Orrain. S. Levett Yeats
Majesty," I said, "I have but my word to offer for this—I have none who will add his pledge to mine."
"No one? Are you sure?"
"Your Majesty, it is as I have said."
A faint smile parted her lips, and she looked up at me suddenly and quickly, her eyes as alive with intelligence as they had appeared dull and lifeless before.
"Well, monsieur, before I trust you," and she struck the glove she held in her hand on the table, "it is necessary for me to tell you something. Listen. Many years ago—I was new to France then—a young gentleman of the best blood of Burgundy came to Paris, and entered at the College of Cambrai. Well, he did what none other of his time did, nor has any of his order done the like since. He took the three courses—took them brilliantly. You follow me?"
"I am all attention, madame." My voice was as cold and measured as hers, but in my heart I began to wonder if I would leave the room for a journey to Montfauçon, with a halt by the way at the Châtelet.
"But," she continued, "this man was not a mere bookworm nor a pedant, though Le Brun, whose voice was the voice of the Sorbonne then, prophesied a red hat for him. The red hat never came, nor did a marshal's baton, though Bevilacqua himself foretold the latter one day, as he brushed away a chalk mark just over the heart, where this young man's foil had touched him. Bevilacqua, mind you—the best sword in Europe!"
I made as if about to speak. I was about to ask her bluntly what was to be the end of this, but with a wave of her hand she stayed me.
"Permit me to continue, monsieur! This man, or boy as he was then, was true metal all through, but he was cursed with an open heart and wealth. Let us say that the course of Philosophy unsettled his mind, that the two campaigns in Italy brought but withered laurels. Let it be what you will, but back he came to Paris; and because his blood was warm, his spirits high, and his heart full of vanity and vain imaginings, the red wine was poured forth, the dice rattled, fair women smiled, and the gold crowns went. It was the old, old story; but the pity of it, monsieur, was that it was such pure good steel that was fretting thus to rust! Was it not?"
She stopped, and looked at me again with her wonderful, searching eyes, and I braced myself, as one who was about to receive a death-blow.
"At last the end came. This brave, gallant—fool—yes, that is the word—quarrelled with his best friend over a lady of the Marais—of the Marais, mind you! This friend wanted to save him from himself. The result was that those two, who had been like brothers, met each other sword in hand under the lee of the Louvre, and one—it was not the fool—fell."
The words seemed to thunder in my ears. By some effort, I knew not how, I managed to restrain myself, and her cold, passionless voice went on:
"After that came ruin—ruin utter and hopeless. And he who might have been anything died like a dog of the streets."
Something like a gasp of relief broke from me; but the Medicis had not done yet. She rose swiftly, and for one brief second let her white hand, glittering with rings, rest on my shoulder. It was for a moment only, and then she let fall her hand, with a smile on her face.
"They say, monsieur, that the age of miracles is past. Caraffa the Legate smiles if you mention them. But I—I believe, for I know. The dead have come back before. Why not again, Bertrand d'Orrain? Would you live again, and pledge your faith for that of the Bourgeois Broussel?"
CHAPTER V
THE PORTE ST. MICHEL
Half-an-hour later, when I quitted the presence of the Queen, it was as one to whom the world was opening afresh, and in that brief interval I had felt and begun to understand the subtle intellect of Catherine, of the existence of which few as yet were aware.
In regard to the mission with which I was entrusted I am pledged to preserve silence. The people concerned in it are dead, and when I follow them the secret will go with me. Let it suffice for me to say that my task was such that a man of honour could accept, and that if I failed the preservation of my skin was my own affair, for help I would get from none. Hidden in the inner pocket of my vest was a dispatch to Montluc, the King's lieutenant in the South. In my hand I openly bore a letter, sealed with the palle of the Medici, and addressed in the Queen's own writing to the King. It was to be the means of my freeing the gates of Paris if difficulty arose, and how it did so I shall presently show.
I found my friends awaiting me, and Le Brusquet asked:
"Well, have you come forth a made man?"
"Monsieur, I will answer you that," I said with assumed gravity, "if you will tell me who betrayed me to the Queen."
I looked from one to the other, and they both laughed.
"Behold the traitor, then!" And Le Brusquet pointed with his finger at me.
"I?"
"Yes, you!—as if you had called it from the housetops. Mon ami, did ever hear of a bourgeois handling sword as you, or bearing arms un coq d'or griffe de sable, en champ d'azur? Those arms are on your wine-cups—if they exist still—they are on the hilt of the sword you lent me."
"Morbleu!"
"But that is not all. In the gay, red days, when Lorgnac here and I had all the world before us, we were of the College of Cambrai. It is true we entered as you left; but we knew you, and when all Paris was full of your name Lorgnac and I, and others whom you knew not, aped the fall of your cloak, the droop of your plume, the tilt of your sword. Those days are gone, and until last night you, I thought, were gone with them."
"Monsieur!"
"Listen! There is more yet. I but told the Queen of the arms you bore. She recognised them at once."
"That is not strange; the Vidame d'Orrain is in Paris!"
"True! But she remembered your history—every detail of it. It was long ago, and many things have happened, and the Seine there has rolled much water under its bridges since then, but she had forgotten nothing. My friend, they who say the Medicis ever forgets are fools—blind in their folly. And so, for the sake of last night, and a little for the days that have gone, we will see pretty things yet, God willing! Eh, De Lorgnac?"
"I for one look forward to the day when a brave man will come to his own," replied the other, and their kindness touched me to the quick.
I am not one gifted with the power of speech—indeed, I hold that the greater the tongue the smaller the heart—but I found words to thank these gallant gentlemen, and De Lorgnac said:
"Monsieur, it is enough thanks to hold us in your esteem, and we will say no more about it. I have, however, some information that may be useful. Your brother the Vidame left Paris this evening for the South, it is said. Thus one danger is at any rate removed from your path."
It was something to know that Simon was gone. I thanked De Lorgnac, and added:
"Now, messieurs, for my news. I know not if I have come forth from that chamber"—and I pointed behind me—"a made man or not. This much I know, I am the bearer of a letter, the delivery of which must not be delayed, and I must leave Paris with the dawn, or before—horse or no horse."
"The horses I said were my care," De Lorgnac said. And then turning to Le Brusquet: "Await me on the steps that lead to the eastern gallery; I am relieved in less than an hour. We will then take monsieur here to my house, where there are two horses in the stables at his disposal, and the rest concerns himself."
Le Brusquet and I went back as we came, his constant companion, the ape, with us. Passing through the open arch I have already mentioned we halted on the steps that lead from the balcony to the eastern wing, and here we awaited De Lorgnac.