Part 13

Between half-past ten and noon, two by two, four by four, five by five, alone or in parties, shabbily or sumptuously dressed, but all well mounted, well armed, and well equipped, a hundred cavaliers made their appearance, all of whom were questioned according to the same formula, and replied by stating whence they came and that they were going to the burial, and by exhibiting their crèpe.

When they had all dined, and become acquainted with one another, while their people were being entertained and their horses were resting, Lenet entered the room where they were all assembled, and said to them:--

"Messieurs, Madame la Princesse thanks you by my mouth for the honor you have done her by calling upon her on your way to join Monsieur le Duc de La Rochefoucauld, who awaits your coming to celebrate the obsequies of his late father. Look upon this house as your own, and deign to take part in the diversion of a stag hunt, ordered to take place this afternoon by Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien, who dons to-day his first pair of breeches."

A murmur of approbation and gratitude welcomed the first part of Lenet's harangue, who, like a practised orator, paused for that purpose.

"After the hunt," he continued, "you will sup with Madame la Princesse, who desires to thank you in person; thereafter you will be at liberty to continue your journey."

Some of the gentlemen paid particular attention to the announcement of this programme, which seemed to some extent to impose fetters on their free will; but in all likelihood they had been warned by Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld to expect something of the sort, for not one of them murmured. Some went to inspect their horses; others had recourse to their portmanteaux to put themselves in fit condition to appear before the princesses; while others remained at table, talking about the state of affairs in the country, which seemed to have some affinity with the events of the day.

Many walked about beneath the main balcony where Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien, his toilet completed, was expected to appear for the last time before his final farewell to female attendants.

The young prince in his nursery, surrounded by nurses and playthings, did not realize his own importance. But the pride of birth manifested itself in full measure, and he gazed impatiently at the rich, yet simple costume in which he was to be dressed for the first time. It was a black velvet suit trimmed with unpolished silver, which made it appear as if he were dressed in mourning: indeed his mother, who was determined at all hazards to pose as a widow, thought seriously of speaking of him in a certain harangue as the "_poor orphaned prince._"

But there was one who eyed these splendid garments even more longingly than the prince. A few feet from him, another child, a few months older than he, with red cheeks and light hair, overflowing with health and strength and childish petulance, was devouring with hungry eyes the luxurious surroundings of his more fortunate playfellow. Several times, unable to repress his curiosity, he had ventured to approach the chair upon which the fine clothes were spread out, and had slyly patted the velvet and caressed the trimming, while the little prince was looking in another direction. But at last it happened that he brought back his eyes in time, and Pierrot drew his hand away too late.

"Take care!" cried the prince, sharply: "take care, Pierrot, you'll spoil my new breeches; they're 'broidered velvet, Pierrot, and it fades when you touch it. I forbid you touching my breeches!"

Pierrot hid the guilty hand behind his back, twisting his shoulders this way and that, as children of all ranks do when they are crossed.

"Don't be angry, Louis," said Madame la Princesse to her son, whose features were disfigured by an ugly grimace. "If Pierrot touches your suit again, he shall be whipped."

Pierrot changed his sulky expression for a threatening one.

"Monseigneur's a prince," he said, "but I'm a gardener; and if monseigneur is to keep me from touching his clothes, I won't let him play with my Guinea hens. Ah! I'm stronger than monseigneur, and he knows it."

These imprudent words were no sooner out of Pierrot's mouth, than the prince's nurse, who was Pierrot's mother, seized the independent youngster by the wrist, and said:--

"Pierrot, you forget that monseigneur is your master, the master of everything in the château and around the château, and so your Guinea hens are his."

"Why, I thought he was my brother," said Pierrot.

"Your foster-brother, yes."

"If he's my brother, we ought to share; and if my Guinea hens are his, his clothes are mine."

The nurse was about to reply by a demonstration of the difference between a uterine brother and a foster-brother, but the young prince, who wished Pierrot to witness his triumph from beginning to end, because he was especially desirous to excite Pierrot's admiration and envy, did not give her time.

