"You will see, therefore, that my own safety rests on your passing quietly out of France and leaving the belief behind you that you are dead—a belief that will quickly spread once I shall have cast off your identity. You apprehend me?"

"Vaguely, monsieur; and perhaps you are right. What do you say, Stanislas?"

"Say?" cried the fiery Marsac. "I am weighed down with shame, my poor Rene, for having so misjudged you."

More he would have said in the same strain, but Lesperon cut him short and bade him attend to the issue now before him. They discussed it at some length, but always under the cloud in which my mysteriousness enveloped it, and, in the end, encouraged by my renewed assurances that I could best save myself if Lesperon were not taken with me, the Gascon consented to my proposals.

Marsac was on his way to Spain. His sister, he told us, awaited him at Carcassonne. Lesperon should set out with him at once, and in forty-eight hours they would be beyond the reach of the King's anger.

"I have a favour to ask of you, Monsieur de Marsac," said I, rising; for our business was at an end. "It is that if you should have an opportunity of communicating with Mademoiselle de Lavedan, you will let her know that I am not—not the Lesperon that is betrothed to your sister."

"I will inform her of it, monsieur," he answered readily; and then, of a sudden, a look of understanding and of infinite pity came into his eyes. "My God!" he cried.

"What is it, monsieur?" I asked, staggered by that sudden outcry.

"Do not ask me, monsieur, do not ask me. I had forgotten for the moment, in the excitement of all these revelations. But—" He stopped short.

"Well, monsieur?"

He seemed to ponder a moment, then looking at me again with that same compassionate glance, "You had better know," said he. "And yet—it is a difficult thing to tell you. I understand now much that I had not dreamt of. You—you have no suspicion of how you came to be arrested?"

"For my alleged participation in the late rebellion?"

"Yes, yes. But who gave the information of your whereabouts? Who told the Keeper of the Seals where you were to be found?"

"Oh, that?" I answered easily. "Why, I never doubted it. It was the coxcomb Saint-Eustache. I whipped him—"

I stopped short. There was something in Marsac's black face, something in his glance, that forced the unspoken truth upon my mind.

"Mother in heaven!" I cried. "Do you mean that it was Mademoiselle de Lavedan?"

He bowed his head in silence. Did she hate me, then, so much as that? Would nothing less than my death appease her, and had I utterly crushed the love that for a little while she had borne me, that she could bring herself to hand me over to the headsman?

God! What a stab was that! It turned me sick with grief—aye, and with some rage not against her, oh, not against her; against the fates that had brought such things to pass.

I controlled myself while their eyes were yet upon me. I went to the door and held it open for them, and they, perceiving something of my disorder, were courteous enough to omit the protracted leave-takings that under other auspices there might have been. Marsac paused a moment on the threshold as if he would have offered me some word of comfort. Then, perceiving, perhaps, how banal must be all comfort that was of words alone, and how it might but increase the anger of the wound it was meant to balm, he sighed a simple "Adieu, monsieur!" and went his way.

When they were gone, I returned to the table, and, sitting down, I buried my head in my arms, and there I lay, a prey to the most poignant grief that in all my easy, fortunate life I had ever known. That she should have done this thing! That the woman I loved, the pure, sweet, innocent girl that I had wooed so ardently in my unworthiness at Lavedan, should have stooped to such an act of betrayal! To what had I not reduced her, since such things could be!

Then, out of my despair grew comfort, slowly at first, and more vigorously anon. The sudden shock of the news had robbed me of some of my wit, and had warped my reasoning. Later, as the pain of the blow grew duller, I came to reflect that what she had done was but a proof—an overwhelming proof—of how deeply she had cared. Such hatred as this can be but born of a great love; reaction is ever to be measured by the action that occasions it, and a great revulsion can only come of a great affection. Had she been indifferent to me, or had she but entertained for me a passing liking, she would not have suffered so.

And so I came to realize how cruel must have been the pang that had driven her to this. But she had loved me; aye, and she loved me still, for all that she thought she hated, and for all that she had acted as if she hated. But even if I were wrong—even if she did hate me—what a fresh revulsion would not be hers when anon she learnt that—whatever my sins—I had not played lightly with her love; that I was not, as she had imagined, the betrothed of another woman!

The thought fired me like wine. I was no longer listless—no longer indifferent as to whether I lived or died. I must live. I must enlighten the Keeper of the Seals and the judges at Toulouse concerning my identity. Why, indeed, had I ever wavered? Bardelys the Magnificent must come to life again, and then—What then?

As suddenly as I had been exalted was I cast down. There was a rumour abroad that Bardelys was dead. In the wake of that rumour I shrewdly guessed that the report of the wager that had brought him into Languedoc would not be slow to follow. What then? Would she love me any the better? Would she hate me any the less? If now she was wounded by the belief that I had made sport of her love, would not that same belief be with her again when she came to know the truth?

Aye, the tangle was a grievous one. Yet I took heart. My old resolve returned to me, and I saw the need for urgency—in that alone could lie now my redemption in her eyes. My wager must be paid before I again repaired to her, for all that it should leave me poor indeed. In the mean while, I prayed God that she might not hear of it ere I returned to tell her.



CHAPTER XI. THE KING'S COMMISSIONER

For that most amiable of Gascon cadets, Monsieur de Castelroux, I have naught but the highest praise. In his every dealing with me he revealed himself so very gallant, generous, and high-minded a gentleman that it was little short of a pleasure to be his prisoner. He made no inquiries touching the nature of my interview with those two gentlemen at the Hotel de la Couronne, and when at the moment of leaving I requested him to deliver a packet to the taller of those same two he did so without comment or question. That packet contained the portrait of Mademoiselle de Marsac, but on the inner wrapper was a note requesting Lesperon not to open it until he should be in Spain.

Neither Marsac nor Lesperon did I see again before we resumed our journey to Toulouse.

At the moment of setting out a curious incident occurred. Castelroux's company of dragoons had ridden into the courtyard as we were mounting. They lined up under their lieutenant's command, to allow us to pass; but as we reached the porte-cochere we were delayed for a moment by a travelling-carriage, entering for relays, and coming, apparently, from Toulouse. Castelroux and I backed our horses until we were in the midst of the dragoons, and so we stood while the vehicle passed in. As it went by, one of the leather curtains was drawn back, and my heart was quickened by the sight of a pale girl face, with eyes of blue, and brown curls lying upon the slender neck. Her glance lighted on me, swordless and in the midst of that company of troopers, and I bowed low upon the withers of my horse, doffing my hat in distant salutation.

The curtain dropped again, and eclipsed the face of the woman that had betrayed me. With my mind full of wild surmisings as to what emotions might have awakened in her upon beholding me, I rode away in silence at Monsieur de Castelroux's side. Had she experienced any remorse? Any shame? Whether or not such feelings had been aroused at sight of me, it certainly would not be long ere she experienced them, for at the Hotel de la Couronne were those who would enlighten her.

The contemplation of the remorseful grief that might anon beset her when she came to ponder the truth of matters, and, with that truth, those things that at Lavedan I had uttered, filled me presently with regret and pity. I grew impatient to reach Toulouse and tell the judges of the mistake that there had been. My name could not be unknown to them, and the very mention of it, I thought, should suffice to give them pause and lead them to make inquiries before sending me to the scaffold. Yet I was not without uneasiness, for the summariness with which Castelroux had informed me they were in the habit of dealing with those accused of high treason occasioned me some apprehensive pangs.

This apprehension led me to converse with my captor touching those trials, seeking to gather from him who were the judges. I learnt then that besides the ordinary Tribunal, a Commissioner had been dispatched by His Majesty, and was hourly expected to arrive at Toulouse. It would be his mission to supervise and direct the inquiries that were taking place. It was said, he added, that the King himself was on his way thither, to be present at the trial of Monsieur le Duc de Montmorency. But he was travelling by easy stages, and was not yet expected for some days. My heart, which had leapt at the news, as suddenly sank again with the consideration that I should probably be disposed of before the King's arrival. It would behoove me, therefore, to look elsewhere for help and for some one to swear to my identity.

