XA VILLAGE FAIR
It was a custom of old standing in the little village of Neuilly to hold a fair every year in the full flush of the spring. The custom of this fair went back for ages; antiquarians declared that they could find traces of it so far off as the reign of the good King Dagobert of the yellow hair, who had, as immortal song has consecrated, a trifling difficulty with his smallclothes; at least, it was certain that it dated from a very long time, and that year by year it had grown in importance with the people who go to fairs for the purposes of business, and in popularity with the people who go to fairs for the purposes of pleasure. Hither came half the tumblers, rope-walkers, contortionists, balancers, bear-leaders, puppet-players, wrestlers, strong men, fat women, bearded ladies, living skeletons, horrible deformities, lion-tamers, quack doctors, mountebanks, and jugglers who patrolled Europe in those days, and earned a precarious living and enjoyed the sweets of a vagabond freedom in the plying of their varied trades.
At one time the fair of Neuilly had attracted only the humbler folk from Paris to taste of its wares, but as it had gradually grown in importance, so, accordingly, it had increased the number of its clients. First, the humbler burgesses came with their wives to gape and stare at the marvels it displayed; then their example was followed by the wealthier of their kind, and fur and velvet moved freely among the rabble of the fair. Now, in the year with which we deal, it had been for some little time the fashion for gentlefolk to drift in merry parties to Neuilly and enjoy the fun of the fair as frankly as any sober burgess or loose-tongued clerk. This year, however, a greater honor still was in store for the fair and its fellowships of vagrant playmakers. It was known to a few, who were privileged to share the secret, and also privileged to share the enjoyment with which that secret was concerned, that his Sovereign Majesty Louis of Bourbon, thirteenth of his name of the kings of France, intended to visit incognito the fair at Neuilly. He was to go thither accompanied by a few of the choicest spirits of his court, the most excellent of the rakes and libertines who had been received into the intimacy of the king’s newly found liberty, and those same rakes and libertines felt highly flattered at being chosen by his highness for his companions in an enterprise which at least was something out of the beaten track of the rather humdrum amusements of the Louvre. Why the king particularly wanted to visit the fair of Neuilly on that particular day of that particular spring-time, none of those that were in the secret of the adventure professed to know or even were curious to inquire. It was enough for them that the king, in spite of his ill-health, looked now with a favorable eye upon frivolity, and that a sport was toward with which their palates for pleasure were not already jaded, and they were as gleeful as children at the prospect of the coming fun.
Neuilly knew nothing of the honor that was awaiting it. Neuilly was busy with its booths and its trestles and its platforms and its roped-in, canvas-walled circuses, and its gathering of wanderers from every corner of Europe, speaking every European tongue. Neuilly was as busy as it well might be about its yearly business, and could scarcely have made more fuss and noise and pother if it had known that not only the King of France, but every crowned head in Christendom, proposed to pay it a visit.
A little way from Neuilly, to the Paris side of the fair, there stood a small wayside inn, which was perched comfortably enough on a bank of the river. It was called, no one knew why, the Inn of the Three Graces, and had, like many another wayside inn in France, its pleasant benches before the doors for open-air drinkers, and its not unpleasant darkened rooms inside for wassail in stormy weather; also it had quite a large orchard and garden behind it running down to the river’s edge, where the people of the Inn raised good fruit and good vegetables, which added materially to the excellence of their homely table. The high-road that skirted the Inn encountered, a little way above it, a bridge that spanned the river and continued its way to Neuilly and the fair and the world beyond. At one side of the Inn was a little space of common land, on which, at this time of fair-making, a company of gypsies were encamped, with their caravans and their ragged tents and their camp-fires. On the other side of the Inn were some agreeably arranged arbors, in whose shadow tables and chairs were disposed for the benefit of those who desired to taste the air with their wine and viands. Taking it in an amiable spirit, the Inn of the Three Graces seemed a very commendable place.
All day long on the day of which we speak, and all day long for many days preceding it, there had been a steady flow of folk from the direction of Paris making in the direction of Neuilly, and not a few of these, taken by the appearance of the little wayside Inn, found it agreeable to refresh themselves by slaking their thirst and staying their stomachs inside or outside of its hospitable walls. The most of those that so passed were sight-seers, and these the Inn saw again as they passed homeward in the dusk or sometimes even in the darkness with the aid of flambeaux and lanterns. But a certain number were, as might be said, professional pedestrians, peddlers with their packs upon their shoulders, anxious to dispose of ribbons and trinkets to gaping rustics, easily bubbled burgesses, and to the more wary histrions and mountebanks, for whom a different scale of charges ranged.
A little after noon on the day in question the wayside Inn of the Three Graces was quiet enough. The last chance visitor had emptied his can and crossed the bridge to Neuilly and its delights; the last peddler had slung his pack and tramped in the same direction; the gypsies, who since early morning had sprawled upon the common land, had shaken themselves free from their idleness into an assumption of activity, and had marched off almost in a body to take their share in the profits of the occasion by a little judicious horse-coping and fortune-telling. One of their number, indeed, they left behind in the great, gaudy, green-and-red caravan that stood in front of all the other caravans in the middle of the grassy space—one of their number who would much have preferred the merriment and the sunlight of the fair to the confinement of the caravan, but who remained in the caravan, nevertheless, because she had to do what she was told.
The neighborhood of the Inn, therefore, seemed strangely deserted when a man appeared upon the bridge in the direction contrary to that of the general stream of passers-by, for this man was coming from the direction of Neuilly and was going in the direction of Paris. He was a twisted man with a hunched back, who was clad in black and carried a long sword, and he came slowly down the slope of the bridge and along the road to the Inn, looking about him quickly and cautiously the while as he did so. He had the air of one resolved to be alert against possible surprises even where surprises were improbable if not impossible; but his sinister face wore a malign smile of self-confidence which proclaimed that its wearer felt himself to be proof against all dangers.