"Don't be afraid, Pierrot," said he; "I am not angry with you, and you shall see me in a little while on my fine white horse, and my nice little saddle! I am going to hunt, and I shall kill the stag!"

"Oh! yes," retorted the irreverent Pierrot, "you'll stay a long while on horseback! You wanted to ride my donkey the other day, and my donkey threw you off on to the ground!"

"Yes, but to-day," rejoined the prince, with all the majesty he could summon to his assistance and find in his memory,--"to-day I represent my papa, and I shall not fall. Besides, Vialas will hold me in his arms."

"Come, come," said Madame la Princesse, to cut short the discussion between the children, "come and dress the prince! One o'clock is striking, and all our friends are waiting impatiently. Lenet, bid them give the signal for departure."

XIV.

At the same instant the blast of the horn rang out in the court-yard and reached the most distant corners of the château. Thereupon each guest ran to his horse, finding him fresh and well-rested, thanks to the care that had been bestowed upon him, and vaulted into the saddle. The huntsman with his stag-hounds, the whippers-in with their packs, were the first to set out. Then the gentlemen drew up in line, and the Duc d'Enghien, mounted on the white horse, and held in his seat by Vialas, made his appearance, surrounded by maids of honor, equerries, and gentlemen in waiting, and followed by his mother in a dazzling costume and riding a jet-black horse. By her side, upon a horse which she rode with charming grace, was the Vicomtesse de Cambes, adorable in her female garb, which she had at last resumed to her great joy.

All search for Madame de Tourville had been made in vain since the night before; she had disappeared: like Achilles, she was sulking in her tent.

This brilliant cavalcade was greeted with unanimous acclamations. The guests stood up in their stirrups, pointing out Madame la Princesse, and Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien, who were strangers to most of the gentlemen, they having never been to court, and being unfamiliar with all this royal pomp. The child bowed with a fascinating smile, Madame la Princesse with majestic affability; they were the wife and son of the man whom his bitterest enemies called the first general in Europe. The first general in Europe was persecuted, pursued, imprisoned by the self-same persons whom he had saved from a foreign foe at Lens, and defended against the rebels at Saint-Germain. This was more than was necessary to arouse enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm knew no bounds.

Madame la Princesse drank in with avidity all these proofs of her popularity; then, upon Lenet's whispering a few words in her ear, she gave the signal for departure, and they soon passed from the gardens into the park, all the gates of which were guarded by soldiers of the Condé regiment. Behind the hunters the wickets were locked; and as if that precaution were insufficient to make sure that no false brother should take part in the festivities, the soldiers remained on sentry duty behind the wicket, and a halberdier, dressed and armed like the one in the court-yard, stood beside each of them, with orders to open to none but those who could answer the three questions which composed the countersign.

A moment after the gates were locked, the notes of the horn, and the furious baying of the hounds, announced that the stag was away.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the park, opposite the wall built by the Constable Anne de Montmorency, six horsemen had halted in the road to listen to the horns and the dogs, and seemed to be taking counsel together as they patted the necks of their panting steeds.

In view of their entirely new costumes, the glistening accoutrements of their horses, the glossy cloaks which fell jauntily from their shoulders over their horses' tails, the magnificence of the weapons which could be seen through artistically devised openings, it was rather astonishing that such smart, well-favored cavaliers should hold aloof at a time when all the nobility of the neighborhood were assembled at the château of Chantilly.

These resplendent worthies were eclipsed, however, by their leader, or by him who appeared to be their leader; plumed hat, gilded baldric, elegant boots with golden spurs, a long sword with carved, open-work hilt,--such, with the accompaniment of a superb sky-blue cloak _à l'Espagnole_, was this gentleman's equipment.

"_Pardieu!_" he exclaimed, after a moment of deep reflection, during which his five comrades gazed at one another in astonishment, "how do we get into the park? By the gate or the wicket? Let us present ourselves at the first gate or the first wicket, and we shall get in all right. Cavaliers of our cut are not left outside when men dressed like those we met this morning are admitted."

