The Bourgeois Philibert, after an arduous day's work, was enjoying in his armchair a quiet siesta in the old comfortable parlor of his city home.
The sudden advent of peace had opened the seas to commerce, and a fleet of long-shut-up merchantmen were rapidly loading at the quays of the Friponne as well as at those of the Bourgeois, with the products of the Colony for shipment to France before the closing in of the St. Lawrence by ice. The summer of St. Martin was lingering soft and warm on the edge of winter, and every available man, including the soldiers of the garrison, were busy loading the ships to get them off in time to escape the hard nip of winter.
Dame Rochelle sat near the window, which to-day was open to the balmy air. She was occupied in knitting, and occasionally glancing at a volume of Jurieu's hard Calvinistic divinity, which lay upon the table beside her. Her spectacles reposed upon the open page, where she had laid them down while she meditated, as was her custom, upon knotty points of doctrine, touching free will, necessity, and election by grace; regarding works as a garment of filthy rags, in which publicans and sinners who trusted in them were damned, while in practice the good soul was as earnest in performing them as if she believed her salvation depended exclusively thereupon.
Dame Rochelle had received a new lease of life by the return home of Pierre Philibert. She grew radiant, almost gay, at the news of his betrothal to Amélie de Repentigny, and although she could not lay aside the black puritanical garb she had worn so many years, her kind face brightened from its habitual seriousness. The return of Pierre broke in upon her quiet routine of living like a prolonged festival. The preparation of the great house of Belmont for his young bride completed her happiness.
In her anxiety to discover the tastes and preferences of her young mistress, as she already called her, Dame Rochelle consulted Amélie on every point of her arrangements, finding her own innate sense of the beautiful quickened by contact with that fresh young nature. She was already drawn by that infallible attraction which every one felt in the presence of Amélie.
“Amélie was too good and too fair,” the dame said, “to become any man's portion but Pierre Philibert's!”
The dame's Huguenot prejudices melted like wax in her presence, until Amélie almost divided with Grande Marie, the saint of the Cevennes, the homage and blessing of Dame Rochelle.
Those were days of unalloyed delight which she spent in superintending the arrangements for the marriage which had been fixed for the festivities of Christmas.
It was to be celebrated on a scale worthy of the rank of the heiress of Repentigny and of the wealth of the Philiberts. The rich Bourgeois, in the gladness of his heart, threw open all his coffers, and blessed with tears of happiness the money he flung out with both hands to honor the nuptials of Pierre and Amélie.
The Bourgeois was profoundly happy during those few brief days of Indian summer. As a Christian, he rejoiced that the long desolating war was over. As a colonist, he felt a pride that, unequal as had been the struggle, New France remained unshorn of territory, and by its resolute defence had forced respect from even its enemies. In his eager hope he saw commerce revive, and the arts and comforts of peace take the place of war and destruction. The husbandman would now reap for himself the harvest he had sown, and no longer be crushed by the exactions of the Friponne!
There was hope for the country. The iniquitous régime of the Intendant, which had pleaded the war as its justification, must close, the Bourgeois thought, under the new conditions of peace. The hateful monopoly of the Grand Company must be overthrown by the constitutional action of the Honnêtes Gens, and its condemnation by the Parliament of Paris, to which an appeal would presently be carried, it was hoped, would be secured.
The King was quarreling with the Jesuits. The Molinists were hated by La Pompadour, and he was certain His Majesty would never hold a lit de justice to command the registration of the decrees issued in his name by the Intendant of New France after they had been in form condemned by the Parliament of Paris.
The Bourgeois still reclined very still on his easy chair. He was not asleep. In the daytime he never slept. His thoughts, like the dame's, reverted to Pierre. He meditated the repurchase of his ancestral home in Normandy and the restoration of its ancient honors for his son.
Personal and political enmity might prevent the reversal of his own unjust condemnation, but Pierre had won renown in the recent campaigns. He was favored with the friendship of many of the noblest personages in France, who would support his suit for the restoration of his family honors, while the all-potent influence of money, the open sesame of every door in the palace of Versailles, would not be spared to advance his just claims.
The crown of the Bourgeois's ambition would be to see Pierre restored to his ancestral château as the Count de Philibert, and Amélie as its noble châtelaine, dispensing happiness among the faithful old servitors and vassals of his family, who in all these long years of his exile never forgot their brave old seigneur who had been banished to New France.