XIÆSOP REDUX
Seeing that the neighborhood was vacant of all occupants, the hunchback advanced to the Inn, and, seating himself at a table under one of the little arbors, drummed lustily with his clinched fist upon the board. In answer to this summons the landlord appeared hurriedly at the door—such a man as had evidently been destined by heaven to play the part of landlord of a wayside inn.
He advanced and questioned his guest obsequiously: "Your honor wants—"
The hunchback answered him, roughly: "Wine, good wine. If you bring me sour runnings I’ll break your head."
The landlord bowed with a dipping upward projection of apologetic hands. "Your honor shall have my best."
The landlord went back into the Inn, and the hunchback sprawled at his ease, tilting back his chair and resting his lean, black legs on the table. He sat thus wise for some little time, blinking under the shadow of his large, black hat at the pleasant sunlight and the pleasant grasses about him with something of the sour air of one to whom such pleasant things meant little. But presently his careless eyes, that might almost have seemed to be asleep, so much were the lids lowered, suddenly grew alert again. A man appeared on the bridge—a lank, lean, yellow-skinned man, with a face that seemed carved out of old ivory, with furtive eyes and a fawning mouth. The new-comer was gorgeously, over-gorgeously, dressed, and his every movement affected the manners of a grand seigneur. He carried a tall cane with a jewelled knob, on which his left hand rested affectionately, as if it pleased him, even in this form, to handle and control costly things. Precious laces extravagantly lapped his unattractive hands. A sword with a jewelled hilt hung from his side. The moment the new-comer saw the hunchback he hastened towards him, but the hunchback, for his part, for all his plain habit, showed no deference to the splendidly dressed gentleman who saluted him. He remained in his easy, sprawling attitude, his chair still tilted back, his thin legs still lolling on the table. The magnificent gentleman addressed him with a certain air of condescension in his voice:
"Good-morning, Æsop. You are punctual. A merit."
Æsop, without rising or showing any deference in his manner, answered with a scarcely veiled note of insolence in his voice: "Good-morning, Monsieur Peyrolles. You are not punctual. A defect. Sit down."
Peyrolles, apparently somewhat dashed by the coolness of his reception, obeyed the injunction of the hunchback and seated himself, but he still forced the show of condescension into his manner and strove to maintain it in his voice as he continued the conversation. "Though it’s—let me see—why, it’s seventeen years since we met—I knew you at once."
Æsop grunted: "Well, I knew you at once, if it comes to that, though the time was no shorter."
Peyrolles smiled awkwardly. "You haven’t changed," he observed.
Æsop’s eyes travelled with a careful and contemptuous scrutiny over the person of his old employer. "You have. You didn’t wear quite such fine clothes when I saw you last, my friend. What luck it is to have a master who makes a rich marriage!"
As he said these words the landlord emerged from the Inn with a tray in his hands that bore a bottle and glasses. As he approached, Æsop swung his legs off the table and resumed the ordinary attitude of a feaster. The landlord placed the tray on the table, thankfully accepted Æsop’s money, and with many salutations returned to the shelter of the Inn. Æsop filled two glasses with a shining white wine and pushed one to Peyrolles. "Drink!" he said, gruffly.
Peyrolles waved his yellow fingers in polite refusal. "I thank you. No."
In a second Æsop had sprung to his feet angrily, and, leaning over the table, thrust his own twisted visage close to the yellow mask in front of him. "Damn you!" he screamed—"damn you! are you too proud to drink with a man who has travelled all the way from Madrid on your dirty business? Let me tell you—"
The man’s attitude of menace, the man’s violent words, clearly alarmed Monsieur Peyrolles, who interrupted him nervously with a voice quavering with protestation: "No, no, you need not. Of course, not too proud. Delighted."
Æsop dropped into his seat again. "That’s better. Your health." He lifted the glass to his lips as he spoke and slowly drained it. There was no sound of solicitation for his companion’s welfare in his words, there was no expression of pleasure on his face as he did so. He took the good wine as he took all bright and kindly things, sourly.
Peyrolles hastened to follow the example of his pledge. "Your health," he said, and sipped diffidently at the wine, and then, finding it agreeable, finished it.
There was a little pause, and then Æsop spoke again.
"Seventeen years," he murmured, with a chuckle—"seventeen years since we last met, on the morning, as I remember, after the little mishap in the moat of Caylus."
Peyrolles shivered, and seemed uneasy. Æsop paid no heed to his evident discomfort.
"What a wild-goose chase you sent us all on, I and Staupitz and the others—flying into Spain to find Lagardere and the child. The others hunted for him, as I suppose you know, with the results which, also, I suppose you know."
Peyrolles nodded feebly. His yellow face was several tinges yellower, his teeth seemed to threaten to chatter, and he looked very unhappy. His voice was grave as he spoke: "Those who did find him were not fortunate." Æsop laughed.
"They were fools," he asserted. "Well, for my part, I said to myself that the wise course for me to follow was not to waste my strength, my energy, and my breath in chasing Lagardere all over a peninsula, but to wait quietly for Lagardere to come to me. Madrid, I reasoned, is the centre of Spain; everyone in Spain comes to Madrid sooner or later;ergo, sooner or later Lagardere will come to Madrid."
"Well, did he?" Peyrolles asked, forcing himself to give tongue, and eying the hunchback dubiously. He found Æsop too humorous for his fancy. Æsop grinned like a monkey whose nuts have been filched.
"No," he said—"no, not as yet, to my knowledge, or he would be dead. But I have a conviction that our paths will cross one day, and when that day comes you may be sorry for Lagardere if your heart is inclined to be pitiful."
The unpleasant expression on Monsieur Peyrolles’s face whenever the name of Lagardere was mentioned now deepened sufficiently to make it quite plain that he cherished no such inclination. Æsop went on:
"He proved himself a pretty good swordsman on the night of the—shall we say altercation?—and he certainly succeeded in persuading me that there was something to be said for those secret thrusts that I treated too lightly. When I first met Lagardere I knew all that Italy and all that France could teach me of sword-play. Now I know all that Spain can teach. I tell you, friend Peyrolles, I think I am the best swordsman alive."
