A Gentleman of France

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Now is the time, my friend,' I said, 'to show your wits, and
prove that M. de Rosny, who said you had a cunning above the
ordinary, was right. If your brain can ever save your head, now
is the time! For I tell you plainly, if you cannot find some way
to outmanoeuvre this villain before to-morrow, I am spent. You
can judge for yourself what chance you will have of going free.'

I paused at that, waiting for him to make some suggestion. To my
chagrin he remained silent, leaning his head on his hand, and
studying the table with his eyes in a sullen fashion; so that I
began to regret the condescension I had evinced in letting him be
seated, and found it necessary to remind him that he had taken
service with me, and must do my bidding.

'Well,' he said morosely, and without looking up, 'I am ready to
do it. But I do not like priests, and this one least of all. I
know him, and I will not meddle with him.'

'You will not meddle with him?' I cried, almost beside myself
with dismay.

'No, I won't,' he replied, retaining his listless attitude. 'I
know him, and I am afraid of him. I am no match for him.'

'Then M. de Rosny was wrong, was he?' I said, giving way to my
anger.

'If it please you,' he answered pertly.

This was too much for me. My riding-switch lay handy, and I
snatched it up. Before he knew what I would be at, I fell upon
him, and gave him such a sound wholesome drubbing as speedily
brought him to his senses. When he cried for mercy--which he did
not for a good space, being still possessed by the peevish devil
which had ridden him ever since his departure from Rosny--I put
it to him again whether M. de Rosny was not right. When he at
last admitted this, but not till then, I threw the whip away and
let him go, but did not cease to reproach him as he deserved.

'Did you think,' I said, 'that I was going to be ruined because
you would not use your lazy brains? That I was going to sit
still, and let you sulk, while mademoiselle walked blindfold into
the toils? Not at all, my friend!'

'Mademoiselle!' he exclaimed, looking at me with a, sudden
change of countenance, end ceasing to rub himself and scowl, as
he had been doing. 'She is not here, and is in no danger.'

'She will be here to-morrow, or the next day,' I said.

You did not tell me that!' he replied, his eyes glittering.
'Does Father Antoine know it?'

'He will know it the moment she enters the town,' I answered.

Noting the change which the introduction of mademoiselle's name
into the affair had wrought in him, I felt something like
humiliation. But at the moment I had no choice; it was my
business to use such instruments as came to my hand, and not,
mademoiselle's safety being at stake, to pick and choose too
nicely. In a few minutes our positions were reversed. The lad
had grown as hot as I cold, as keenly excited as I critical.
When he presently came to a stand in front of me, I saw a strange
likeness between his face and the priest's; nor was I astonished
when he presently made just such a proposal as I should have
expected from Father Antoine himself.

'There is only one thing for it,' he muttered, trembling all
over. 'He must be got rid of!'

'Fine talking!' I said, contemptuously. 'If he were a soldier
he might be brought to it. But he is a priest, my friend, and
does not fight.'

'Fight? Who wants him to fight?' the lad answered, his face
dark, his hands moving restlessly. 'It is the easier done. A
blow in the back, and he will trouble us no more.'

'Who is to strike it?' I asked drily.

Simon trembled and hesitated; but presently, heaving a deep sigh,
he said, 'I will.'

'It might not be difficult,' I muttered, thinking it over.

'It would be easy,' he answered under his breath. His eyes
shone, his lips were white, and his long dark hair hung wet over
his forehead.

I reflected, and the longer I did so the more feasible seemed the
suggestion. A single word, and I might sweep from my path the
man whose existence threatened mine; who would not meet me
fairly, but, working against me darkly and treacherously,
deserved no better treatment at my hands than that which a
detected spy receives. He had wronged my mother; he would fain
destroy my friends!

And, doubtless, I shall be blamed by some and ridiculed by more
for indulging in scruples at such a time. But I have all my life
long been prejudiced against that form of underhand violence
which I have heard old men contend came into fashion in our
country in modern times, and which certainly seems to be alien
from the French character. Without judging others too harshly,
or saying that the poniard is never excusable--for then might
some wrongs done to women and the helpless go without remedy--I
have set my face against its use as unworthy of a soldier. At
the time, moreover, of which I am now writing the extent to which
our enemies had lately resorted to it tended to fix this feeling
with peculiar firmness in my mind; and, but for the very
desperate dilemma in which I stood at the moment--and not I
alone--I do not think that I should have entertained Simon's
proposal for a minute.

