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                           THE DUKE'S MOTTO

                             A MELODRAMA

                                  BY
                        JUSTIN HUNTLY McCARTHY

                              AUTHOR OF
           "SERAPHICA" "IF I WERE KING" "THE PROUD PRINCE"
                              ETC. ETC.

                         NEW YORK AND LONDON
                     HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
                               MCMVIII

                              NOVELS BY
                        JUSTIN HUNTLY McCARTHY

          THE GORGEOUS BORGIA.  Post 8vo              $1.50
          SERAPHICA.  Post 8vo                         1.50
          THE DUKE'S MOTTO.  Post 8vo                  1.50
          IF I WERE KING.  Illustrated.  Post 8vo      1.50
          MARJORIE.  Illustrated.  Post 8vo            1.50
          THE DRYAD.  Post 8vo                         1.50
          THE LADY OF LOYALTY HOUSE.  Post 8vo         1.50
          THE PROUD PRINCE.  Post 8vo                  1.50
          THE FLOWER OF FRANCE.  Post 8vo              1.50
          THE ILLUSTRIOUS O'HAGAN.  Post 8vo           1.50
          NEEDLES AND PINS. Illustrated.  Post 8vo     1.50

                 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, N. Y.

                       Published August, 1908.

                               DÉDICACE

                          A VICTORIEN SARDOU

MAÎTRE,

Voilà un mélodrame que j'ai fait, le dernier de plusieurs mélodrames
anglais qui ont Lagardère pour héros. Des mots remplacent l'action, des
mots remplacent le décor, les costumes, et les accessoires; mais enfin ce
pastiche n'est qu'une pièce et non un roman. Je l'ai fait pour Lewis
Waller, acteur romantique s'il en fut, et grandement doué des qualités
qui appartiennent par tradition à Lagardère. J'ai su, il y a longtemps,
grâce à M. Jules Claretie, que vous étiez le vrai createur de ce paladin,
Lagardère, pair de d'Artagnan, pair de Cyrano, pair presque de Roland et
d'Olivier. Et si je ne l'avais pas su, j'aurais pu l'apprendre
dernièrement en lisant ce livre aussi plein de charme que d'érudition,
"Les Anciens Théâtres de Paris" de M. Georges Cain. Mais je crois que
cette vérité est connue de peu de monde dans les pays où se parle la
langue anglaise, que quand on loue "Le Bossu" de Féval on doit aussi
louer "Le Bossu" de Sardou.

XIV-I.-MCMVIII.

                               CONTENTS

       I.  THE SEVEN DEVILS                     1
      II.  THE THRUST OF NEVERS                13
     III.  A BUYER OF BLADES                   32
      IV.  THE LITTLE PARISIAN                 48
       V.  THE PARRY TO THE THRUST OF NEVERS   62
      VI.  THE MOAT OF CAYLUS                  73
     VII.  BROTHERS-IN-ARMS                    82
    VIII.  THE FIGHT IN THE MOAT               91
      IX.  THE SCYTHE OF TIME                 100
       X.  A VILLAGE FAIR                     108
      XI.  ÆSOP REDUX                         114
     XII.  FLORA                              124
    XIII.  CONFIDENCES                        132
     XIV.  "I AM HERE!"                       139
      XV.  THE KING'S WORD                    152
     XVI.  SHADOWS                            159
    XVII.  IN THE GARDEN                      172
   XVIII.  THE FACTION OF GONZAGUE            185
     XIX.  THE HALL OF THE THREE LOUIS        198
      XX.  A CONFIDENTIAL AGENT               209
     XXI.  THE PRINCESS DE GONZAGUE           219
    XXII.  THE FAMILY COUNCIL                 225
   XXIII.  THE KING'S BALL                    237
    XXIV.  THE ROSE-COLORED DOMINO            247
     XXV.  THE GLOVE OF COCARDASSE            257
    XXVI.  THE REWARD OF ÆSOP                 266
   XXVII.  ÆSOP IN LOVE                       278
  XXVIII.  THE SIGNATURE OF ÆSOP              290
    XXIX.  THE DEAD SPEAKS                    298

THE SEVEN DEVILS

It was very warm in the inn room, but it was so much warmer outside, in
the waning flames of the late September evening, that the dark room
seemed veritably cool to those who escaped into its shelter from the
fading sunlight outside. A window was open to let in what little air was
stirring, and from that window a spectator with a good head might look
down a sheer drop of more than thirty feet into the moat of the Castle of
Caylus. The Inn of the Seven Devils was perched on the lip of one rock,
and Caylus Castle on the lip of another. Between the two lay the gorge,
which had been partially utilized to form the moat of the castle, and
which continued its way towards the Spanish mountains. Beyond the castle
a bridge spanned the ravine, carrying on the road towards the frontier.
The moat itself was dry now, for war and Caylus had long been
disassociated, and France was, for the moment, at peace with her
neighbor, if at peace with few other powers. A young thirteenth Louis, a
son of the great fourth Henri, now sat upon the throne of France, and
seemingly believed himself to be the ruler of his kingdom, though a newly
made Cardinal de Richelieu held a different opinion, and acted according
to his conviction with great pertinacity and skill.

Inside the Inn of the Seven Devils, on this heavy day of early autumn,
seven men were sitting. It was an odd chance, and the men had joked about
it heavily--there was one man for each devil of the Inn's name. Six of
these men were grouped about a table furnished with flagons and beakers,
and were doing their best to alleviate the external heat by copious
draughts of the rough but not unkindly native wine which Martine, the
plain-faced maid of the Inn, dispensed generously enough from a ruddy
earthenware pitcher. A stranger entering the room would, at the first
glance, have taken the six men seated around the table for soldiers, for
all were stalwart fellows, with broad bodies and long limbs, bronzed
faces and swaggering carriage, and behind them where they sat six great
rapiers dangled from nails in the wall, rapiers which the revellers had
removed from their sides for their greater ease and comfort. But if the
suppositious stranger were led to study the men a little more closely, he
would be tempted to correct his first impression. The swaggering carriage
of the men lacked something of the stiffness inevitably to be associated
with military training in the days when the levies of the Sun-King were
held, or at least held themselves to be, the finest troops in Europe, a
cheerful opinion which no amount of military misfortune could dissipate.

Each of the drinkers of the inn had his own individuality of swagger, his
truculent independence of mien, which suggested a man by no means
habitually used either to receive commands or to render unquestioning
obedience. Each of the men resembled his fellows in a certain flamboyant
air of ferocity, but no one of them resembled the others by wearing that
air of harmonious training with other men which links together a company
of seasoned soldiers. With their long cloaks and their large hats and
their high boots, with their somewhat shabby garments stained with age
and sweat and wine, in many places patched and in many places tattered,
with their tangled locks and ragged mustachios, the revellers had on
closer study more the appearance of brigands, or at least of guerillas,
than of regular troops. As a matter of fact, they were neither soldiers
nor brigands, though their way of life endowed them with some of the
virtues of the soldier and most of the vices of the brigand.

There was not a man in that room who lacked courage of the fiercest kind;
there was but one man in the room with intelligence enough to appreciate
the possibility of an existence uncoupled with the possession of courage
of the fiercest kind. There was not a man in the room who had the
slightest fear of death, save in so far as death meant the cessation of
those privileges of eating grossly, drinking grossly, and loving grossly,
which every man of the jack-rascals prized not a little. There was not a
man in the room that was not prepared to serve the person, whoever he
might be, who had bought his sword to strike and his body to be stricken,
so long as the buyer and the bought had agreed upon the price, and so
long as the man who carried the sword felt confident that the man who
dandled the purse meant to meet his bargain.

These were the soldierly virtues. But, further, there was not a man in
the room who would have felt the smallest compunction in cutting any
man's throat if he had full pockets, or shaming any woman's honor if she
had good looks. These were their brigand's vices. Fearless in their
conduct, filthy in their lives, the assembled rogues were as ugly a bunch
of brutalities as ever sprawled in a brothel, brawled in a tavern, or
crawled from some dark corner to cut down their unsuspicious prey.

The six fellows that sat around the wine-stained, knife-notched table of
the Inn of the Seven Devils had little in them to interest a serious
student of humanity, if such a one had chanced, for his misfortune, to
find his way to that wicked wine-house on that wicked evening. There were
differences of nationality among the half-dozen; that was plain enough
from their features and from their speech, for though they all talked, or
thought they talked, in French, each man did his speaking with an accent
that betrayed his nativity. As the babbling voices rose and fell in
alternations of argument that was almost quarrel, narrative that was
sometimes diverting, and ribaldry that was never wit, it would seem as if
the ruffianism of half Europe had called a conference in that squalid,
horrible little inn. Guttural German notes mixed whimsically with
sibilant Spanish and flowing Portuguese. Cracked Biscayan--which no
Spaniard will allow to be Spanish--jarred upon the suavity of Italian
accents, and through the din the heavy steadiness of a Breton voice could
be heard asserting itself. Though every man spoke in French, for the
purposes of the common parliament, each man swore in his own tongue; and
they all swore briskly and crisply, with a seemingly inexhaustible
vocabulary of blasphemy and obscenity, so that the foul air of that inn
parlor was rendered fouler still by the volley of oaths--German, Spanish,
Italian, Portuguese, Biscayan, and Breton--that were fired into its
steaming, stinking atmosphere. So much for the six men that sat at the
table.

The seventh man in the room, although he was of the same fellowship, was
curiously unlike his fellows. While the others were burly, well-set-up
fellows, who held their heads high enough and thrust out their chests
valiantly and sprawled their strong limbs at ease, the seventh man was a
hunchback, short of stature and slender of figure, with a countenance
whose quiet malignity contrasted decisively with the patent brutality of
his comrades. The difference between the one and the others was
accentuated even in dress, for, while the swashbucklers at the table
loved to bedizen themselves with an amount of ferocious finery, and
showed in their sordid garments a quantity of color that likened them to
a bunch of faded wild flowers, the hunchback was clad soberly in black
that was well-worn, indeed, and grizzled at the seams, but neatly
attended. He sat in the window, reading intently in a little volume, and,
again unlike his associates, while he read he nursed between his knees a
long and formidable rapier. Those at the table paid him no heed; most of
them knew his ways, and he, on his side, seemed to be quite undisturbed
in his studies by the noise and clamor of the drinking-party, and to be
entirely absorbed in the delights of literature.

But if the hunchback student was quite content to let his companions be,
and to find his pleasures in scholarship of a kind, it came about that
one of his companions, in a misguided moment, found himself less content
to leave the hunchback student undisturbed. It was the one of the company
that knew least about him--Pinto the Biscayan, newest recruit in that
huddle of ruffians, and therefore the less inclined than his fellows to
let a sleeping dog lie. He had been drinking deeply, for your Biscayans
are potent topers, and in the course of his cups he discovered that it
irritated him to see that quiet, silent figure perched there in the
window with its wry body as still as if it had been snipped out of
cardboard, with its comical long nose poked over a book, with its
colorless puckered lips moving, as if the reader muttered to himself the
meaning of what he read, and tasted an unclean pleasure in so doing. So
Pinto pulled himself to his feet, steadied himself with the aid of the
table edge, and then, with a noiseless dexterity that showed the
practised assassin, whose talent it is to pad in shadows, he crossed the
room and came up behind the hunchback before the hunchback was, or seemed
to be, aware of his neighborhood.

"What are you reading?" he hiccoughed. "Let us have a peep at it." And
before the hunchback could make an answer Pinto had picked the book
quickly from the hunchback's fingers and held it to his own face to see
what it told about.

Now it would have profited Biscayan Pinto very little if he had been
given time to study the volume, at least so far as its text was
concerned, for the little book was a manuscript copy of the _Luxurious
Sonnets_ of that Pietro Aretino whom men, or rather some men, once called
"The Divine." The book was illustrated as well, not unskilfully, with
sketches that professed to be illuminative of the text in the manner of
Giulio Romano. These might have pleased the Biscayan, for if he had no
Italian, and could, therefore, make nothing of the voluptuousness of the
Scourge of Princes, he could, at least, see as well as another savage the
meaning of a lewd image. But the privilege was denied him. Scarcely had
he got the book in his fingers when it was plucked from them again, and
thereafter, while with his left hand the hunchback slipped the booklet
into the breast of his doublet, with his right hand he dealt Pinto such a
buffet on the side of his head as sent him reeling across the floor, to
bring up with a dull thud at the table against the backs of his nearest
companions.

Instantly all was tumult. Pinto, black with anger, screamed Biscayan
maledictions and struggled to get at his sword where it hung against the
wall, while his comrades, clinging to him and impeding him, were trying
in every variety of bad French to dissuade him from a purpose which they
were well enough aware must needs end disastrously for him. For they all
knew, what the raw Biscayan did not know, how strong was the arm and how
terrible the sword of the hunchback whose studies Pinto had so rudely and
so foolishly interrupted. As for the hunchback himself, he stood quietly
by his chair, with his hands resting on the pommel of his rapier, and a
disagreeable smile twisting new hints of malignity into features that
were malign enough in repose. Now it may be that the sight of that
frightful smile had its effect in cooling the hot blood of the Biscayan,
for, indeed, the hunchback, as he stood there, so quietly alert, so
demoniacally watchful, seemed the most terrible antagonist he had ever
challenged. At least, in a little while the Biscayan, drinking in swiftly
the warnings of his companions, consented to be pacified, consented even
to be apologetic on a whispered hint, that was also a whispered threat,
from his leader, that there should be no brawling among friends.

"It was only a joke, comrade," he said, sullenly, and flung himself
heavily into his empty seat. The hunchback nodded grimly.

"I like a joke as well as any man," he said, "and can make one myself if
occasion serve."

Therewith he seated himself anew, and, pulling the book from his bosom,
resumed his reading and his silent mouthing, while something of a gloom
brooded over his fellows at the table. It was to dissipate this gloom
that presently the man who sat at the head of the table, a bald and
red-faced fellow who looked a German, and who seemed to exercise some
kind of headship over the others, pushed back his chair a little from the
board and glanced half anxiously and half angrily towards the inn door.
Then he thumped his red fist upon the wood till the flagons clattered and
rattled.