"Do you know the name of this King's Commissioner?" I asked.

"It is a certain Comte de Chatellerault, a gentleman man said to stand very high in His Majesty's favour."

"Chatellerault!" I cried in wondering joy.

"You know him?"

"Most excellently!" I laughed. "We are very intimately acquainted."

"Why, then, monsieur, I augur you this gentleman's friendship, and that it may pilot you through your trouble. Although—" Being mercifully minded, he stopped short.

But I laughed easily. "Indeed, my dear Captain, I think it will," said I; "although friendship in this world is a thing of which the unfortunate know little."

But I rejoiced too soon, as you shall hear.

We rode diligently on, our way lying along the fertile banks of the Garonne, now yellow with the rustling corn. Towards evening we made our last halt at Fenouillet, whence a couple of hours' riding should bring us to Toulouse.

At the post-house we overtook a carriage that seemingly had halted for relays, but upon which I scarce bestowed a glance as I alighted.

Whilst Castelroux went to arrange for fresh horses, I strode into the common room, and there for some moments I stood discussing the viands with our host. When at last I had resolved that a cold pasty and a bottle of Armagnac would satisfy our wants, I looked about me to take survey of those in the room. One group in a remote corner suddenly riveted my attention to such a degree that I remained deaf to the voice of Castelroux, who had just entered, and who stood now beside me. In the centre of this group was the Comte de Chatellerault himself, a thick-set, sombre figure, dressed with that funereal magnificence he affected.

But it was not the sight of him that filled me with amazement. For that, Castelroux's information had prepared me, and I well understood in what capacity he was there. My surprise sprang rather from the fact that amongst the half-dozen gentlemen about him—and evidently in attendance—I beheld the Chevalier de Saint-Eustache. Now, knowing as I did, the Chevalier's treasonable leanings, there was ample cause for my astonishment at finding him in such company. Apparently, too, he was on very intimate terms with the Count, for in raising my glance I had caught him in the act of leaning over to whisper familiarly in Chatellerault's ear.

Their eyes—indeed, for that matter the eyes of the entire company—were turned in my direction.

Perhaps it was not a surprising thing that Chatellerault should gaze upon me in that curious fashion, for was it not probable that he had heard that I was dead? Besides, the fact that I was without a sword, and that at my side stood a King's officer, afforded evidence enough of my condition, and well might Chatellerault stare at beholding me so manifestly a prisoner.

Even as I watched him, he appeared to start at something that Saint-Eustache was saying, and a curious change spread over his face. Its whilom expression had been rather one of dismay; for, having believed me dead, he no doubt accounted his wager won, whereas seeing me alive had destroyed that pleasant conviction. But now it took on a look of relief and of something that suggested malicious cunning.

"That," said Castelroux in my ear, "is the King's commissioner."

Did I not know it? I never waited to answer him, but, striding across the room, I held out my hand over the table—to Chatellerault.

"My dear Comte," I cried, "you are most choicely met."

I would have added more, but there was something in his attitude that silenced me. He had turned half from me, and stood now, hand on hip, his great head thrown back and tilted towards his shoulder, his expression one of freezing and disdainful wonder.

Now, if his attitude filled me with astonishment and apprehension, consider how these feelings were heightened by his words.

"Monsieur de Lesperon, I can but express amazement at your effrontery. If we have been acquainted in the past, do you think that is a sufficient reason for me to take your hand now that you have placed yourself in a position which renders it impossible for His Majesty's loyal servants to know you?"

I fell back a pace, my mind scarce grasping yet the depths of this inexplicable attitude.

"This to me, Chatellerault?" I gasped.

"To you?" he blazed, stirred to a sudden passion. "What else did you expect, Monsieur de Lesperon?"

I had it in me to give him the lie, to denounce him then for a low, swindling trickster. I understood all at once the meaning of this wondrous make-believe. From Saint-Eustache he had gathered the mistake there was, and for his wager's sake he would let the error prevail, and hurry me to the scaffold. What else might I have expected from the man that had lured me into such a wager—a wager which the knowledge he possessed had made him certain of winning? Would he who had cheated at the dealing of the cards neglect an opportunity to cheat again during the progress of the game?

As I have said, I had it in my mind to cry out that he lied—that I was not Lesperon; that he knew I was Bardelys. But the futility of such an outcry came to me simultaneously with the thought of it. And, I fear me, I stood before him and his satellites—the mocking Saint-Eustache amongst them—a very foolish figure.

"There is no more to be said," I murmured at last.

"But there is!" he retorted. "There is much more to be said. You shall render yet an account of your treason, and I am afraid, my poor rebel, that your comely head will part company with your shapely body. You and I will meet at Toulouse. What more is to be said will be said in the Tribunal there."

A chill encompassed me. I was doomed, it seemed. This man, ruling the province pending the King's arrival, would see to it that none came forward to recognize me. He would expedite the comedy of my trial, and close it with the tragedy of my execution. My professions of a mistake of identity—if I wasted breath upon them would be treated with disdain and disregarded utterly. God! What a position had I got myself into, and what a vein of comedy ran through it—grim, tragic comedy, if you will, yet comedy to all faith. The very woman whom I had wagered to wed had betrayed me into the hands of the very man with whom I laid my wager.

But there was more in it than that. As I had told Mironsac that night in Paris, when the thing had been initiated, it was a duel that was being fought betwixt Chatellerault and me—a duel for supremacy in the King's good graces. We were rivals, and he desired my removal from the Court. To this end had he lured me into a bargain that should result in my financial ruin, thereby compelling me to withdraw from the costly life of the Luxembourg, and leaving him supreme, the sole and uncontested recipient of our master's favour. Now into his hand Fate had thrust a stouter weapon and a deadlier: a weapon which not only should make him master of the wealth that I had pledged, but one whereby he might remove me for all time, a thousandfold more effectively than the mere encompassing of my ruin would have done.

I was doomed. I realized it fully and very bitterly.

I was to go out of the ways of men unnoticed and unmourned; as a rebel, under the obscure name of another and bearing another's sins upon my shoulders, I was to pass almost unheeded to the gallows. Bardelys the Magnificent—the Marquis Marcel Saint-Pol de Bardelys, whose splendour had been a byword in France—was to go out like a guttering candle.

The thought filled me with the awful frenzy that so often goes with impotency, such a frenzy as the damned in hell may know. I forgot in that hour my precept that under no conditions should a gentleman give way to anger. In a blind access of fury I flung myself across the table and caught that villainous cheat by the throat, before any there could put out a hand to stop me.

He was a heavy man, if a short one, and the strength of his thick-set frame was a thing abnormal. Yet at that moment such nervous power did I gather from my rage, that I swung him from his feet as though he had been the puniest weakling. I dragged him down on to the table, and there I ground his face with a most excellent good-will and relish.

"You liar, you cheat, you thief!" I snarled like any cross-grained mongrel. "The King shall hear of this, you knave! By God, he shall!"

They dragged me from him at last—those lapdogs that attended him—and with much rough handling they sent me sprawling among the sawdust on the floor. It is more than likely that but for Castelroux's intervention they had made short work of me there and then.

But with a bunch of Mordieus, Sangdieus, and Po' Cap de Dieus, the little Gascon flung himself before my prostrate figure, and bade them in the King's name, and at their peril, to stand back.

Chatellerault, sorely shaken, his face purple, and with blood streaming from his nostrils, had sunk into a chair. He rose now, and his first words were incoherent, raging gasps.

