“By my faith, you may thank God every night of your worthless life that I came so opportunely to Toulouse, and so may that fair child whose beauty you have limned with such a lover’s ardour. Nay, never redden, Marcel. What? At your age, and with such a heavy score of affaires to your credit, has it been left for a simple Languedoc maiden to call a blush to your callous cheek? Ma foi, they say truly that love is a great regenerator, a great rejuvenator!”
I made him no answer other than a sigh, for his words set me thinking, and with thought came a tempering of the gay humour that had pervaded me. Remarking this, and misreading it, he laughed outright.
“There, Marcel, never fear. We will not be rigorous. You have won both the maid and the wager, and, by the Mass, you shall enjoy both.”
“Helas, Sire,” I sighed again, “when the lady comes to know of the wager–”
“Waste no time in telling her, Marcel, and cast yourself upon her mercy. Nay, go not with so gloomy a face, my friend. When woman loves, she can be very merciful; leastways, they tell me so.”
Then, his thoughts shifting ground once more, he grew stern again.
“But first we have Chatellerault to deal with. What shall we do with him?”
“It is for Your Majesty to decide.”
“For me?” he cried, his voice resuming the harshness that was never far from it. “I have a fancy for having gentlemen about me. Think you I will set eyes again upon that dastard? I am already resolved concerning him, but it entered my mind that it might please you to be the instrument of the law for me.”
“Me, Sire?”
“Aye, and why not? They say you can play a very deadly sword upon necessity. This is an occasion that demands an exception from our edict. You have my sanction to send the Comte de Chatellerault a challenge. And see that you kill him, Bardelys!” he continued viciously. “For, by the Mass, if you don’t, I will! If he escapes your sword, or if he survives such hurt as you may do him, the headsman shall have him. Mordieu! is it for nothing that I am called Louis the Just?”
I stood in thought for a moment. Then–
“If I do this thing, Sire,” I ventured, “the world will say of me that I did so to escape the payment I had incurred.”
“Fool, you have not incurred it. When a man cheats, does he not forfeit all his rights?”
“That is very true. But the world–”
“Peste!” he snapped impatiently, “you are beginning to weary me, Marcel – and all the world does that so excellently that it needs not your collaboration. Go your ways, man, and do as you elect. But take my sanction to slay this fellow Chatellerault, and I shall be the better pleased if you avail yourself of it. He is lodged at the Auberge Royale, where probably you will find him at present. Now, go. I have more justice to dispense in this rebellious province.”
I paused a moment.
“Shall I not resume my duties near Your Majesty?”
He pondered a moment, then he smiled in his weary way.
“It would please me to have you, for these creatures are so dismally dull, all of them. Je m’ennuie tellement, Marcel!” he sighed. “Ough! But, no, my friend, I do not doubt you would be as dull as any of them at present. A man in love is the weariest and most futile thing in all this weary, futile world. What shall I do with your body what time your soul is at Lavedan? I doubt me you are in haste to get you there. So go, Marcel. Get you wed, and live out your amorous intoxication; marriage is the best antidote. When that is done, return to me.”
“That will be never, Sire,” I answered slyly.
“Say you so, Master Cupid Bardelys?” And he combed his beard reflectively. “Be not too sure. There have been other passions – aye, as great as yours – yet have they staled. But you waste my time. Go, Marcel; you are excused your duties by me for as long as your own affairs shall hold you elsewhere – for as long as you please. We are here upon a gloomy business – as you know. There are my cousin Montmorency and the others to be dealt with, and we are holding no levees, countenancing no revels. But come to me when you will, and I will see you. Adieu!”
I murmured my thanks, and very deep and sincere were they. Then, having kissed his hand, I left him.
Louis XIII is a man who lacks not maligners. Of how history may come to speak of him it is not mine to hazard. But this I can say, that I, at least, did never find him other than a just and kindly master, an upright gentleman, capricious at times and wilful, as must inevitably be the case with such spoilt children of fortune as are princes, but of lofty ideals and high principles. It was his worst fault that he was always tired, and through that everlasting weariness he came to entrust the determining of most affairs to His Eminence. Hence has it resulted that the censure for many questionable acts of his reign, which were the work of my Lord Cardinal, has recoiled upon my august master’s head.
But to me, with all the faults that may be assigned him, he was ever Louis the Just, and wherever his name be mentioned in my hearing, I bare my head.
CHAPTER XIV EAVESDROPPING
I turned it over in my mind, after I had left the King’s presence, whether or not I should visit with my own hands upon Chatellerault the punishment he had so fully earned. That I would have gone about the task rejoicing you may readily imagine; but there was that accursed wager, and – to restrain me – the thought of how such an action might be construed into an evasion of its consequences. Better a thousand times that His Majesty should order his arrest and deal with him for his attempted perversion of justice to the service of his own vile ends. The charge of having abused his trust as King’s commissioner to the extent of seeking to do murder through the channels of the Tribunal was one that could not fail to have fatal results for him – as, indeed, the King had sworn.
That was the position of affairs as it concerned Chatellerault, the world, and me. But the position must also be considered as it concerned Roxalanne, and deeply, indeed, did I so consider it. Much pondering brought me again to the conclusion that until I had made the only atonement in my power, the only atonement that would leave me with clean hands, I must not again approach her.
Whether Chatellerault had cheated or not could not affect the question as it concerned Mademoiselle and me. If I paid the wager –whether in honour bound to do so or not – I might then go to her, impoverished, it is true, but at least with no suspicion attaching to my suit of any ulterior object other than that of winning Roxalanne herself.
I could then make confession, and surely the fact that I had paid where clearly there was no longer any need to pay must earn me forgiveness and afford proof of the sincerity of my passion.
Upon such a course, then, did I decide, and, with this end in view, I took my way towards the Auberge Royale, where His Majesty had told me that the Count was lodged. It was my purpose to show myself fully aware of the treacherous and unworthy part he had played at the very inception of the affair, and that if I chose to consider the wager lost it was that I might the more honestly win the lady.
Upon inquiring at the hostelry for Monsieur de Chatellerault I was informed by the servant I addressed that he was within, but that at the moment he had a visitor. I replied that I would wait, and demanded a private room, since I desired to avoid meeting any Court acquaintances who might chance into the auberge before I had seen the Count.
My apparel at the moment may not have been all that could have been desired, but when a gentleman’s rearing has taken place amid an army of servitors to minister to his every wish, he is likely to have acquired an air that is wont to win him obedience. With all celerity was I ushered into a small chamber, opening on the one side upon the common room, and being divided on the other by the thinnest of wooden partitions from the adjoining apartment.
Here, the landlord having left me, I disposed myself to wait, and here I did a thing I would not have believed myself capable of doing, a thing I cannot think of without blushing to this very day. In short, I played the eavesdropper – I, Marcel Saint-Pol de Bardelys. Yet, if you who read and are nice-minded, shudder at this confession, or, worse still, shrug your shoulders in contempt, with the reflection that such former conduct of mine as I have avowed had already partly disposed you against surprise at this I do but ask that you measure my sin by my temptation, and think honestly whether in my position you might not yourselves have fallen. Aye – be you never so noble and high-principled – I make bold to say that you had done no less, for the voice that penetrated to my ears was that of Roxalanne de Lavedan.