"I tell you again, Cauvignac," replied one of the five, "that those same ill-clad men, who, notwithstanding their dress and their rustic bearing, are in the park at this moment, had a great advantage over us,--the countersign. We haven't it, and we can't get in."

"You think so, Ferguzon?" said the first speaker, with some deference for the opinion of his lieutenant; our readers will have recognized in him the adventurer whom they met in the early pages of this narrative.

"Do I think so? I am sure of it. Do you imagine that these people are hunting for the sake of hunting? _Tarare!_ they are conspiring, that's certain."

"Ferguzon is right," said a third; "they are conspiring, and we sha'n't be able to get in."

"A stag-hunt isn't a bad thing, however, when one falls in with it on the road."

"Especially when one is tired of hunting men, eh, Barrabas?" said Cauvignac. "Well, it shall not be said that we allowed this one to pass under our noses. We are all that any one need be to cut a decent figure at this _fête_; we are as shiny as new crown-pieces. If Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien needs soldiers, where will he find smarter ones than we? If he needs conspirators, where will he find any more fashionably dressed? The least gorgeous of us has the bearing of a captain!"

"And you, Cauvignac," rejoined Barrabas "would pass at need for a duke and peer."

Ferguzon said nothing; he was reflecting.

"Unfortunately," continued Cauvignac, laughing, "Ferguzon is not inclined to hunt to-day."

"_Peste!_" said Ferguzon, "I've no special objection to hunting; it's a gentlemanly amusement which suits me to a T. So I don't despise it myself, nor try to dissuade others. I simply say that an entrance to the park where they are hunting is made impossible by locked gates."

"Hark!" cried Cauvignac, "there are the horns sounding the tally-ho."

"But," continued Ferguzon, "what I say doesn't necessarily mean that we may not hunt."

"How can we hunt, blockhead, if we can't get in?"

"I don't say that we can't get in," rejoined Ferguzon.

"How the devil can we get in, if the gates, which are open to others, are locked in our faces?"

"Why shouldn't we make a breach in this little wall, for our private use,--a breach through which we and our horses can pass, and behind which we certainly shall find no one to call us to account?"

"_Hourra!_" cried Cauvignac, waving his hat joyfully. "Full reparation! Ferguzon, you are the one brainy man among us! And when I have overturned the King of France, and placed Monsieur le Prince on his throne, I will demand Signor Mazarino Mazarini's place for you. To work, my boys, to work!"

With that, Cauvignac sprang to the ground, and, assisted by his companions, one of whom sufficed to hold all the horses, he began to tear down the wall, already in a somewhat shaky condition.

In a twinkling the five workers opened a breach three or four feet wide. Then they remounted and followed Cauvignac into the park.

"Now," said he, riding in the direction whence the sound of the horns seemed to come, "now, be refined and courteous, and I invite you to take supper with Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien."

XV.

We have said that our six gentlemen of recent manufacture were well mounted; their horses also had the advantage over those of the cavaliers who arrived in the morning, that they were fresh. They therefore soon overtook the main body of the hunt, and took their places among the hunters without the least objection from any quarter. The great majority of the guests were from different provinces, and were not acquainted with one another; so that the intruders, once in the park, might easily pass for guests.

Everything would have passed off as well as they could have wished, if they had kept to their proper station, or even if they had been content with outstripping the others and riding among the huntsmen and whippers-in. But it was not so. In a very few moments Cauvignac seemed to reach the conclusion that the hunt was given in his honor; he snatched a horn from the hands of one of the whippers-in, who did not dare refuse to give it to him, took the lead of the huntsmen, rode in front of the captain of the hunt again and again, cut through woods and hedges, blowing the horn in any but the right way, confusing the _vue_ with the _lancer_, the _debuché_ with the _rembuché_, running down the dogs, overturning the whippers-in, saluting the ladies with a jaunty air when he rode by them, swearing, yelling, and losing his head when he lost sight of them, and at the last coming upon the stag, just as the animal, after swimming across the great pond, turned upon his pursuers and stood at bay.

"_Hallali! Hallali!_" cried Cauvignac, "the stag is ours! _Corbleu!_ we have him."