As it was, I presently answered him in a way which left him in no
doubt of my sentiments. 'Simon, my friend,' I said--and I
remember I was a little moved--'you have something still to
learn, both as a soldier and a Huguenot. Neither the one nor the
other strikes at the back.'

'But if he will not fight?' the lad retorted rebelliously.
'What then?'

It was so clear that our adversary gained an unfair advantage in
this way that I could not answer the question. I let it pass,
therefore, and merely repeating my former injunction, bade Simon
think out another way.

He promised reluctantly to do so, and, after spending some
moments in thought, went out to learn whether the house was being
watched.

When he returned, his countenance wore so new an expression that
I saw at once that something had happened. He did not meet my
eye, however, and did not explain, but made as if he would go out
again, with something of confusion in his manner. Before finally
disappearing, however, he seemed to change his mind once more;
for, marching up to me where I stood eyeing him with the utmost
astonishment, he stopped before me, and suddenly drawing out his
hand, thrust something into mine.

'What is it, man?' I said mechanically.

'Look!' he answered rudely, breaking silence for the first time.
'You should know. Why ask me? What have I to do with it?'

I looked then, and saw that he had given me a knot of velvet
precisely similar is shape, size, and material to that well-
remembered one which had aided me so opportunely in my search for
mademoiselle. This differed from that a little in colour, but in
nothing else, the fashion of the bow being the same, and one
lappet hearing the initials 'C. d. l. V.,' while the other had
the words, 'A moi.' I gazed at it in wonder. 'But, Simon,' I
said, 'what does it mean? Where did you get it?'

'Where should I get it?' he answered jealously. Then, seeming
to recollect himself, he changed his tone. 'A woman gave it to
me in the street,' he said.

I asked him what woman.

'How should I know?' he answered, his eyes gleaming with anger.
'It was a woman in a mask.'

'Was it Fanchette?' I said sternly.

'It might have been. I do not know,' he responded.

I concluded at first that mademoiselle and her escort had arrived
in the outskirts of the city, and that Maignan had justified his
reputation for discretion by sending in to learn from me whether
the way was clear before he entered. In this notion I was partly
confirmed and partly shaken by the accompanying message; which
Simon, from whom every scrap of information had to be dragged as
blood from a stone, presently delivered.

'You are to meet the sender half an hour after sunset to-morrow
evening,' he said, 'on the Parvis at the north-east corner of the
cathedral.'

'To-morrow evening?'

'Yes, when else?' the lad answered ungraciously. 'I said to-
morrow evening.'

I thought this strange. I could understand why Maignan should
prefer to keep his charge outside the walls until he heard from
me, but not why he should postpone a meeting so long. The
message, too, seemed unnecessarily meagre, and I began to think
Simon was still withholding something.

'Was that all?' I asked him.

'Yes, all,' he answered, 'except--'

'Except what?' I said sternly.

'Except that the woman showed me the gold token Mademoiselle de
la Vire used to carry,' he answered reluctantly, 'and said, if
you wanted further assurance that would satisfy you.'

'Did you see the coin?' I cried eagerly.

'To be sure,' he answered.

'Then, mon dieu!' I retorted, 'either you are deceiving me, or
the woman you saw deceived you. For mademoiselle has not got the
token! I have it here, in my possession! Now, do you still say
yon saw it, man?'

'I saw one like it,' he answered, trembling, his face damp.
'That I will swear. And the woman told me what I have told you.
And no more.'

'Then it is clear,' I answered, 'that mademoiselle has nothing to
do with this, and is doubtless many a league away. This is one
of M. de Bruhl's tricks. Fresnoy gave him the token he stole
from me. And I told him the story of the velvet knot myself.
This is a trap; and had I fallen into it, and gone to the Parvis
to-morrow evening, I had never kept another assignation, my lad.'

Simon looked thoughtful. Presently he said, with a crestfallen
air, 'You were to go alone. The woman said that.'

Though I knew well why he had suppressed this item, I forbore to
blame him. 'What was the woman like?' I said.

'She had very much of Franchette's figure,' he answered. He
could not go beyond that. Blinded by the idea that the woman was
mademoiselle's attendant, and no one else, he had taken little
heed of her, and could not even say for certain that she was not
a man in woman's clothes.