His reflections took a practical turn, and he enumerated in his mind the friends he could count upon in France to support, and the enemies who were sure to oppose the attainment of this great object of his ambition. But the purchase of the château and lands of Philibert was in his power. Its present possessor, a needy courtier, was deeply in debt, and would be glad, the Bourgeois had ascertained, to sell the estates for such a price as he could easily offer him.
To sue for simple justice in the restoration of his inheritance would be useless. It would involve a life-long litigation. The Bourgeois preferred buying it back at whatever price, so that he could make a gift of it at once to his son, and he had already instructed his bankers in Paris to pay the price asked by its owner and forward to him the deeds, which he was ambitious to present to Pierre and Amélie on the day of their marriage.
The Bourgeois at last looked up from his reverie. Dame Rochelle closed her book, waiting for her master's commands.
“Has Pierre returned, dame?” asked he.
“No, master; he bade me say he was going to accompany Mademoiselle Amélie to Lorette.”
“Ah! Amélie had a vow to Our Lady of St. Foye, and Pierre, I warrant, desired to pay half the debt! What think you, dame, of your godson? Is he not promising?” The Bourgeois laughed quietly, as was his wont sometimes.
Dame Rochelle sat a shade more upright in her chair. “Pierre is worthy of Amélie and Amélie of him,” replied she, gravely; “never were two out of heaven more fitly matched. If they make vows to the Lady of St. Foye they will pay them as religiously as if they had made them to the Most High, to whom we are commanded to pay our vows!”
“Well, Dame, some turn to the east and some to the west to pay their vows, but the holiest shrine is where true love is, and there alone the oracle speaks in response to young hearts. Amélie, sweet, modest flower that she is, pays her vows to Our Lady of St. Foye, Pierre his to Amélie! I will be bound, dame, there is no saint in the calendar so holy in his eyes as herself!”
“Nor deserves to be, master! Theirs is no ordinary affection. If love be the fulfilling of the law, all law is fulfilled in these two, for never did the elements of happiness mingle more sweetly in the soul of a man and a woman than in Pierre and Amélie!”
“It will restore your youth, dame, to live with Pierre and Amélie,” replied the Bourgeois. “Amélie insists on it, not because of Pierre, she says, but for your own sake. She was moved to tears one day, dame, when she made me relate your story.”
Dame Rochelle put on her spectacles to cover her eyes, which were fast filling, as she glanced down on the black robe she wore, remembering for whom she wore it.
“Thanks, master. It would be a blessed thing to end the remaining days of my mourning in the house of Pierre and Amélie, but my quiet mood suits better the house of my master, who has also had his heart saddened by a long, long day of darkness and regret.”
“Yes, dame, but a bright sunset, I trust, awaits it now. The descending shadow of the dial goes back a pace on the fortunes of my house! I hope to welcome my few remaining years with a gayer aspect and a lighter heart than I have felt since we were driven from France. What would you say to see us all reunited once more in our old Norman home?”
The dame gave a great start, and clasped her thin hands.
“What would I say, master? Oh, to return to France, and be buried in the green valley of the Côte d'Or by the side of him, were next to rising in the resurrection of the just at the last day.”
The Bourgeois knew well whom she meant by “him.” He reverenced her feeling, but continued the topic of a return to France.
“Well, dame, I will do for Pierre what I would not do for myself. I shall repurchase the old château, and use every influence at my command to prevail on the King to restore to Pierre the honors of his ancestors. Will not that be a glorious end to the career of the Bourgeois Philibert?”
“Yes, master, but it may not end there for you. I hear from my quiet window many things spoken in the street below. Men love you so, and need you so, that they will not spare any supplication to bid you stay in the Colony; and you will stay and die where you have lived so many years, under the shadow of the Golden Dog. Some men hate you, too, because you love justice and stand up for the right. I have a request to make, dear master.”
“What is that, dame?” asked he kindly, prepared to grant any request of hers.
“Do not go to the market to-morrow,” replied she earnestly.
The Bourgeois glanced sharply at the dame, who continued to ply her needles. Her eyes were half closed in a semi-trance, their lids trembling with nervous excitement. One of her moods, rare of late, was upon her, and she continued:
“Oh, my dear master! you will never go to France; but Pierre shall inherit the honors of the house of Philibert!”