Peyrolles did not at all like to be hailed as friend in this familiar manner by the hunchback, but he had his reasons for mastering his feelings, and he showed no signs of distaste. Perhaps he had begun to realize that Æsop would not mind in the least if he did manifest displeasure.
"Now, finding myself in Madrid," Æsop resumed, "and not being inclined to follow the foolish example of my companions, which led each of them in turn to you know what, I cast about to make myself comfortable in Madrid. I soon found a way. I set up an excellent bagnio; I lured rich youths to the altars and alcoves of play and pleasure. I made a great deal of money, and enjoyed myself very much incidentally. It is always a pleasure to me to see straight, smooth, suave men killing themselves with sweet sins."
The expression of his face was so hideous, as he spoke in his demoniacal air of triumph over those that were less afflicted than himself, that Peyrolles, who was not at all squeamish, shuddered uncomfortably. Æsop seemed for a while to be absorbed in soothing memories, but presently he made an end of rubbing his hands together silently, and resumed his speech:
"It was all in the way of my ancient and honorable trade to have no small traffic with pretty women and the friends of pretty women and the parents of pretty women. And it was this part of my trade which put the idea into my head which prompted me to write to you, friend Peyrolles, and which persuaded me to uproot myself from my comfortable house and my responsive doxies, and jog all the way from Madrid to Paris."
The sense of what he had sacrificed in making the journey seemed suddenly to gall him, for he glared ferociously at Peyrolles, and said, sharply: "Here have I been talking myself dry while you sit mumchance. Tell me some tale for a change. Why in the name of the ancient devil did Nevers’s widow marry Gonzague?"
Peyrolles laughed feebly. "Love, I suppose."
Æsop waved the suggestion away. "Don’t talk like a fool. I expect old Caylus made her. He was a grim old chip, after my own heart, and our widow had no friends. Oh yes; I expect daddy Caylus made her marry Gonzague. What a joke!—what an exquisite joke!"
Peyrolles replied, with attempted dignity: "You didn’t travel all the way from Madrid to talk about my master’s marriage, I suppose."
In a moment Æsop’s manner became ferocious again. Again he thrust forward his seamed, malicious face, and again the yellow mask drew back from it. "You are right, I did not. I came because I am tired of Spain, because I lust for Paris, because I desire to enter the service of his Highness Prince Louis de Gonzague, to whom I am about to render a very great service."
Peyrolles looked at him thoughtfully, the yellow mask wrinkled with dubiety. "Are you serious about this service?" he asked. "Can you really perform what your letter seemed to promise?"
"I should not have travelled all this way if I did not know what I was about," Æsop growled. "I think it matters little if I have lost Lagardere if I have found the daughter of Nevers."
Peyrolles was thoroughly interested, and leaned eagerly across the table. "Then you think you have found her?"
Æsop grinned at him maliciously. "As good as found her. I have found a girl who may be—come, let’s put a bold face on it and say must be—Nevers’s daughter. I told you so much in my letter."
Peyrolles now drew back again with a cautious look on his face as he answered, cautiously: "My master, Prince Gonzague, must be satisfied. Where is this girl?"
Æsop continued: "Here. I found her in Madrid, the dancing-girl of a band of gypsies. She is the right age. The girl is clever, she is comely, her hair is of the Nevers shade, her color of the Nevers tint. She is, by good-fortune, still chaste, for when I first began to think of this scheme the minx was little more than a child, and the gypsies, who were willing to do my bidding, kept her clean for my need. Oh, she has been well prepared, I promise you! She has been taught to believe that she was stolen from her parents in her babyhood, and will meet any fable half-way. She will make a most presentable heiress to the gentleman we killed at Caylus—"
Peyrolles agitated his yellow hands deprecatingly. He did not like the revival of unpleasant memories. "My good friend!" he protested.
Æsop eyed him with disdain. "Well, we did kill him, didn’t we? You don’t want to pretend that he’s alive now, after that jab in the back your master gave him fifteen years ago?"
Peyrolles wriggled on his chair in an agony of discomfort. "Hush, for Heaven’s sake! Don’t talk like that!"
Æsop slapped the table till the glasses rang. "I’ll talk as I please."
Peyrolles saw it was useless to argue with the hunchback, and submitted. "Yes, yes; but let bygones be bygones. About this girl?"
Æsop resumed his narrative. "I sent her and her tribe Franceward from Madrid. I didn’t accompany them, for I’m not fond of companionship; but I told them to wait me here, and here they are. What place could be more excellent? All sorts of vagabonds come hither from all parts of the world at fair-time. How natural that your admirable master should amuse his leisure by visiting the fair, and in so diverting himself be struck by a beautiful gypsy girl’s resemblance to the features of his dear dead friend! It is all a romance, friend Peyrolles, and a very good romance. And I, Æsop, made it."
The hunchback struck an attitude as he spoke, and strove to twist his evil countenance into a look of inspiration.
Peyrolles was all eagerness now. "Let me see the girl," he pleaded.
Æsop shook his head. "By-and-by. It is understood that if Gonzague accepts the girl as Nevers’s child he takes me into his service in Paris. Eh?"
Peyrolles nodded. "That is understood."
Æsop yawned on the conclusion of the bargain. "Curse me if I see why he wants the child when he has got the mother."
Peyrolles again neared, and spoke with a lowered voice: "I can be frank with you, master Æsop?"
"It’s the best plan," Æsop growled.
XIIFLORA
Peyrolles prepared to be frank. He put up his hand, and whispered behind it cautiously: "The married life of the Prince de Gonzague and the widow of Nevers has not been ideally happy."
Æsop grinned at him in derision. "You surprise me!" he commented, ironically.
