Chapter 8

"And good luck to you! Félix, I offer you no reward for this midnight journey into the house of our enemies. For recompense you will see her."

XIII

_Mademoiselle._

I went to find Maître Menard, to urge upon him that some one should stay with M. Étienne while I was gone, lest he swooned or became light-headed. But the surgeon himself was present, having returned from bandaging up some common skull to see how his noble patient rested. He promised that he would stay the night with M. le Comte; so, eased of that care, I set out for the Hôtel de Lorraine, one of the inn-servants with a flambeau coming along to guide and guard me. M. Étienne was a favourite in this inn of Maître Menard's; they did not stop to ask whether he had money in his purse before falling over one another in their eagerness to serve him. It is my opinion that one gets more out of the world by dint of fair words than by a long purse or a long sword.

We had not gone a block from the inn before I turned to the right-about, to the impatience of my escort.

"Nay, Jean, I must go back," I said. "I will only delay a moment, but see Maître Menard I must."

He was still in the cabaret where the crowd was thinning.

"Now what brings you back?"

"This, maître," said I, drawing him into a corner. "M. le Comte has been in a fracas to-night, as you perchance may have divined. His arch-enemy gave us the slip. And I am not easy for monsieur while this Lucas is at large. He has the devil's own cunning and malice; he might track him here to the Three Lanterns. Therefore, maître, I beg you to admit no one to M. le Comte--no one on any business whatsoever. Not if he comes from the Duke of Mayenne himself."

"I won't admit the Sixteen themselves," the maître declared.

"There is one man you may admit," I conceded. "Vigo, M. de St. Quentin's equery. You will know him for the biggest man in France."

"Good. And this other; what is he like?"

"He is young," I said, "not above four or five and twenty. Tall and slim,--oh, without doubt, a gentleman. He has light-brown hair and thin, aquiline face. His tongue is unbound, too."

"His tongue shall not get around me," Maître Menard promised. "The host of the Three Lanterns was not born yesterday let me tell you."

With this comforting assurance I set out once more on my expedition with, to tell truth, no very keen enthusiasm for the business. It was all very well for M. Étienne to declare grandly that as recompense for my trouble I should see Mlle. de Montluc. But I was not her lover and I thought I could get along very comfortably without seeing her. I knew not how to bear myself before a splendid young noblewoman. When I had dashed across Paris to slay the traitor in the Rue Coupejarrets I had not been afraid; but now, going with a love-message to a girl, I was scared.

And there was more than the fear of her bright eyes to give me pause. I was afraid of Mlle. de Montluc, but more afraid of M. de Mayenne's cousin. What mocking devil had driven Étienne de Mar, out of a whole France full of lovely women, to fix his unturnable desire on this Ligueuse of Mayenne's own brood? Had his father's friends no daughters, that he must seek a mistress from the black duke's household? Were there no families of clean hands and honest speech, that he must ally himself with the treacherous blood of Lorraine?

I had seen a sample of the League's work to-day, and I liked it not. If Mayenne were, as Yeux-gris surmised, Lucas's backer, I marvelled that my master cared to enter his house; I marvelled that he cared to send his servant there. Yet I went none the less readily for that; I was here to do his bidding. Nor was I greatly alarmed for my own skin; I thought myself too small to be worth my Lord Mayenne's powder. And I had, I do confess, a lively curiosity to behold the interior of the greatest house in Paris, the very core and centre of the League. Belike if it had not been for terror of this young demoiselle I had stepped along cheerfully enough.

Though the hour was late, many people still loitered in the streets, the clear summer night, and all of them were talking politics. As Jean and I passed at a rapid pace the groups under the wine-shop lanterns, we caught always the names of Mayenne and Navarre. Everywhere they asked the same two questions: Was it true that Henry was coming into the Church? And if so, what would Mayenne do next? I perceived that old Maître Jacques of the Amour de Dieu knew what he was talking about: the people of Paris were sick to death of the Leagues and their intriguery, galled to desperation under the yoke of the Sixteen.

Mayenne's fine new hôtel in the Rue St. Antoine was lighted as for a fête. From its open windows came sounds of gay laughter and rattling dice. You might have thought them keeping carnival in the midst of a happy and loyal city. If the Lieutenant-General found anything to vex him in the present situation, he did not let the commonalty know it.