The Bourgeois looked up contentedly. He respected, without putting entire faith in Dame Rochelle's inspirations. “I shall be resigned,” he said, “not to see France again, if the King's Majesty makes it a condition that he restore to Pierre the dignity, while I give him back the domain of his fathers.”
Dame Rochelle clasped her hands hard together and sighed. She spake not, but her lips moved in prayer as if deprecating some danger, or combating some presentiment of evil.
The Bourgeois watched her narrowly. Her moods of devout contemplation sometimes perplexed his clear worldly wisdom. He could scarcely believe that her intuitions were other than the natural result of a wonderfully sensitive and apprehensive nature; still, in his experience he had found that her fancies, if not supernatural, were not unworthy of regard as the sublimation of reason by intellectual processes of which the possessor was unconscious.
“You again see trouble in store for me, dame,” said he smiling; “but a merchant of New France setting at defiance the decrees of the Royal Intendant, an exile seeking from the King the restoration of the lordship of Philibert, may well have trouble on his hands.”
“Yes, master, but as yet I only see trouble like a misty cloud which as yet has neither form nor color of its own, but only reflects red rays as of a setting sun. No voice from its midst tells me its meaning; I thank God for that. I like not to anticipate evil that may not be averted!”
“Whom does it touch, Pierre or Amélie, me, or all of us?” asked the Bourgeois.
“All of us, master? How could any misfortune do other than concern us all? What it means, I know not. It is now like the wheel seen by the Prophet, full of eyes within and without, like God's providence looking for his elect.”
“And finding them?”
“Not yet, master, but ere long,—finding all ere long,” replied she in a dreamy manner. “But go not to the market to-morrow.”
“These are strange fancies of yours, Dame Rochelle. Why caution me against the market to-morrow? It is the day of St. Martin; the poor will expect me; if I go not, many will return empty away.”
“They are not wholly fancies, master. Two gentlemen of the Palace passed to-day, and looking up at the tablet, one wagered the other on the battle to-morrow between Cerberus and the Golden Dog. I have not forgotten wholly my early lessons in classical lore,” added the dame.
“Nor I, dame. I comprehend the allusion, but it will not keep me from the market! I will be watchful, however, for I know that the malice of my enemies is at this time greater than ever before.”
“Let Pierre go with you, and you will be safe,” said the dame half imploringly.
The Bourgeois laughed at the suggestion and began good-humoredly to rally her on her curious gift and on the inconvenience of having a prophetess in his house to anticipate the evil day.
Dame Rochelle would not say more. She knew that to express her fears more distinctly would only harden the resolution of the Bourgeois. His natural courage would make him court the special danger he ought to avoid.
“Master,” said she, suddenly casting her eyes in the street, “there rides past one of the gentlemen who wagered on the battle between Cerberus and the Golden Dog.”
The Bourgeois had sufficient curiosity to look out. He recognized the Chevalier de Pean, and tranquilly resumed his seat with the remark that “that was truly one of the heads of Cerberus which guards the Friponne, a fellow who wore the collar of the Intendant and was worthy of it. The Golden Dog had nothing to fear from him.”
Dame Rochelle, full of her own thoughts, followed with her eyes the retreating figure of the Chevalier de Pean, whom she lost sight of at the first turn, as he rode rapidly to the house of Angélique des Meloises. Since the fatal eve of St. Michael, Angélique had been tossing in a sea of conflicting emotions, sometimes brightened by a wild hope of the Intendant, sometimes darkened with fear of the discovery of her dealings with La Corriveau.
It was in vain she tried every artifice of female blandishment and cunning to discover what was really in the heart and mind of Bigot. She had sounded his soul to try if he entertained a suspicion of herself, but its depth was beyond her power to reach its bottomless darkness, and to the last she could not resolve whether he suspected her or not of complicity with the death of the unfortunate Caroline.
She never ceased to curse La Corriveau for that felon stroke of her mad stiletto which changed what might have passed for a simple death by heartbreak into a foul assassination.
The Intendant she knew must be well aware that Caroline had been murdered; but he had never named it or given the least token of consciousness that such a crime had been committed in his house.