"What is your name, sir?" he bellowed at last, addressing the Captain.

"Amedee de Mironsac de Castelroux, of Chateau Rouge in Gascony," answered my captor, with a grand manner and a flourish, and added, "Your servant."

"What authority have you to allow your prisoners this degree of freedom?"

"I do not need authority, monsieur," replied the Gascon.

"Do you not?" blazed the Count. "We shall see. Wait until I am in Toulouse, my malapert friend."

Castelroux drew himself up, straight as a rapier, his face slightly flushed and his glance angry, yet he had the presence of mind to restrain himself, partly at least.

"I have my orders from the Keeper of the Seals, to effect the apprehension of Monsieur de Lesperon; and to deliver him up, alive or dead, at Toulouse. So that I do this, the manner of it is my own affair, and who presumes to criticize my methods censoriously impugns my honour and affronts me. And who affronts me, monsieur, be he whosoever he may be, renders me satisfaction. I beg that you will bear that circumstance in mind."

His moustaches bristled as he spoke, and altogether his air was very fierce and truculent. For a moment I trembled for him. But the Count evidently thought better of it than to provoke a quarrel, particularly one in which he would be manifestly in the wrong, King's Commissioner though he might be. There was an exchange of questionable compliments betwixt the officer and the Count, whereafter, to avoid further unpleasantness, Castelroux conducted me to a private room, where we took our meal in gloomy silence.

It was not until an hour later, when we were again in the saddle and upon the last stage of our journey, that I offered Castelroux an explanation of my seemingly mad attack upon Chatellerault.

"You have done a very rash and unwise thing, monsieur," he had commented regretfully, and it was in answer to this that I poured out the whole story. I had determined upon this course while we were supping, for Castelroux was now my only hope, and as we rode beneath the stars of that September night I made known to him my true identity.

I told him that Chatellerault knew me, and I informed him that a wager lay between us—withholding the particulars of its nature—which had brought me into Languedoc and into the position wherein he had found and arrested me. At first he hesitated to believe me, but when at last I had convinced him by the vehemence of my assurances as much as by the assurances themselves, he expressed such opinions of the Comte de Chatellerault as made my heart go out to him.

"You see, my dear Castelroux, that you are now my last hope," I said.

"A forlorn one, my poor gentleman!" he groaned.

"Nay, that need not be. My intendant Rodenard and some twenty of my servants should be somewhere betwixt this and Paris. Let them be sought for monsieur, and let us pray God that they be still in Languedoc and may be found in time."

"It shall be done, monsieur, I promise you," he answered me solemnly. "But I implore you not to hope too much from it. Chatellerault has it in his power to act promptly, and you may depend that he will waste no time after what has passed."

"Still, we may have two or three days, and in those days you must do what you can, my friend."

"You may depend upon me," he promised.

"And meanwhile, Castelroux," said I, "you will say no word of this to any one."

That assurance also he gave me, and presently the lights of our destination gleamed out to greet us.

That night I lay in a dank and gloomy cell of the prison of Toulouse, with never a hope to bear company during those dark, wakeful hours.

A dull rage was in my soul as I thought of my position, for it had not needed Castelroux's recommendation to restrain me from building false hopes upon his chances of finding Rodenard and my followers in time to save me. Some little ray of consolation I culled, perhaps, from my thoughts of Roxalanne. Out of the gloom of my cell my fancy fashioned her sweet girl face and stamped it with a look of gentle pity, of infinite sorrow for me and for the hand she had had in bringing me to this.

That she loved me I was assured, and I swore that if I lived I would win her yet, in spite of every obstacle that I myself had raised for my undoing.



CHAPTER XII. THE TRIBUNAL OF TOULOUSE

I had hoped to lie some days in prison before being brought to trial, and that during those days Castelroux might have succeeded in discovering those who could witness to my identity. Conceive, therefore, something of my dismay when on the morrow I was summoned an hour before noon to go present myself to my judges.

From the prison to the Palace I was taken in chains like any thief—for the law demanded this indignity to be borne by one charged with the crimes they imputed to me. The distance was but short, yet I found it over-long, which is not wonderful considering that the people stopped to line up as I went by and to cast upon me a shower of opprobrious derision—for Toulouse was a very faithful and loyal city. It was within some two hundred yards of the Palace steps that I suddenly beheld a face in the crowd, at the sight of which I stood still in my amazement. This earned me a stab in the back from the butt-end of the pike of one of my guards.

"What ails you now?" quoth the man irritably. "Forward, Monsieur le traite!"

I moved on, scarce remarking the fellow's roughness; my eyes were still upon that face—the white, piteous face of Roxalanne. I smiled reassurance and encouragement, but even as I smiled the horror in her countenance seemed to increase. Then, as I passed on, she vanished from my sight, and I was left to conjecture the motives that had occasioned her return to Toulouse. Had the message that Marsac would yesterday have conveyed to her caused her to retrace her steps that she might be near me in my extremity; or had some weightier reason influenced her return? Did she hope to undo some of the evil she had done? Alas, poor child! If such were her hopes, I sorely feared me they would prove very idle.

Of my trial I should say but little did not the exigencies of my story render it necessary to say much. Even now, across the gap of years, my gorge rises at the mockery which, in the King's name, those gentlemen made of justice. I can allow for the troubled conditions of the times, and I can realize how in cases of civil disturbances and rebellion it may be expedient to deal summarily with traitors, yet not all the allowances that I can think of would suffice to condone the methods of that tribunal.

The trial was conducted in private by the Keeper of the Seals—a lean, wizened individual, with an air as musty and dry as that of the parchments among which he had spent his days. He was supported by six judges, and on his right sat the King's Commissioner, Monsieur de Chatellerault—the bruised condition of whose countenance still advertised the fact that we had met but yesterday.

Upon being asked my name and place of abode, I created some commotion by answering boldly "I am the Sieur Marcel de Saint-Pol, Marquis of Bardelys, of Bardelys in Picardy."

The President—that is to say, the Keeper of the Seals—turned inquiringly to Chatellerault. The Count, however, did no more than smile and point to something written on a paper that lay spread upon the table. The President nodded.

"Monsieur Rene de Lesperon," said he, "the Court may perhaps not be able to discriminate whether this statement of yours is a deliberate attempt to misguide or frustrate the ends of justice, or whether, either in consequence of your wounds or as a visitation of God for your treason, you are the victim of a deplorable hallucination. But the Court wishes you to understand that it is satisfied of your identity. The papers found upon your person at the time of your arrest, besides other evidence in our power, remove all possibility of doubt in that connection. Therefore, in your own interests, we implore you to abandon these false statements, if so be that you are master of your wits. Your only hope of saving your head must lie in your truthfully answering our questions, and even then, Monsieur de Lesperon, the hope that we hold out to you is so slight as to be no hope at all."

There was a pause, during which the other judges nodded their heads in sage approval of their President's words. For myself, I kept silent, perceiving how little it could avail me to continue to protest, and awaited his next question.

"You were arrested, monsieur, at the Chateau de Lavedan two nights ago by a company of dragoons under the command of Captain de Castelroux. Is that so?"

"It is so, monsieur."

"And at the time of your arrest, upon being apprehended as Rene de Lesperon, you offered no repudiation of the identity; on the contrary, when Monsieur de Castelroux called for Monsieur de Lesperon, you stepped forward and acknowledged that you were he."

"Pardon, monsieur. What I acknowledged was that I was known by that name."

The President chuckled evilly, and his satellites smiled in polite reflection of his mood.

"This acute differentiating is peculiar, Monsieur de Lesperon, to persons of unsound mental condition," said he. "I am afraid that it will serve little purpose. A man is generally known by his name, is he not?" I did not answer him. "Shall we call Monsieur de Castelroux to confirm what I have said?"