The Duke of Mayenne's house, like my duke's, was guarded by men-at-arms; but his grilles were thrown back while his soldiers lounged on the stone benches in the archway. Some of them were talking to a little knot of street idlers who had gathered about the entrance, while others, with the aid of a torch and a greasy pack of cards, were playing lansquenet.

I knew no way to do but to ask openly for Mlle. de Montluc, declaring that I came on behalf of the Comte de Mar.

"That is right; you are to enter," the captain of the guard replied at once. "But you are not the Comte de Mar yourself? Nay, no need to ask," he added with a laugh. "A pretty count you would make."

"I am his servant," I said. "I am charged with a message for mademoiselle."

"Well, my orders were to admit the count, but I suppose you may go in. If mademoiselle cannot land her lover it were cruel to deny her the consolation of a message."

A laugh went up and one of the gamblers looked round to say:

"It has gone hard with mademoiselle lately, sangdieu! Here's the Comte de Mar has not set foot in the house for a month or more, and M. Paul for a quarter of a year is vanished off the face of the earth. It seemed as if she must take the little cheese or nothing. But now things are looking up with her. M. Paul has walked calmly in, and here is a messenger at least from the other."

"But M. Paul has walked calmly out again," a third soldier took up the tale. "He did not stay very long, for all mademoiselle's graces."

"Then I warrant 'twas mademoiselle sent him off with a flea in his ear," another cried. "She looks higher than a bastard, even Le Balafré's own."

"She had better take care how she flouts Paul de Lorraine," came the retort, but the captain bade me march along. I followed him into the house, leaving Jean to be edified, no doubt, by a whole history, false and true, concerning Mlle. de Montluc. We bow down before the lofty of the earth, we underlings, but behind their backs there is none with whose names we make so free. And there we have the advantage of our masters; for they know little of our private matters while we know everything of theirs.

In the hall the captain turned me over to a lackey who conducted me through a couple of antechambers to a curtained doorway whence issued a merry confusion of voices and laughter. He passed in while I remained to undergo the scrutiny of the pair of flunkies whose repose we had invaded. But in a moment my guide appeared again, lifting the curtain for me to enter.

The big room was ablaze with candles set in mirrored sconces along the walls, set also in silver candelabra on the tables. There was a crowd of people in the place, a hundred it seemed to my dazzled eyes; grouped, most of them, about the tables set up and down, either taking hands themselves at cards or dice or betting on those who did. Bluff soldiers in breastplate and jack-boots were not wanting in the throng, but the larger number of the gallants were brave in silken doublets and spotless ruffs, as became a noble's drawing-room. And the ladies! mordieu, what am I to say of them? Tricked out in every gay colour under the sun, agleam with jewels--eh bien, the ladies of St. Quentin, that I had thought so fine, were but serving-maids to these.

I stood blinking, dazed by the lights and the crowd and the chatter, unable in the first moment to note clearly any face in the congregation of strange countenances. Nor would it have helped me if I could, for here close about were a dozen fair women, any one of whom might be Mlle. de Montluc. My heart hammered in my throat. I knew not whom to address. But a young noble near by, dazzling in a suit of pink, took the burden on himself.

"I heard Mar's name; yet you are not M. de Mar, I think."

He spoke with a languid but none the less teasing derision. In truth, I must have resembled a little brown hare suddenly turned out of a bag in the midst of that gorgeous company.

"No," I stammered; "I am his servant. I seek Mlle. de Montluc."

"I have wondered what has become of Étienne de Mar this last month," spoke a second young gentleman, advancing from his place behind a fair one's chair. He was neither so pretty nor so fine as the other, but in his short, stocky figure and square face there was a force which his comrade lacked. He regarded me with a far keener glance as he asked:

"Peste! he must be in low water if this is the best he can do for a lackey."

"Perhaps the fellow's errand is to beg an advance from Mlle. de Montluc," suggested the pink youth.

"Who speaks my name?" a clear voice called; and a lady, laying down her hand at cards, rose and came toward me.