It was in vain that she repeated, with a steadiness of face which sometimes imposed even on Bigot, her request for a lettre de cachet, or urged the banishment of her rival, until the Intendant one day, with a look which for a moment annihilated her, told her that her rival had gone from Beaumanoir and would never trouble her any more.
What did he mean? Angélique had noted every change of muscle, every curve of lip and eyelash as he spake, and she felt more puzzled than before.
She replied, however, with the assurance she could so well assume, “Thanks, Bigot; I did not speak from jealousy. I only asked for justice and the fulfilment of your promise to send her away.”
“But I did not send her away. She has gone away, I know not whither,—gone, do you mind me, Angélique? I would give half my possessions to know who helped her to ESCAPE—yes, that is the word—from Beaumanoir.”
Angélique had expected a burst of passion from Bigot; she had prepared herself for it by diligent rehearsal of how she would demean herself under every possible form of charge, from bare innuendo to direct impeachment of herself.
Keenly as Bigot watched Angélique, he could detect no sign of confusion in her. She trembled in her heart, but her lips wore their old practised smile. Her eyes opened widely, looking surprise, not guilt, as she shook him by the sleeve or coquettishly pulled his hair, asking if he thought that “she had stolen away his lady-love!”
Bigot though only half deceived, tried to persuade himself of her innocence, and left her after an hour's dalliance with the half belief that she did not really merit the grave suspicions he had entertained of her.
Angélique feared, however, that he was only acting a part. What part? It was still a mystery to her, and likely to be; she had but one criterion to discover his real thoughts. The offer of his hand in marriage was the only test she relied upon to prove her acquittal in the mind of Bigot of all complicity with the death of Caroline.
But Bigot was far from making the desired offer of his hand. That terrible night in the secret chamber of Beaumanoir was not absent from his mind an hour. It could never be forgotten, least of all in the company of Angélique, whom he was judging incessantly, either convicting or acquitting her in his mind as he was alternately impressed by her well-acted innocent gaiety or stung by a sudden perception of her power of deceit and unrivalled assurance.
So they went on from day to day, fencing like two adepts in the art of dissimulation, Bigot never glancing at the murder, and speaking of Caroline as gone away to parts unknown, but, as Angélique observed with bitterness, never making that a reason for pressing his suit; while she, assuming the rôle of innocence and ignorance of all that had happened at Beaumanoir, put on an appearance of satisfaction, or pretending still to fits of jealousy, grew fonder in her demeanor and acted as though she assumed as a matter of course that Bigot would now fulfill her hopes of speedily making her his bride.
The Intendant had come and gone every day, unchanged in his manner, full of spirits and gallantry, and as warm in his admiration as before; but her womanly instinct told her there was something hidden under that gay exterior.
Bigot accepted every challenge of flirtation, and ought to have declared himself twenty times over, but he did not. He seemed to bring himself to the brink of an avowal only to break into her confidence and surprise the secret she kept so desperately concealed.
Angélique met craft by craft, duplicity by duplicity, but it began to be clear to herself that she had met with her match, and although the Intendant grew more pressing as a lover, she had daily less hope of winning him as a husband.
The thought was maddening. Such a result admitted of a twofold meaning: either he suspected her of the death of Caroline, or her charms, which had never failed before with any man, failed now to entangle the one man she had resolved to marry.
She cursed him in her heart while she flattered him with her tongue, but by no art she was mistress of, neither by fondness nor by coyness, could she extract the declaration she regarded as her due and was indignant at not receiving. She had fairly earned it by her great crime. She had still more fully earned it, she thought, by her condescensions. She regarded Providence as unjust in withholding her reward, and for punishing as a sin that which for her sake ought to be considered a virtue.
She often reflected with regretful looking back upon the joy which Le Gardeur de Repentigny would have manifested over the least of the favors which she had lavished in vain upon the inscrutable Intendant. At such moments she cursed her evil star, which had led her astray to listen to the promptings of ambition and to ask fatal counsel of La Corriveau.
Le Gardeur was now in the swift downward road of destruction. This was the one thing that caused Angélique a human pang. She might yet fail in all her ambitious prospects, and have to fall back upon her first love,—when even that would be too late to save Le Gardeur or to save her.