Peyrolles went on: "The marriage is only a marriage in name. What arguments succeeded in persuading so young a widow to marry again so soon I do not, of course, know." He paused for a moment and frowned a little, for Æsop, though saying nothing, was lolling out his tongue at him mockingly. Then he went on, with a somewhat ruffled manner: "At all events, whatever the arguments were, they succeeded, and the Duchess de Nevers became the Princess de Gonzague. After the ceremony the Princess de Gonzague told her husband that she lived only in the hope of recovering her child, and that she would kill herself if she were not left in peace."
He paused for a moment. Æsop spurred him on: "Well, go on, go on."
Peyrolles cleared his throat. Being frank was neither habitual nor pleasant. "As the princess had absolute control of the wealth of her dead husband, the Duke de Nevers, and as she promised to allow my master the use of her fortune as long as he—"
Again he paused, and Æsop interpolated: "Left her in peace."
Peyrolles accepted the suggestion. "Exactly—my master, who is a perfect gentleman, accepted the situation. Since that day they seldom meet, seldom speak. The princess always wears mourning—"
Æsop shivered. "Cheerful spouse."
Peyrolles went on: "While the Prince de Gonzague lives a bright life, and sets the mode in wit, dress, vice—in every way the perfect gentleman, and now the favorite companion and friend of his melancholy majesty, whose natural sadness at the loss of the great cardinal he does his best to alleviate."
Æsop laughed mockingly as Peyrolles mouthed his approvals. "Lucky groom. But if he can spend the money, why does he want the girl?"
Peyrolles answered, promptly: "To please the princess, and prove himself the devoted husband."
Æsop was persistent: "What is the real reason?"
Peyrolles, with a grimace, again consented to be frank: "As Mademoiselle de Nevers is not proved to be dead, the law assumes her to be alive, and it is as the guardian of this impalpable young person that my dear master handles the revenues of Nevers. If she were certainly dead, my master would inherit."
Æsop still required information. "Then why the devil does he want to prove that she lives?"
There was again a touch of condescension in Peyrolles’s manner: "You are not so keen as you think, good Æsop. Mademoiselle de Nevers, recovered, restored to her mother’s arms, the recognized heiress of so much wealth, might seem to be a very lucky young woman. But even lucky young women are not immortal."
Æsop chuckled. "Oh, oh, oh! If the lost-and-found young lady were to die soon after her recovery the good Louis de Gonzague would inherit without further question. I fear my little gypsy is not promised a long life."
Peyrolles smiled sourly. "Let me see your little gypsy."
Æsop hesitated for a moment. It evidently went against his grain to oblige Peyrolles—or, for that matter, any man, in anything; but in this instance to oblige served his own turn. He rose, and, passing the door of the Inn, crossed the space of common land to where the caravan stood, a deserted monument of green and red.
The hunchback tapped at the door and whispered through the lock: "Are you there, Flora?"
A woman’s voice answered from within—a young voice, a sweet voice, a slightly impatient voice. "Yes," it said.
"Come out," Æsop commanded, curtly.
Then the gaudy door of the caravan yielded, and a pretty gypsy girt appeared in the opening. She was dark-haired, she was bright-eyed, she was warmly colored. She seemed to be about eighteen years of age, but her figure already had a rich Spanish fulness and her carriage was swaying and voluptuous. Most men would have been glad enough to stand for a while in adoration of so pleasing a picture, but Æsop was not as most men. His attitude to women when they concerned him personally was not of adoration. In this case the girl did not concern him personally, and he had no interest in her youth or her charms save in so far as they might serve the business he had in hand.
The girl looked at him with a little frown, and spoke with a little note of fretfulness in her voice: "So you have come at last. I have been so tired of waiting for you, mewed up in there."
Æsop answered her, roughly: "That’s my business. Here is a gentleman who wants to speak with you."
As he spoke he beckoned to Peyrolles, who rose from his seat and moved with what he considered to be dignity towards the pair, making great play of cane, great play of handkerchief, great play of jewelled-hilted sword flapping against neatly stockinged leg.
He saluted the gypsy in what he conceived to be the grand manner. "Can you tell fortunes, pretty one?"
The gypsy laughed, and showed good teeth as she did so. "Surely, on the palm or with the cards—all ways."
"Can you tell your own fortune?" Peyrolles questioned, with a faint tinge of malice in the words.
Flora laughed again, and answered, unhesitatingly: "To dance my way through the world, to enjoy myself as much as I can in the sunshine, to please pretty gentlemen, to have money to spend, to wear fine clothes and do nice things and enjoy myself, to laugh often and cry little. That is my fortune, I hope."
Peyrolles shook his head and looked very wise. "Perhaps I can tell you a better fortune."
Flora was impressed by the manner of the grand gentleman, for to her he seemed a grand gentleman. "Tell me, quick!" she entreated.
Peyrolles condescended to explain: "Seventeen years ago a girl of noble birth, one year old, was stolen from her mother and given to gypsies."
Flora, listening, counted on her fingers: "Seventeen, one, eighteen—why, just my age."
Peyrolles approved. "You are hearing the voice of Nature—excellent."
Æsop put in his word: "That mother has been looking for her child ever since."
Peyrolles summed up the situation with a malign smile: "We believe we have found her."
Flora began to catch the drift of the conversation, and was eager for more knowledge. "Go on—go on! I always dreamed of being a great lady."
Peyrolles raised a chastening finger. "Patience, child, patience. The prince, my master, honors the fair to-day in company with a most exalted personage. I will bring him here to see you dance. If he recognizes you, your fortune is made."
Flora questioned, cunningly: "How can he recognize a child of one?"
Peyrolles lifted to his eyes the elaborately laced kerchief he had been carrying in his right hand, and appeared to be a prey to violent emotions. "Your father was his dearest friend," he murmured, in a tearful voice. "He would see his features in you."
Flora clapped her hands. "I hope he will."