She was clad in amber satin. She was tall, and she carried herself with stately grace. Her black hair shadowed a cheek as purely white and pink as that of any yellow-locked Frisian girl, while her eyes, under their sooty lashes, shone blue as corn-flowers.

I began to understand M. Étienne.

"Who is it wants me?" she repeated, and catching sight of me stood regarding me in some surprise, not unfriendly, waiting for me to explain myself. But before I could find my tongue the man in pink answered her with his soft drawl:

"Mademoiselle, this is a minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary--most extraordinary--from the court of his Highness the Comte de Mar."

"Oh, that is it!" she cried with a little laugh, but not, I think, at my uncouthness, though she looked me over curiously.

"He has not come himself, M. de Mar?"

"It appears not, mademoiselle."

She did not seem vastly disconcerted for all she cried in doleful tones:

"Alack! alack! I have lost. And Paul is not present to enjoy his triumph. He wagered me a pair of pearl-broidered gloves that I could not produce M. de Mar."

"But it is not his fault," I answered her, eagerly. "It is not M. de Mar's fault, mademoiselle. He has been hurt to-day, and he could not come. He is in bed of his wounds; he could not walk across his room. He tried. He bade me lay at mademoiselle's feet his lifelong services."

"Ah, Lorance!" cried a young demoiselle in a sky-coloured gown, "methinks you have indeed lost M. de Mar if he sends you no better messenger of his regrets than this horse-boy."

"I have lost the gloves, that is certain and sad," Mlle. de Montluc replied, as if the loss of the wager were all her care. "I am punished for my vanity, mesdames et messieurs. I undertook to produce my recreant squire and I have failed. Alas!" And she put up her white hands before her face with a pretty imitation of despair, save that her eyes sparkled from between her fingers.

By this time the gamesters about us had stopped their play, in a general interest in the affair. An older lady coming forward with an air of authority demanded:

"What is this disturbance, Lorance?"

"A wager between me and my cousin Paul, madame," she answered with instant gravity and respect.

"Paul de Lorraine! Is he here?" the other asked, unpleased, I thought.

"Yes, madame. He dropped from the skies on us this afternoon. He is out of the house again now."

"But while he was in the house," quoth she in sky-colour, "though he did not find time to pay his respects to Mme. la Duchesse, he had the leisure for considerable conversation with Mlle. de Montluc."

The other lady, whom I now guessed to be the Duchesse de Mayenne herself, turned somewhat sharply on her cousin of Montluc.

"I do not yet hear your excuses, mademoiselle, for the introduction of a stable-boy into my salon."

"I beg you to believe, madame, I am not responsible for it," she protested. "Paul, when he was here, saw fit to rally me concerning M. de Mar. Mlle. de Tavanne informed him of the count's defection and they were pleased to be merry with me over it. I vowed I could get him back if I wished. The end of the matter was that I wrote a letter which my cousin promised to have conveyed to M. le Comte's old lodgings. This is the answer," mademoiselle cried, with a wave of her hand toward me. "But I did not expect it in this guise, madame. Blame your lackeys who know not their duties, not me."

"I blame you, mademoiselle," Mme. de Mayenne answered her, tartly. "I consider my salon no place for intrigues with horse-boys. If you must hold colloquy with this fellow, take him whither he belongs--to the stables."

A laugh went up among those who laugh at whatever a duchess says.

"Come, mesdames, we will resume our play," she added to the ladies who had followed her on the scene, and turned her back in lofty disdain on Mlle. de Montluc and her concerns. But though some of the company obeyed her, a curious circle still surrounded us.

"Dame! if you must be banished to the stables, we all will go, mademoiselle," declared the pink gallant. "We all want news of the vanished Mar."

"Indeed we do. We have missed him sorely. And I dare swear this messenger's account will prove diverting," lisped the sky-coloured demoiselle.

I was not enjoying myself. I had given all my hopes of glory to be out in the street again. I wished Mlle. de Montluc would take me to the stables--anywhere out of this laughing company. But she had no such intent.

"I think madame does not mean her sentence," she rejoined. "I would not for the world frustrate your curiosity, Blanche; nor yours, M. de Champfleury. Tell us what has befallen your master, Sir Courier."

"He has been in a duel, mademoiselle."

"Whom was he fighting?"

"And for what lady's favour?"