"It is not necessary. Since you allow that I may have said I was known by the name, but refuse to recognize the distinction between that and a statement that 'Lesperon' is my name, it would serve no purpose to summon the Captain."

The President nodded, and with that the point was dismissed, and he proceeded as calmly as though there never had been any question of my identity.

"You are charged, Monsieur de Lesperon, with high treason in its most virulent and malignant form. You are accused of having borne arms against His Majesty. Have you anything to say?"

"I have to say that it is false, monsieur; that His Majesty has no more faithful or loving subject than am I."

The President shrugged his shoulders, and a shade of annoyance crossed his face.

"If you are come here for no other purpose than to deny the statements that I make, I am afraid that we are but wasting time," he cried testily. "If you desire it, I can summon Monsieur de Castelroux to swear that at the time of your arrest and upon being charged with the crime you made no repudiation of that charge."

"Naturally not, monsieur," I cried, somewhat heated by this seemingly studied ignoring of important facts, "because I realized that it was Monsieur de Castelroux's mission to arrest and not to judge me. Monsieur de Castelroux was an officer, not a Tribunal, and to have denied this or that to him would have been so much waste of breath."

"Ah! Very nimble; very nimble, in truth, Monsieur de Lesperon, but scarcely convincing. We will proceed. You are charged with having taken part in several of the skirmishes against the armies of Marshals de Schomberg and La Force, and finally, with having been in close attendance upon Monsieur de Montmorency at the battle of Castelnaudary. What have you to say?"

"That it is utterly untrue."

"Yet your name, monsieur, is on a list found among the papers in the captured baggage of Monsieur le Duc de Montmorency."

"No, monsieur," I denied stoutly, "it is not."

The President smote the table a blow that scattered a flight of papers.

"Par la mort Dieu!" he roared, with a most indecent exhibition of temper in one so placed. "I have had enough of your contradictions. You forget, monsieur, your position—"

"At least," I broke in harshly, "no less than you forget yours."

The Keeper of the Seals gasped for breath at that, and his fellow judges murmured angrily amongst themselves. Chatellerault maintained his sardonic smile, but permitted himself to utter no word.

"I would, gentlemen," I cried, addressing them all, "that His Majesty were here to see how you conduct your trials and defile his Courts. As for you, Monsieur le President, you violate the sanctity of your office in giving way to anger; it is a thing unpardonable in a judge. I have told you in plain terms, gentlemen, that I am not this Rene de Lesperon with whose crimes you charge me. Yet, in spite of my denials, ignoring them, or setting them down either to a futile attempt at defence or to an hallucination of which you suppose me the victim, you proceed to lay those crimes to my charge, and when I deny your charges you speak of proofs that can only apply to another.

"How shall the name of Lesperon having been found among the Duke of Montmorency's papers convict me of treason, since I tell you that I am not Lesperon? Had you the slightest, the remotest sense of your high duty, messieurs, you would ask me rather to explain how, if what I state be true, I come to be confounded with Lesperon and arrested in his place. Then, messieurs, you might seek to test the accuracy of what statements I may make; but to proceed as you are proceeding is not to judge but to murder. Justice is represented as a virtuous woman with bandaged eyes, holding impartial scales; in your hands, gentlemen, by my soul, she is become a very harlot clutching a veil."

Chatellerault's cynical smile grew broader as my speech proceeded and stirred up the rancour in the hearts of those august gentlemen. The Keeper of the Seals went white and red by turns, and when I paused there was an impressive silence that lasted for some moments. At last the President leant over to confer in a whisper with Chatellerault. Then, in a voice forcedly calm—like the calm of Nature when thunder is brewing—he asked me, "Who do you insist that you are, monsieur?"

"Once already have I told you, and I venture to think that mine is a name not easily forgotten. I am the Sieur Marcel de Saint-Pol, Marquis of Bardelys, of Bardelys in Picardy."

A cunning grin parted his thin lips.

"Have you any witnesses to identify you?"

"Hundreds, monsieur!" I answered eagerly, seeing salvation already within my grasp.

"Name some of them."

"I will name one—one whose word you will not dare to doubt."

"That is?"

"His Majesty the King. I am told that he is on his way to Toulouse, and I but ask, messieurs, that you await his arrival before going further with my trial."

"Is there no other witness of whom you can think, monsieur? Some witness that might be produced more readily. For if you can, indeed, establish the identity you claim, why should you languish in prison for some weeks?"

His voice was soft and oily. The anger had all departed out of it, which I—like a fool—imagined to be due to my mention of the King.

"My friends, Monsieur le Garde des Sceaux, are all either in Paris or in His Majesty's train, and so not likely to be here before him. There is my intendant, Rodenard, and there are my servants—some twenty of them—who may perhaps be still in Languedoc, and for whom I would entreat you to seek. Them you might succeed in finding within a few days if they have not yet determined to return to Paris in the belief that I am dead."

He stroked his chin meditatively, his eyes raised to the sunlit dome of glass overhead.

"Ah-h!" he gasped. It was a long-drawn sigh of regret, of conclusion, or of weary impatience. "There is no one in Toulouse who will swear to your identity monsieur?" he asked.

"I am afraid there is not," I replied. "I know of no one."

As I uttered those words the President's countenance changed as abruptly as if he had flung off a mask. From soft and cat-like that he had been during the past few moments, he grew of a sudden savage as a tiger. He leapt to his feet, his face crimson, his eyes seeming to blaze, and the words he spoke came now in a hot, confused, and almost incoherent torrent.

"Miserable!" he roared, "out of your own mouth have you convicted yourself. And to think that you should have stood there and wasted the time of this Court—His Majesty's time—with your damnable falsehoods! What purpose did you think to serve by delaying your doom? Did you imagine that haply, whilst we sent to Paris for your witnesses, the King might grow weary of justice, and in some fit of clemency announce a general pardon? Such things have been known, and it may be that in your cunning you played for such a gain based upon such a hope. But justice, fool, is not to be cozened. Had you, indeed, been Bardelys, you had seen that here in this court sits a gentleman who is very intimate with him. He is there, monsieur; that is Monsieur le Comte de Chatellerault, of whom perhaps you may have heard. Yet, when I ask you whether in Toulouse there is any one who can bear witness to your identity, you answer me that you know of no one. I will waste no more time with you, I promise you."

He flung himself back into his chair like a man exhausted, and mopped his brow with a great kerchief which he had drawn from his robes. His fellow judges laid their heads together, and with smiles and nods, winks and leers, they discussed and admired the miraculous subtlety and acumen of this Solomon. Chatellerault sat, calmly smiling, in solemn mockery.

For a spell I was too thunderstruck to speak, aghast at this catastrophe. Like a fool, indeed, I had tumbled into the pit that had been dug for me by Chatellerault for I never doubted that it was of his contriving. At last, "My masters," said I, "these conclusions may appear to you most plausible, but, believe me, they are fallacious. I am perfectly acquainted with Monsieur de Chatellerault, and he with me, and if he were to speak the truth and play the man and the gentleman for once, he would tell you that I am, indeed, Bardelys. But Monsieur le Comte has ends of his own to serve in sending me to my doom. It is in a sense through his agency that I am at present in this position, and that I have been confounded with Lesperon. What, then, could it have availed me to have made appeal to him? And yet, Monsieur le President, he was born a gentleman, and he may still retain some notion of honour. Ask him, sir—ask him point-blank, whether I am or not Marcel de Bardelys."

The firmness of my tones created some impression upon those feeble minds. Indeed, the President went so far as to turn an interrogative glance upon the Count. But Chatellerault, supremely master of the situation, shrugged his shoulders, and smiled a pitying, long-suffering smile.

"Must I really answer such a question, Monsieur le President?" he inquired in a voice and with a manner that clearly implied how low would be his estimate of the President's intelligence if he were, indeed, constrained to do so.