"Why don't the late dogs come to heel?" he grumbled, speaking with a
strong Teutonic accent. "It is long past the hour, and I like
punctuality."

A Spaniard at his right hand, swarthy, not ill-looking, whom his friends
called Pepe el Matador, grinned into the German's face.

"Will not this string of swords serve the turn?" he said, and pointed
with a dirty, well-shaped hand to the six long rapiers that hung against
the wall behind them.

The Italian, Faenza, began to laugh a little, quiet, teasing laugh; the
sullen Biscayan, Pinto, patted el Matador on the back; Joel de Jurgan the
Breton, stared stolidly; and Saldagno the Portuguese, refreshed himself
with a drink. Encouraged by what he conceived to be the sympathy of his
comrades, Pepe renewed the attack. "Come, Staupitz, come," he questioned,
"are not those swords long enough and sharp enough to scare the devil?"

Staupitz struck the table again. "No, no, my children," he said, "not for
this job. Monsieur Peyrolles told me to bring nine of my babies, and nine
we must be, and nine we should be at this moment if our truants were at
hand."

At this moment Saldagno set down his beaker. "I hear footsteps," he said.
In the momentary silence which followed this remark, all present could
hear distinctly enough the tramp of feet outside, and in another instant
the door was flung open and the two men whom Staupitz had been expecting
so impatiently made their appearance.

If the contrast had been marked between the six men who sat at the table
and the seventh man who sat apart, the contrast that existed between the
two new-comers was still more striking. The first to enter was a big,
jovial, red-faced, black-haired man with a huge mustache and a manner
that suggested an ebullient admiration of himself and an ebullient
appreciation of all possible pleasures. He was habited much like his
predecessors, in that he was booted, cloaked, hatted, and sworded as they
were booted, cloaked, hatted, and sworded, but everything with him,
owing, it may be, to his flagrant Gascon nationality, tended to an
extravagance of exaggeration that made him seem almost like a caricature
of the others. His hat was bigger, his cloak more voluminous, his boots
more assertive, his sword longer, his taste for colors at once more
pronounced and more gaudy. If the others might be likened in their
coloring to faded wild flowers, this man seemed to blaze like some
monstrous exotic. He was a swashbuckler whom Callot would have loved to
paint.

While he entered the room with his air of splendid assurance that
suggested that the Inn belonged to him, and greeted those that awaited
him with such a nod as a monarch might accord to his vassals, he was
followed by one that showed in almost every particular his opposite. This
one, that represented an extreme of Norman character as his ally
represented an extreme of Gascon character, this one that seemed to
shelter timidly behind the effulgence of his companion, was a lean,
lanky, pallid fellow, clad wholly in black of a rustier and shabbier kind
than that worn by the reader in the window. From beneath his dingy black
felt hat thin wisps of flaxen hair flowed ridiculously enough about his
scraggy neck. While his Gascon comrade entered the room with the manner
of one who carries all before him, the Norman seemed to creep, or rather
to slink, in with lack-lustre eyes peering apologetically about him
through lowered pink eyelids, while his twitching fingers appeared to
protest apologetically for his intrusion into a society so far above his
deserts. But if in almost every particular he was the opposite to his
friend, in one particular, however, he resembled him, for a long rapier
hung from his side and slapped against his lean calves.

In a further regard, moreover, the two new-comers, however different they
might seem in build of body and in habit of apparel, resembled each other
more closely than they resembled any of the earlier occupants of the Inn
room. There are castes in rascality as in all other trades, classes,
professions, and mysteries, honorable or dishonorable, and this latest
pair of knaves belonged patently to the more amiable caste of
ruffianism--a higher or a lower caste, as you may be pleased to look at
it. In the bold eyes of the gaudily clad Gascon, as in the uneasy eyes of
the sable-coated Norman, there was a quality of candor which might be
sought for in vain among the rogues that greeted them. Certainly neither
the Gascon nor the Norman would have seemed reassuring figures to a timid
traveller on a lonely road, and yet there was, as it were, a kind of
gentility in their composition which would have been obvious to a reader
of men, and would have approved them as, in their way and of their race,
trustworthy. Here, the reader of men would say, are a brace of assassins
who hold a sort of honor in their hearts, who would never skulk in a
corner to stab an enemy in the back, nor wrong a wretched woman who
plainly was unwilling to be wronged--a brace of heroes. And the reader of
men would for once in a way, have been in the right.

II

THE THRUST OF NEVERS

At the sight of the two men, the ruffians at the table set up a roar of
welcome and bumped their mugs lustily upon the board to a chorus of
greeting, in which the names of Cocardasse and Passepoil were repeated in
a variety of accents from German to Italian, from Portuguese to Biscayan,
from Spanish to Breton, but in all cases with the same degree of
enthusiasm and admiration. The big, gaudy fellow, patently pleased by the
tribute, struck a magnificent attitude and extended a benedictory hand
towards the drinkers. "Courage, chanticleers!" he shouted--"comrades
all," and, advancing towards the table, gave Staupitz a lusty slap on the
back, while Passepoil, following nervously behind him, whispered beneath
his breath and behind his lifted hand a timid "Greeting, gentlemen,"
which was hardly audible in the buzz of voices. But while Cocardasse was
busy engaging clasps of the hand with the men of many nationalities who
had been waiting for him, the attention of Passepoil was entirely
diverted by the appearance of the Inn maid, Martine, who at that moment
appeared upon the scene with a fresh pitcher of wine in honor of the
fresh arrivals. The lean and pale man blushed and sighed as he saw her.
Those in the room that knew the Norman were well aware that love of woman
was his weakness, and they paid no heed to his attempted philandering,
taking it, so far as they thought of it at all, as a matter of course and
honest Passepoil's way.

Though Martine was as little comely as need be, she was still a woman,
and a woman Passepoil had never seen before, and, sidling towards her, he
endeavored to enter into amicable conversation, which was received but
indifferently well. By this time Cocardasse had finished his greetings,
and, drawing back a step or two, surveyed the company with a look of
satisfaction not unmingled with astonishment.

"Why, Papa Staupitz," he said, "here we have many friends and all fine
blades. This is indeed a pleasure party." His eyes travelled from the
table to the window, where the man in black still sat and read quite
unconcernedly. Something like surprise puckered Cocardasse's rubicund
face. "You here, Æsop?" he questioned.

The man whom he called Æsop looked up for a moment from his book and
shrugged his shoulders. "Devil knows why!" he said. "If they want me,
they don't want the others. If they want the others, they don't want
me."

His remarks were interrupted by a slight scuffle between Passepoil and
Martine. Passepoil had so far conquered his natural timidity as to go to
the length of soliciting a kiss from the Inn maid. She had successfully
repulsed him with a slap on each of his cheeks, and had slipped from the
room. While Passepoil was rubbing his face ruefully, Æsop went on,
sardonically:

"What do you think of it, friend Cocardasse? Here we are, nine of us,
nine picked swordsmen, and we are going to fight one man."

Cocardasse had returned to the table and filled himself a monstrous
measure of wine. He was thirsty, an habitual state with him, and he eyed
the rough wine lovingly.

"Who is the giant who is going to fight nine of us?" he asked as he
lifted his cup from the board.

Passepoil, who, enjoying like his comrade an abiding drought, had
followed his example, hoping to find consolation in wine for the
disappointments of love, also expressed his surprise.

"Every man of us can fight three men at a time," he whispered, timidly,
and he, too, lifted his glass.

"Who is the man, anyhow?" said Cocardasse, cheerfully, making the wine
swing in the vessel; and Staupitz answered him, slowly:

"Louis, Duke of Nevers."

The effect of this simple speech upon the new-comers was exceedingly
remarkable. Cocardasse seemed suddenly to forget his thirst, for he set
down his untasted mug upon the table. Passepoil did the like. "Oh!" said
Cocardasse, solemnly. "Ah!" said Passepoil, gloomily.

For a few appreciable seconds of strained excitement to those that
watched them the pair remained rigid, staring at their rejected
wine-cups, as if the liquor they contained had some monstrous Medusa-like
property of stiffening into stone all those that presumed to drink of it.
Then the Gascon, slowly turning his head, gazed steadfastly at the
Norman; and the Norman, slowly turning his head, gazed steadfastly at the
Gascon, and then the pair, so gazing, both wagged their polls very
solemnly indeed, and puckered their eyebrows and betrayed many other very
visible signs of dissatisfaction, not to say of discomfort. Then
Cocardasse muttered to his comrade the words "Louis de Nevers," as if
they were not at all to his liking, and Passepoil, in his turn, repeated
the words, as if they were not at all to his liking, and then they both
sighed and grunted and were silent.

The look of stupefaction, not to say consternation, on the faces of the
new arrivals was patent to every man in the room--most patent and most
unpalatable to the leader of the gang. Staupitz thrust his red, Teutonic
face forward with a mocking look and a mocking voice as he grunted:
"Seems to me you don't relish the job."

Cocardasse nodded at him with perfect affability, and patted his shoulder
with a massive, red hand. "Papa Staupitz," he said, good-humoredly, "you
read me like a book."

"In the largest print," added Passepoil, who generally supplemented any
remark of his comrade with some approving comment of his own.

Staupitz swung round in his chair, upsetting a tankard in his angry
movement, as he glared, all rage, at the strangely assorted pair. "Are
you afraid?" he asked, with guttural contempt.

Cocardasse grinned and showed his large, dog-like teeth. "I am not afraid
of you, Papa Staupitz," he said, quite cheerfully, "nor of any man in
this room, nor of all the men in this room."

Passepoil added, stammering in his speech, blinking his pink eyelids
rapidly: "If any gentleman doubts the point, there is a pleasant bit of
kitchen garden outside where we can adjourn and argue the matter
pleasantly together, as gentlemen should."

Nobody present seemed inclined to pick a quarrel either with the
ebullient Gascon or the hesitating Norman. The six bullies at the table
knew well enough, and savage, masterful Æsop at the window knew well
enough, that the swaggering Gascon was the first fencing-master in Paris,
and that his colleague, the Norman, for all his air of ineffable
timidity, was only second to him in skill with the weapon and readiness
to use it. There was a moment's silence, and then Cocardasse observed:
"I'm afraid of just two men in the world."

"The same with me," added Passepoil, humbly.

Cocardasse resumed his interrupted speech: "And one of them is Louis de
Nevers."

Staupitz's puzzled, angry face travelled round the room, ranging over the
Gascon, the Norman, the Spaniard, the Portuguese, the Biscayan, the
Breton, and the hunchback. "Thunder and weather!" he cried; "is not nine
to one good enough odds for you?"

The others, with the exception of Æsop, who still seemed to read as
peacefully in his book as if he were alone in the room, appeared inclined
to applaud the question of their chief, but Cocardasse was not in the
least impressed by the retort. He replied to Staupitz's query with
another--"Have you never heard of the secret thrust of Nevers?"

A new silence seemed to fall upon the company, and for the second time
since the Gascon and the Norman had entered the room the hunchback took a
part in the conversation, closing his book as he did so, but carefully
keeping a finger between the pages to mark the place. "I don't believe in
secret thrusts," he said, decisively.

The Gascon moved a little away from Staupitz and a little nearer to Æsop,
whom he looked at fixedly. The hunchback sustained his gaze with his
habitual air of cold indifference. Cocardasse spoke: "You will, if you
ever face Louis de Nevers. Now, Passepoil, here, and I, we are, I
believe, held in general repute as pretty good swordsmen--"

Passepoil interrupted, stuttering furiously in his excitement: "But he
touched us with that secret thrust in our own school in Paris--"

Cocardasse completed his friend's statement: "Three times, here on the
forehead, just between the eyes."

Passepoil labored his point: "Devil take us if we could find a parry for
it."

Cocardasse summed up his argument, gloomily: "They say it has never been
parried, never will be parried."

Again an awkward silence reigned. With a shrug of his shoulders, Æsop
resumed his studies, finding Aretino more diverting than such nonsense.
Breton stared at Teuton; Italian interrogated Spaniard; Portuguese
questioned Biscayan. The affairs of the party seemed to be at a
dead-lock. The fact was that Staupitz and his little band of babies, as
he was pleased to call them, were not really of the same social standing
in the world of cutthroats as Gascon Cocardasse and Norman Passepoil.
Cocardasse and his companion were recognized fencing-masters in Paris,
well esteemed, if not of the highest note, whereas Staupitz was no better
than an ordinary bully-broker, and his so-styled children no more than
provincial rascallions. It was not for them, and they knew it, to display
such knowledge of the great world as might be aired by Cocardasse and
Passepoil, and when Cocardasse spoke with so much significance about the
thrust of Nevers, and questioned them with so much insistence about the
thrust of Nevers, it was plain that he spoke from the brimmings of a
wisdom richer than their own. Staupitz, who was in some sense a son of
Paris, if only an adopted son, and that, indeed, by process of
self-adoption, knew enough of Olympian matters to be aware that there was
an illustrious gentleman that was Duke of Nevers, whom he was equally
willing to aid with his sword or slay with his sword, if occasion served.
Now occasion seemed to demand that Staupitz should follow the latter
course. He was employed to kill somebody, and Æsop had assured him that
this somebody was Louis, Duke de Nevers. Staupitz had not cared who it
was; it was all one to him, but honestly he was troubled now by the
patent trouble of Cocardasse and his ominous mutterings about the thrust
of Nevers.

Passepoil broke the silence, surveying the puzzled faces around him. "No
wonder there's such a crowd of us." And for the first time there was
something like the sound of audacity in his voice and a glance of
audacity on his visage.

"Faith," said Cocardasse, emphatically, "I'd rather face an army than
face Louis de Nevers."

Again there was a silence. The gentlemen of the sword seemed to be at a
loss for conversation. Again Passepoil broke the silence, this time with
a question: "Why are we after Louis de Nevers?"