De Pean rode fast up the Rue St. Louis, not unobservant of the dark looks of the Honnêtes Gens or the familiar nods and knowing smiles of the partisans of the Friponne whom he met on the way.
Before the door of the mansion of the Chevalier des Meloises he saw a valet of the Intendant holding his master's horse, and at the broad window, half hid behind the thick curtains, sat Bigot and Angélique engaged in badinage and mutual deceiving, as De Pean well knew.
Her silvery laugh struck his ear as he drew up. He cursed them both; but fear of the Intendant, and a due regard to his own interests, two feelings never absent from the Chevalier De Pean, caused him to ride on, not stopping as he had intended.
He would ride to the end of the Grande Allée and return. By that time the Intendant would be gone, and she would be at liberty to receive his invitation for a ride to-morrow, when they would visit the Cathedral and the market.
De Pean knew enough of the ways of Angélique to see that she aimed at the hand of the Intendant. She had slighted and vilipended himself even, while accepting his gifts and gallantries. But with a true appreciation of her character, he had faith in the ultimate power of money, which represented to her, as to most women, position, dress, jewels, stately houses, carriages, and above all, the envy and jealousy of her own sex.
These things De Pean had wagered on the head of Angélique against the wild love of Le Gardeur, the empty admiration of Bigot, and the flatteries of the troop of idle gentlemen who dawdled around her.
He felt confident that in the end victory would be his, and the fair Angélique would one day lay her hand in his as the wife of Hugues de Pean.
De Pean knew that in her heart she had no love for the Intendant, and the Intendant no respect for her. Moreover, Bigot would not venture to marry the Queen of Sheba without the sanction of his jealous patroness at Court. He might possess a hundred mistresses if he liked, and be congratulated on his bonnes fortunes, but not one wife, under the penalty of losing the favor of La Pompadour, who had chosen a future wife for him out of the crowd of intriguantes who fluttered round her, basking like butterflies in the sunshine of her semi-regal splendor.
Bigot had passed a wild night at the Palace among the partners of the Grand Company, who had met to curse the peace and drink a speedy renewal of the war. Before sitting down to their debauch, however, they had discussed, with more regard to their peculiar interests than to the principles of the Decalogue, the condition and prospects of the Company.
The prospect was so little encouraging to the associates that they were glad when the Intendant bade them cheer up and remember that all was not lost that was in danger. “Philibert would yet undergo the fate of Actaeon, and be torn in pieces by his own dog.” Bigot, as he said this, glanced from Le Gardeur to De Pean, with a look and a smile which caused Cadet, who knew its meaning, to shrug his shoulders and inquire of De Pean privately, “Is the trap set?”
“It is set!” replied De Pean in a whisper. “It will spring to-morrow and catch our game, I hope.”
“You must have a crowd and a row, mind! this thing, to be safe, must be done openly,” whispered Cadet in reply.
“We will have both a crowd and a row, never fear! The new preacher of the Jesuits, who is fresh from Italy and knows nothing about our plot, is to inveigh in the market against the Jansenists and the Honnêtes Gens. If that does not make both a crowd and a row, I do not know what will.”
“You are a deep devil, De Pean! So deep that I doubt you will cheat yourself yet,” answered Cadet gruffly.
“Never fear, Cadet! To-morrow night shall see the Palace gay with illumination, and the Golden Dog in darkness and despair.”
Le Gardeur was too drunk to catch the full drift of the Intendant's reference to the Bourgeois under the metaphor of Actaeon torn in pieces by his own dog. He only comprehended enough to know that something was intended to the disparagement of the Philiberts, and firing up at the idea, swore loudly that “neither the Intendant nor all the Grand Company in mass should harm a hair of the Bourgeois's head!”
“It is the dog!” exclaimed De Pean, “which the Company will hang, not his master, nor your friend his son, nor your friend's friend the old Huguenot witch! We will let them hang themselves when their time comes; but it is the Golden Dog we mean to hang at present, Le Gardeur!”
“Yes! I see!” replied Le Gardeur, looking very hazy. “Hang the Golden Dog as much as you will, but as to the man that touches his master, I say he will have to fight ME, that is all.” Le Gardeur, after one or two vain attempts, succeeded in drawing his sword, and laid it upon the table.