"Cauvignac," said Ferguzon, who was only a length behind him. "Cauvignac, you'll get us all turned out of the park. In God's name be more quiet!"

But Cauvignac heard not a word, and, seeing that the animal was getting the best of the dogs, dismounted and drew his sword, shouting with all the strength of his lungs:--

"_Hallali! Hallali!_"

His companions, excepting always the prudent Ferguzon, encouraged by his example, were preparing to swoop down upon their prey, when the captain of the hunt interposed.

"Gently, monsieur," he said, waving Cauvignac aside with his knife; "Madame la Princesse directs the hunt. It is for her, therefore, to cut the stag's throat, or to concede that honor to such person as she may please."

Cauvignac was recalled to himself by this sharp reprimand; and as he fell back with decidedly bad grace, he found himself suddenly surrounded by the crowd of hunters, the delay having given them time to come up. They formed a great circle about the beast, driven to bay at the foot of an oak, and surrounded by all the dogs.

At the same moment Madame la Princesse was seen galloping up, preceding Monsieur le Duc d'Enghien, the gentlemen in waiting and the ladies, who had made it a point of honor not to leave her. She was greatly excited, and it was easy to imagine that she looked upon this simulacrum of war as the prelude to a real war.

When she reached the centre of the circle she stopped, cast a haughty glance about her, and noticed Cauvignac and his comrades, whom the officers of the hunt were eying uneasily and suspiciously.

The captain drew near to her, knife in hand. It was the knife ordinarily used by Monsieur le Prince; the blade was of the finest steel and the handle of silver-gilt.

"Does your Highness know yonder gentleman?" he said in a low tone, glancing at Cauvignac out of the corner of his eye.

"No," said she, "but he was admitted, so he is undoubtedly known to some one."

"He is known to no one, your Highness; every one whom I have questioned sees him to-day for the first time."

"But he could not pass the gates without the countersign."

"No, of course not," replied the captain; "and yet I venture to advise your Highness to be on your guard."

"First of all, we must know who he is," said the princess.

"We shall soon know, madame," Lenet, who had ridden up with the princess, observed with his habitual smile. "I have sent a Norman, a Picard, and a Breton to talk with him, and he will be closely questioned; but for the moment, do not seem to be talking about him, or he will escape us."

"Cauvignac," said Ferguzon, "I think that we are being discussed in high places. We shall do well to suffer an eclipse."

"Do you think so?" said Cauvignac. "'Faith, what's the odds? I propose to be in at the death, come what come may."

"It's a stirring spectacle, I know," said Ferguzon, "but we may have to pay more for our places than at the Hôtel de Bourgogne."

"Madame," said the captain, presenting the knife to the princess, "to whom is your Highness pleased to grant the honor of putting the stag to death?"

"I reserve it for myself, monsieur," said the princess; "a woman of my station should accustom herself to the touch of steel and the sight of blood."

"Namur," said the captain to the arquebusier, "be ready."

The arquebusier stepped forward, arquebuse in hand, and took up his position within twenty feet of the animal. This manœuvre was intended to ensure the princess's safety if the stag, driven to despair, as sometimes happens, should attack her instead of waiting meekly to be killed.

Madame la Princesse dismounted, and with sparkling eyes, glowing cheeks, and lips slightly parted, walked toward the animal, who was almost entirely buried under the dogs, and seemed to be covered with a carpet of a thousand colors. Doubtless the animal did not believe that death was to come to him from the hand of the lovely princess, from which he had eaten many and many a time; he had fallen upon his knees, and he tried to rise, letting fall from his eyes the great tear-drop which accompanies the death agony of the stag and the deer. But he had not time; the blade of the knife, glistening in the sun's rays, disappeared to the hilt in his throat; the blood spurted out into the princess's face; the stag raised his head, and, casting a last reproachful glance at his beautiful mistress, fell forward and died.

At the same instant all the horns blew the death-blast, and a mighty shout arose: "_Vive_ Madame la Princesse!" while the young prince stood up in his saddle and clapped his little hands in high glee.