Æsop, looking cynically from the girl to the man and from the man to the girl, commented, dryly: "I think he will."
Peyrolles considered the interview had lasted long enough. He signed to the girl to retire with the air of a grandee dismissing some vassal. "Enough. Retire to your van till I come for you."
Flora pouted and pleaded: "Don’t be long. I’m tired of being in there."
Æsop snapped at her, sharply: "Do as you are told. You are not a princess yet."
The girl frowned, the girl’s eyes flashed, but her acquaintance with Æsop had given her the thoroughly justifiable impression that he was a man whom it was better to obey, and she retired into the caravan and shut the green-and-red door with a bang behind her.
Æsop turned with a questioning grin to Peyrolles. "Well?" he said.
Peyrolles looked approval. "I think she’ll do. I’ll go and find the prince at once."
"I will go a little way with you," Æsop said, more perhaps because he thought his company might exasperate the sham grand man than for any other reason. He knew Peyrolles would think it unbecoming his dignity to be seen in close companionship with the shabbily habited hunchback, hence his display of friendship. As he linked his black arm in the yellow-satin arm of Peyrolles, he added: "I have taken every care to make our tale seem plausible. The gypsies will swear that they stole her seventeen years ago."
Peyrolles nodded, looking askance at him, and wishing that destiny had not compelled him to make use of such an over-familiar agent, and the precious pair went over the bridge together and disappeared from the neighborhood of the little Inn, and the spirit of solitude seemed again to brood over the locality. But it was not suffered to brood for very long. As soon as the voices and the footsteps of Peyrolles and Æsop were no longer audible; the green-and-red door of the caravan was again cautiously opened, and cautiously the head of the pretty gypsy girl was thrust out into the air. When she saw that the pair had disappeared, she ran lightly down the steps of the caravan, and, crossing the common, paused under the windows of the Inn, where she began to sing in a sweet, rich voice a verse of a Spanish gypsy song:
"Come to the window, dear;
Listen and lean while I say
A Romany word in your ear,
And whistle your heart away."
XIIICONFIDENCES
Before she had finished the last line of the verse the curtains of a window in the second story of the Inn parted and another young girl showed herself through the lattice. This girl was dark-haired like the gypsy, and bright-eyed like the gypsy, and, like the gypsy, she seemed to be some eighteen years of age, but beyond these obvious features resemblance ceased. The girl who looked down from the window of the Inn was of a slenderer shape than the gypsy, of a more delicate complexion, of a grace and bearing that suggested different breeding and another race than that of the more exuberant Gitana. The girl at the window spoke in a clear, sweet voice to the singer: "I thought it must be you, Flora."
Flora called back to her: "Come down to me, Gabrielle."
The girl Gabrielle shook her head. "Henri does not wish me to go abroad while he is absent."
Flora made a little face. "Our friends do keep us prisoners. There is not a soul about."
Gabrielle smiled and consented. "I will come for a moment."
She withdrew from the window, and in a few minutes she appeared at the Inn door and joined her impatient friend. Flora kissed her affectionately, and asked, between kisses: "Are you not angry with Henri for keeping you thus caged?"
Gabrielle smiled an amused denial. "How could I be angry with Henri? He has good reasons for his deeds. We are in great danger. We have enemies."
Flora stared at her wild-eyed. "Who are your enemies?"
Gabrielle looked about her, as if to be assured that no one was within hearing, and then whispered into Flora’s ear: "Henri will never tell me, but they hunt us down. Ever since I was a child we have fled from place to place, hiding. I have often been roused at night by clash of swords and Henri’s voice, crying: ’I am here!’ But his sword is always the strongest, and we have always escaped."
"Surely you will be safe in Paris," Flora said.
Gabrielle sighed. "Why, it seems we dare not enter Paris yet. When we left Madrid in your company Henri told me we were journeying to Paris, but now we linger here outside the walls until Henri has seen some one—I know not who; and while we linger here I must keep in-doors."
Flora looked mischievous. "Perhaps Henri is jealous, and tells this tale to keep you to himself."
Gabrielle sighed again: "Henri only thinks of me as a child."
Flora still was mischievous. "But you know you are not his child, and I am sure you do not think of him as a father."
Gabrielle turned upon her friend with an air of dainty imperiousness. "Flora, Flora, you may be a witch, but there are some thoughts of mine you must not presume to read."
Flora laughed. "You command like a great lady. ’Must not,’ indeed, and ’presume’! Let me tell you, pretty Gabrielle, that I am the great lady here."
Gabrielle was instantly winning and tender again. "You are my sweet friend, and I did not mean to command you."
Flora laughed good-humoredly. "You should have seen your air of greatness. But I am speaking seriously. I believe I am the long-lost daughter of a great lord."
Gabrielle stared, amazed. "Really, Flora, really? Are you in earnest? Tell me all about it."
Flora looked like a gypsy sphinx. "Oh, but I may not. I should not have spoken of it at all, but I am so mad and merry at the good news that out it slipped."
Gabrielle softly patted her cheek. "I am glad of anything that makes you happy."
Flora tried to look magnificent. "Do not you envy me? Would not you like to be a great lady, too? I am afraid you look more like it than I do."
Gabrielle spoke again in a whisper: "I will tell you my secret in return for yours. So long as I can be by Henri’s side I envy no one—ask nothing better of fortune."
Flora smiled knowingly. "Do you call that a secret? I have known that ever since I first saw you look at him."
Gabrielle looked pained. "Am I so immodest a minion?"
Flora protested: "No, no. But your eyes are traitors and tell me tales."
"I must be wary," Gabrielle said, "that they tell no tales to—to others."
Flora shrugged her pretty shoulders. "Lovers are droll. A maid may love a man, and a man may love a maid, and neither know that the other is sick of the same pip, poor fowls."
"What do you mean, witch?" Gabrielle questioned.
Flora twirled a pirouette before she replied: "Nothing—less than nothing. I dance here by-and-by to please a grandee. Will you peep through your lattice?"