"Is it a pretty Huguenot this time?"

"Does she make him read his Bible?"

"Or did her big brother set on him for a wicked papist?"

The questions chorussed upon me; I saw they were framed to tease mademoiselle. I answered as best I might:

"He thinks of no lady but Mlle. de Montluc. The fight was over other matters. I am only told to say M. le Comte regrets most heartily that his wound prevents his coming, and to assure mademoiselle that he is too weak and faint to walk across the floor."

"Then exceed your instructions a little. Tell us what monsieur has been about these four weeks that he could not take time to visit us."

I was in a dilemma. I knew she was M. Étienne's chosen lady and therefore deserving of all fealty from me; yet at the same time I could not answer her question. It was sheer embarrassment and no intent of rudeness that caused my short answer:

"About his own concerns, mademoiselle."

"The young puppy begins to growl!" exclaimed the thick-set soldierly fellow who had bespoken me before, whose hostile gaze had never left my face. "I'll have him flogged, mademoiselle, for this insolence."

"M. de Brie--" she began at the same moment that I cried out to her:

"I meant no insolence; I crave mademoiselle's pardon." I added, in my haste floundering deeper into the mire: "Mademoiselle sees for herself that I cannot tell about M. le Comte's affairs in this house."

Brie had me by the collar.

"So that is what has become of Mar!" he cried triumphantly. "I thought as much. If Mar's affairs are to be a secret from this house, then, nom de dieu, they are no secret."

He shook me back and forth as if to shake the truth out of me, till my teeth rattled together; I could not have spoken if I would. But he cried on, his voice rising with excitement:

"It has been no secret where St. Quentin stands and what he has been about. He came into Paris, smooth and smiling, his own man, forsooth--neither ours nor the heretic's! Mordieu! he was Henry's, fast and sure, save that he was not man enough to say so. I told Mayenne last month we ought to settle with M. de St. Quentin; I asked nothing better than to attend to him. But the general would not, but let him alone, free and unmolested in his work of stirring up sedition. And Mar, too--"

He stopped in the middle of a word. All the company who had been pressing around us halted still. I knew that behind me some one had entered the room.

M. de Brie dragged me back from where we were blocking the passage. I turned in his grasp to face the newcomer.

He was a tall, stout man, deep-chested, thick-necked, heavy-jowled. His wavy hair, brushed up from a high forehead, was lightest brown, while his brows, mustachios, and beard were dark. His eyes were dark also, his full lips red and smiling. He had the beauty and presence of all the Guises; it needed not the star on his breast to tell me that this was Mayenne himself.

He advanced into the room returning the salutes of the company, but his glance travelling straight to me and my captor.

"What have we here, François?"

"This is a fellow of Étienne de Mar's, M. le Duc," Brie answered. "He came here with messages for Mlle. de Montluc. I am getting out of him what Mar has been up to since he disappeared a month back."

"You are at unnecessary pains, my dear François; I already know Mar's whereabouts and doings rather better than he knows them himself."

Brie dropped his hand from my collar, looking by no means at ease. I perceived that this was the way with Mayenne: you knew what he said but you did not know what he thought. His somewhat heavy face varied little; what went on in his mind behind the smiling mask was matter for anxiety. If he asked pleasantly after your health, you fancied he might be thinking how well you would grace the gallows.

M. de Brie said nothing and the duke continued:

"Yes, I have kept watch over him these five weeks. You are late, François. You little boys are fools; you think because you do not know a thing I do not know it. Was I cruel to keep my information from you, ma belle Lorance?"

The attack was absolutely sudden; he had not seemed to observe her. Mademoiselle coloured and made no instant reply. His voice was neither loud nor rough; he was smiling upon her.

"Or did you need no information, mademoiselle?"

She met his look unflinching.

"I have not been sighing for tidings of the Comte de Mar, monsieur."

"Because you have had tidings, mademoiselle?"

"No, monsieur, I have had no communication with M. de Mar since May--until to-night."

"And what has happened to-night?"

"To-night--Paul appeared."

"Paul!" ejaculated the duke, startled momentarily out of his phlegm. "Paul here?"

"He was, monsieur, an hour ago. He has since gone forth again, I know not whither or for what."