I thought the matter over and discussed it with him; and was
heartily minded to punish M. de Bruhl, if I could discover a way
of turning his treacherous plot against himself. But the lack of
any precise knowledge of his plans prevented me stirring in the
matter; the more as I felt no certainty that I should be master
of my actions when the time came.

Strange to say the discovery of this movement on the part of
Bruhl, who had sedulously kept himself in the background since
the scene in the king's presence, far from increasing my
anxieties, had the effect of administering a fillip to my
spirits; which the cold and unyielding pressure of the Jacobin
had reduced to a low point. Here was something I could
understand, resist, and guard against. The feeling that I had
once more to do with a man of like aims and passions with myself
quickly restored me to the use of my faculties; as I have heard
that a swordsman opposed to the powers of evil regains his vigour
on finding himself engaged with a mortal foe. Though I knew that
the hours of grace were fast running to a close, and that on the
morrow the priest would call for an answer, I experienced that
evening an, unreasonable lightness and cheerfulness. I retired
to rest with confidence, and slept is comfort, supported in part,
perhaps, by the assurance that in that room where my mother died
her persecutor could have no power to harm me.

Upon Simon Fleix, on the other hand, the discovery that Bruhl was
moving, and that consequently peril threatened us from a new
quarter, had a different effect. He fell into a state of extreme
excitement, and spent the evening and a great part of the night
in walking restlessly up and down the room, wrestling with the
fears and anxieties which beset us, and now talking fast to
himself, now biting his nails in an agony of impatience. In vain
I adjured him not to meet troubles halfway; or, pointing to the
pallet which he occupied at the foot of my couch, bade him, if he
could not devise a way of escape, at least to let the matter rest
until morning. He had no power to obey, but, tortured by the
vivid anticipations which it was his nature to entertain, he
continued to ramble to and fro in a fever of the nerves, and had
no sooner lain down than be was up again. Remembering, however,
how well he had borne himself on the night of mademoiselle's
escape from Blois, I refrained from calling him a coward; and
contented myself instead with the reflection that nothing sits
worse on a fighting-man than too much knowledge--except, perhaps,
a lively imagination.

I thought it possible that mademoiselle might arrive next day
before Father Antoine called to receive his answer. In this
event I hoped to have the support of Maignan's experience. But
the party did not arrive. I had to rely on myself and my own
resources, and, this being so, determined to refuse the priest's
offer, but in all other things to be guided by circumstances.

About noon he came, attended, as was his practice, by two
friends, whom he left outside. He looked paler and more shadowy
than before, I thought, his hands thinner, and his cheeks more
transparent. I could draw no good augury, however, from these,
signs of frailty, for the brightness of his eyes and the unusual
elation of his manner told plainly of a spirit assured of the
mastery. He entered the room with an air of confidence, and
addressed me in a tone of patronage which left me in no doubt of
his intentions; the frankness with which he now laid bare his
plans going far to prove that already he considered me no better
than his tool.

I did not at once undeceive him, but allowed him to proceed, and
even to bring out the five hundred crowns which he had promised
me, and the sight of which he doubtless supposed would clench the
matter.

Seeing this he became still less reticent, and spoke so largely
that I presently felt myself impelled to ask him if he would
answer a question.

'That is as may be, M. de Marsac,' he answered lightly. 'You may
ask it.'

'You hint at great schemes which you have in hand, father,' I
said. 'You speak of France and Spain and Navarre, and kings and
Leagues and cardinals! You talk of secret strings, and would
have me believe that if I comply with your wishes I shall find
you as powerful a patron as M. de Rosny. But--one moment, if you
please,' I continued hastily, seeing that he was about to
interrupt me with such eager assurances as I had already heard;
'tell me this. With so many irons in the fire, why did you
interfere with one old gentlewoman--for the sake of a few
crowns?"

'I will tell you even that,' he answered, his face flushing at my
tone. 'Have you ever heard of an elephant? Yes. Well, it has a
trunk, you know, with which it can either drag an oak from the
earth or lift a groat from the ground. It is so with me. But
again you ask,' he continued with an airy grimace, 'why I wanted
a few crowns. Enough that I did. There are going to be two
things in the world, and two only, M. de Marsac: brains and
money. The former I have, and had: the latter I needed--and
took.'

'Money and brains?' I said, looking at him thoughtfully.

'Yes,' he answered, his eyes sparkling, his thin nostrils
beginning to dilate. 'Give me these two, and I will rule
France!'