“Do you see that, De Pean? That is the sword of a gentleman, and I will run it through the heart of any man who says he will hurt a hair of the head of Pierre Philibert, or the Bourgeois, or even the old Huguenot witch, as you call Dame Rochelle, who is a lady, and too good to be either your mother, aunt, or cater cousin, in any way, De Pean!”
“By St. Picot! You have mistaken your man, De Pean!” whispered Cadet. “Why the deuce did you pitch upon Le Gardeur to carry out your bright idea?”
“I pitched upon him because he is the best man for our turn. But I am right. You will see I am right. Le Gardeur is the pink of morality when he is sober. He would kill the devil when he is half drunk, but when wholly drunk he would storm paradise, and sack and slay like a German ritter. He would kill his own grandfather. I have not erred in choosing him.”
Bigot watched this by-play with intense interest. He saw that Le Gardeur was a two-edged weapon just as likely to cut his friends as his enemies, unless skilfully held in hand, and blinded as to when and whom he should strike.
“Come, Le Gardeur, put up your sword!” exclaimed Bigot, coaxingly; “we have better game to bring down to-night than the Golden Dog. Hark! They are coming! Open wide the doors, and let the blessed peacemakers enter!”
“The peacemakers!” ejaculated Cadet; “the cause of every quarrel among men since the creation of the world! What made you send for the women, Bigot?”
“Oh, not to say their prayers, you may be sure, old misogynist, but this being a gala-night at the Palace, the girls and fiddlers were ordered up by De Pean, and we will see you dance fandangoes with them until morning, Cadet.”
“No you won't! Damn the women! I wish you had kept them away, that is all. It spoils my fun, Bigot!”
“But it helps the Company's! Here they come!”
Their appearance at the door caused a hubbub of excitement among the gentlemen, who hurried forward to salute a dozen or more women dressed in the extreme of fashion, who came forward with plentiful lack of modesty, and a superabundance of gaiety and laughter.
Le Gardeur and Cadet did not rise like the rest, but kept their seats. Cadet swore that De Pean had spoiled a jolly evening by inviting the women to the Palace.
These women had been invited by De Pean to give zest to the wild orgie that was intended to prepare Le Gardeur for their plot of to-morrow, which was to compass the fall of the Bourgeois. They sat down with the gentlemen, listening with peals of laughter to their coarse jests, and tempting them to wilder follies. They drank, they sang, they danced and conducted, or misconducted, themselves in such a thoroughly shameless fashion that Bigot, Varin, and other experts of the Court swore that the petits appartements of Versailles, or even the royal fêtes of the Parc aux cerfs, could not surpass the high life and jollity of the Palace of the Intendant.
In that wild fashion Bigot had passed the night previous to his present visit to Angélique. The Chevalier de Pean rode the length of the Grande Allée and returned. The valet and horse of the Intendant were still waiting at the door, and De Pean saw Bigot and Angélique still seated at the window engaged in a lively conversation, and not apparently noticing his presence in the street as he sat pulling hairs out of the mane of his horse, “with the air of a man in love,” as Angélique laughingly remarked to Bigot.
Her quick eye, which nothing could escape, had seen De Pean the first time he passed the house. She knew that he had come to visit her, and seeing the horse of the Intendant at the door, had forborne to enter,—that would not have been the way with Le Gardeur, she thought. He would have entered all the readier had even the Dauphin held her in conversation.
Angélique was woman enough to like best the bold gallant who carries the female heart by storm and puts the parleying garrison of denial to the sword, as the Sabine women admired the spirit of their Roman captors and became the most faithful of wives.
De Pean, clever and unprincipled, was a menial in his soul, as cringing to his superiors as he was arrogant to those below him.
“Fellow!” said he to Bigot's groom, “how long has the Intendant been here?”
“All the afternoon, Chevalier,” replied the man, respectfully uncovering his head.
“Hum! and have they sat at the window all the time?”
“I have no eyes to watch my master,” replied the groom; “I do not know.”
“Oh!” was the reply of De Pean, as he suddenly reflected that it were best for himself also not to be seen watching his master too closely. He uttered a spurt of ill humor, and continued pulling the mane of his horse through his fingers.
“The Chevalier de Pean is practising patience to-day, Bigot,” said she; “and you give him enough time to exercise it.”