Mayenne ruminated over this, pulling off his gloves slowly.

"Well? What has this to do with Mar?"

She had no choice, though in evident fear of his displeasure, but to go through again the tale of the wager and letter. She was moistening her dry lips as she finished, her eyes on his face wide with apprehension. But he answered amiably, half absently, as if the whole affair were a triviality:

"Never mind; I will give you a pair of gloves, Lorance."

He stood smiling upon us as if amused for an idle moment over our childish games. The colour came back to her cheeks; she made him a curtsey, laughing lightly.

"Then my grief is indeed cured, monsieur. A new bit of finery is the best of balms for wounded self-esteem, is it not, Blanche? I confess I am piqued; I had dared to imagine that my squire might remember me still after a month of absence. I should have known it too much to ask of mortal man. Not till the rivers run up-hill will you keep our memories green for more than a week, messieurs."

"She turns it off well," cried the little demoiselle in blue, Mlle. Blanche de Tavanne; "you would not guess that she will be awake the night long, weeping over M. de Mar's defection."

"I!" exclaimed Mlle. de Montluc; "I weep over his recreancy? It is a far-fetched jest, my Blanche; can you invent no better? The Comte de Mar--behold him!"

She snatched a card from a tossed-down hand, holding it up aloft for us all to see. It was by chance the knave of diamonds; the pictured face with its yellow hair bore, in my fancy at least, a suggestion of M. Étienne.

"Behold M. de Mar--behold his fate!" With a twinkling of her white fingers she had torn the luckless knave into a dozen pieces and sent them whirling over her head to fall far and wide among the company.

"Summary measures, mademoiselle!" quoth a grizzled warrior, with a laugh. "Mordieu! have we your good permission to deal likewise with the flesh-and-blood Mar, when we go to arrest him for conspiring against the Holy League?"

But Mlle. de Tavanne's quick tongue robbed him of his answer.

"Marry, you are severe on him, Lorance. To be sure he does not come himself, but he sends so gallant a messenger!"

Mademoiselle glanced at me with hard blue eyes.

"That is the greatest insult of all," she said. "I could forgive--and forget--his absence; but I do not forgive his despatching me his horse-boy."

Thus far I had choked down my swelling rage at her faithlessness, her vanity, her despiteful entreatment of my master's plight. I knew it was sheer madness for me to attempt his defence before this hostile company; nay, there was no object in defending him; there was not one here who cared to hear good of him. But at her last insult to him my blood boiled so hot that I lost all command of myself, and I burst out:

"If I were a horse-boy,--which I am not,--I were twenty times too good to be carrying messages hither. You need not rail at his poverty, mademoiselle; it was you brought him to it. It was for you he was turned out of his father's house. But for you he would not now be lying in a garret, penniless and dishonoured. Whatever ills he suffers, it is you and your false house have brought them."

Brie had me by the throat. Mayenne interfered without excitement.

"Don't strangle him, François; I may need him later. Let him be flogged and locked in the oratory."

He turned away as one bored over a trifling matter. And as the lackeys dragged me back to the door, I heard Mlle. de Montluc saying:

"Oh, M. de Latour, what have I done in destroying your knave of diamonds! Ma foi, you had a quatorze!"

XIV

_In the oratory._

"Here, Pierre!" M. de Brie called to the head lackey, "here's a candidate for a hiding. This is a cub of that fellow Mar's. He reckoned wrong when he brought his insolence into this house. Lay on well, boys; make him howl."

Brie would have liked well enough, I fancy, to come along and see the fun, but he conceived that his duty lay in the salon. Pierre, the same who had conducted me to Mlle. de Montluc, now led the way into a long oak-panelled parlour. Opposite the entrance was a huge chimney carved with the arms of Lorraine; at one end a door led into a little oratory where tapers burned before the image of the Virgin; at the other, before the two narrow windows, stood a long table with writing-materials. Chests and cupboards nearly filled the walls. I took this to be a sort of council-room of my Lord Mayenne.

Pierre sent one of his men for a cane and to the other suggested that he should quench the Virgin's candles.

"For I don't see why this rascal should have the comfort of a light in there," he said. "As for Madonna Mary, she will not mind; she has a million others to see by."