Nobody seemed to be able to answer him. Even Staupitz, who was
responsible to the others for this gathering of the company, was baffled.
He had been told to supply nine swords, and he had supplied them. He had
been told by his employer the purpose for which the nine swords were
wanted--he had been told by Æsop against whom those nine swords were to
be drawn--and that was the extent of his knowledge. This time the
hunchback, in his favorite character of know-all, took the lead. He put
his book in his pocket, as if he perceived that further study was to be
denied him that afternoon, with so much noise and bustle of curiosity
about him, and rose from his chair. Holding his long rapier behind his
back with both his hands, he advanced into the middle of the room, where
he proceeded to harangue his fellow-guardsmen.

"I can tell you," he said, harshly, "if you would care to hear the
story."

Now bravos, swashbucklers, spadassins, and such soldiers of fortune are
like children in this regard--as indeed in many another--that they love a
good yarn well spun. If something in the dominating, masterful manner of
Æsop compelled their attention, something also in the malicious smile
that twitched his lips seemed to promise plenitude of entertainment. A
grave quiet settled upon the ragamuffins, their sunburned faces were
turned eagerly towards the hunchback, their wild eyes studied his mocking
face; they waited in patience upon his pleasure. Pleased with the
humility of his audience, Æsop began his narrative.

"There are," he said, "now living three noble gentlemen in the first
flush of youth, in the first flight of greatness, young, handsome,
brilliant, more like brothers than friends. They are known in the noble
world of the court as the three Louis, because by a curious chance each
of these splendid gentlemen carries Louis for a Christian name. Humorists
have been known to speak of them as the three Louis d'or. The first is
none other than our good king's person, Louis of Bourbon, thirteenth
monarch of his name; the second is Louis, Duke of Nevers; the third is
his cousin, Louis of Mantua, Prince of Gonzague."

He paused for a moment, looking with the satisfaction of a tale-teller at
the expectant faces before him, and as he paused an approving murmur from
his audience urged him to continue. Æsop resumed his narration.

"You will ask how the Italianate Mantuan comes to be a cousin of our
French Nevers, and I will tell you. Nevers's father, Louis de Nevers, the
twelfth duke, had a very beautiful sister, who was foolish enough, or
wise enough, as you may choose to take it, to fall in love with a needy
Italian nobleman that came adventuring to Paris in the hope of making a
rich marriage. He made a rich marriage, or perhaps it would be more
accurate to say that he thought he made a rich marriage. He married
Mademoiselle de Nevers."

Again Æsop halted, employing one of the familiar devices of rhetoricians,
who lure their hearers to keener interest by such judicious pauses in the
course of their exposition. The listening ruffians were as attentive as
babes at a day-school, and Æsop, with a hideous distortion of his
features, which he intended for a pleased smile, went on with his story:

"Mademoiselle de Nevers had some fortune of her own, of course, but it
was not large; it was not the feast for which the amative Mantuan had
hungered. The Nevers's fortune was in the duke's hands, and remained in
the duke's hands, for the duke married at much the same time as his
sister; and the duke's wife and Gonzague's wife were brought to bed much
about the same time, and each bore a son, and each son was named Louis
after the twelfth duke, out of the affection his wife bore him, out of
the affection his sister bore him, and out of the affection that sister's
Mantuan husband pretended, in his sly Italian manner, to bear him."

A belated patriotism stirring vaguely in Faenza's muddled mind tempted
him to resent the hunch-back's slights upon the land which had been
unlucky enough to mother him.

"All men of Italy are not knaves," he growled, huskily, and, half rising
from his seat with crimsoned visage, he was busying himself to say more,
when Staupitz, who was as interested as the others in Master Æsop's
scandalous chronicle, clapped one bear's paw on Faenza's shoulder and
another bear's paw across Faenza's mouth, and thus forced him at once, by
sheer effort of brute strength, to a sitting posture and to silence. This
action on the part of the man whom for the time being he had consented to
accept as his general, combined with the cold glance of cruelty and scorn
which Æsop gave him, served to cool Faenza's hot blood. He heard Æsop
say, dryly, "Some men of Italy are fools," and might perchance have
flamed again, to his misluck, but that Staupitz, breathing thickly in his
ear, whispered: "Idiot, he mocks a Mantuan. Are not you Naples born and
bred?" Faenza, recovering his composure, resolved himself swiftly from an
Italian in general to a Neapolitan in particular, with a clannish
antagonism to alien states. He spat upon the floor. "Damn all Mantuans!"
he muttered, and did no more to interrupt the flow of Æsop's discourse.

"As I was saying, this princeling of Gonzague affected a great show of
friendship for his ducal brother of Nevers, and this same friendship he
left--it was, indeed, wellnigh all he had to leave--to his only son and
only child, the present prince of Gonzague."

He made a momentary halt, as if he were observing curiously the effect of
his words upon his hearers, then resumed:

"The young Louis de Gonzague and the young Louis de Nevers were almost of
an age. Each was an only child, each was an only son, each was clever,
each was courageous, each was comely, each was the chosen heart's friend
of a namesake king, each was much a lover of ladies, each was much loved
by ladies."

Æsop grinned hideously as he said these words, and his left hand fumbled
lovingly at the little volume that lay hid in the breast of his doublet,
but he did not delay the flow of his words.

"The chief difference between the two young men who were bound so
closely by ties of blood and yet more closely by ties of personal
affection was that while Louis de Nevers was the heir to all the
treasures of his house, Louis of Gonzague was heir to little more than a
rotting palace and a hollow title. And yet, by the irony of nature that
seemed to deny long life to any of the stock of Nevers, Louis de Gonzague
was the next of kin to his cousin, and the heir to all his wealth if by
any ill chance the dear young duke should die unmarried."

Here Æsop deliberately shut his mouth for several seconds, while the
listening bandits, persuaded that some thrilling news was toward, nudged
each other with their elbows and riddled the watchful hunchback with
imploring glances that entreated him to proceed. Thus mutely importuned,
Æsop opened his mouth again:

"But the difference in the youths' fortunes never made any difference in
their friendship. The purse of the rich Nevers was always open to the
fingers of the poor Gonzague, and the poor Gonzague had always too true
an appreciation of the meaning of friendship to deny his heart's brother
the privilege of ministering to his needs. And as the young Nevers did
not hint at the slightest inclination to marry and settle down, but
always declared himself and approved himself the most vagrant of lovers
and the most frivolous of libertines, there seemed no reason for the good
Gonzague to be uneasy as to his possible heritage. Moreover, the young
Duke of Nevers was something delicate of constitution, as it would seem,
for all his skill as a soldier and swordsman and his fame as a lady's
man. Once when he was the guest of his cousin of Gonzague in Mantua he
fell ill of a strange fever that came near to ending his days, and was
only saved by his French physician, who tended him day and night and took
him back to France in the first dawn of his convalescence."

Æsop stopped and blinked at his hearers viciously, looking like some
school-master that wonders how much or how little of what he has been
saying his pupils have understood. Cocardasse was the first to show
intelligence and to give it tongue.

"I'll wager," he cried, and swore a great Gascon oath, "that I can hazard
a pretty guess as to the name of our employer in to-night's work."

Æsop leered at him with a pitying benignity.

"You were always a great brain for deduction, friend Cocardasse," he
said. "And who should you say was the honest gentleman who wanted our
swords for this present business?"

"Why," answered Cocardasse, shaking his head gloomily, "though I hate to
think it, and hate to say it, it seems to me that the man who has most to
gain from this little meeting and its inevitable result is none other
than the third Louis, your Italian of Gonzague."

Æsop nodded, and a ferocious smile illuminated his evil face.

"You have come to a very creditable conclusion, friend Cocardasse. It
looks very much as if Jonathan wanted to kill David, as if Patroclus
yearned to slaughter Achilles, as if Pythias wanted to extinguish
Damon."

Master Æsop prided himself upon his scholarship and his felicity in
classical allusion--a felicity wholly wasted upon his present audience.

Cocardasse was still curious. "Why does Louis de Gonzague want to kill
his friend, Louis of Nevers, just at this particular moment, and why here
in this heaven-forgotten hole of a place, in this heaven-forgotten corner
of the world?"

Æsop explained: "Because Louis de Gonzague, having tried once, with good
reason, and failed, tries again with better reason and means to succeed
this time, believing much steel to do better than a little poison.
Because, in a few words, Louis de Gonzague wants to marry the beautiful
Gabrielle, daughter of old Caylus of the castle there, who is wealthy,
too."

Passepoil, who was always interested in affairs of the heart, put in his
word. "Why doesn't he marry her?"

Æsop was ready to explain that matter also: "Because Gabrielle de Caylus
is already secretly married to Louis de Nevers. They were married one
year ago in the chapel of Caylus, and the only witnesses were Louis de
Gonzague and his factotum, Monsieur Peyrolles, who has summoned us to
this tryst."

"Why were they secretly married?" asked the amorous Passepoil.

Æsop answered him: "An old family feud between the houses of Nevers and
Caylus. The marquis would rather kill his daughter than let her marry
Louis de Nevers. So they were wedded secretly, without his knowledge, and
Louis de Gonzague, that could deny his dear friend and cousin, Louis de
Nevers, nothing, helped him to his wife."

"That was generous, at least," Passepoil sighed.

Æsop sneered. "He hoped, as he believed with reason, that there would be
no issue of the marriage, and that by-and-by he would come to what he
called his own. But three months ago a daughter was born to the nuptials
of Nevers, and that is why we are here to-night. Monsieur Peyrolles would
pretend that it is the old marquis who is using us, the old marquis who
is suspicious of an amour between his daughter and Nevers. But I know
better."

"How do you know all this?" Cocardasse inquired.

Æsop shrugged his shoulders. "My good fellow," he said, "it is my
business to know everything that is worth knowing in my trade. There are
very few noble houses in France that can hope to hold any secrets from
me. You may take my word for it--that is how matters stand."

Staupitz and his five swordsmen sat silent and puzzled, leaving the ball
of conversation to be tossed between Cocardasse, Passepoil, and Æsop.

Cocardasse spoke next: "An ugly job. There's only one man alive to match
Louis de Nevers."

Something almost approaching a human smile distorted the wrinkled face
of Æsop and made it appear more than usually repulsive. "You mean me," he
said, and the smirk deepened, only to dissipate quickly as Cocardasse
replied:

"Devil a bit. I mean the little Parisian, Henri de Lagardere."

"The best swordsman in Paris!" Passepoil cried, enthusiastically.

"The best swordsman in France!" Cocardasse shouted.

Passepoil commented again: "The best swordsman in Europe."

Cocardasse, not to be outdone, put the final touch to the picture: "The
best swordsman in the world."

The name of Lagardere seemed to make a marked impression upon the
company. Every man seemed to have his contribution to make to the history
of the little Parisian.

Faenza was the first to speak.

"I met your Lagardere once," he said, "at a fencing-school in Milan,
where half a dozen French gentlemen met half a dozen gentlemen of my
nationality in a match to test the merits of the French and Italian
methods of fence. This Lagardere of yours was the only one whom I had any
difficulty in overcoming."

Cocardasse gave an ironic snort. It was evident that he did not in the
least believe the latter part of Faenza's narrative. Joel de Jurgan took
up the thread of reminiscence.

"If your Lagardere be the same as the man I am thinking of," he said, "I
came across him a couple of years ago at the fair of Neuilly. We had a
passage of arms, and I think I gave him a cut on the head, but it took me
some time, I promise you."

Cocardasse glared at the speaker, but said nothing, though the word
"liar" was plainly expressed in his scornful glance. Joel, impressed by
his angry face, hastened to add, with the air of one that praises an
adversary in the handsomest manner, "I swear he was the best fellow,
second to myself, that I ever met with the rapier."

"I have met him," grunted Staupitz. "He touched me once in a bout of
twelve points. That was a triumph for him, to my thinking."

Pepe added: "He fought with me once in Madrid, and got off without a
scratch. That says a good deal for his skill, I'm thinking."

Saldagno and Pinto were silent. They looked curiously at Pepe, but they
nodded their heads approvingly.

Thus each of the bravos had his eager tale to tell, and would have told
more but that Cocardasse waved them into silence with his large hand.
"There is only one Lagardere," he said, and looked as if the subject were
ended.

Æsop yawned. "I should like to meet your Lagardere."

Cocardasse eyed him ironically. "Sword in hand?" he questioned. "When
that day comes, pray for your soul."

Æsop shrugged his shoulders, and with an air of indifference produced a
watch and consulted its dial. "Friends," he said, "this is the hour fixed
for the arrival of Monsieur Peyrolles, and I think I hear footsteps in
the passage."

Instantly the Gascon seemed animated by a hurried purpose. He sprang to
Staupitz's side, and, catching him by the shoulder, shook him vehemently.
"We must be well paid to face the thrust of Nevers. Let me bargain for
you. Back me up, and those that are alive to-night will have money in
pocket to-morrow."

A BUYER OF BLADES

Staupitz and his companions seemed to place implicit confidence in the
superior diplomatic powers of their Gascon comrade, and to have been
seriously impressed by the gravity of his statement concerning the thrust
of Nevers, so death-dealing, so unwardable, so almost magically fatal,
for they readily agreed to his proposition. Places were rapidly found for
Cocardasse and Passepoil at the table. Æsop returned to his seat and his
little sinful book. It was deepening dusk by now, but the hunchback knew
his Aretino by heart, and the open page was a pretence. So he mused by
the window, and sat nursing his knee moodily. Those at the table seemed
busy drinking, and heedless of all things save drink, when the side-door
of the room, that led through the kitchen to the yard, opened, and the
man they were expecting entered. It was characteristic of the man to make
his appearance so slyly, surreptitiously, sidling, and roundabout, where
another would have stepped in direct. At the heels of the new-comer
tiptoed Martine, swinging, for precaution against the thickening dusk, a
dingy lantern whose provision of fish-oil emitted a pitiful light that
scarcely bettered the growing blackness. This lantern the girl set upon
the head of an empty barrel that stood in a corner, and its fitful,
shivering rays, faintly illuminating the murkiness around, was at least
strong enough to allow any philosopher among the bravos--and Æsop was in
his way a philosopher--to observe and moralize upon the contrast between
the appearance of this Monsieur Peyrolles who employed bravos and the
bravos that this Monsieur Peyrolles employed.