'You will rule France?' I exclaimed, amazed beyond measure by
his audacity. 'You, man?'

'Yes, I,' he answered, with abominable coolness. 'I, priest,
monk, Churchman, clerk. You look surprised, but mark you, sir,
there is a change going on. Our time is coming, and yours is
going. What hampers our lord the king and shuts him up in Blois,
while rebellions stalk through France? Lack of men? No; but
lack of money. Who can get the money for him--you the soldier,
or I the clerk? A thousand times, I! Therefore, my time is
coming, and before you die you will see a priest rule France.'

'God forbid it should be you,' I answered scornfully.

'As you please,' he answered, shrugging his shoulders, and
assuming in a breath a mask of humility which sat as ill on his
monstrous conceit as ever nun's veil on a trooper. 'Yet it may
even be I; by the favour of the Holy Catholic Church, whose
humble minister I am.'

I sprang up with a great oath at that, having no stomach for more
of the strange transformations, in which this man delighted, and
whereof the last had ever the air of being the most hateful.
'You villain!' I cried, twisting my moustaches, a habit I have
when enraged. 'And so you would make me a stepping-stone to your
greatness. You would bribe me--a soldier and a gentleman. Go,
before I do you a mischief. That is all I have to say to you.
Go! You have your answer. I will tell you nothing--not a jot or
a tittle. Begone from my room!'

He fell back a step in his surprise, and stood against the table
biting his nails and scowling at me, fear and chagrin contending
with half a dozen devils for the possession of his face. 'So you
have been deceiving me,' he said slowly, and at last.

'I have let you deceive yourself' I answered, looking at him with
scorn, but with little of the fear with which he had for a while
inspired me. 'Begone, and do your worst.'

'You know what you are doing,' he said. 'I have that will hang
you, M. de Marsac--or worse.'

'Go!' I cried.

'You have thought of your friends,' he continued mockingly.

'Go!' I said.

'Of Mademoiselle de la Vire, if by any chance she fall into my
hands? It will not be hanging for her. You remember the two
Foucauds?'--and he laughed.

The vile threat, which I knew he had used to my mother, so worked
upon me that I strode forward unable to control myself longer.
In another moment I had certainly taken him by the throat and
squeezed the life out of his miserable carcase, had not
Providence in its goodness intervened to save me. The door, on
which he had already laid his hand in terror, opened suddenly.
It admitted Simon, who, closing it; behind him, stood looking
from one to the other of us in nervous doubt; divided between
that respect for the priest which a training at the Sorbonne had
instilled into him, and the rage which despair arouses in the
weakest.

His presence, while it checked me in my purpose, seemed to give
Father Antoine courage, for the priest stood his ground, and even
turned to me a second time, his face dark with spite and
disappointment. 'Good,' he said hoarsely. 'Destroy yourself if
you will! I advise you to bar your door, for in an hour the
guards will be here to fetch you to the question.'

Simon cried out at the threat, so that I turned and looked at the
lad. His knees were shaking, his hair stood on end.

The priest saw his terror and his own opportunity. 'Ay, in an
hour,' he continued slowly, looking at him with cruel eyes. 'In
an hour, lad! You must be fond of pain to court it, and out of
humour with life to throw it away. Or stay,' he continued
abruptly, after considering Simon's narrowly for a moment, and
doubtless deducing from it a last hope, 'I will be merciful. I
will give you one more chance.'

'And yourself?' I said with a sneer.

'As you please,' he answered, declining to be diverted from the
trembling lad, whom his gaze seemed to fascinate. 'I will give
you until half an hour after sunset this evening to reconsider
the matter. If you make up your minds to accept my terms, meet
me then. I leave to-night for Paris, and I will give you until
the last moment. But,' he continued grimly, 'if you do not meet
me, or, meeting me, remain obstinate--God do so to me, and more
also, if you see the sun rise thrice.'

Some impulse, I know not what, seeing that I had no thought of
accepting his terms or meeting him, led me to ask briefly,
'Where?'

'On the Parvis of the Cathedral,' he answered after a moment's
calculation. 'At the north-east corner, half an hour after
sunset. It is a quiet spot.'

Simon uttered a stifled exclamation. And then for a moment there
was silence in the room, while the lad breathed hard and
irregularly, and I stood rooted to the spot, looking so long and
so strangely at the priest that Father Antoine laid his hand
again on the door and glanced uneasily behind him. Nor was he
content until he had hit on, as he fancied, the cause of my
strange regard.