"But no, Monsieur le Comte," replied the President with sudden haste, and in scornful rejection of the idea. "There is no necessity that you should answer."

"But the question, Monsieur le President!" I thundered, my hand outstretched towards Chatellerault. "Ask him—if you have any sense of your duty—ask him am I not Marcel de Bardelys."

"Silence!" blazed the President back at me. "You shall not fool us any longer, you nimble-witted liar!"

My head drooped. This coward had, indeed, shattered my last hope.

"Some day, monsieur," I said very quietly, "I promise you that your behaviour and these gratuitous insults shall cost you your position. Pray God they do not cost you also your head!"

My words they treated as one might treat the threats of a child. That I should have had the temerity to utter them did but serve finally to decide my doom, if, indeed, anything had been wanting.

With many epithets of opprobrium, such as are applied to malefactors of the lowest degree, they passed sentence of death upon me, and with drooping spirits, giving myself up for lost and assured that I should be led to the block before many hours were sped, I permitted them to reconduct me through the streets of Toulouse to my prison.

I could entertain you at length upon my sensations as I walked between my guards, a man on the threshold of eternity, with hundreds of men and women gaping at me—men and women who would live for years to gape upon many another wretch in my position. The sun shone with a brilliance that to such eyes as mine was a very mockery. Thus would it shine on through centuries, and light many another unfortunate to the scaffold. The very sky seemed pitiless in the intensity of its cobalt. Unfeeling I deemed the note that everywhere was struck by man and Nature, so discordant was it with my gloomy outlook. If you would have food for reflection upon the evanescent quality of life, upon the nothingness of man, upon the empty, heartless egoism implicit in human nature, get yourselves sentenced to death, and then look around you. With such a force was all this borne in upon me, and with such sufficiency, that after the first pang was spent I went near to rejoicing that things were as they were, and that I was to die, haply before sunset. It was become such a world as did not seem worth a man's while to live in: a world of vainness, of hollowness, of meanness, of nothing but illusions. The knowledge that I was about to die, that I was about to quit all this, seemed to have torn some veil from my eyes, and to have permitted me to recognize the worthless quality of what I left. Well may it be that such are but the thoughts of a man's dying moments, whispered into his soul by a merciful God to predispose him for the wrench and agony of his passing.

I had been a half-hour in my cell when the door was opened to admit Castelroux, whom I had not seen since the night before. He came to condole with me in my extremity, and yet to bid me not utterly lose hope.

"It is too late to-day to carry out the sentence," said he, "and as to-morrow will be Sunday, you will have until the day after. By then much may betide, monsieur. My agents are everywhere scouring the province for your servants, and let us pray Heaven that they may succeed in their search."

"It is a forlorn hope, Monsieur de Castelroux," I sighed, "and I will pin no faith to it lest I suffer a disappointment that will embitter my last moments, and perhaps rob me of some of the fortitude I shall have need of."

He answered me, nevertheless, with words of encouragement. No effort was being spared, and if Rodenard and my men were still in Languedoc then was every likelihood that they would be brought to Toulouse in time. Then he added that that, however, was not the sole object of his visit. A lady had obtained permission of the Keeper of the Seals to visit me, and she was waiting to be admitted.

"A lady?" I exclaimed, and the thought of Roxalanne flitted through my mind. "Mademoiselle de Lavedan?" I inquired.

He nodded. "Yes," said he; then added, "She seems in sore affliction, monsieur."

I besought him to admit her forthwith, and presently she came. Castelroux closed the door as he withdrew, and we were left alone together. As she put aside her cloak, and disclosed to me the pallor of her face and the disfiguring red about her gentle eyes, telling of tears and sleeplessness, all my own trouble seemed to vanish in the contemplation of her affliction.

We stood a moment confronting each other with no word spoken. Then, dropping her glance, and advancing a step, in a faltering, hesitating manner "Monsieur, monsieur," she murmured in a suffocating voice.

In a bound I was beside her, and I had gathered her in my arms, her little brown head against my shoulder.

"Roxalanne!" I whispered as soothingly as I might—"Roxalanne!"

But she struggled to be free of my embrace.

"Let me go, monsieur," she pleaded, a curious shrinking in her very voice. "Do not touch me, monsieur. You do not know—you do not know."

For answer, I enfolded her more tightly still.

"But I do know, little one," I whispered; "and I even understand."

At that, her struggles ceased upon the instant, and she seemed to lie limp and helpless in my arms.

"You know, monsieur," she questioned me—"you know that I betrayed you?"

"Yes," I answered simply.

"And you can forgive me? I am sending you to your death and you have no reproaches for me! Oh, monsieur, it will kill me!"

"Hush, child!" I whispered. "What reproaches can I have for you? I know the motives that impelled you."

"Not altogether, monsieur; you cannot know them. I loved you, monsieur. I do love you, monsieur. Oh! this is not a time to consider words. If I am bold and unmaidenly, I—I—"

"Neither bold nor unmaidenly, but—oh, the sweetest damsel in all France, my Roxalanne!" I broke in, coming to her aid. "Mine was a leprous, sinful soul, child, when I came into Languedoc. I had no faith in any human good, and I looked as little for an honest man or a virtuous woman as one looks for honey in a nettle. I was soured, and my life had hardly been such a life as it was meet to bring into contact with your own. Then, among the roses at Lavedan, in your dear company, Roxalanne, it seemed that some of the good, some of the sweetness, some of the purity about you were infused anew into my heart. I became young again, and I seemed oddly cleansed. In that hour of my rejuvenation I loved you, Roxalanne."

Her face had been raised to mine as I spoke. There came now a flutter of the eyelids, a curious smile about the lips. Then her head drooped again and was laid against my breast; a sigh escaped her, and she began to weep softly.

"Nay, Roxalanne, do not fret. Come, child, it is not your way to be weak."

"I have betrayed you!" she moaned. "I am sending you to your death!"

"I understand, I understand," I answered, smoothing her brown hair.

"Not quite, monsieur. I loved you so, monsieur, that you can have no thought of how I suffered that morning when Mademoiselle de Marsac came to Lavedan.

"At first it was but the pain of thinking that—that I was about to lose you; that you were to go out of my life, and that I should see you no more—you whom I had enshrined so in my heart.

"I called myself a little fool that morning for having dreamed that you had come to care for me; my vanity I thought had deluded me into imagining that your manner towards me had a tenderness that spoke of affection. I was bitter with myself, and I suffered oh, so much! Then later, when I was in the rose garden, you came to me.

"You remember how you seized me, and how by your manner you showed me that it was not vanity alone had misled me. You had fooled me, I thought; even in that hour I imagined you were fooling me; you made light of me; and my sufferings were naught to you so that I might give you some amusement to pass the leisure and monotony of your sojourn with us."

"Roxalanne—my poor Roxalanne!" I whispered.

"Then my bitterness and sorrow all turned to anger against you. You had broken my heart, and I thought that you had done it wantonly. For that I burned to punish you. Ah! and not only that, perhaps. I think, too, that some jealousy drove me on. You had wooed and slighted me, yet you had made me love you, and if you were not for me I swore you should be for no other. And so, while my madness endured, I quitted Lavedan, and telling my father that I was going to Auch, to his sister's house, I came to Toulouse and betrayed you to the Keeper of the Seals.

"Scarce was the thing done than I beheld the horror of it, and I hated myself. In my despair, I abandoned all idea of pursuing the journey to Auch, but turned and made my way back in haste, hoping that I might still come to warn you. But at Grenade I met you already in charge of the soldiers. At Grenade, too I learnt the truth—that you were not Lesperon. Can you not guess something of my anguish then? Already loathing my act, and beside myself for having betrayed you, think into what despair I was plunged by Monsieur de Marsac's intimation.