Monsieur Peyrolles was a tall, thin, middle-aged man of pale complexion.
Like Æsop and like Passepoil, he was dressed in black, as became the
confidential servant of a master with many confidences; but, unlike the
amorous Æsop and unlike the amorous Passepoil--though the two men were
amorous after a very different fashion--his garments were of fine quality
and fine cut, with much costly lace at his yellow neck, and much costly
lace about the wrists of yellow hands that to a casual glance might, in
their affected ease, have passed for patrician. Like Passepoil, he
carried a sword, and, like Passepoil, he knew how to use it, although,
unlike Passepoil, he was really of a timid disposition, and never engaged
in any encounter in which he was not certain that his skill was far
superior to that of his opponent.

He affected the manners of a fine gentleman, and modelled himself as much
as he dared upon the carriage of his master, when his master was not by,
and, like the most of such copying apes, he overdid the part. His face
was curiously unpleasant, long and yellowish white and inexpressive, with
drooping eyelids masking pale, shifty eyes, with a drooping, ungainly
nose, and a mouth that seemed like a mistake of nature.

When Martine had placed her lantern to her satisfaction upon its Bacchic
pedestal, she slipped from the room as quietly as she had entered it,
answering as she went, with a glance of disdain, the passion of
admiration that glowed in the eyes and twitched in the fingers of Norman
Passepoil. The people that kept that evil Inn, the people that served
that evil Inn, always left their sinister customers to themselves to kiss
or kill, as best pleased them.

On the entrance of Monsieur Peyrolles the bravos rose and saluted him
ceremoniously. If there was any hidden mockery, any latent contempt, any
unconscious hate felt by the brave scoundrels for the cowardly scoundrel
in their reverence, it was not evident to the new-comer, who took the
greetings with offensive condescension, eying the bandits over the lace
edges of his kerchief.

Staupitz advanced some few feet to greet him. "Welcome, Monsieur
Peyrolles," he said. Then, pointing with an air of introduction to the
fantastic, many-colored, huge-hatted, big-booted gang of ruffians ranged
about the table, he added, "My children."

In the dim light Peyrolles peered derisively at the different members of
the party. "They seem a choice set of ruffians," he observed, with the
labored impertinence that seemed to him a copy of his master's
nonchalance.

Staupitz laughed thickly. "No better blades between here and world's
end." He pointed first at his comrades, as if to imply that he spoke
allegorically; then he pointed to the row of rapiers dangling against the
wall, to prove that he also spoke practically and by the card.

"After all," said Peyrolles, "that is the important matter. I come to
tell you how to earn your pay."

By this time Staupitz and the others had resumed their seats and were
staring fixedly at Peyrolles, something to that worthy personage's
embarrassment. Staupitz having said his say, dropped into silence, and
Cocardasse leaned forward, asserting himself. "We are all attention," he
declared; and Passepoil, faithful echo by his side, murmured, "We are all
attention," and allowed himself to wonder what had become of Martine, and
to regret that business did not permit him to go to look for her.

Peyrolles began to explain. "Wait in the moat to-night at ten o'clock."

Staupitz interrupted him. "Ten o'clock?" he cried. "The devil! it will be
pretty dark by ten."

"I think there should be a moon about ten," Æsop observed, quietly, with
his exasperating air of all knowledge.

"Yes, yes," Peyrolles went on, sharply, irritated at being stayed in his
instructions, "there will be a moon, no doubt, but we do not want too
much light for this business. Well, then, wait in the moat at ten. I do
not think you will have to wait long. Then, or thenabouts, a cavalier
coming by the mountain road will tie his horse to a tree beyond the
bridge that spans the ravine. He will cross the bridge and walk to yonder
window hard by the postern."

Peyrolles paused as if he had nothing more to say, and took it for
granted that his hearers understood his drift. But one of them seemed to
desire more explicit information.

"Then," said Cocardasse--"then we are to accost him."

Peyrolles nodded. "Very politely--and earn your money." He turned upon
his heel now, for he relished the Inn room little, and its company less,
being a fastidious lackey, and made to go, as if the affair were
settled.

But Cocardasse arrested him. "Who is the gentleman we accost politely?"
he asked, very blandly, but behind this blandness of Cocardasse's there
was something menacing to those that knew him well.

Peyrolles eyed the huge Gascon disdainfully. "That does not concern you,"
he said, sharply.

But the Gascon was not in the least abashed, and, while he grinned at the
would-be great man with an air of veiled insolence that was excessively
exasperating to Monsieur Peyrolles, he questioned again: "Who is our
employer?"

Again Peyrolles retorted: "That does not concern you."

And again Cocardasse persisted: "It might concern us very much if we
chanced to believe that our quarry is Louis de Nevers, and if we got it
somehow or other into our heads that our employer is Louis de Gonzague."

As Cocardasse spoke these words, Peyrolles, now thoroughly alarmed and
irritated, gave Cocardasse a glance that ought to have withered him, but
Cocardasse was not withered, and smiled banteringly at his employer.

"Fellow," Peyrolles said, "you are inquisitive." As he spoke he flapped
his kerchief reprovingly at the bravo, whose dilated nostrils greedily
drank the delicate odors it discharged, and he again made as if to
depart, and again Cocardasse delayed him, still with the same
exasperating show of exuberant politeness.

"When it is a matter of our skins," he said, "I think we have a right to
be inquisitive, and I think we had better have a little chat, Monsieur
Peyrolles."

As he spoke he made a noble flourish of his right arm that was distinctly
an invitation to Peyrolles to seat himself in their company, and
Passepoil, rising with an air of great urbanity, placed a stool before
Peyrolles.

"Pray be seated," he urged, suavely, blinking his pink eyelids and
manifesting a deferential fear of the great man that he was very far
indeed from feeling.

Peyrolles looked about him half angrily, half frightened. He would have
been glad to make his escape from that accursed chamber, but he had
astuteness enough to see that there was no escape for him. Cocardasse had
somehow or other managed to get between him and the door, and the other
ruffians seemed to be entirely in sympathy with the Gascon's conduct, and
to have no regard whatever for Peyrolles's dignity or feelings.

With a smile that he intended to be amiable, Peyrolles sat down.

"Well," he said, with an air of one that swallows sour wine, "what have
you to say to me?"

"Come," said the Gascon, "that is good. Now we can chat at our ease, and
it will not take us many seconds to understand each other, I promise
you." He turned to Staupitz. "What was the sum offered for our services?"
He knew very well, for Staupitz had told him as they huddled together
before, while the hand of Peyrolles was upon the latch, but he thought
that it made the situation more impressive if he affected ignorance.

Staupitz answered: "Three hundred pistoles."

Now this was a fair market price enough as the tariff went for ambuscades
and assassinations of the kind. It meant twenty-five pistoles each to the
eight subordinates of the band, and a comfortable hundred pistoles for
old Papa Staupitz to pocket as the patron of the enterprise. But
Cocardasse held up his hands in well-affected horror and amazement.
"Three hundred pistoles!" he echoed; "for ruddling the blades and
risking the lives of nine of the finest swordsmen in Europe?
Preposterous!--there must be some mistake! We won't haggle. We must have
three thousand pistoles or--good-bye."

At this audacious proposal to raise their blood-wages exactly ten times,
the eyes of the bravos glittered avariciously, and they drummed approval
on the table with their fists. Cocardasse deprecated this display of
interest with a gentle wave of the hand, and, leaning back in his chair,
eyed Peyrolles coolly, sure that he plied him with a vise. And Cocardasse
was right.

Peyrolles hesitated, but also Peyrolles reflected. It had been his wish
to buy his bandits as cheaply as he could, but it was evident that they
were better informed about the night's business than he intended them to
be. It was essential that the work must be done that night, and it was
also evident that the gentlemen of the sword were quite prepared to take
their leaves if their terms were not agreed to. He sighed and said, "You
shall have the money."

Cocardasse nodded approvingly. He was enjoying himself immensely in this
baiting of the valet of Gonzague, but he allowed no sign of entertainment
to ripple over his crimson countenance.

"Good," he said, quietly, "but I take it that you have not got such a sum
as three thousand pistoles about you."

Peyrolles shook his head. "I have brought with me the three hundred
pistoles that were agreed upon," he said, sourly, with an emphasis upon
the closing words of his speech. Cocardasse caught him up promptly.

"Agreed upon in ignorance of the services demanded," he corrected. "Well,
good Monsieur Peyrolles, let us have that three hundred pistoles as
earnest money for the larger sum."

Somewhat reluctantly Monsieur Peyrolles produced from his doublet a small
canvas bag and threw it into the hollow of Cocardasse's extended palm. It
chinked pleasantly as it fell, and Cocardasse weighed it tenderly.

"I will not affront your worthiness," he said, "by affecting to doubt the
contents of this little bag, and putting it to the scrutiny of a count. I
will take your word for the tale."

As he spoke he tossed the bag over to Staupitz, who caught it dexterously
and put it in his pocket. On this Peyrolles made to rise, and again found
that the hand of Passepoil, obedient to a glance from Cocardasse,
descended upon his shoulder and nailed him to his place.

"Wait," said Cocardasse, amiably, "we must have some surety for the lave
of the money."

"Is not my word enough?" Peyrolles asked, with an ineffective air of
dignity. Cocardasse smiled very sweetly.

"The best of us may have a bad memory," he said, and sighed over the
frailties of humanity. He turned to his nominal leader. "Papa Staupitz,"
he said, "will you not see if a pen and ink be available?"

Staupitz rose while Peyrolles glowered, and going to the door that led to
the kitchen, summoned Martine. Martine, heedless of the adoring homage
renewed in Passepoil's eyes, went to a cupboard in the wall and extracted
from its depths a dingy ink-horn and a stubby quill, together with a page
of fairly clean paper torn from the back of an old account-book. Setting
these on the table, she departed as quietly as she came, wholly
indifferent to the languishing glances of the Norman. Cocardasse waved a
space for Peyrolles at the table.

"Be so good," he said, with a quiet insistence, "as to write a formal
promise to pay Papa Staupitz two thousand seven hundred pistoles
to-morrow. Date it carefully, and sign it with your excellent and
honorable name, my dear Monsieur Peyrolles."

Peyrolles frowned, but there was no help for it; so he rose to his feet,
untroubled this time by the restraining fingers of Passepoil, and, going
to the table, wrote the demanded document, with every appearance of
repugnance at the task and its conditions, for the pen was vile, the ink
viler, and the paper vilest. When he had finished, Cocardasse took it
from him and scanned it carefully.

"That is all right," he said, and placed the still wet writing on the
table in front of Staupitz. Peyrolles made as if to move towards the
door, but again Passepoil, who was watching intently the face of
Cocardasse, read a meaning there, and, pouncing upon Peyrolles,
persuaded him firmly back into the seat he had quitted.

"That is not all," said Cocardasse to the astonished and angry valet.
"This night's work is a big night's work, and not to be paid for over the
counter and done with. We want the money first, but afterwards we want
the protection and favor of Louis de Gonzague."

Peyrolles frowned and made a vehement effort to assert his authority.

"You talk very freely and loosely of great names," he said, with as much
sharpness as he could muster in the presence of that ring of rascality.
"You should know very well, if you know anything at all about the
scandals of grandees, that Monseigneur the Marquis of Caylus has every
reason to dislike Monseigneur the Duke of Nevers, and to wish him out of
the way."

Cocardasse laid a whimsical finger to the side of his jolly, tropical
nose and grinned impishly.

"We know what we know, Monsieur Peyrolles," he said, urbanely. "If it
were merely necessary to kill the Duke of Nevers to gratify the hate of
any private enemy, one place would do as well as another, and we might
take him any time on his way here, instead of waiting till the precise
moment when he enters the moat of Caylus. But you wish us to wait for
that precise moment because you, and your master, wish it to seem patent
to all the world that the deed was done by the Marquis of Caylus on his
own ground, to defend his own honor. Once again, we demand hereafter the
favor and protection of his highness the Prince of Gonzague."

This time Peyrolles needed no pause for reflection. So much was wise to
promise to men who could draw conclusions so dexterously. "You shall have
it," he said, and rose from his seat, this time unrestrained by the
Norman's pressure. "There is my hand on it," he added.

Cocardasse appeared not to perceive the extended hand as he slapped the
hilt of his sword. "Here is my rapier, which answers for me."

Peyrolles smiled sourly. "You had better place a sentinel in the moat,"
he said, addressing Staupitz. "He can give the signal when the mouse
walks into the trap. Till then let the others keep in the background so
as to cut off our gentleman's retreat."

Staupitz nodded sulkily. He had always held Monsieur Peyrolles in
considerable respect, a respect that had been greatly shaken by
Cocardasse's audacious and insolent treatment of the satellite of
Gonzague. Now the bravo seemed ready to resent receiving an order from
his employer's go-between. Peyrolles prudently took no notice of his
sullenness. "Good-evening, gentlemen," he said, and walked towards the
door. As he reached it, he turned again and spoke significantly:
"Remember--if you fail, no pay."

Cocardasse grinned impudently at him. "Sleep in peace, Monsieur
Peyrolles." Peyrolles made a wry face and went out.

As soon as he had gone the bravos gathered about Cocardasse and patted
him enthusiastically on the back. Only Æsop remained in his corner,
apparently indifferent to the whole proceedings.

"Well done, comrade," cried Passepoil, wringing the hand of his
brother-in-arms; and the others, whose pay had been so notably increased
by the diplomacy of Cocardasse, were equally as effusive in their
expressions of gratitude.