"Perhaps," Gabrielle answered, cautiously. Then she gave a little start. "Some one is coming," she said, and, indeed, some one was coming. A man had just mounted the bridge from the Neuilly road and stood there for an instant surveying the two girls. He was a modish young gentleman, very splendidly attired, who carried himself with a dainty insolence, and he now came slowly towards the girls with an amiable salutation.
"Exquisite ladies," he said, "I give you good-day."
At the sound of his voice and the sight of his figure Gabrielle had disappeared into the Inn as quickly as ever rabbit disappeared into its hole. Flora had no less nimbly run down to the caravan; but when she reached it she paused on the first step, attracted by the appearance of the handsomely dressed young gentleman, who appealed to her earnestly: "Why do you scatter so rashly? I should be delighted to talk with you."
Flora mocked him: "Perhaps we do not want to talk to you."
The new-comer would not admit the possibility. "Impossible," he protested. "Let me present myself. I am the Marquis de Chavernay. I am very diverting. I can make love to more ladies at the same time than any gentleman of my age at court."
Flora laughed. "Amiable accomplishment," she said, mockingly; but while she mocked her quick eyes were carefully noting every particular of the stranger’s appearance, from the exquisite laces at his throat and wrists to the jewels on his fingers, and finding all very much to her taste, and the appropriate adornments for a young gentleman of so gallant a carriage and so pleasantly impertinent a face. She had never cast her eyes upon any youth in Madrid that had captivated her fancy so mightily, and she thought to herself that when the time came for her to have a lover here was the very lover she would choose. And then she remembered, with a fluttering heart, that she was likely to become a great lady and the peer of this fascinating dandiprat. As for him, he returned her gaze with a bold stare of approval.
The Marquis de Chavernay agitated his dainty hands in delicate assurance. "Agreeable, believe me," he asserted; and then asked: "Why has your sister nymph retreated from the field? I could entertain the pair of you."
As Flora’s only answer to this assurance was a further, though perhaps not very earnest, effort to enter the caravan, he restrained her with appealing voice and gesture: "Please do not go."
Flora looked at him quizzically. "Why should I stay, pretty gentleman?"
The little marquis made her a bow. "Because you can do me a service, pretty lady. Is there an inn hereabouts at the sign of the Three Graces?"
Flora was curious. "Why do you want to know?"
The little marquis wore a mysterious look, as if all the political secrets of the period were shut in his heart or head, and he lowered his voice as he answered: "Because I am commissioned to ascertain its whereabouts for a friend."
Flora laughed, and pointed to the Inn into which Gabrielle had retreated. "You have not far to seek to oblige your friend," she said. "There it stands behind you."
Chavernay swung round on his heels, and surveyed the modest little hostelry with amusement. "The shelter of the fugitive nymph. Oh, now I understand my friend’s anxiety! Pretty child, my duty forces me to leave you when my inclination would fling me into your arms. If I may wait upon you later—"
This time Flora had evidently made up her mind that it would be indiscreet of her further to prolong the colloquy. She dipped him a courtesy, half mocking and half respectful, wished him good-day, and, diving into the caravan, slammed the door in his face. The little marquis seemed at first astonished at the austerity of the gypsy girl.
"Dido retires to her cave," he thought to himself. "Shall Æneas pursue?" He made for a moment as if to advance and force his company upon the seeming reluctant damsel. Then his volatile thoughts flickered back to the girl who had entered the Inn. "Methinks," he reflected, "I would as soon play Paris to yonder Helen. But I must not keep his Majesty waiting. No wonder he seeks the Inn of the Three Graces." For it was plain to the little gentleman that he had now discovered the reason why his august master and sovereign had done him the honor to select him as scout to find out the whereabouts of the unknown tavern.
XIV"I AM HERE!"
Pleased at the success of his mission, although disappointed at not having made further progress in the graces of the two girls whom he was pleased to regard as shepherdesses, he cast his eye first to the shut door of the caravan and then to the silent face of the tavern, and was about to rejoin his illustrious master with all speed when his attention was arrested by a singular figure advancing towards him from the Paris road. This person was tall and thin and bony, with a weakly amiable face fringed with flaxen hair, and timid eyes that blinked under pink eyelids. He was dressed in black clothes of an extreme shabbiness, and the only distinguishing feature of his appearance was a particularly long and formidable sword that flapped against his calves. The fellow was at once so fantastic and so ridiculous that Chavernay, whose sense of humor was always lively, regarded him with much curiosity and at the same time with affected dismay.
"Is this ogre," he wondered to himself, "one of the protecting giants who guard the fair nymphs of this place, or is he rather some cruel guardian appointed by the enchanter, who denies them intercourse with agreeable mankind?" Thus Chavernay mused, affecting the fancies of some fashionable romance; and then, finding that his attentions appeared strangely to embarrass the angular individual in black, he turned on his heels to make for the bridge, and again came to a halt, for on the bridge appeared another figure as grotesque as the first-comer, but grotesque in a wholly different manner.
This second stranger was as burly as the first was lean, and as gaudy in his apparel as the first was simple. The petals of the iris, the plumes of the peacock seemed to have been pillaged by him for the colors that made up his variegated wardrobe. A purple pourpoint, crimson breeches, an amber-colored cloak, and a huge hat with a blue feather set off a figure of extravagantly martial presence. Where the face of the first-comer was pale, insignificant, and timid, that of the second-comer was ruddy, assertive, and bold. The only point in common with his predecessor was that he, too, swung at his side a monstrous rapier. The sight of this whimsical stranger was too much for Chavernay’s self-restraint, and he burst into a hearty fit of laughter, which he made no effort to control.
"What a scarecrow!" he muttered, looking back at the individual in black. "What a gorgon!" he continued, as his eyes travelled to the man in motley. "Gog and Magog, by Heavens!" he commented, as he surveyed the astonishing pair.