"Then I understood that for reasons of your own you had concealed your identity. You were not perhaps, betrothed; indeed, I remembered then how, solemnly you had sworn that you were not; and so I bethought me that your vows to me may have been sincere and such as a maid might honourably listen to."

"They were, Roxalanne! they were!" I cried.

But she continued "That you had Mademoiselle de Marsac's portrait was something that I could not explain; but then I hear that you had also Lesperon's papers upon you; so that you may have become possessed of the one with the others. And now, monsieur—"

She ceased, and there against my breast she lay weeping and weeping in her bitter passion of regret, until it seemed to me she would never regain her self-control.

"It has been all my fault, Roxalanne," said I, "and if I am to pay the price they are exacting, it will be none too high. I embarked upon a dastardly business; which brought me to Languedoc under false colours. I wish, indeed, that I had told you when first the impulse to tell you came upon me. Afterwards it grew impossible."

"Tell me now," she begged. "Tell me who you are."

Sorely was I tempted to respond. Almost was I on the point of doing so, when suddenly the thought of how she might shrink from me, of how, even then, she might come to think that I had but simulated love for her for infamous purposes of gain, restrained and silenced me. During the few hours of life that might be left me I would at least be lord and master of her heart. When I was dead—for I had little hope of Castelroux's efforts—it would matter less, and perhaps because I was dead she would be merciful.

"I cannot, Roxalanne. Not even now. It is too vile! If—if they carry out the sentence on Monday, I shall leave a letter for you, telling you everything."

She shuddered, and a sob escaped her. From my identity her mind fled back to the more important matter of my fate.

"They will not carry it out, monsieur! Oh, they till not! Say that you can defend yourself, that you are not the man they believe you to be!"

"We are in God's hands, child. It may be that I shall save myself yet. If I do, I shall come straight to you, and you shall know all that there is to know. But, remember, child"—and raising her face in my hands, I looked down into the blue of her tearful eyes—"remember, little one, that in one thing I have been true and honourable, and influenced by nothing but my heart—in my wooing of you. I love you, Roxalanne, with all my soul, and if I should die you are the only thing in all this world that I experience a regret at leaving."

"I do believe it; I do, indeed. Nothing can ever alter my belief again. Will you not, then, tell me who you are, and what is this thing, which you call dishonourable, that brought you into Languedoc?"

A moment again I pondered. Then I shook my head.

"Wait, child," said I; and she, obedient to my wishes, asked no more.

It was the second time that I neglected a favourable opportunity of making that confession, and as I had regretted having allowed the first occasion to pass unprofited, so was I, and still more poignantly, to regret this second silence.

A little while she stayed with me yet, and I sought to instil some measure of comfort into her soul. I spoke of the hopes that I based upon Castelroux's finding friends to recognize me—hopes that were passing slender. And she, poor child, sought also to cheer me and give me courage.

"If only the King were here!" she sighed. "I would go to him, and on my knees I would plead for your enlargement. But they say he is no nearer than Lyons; and I could not hope to get there and back by Monday. I will go to the Keeper of the Seals again, monsieur, and I will beg him to be merciful, and at least to delay the sentence."

I did not discourage her; I did not speak of the futility of such a step. But I begged her to remain in Toulouse until Monday, that she might visit me again before the end, if the end were to become inevitable.

Then Castelroux came to reconduct her, and we parted. But she left me a great consolation, a great strengthening comfort. If I were destined, indeed, to walk to the scaffold, it seemed that I could do it with a better grace and a gladder courage now.



CHAPTER XIII. THE ELEVENTH HOUR

Castelroux visited me upon the following morning, but he brought no news that might be accounted encouraging. None of his messengers were yet returned, nor had any sent word that they were upon the trail of my followers. My heart sank a little, and such hope as I still fostered was fast perishing. Indeed, so imminent did my doom appear and so unavoidable, that later in the day I asked for pen and paper that I might make an attempt at setting my earthly affairs to rights. Yet when the writing materials were brought me, I wrote not. I sat instead with the feathered end of my quill between my teeth, and thus pondered the matter of the disposal of my Picardy estates.

Coldly I weighed the wording of the wager and the events that had transpired, and I came at length to the conclusion that Chatellerault could not be held to have the least claim upon my lands. That he had cheated at the very outset, as I have earlier shown, was of less account than that he had been instrumental in violently hindering me.

I took at last the resolve to indite a full memoir of the transaction, and to request Castelroux to see that it was delivered to the King himself. Thus not only would justice be done, but I should—though tardily—be even with the Count. No doubt he relied upon his power to make a thorough search for such papers as I might leave, and to destroy everything that might afford indication of my true identity. But he had not counted upon the good feeling that had sprung up betwixt the little Gascon captain and me, nor yet upon my having contrived to convince the latter that I was, indeed, Bardelys, and he little dreamt of such a step as I was about to take to ensure his punishment hereafter.

Resolved at last, I was commencing to write when my attention was arrested by an unusual sound. It was at first no more than a murmuring noise, as of at sea breaking upon its shore. Gradually it grew its volume and assumed the shape of human voices raised in lusty clamour. Then, above the din of the populace, a gun boomed out, then another, and another.

I sprang up at that, and, wondering what might be toward, I crossed to my barred window and stood there listening. I overlooked the courtyard of the jail, and I could see some commotion below, in sympathy, as it were, with the greater commotion without.

Presently, as the populace drew nearer, it seemed to me that the shouting was of acclamation. Next I caught a blare of trumpets, and, lastly, I was able to distinguish above the noise, which had now grown to monstrous proportions, the clattering hoofs of some cavalcade that was riding past the prison doors.

It was borne in upon me that some great personage was arriving in Toulouse, and my first thought was of the King. At the idea of such a possibility my brain whirled and I grew dizzy with hope. The next moment I recalled that but last night Roxalanne had told me that he was no nearer than Lyons, and so I put the thought from me, and the hope with it, for, travelling in that leisurely, indolent fashion that was characteristic of his every action, it would be a miracle if His Majesty should reach Toulouse before the week was out, and this but Sunday.

The populace passed on, then seemed to halt, and at last the shouts died down on the noontide air. I went back to my writing, and to wait until from my jailer, when next he should chance to appear, I might learn the meaning of that uproar.

An hour perhaps went by, and I had made some progress with my memoir, when my door was opened and the cheery voice of Castelroux greeted me from the threshold.

"Monsieur, I have brought a friend to see you."

I turned in my chair, and one glance at the gentle, comely face and the fair hair of the young man standing beside Castelroux was enough to bring me of a sudden to my feet.

"Mironsac!" I shouted, and sprang towards him with hands outstretched.

But though my joy was great and my surprise profound, greater still was the bewilderment that in Mironsac's face I saw depicted.

"Monsieur de Bardelys!" he exclaimed, and a hundred questions were contained in his astonished eyes.

"Po' Cap de Dieu!" growled his cousin, "I was well advised, it seems, to have brought you."

"But," Mironsac asked his cousin, as he took my hands in his own, "why did you not tell me, Amedee, that it was to Monsieur le Marquis de Bardelys that you were conducting me?"

"Would you have had me spoil so pleasant a surprise?" his cousin demanded.

"Armand," said I, "never was a man more welcome than are you. You are but come in time to save my life."

And then, in answer to his questions, I told him briefly of all that had befallen me since that night in Paris when the wager had been laid, and of how, through the cunning silence of Chatellerault, I was now upon the very threshold of the scaffold. His wrath burst forth at that, and what he said of the Count did me good to hear. At last I stemmed his invective.

"Let that be for the present, Mironsac," I laughed. "You are here, and you can thwart all Chatellerault's designs by witnessing to my identity before the Keeper of the Seals."