Cocardasse met their applause with an impressive monosyllable. "Wine," he
said to Martine, who had peeped in to see if her services were needed,
and in a twinkling the pannikins were filled again and lifted to eight
thirsty mouths, and set down again empty of their contents. The first
business was to share the contents of Monsieur Peyrolles's bag, which
Staupitz duly divided according to the original understanding, giving
each man twenty-five pistoles, and keeping the remainder for himself. By
this time the ink on the promissory note was dry, and Staupitz folded it
up carefully and put it in his pocket.

After this for another half-hour the talk was all about the young Duke de
Nevers and his secret thrust, and the woman he loved, and the Prince de
Gonzague, his friend, who meant to kill him. Here, as before, Æsop
dominated the party by his superior knowledge of all the individuals in
the little tragedy in which they were invited to play subordinate parts.
He told them of the life feud between the family of Caylus and the family
of Nevers, a feud as bitter as that of the Capulets and Montagues of old
time. He told them of Gonzague's passions, Gonzague's poverty. He told
them all about Monsieur Peyrolles, Gonzague's discreet and infamous
factotum. He told them, also, being as it seemed a very gold-mine of
court scandals, much of the third Louis, the august friend of Louis of
Nevers and Louis of Gonzague, the third Louis who was the king of
France.

The bravos hung upon his words. In many ways they were simple folk, and,
like all simple folk, they loved to be told stories, and Æsop prided
himself upon being something of a man of letters, a philosopher, and an
historian. It was, therefore, no small annoyance to narrator and audience
when the narrative was interrupted, as it was nearing its conclusion, by
the opening of the Inn door. Every face expressed astonishment as it was
pushed sufficiently apart to admit the entry of a slender and graceful
boy in the rich habit of a page. The boy came a little way into the room,
looking cautiously about him. He acted as if at first he took the room in
its dimness to be unoccupied, and he seemed to be somewhat disconcerted
at discovering that it contained so many occupants. He stood still while
his bright eyes ran rapidly, and indeed fearfully, over the somewhat
alarming features of the guests. Failing, apparently, to find among them
the person, whoever it was, whom he had come there to seek, he turned to
leave as quietly as he had entered, but his egress was barred by Æsop,
who had slipped between him and the door, and who now questioned him,
with a grin of malignant intelligence on his face.

"Whom are you looking for, pygmy?"

The page put a bold face on it and answered with a bold voice: "I have a
letter for a gentleman."

Æsop pointed to the group at the table. "We are all gentlemen. Let's have
a look at your letter." Then he added to his companions: "It may be
useful. The imp wears the livery of Nevers."

Instantly the others approved by signs and grunts of Æsop's action, and
the page, now really alarmed, made a desperate effort to escape. "Let me
pass!" he cried, and tried to rush under Æsop's arm. But Æsop caught the
boy in an iron grip, and, though the courageous page drew a dagger and
tried to stab his assailant, he was disarmed in a second and seized by
the others, who sprang from the table and clustered about him, fierce
birds of prey about a helpless quarry. The lad cried for help, hopelessly
enough. Strong, dirty fingers were tearing open his jerkin and fumbling
for the concealed letter, when suddenly it seemed to the astonished
swordsmen that an earthquake and a whirlwind had combined for their
undoing. Æsop rolled to one end of the room, Staupitz to another;
Cocardasse and Passepoil, Saldagno, Pepe, Pinto, Faenza, and Joel were
scattered like sparrows, and the little page found himself liberated and
crouching at the feet of a man who was standing with folded arms
surveying the discomfited bravos mockingly.

IV

THE LITTLE PARISIAN

The new-comer was a young man of little over one-and-twenty, of medium
height, but with a well-built, well-knit figure that gave a promise of
extraordinary strength and power of endurance, coupled at the same time
with a scarcely less extraordinary suppleness. He had a face that was
certainly handsome, though many handsomer faces were familiar in Paris at
that day, but none more gallant, and, indeed, its chief charm was its
almost audacious air of self-reliance, of unfailing courage, of
changeless composure, and unconquerable humor. The eyes were bright and
laughing. Even now, although the man was undoubtedly angry, his eyes
still smiled in unison with his lips. His dark hair fell gracefully about
his shoulders. He wore a somewhat faded white coat, girdled with a
crimson sash--the white coat of a captain in the king's Light-Horse--and,
though he carried himself with an easy dignity, the general condition of
his dress showed he was one who was neither afraid of nor unfamiliar with
poverty. Now he looked around him with a bright defiance, seemingly
diverted by the havoc his single pair of arms and legs--for he had used
both limbs in the brawl--had wrought among nine swashbucklers, and
apparently prepared at any moment to repeat the performance, if occasion
called for action.

It was curious to observe that, though the new-comer had worked such
confusion among the bravos whom he had taken so roughly unawares, he did
not show any sign of having passed through a scuffle with a number of men
or having accomplished anything especially arduous in bringing them so
swiftly to discomfiture. His breathing was not quickened, his comely
young face was unflushed. As he stood there lightly poised in an easy
attitude that might at any moment be resolved into an attitude of
defence, he seemed, to such of his spectators as had sufficiently
recovered their senses to look at him coolly, rather to resemble one that
had come in on the heels of a tuss and was watching its result with
unconcerned eyes than one that with no more assistance than his own agile
limbs had been the cause of humiliation to so many powerful adversaries.
Staupitz, blinking fiercely as he rubbed his aching head, which had
rattled sharply against the table that arrested his flight across the
room, was too bewildered to swear out the oaths that were frothing within
him when he realized that the earthquake, the whirlwind, the cataclysm
that had tumbled him and his companions about like so many nine-pins was
no other and no more than the slim and pleasant young gentleman who
stood there so composedly. While the bewildered ruffians were picking
themselves up, and with some little difficulty recovering their breath,
the young gentleman addressed them mockingly: "Are there quite enough of
you to manage this adversary?" And as he spoke he pointed to the little
page who was huddled at his feet.

Æsop was the first of the bravos to recover his troubled senses and to
seek to retaliate upon his assailant. He whipped his long rapier from its
sheath, and was making for the intruder when Cocardasse flung his strong
arms around the hunchback and restrained him. "Be easy," he cried; "it is
the little Parisian!" And at the same moment Passepoil, with the gesture
of one who salutes in a fencing-school, exclaimed the name "Lagardere."

As for the other ruffians, they gathered together sulkily enough about
the table, staring at the stranger. His face was familiar to all of them,
and there was not one among them bold enough to follow the example of
Æsop. Lagardere, who had taken no notice of the threatened attack of the
hunchback, surveyed the group, and, glancing from them, addressed himself
to Cocardasse and Passepoil.

"Why, my old masters," he asked, drolling them, "what are you doing in
this desperate adventure? You ought to be careful. The boy might have
hurt you." His eyes turned from the Gascon and the Norman back again to
the fellows at the table. "Some of these scarecrows seem familiar." His
glance rested on Staupitz, and he questioned him: "Where have we met?"

Staupitz saluted Lagardere very respectfully as he answered: "At Lyons."

Lagardere seemed to search his memory and to find what he sought. "True.
You touched me once."

Staupitz made an apologetic gesture. "Only once in twelve times."

Lagardere turned to Saldagno, Pepe, and Pinto. "Ah, my bandits of Madrid,
who tried me, three to one."

Saldagno was more apologetic than Staupitz, with a Latin profusion of
gesture, as he explained: "That was for a wager, captain."

Lagardere shrugged his shoulders. "Which you did not win." He turned to
Joel de Jurgan. "Does your head still carry my cut?"

The Breton lifted a large hand to his bullet head and fumbled through the
thick hair for a familiar spot. "There is a scar," he admitted.

Lagardere turned to the Italian. "Do you still," he asked, "hold the
Italian school to be superior to the French?"

Faenza shook his head. "Not when you practise the French method," he
answered, politely.

There was a little pause, and then Æsop, who had by this time been
released from the embrace of Cocardasse, and had sheathed his sword, came
forward and faced Lagardere. "I desire acquaintanceship, Captain
Lagardere. Men call me Æsop."

Lagardere gazed at the hunchback, and a look of displeasure banished the
mirth from his eyes. "I have heard of you," he said, curtly. "A good
sword and a bad heart. I don't like the blend. You may go to the devil."

He turned away from Æsop and bent over the lad, who still crouched at his
feet. "Now, lad, you must promise not to hurt these gentlemen, for some
of them are friends of mine."

While the bravos tried not to appear annoyed by Lagardere's banter,
which, indeed, in its simplicity vexed their simple natures greatly, the
page rose to his feet and whispered softly to his rescuer, "I have a
letter for you from the Duke de Nevers."

Lagardere extended his hand. "Give it," he said.

The page produced the letter, of which Æsop had been so anxious to gain
possession, and handed it to Lagardere, whispering as he did so, "Save me
from these ogres. I carry another letter to a lady."

Lagardere smiled. "To Gabrielle de Caylus, I'll swear," he murmured in a
low voice which was calculated only to reach the page's ears. Then he
turned again to the swordsmen. "Sirs, this lad, more fastidious than I,
dislikes your society. Pray respect his prejudices." He pushed the page
gently towards the main door. "Hop, skip, jump!"

In a moment the page had glided out of the room. Æsop made a movement as
if he were inclined to follow, but any such intention was frustrated by
Lagardere, who shut the door after the boy and stood with his back
towards it. "Stay where you are, gentlemen," he said, and there was
something so persuasive in the way in which he said it that the gentlemen
stayed where they were. Then Lagardere, as if he had almost forgotten
their presence, slowly walking down the room till he paused in the
middle, opened the letter and began to read it. As he seemed absorbed by
its contents, Staupitz on the one side and Æsop on the other came
cautiously towards him with the intention of reading the letter over his
shoulder, but Lagardere's seeming forgetfulness of their presence
instantly changed. He looked up sharply, glancing right and left, and
Æsop and Staupitz fell back in confusion, while Lagardere spoke to them,
mocking them: "You will dub me eccentric; you will nickname me whimsical;
you will damn me for a finicking stickler, and all because I am such an
old-fashioned rascal as to wish to keep my correspondence to myself.
There, there, don't be crestfallen. This letter makes me so merry that
you shall share its treasure. But, first, fill and drink with me, a noble
toast."

To suggest drinking was to forge a link between the bravos and the man
who down-faced them so masterfully. The big jug seemed to jump from hand
to hand, every mug was full in a twinkling, and every face was fixed
steadfastly on Lagardere, waiting for his words. Lagardere lifted his
brimming beaker with a voice of joyous mockery that carried at once
defiance and respect to a distant man. "The health of Louis of Nevers!"
he said, and drained his green wine as cheerfully as if it had been the
elixir of the gods.

At his words blank astonishment spread over the faces of the Gascon and
the Norman. "He said 'Nevers,'" Cocardasse whispered to Passepoil, and
Passepoil whispered back, "He did." As for the other bravos, they had
been as much surprised as Cocardasse and Passepoil by Lagardere's
request, but they managed to conceal their surprise by lifting their
mugs, and now as they nodded and winked to one another, they tilted their
vessels and drank, shouting, "The health of Louis de Nevers!"

Cocardasse came nearer to Lagardere, and said in a voice that was almost
a whisper, "Why do you drink the health of Louis de Nevers?"

Lagardere looked for a moment annoyed at the presumption of Cocardasse in
questioning him, then the annoyance gave place to his familiar air of
tolerant amusement. "I don't love questions, but you have a kind of right
to query." He turned to the others. "You must know, sirs, that this pair
of rapiers were my fairy godfathers in the noble art of fence."

The Norman looked at Lagardere with a very loving expression. "You were a
sad little rag of humanity when first you came to our fencing-academy."

"You are right there," said Lagardere. "I was the poorest, hungriest
scrap of mankind in all Paris. I had neither kin nor friends nor pence,
nothing but a stout heart and a sense of humor. That is why I came to
your academy, old rogues."

Cocardasse was reminiscent. "Faith, you looked droll enough, with your
pale face and your shabby clothes. 'I want to be a soldier,' says you; 'I
want to use the sword.'"

Lagardere nodded. "That was my stubborn law. The world laughed at me, but
I laughed at the world, and I won my wish."

"Just think of it!" said Cocardasse. "Henri de Lagardere, a gentleman
born, without a decent relative, without a decent friend, without a
penny, making his livelihood as a strolling player in the booth of a
mountebank."

While Cocardasse was speaking, Lagardere seemed to listen like a man in a
dream. He forgot for the moment the reeking Inn room where he stood, the
beastly visages that surrounded him, the whimsy that had drifted him
thither. All these things were forgotten, and the man that was little
more than a boy in years was in fancy altogether a boy again, a
shivering, quivering slip of a boy that stood on the gusty high-road and
knuckled his eyelids to keep his eyes from crying. How long ago it
seemed, that time twelve years ago when a mutinous urchin fled from a
truculent uncle to seek his fortune as Heaven might please to guide!
Heaven guided an itinerant mime and mountebank that tramped France with
his doxy to a wet hedge-side where a famished, foot-sore scrap of a lad
lay like a tired dog, trying not to sob. The mountebank was curious, the
mountebank's doxy was kind; both applauded lustily the boy's resolve to
march to Paris, cost what it might cost, and make his fortune there. The
end of the curiosity and the kindness and the applause was that the
little Lagardere found himself at once the apprentice and the adopted son
of the mountebank, with his fortune as far off as the stars. But he
learned many things, the little Lagardere, under the care of that same
mountebank; all that the mountebank could teach him he learned, and he
invented for himself tricks that were beyond the mountebank's skill. How
long ago it seemed! Would ever space of time seem so long again? So the
young man mused swiftly, while Cocardasse told his tale; but ere
Cocardasse had finished, Lagardere was back in the tavern again, and,
when Cocardasse had finished, Lagardere caught him up: "Why not? Some
actors are as honest as bandits. I was no bad mummer, sirs. I could
counterfeit any one of you now so that your mother wouldn't know the
cheat. And my master made me an athlete, too; taught me every trick of
wrestling and tumbling and juggling with the muscles. That is why I was
able to tumble you about so pleasantly just now. I should have been a
mountebank to this day but for an accident."