Then, still laughing, he ran across the bridge and left the two objects of his mirth glaring after him in indignation. Indeed, so indignant were they, and so steadily did they keep their angry eyes fixed upon the retreating figure of the marquis, while each continued his original course of progression, that the two men, heedless of each other, ran into each other with an awkward thump that recalled to each of them the fact that there were other persons in the world as well as an impertinent gentleman with nimble heels. The man in black and the man in many colors each clapped a hand to a sword-hilt, only to withdraw it instantly and extend it in sign of amicable greeting.
"Passepoil!" cried the man in many colors.
"Cocardasse!" cried the man in black.
"To my arms, brother, to my arms!" cried Cocardasse, and in a moment the amazing pair were clasped in each other’s embrace.
"Is it really you?" said Cocardasse, when he thought the embrace had lasted long enough, holding Passepoil firmly by the shoulders and gazing fixedly into his pale, pathetic face.
Passepoil nodded. "Truly. What red star guides you to Paris?"
Cocardasse dropped his voice to a whisper. "I had a letter."
Passepoil whispered in reply: "So had I."
Cocardasse amplified: "My letter told me to be outside the Inn of the Three Graces, near Neuilly, on a certain day—this day—to serve the Prince of Gonzague."
Passepoil nodded again. "So did mine."
Cocardasse continued: "Mine enclosed a draft on the Bank of Marseilles to pay expenses."
Passepoil noted a point of difference: "Mine was on the Bank of Calais."
"I suppose Gonzague wants all that are left of us," Cocardasse said, thoughtfully.
Passepoil sighed significantly. "There aren’t many."
Cocardasse looked as gloomy as was possible for one of his rubicund countenance and jolly bearing. "Lagardere has kept his word."
"Staupitz was killed at Seville," Passepoil murmured, as one who begins a catalogue of disasters.
Cocardasse continued: "Faenza was killed at Burgos."
Passepoil went on: "Saldagno at Toledo."
Cocardasse took up the tale: "Pinto at Valladolid."
Passepoil concluded the catalogue: "Joel at Grenada, Pepe at Cordova."
"All with the same wound," Cocardasse commented, with a curious solemnity in his habitually jovial voice.
Passepoil added, lugubriously: "The thrust between the eyes."
Cocardasse summed up, significantly: "The thrust of Nevers."
The pair were silent for an instant, looking at each other with something like dismay upon their faces, and their minds were evidently busy with old days and old dangers.
Passepoil broke the silence. "They didn’t make much by their blood-money."
"Yes," said Cocardasse; "but we, who refused to hunt Lagardere, we are alive."
Passepoil cast a melancholy glance over his own dingy habiliments and then over the garments of Cocardasse, garments which, although glowing enough in color, were over-darned and over-patched to suggest opulence. "In a manner," he said, dryly.
Cocardasse drew himself up proudly and slapped his chest. "Poor but honest."
Passepoil allowed a faint smile, expressive of satisfaction, to steal over his melancholy countenance. "Thank Heaven, in Paris we can’t meet Lagardere."
Cocardasse appeared plainly to share the pleasure of his old friend. "An exile dare not return," he said, emphatically, with the air of a man who feels sure of himself and of his words. But it is the way of destiny very often, even when a man is surest of himself and surest of his words, to interpose some disturbing factor in his confident calculations, to make some unexpected move upon the chess-board of existence, which altogether baffles his plans and ruins his hopes. So many people had crossed the bridge that morning that it really seemed little less than probable that the appearance of a fresh pedestrian upon its arch could have any serious effect upon the satisfactory reflections of the two bravos. Yet at that moment a man did appear upon the bridge, who paused and surveyed Cocardasse and Passepoil, whose backs were towards him, with a significant smile.
The new-comer was humbly clad, very much in the fashion of one of those gypsies who had pitched their camp so close to the wayside tavern; but if the man’s clothes were something of the gypsy habit, he carried a sword under his ragged mantle, and it was plain from the man’s face that he was not a gypsy. His handsome, daring, humorous face, bronzed by many suns and lined a little by many experiences—a face that in its working mobility and calm inscrutability might possibly have been the countenance of a strolling player—was the face of a man still in the prime of life, and carrying his years as lightly as if he were still little more than a lad. He moved noiselessly from the bridge to the high-road, and came cautiously upon the swashbucklers at the very moment when Passepoil was saying, with a shiver: "I’m always afraid to hear Lagardere’s voice cry out Nevers’s motto."
Even on the instant the man in the gypsy habit pushed his way between the two bandits, laying a hand on each of their shoulders and saying three words: "I am here!"
Cocardasse and Passepoil fell apart, each with the same cry in the same amazed voice.
"Lagardere!" said Cocardasse, and his ruddy face paled.
"Lagardere!" said Passepoil, and his pale face flushed.
As for Lagardere, he laughed heartily at their confusion. "You are like scared children whose nurse hears bogey in the chimney."
Cocardasse strove to seem amused. "Children!" he said, with a forced laugh, and it was with a forced laugh that Passepoil repeated the word "Bogey."
For a moment the good-humor faded from the face of Lagardere, and he spoke grimly enough: "There were nine assassins in the moat at Caylus. How many are left now?"
"Only three," Cocardasse answered.
Passepoil was more precise. "Cocardasse and myself and Æsop."
Lagardere looked at them mockingly. "Doesn’t it strike you that Æsop will soon be alone?"
Cocardasse shuddered. "It’s no laughing matter."
Lagardere still continued to smile. "Vengeance sometimes wears a sprightly face and smiles while she strikes."
Passepoil was now a sickly green. "A very painful humor," he stammered.
There was an awkward pause, and then Cocardasse suddenly spoke in a decisive tone. "Captain, you have no right to kill us," he growled, and Passepoil, nodding his long head, repeated his companion’s phrase with Norman emphasis.
