stood silent and abashed.
The two women, who had withdrawn into a dark and retired corner of the apartment, stood gazing with interest upon this pretty scene.
“Well, gentlemen?” I asked in a tone of persiflage, as I took a step towards them. “Have you naught to say to me, now that I have answered your imperious summons? What! All dumb?”
“Our affair is not with you,” said St. Auban, curtly.
“Pardon! Why, then, did you inquire where I was?”
“Messieurs,” exclaimed Vilmorin, whose face assumed the pallor usual to it in moments of peril, “meseems we have been misinformed, and that M. de Mancini is not here. Let us seek elsewhere.”
“Most excellent advice, gentlemen,” I commented—“seek elsewhere.”
“Monsieur,” cried the little officer, turning purple, “it occurs to me that you are mocking us.”
“Mocking you! Mocking you? Mocking a gentleman who has been tied to so huge a sword as yours. Surely—surely, sir, you do not think—”
“I'll not endure it,” he broke in. “You shall answer to me for this.”
“Have a care, sir,” I cried in alarm as he rushed forward. “Have a care, sir, lest you trip over your sword.”
He halted, drew himself up, and, with a magnificent gesture: “I am Armand de Malpertuis, lieutenant of his Majesty's guards,” he announced, “and I shall be grateful if you will do me the honour of taking a turn with me, outside.”
“I am flattered beyond measure, M. Malappris—”
“Mal-per-tuis,” he corrected furiously.
“Malpertuis,” I echoed. “I am honoured beyond words, but I do not wish to take a turn.”
“Mille diables, sir! Don't you understand? We must fight.”
“Must we, indeed? Again I am honoured; but, Monsieur, I don't fight sparrows.”
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” cried St. Auban, thrusting himself between us. “Malpertuis, have the goodness to wait until one affair is concluded before you create a second one. Now, M. de Luynes, will you tell me whether M. de Mancini is here or not?”
“What if he should be?”
“You will be wise to withdraw—we shall be three to two.”
“Three to two! Surely, Marquis, your reckoning is at fault. You cannot count the Vicomte there as one; his knees are knocking together; at best he is but a woman in man's clothes. As for your other friend, unless his height misleads me, he is but a boy. Therefore, Monsieur, you see that the advantage is with us. We are two men opposed to a man, a woman, and a child, so that—”
“In Heaven's name, sir,” cried St. Auban, again interposing himself betwixt me and the bellicose Malpertuis, “will you cease this foolishness? A word with you in private, M. de Luynes.”
I permitted him to take me by the sleeve, and lead me aside, wondering the while what curb it was that he was setting upon his temper, and what wily motives he might have for adopting so conciliatory a tone.
With many generations to come, the name of César de St. Auban must perforce be familiar as that of one of the greatest roysterers and most courtly libertines of the early days of Louis XIV., as well as that of a rabid anti-cardinalist and frondeur, and one of the earliest of that new cabal of nobility known as the petits-maîtres, whose leader the Prince de Condé was destined to become a few years later. He was a man of about my own age, that is to say, between thirty-two and thirty-three, and of my own frame, tall, spare, and active. On his florid, débonnair countenance was stamped his character of bon-viveur. In dress he was courtly in the extreme. His doublet and haut-de-chausses were of wine-coloured velvet, richly laced, and he still affected the hanging sleeves of a fast-disappearing fashion. Valuable lace filled the tops of his black boots, a valuable jewel glistened here and there upon his person, and one must needs have pronounced him a fop but for the strength and resoluteness of his bearing, and the long rapier that hung from his gold-embroidered baldrick. Such in brief is a portrait of the man who now confronted me, his fine blue eyes fixed upon my face, wherein methinks he read but little, search though he might.
“M. de Luynes,” he murmured at last, “you appear to find entertainment in making enemies, and you do it wantonly.”
“Have you brought me aside to instruct me in the art of making friends?”
“Possibly, M. de Luynes; and without intending an offence, permit me to remark that you need them.”
“Mayhap. But I do not seek them.”
“I have it in my heart to wish that you did; for I, M. de Luynes, seek to make a friend of you. Nay, do not smile in that unbelieving fashion. I have long esteemed you for those very qualities of dauntlessness and defiance which have brought you so rich a crop of hatred. If you doubt my words, perhaps you will recall my attitude towards you in the horse-market yesterday, and let that speak. Without wishing to remind you of a service done, I may yet mention that I stood betwixt you and the mob that sought to avenge my friend Canaples. He was my friend; you stood there, as indeed you have always stood, in the attitude of a foe. You wounded Canaples, maltreated Vilmorin, defied me; and yet but for my intervention, mille diables sir, you had been torn to pieces.”
“All this I grant is very true, Monsieur,” I made reply, with deep suspicion in my soul. “Yet, pardon me, if I confess that to me it proves no more than that you acted as a generous enemy. Pardon my bluntness also—but what profit do you look to make from gaining my friendship?”
“You are frank, Monsieur,” he said, colouring slightly, “I will be none the less so. I am a frondeur, an anti-cardinalist. In a word, I am a gentleman and a Frenchman. An interloping foreigner, miserly, mean-souled, and Jesuitical, springs up, wins himself into the graces of a foolish, impetuous, wilful queen, and climbs the ladder which she holds for him to the highest position in France. I allude to Mazarin; this Cardinal who is not a priest; this minister of France who is not a Frenchman; this belittler of nobles who is not a gentleman.”
“Mort Dieu, Monsieur—”
“One moment, M. de Luynes. This adventurer, not content with the millions which his avaricious talons have dragged from the people for his own benefit, seeks, by means of illustrious alliances, to enrich a pack of beggarly nieces and nephews that he has rescued from the squalor of their Sicilian homes to bring hither. His nieces, the Mancinis and Martinozzis, he is marrying to Dukes and Princes. 'T is not nice to witness, but 't is the affair of the men who wed them. In seeking, however, to marry his nephew Andrea to one of the greatest heiresses in France, he goes too far. Yvonne de Canaples is for some noble countryman of her own—there are many suitors to her hand—and for no nephew of Giulio Mazarini. Her brother Eugène, himself, thinks thus, and therein, M. de Luynes, you have the real motive of the quarrel which he provoked with Andrea, and which, had you not interfered, could have had but one ending.”
“Why do you tell me all this, Monsieur?” I inquired coldly, betraying none of the amazement his last words gave birth to.
“So that you may know the true position of affairs, and, knowing it, see the course which the name you bear must bid you follow. Because Canaples failed am I here to-day. I had not counted upon meeting you, but since I have met you, I have set the truth before you, confident that you will now withdraw from an affair to which no real interest can bind you, leaving matters to pursue their course.”
He eyed me, methought, almost anxiously from under his brows, as he awaited my reply. It was briefer than he looked for.
“You have wasted time, Monsieur.”
“How? You persist?”
“Yes. I persist. Yet for the Cardinal I care nothing. Mazarin has dismissed me from his service unjustly and unpaid. He has forbidden me his nephew's company. In fact, did he know of my presence here with M. de Mancini, he