And then of a sudden a doubt closed like a cold hand upon my brain. I turned to Castelroux.

"Mon Dieu!" I cried. "What if they were to deny me a fresh trial?"

"Deny it you!" he laughed. "They will not be asked to grant you one."

"There will be no need," added Mironsac. "I have but to tell the King—"

"But, my friend," I exclaimed impatiently, "I am to die in the morning!"

"And the King shall be told to-day—now, at once. I will go to him."

I stared askance a moment; then the thought of the uproar that I had heard recurring to me, "Has the King arrived already?" I exclaimed.

"Naturally, monsieur. How else do I come to be here? I am in His Majesty's train."

At that I grew again impatient. I thought of Roxalanne and of how she must be suffering, and I bethought me that every moment Mironsac now remained in my cell was another moment of torture for that poor child. So I urged him to be gone at once and carry news of my confinement to His Majesty. He obeyed me, and I was left alone once more, to pace up and down in my narrow cell, a prey to an excitement such as I should have thought I had outlived.

At the end of a half-hour Castelroux returned alone.

"Well?" I cried the moment the door opened, and without giving him so much as time to enter. "What news?"

"Mironsac tells me that His Majesty is more overwrought than he has ever seen him. You are to come to the Palace at once. I have an order here from the King."

We went in a coach, and with all privacy, for he informed me that His Majesty desired the affair to be kept secret, having ends of his own to serve thereby.

I was left to wait some moments in an ante-chamber, whilst Castelroux announced me to the King; then I was ushered into a small apartment, furnished very sumptuously in crimson and gold, and evidently set apart for His Majesty's studies or devotions. As I entered, Louis's back was towards me. He was standing—a tall, spare figure in black—leaning against the frame of a window, his head supported on his raised left arm and his eyes intent upon the gardens below.

He remained so until Castelroux had withdrawn and the door had closed again; then, turning suddenly, he confronted me, his back to the light, so that his face was in a shadow that heightened its gloom and wonted weariness.

"Voila, Monsieur de Bardelys!" was his greeting, and unfriendly. "See the pass to which your disobedience of my commands has brought you."

"I would submit, Sire," I answered, "that I have been brought to it by the incompetence of Your Majesty's judges and the ill-will of others whom Your Majesty honours with too great a confidence, rather than by this same disobedience of mine."

"The one and the other, perhaps," he said more softly. "Though, after all, they appear to have had a very keen nose for a traitor. Come, Bardelys, confess yourself that."

"I? A traitor?"

He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed without any conspicuous mirth.

"Is not a traitor one who runs counter to the wishes; of his King? And are you not, therefore, a traitor, whether they call you Lesperon or Bardelys? But there," he ended more softly still, and flinging himself into a chair as he spoke, "I have been so wearied since you left me, Marcel. They have the best intentions in the world, these dullards, and some of them love me even; but they are tiresome all. Even Chatellerault, when he has a fancy for a jest—as in your case perpetrates it with the grace of a bear, the sprightliness of an elephant."

"Jest?" said I.

"You find it no jest, Marcel? Pardieu, who shall blame you? He would be a man of unhealthy humour that could relish such a pleasantry as that of being sentenced to death. But tell me of it. The whole story, Marcel. I have not heard a story worth the listening to since—since you left us."

"Would it please you, Sire, to send for the Comte de Chatellerault ere I begin?" I asked.

"Chatellerault? No, no." He shook his head whimsically. "Chatellerault has had his laugh already, and, like the ill-mannered dog he is, he has kept it to himself. I think, Marcel, that it is our turn now. I have purposely sent Chatellerault away that he may gain no notion of the catastrophic jest we are preparing him in return."

The words set me in the very best of humours, and to that it may be due that presently, as I warmed to my narrative, I lent it a vigour that drew His Majesty out of his wonted apathy and listlessness. He leaned forward when I told him of my encounter with the dragoons at Mirepoix, and how first I had committed the false step of representing myself to be Lesperon.

Encouraged by his interest, I proceeded, and I told my story with as much piquancy as I was master of, repressing only those slight matters which might reflect upon Monsieur de Lavedan's loyalty, but otherwise dealing frankly with His Majesty, even down to the genuineness of the feelings I entertained for Roxalanne. Often he laughed, more often still he nodded approvingly, in understanding and sympathy, whilst now and then he purred his applause. But towards the end, when I came to the matter of the Tribunal of Toulouse, of how my trial was conducted, and of the part played in it by Chatellerault, his face grew set and hard.

"It is true—all this that you tell me?" he cried harshly.

"As true as the Gospels. If you deem an oath necessary, Sire, I swear by my honour that I have uttered nothing that is false, and that, in connection with Monsieur de Chatellerault, even as I have suppressed nothing, so also have I exaggerated nothing."

"The dastard!" he snapped. "But we will avenge you, Marcel. Never fear it."

Then the trend of his thoughts being changed, he smiled wearily.

"By my faith, you may thank God every night of your worthless life that I came so opportunely to Toulouse, and so may that fair child whose beauty you have limned with such a lover's ardour. Nay, never redden, Marcel. What? At your age, and with such a heavy score of affaires to your credit, has it been left for a simple Languedoc maiden to call a blush to your callous cheek? Ma foi, they say truly that love is a great regenerator, a great rejuvenator!"

I made him no answer other than a sigh, for his words set me thinking, and with thought came a tempering of the gay humour that had pervaded me. Remarking this, and misreading it, he laughed outright.

"There, Marcel, never fear. We will not be rigorous. You have won both the maid and the wager, and, by the Mass, you shall enjoy both."

"Helas, Sire," I sighed again, "when the lady comes to know of the wager—"

"Waste no time in telling her, Marcel, and cast yourself upon her mercy. Nay, go not with so gloomy a face, my friend. When woman loves, she can be very merciful; leastways, they tell me so."

Then, his thoughts shifting ground once more, he grew stern again.

"But first we have Chatellerault to deal with. What shall we do with him?"

"It is for Your Majesty to decide."

"For me?" he cried, his voice resuming the harshness that was never far from it. "I have a fancy for having gentlemen about me. Think you I will set eyes again upon that dastard? I am already resolved concerning him, but it entered my mind that it might please you to be the instrument of the law for me."

"Me, Sire?"

"Aye, and why not? They say you can play a very deadly sword upon necessity. This is an occasion that demands an exception from our edict. You have my sanction to send the Comte de Chatellerault a challenge. And see that you kill him, Bardelys!" he continued viciously. "For, by the Mass, if you don't, I will! If he escapes your sword, or if he survives such hurt as you may do him, the headsman shall have him. Mordieu! is it for nothing that I am called Louis the Just?"

I stood in thought for a moment. Then—

"If I do this thing, Sire," I ventured, "the world will say of me that I did so to escape the payment I had incurred."

"Fool, you have not incurred it. When a man cheats, does he not forfeit all his rights?"

"That is very true. But the world—"

"Peste!" he snapped impatiently, "you are beginning to weary me, Marcel—and all the world does that so excellently that it needs not your collaboration. Go your ways, man, and do as you elect. But take my sanction to slay this fellow Chatellerault, and I shall be the better pleased if you avail yourself of it. He is lodged at the Auberge Royale, where probably you will find him at present. Now, go. I have more justice to dispense in this rebellious province."

I paused a moment.

"Shall I not resume my duties near Your Majesty?"

He pondered a moment, then he smiled in his weary way.

"It would please me to have you, for these creatures are so dismally dull, all of them. Je m'ennuie tellement, Marcel!" he sighed. "Ough! But, no, my friend, I do not doubt you would be as dull as any of them at present. A man in love is the weariest and most futile thing in all this weary, futile world. What shall I do with your body what time your soul is at Lavedan? I doubt me you are in haste to get you there. So go, Marcel. Get you wed, and live out your amorous intoxication; marriage is the best antidote. When that is done, return to me."