Passepoil was curious. "What accident?" he asked.

Lagardere answered him: "A brawl over a wench with a bully. I challenged
him, though I was more at home with a toasting-fork than a sword. I
caught up an unfamiliar weapon, but he nicked the steel from my hand at a
pass and banged me with the flat of his blade. The girl laughed. The
bully grinned. I swore to learn swordcraft."

"And you did," said Passepoil. "In six months you were our best pupil."

Cocardasse continued: "In twelve you were our master."

Passepoil questioned again: "What became of your bully?"

Lagardere was laconic: "We had a chat afterwards. I attended his
funeral."

Cocardasse clapped his hands. "Well begun, little Parisian."

Passepoil pointed admiringly at Lagardere. "Look at you now, a captain in
the king's guard."

Lagardere laughed cheerfully. "Look if you like, but I am no such thing.
I am cashiered, exiled from Paris."

"Why?" asked Cocardasse, and Lagardere replied with a question: "Do you
remember the Baron de Brissac?"

Cocardasse nodded. "One of the best swords in Paris."

Lagardere resumed: "Well, the late baron--"

Passepoil interrupted: "The late baron?"

Lagardere explained: "Brissac had a lewd tongue and smirched a woman. So
I pulled his ears."

Cocardasse grinned. "The devil you did!"

"Yes," said Lagardere, "they were very long and tempting. We resumed the
argument elsewhere. It was brief. Good-bye, Brissac! But as the good
king, thanks to the good cardinal, now frowns upon duelling, I am exiled
when I ought to be rewarded."

Cocardasse sighed. "There is no encouragement for virtue nowadays."

Lagardere's voice was as cheerful as if there were no such thing in the
world as exile. "Well, there I was at my wit's end, and my nimble wits
found work for me. 'If I must leave France,' I said, 'I will go to Spain,
where the spirit of chivalry still reigns.' So I raised a regiment of
adventurers like myself--broken gentlemen, ruined spendthrifts, poor
devils out at elbow, gallant soldiers of fortune one and all. They wait
for me a mile from here. We shall find work to do in Spain or elsewhere.
The world is wide, and it has always work for good swords to do."

Cocardasse looked at him admiringly. "Your sword will never rust for want
of use," he said, with approval.

Lagardere answered him, briskly: "Why should it? 'Tis the best friend in
the world. What woman's eye ever shone as brightly as its blade, what
woman's tongue ever discoursed such sweet music?"

Cocardasse took off his hat and swung it. "Hurrah for the sword!" he
shouted.

Lagardere's glance applauded his enthusiasm. "Iron was God's best gift to
man, and he God's good servant who hammered it into shape and gave it
point and edge. I shall never be happy until I am master of it."

Æsop joined the conversation mockingly. "I thought you were master of
it," he said, with an obvious sneer.

Cocardasse and Passepoil looked horrified at the hunchback's
impertinence, but Lagardere did not seem to be vexed, and answered, quite
amiably: "So did I till lately." Then he said, addressing himself
generally to the company: "Have any of you ever heard of the thrust of
Nevers?"

A tremor of excitement ran through his audience. Cocardasse took up the
talk: "We spoke of it but now."

"Well," said Lagardere, "what do you think of it?"

Æsop, the irrepressible, thrust in his opinion. "Never was secret thrust
invented that cannot be parried."

Lagardere looked at him somewhat contemptuously. "So I thought till I
crossed swords with Nevers. Now I think differently."

Cocardasse whistled. "The devil you do," he commented.

"I will tell you all about it," said Lagardere. "It happened three months
ago. That secret thrust piqued me. Then people talked too much about
Nevers; that irritated me. Wherever I went, from court to camp, from
tavern to palace, the name of Nevers was dinned in my ears. The barber
dressed your hair à la Nevers. The tailor cut your coat à la Nevers.
Fops carried canes à la Nevers; ladies scented themselves à la Nevers.
One day at the inn they served me cutlets à la Nevers. I flung the damned
dish out of the window. On the doorstep I met my boot-maker, who offered
to sell me a pair of boots à la Nevers. I cuffed the rascal and flung him
ten louis as a salve. But the knave only said to me: 'Monsieur de Nevers
beat me once, but he gave me a hundred pistoles.'"

Passepoil sighed for the sorrows of his young pupil: "Poor little
Parisian!"

Lagardere went on with his tale: "Now I am vainglorious enough to hold
that cutlets would taste good if they were cooked à la Lagardere; that
coats à la Lagardere would make good wearing, and boots à la Lagardere
good walking. I came to the conclusion that Paris was not big enough for
the pair of us, and that Nevers was the man to quit the field. Like Æsop
yonder, I laughed at the secret thrust."

He paused, and Cocardasse questioned: "But you don't laugh now?"

Lagardere answered him, gravely: "Not a laugh. I waited for Nevers one
evening outside the Louvre and saluted him. 'Sir,' I said, in my grandest
manner, 'I rely upon your courtesy to give me a moonlight lesson in your
secret thrust.' Lord, how he started. 'Who the devil are you?' says he. I
made him a magnificent bow. 'I am Henri de Lagardere, of the king's
Light-Horse. I am always in trouble, always in debt, always in love.
These are misfortunes a man can endure. But I am always hearing of your
merits, which is fretting, and of your irresistible secret thrust, and
that is unbearable.'"

Lagardere paused to give dramatic effect to the point in his narrative.

"What did he say to that?" asked Passepoil.

Lagardere went on: "'Ah,' said the duke, 'you are the fellow they call
handsome Lagardere'" (Lagardere interrupted the flow of his story with a
pathetic parenthesis--"I can't help it, they do call me so"); "'people
talk too much about you, and that wearies me'; which shows that he had a
touch of my complaint. Well, he was civility itself. We went down by the
church of St.-Germain, and had scarcely crossed swords when the point of
his rapier pricked me here, just between the eyes. I was touched--I,
Lagardere--and if I had not leaped backward I should have been a dead
man. 'That is my secret thrust,' says the duke with a smile, and wished
me good-evening."

V

THE PARRY TO THE THRUST OF NEVERS

There was a heavy stillness in the room when Lagardere came to the end of
his tale. "This sounds serious," Cocardasse said, gloomily, and those
about him were gloomily silent.

Lagardere resumed his story: "I pondered that thrust for a month. At last
I mastered it. I tried it on the Baron de Brissac with perfect success."

A general laugh at this remark relieved the tension of the bravos'
nerves. Æsop took advantage of the more cheerful atmosphere again to
address Lagardere. "Matchless cavalier," he asked, with a wry assumption
of politeness, "would you show me that thrust you esteem so highly?"

Lagardere looked at the speaker with a whimsical smile. "With pleasure,"
he said, and drew his sword. Æsop did likewise, and while the bravos drew
back towards the wall to allow a free space for the lesson the two
swordsmen came on guard. Lagardere explained while he fenced, naming each
feint and lunge and circle of the complicated attack as he made it. With
the last word of his steel-illuminated lecture his sword, that had
illustrated the words of the fencer, seemed suddenly to leap forward, a
glittering streak of light.

Æsop leaped back with a yell, and clapped his left hand to his forehead.
"Damnation!" he cried.

Cocardasse, who had been following the proceedings with the keenest
attention, hurried out of the circle of spectators. "Splendid!" he cried.
"What is the parry?"

"It is as clear as day," Lagardere answered. "This is how the trick is
done," and again, as he spoke, his blade explained his text, gleaming and
twisting in the cunning evolutions of the riposte.

Cocardasse, who had drawn his own sword, repeated Lagardere's words and
parodied Lagardere's gestures faithfully. "I see," he said, and turned to
the others, who had lost nothing of the lesson. "Have you caught it,
boys? It might serve--"

Lagardere interrupted him, indifferent to the evil appreciation on the
faces of the spectators. "It will serve at once. I am going to try it on
its master."

"On Nevers?" queried Staupitz, hoarsely.

Lagardere nodded. "On no less a man. I should have told you that I
plagued him until he promised me my revenge. When I was exiled I wrote to
remind him." Lagardere drew a letter from his breast and held it up for a
moment before returning it to its lodging. "In this letter he accepts my
challenge, names the time, the place--"

Cocardasse interrupted: "What time?"

"To-night at ten," Lagardere replied.

"The place?" asked Passepoil.

"The moat of Caylus," Lagardere answered. He pointed to the window at
which Æsop had been sitting so long. "You can see it from that window."

There was a general look of astonishment on the faces of all the bravos.
Passepoil, quick with his Norman caution, glanced at Staupitz and the
group about him, and put his finger cautiously to his lips.

Cocardasse was still inquisitive. "Why there?" he questioned.

Lagardere explained, amiably: "Because such is the good duke's pleasure.
When I sent him my cartel I made it plain that I had little time on my
hands, as I was anxious, on account of the king's fire-new zeal against
duelling, to cross the frontier as speedily as might be. I knew the duke
was staying on his estates near by, and I suggested, with a fine show of
gravity, that possibly his highness was acquainted with some quiet place
in the neighborhood of the Castle of Caylus where we might settle our
little difference. Oh, the words were solemnly couched, but I swear to
you that I laughed heartily when I wrote them."

Lagardere laughed again in memory of that former mirth as he made an end
of speaking. Cocardasse scratched an ear and glanced at Passepoil.
Passepoil scratched an ear and glanced at Cocardasse. The rest of the
bravos stared with a sullen curiosity at Lagardere, who paid no heed to
their gaze.

"Why did you laugh?" Cocardasse asked, after a short pause.

Lagardere answered him affably: "Because I knew that my allusion to
Caylus would fret my excellent enemy. There is, it seems, a beauty hidden
in that gloomy castle, Gabrielle de Caylus, whom my duke adores in spite
of the ancient feud between the two houses of Caylus and Nevers. It
should please him to fight under the eyes of his lady love, whom I can
console if I win."

The idea seemed to please Lagardere, for he again began to laugh softly
to himself after he had finished speaking. But Cocardasse did not seem to
think it was a laughing matter, for his voice was almost solemn as he
asked: "Did you speak of the lady in your letter to Nevers?"

Lagardere interrupted his mirth to reply: "Of course. The situation is so
humorous. I suggested playfully that there was a lovely princess
imprisoned in the castle of a wicked old ogre named Caylus, and I hinted
that if things turned out as I hoped, I might be fortunate enough to
carry solace and freedom to the captive damsel." He paused for a moment
and then asked in wonder: "Why do you pull such long faces?"

For, indeed, the faces of the swashbucklers were almost funereal in their
solemnity. Passepoil, relying upon his Norman cunning, took it upon
himself to explain a ticklish situation. "It is lucky we are here to
help you," he said, knowingly.

Lagardere's laughter became more pronounced. "To help me?" he cried, and
he shook with amusement at the absurdity of the words.

Passepoil insisted: "It's no laughing matter. Nevers is the lady's
husband."

He spoke with a portentous solemnity against which Lagardere protested,
laughing louder than before. "On the contrary, it is more laughable than
ever. A secret marriage. A romance. Perhaps I shall have to soothe a
widow when I hoped to woo a maid."

"Better have a sword or two to back you," Cocardasse suggested,
cunningly.

Lagardere frowned. "No, thank you. I do my own fighting."

Passepoil whispered, insinuatingly: "Could I help to carry off the
lady?"

Lagardere's frown deepened. "No, thank you. I do my own love-making.
Clear out and leave me alone. That is all I want of you, my friends."

Cocardasse sighed. "I'd do anything in the world to oblige you, but--" He
paused and looked helplessly at his former pupil, whom his faltering
speech, his hesitating manner began to anger.

"But what?" said Lagardere, sharply.

Cocardasse made an apologetic gesture. "Every man to his trade. We also
are waiting for some one."

Lagardere raised his eyebrows. "Indeed, and that some one?"

The bravos looked at one another uneasily, trying to seem devil-may-care
and failing wofully. Nobody appeared to want to speak. At last Passepoil
spoke. "That some one is Louis de Nevers," he said, and wished heartily
that he did not have to say it.

Lagardere at first appeared to be puzzled by the answer. Then the full
meaning of it seemed to fall upon him like a blow, and his face blazed at
the insult. "Nevers! You! Ah, this is an ambuscade, and I have sat at
drink with assassins!"

Cocardasse protested: "Come, captain, come."

Lagardere's only answer was to spring back clear of the nearest swordsmen
and to draw his sword again. The bravos gathered together angrily about
Staupitz, buzzing like irritated bees.

Lagardere flung his comely head back, and his bright eyes flamed with a
royal rage. His words came quick and clear in his anger: "It was for this
you sought to learn Nevers's thrust, and I--Oh, it would make the gods
laugh to think that I taught it to you! You have the best of the joke so
far, excellent assassins, but if any one of you touches a hair of
Nevers's head he will find that the joke is two-edged, like my sword. If
Nevers must die, it shall be in honorable battle and by my hands, but not
by yours, while Lagardere lives."

Æsop commented, sneeringly: "Lagardere is not immortal."

Staupitz grunted, angrily: "Shall one man dictate to nine?" and made an
appealing gesture to his comrades, inciting them against their censor.

Lagardere faced their menaces with the contemptuous indifference with
which a mastiff might have faced as many rats. He commanded, imperiously:
"Pack off, the whole gang of you, and leave Nevers to me!"

The bravos still buzzed and grumbled: Cocardasse rubbed his chin
thoughtfully; Passepoil pinched his long nose. The situation was becoming
critical. Lagardere was Lagardere, but he was only one man, after all, in
a narrow room, against great odds. Truly, the odds would be diminished if
the quarrel came to actual blows, for Cocardasse was resolved, and he
knew that Passepoil was resolved also, to side with Lagardere in such an
emergency. But even with the situation thus altered the result could only
be unnecessary bloodshed, which would be bad, for, if Lagardere was their
dear Little Parisian, the others were also their comrades. Further, it
would mean the postponing, probably the abandonment, of their enterprise
against Nevers, which would be much worse. Cocardasse plucked the Norman
to him with a strong finger and thumb, and whispered in his ear: "Get the
boys away and shift the keys."

