword, he
had played a high part for a length of time, and attached to
himself, especially since the death of Guise, a considerable
number of followers.

'The truth is,' one of the marquis's gentlemen, who was a little
heated with wine, observed, 'there is nothing at this moment
which a bold and unscrupulous man may not win in France!'

'Nor a bold and Christian gentleman for France!' replied M. de
Rambouillet with, some asperity. 'By the way,' he continued,
turning abruptly to the servant, 'where is M. Francois?'

The valet answered that he had not returned with us from the
castle. The Marquis expressed himself annoyed at this, and I
gathered, firstly, that the missing man was his near kinsman,
and, secondly, that he was also the young spark who had been so
forward to quarrel with me earlier in the evening. Determining
to refer the matter, should it become pressing, to Rambouillet
for adjustment, I took leave of him, and attended by two of his
servants, whom he kindly transferred to my service for the
present, I started towards my lodging a little before midnight.

The moon had risen while we were at supper, and its light, which
whitened the gables on one side of the street, diffused a glimmer
below sufficient to enable us to avoid the kennel. Seeing this,
I bade the men put out our torch. Frost had set in, and a keen
wind was blowing, so that we were glad to hurry on at a good
pace; and the streets being quite deserted at this late hour, or
haunted only by those who had come to dread the town marshal, we
met no one and saw no lights. I fell to thinking, for my part,
of the evening I had spent searching Blois for Mademoiselle, and
of the difference between then and now. Nor did I fail while on
this track to retrace it still farther to the evening of our
arrival at my mother's; whence, as a source, such kindly and
gentle thoughts welled up in my mind as were natural, and the
unfailing affection of that gracious woman required. These,
taking the place for the moment of the anxious calculations and
stern purposes which had of late engrossed me, were only ousted
by something which, happening under my eyes, brought me violently
and abruptly to myself.

This was the sudden appearance of three men, who issued one by
one from an alley a score of yards in front of us, and after
pausing a second to look back the way they had come, flitted on
in single file along the street, disappearing, as far as the
darkness permitted me to judge, round a second corner. I by no
means liked their appearance, and, as a scream and the clash of
arms rang out next moment from the direction in which they had
gone, I cried lustily to Simon Fleix to follow, and ran on,
believing from the rascals' movements that they were after no
good, but that rather some honest man was like to be sore beset.

On reaching the lane down which they had plunged, however, I
paused a moment, considering not so much its black-ness, which
was intense, the eaves nearly meeting overhead, as the small
chance I had of distinguishing between attackers and attacked.
But Simon and the men overtaking me, and the sounds of a sharp
tussle still continuing, I decided to venture, and plunged into
the alley, my left arm well advanced, with the skirt of my cloak
thrown over it, and my sword drawn back. I shouted as I ran,
thinking that the knaves might desist on hearing me; and this was
what happened, for as I arrived on the scene of action--the
farther end of the alley--two men took to their heels, while of
two who remained, one lay at length in the kennel, and another
rose slowly from his knees.

'You are just in time, sir,' the latter said, breathing hard, but
speaking with a preciseness which sounded familiar. 'I am
obliged to you, sir, whoever you are. The villains had got me
down, and in a few minutes more would have made my mother
childless. By the way, you have no light, have you?' he
continued, lisping like a woman.

One of M. de Rambouillet's men, who had by this time come up,
cried out that it was Monsieur Francois.

'Yes, blockhead!' the young gentleman answered with the utmost
coolness. 'But I asked for a light, not for my name.

'I trust you are not hurt, sir?' I said, putting up my sword.

'Scratched only,' he answered, betraying no surprise on learning
who it was had come up so opportunely; as he no doubt did learn
from my voice, for he continued with a bow, a slight price to pay
for the knowledge that M. de Marsac is as forward on the field as
on the stairs.'

I bowed my acknowledgments.

'This fellow,' I said, 'is he much hurt?'

'Tut, tut! I thought I had saved the marshal all trouble, M.
Francois replied. 'Is he not dead, Gil?'

The poor wretch made answer for himself, crying out piteously,
and in a choking voice, for a priest to shrive him. At that
moment Simon Fleix returned with our torch, which he had lighted
at the nearest cross-streets, where there was a brazier, and we
saw by this light that the man was coughing up blood, and might
live perhaps half an hour.

'Mordieu! That comes of thrusting too high!' M. Francois
muttered, regretfully. An inch lower, and there would have been
none of this trouble! I suppose somebody must fetch one. Gil,'
he continued, 'run, man, to the sacristy in the Rue St. Denys,
and get a Father. Or--stay! Help to lift him under the lee of
the wall there. The wind cuts like a knife here.'

The street being on the slope of the hill, the lower part of the
house nearest us stood a few feet from the ground, on wooden
piles, and the space underneath it, being enclosed at the back
and sides, was used as a cart-house. The servants moved the
dying man into this rude shelter, and I accompanied them, being
unwilling to leave the young gentleman alone. Not wishing,
however, to seem to interfere, I walked to the farther end, and
sat down on the shaft of a cart, whence I idly admired the
strange aspect of the group I had left, as the glare of the torch
brought now one and now another into prominence, and sometimes
shone on M. Francois' jewelled fingers toying with his tiny
moustache, and sometimes on the writhing features of the man at
his feet.

On a sudden, and before Gil had started on his errand, I saw
there was a priest among them. I had not seen him enter, nor had
I any idea whence he came. My first impression was only that
here was a priest, and that he was looking at me--not at the man
craving his assistance on the floor, or at those who stood round
him, but at me, who sat away in the shadow beyond the ring of
light!

This was surprising; but a second glance explained it, for then I
saw that he was the Jacobin monk who had haunted my mother's
dying hours. And, amazed as much at this strange RENCONTRE as at
the man's boldness, I sprang up and strode forwards, forgetting,
in an impulse of righteous anger, the office he came to do. And
this the more as his face, still turned to me, seemed instinct to
my eyes with triumphant malice. As I moved towards him, however,
with a fierce exclamation on my lips, he suddenly dropped his
eyes and knelt. Immediately M. Francois cried 'Hush!' and the
men turned to me with scandalised faces. I fell back. Yet even
then, whispering on his knees by the dying man, the knave was
thinking, I felt sure, of me, glorying at once in his immunity
and the power it gave him to tantalise me without fear.

I determined, whatever the result, to intercept him when all was
over; and on the man dying a few minutes later, I walked
resolutely to the open side of the shed, thinking it likely he
might try to slip away as mysteriously as he had come. He stood
a moment speaking to M. Francois, however, and then, accompanied
by him, advanced boldly to meet me, a lean smile on his face.

'Father Antoine,' M. d'Agen said politely,' tells me that he
knows you, M. de Marsac, and desires to speak to you, MAL-A-
PROPOS as is the occasion.'

'And I to him,' I answered, trembling with rage, and only
restraining by an effort the impulse which would have had me dash
my hand in the priest's pale, smirking face. 'I have waited long
for this moment,' I continued, eyeing him steadily, as M.
Francois withdrew out of hearing, 'and had you tried to avoid me,
I would have dragged you back, though all your tribe were here to
protect you.'

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