Such amusement as I felt was tempered by apprehension. I shot a swift glance at Chatellerault to mark how he took this pleasantry and this pledging of the lady whom the King had sent him to woo, but whom he had failed to win. He had risen with the others at La Fosse’s bidding, either unsuspicious or else deeming suspicion too flimsy a thing by which to steer conduct. Yet at the mention of her name a scowl darkened his ponderous countenance. He set down his glass with such sudden force that its slender stem was snapped and a red stream of wine streaked the white tablecloth and spread around a silver flowerbowl. The sight of that stain recalled him to himself and to the manners he had allowed himself for a moment to forget.
“Bardelys, a thousand apologies for my clumsiness,” he muttered.
“Spilt wine,” I laughed, “is a good omen.”
And for once I accepted that belief, since but for the shedding of that wine and its sudden effect upon him, it is likely we had witnessed a shedding of blood. Thus, was the ill-timed pleasantry of my feather-brained La Fosse tided over in comparative safety. But the topic being raised was not so easily abandoned. Mademoiselle de Lavedan grew to be openly discussed, and even the Count’s courtship of her came to be hinted at, at first vaguely, then pointedly, with a lack of delicacy for which I can but blame the wine with which these gentlemen had made a salad of their senses. In growing alarm I watched the Count. But he showed no further sign of irritation. He sat and listened as though no jot concerned. There were moments when he even smiled at some lively sally, and at last he went so far as to join in that merry combat of wits, and defend himself from their attacks, which were made with a good-humour that but thinly veiled the dislike he was held in and the satisfaction that was culled from his late discomfiture.
For a while I hung back and took no share in the banter that was toward. But in the end – lured perhaps by the spirit in which I have shown that Chatellerault accepted it, and lulled by the wine which in common with my guests I may have abused – I came to utter words but for which this story never had been written.
“Chatellerault,” I laughed, “abandon these defensive subterfuges; confess that you are but uttering excuses, and acknowledge that you have conducted this affair with a clumsiness unpardonable in one equipped with your advantages of courtly rearing.”
A flush overspread his face, the first sign of anger since he had spilled his wine.
“Your successes, Bardelys, render you vain, and of vanity is presumption born,” he replied contemptuously.
“See!” I cried, appealing to the company. “Observe how he seeks to evade replying! Nay, but you shall confess your clumsiness.”
“A clumsiness,” murmured La Fosse drowsily, “as signal as that which attended Pan’s wooing of the Queen of Lydia.”
“I have no clumsiness to confess,” he answered hotly, raising his voice. “It is a fine thing to sit here in Paris, among the languid, dull, and nerveless beauties of the Court, whose favours are easily won because they look on dalliance as the best pastime offered them, and are eager for such opportunities of it as you fleering coxcombs will afford them. But this Mademoiselle de Lavedan is of a vastly different mettle. She is a woman; not a doll. She is flesh and blood; not sawdust, powder, and vermilion. She has a heart and a will; not a spirit corrupted by vanity and licence.”
La Fosse burst into a laugh.
“Hark! O, hark!” he cried, “to the apostle of the chaste!”
“Saint Gris!” exclaimed another. “This good Chatellerault has lost both heart and head to her.”
Chatellerault glanced at the speaker with an eye in which anger smouldered.
“You have said it,” I agreed. “He has fallen her victim, and so his vanity translates her into a compound of perfections. Does such a woman as you have described exist, Comte? Bah! In a lover’s mind, perhaps, or in the pages of some crack-brained poet’s fancies; but nowhere else in this dull world of ours.”
He made a gesture of impatience.
“You have been clumsy, Chatellerault,” I insisted.
“You have lacked address. The woman does not live that is not to be won by any man who sets his mind to do it, if only he be of her station and have the means to maintain her in it or raise her to a better. A woman’s love, sir, is a tree whose root is vanity. Your attentions flatter her, and predispose her to capitulate. Then, if you but wisely choose your time to deliver the attack, and do so with the necessary adroitness – nor is overmuch demanded – the battle is won with ease, and she surrenders. Believe me, Chatellerault, I am a younger man than you by full five years, yet in experience I am a generation older, and I talk of what I know.”
He sneered heavily. “If to have begun your career of dalliance at the age of eighteen with an amour that resulted in a scandal be your title to experience, I agree,” said he. “But for the rest, Bardelys, for all your fine talk of conquering women, believe me when I tell you that in all your life you have never met a woman, for I deny the claim of these Court creatures to that title. If you would know a woman, go to Lavedan, Monsieur le Marquis. If you would have your army of amorous wiles suffer a defeat at last, go employ it against the citadel of Roxalanne de Lavedan’s heart. If you would be humbled in your pride, betake yourself to Lavedan.”
“A challenge!” roared a dozen voices. “A challenge, Bardelys!”
“Mais voyons,” I deprecated, with a laugh, “would you have me journey into Languedoc and play at wooing this embodiment of all the marvels of womanhood for the sake of making good my argument? Of your charity, gentlemen, insist no further.”
“The never-failing excuse of the boaster,” sneered Chatellerault, “when desired to make good his boast.”
“Monsieur conceives that I have made a boast?” quoth I, keeping my temper.
“Your words suggested one – else I do not know the meaning of words. They suggested that where I have failed you could succeed, if you had a mind to try. I have challenged you, Bardelys. I challenge you again. Go about this wooing as you will; dazzle the lady with your wealth and your magnificence, with your servants, your horses, your equipages; and all the splendours you can command; yet I make bold to say that not a year of your scented attentions and most insidious wiles will bear you fruit. Are you sufficiently challenged?”
“But this is rank frenzy!” I protested. “Why should I undertake this thing?”
“To prove me wrong,” he taunted me. “To prove me clumsy. Come, Bardelys, what of your spirit?”
“I confess I would do much to afford you the proof you ask. But to take a wife! Pardi! That is much indeed!”
“Bah!” he sneered. “You do well to draw back You are wise to avoid discomfiture. This lady is not for you. When she is won, it will be by some bold and gallant gentleman, and by no mincing squire of dames, no courtly coxcomb, no fop of the Luxembourg, be his experiences of dalliance never so vast.”
“Po’ Cap de Dieu!” growled Cazalet, who was a Gascon captain in the Guards, and who swore strange, southern oaths. “Up, Bardelys! Afoot! Prove your boldness and your gallantry, or be forever shamed; a squire of dames, a courtly coxcomb, a fop of the Luxembourg! Mordemondieu! I have given a man a bellyful of steel for the half of those titles!”
“I heeded him little, and as little the other noisy babblers, who now on their feet – those that could stand – were spurring me excitedly to accept the challenge, until from being one of the baiters it seemed that of a sudden the tables were turned and I was become the baited. I sat in thought, revolving the business in my mind, and frankly liking it but little. Doubts of the issue, were I to undertake it, I had none.
My views of the other sex were neither more nor less than my words to the Count had been calculated to convey. It may be – I know now that it was that the women I had known fitted Chatellerault’s description, and were not over-difficult to win. Hence, such successes as I had had with them in such comedies of love as I had been engaged upon had given me a false impression. But such at least was not my opinion that night. I was satisfied that Chatellerault talked wildly, and that no such woman lived as he depicted. Cynical and soured you may account me. Such I know I was accounted in Paris; a man satiated with all that wealth and youth and the King’s favour could give him; stripped of illusions, of faith and of zest, the very magnificence – so envied – of my existence affording me more disgust than satisfaction. Since already I had gauged its shallows.