Passepoil nodded, and glided discreetly among the bravos huddled together
at the table, whispering the words of Cocardasse in the ears of each.

Lagardere frowned at this mystery. "What are you whispering?" he asked,
angrily.

Cocardasse explained, plausibly. "Only that if you wanted to keep Nevers
to yourself--"

Passepoil interrupted, concluding: "It mattered little who did the job."

By this time the bravos, who at the beginning of the quarrel had unhooked
their rapiers from the wall, were now pulling their cloaks about them and
making for the main door. The Italian, the Breton, the Spaniard, the
Biscayan, and the Portuguese filed out into the passage, followed by
Æsop, who turned to pay Lagardere a mocking salutation and to say,
tauntingly: "So good-night, gallant captain."

Staupitz, with an air of surly carelessness, sauntered down to the only
other door in the room, the door that led to the domestic offices of the
Inn. While he did so, Cocardasse held out his hand to Lagardere in sign
of amity, but Lagardere refused it. "I am no precisian," he said. "I have
kept vile company. I would not deny my hand to a hang-man. But the most
tolerant philosopher has his dislikes, and mine are assassins."

Cocardasse sighed, and made for the main door, followed by Passepoil, who
said, wistfully, "Adieu, Little Parisian," a greeting of which Lagardere
took no notice.

Now, while Æsop had been saying his taunting farewell to Lagardere he had
been standing with his back to the door, and with his left hand had
dexterously abstracted the key. Also, while Cocardasse had been
endeavoring to gain a clasp of the hand from Lagardere, Staupitz had
quietly locked the door leading to the kitchen and put that key in his
pocket. Now Staupitz, Cocardasse, and Passepoil went in their turn
through the main door and drew it behind them.

Lagardere seated himself at the table with a sigh of relief as he heard
the heavy feet trampling down the passage, but his relief did not last
long. His quick ears caught a sound that was undoubtedly the click of a
key in a lock, followed by the shuffle of cautiously retiring feet. He
instantly sprang to his feet, and, rushing to the main door, caught at
the handle and found the door firmly locked.

"Damn them!" he cried; "they have locked the door." Then he began to
shout, furiously, calling first upon Cocardasse, and then upon Passepoil
by name to open the door immediately, knowing these two to be his friends
among the gang of rascals. But no answer came to his cries, and, vigorous
though he was, his efforts had no effect upon the solid strength of the
door. Turning, he hurried to the door which led to the kitchen and tried
that, only to find that it, too, was locked against him, and that it,
too, was impregnable. He looked about him hurriedly. He knew it was no
use calling for the people of the Inn, who would be sure to side with
their truculent customers, and he knew also that, if he did not succeed
in making his escape from the trap into which he had blundered, Nevers
would be murdered.

He rushed to the window and looked out. The sight was not pleasing. The
rugged rock on which the Inn was perched dropped beneath him thirty feet
to the moat below, and, though his eyes eagerly scanned the face of the
cliff, he could see no possibility, even for one so nimble as himself, of
climbing down it successfully. To jump such a height would be to end as a
jelly and be of no service to Nevers. For a few wild moments he cursed
his folly in having been deluded by the bravos, and then his native high
spirits and his native humor came to his assistance, reminding him that
he always made it his business to look upon the diverting side of life,
and that it was now clearly his duty to seek for the entertaining
elements of the present predicament. Undoubtedly, these were hard to
find. The jest was decidedly a bitter one, and could only be turned to
his taste if he succeeded in getting out. But how was he to succeed? He
tried the door again, despairingly and unsuccessfully as before. He
reflected that perhaps there might be a rope in the room, and anxiously
he looked in every corner. No rope was to be found.

Clapping his hands to his sides in his vexation at being thus baffled, he
touched the soft substance of his silken sash, and instantly an idea
kindled at the touch. "Perhaps this will do," he thought, and hurriedly
proceeded to unwind it. It was a long sash, for it went from his shoulder
to his waist and then three times round his middle, where it was tied in
a large bow with long ends. It was at least fifteen feet long, and as
tough as any hemp that was ever twisted. He fastened one end of it
quickly round a bar in the window, and let the long crimson streamer drop
down the side of the cliff. Using this as a means of descent, it would
bring him half-way down the rock. Hanging by his arms, he would cover
much of the remaining distance, and the drop thence to the ground would
be easy. In another moment he was outside the window, and, grasping the
silk firmly in his strong fingers, began his perilous descent.

VI

THE MOAT OF CAYLUS

The descent into the moat of Caylus was rather a ticklish business, even
with the aid of an improvised rope, for the face of the cliff was, for
the most part, smooth, and afforded little in the way of foothold, but
Lagardere was a trained athlete and a man of great physical strength, one
that could use his feet with skill for purchase against the face of the
rock, and he made his way dexterously to the end of his tether. Even when
he had got thus far, and was swinging by his hands from the end of his
taut sash, he was a considerable distance from the ground. But Lagardere
let go with as light a heart as if he were a new Curtius leaping into a
new gulf; and, indeed, if he had been of a mind to make the parallel, he
would have counted his stake as great as the safety of Rome. Dropping
like a plummet, he alighted on his hands and knees on the ground. Quickly
he picked himself up, dusted the earth from his palms, and, after
carefully feeling himself all over to make sure that he was none the
worse, save for the jar of his tumble, he looked about him cautiously. It
was late evening now, and the hot day knew no cooler dusk.

As he looked up from the strange vault in which he stood, the vault that
was formed by the moat of Caylus between the rock on which the castle
rose and the rock on which the Inn of the Seven Devils was perched, he
saw above him the late evening sky painted with the strangest pageant. To
the right of the spot where the sun had declined the purple melancholy of
the heavens was broken by a blaze of gold, such as might have flashed
from the armor of some celestial host marshalled and marching against the
Powers of Darkness. To the left, under lowered eyelids of sable clouds,
there ran a band of red fire that seemed as if it must belt the earth
with its fury, a red fire that might have flamed from the mouth of the
very pit. Lagardere was not over-imaginative, but the strangeness of the
contrast, the fierce splendor of the warring colors, touched the player's
heart beneath the soldier's hide. "The gold of heaven," he murmured, and
saluted the sky to the right. "The rod of hell," he thought, and pointed
towards the left, where distant trees stared, black, angry outlines
against those waves of livid fire. Was not this contest in the clouds a
kind of allegory of the quarrel in which he was now engaged, and was not
his cause very surely, in its righteousness, its justice, its honor,
gilded and invigorated by those noble rays to strive against and
overthrow the legionaries of evil?

Even as he thought such unfamiliar thoughts, the pageant of opposing
forces dimmed and dwindled. The darkness was gathering swiftly, investing
the world with its legion of gloom; and in the shadow of the great Castle
of Caylus, rising like a rock itself out of the solid rock behind
Lagardere, the moat was soon very dark indeed. There was little light in
the moonless sky; there came none from the castle, which in its dim
outline of towers and battlements might have been the enchanted palace of
some fairy tale, so soundless, so lightless, so unpeopled did it seem.
There was a faint gleam discernible in the windows of the Inn on the
other side of the gorge from which he had just succeeded in escaping.

Lagardere looked up at the Inn and laughed; Lagardere looked up at the
castle and smiled. What was she like, he wondered, that beautiful
Gabrielle de Caylus, whom it had been his impudent ambition to woo, and
whom he now knew to be married to Nevers, his appointed antagonist? He
had come all that way with the pleasant intention of killing Nevers, but
he felt more friendly towards his enemy since he had learned of the plot
against his life, and he wondered who was the instigator of that plot,
who was the paymaster of the, as he believed, baffled assassins. For in a
sense he believed them to be baffled, and this for two reasons. The first
was that he heard no sound of stealthy footsteps creeping across the
bridge. The second was that when he glanced up at the Inn window he saw
that the dim glow in the distant window was suddenly occulted, and then
as suddenly became visible again. It was plain to Lagardere that some
one had entered the room and had looked out of the window for an instant.
Therefore some one had already discovered his absence, probably the maid
of the Inn. No doubt she would send word to the bravos, and it might very
well chance that the bravos would not think the odds in their favor
sufficiently good when they knew that they had to deal with Henri de
Lagardere as well as with Louis de Nevers.

Lagardere whistled cheerfully the lilt of a drinking-song as he reflected
thus, for he considered himself quite equal to handling the whole batch
of rascallions if only he had a wall of some kind to back him. He was
fondling the possibility that they had given up the whole business in
disgust at his interruption of their purpose, when it suddenly stabbed
his fancy that they might ambush Nevers on his way. But he dismissed that
fear instantly. He hoped and believed that if they knew he was free they
would give him the first chance to kill Nevers for them. In any case, all
that he could do was to wait patiently where he was and see what the
creeping minutes brought.

The moat of Caylus did not appear to him to be, under the existing
conditions, by any means the ideal field for a duel. In the darkness it
seemed to him to be more happily adapted for a game of blindman's-buff.
There was a half-filled hay-cart in the moat, and bundles of hay were
scattered hither and thither on the ground and littered the place
confusingly. Lagardere began to busy himself in clearing some of this hay
out of the way, so as to afford an untroubled space for the coming
combat. While he was thus engaged he heard for the first time a faint
sound come from the direction of the castle. It was the sound of a door
being turned cautiously upon its hinges. Crouching in the shadow of the
rock down which he had lately descended, Lagardere looked round and saw
dimly two forms emerge like shadows from the very side of the castle. The
new-comers had come forth from a little postern that gave onto the moat,
to which they descended by some narrow steps cut in the rock, and they
now walked a little way slowly into the darkness. Lagardere, all
watchfulness, could hear one of the shadows say to the other, "This way,
monseigneur," and the word "monseigneur" made him wonder. Was he going to
be brought face to face with the Marquis of Caylus, the old ogre whose
grim tyranny had been talked of even in Paris?

The shadow addressed as monseigneur answered, "I see no one," and the
voices of both the shadows were unfamiliar to the listener. But the voice
of the shadow that was saluted as monseigneur sounded like the voice of a
young man.

The leading shadow seemed to be peering into the darkness in front of
him. "I told them to place a sentinel," he said to his companion; and as
he spoke he caught sight of Lagardere, who must have looked as shadowy
to him as he looked to Lagardere, and he pointed as he added: "Yes, there
is some one there, monseigneur."

"Who is it?" the second shadow questioned, and again the voice sounded
youthful to Lagardere's ears.

"It looks like Saldagno," said the first shadow; and, coming a little
farther forward, he called dubiously into the gloom: "Is that you,
Saldagno?"

Now, as Saldagno was the name of one of the swordsmen who had met at the
Inn in menace of Nevers, Lagardere came to the swift conclusion that the
two shadows now haunting him had something to do with that conspiracy,
and that, if it were possible, it would be as well to learn their
purposes. He was, therefore, quite prepared to be Saldagno for the
occasion, and it was with a well-affected Lusitanian accent that he
promptly answered, "Present," and came a little nearer to the strangers.

The first shadow spoke again, craning a long neck into the darkness. "It
is I, Monsieur Peyrolles. Come here."

Lagardere advanced obediently, and the second shadow, coming to the side
of his companion, questioned him. "Would you like to earn fifty
pistoles?"

Although both the voices were strange to Lagardere, the voice of this
second shadow seemed to denote a person of better breeding than his
companion, a person accustomed to command when the other was accustomed
to cajole. Also, it was decidedly the voice of a young man. Whoever the
speaker might be, he certainly was not the crabbed old Marquis de Caylus.
Lagardere endeavored eagerly but unsuccessfully to see the face of the
speaker. Night had by this time fallen completely. The moat was as black
as a wolf's mouth, and the shadow that was muffled in a cloak held a
corner of it so raised that it would have concealed his visage if the
gorge had been flooded with moonlight.

"Who would not?" Lagardere answered, with a swagger which seemed to him
appropriate to a light-hearted assassin.

The shadow gave him commands. "When ten o'clock strikes, tap at this
window with your sword." He pointed as he spoke to the wall of the
castle, and in that wall Lagardere, peering through the obscurity, could
faintly discern a window about a man's height from the moat. The speaker
went on: "A woman will open. Whisper very low, 'I am here.'"

Involuntarily Lagardere echoed the last words, "I am here," and added,
"The motto of Nevers."

There was annoyance in the well-bred voice as it questioned, sharply:
"What do you know of Nevers?"

Peyrolles respectfully answered for the sham Saldagno: "Monseigneur, they
all know whom they are to meet. How they know I cannot tell, but they do
know. But they are to be trusted."

The shadow shrugged his shoulders and resumed his instructions: "The
woman will hand you a child, a baby a few months old. Take it at once to
the Inn." He paused for a moment and then said, slowly: "I trust you are
not tender-hearted."

Lagardere protested with voice and gesture. "You pain me," he declared.

Apparently satisfied, the shadow went on: "If the girl should die in your
arms, no one will blame you, and your fifty pistoles will be a hundred.
'Tis but a quick nip of finger and thumb on an infant's neck. Do you
understand?"

"What I do not understand," retorted Lagardere, "is why you do not do the
job yourself and save your money."

It was now Peyrolles's turn to be annoyed. "Rascal!" he exclaimed,
angrily. But the man he called monseigneur restrained him.

"Calm, Peyrolles, calm! For the very good reason, inquisitive gentleman,
that the lady in question would know my voice or the voice of my friend
here, and as I do not wish her to think that I have anything to do with
to-night's work--"

Lagardere interrupted, bluffly: "Say no more. I'm your man."

Even as he spoke the plaintive sound of a horn was heard far away in the
distance. Peyrolles spoke: "The first signal. The shepherds have been
told to watch and warn at the wood-ends and the by-path and the causeway
to the bridge. Nevers has entered the forest."

The noble shadow gave a little laugh. "He is riding to his death, the
fool amorist. Come."

