Traitor and True. John Bloundelle-Burton
and the two desperadoes on horses strong and muscular.
"Summon the gate," the former said now. "Summon in the name of the King."
"Open," cried La Truaumont, "open. Par ordre du Roi. Open, I say."
"Who are you?" cried out a voice from the gatehouse window, at which a man's face had by now appeared. "Who are you that summon thus in the name of the King? Stand and answer."
"The Prince and Chevalier Louis De Beaurepaire, Grand Veneur and Colonel of all His Majesty's Guards," replied La Truaumont, knowing well that his master would not deign to answer at all. "Attended by the Chief of his own bodyguard, the Captain de La Truaumont."
"And the others, most worshipful sir?"
"The Vicomte d'Aignay-le-Duc," called back Humphrey, naming, as had been decided, one of the Duchess's estates, "attended by Monsieur Jean de Beaufôret," naming another, "followed by their attendant, Monsieur Homfroi."
"And the others, who are they, illustrious seigneur?"
"Le Capitaine Fleur de Mai, Le Colonel Boisfleury, both of Prince de Beaurepaire's bodyguard," bawled the former in an authoritative, dictatorial voice.
"Pass all," the man said now, the gate beginning to creak on its hinges as he spoke. "Pass. Good-night, noble seigneurs."
"Bid him let the gate remain open," De Beaurepaire said to La Truaumont. "Tell him I do but ride outside it, there to make my adieux to the 'Vicomte'."
After which, and when this order had been given, all rode through the gate. The travellers were outside Paris; they had left it behind.
All had done so with the exception of De Beaurepaire who-since he had fulfilled his promise of preventing the Duchess from being interfered with in her flight from a mad husband until, at least, she was outside the city walls-was about to say farewell to the party.
"Farewell, Louis de Beaurepaire," that lady said now, as she placed her long-gloved hand in his, while her soft, dark eyes looked out at him from under her curled wig and plumed hat, "farewell. You have placed me in the way that leads to safety and freedom; I beseech of you to do nothing that may make safety and freedom strangers to you. Hear my last words before I go. Even as now you turn back to Paris and all the honours that you have, so turn back from that which may deprive you of all honour; ay! and more. Addio."
CHAPTER VI
The road to Nancy from Paris ran through the old province of Champagne until Lorraine was entered-Lorraine, which, since the peace of Westphalia, had fallen under French rule.
Along this road the cavalcade led by La Truaumont progressed day by day on its way towards Nancy, a hundred and fifty miles and more by road from Paris. Between each morning and night the members of that cavalcade rode on and accomplished some thirty miles at a slow pace so as to spare their horses as much as possible, while halting in the evenings at old inns where, though they gave no name, their appearance and their manners proclaimed that they were persons, or at least that one of them was, of high importance.
For the Duchess, Jacquette and Humphrey took their meals together behind a screen in whatever public room they sat down, as was the custom of the nobility when travelling; La Truaumont took his alone behind another screen close by, while the soi-disant, or, it may be, the actual Colonel-for Colonels could oft fall low in these times! – Boisfleury took his in company with the sinister and truculent Fleur de Mai.
"And, sang bleu!" exclaimed the latter individual on the third night of their halt, which took place at Vitry, "if we were not ordered to sit apart and to restore ourselves like serving men and valets by this insolent La Truaumont, I would be well content with the office. This ride through the air of Champagne is good for our health, the food and drink is wholesome and ample, the absence of expense good for our pockets. Nevertheless, I do think I must stick my rapier through La Truaumont's midriff at the end of the ride. For his insults," and he swallowed a large gulp of golden Avize, a local wine.
"Stick thy fork in thy mouth and thy glass down thy throat!" replied Boisfleury, tearing the flesh off a chicken's wing with his teeth as he spoke, "and utter no banalities. You are well paid, you sleep warm and soft o' nights and eat and drink of the best, and all you have to do is to ride by my side and listen to my sweet converse and hold your babbling tongue. While as to rapiers through midriffs-what would the attempt profit you? La Truaumont is a ferrailleur of the first water. Better put good food inside you than your vitals outside."
"I am as good as he," Fleur de Mai replied in a voice which was getting husky with the Avize, when suddenly Boisfleury interrupted any further observations by exclaiming: -
"Be silent, fool, and stagger to thy feet. See, the Duchess rises from the table behind the screen. Ha! the Englishman bids madame good-night. He kissed her hand and, me damne! kisses slyly the ear of the girl, d'Angelis. Ha! Ha! The kiss, the English kiss! They can do nothing without that. And, observe, La Truaumont comes this way. Stand steady on thy feet, chameau."
"Boot and saddle at six o'clock to-morrow," said La Truaumont as he came down the great inn-room which was part hall, and, at the end, part kitchen. "Up at five. Boisfleury, see he is up," looking at Fleur de Mai.
"I shall be up," muttered that worthy. "Have no fear. A pint of this wine will not make me sleep heavily. I'll throw the dice with you now for a bottle of the best."
The noble lady, Ortenzia, Duchesse de Castellucchio, who was now riding from Paris to Nancy on her way to cross the Alps and, later, to join her own family, that of the Scoriatis, had some few years before this made almost a similar journey to France, there to marry her countryman the Duc de Castellucchio, a man whose family, originally poor, had followed Concino Concini-the Maréchal d'Ancre-into France, but had managed to escape the awful end that had overtaken both him and his wife.
Having escaped such a fate as the assassination of the former or the execution by burning of the latter, as well as any other forms of death which the creatures of those once powerful adventurers might well have expected to overtake them, the family thrived and prospered. Steering clear of political machinations until the Concinis were almost forgotten and, indeed, until Louis le Juste was himself in his grave, they devoted themselves to commerce and, above all, to money lending and, thereby, grew rich.
But when, at last, Mazarin's star was in the ascendant as it became shortly after the death of Richelieu, they attached themselves to his fortunes, while, as he grew all powerful, so did they who, coming to France almost paupers, were now enormously wealthy.
One grief there was, however, that fell heavily on old Felice Ventura who had, by this time, become Monsieur le Duc de Castellucchio (he having decided to confer honour on his birthplace by taking its name for his title), and that grief was that his only son and successor gave signs of becoming a maniac, if he were not already one.
Always strange as a boy, this son had, as a young man, given still more astonishing signs of mental derangement, and, a short time after he had espoused Ortenzia Scoriati, the daughter of a noble and wealthy Milanese family, he was regarded and spoken of not only as a lunatic but a dangerous one. For, from such outbreaks as rousing the whole house from their beds by saying that a ghost was wandering round it, and by dragging his wife out of her own bed by the hair to look for the apparition; by not allowing any footmen to be in his service who were under seventy, in case his wife should fall in love with them, and by breaking up all the statues he owned (which his father had collected at an enormous cost) since he proclaimed such things to be heathen and profligate, he proceeded to greater extremities. He invariably tore the patches off his wife's face whenever she placed them on it, saying that they were the allurements used by giddy women; he insisted next that his wife should have her teeth drawn so that she should become hideous in the eyes of the world, and it was only by the flight from him which she was now undertaking that the Duchess was able to prevent herself from being thus disfigured for the rest of her life.
But even before this moment had arrived, his conduct had been such as to induce the unhappy Duchess to determine to leave him. He ruined all the costly furniture and pictures, as well as the statues, which his old father had accumulated, on the usual plea that they were not fit for modest people to