'Ha!' he said, his thin lip curling in conceit at his
astuteness, 'I understand you think to kill me to-night? Let me
tell you, this house is watched. If you leave here to meet me
with any companion--unless it be M. d'Agen, whom I can trust, I
shall be warned, and be gone before you reach the rendezvous.
And gone, mind you,' he added, with a grim smile, 'to sign your
death-warrant.'

He went out with that, closing the door behind him; and we heard
his step go softly down the staircase. I gazed at Simon, and he
at me, with all the astonishment and awe which it was natural we
should feel in presence of so remarkable a coincidence.

For by a marvel the priest had named the same spot and the same
time as the sender of the velvet knot!

'He will go,' Simon said, his face flushed and his voice
trembling, 'and they will go.'

'And in the dark they will not know him,' I muttered. 'He is
about my height. They will take him for me!'

'And kill him!' Simon cried hysterically. 'They will kill him!
He goes to his death, monsieur. It is the finger of God.'

CHAPTER XX.

THE KING'S FACE.

It seemed so necessary to bring home the crime to Bruhl should
the priest really perish in the trap laid for me, that I came
near to falling into one of those mistakes to which men of action
are prone. For my first impulse was to follow the priest to the
Parvis, closely enough, if possible, to detect the assassins in
the act, and with sufficient force, if I could muster it, to
arrest them. The credit of dissuading me from this course lies
with Simon, who pointed out its dangers in so convincing a manner
that I was brought with little difficulty to relinquish it.

Instead, acting on his advice, I sent him to M. d'Agen's lodging,
to beg that young gentleman to call upon me before evening.
After searching the lodging and other places in vain, Simon found
M. d'Agen in the tennis-court at the Castle, and, inventing a
crafty excuse, brought him to my lodging a full hour before the
time.

My visitor was naturally surprised to find that I had nothing
particular to say to him. I dared not tell him what occupied my
thoughts, and for the rest invention failed me. But his gaiety
and those pretty affectations on which he spent an infinity of
pains, for the purpose, apparently, of hiding the sterling worth
of a character deficient neither in courage nor backbone, were
united to much good nature. Believing at last that I had sent
for him in a fit of the vapours, he devoted himself to amusing me
and abusing Bruhl--a very favourite pastime with him. And in
this way he made out a call of two hours.

I had not long to wait for proof of Simon's wisdom in taking this
precaution. We thought it prudent to keep within doors after our
guest's departure, and so passed the night in ignorance whether
anything had happened or not. But about seven next morning one
of the Marquis's servants, despatched by M. d'Agen, burst in upon
us with the news--which was no news from the moment his hurried
footstep sounded on the stairs that Father Antoine had been set
upon and killed the previous evening!

I heard this confirmation of my hopes with grave thankfulness;
Simon with so much emotion that when the messenger was gone he
sat down on a stool and began to sob and tremble as if he had
lost his mother, instead of a mortal foe. I took advantage of
the occasion to read him a sermon on the end of crooked courses;
nor could I myself recall without a shudder the man's last words
to me; or the lawless and evil designs in which he had rejoiced,
while standing on the very brink of the pit which was to swallow
up both him and them in everlasting darkness.

Naturally, the uppermost feeling in my mind was relief. I was
free once more. In all probability the priest had kept his
knowledge to himself, and without him his agents would be
powerless. Simon, it is true, heard that the town was much
excited by the event; and that many attributed it to the
Huguenots. But we did not suffer ourselves to be depressed by
this, nor had I any foreboding until the sound of a second
hurried footstep mounting the stairs reached our ears.

I knew the step in a moment for M. d'Agen's, and something
ominous in its ring brought me to my feet before he opened the
door. Significant as was his first hasty look round the room, he
recovered at sight of me all his habitual SANG-FROID. He saluted
me, and spoke coolly, though rapidly. But he panted, and I
noticed in a moment that he had lost his lisp.

'I am happy in finding you,' he said, closing the door carefully
behind him, 'for I am the bearer of ill news, and there is not a
moment to be lost. The king has signed an order for your instant
consignment to prison, M. de Marsac, and, once there, it is
difficult to say what may not happen.'

'My consignment?' I exclaimed. I may be pardoned if the news
for a moment found me unprepared.

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