Then the two shadows flitted away in the darkness as nebulously as they
had come, and the castle swallowed them up, and Lagardere was alone again
in the moat among the bundles of hay.

"May the devil fly away with you for a pair of knaves!" he said beneath
his breath, apostrophizing the vanished shadows. "But I'll save the child
and Nevers in spite of you." For in those moments of horrid colloquy all
his purpose had been transmuted. These unknown plotters of murder had
confirmed him in his alliance to the man he had come to slay. So long as
Nevers was in peril from these strange enemies, so long Lagardere would
be his friend, free, of course, to rekindle his promise later. But now
even Nevers's life was not of the first importance. There was a child
threatened, a child to be saved. Who were these devils, these Herods,
that sought to slay a baby?

Even as he asked himself this question he could hear through the clear
air the striking of a clock in the distant village. He counted the
strokes from one to ten. This was the time that had been fixed by the
master shadow. Lagardere made his way carefully across the moat till he
stood beneath the designated window. He drew his sword and tapped with
the blade thrice against the pane. Then he sheathed his sword and waited
upon events.

VII

BROTHERS-IN-ARMS

He had not long to wait. In a few moments the window above him turned
softly on its hinges, and a head appeared in the open space. The chamber
from which the window opened was unilluminated, and the light in the moat
was so dim that Lagardere could only perceive the vague outline of a
woman's head and shoulders leaning forward into the darkness. Even in
that moment of tension he felt himself stirred by a sharp regret that he
should not be able to judge for himself as to the beauty of the lady whom
the world called Gabrielle de Caylus, but whom he knew to be the Duchess
de Nevers. A very low, sweet voice called to him through the darkness,
speaking the Christian name of Nevers.

"Louis!" the woman said, and Lagardere immediately answered, "I am here."
He spoke very low, that his voice might not be recognized, and because he
had the mimic's trick he made his voice as like as he could to the voice
of Nevers.

Evidently his voice was not recognized, evidently the lady took him for
her lord, for she immediately went on speaking very low and clear, her
words falling rapidly from above on the ears of the waiting Lagardere.

"Do not speak, Louis," she said; "do not linger. I am watched; I fear
danger. Take our dear Gabrielle."

As she spoke she leaned her body a little farther forward into the night
and extended her arms towards her hearer.

Lagardere tingled with a sudden thrill as he realized that this beautiful
woman was nearer to him, that she was seeking him, that she believed him
to be her lover. And he realized with a pang that he, impudent in his
libertinism, had entertained with a light heart the light hope in some
audacious way to take by storm the love of this unknown woman. It had
seemed, in Paris, an insolently boyishly possible, plausible adventure;
but now, in his new knowledge and in this distant, lonely place, his
enterprise, that, after all, was little more than an impish vision,
seemed no other than a tragi-comical impertinence. All that he had known
of Gabrielle de Caylus was that she was reported fair, and that she was
loved by his enemy. All that he knew of her now was that she was his
enemy's wife, that she had a gracious voice, and that she loved his enemy
very dearly; yet this was enough for Lagardere, this, and to know that
the woman was all unconsciously trusting to his honor, to his courage, to
his truth. And it was with an unfamiliar exaltation of the spirit that
Lagardere swore to himself that the unwitting confidence of Gabrielle de
Caylus should not be misplaced, and that all his hand, his heart, his
sword could do for her service should cheerfully and faithfully be done.

Lagardere could see that she was holding something in the nature of a
bundle in her out-stretched arms. This was the child, no doubt, of whom
the masked shadow had spoken. Lagardere took the bundle cautiously in his
hands and lowered it to a secure resting-place in his left arm. Then the
Duchess de Nevers spoke again, and he saw that she was holding another
and smaller object in her hand.

"This packet," she said, "contains the papers recording our marriage,
torn from the register of the chapel. I feared they would be destroyed if
I did not save them."

As she spoke she put the packet into Lagardere's extended right hand, and
as his fingers closed upon it the horn that he had heard before was wound
again in the distance, but this time it seemed to his keen ears that the
sound was nearer than before.

The woman in the window gave a shiver. "There is much to say," she
sighed, "but no time to say it now. That may be a signal. Go, go, Louis.
I love you."

In another moment her head was drawn back into the darkness of the
apartment, the window closed, and the old castle was as silent and
obscure as before. If it were not for the bundle in his left arm and the
packet in his right hand, Lagardere might well have been tempted to
believe that the whole episode was no more than the fancy of a dream. He
thrust the packet into his breast, and then moved slowly towards the
centre of the moat, tenderly cradling his precious charge. Peering
closely down at the bundle, he could dimly discern what seemed to be a
baby face among the encircling folds of silk which wrapped the child. It
was sleeping soundly; the transition from its mother's arms to the arms
of the soldier of fortune had not wakened it, and now, as Lagardere
gently rocked it in his arms, it continued to sleep.

The whimsicality of the adventure began to tickle Lagardere's fancy. He
seemed to be destined to play many parts that night. A few minutes back
he had masqueraded as a bravo to deceive the mysterious shadows. Then he
had pretended to be a husband to deceive the Duchess de Nevers. Now he
imitated a nurse in order that Nevers's child might sleep soundly. He
looked again at the quiet morsel of humanity, and his heart was stirred
with strange desires and melancholy imaginings. Raising his hand to his
hat, he uncovered solemnly and made the baby a sweeping salute.

"Mademoiselle de Nevers," he whispered, "your loyal servant salutes you!
Sleep in peace, pretty sweetheart."

Then he began to sing softly beneath his breath the burden of an old
French lullaby which he remembered from his childhood days, with its
burden of "Do, do, l'enfant do, l'enfant dormira tantôt," and as he sang
the horn again sounded the same dreary, prolonged note as before, but now
more clearly, and therefore plainly nearer.

"That must be the last signal," Lagardere thought, and on the moment he
heard the sound of footsteps on the bridge, and out of the darkness
beyond a man slowly descended into the darkness of the moat. In another
instant Lagardere heard the well-known voice of Nevers calling out:
"Halloo! Is any one here?"

Lagardere advanced to meet his appointed enemy. "This way, duke!" he
cried. Then he added, reprovingly: "You would have been wiser to carry a
lantern."

Nevers moved swiftly towards him along the kind of path that Lagardere
had made in the bundle of hay, and as he came he spoke, and his tone was
menacing and imperious. "Let me feel your blade. I can kill in the
dark."

Lagardere answered him, ironically: "Gifted gentleman! But I want a talk
first."

He had scarcely finished when a flash like lightning stabbed the darkness
and came very near to stabbing him. It was the sword of Nevers, who was
thrusting wildly before him into the gloom, while he cried: "Not a word!
You have insulted a woman!"

Lagardere beat a rapid retreat for a few paces, and called to him: "I
apologize humbly, abjectly. I kneel for forgiveness."

Nevers's only answer was to follow up and thrust rapidly at Lagardere's
retreating figure, while he cried, fiercely: "Too late."

There was nothing for Lagardere to do but to defend himself in order to
gain time with this passionate madman. Therefore, Lagardere drew his
sword and parried the attack which Nevers was now making at close
quarters. It was so dark in the moat that the two antagonists could
scarcely see each other, and even the brightness of the blades was with
difficulty distinguished. In a voice that was at once anxious and
mocking, Lagardere cried to the duke: "Unnatural parent, do you wish to
kill your child?"

The last word stopped Nevers like a blow. He lowered his sword and spoke
wonderingly: "My child! What do you mean?"

Lagardere answered him, gravely: "At this moment Mademoiselle de Nevers
is nestled in my arms."

Nevers echoed him, astonished: "My daughter, in your arms?"

Lagardere came quite close to the duke and showed him the bundle cradled
in his elbow. "See for yourself; but step gently, for the young lady's
sleep must be respected."

Nevers gave a gasp of surprise. "What has happened?"

Lagardere answered him, slowly: "Madame de Nevers gave this little lady
to me just now from yonder window, taking me for you. There is a plot to
kill the child, to kill you."

Nevers gave a groan. "This is the hate of the Marquis de Caylus."

"I don't know who is doing the job," Lagardere answered, "but what I do
know is that the night is alive with assassins. I think I have got rid of
some of them, but there may be others, wherefore prudence advises us to
be off."

He could see Nevers stiffen himself in the darkness as he answered,
proudly: "A Nevers fly?"

Lagardere shrugged his shoulders. "Even I have no passion for flight, but
with a sweet young lady to defend--"

Nevers seemed to accept his correction. "You are right. Forgive me. Let
us go."

The two men turned to leave the moat, but as they did so they were
stopped by the sound of fresh footsteps on the bridge, and in another
instant Nevers's page had descended the steps and ran to join them.

"My lord!" he cried to the duke as soon as he reached the pair--"my lord,
my lord, you are surrounded!"

Nevers gave an angry cry: "Too late!"

Lagardere answered him with a laugh. "Nonsense! There are but nine
rascals."

But the laugh died away upon his lips when the page hurriedly
interrupted: "Twenty at least."

Lagardere was staggered but emphatic. "Nine, duke, nine. I saw them,
counted them, know them."

The page was equally emphatic. "They have got help since you came. There
are smugglers hereabouts, and they have recruited their ranks from
them."

Lagardere grunted. "Ungentlemanly," he protested, and then addressed
Nevers: "Well, duke, we can manage ten apiece easily." He turned to the
boy and gave him some quick instructions. "Creep through the wood behind
the castle to the highway. Run like the devil to the cross-roads, where
my men wait. Tell them Lagardere is in danger. They may be here in a
quarter of an hour."

The boy answered him, decisively: "They shall be."

Lagardere patted him on the back. "Good lad," he said, and the boy darted
from his side and disappeared into the darkness.

Lagardere turned to the duke. "There is no chance of escaping now without
a scuffle," he said; "we must fight it out as well as we can. You and I,
duke, ought not to think it a great matter to handle ten rascals apiece
in this fighting-place, if only we intrench ourselves properly."

As he spoke he laid his precious bundle reverently in the hay-cart, where
it seemed to sleep as peacefully as if it were in its native cradle, and
began piling up the great masses of the bundles of hay in front of him to
form a kind of rampart.

Nevers looked at him in astonishment. "Do you stand by me?"

Lagardere answered him cheerfully. "I came here to fight with you. I stay
here to fight for you. I must fight somebody. I lose by the change, for
it is a greater honor to fight Monsieur de Nevers than a battalion of
bravos, but there is no help for it."

There was a little silence, and then Nevers said, slowly: "You are a
splendid gentleman."

"There is nothing to make a fuss about," Lagardere said, lightly. "I am
this little lady's soldier. I came here in a cutthroat humor enough, but
since I dandled her daintiness in my arms I've taken a fine liking for
her father."

Nevers reached out his hand to Lagardere. "Henceforward we are
comrades--brothers."

Lagardere clasped the extended hand. "Heart and hand, for life and death,
brother."

VIII

THE FIGHT IN THE MOAT

As they stood there, hand clasped in hand, exchanging the dateless pledge
of brotherhood, they heard the sound of many feet coming cautiously along
the road to the bridge. The practised assassins walked catfoot, but there
were others that shuffled in their care to go warily.

Nevers said, quietly: "Here come the swords."

Lagardere gave a jolly laugh. "Now for a glorious scrimmage!" he said,
and made his sword sing in the air.

As he spoke the words, shade after shade began to descend the steps from
the bridge and to advance cautiously into the moat. Lagardere counted
them as they came: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,
ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Even in the darkness he thought he could
recognize certain figures: the twisted form of the hunchback, the burly
body of Cocardasse, the gaunt figure of the Norman, the barrel bulk of
Staupitz. This barrel bulk came to the front of the shadows huddled
together at the base of the hill, and spoke with the thick, Teutonic
voice that Lagardere had heard so short a time before. "There they are,"
Staupitz said, and Lagardere could see a gleam in the night as the German
pointed to where the two newly bound comrades stood together.

An instant answer came with the defiant cry of Nevers, "I am here!" which
was immediately echoed by Lagardere. "I am here!" he shouted; and then
added for himself: "Lagardere! Lagardere!"

Among the bravos a momentary note of comedy intruded upon the intended
tragedy, as is often the way when humanity foregathers on sinister
business. Cocardasse plucked Passepoil by the sleeve and drew him a
little away from their fellow-ruffians. "We cannot fight against the
Little Parisian," he whispered into the Norman's ear. "We will look on,
comrade." Passepoil nodded approval, but spoke no word. For the rest of
that red adventure into the placid blackness of the night those two stood
apart in the shadow, with their arms folded and their swords in their
sheaths, sombrely watching the seven men that were their friends
assailing the one man they loved. Such honor as they had forbade them to
change sides and fight for the Little Parisian. They had been paid to
range with the assailants of Nevers. But no payment could possibly
prevail on them to attack Lagardere. So, according to their consciences,
they split the difference and held aloof. Their abstention was not
noticed by their fellows in the excitement of the time.

Numerous as they were, the bravos and their new recruits seemed unwilling
to advance against two such famous swordsmen. Lagardere taunted their
apathy:

"Come, you crows, the eagles wait for you." He felt that the words had a
fine theatrical ring, and he enjoyed them as he flung them forth.

Nevers cried his cry, "I am here!" and Lagardere repeated it, "I am
here!" He was longing to come to blows with the bandits, and to show them
what two men could do against their multitude. His sword quivered like a
snake in its eagerness to feel blades against its blade.

The barrel bulk of Staupitz spoke again addressing his little army. "Do
you fear two men?" he asked. "Forward!"

On the word the eighteen men charged, the original seven leading; the
eleven recruits, less whole-hearted in the business, came less alertly in
the rear. The charge of the assassins was abruptly arrested by
Lagardere's bulwark, and over that bulwark the swords of the two
defenders flashed and leaped, and before every thrust a man went down. It
seemed an age of battle, it seemed an instant of battle. Then the baffled
assassins recoiled, leaving two of the smugglers for dead, while Saldagno