Madame la Princesse withdrew the knife from the animal's throat, glanced around with the look of an Amazon in her eyes, handed the dripping knife to the captain of the hunt, and remounted. Lenet thereupon drew nigh.

"Does Madame la Princesse wish me to tell her," said he, with a smile, "of whom she was thinking when she cut the poor beast's throat a moment since?"

"Yes, Lenet, I should be glad to have you tell me."

"She was thinking of Monsieur de Mazarin, and would have been glad to have him in the stag's place."

"Yes," cried the princess, "that is quite true, and I would have cut his throat without pity, I swear to you: but really, Lenet, you are a sorcerer!"

She turned to the rest of the company.

"Now that the hunt is at an end, messieurs," said she, "please follow me. It is too late now to start another stag, and besides, supper awaits us."

Cauvignac acknowledged this invitation by a most graceful bow.

"Pray, what are you doing, captain?" queried Ferguzon.

"_Pardieu_ I am accepting! Didn't you hear Madame la Princesse invite us to supper, as I promised you that she would?"

"Cauvignac, you may take my advice or not, but if I were in your place I would make for the breach in the wall."

"Ferguzon, my friend, your natural perspicacity plays you false. Didn't you notice the orders given by yonder gentleman in black, who has the expression of a fox when he laughs, and of a badger when he doesn't laugh? Ferguzon, the breach is guarded, and to make for the breach is to indicate a purpose to go out as we came in."

"But if that's the case, what is to become of us?"

"Never fear! I will answer for everything."

With that assurance the six adventurers took their places in the midst of the gentlemen, and rode with them toward the château.

Cauvignac was not mistaken; they were closely watched.

Lenet rode on the outskirts of the cavalcade. On his right was the captain of the hunt, and on his left the intendant of the Condé estates.

"You are sure," said he, "that no one knows those men?"

"No one; we have questioned more than fifty gentlemen, and the reply is always the same; perfect strangers to everybody."

The Norman, the Picard, and the Breton had no further information to impart. But the Norman had discovered a breach in the park wall, and like an intelligent man had stationed guards there.

"We must have recourse, then, to a more efficacious method," said Lenet. "We must not allow a handful of spies to compel us to send away a hundred gallant fellows without accomplishing anything. Look to it, Monsieur l'Intendant, that no one is allowed to leave the court-yard, or the gallery where the horsemen are to be entertained. Do you, Monsieur le Capitaine, as soon as the door of the gallery is closed, station a picket guard of twelve men with loaded muskets, in case of accident. Go! I will not lose sight of them."

Lenet had no great difficulty in performing the duties he had imposed upon himself. Cauvignac and his companions evinced no desire to fly. Cauvignac rode among the foremost, twisting his moustache with a killing air; Ferguzon followed him, relying upon his promise, for he knew his leader too well not to be sure that he would not be caught in that trap, even if it had no second issue. Barrabas and the other three followed their captain and lieutenant, thinking of nothing but the excellent supper that awaited them; they were in fact rather dull fellows, who with absolute indifference abandoned the intellectual portion of their social relations to their two leaders, in whom they had full and entire confidence.

Everything took place in accordance with Lenet's intention, and his orders were carried out to the letter. Madame la Princesse took her place in the great reception-room under a canopy, which served her for a throne. Her son was beside her, dressed as we have described.

The guests exchanged glances; they had been promised a supper, but it was evident that they were to listen to a speech.

The princess at last rose and began to speak. Her harangue[1] was well calculated to arouse enthusiasm and make converts to her cause. On this occasion Clémence de Maillé-Brézé gave free rein to her feelings, and openly attacked Mazarin. Her hearers, electrified by the reminder of the insult offered to the whole nobility of France in the persons of the princes, and even more, it may be, by the hope of making an advantageous bargain with the court in case of success, interrupted the discourse again and again, calling God to witness, at the tops of their voices, that they would do faithful service in the cause of the illustrious house of Condé, and would help to rescue it from the state of degradation to which Mazarin wished to reduce it.