“You wish me gone, Angélique!” said he, rising; “the Chevalier de Pean is naturally waxing impatient, and you too!”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed she; “he shall wait as long as I please to keep him there.”
“Or as long as I stay. He is an accommodating lover, and will make an equally accommodating husband for his wife's friend some day!” remarked Bigot laughingly.
Angélique's eyes flashed out fire, but she little knew how true a word Bigot had spoken in jest. She could have choked him for mentioning her in connection with De Pean, but remembering she was now at his mercy, it was necessary to cheat and cozen this man by trying to please him.
“Well, if you must go, you must, Chevalier! Let me tie that string,” continued she, approaching him in her easy manner. The knot of his cravat was loose. Bigot glanced admiringly at her slightly flushed cheek and dainty fingers as she tied the loose ends of his rich steinkirk together.
“'Tis like love,” said she, laughingly; “a slip-knot that looks tied until it is tried.”
She glanced at Bigot, expecting him to thank her, which he did with a simple word. The thought of Caroline flashed over his mind like lightning at that moment. She, too, as they walked on the shore of the Bay of Minas had once tied the string of his cravat, when for the first time he read in her flushed cheek and trembling fingers that she loved him. Bigot, hardy as he was and reckless, refrained from touching the hand or even looking at Angélique at this moment.
With the quick perception of her sex she felt it, and drew back a step, not knowing but the next moment might overwhelm her with an accusation. But Bigot was not sure, and he dared not hint to Angélique more than he had done.
“Thanks for tying the knot, Angélique,” said he at length. “It is a hard knot, mine, is it not, both to tie and to untie?”
She looked at him, not pretending to understand any meaning he might attach to his words. “Yes, it is a hard knot to tie, yours, Bigot, and you do not seem particularly to thank me for my service. Have you discovered the hidden place of your fair fugitive yet?” She said this just as he turned to depart. It was the feminine postscript to their interview.
Bigot's avoidance of any allusion to the death of Caroline was a terrible mark of suspicion; less in reality, however, than it seemed.
Bigot, although suspicious, could find no clue to the real perpetrators of the murder. He knew it had not been Angélique herself in person. He had never heard her speak of La Corriveau. Not the smallest ray of light penetrated the dark mystery.
“I do not believe she has left Beaumanoir, Bigot,” continued Angélique; “or if she has, you know her hiding-place. Will you swear on my book of hours that you know not where she is to be found?”
He looked fixedly at Angélique for a moment, trying to read her thoughts, but she had rehearsed her part too often and too well to look pale or confused. She felt her eyebrow twitch, but she pressed it with her fingers, believing Bigot did not observe it, but he did.
“I will swear and curse both, if you wish it, Angélique,” replied he. “Which shall it be?”
“Well, do both,—swear at me and curse the day that I banished Le Gardeur de Repentigny for your sake, François Bigot! If the lady be gone, where is your promise?”
Bigot burst into a wild laugh, as was his wont when hard-pressed. He had not, to be sure, made any definite promise to Angélique, but he had flattered her with hopes of marriage never intended to be realized.
“I keep my promises to ladies as if I had sworn by St. Dorothy,” replied he.
“But your promise to me, Bigot! Will you keep it, or do worse?” asked she, impatiently.
“Keep it or do worse! What mean you, Angélique?” He looked up in genuine surprise. This was not the usual tone of women towards him.
“I mean that nothing will be better for François Bigot than to keep his promise, nor worse than to break it, to Angélique des Meloises!” replied she, with a stamp of her foot, as was her manner when excited.
She thought it safe to use an implied threat, which at any rate might reach the thought that lay under his heart like a centipede under a stone which some chance foot turns over.
But Bigot minded not the implied threat. He was immovable in the direction she wished him to move. He understood her allusion, but would not appear to understand it, lest worse than she meant should come of it.
“Forgive me, Angélique!” said he, with a sudden change from frigidity to fondness. “I am not unmindful of my promises; there is nothing better to myself than to keep them, nothing worse than to break them. Beaumanoir is now without reproach, and you can visit it without fear of aught but the ghosts in the gallery.”
Angélique feared no ghosts, but she did fear that the Intendant's words implied a suggestion of one which might haunt it for the future, if there were any truth in tales.
“How can you warrant that, Bigot?” asked she dubiously.