Lagardere looked from one to the other of the pair, and there was a twinkle in his eyes that reassured them. "Are you scared, old knaves? No explanations; let me speak. That night in Caylus, seventeen years ago, when the darkness quivered with swords, I did not meet your blades."
Cocardasse explained. "When you backed Nevers we took no part in the scuffle."
"Nor did we join in hunting you later," Passepoil added, hurriedly.
Lagardere’s face wore a look of satisfaction. "In all the tumult of that tragic night I thought I saw two figures standing apart—thought they might be, must be, my old friends. That is why I have sent for you."
"Sent for us?" Cocardasse echoed in astonishment.
"Was it you who—" Passepoil questioned, equally surprised.
"Why, of course it was," Lagardere answered. "Sit down and listen."
He led the way to the very table at which, such a short time before, Æsop had sat with Peyrolles. Now he and Cocardasse and Passepoil seated themselves, the two bravos side by side and still seemingly not a little perturbed, Lagardere opposite to them and studying them closely, resting his chin upon his hands.
"Ever since that night I have lived in Spain, hunted for a while by Gonzague’s gang, until, gradually, Gonzague’s gang ceased to exist."
"The thrust of Nevers," Cocardasse commented, quietly.
Lagardere smiled sadly. "Exactly. I had only one purpose in life—to avenge Nevers and to protect Nevers’s child. I abandoned my captaincy of irregulars when the late cardinal quarrelled with Spain. I did not like the late cardinal, but he was a Frenchman, and so was I. Since then I have lived as best I could, from hand to mouth, but always the child was safe, always the child was cared for, always the child was in some obscure hands that were kind and mild. Well, the child grew up, the beautiful child dawned into a beautiful girl, and still I kept her to myself, for I knew it was not safe to let Gonzague know that she lived. But the girl is a woman now; she is the age to inherit the territories of Nevers. The law will shield her from the treason of Gonzague. The king will protect the daughter of his friend."
The Norman shook his head, and the expression of his face was very dubious. "Gonzague is a powerful personage."
Cocardasse did not appear to be so much impressed by the power of Gonzague, but then it must be remembered that he came from Marseilles, while Passepoil arrived from Calais, which is more impressed by Paris. What the Gascon wanted to know was how his old friend and one-time enemy had contrived to appear so opportunely.
"How did you get here?" he asked.
Lagardere explained. "There was a gypsy lass in Madrid of whom by chance Gabrielle had made a friend. Poor girl, she could not have many friends. One day this girl told us that she and her tribe were going to Paris on some secret business of their own. Here was an opportunity for the exiles to return, unseen, to France. As gypsies, we travelled with the gypsies. I have been a strolling player, and as a strolling player I helped to pay my way. Before we left Madrid I wrote you those letters. As a result of all this delicate diplomacy, here I am, and here you are."
Cocardasse still was puzzled. "But our letters spoke of the service of Gonzague?"
Lagardere laughed as he answered the riddle. "Because, dear dullards, I want you to enter the service of Gonzague. If I return to France to right a wrong, I know the risk I run and the blessing of you two devils to help me."
Each of the two bravos extended his right hand. "Any help we can give," protested Cocardasse—"is yours," added Passepoil.
Lagardere clasped the extended hands confidently. "I take you at your words. Gonzague is at the fair yonder in attendance upon the king. You may get a chance to approach him. He can hardly refuse you his favor."
"Hardly," said Cocardasse, grimly, and—"hardly," echoed Passepoil, with a wry smile.
Lagardere rose to his feet. "Go now. I shall find means to let you know of my whereabouts and my purposes later. Till then—"
"Devotion!" cried Cocardasse.
"Discretion!" cried Passepoil, and each of the men saluted Lagardere with a military salute. Then the two bravos, linking arms, crossed the bridge together and made for the fair, conversing as they went of the wonderful chance that had brought Lagardere back to Paris and their own good-fortune in having been able to prove themselves innocent of complicity in the murder of Nevers.
When they were gone, Lagardere walked slowly up and down beneath the trees, reflecting deeply. He had gained one point in the desperate game he had set himself to play. He had found two adherents upon whose hands, whose hearts, and whose swords he could count with confidence, and he felt that he had succeeded, in a measure, in planting adherents of his own in the enemy’s camp. But he had another point in his desperate game to win that morning. He had written a letter, he had requested a favor, he had made an appointment. Immediately on arriving in the neighborhood of Paris he had caused a letter to be despatched to the king’s majesty—not to the king direct, indeed, but to the king’s private secretary, whom Lagardere knew by repute to be an honorable and loyal gentleman, who could be, as he believed, relied upon, if he credited the letter, to keep it as a secret between himself and his royal master. It was a bold hazard, although the letter was weighted with the talisman of a name that must needs recall an ancient friendship. Would that letter be answered? Would that favor be granted? Would that appointment be kept?
For some time Lagardere paced the grass thoughtfully; for some time—perhaps for a quarter of an hour—his solitude was undisturbed. At the end of that time he emerged from the shadow of the trees, and, standing at the foot of the bridge, surveyed the road that led to Neuilly. What he saw upon the road seemed to give him the greatest satisfaction. Three gentlemen were walking together in the direction of the Inn. One was a very dandy-like young gentleman, very foppishly habited, who seemed to skip through existence upon twinkling heels. Another was a stiff, soldierly looking man of more than middle age, whom Lagardere knew to be Captain Bonnivet, of the Royal Guards. The third, who was the first of the group, was a man who, though still in the early prime of life, looked as if he were fretted with the cares of many more years than were his lot. He was a slender personage, with a long, pale face. He was clad entirely in black, in emphasis of a mourning mind, and as he walked he coughed from time to time, and shivered and looked about him wistfully. But at the same time he seemed to affect a gay manner with his companions, as one that aired a determination to be entertained. It was seventeen years since Lagardere had seen the king, and he was saddened at the change that the years had made in him. He could only pray that those changing years had wrought no alteration in the affection of Louis of France for Louis of Nevers.