“Because Pierre Philibert and La Corne St. Luc have been with the King's warrant and searched the château from crypt to attic, without finding a trace of your rival.”
“What, Chevalier, searched the Château of the Intendant?”
“Par bleu! yes, I insisted upon their doing so; not, however, till they had gone through the Castle of St. Louis. They apologized to me for finding nothing. What did they expect to find, think you?”
“The lady, to be sure! Oh, Bigot,” continued she, tapping him with her fan, “if they would send a commission of women to search for her, the secret could not remain hid.”
“No, truly, Angélique! If you were on such a commission to search for the secret of her.”
“Well, Bigot, I would never betray it, if I knew it,” answered she, promptly.
“You swear to that, Angélique?” asked he, looking full in her eyes, which did not flinch under his gaze.
“Yes; on my book of hours, as you did!” said she.
“Well, there is my hand upon it, Angélique. I have no secret to tell respecting her. She has gone, I cannot tell WHITHER.”
Angélique gave him her hand on the lie. She knew he was playing with her, as she with him, a game of mutual deception, which both knew to be such. And yet they must, circumstanced as they were, play it out to the end, which end, she hoped, would be her marriage with this arch-deceiver. A breach of their alliance was as dangerous as it would be unprofitable to both.
Bigot rose to depart with an air of gay regret at leaving the company of Angélique to make room for De Pean, “who,” he said, “would pull every hair out of his horse's mane if he waited much longer.”
“Your visit is no pleasure to you, Bigot,” said she, looking hard at him. “You are discontented with me, and would rather go than stay!”
“Well, Angélique, I am a dissatisfied man to-day. The mysterious disappearance of that girl from Beaumanoir is the cause of my discontent. The defiant boldness of the Bourgeois Philibert is another. I have heard to-day that the Bourgeois has chartered every ship that is to sail to France during the remainder of the autumn. These things are provoking enough, but they drive me for consolation to you. But for you I should shut myself up in Beaumanoir, and let every thing go helter-skelter to the devil.”
“You only flatter me and do not mean it!” said she, as he took her hand with an over-empressement as perceptible to her as was his occasional coldness.
“By all the saints! I mean it,” said he. But he did not deceive her. His professions were not all true, but how far they were true was a question that again and again tormented her, and set her bosom palpitating as he left her room with his usual courteous salute.
“He suspects me! He more than suspects me!” said she to herself as Bigot passed out of the mansion and mounted his horse to ride off. “He would speak out plainer if he dared avow that that woman was in truth the missing Caroline de St. Castin!” thought she with savage bitterness.
“I have a bit in your mouth there, François Bigot, that will forever hold you in check. That missing demoiselle, no one knows as you do where she is. I would give away every jewel I own to know what you did with the pretty piece of mortality left on your hands by La Corriveau.”
Thus soliloquized Angélique for a few moments, looking gloomy and beautiful as Medea, when the step of De Pean sounded up the broad stair.
With a sudden transformation, as if touched by a magic wand, Angélique sprang forward, all smiles and fascinations to greet his entrance.
The Chevalier de Pean had long made distant and timid pretensions to her favor, but he had been overborne by a dozen rivals. He was incapable of love in any honest sense; but he had immense vanity. He had been barely noticed among the crowd of Angélique's admirers. “He was only food for powder,” she had laughingly remarked upon one occasion, when a duel on her account seemed to be impending between De Pean and the young Captain de Tours; and beyond doubt Angélique would have been far prouder of him shot for her sake in a duel than she was of his living attentions.
She was not sorry, however, that he came in to-day after the departure of the Intendant. It kept her from her own thoughts, which were bitter enough when alone. Moreover, she never tired of any amount of homage and admiration, come from what quarter it would.
De Pean stayed long with Angélique. How far he opened the details of the plot to create a riot in the market-place that afternoon can only be conjectured by the fact of her agreeing to ride out at the hour designated, which she warmly consented to do as soon as De Pean informed her that Le Gardeur would be there and might be expected to have a hand in the tumult raised against the Golden Dog. The conference over, Angélique speedily dismissed De Pean. She was in no mood for flirtation with him. Her mind was taken up with the possibility of danger to Le Gardeur in this plot, which she saw clearly was the work of others, and not of himself, although he was expected to be a chief actor in it.