"That will be never, Sire," I answered slyly.

"Say you so, Master Cupid Bardelys?" And he combed his beard reflectively. "Be not too sure. There have been other passions—aye, as great as yours—yet have they staled. But you waste my time. Go, Marcel; you are excused your duties by me for as long as your own affairs shall hold you elsewhere—for as long as you please. We are here upon a gloomy business—as you know. There are my cousin Montmorency and the others to be dealt with, and we are holding no levees, countenancing no revels. But come to me when you will, and I will see you. Adieu!"

I murmured my thanks, and very deep and sincere were they. Then, having kissed his hand, I left him.

Louis XIII is a man who lacks not maligners. Of how history may come to speak of him it is not mine to hazard. But this I can say, that I, at least, did never find him other than a just and kindly master, an upright gentleman, capricious at times and wilful, as must inevitably be the case with such spoilt children of fortune as are princes, but of lofty ideals and high principles. It was his worst fault that he was always tired, and through that everlasting weariness he came to entrust the determining of most affairs to His Eminence. Hence has it resulted that the censure for many questionable acts of his reign, which were the work of my Lord Cardinal, has recoiled upon my august master's head.

But to me, with all the faults that may be assigned him, he was ever Louis the Just, and wherever his name be mentioned in my hearing, I bare my head.



CHAPTER XIV. EAVESDROPPING

I turned it over in my mind, after I had left the King's presence, whether or not I should visit with my own hands upon Chatellerault the punishment he had so fully earned. That I would have gone about the task rejoicing you may readily imagine; but there was that accursed wager, and—to restrain me—the thought of how such an action might be construed into an evasion of its consequences. Better a thousand times that His Majesty should order his arrest and deal with him for his attempted perversion of justice to the service of his own vile ends. The charge of having abused his trust as King's commissioner to the extent of seeking to do murder through the channels of the Tribunal was one that could not fail to have fatal results for him—as, indeed, the King had sworn.

That was the position of affairs as it concerned Chatellerault, the world, and me. But the position must also be considered as it concerned Roxalanne, and deeply, indeed, did I so consider it. Much pondering brought me again to the conclusion that until I had made the only atonement in my power, the only atonement that would leave me with clean hands, I must not again approach her.

Whether Chatellerault had cheated or not could not affect the question as it concerned Mademoiselle and me. If I paid the wager—whether in honour bound to do so or not—I might then go to her, impoverished, it is true, but at least with no suspicion attaching to my suit of any ulterior object other than that of winning Roxalanne herself.

I could then make confession, and surely the fact that I had paid where clearly there was no longer any need to pay must earn me forgiveness and afford proof of the sincerity of my passion.

Upon such a course, then, did I decide, and, with this end in view, I took my way towards the Auberge Royale, where His Majesty had told me that the Count was lodged. It was my purpose to show myself fully aware of the treacherous and unworthy part he had played at the very inception of the affair, and that if I chose to consider the wager lost it was that I might the more honestly win the lady.

Upon inquiring at the hostelry for Monsieur de Chatellerault I was informed by the servant I addressed that he was within, but that at the moment he had a visitor. I replied that I would wait, and demanded a private room, since I desired to avoid meeting any Court acquaintances who might chance into the auberge before I had seen the Count.

My apparel at the moment may not have been all that could have been desired, but when a gentleman's rearing has taken place amid an army of servitors to minister to his every wish, he is likely to have acquired an air that is wont to win him obedience. With all celerity was I ushered into a small chamber, opening on the one side upon the common room, and being divided on the other by the thinnest of wooden partitions from the adjoining apartment.

Here, the landlord having left me, I disposed myself to wait, and here I did a thing I would not have believed myself capable of doing, a thing I cannot think of without blushing to this very day. In short, I played the eavesdropper—I, Marcel Saint-Pol de Bardelys. Yet, if you who read and are nice-minded, shudder at this confession, or, worse still, shrug your shoulders in contempt, with the reflection that such former conduct of mine as I have avowed had already partly disposed you against surprise at this I do but ask that you measure my sin by my temptation, and think honestly whether in my position you might not yourselves have fallen. Aye—be you never so noble and high-principled—I make bold to say that you had done no less, for the voice that penetrated to my ears was that of Roxalanne de Lavedan.

"I sought an audience with the King," she was saying, "but I could not gain his presence. They told me that he was holding no levees, and that he refused to see any one not introduced by one of those having the private entree."

"And so," answered the voice of Chatellerault, in tones that were perfectly colourless, "you come to me that I may present you to his Majesty?"

"You have guessed it, Monsieur le Comte. You are the only gentleman of His Majesty's suite, with whom I can claim acquaintance—however slight—and, moreover, it is well known how high you stand in his royal favour. I was told that they that have a boon to crave can find no better sponsor."

"Had you gone to the King, mademoiselle," said he, "had you gained audience, he would have directed you to make your appeal to me. I am his Commissioner in Languedoc, and the prisoners attainted with high treason are my property."

"Why then, monsieur," she cried in an eager voice, that set my pulses throbbing, "you'll not deny me the boon I crave? You'll not deny me his life?"

There was a short laugh from Chatellerault, and I could hear the deliberate fall of his feet as he paced the chamber.

"Mademoiselle, mademoiselle, you must not overrate my powers. You must not forget that I am the slave of Justice. You may be asking more than is in my power to grant. What can you advance to show that I should be justified in proceeding as you wish?"

"Helas, monsieur, I can advance nothing but my prayers and the assurance that a hideous mistake is being made."

"What is your interest in this Monsieur de Lesperon?"

"He is not Monsieur de Lesperon," she cried.

"But, since you cannot tell me who he is, you must be content that we speak of him at least as Lesperon," said he, and I could imagine the evil grin with which he would accompany the words.

The better that you may appreciate that which followed, let me here impart to you the suspicions which were already sinking into my mind, to be changed later into absolute convictions touching the course the Count intended to pursue concerning me. The sudden arrival of the King had thrown him into some measure of panic, and no longer daring to carry out his plans concerning me, it was his object, I made no doubt, to set me at liberty that very evening. Ere he did so, however, and presuming upon my ignorance of His Majesty's presence in Toulouse, Chatellerault would of a certainty have bound me down by solemn promise—making that promise the price of my liberty and my life—to breathe no word of my captivity and trial. No doubt, his cunning brain would have advanced me plausible and convincing reasons so to engage myself.

He had not calculated upon Castelroux, nor that the King should already have heard of my detention. Now that Roxalanne came to entreat him to do that which already he saw himself forced to do, he turned his attention to the profit that he might derive from her interestedness on my behalf. I could guess also something of the jealous rage that must fill him at this signal proof of my success with her, and already I anticipated, I think, the bargain that he would drive.

"Tell me, then," he was repeating, "what is your interest in this gentleman?"

There was a silence. I could imagine her gentle face clouded with the trouble that sprang from devising an' answer to that question; I could picture her innocent eyes cast down, her delicate cheeks pinked by some measure of shame, as at last, in a low, stifled voice, the four words broke from her "I love him, monsieur."

Ah, Dieu! To hear her confess it so! If yesternight it had stirred me to the very depths of my poor, sinful soul to have her say so much to me, how infinitely more did it not affect me to overhear this frank avowal of it to another! And to think that she was undergoing all this to the end that she might save me!

From Chatellerault there came an impatient snort in answer, and his feet again smote the floor as he resumed the pacing that for a moment he had suspended. Then followed a pause, a long silence, broken only by the Count's restless walking to and fro. At last "Why are you silent, monsieur?" she asked in a trembling voice.

"Helas, mademoiselle, I can do nothing. I had feared that it might be thus with you; and, if I put the question, it was in the hope that I was wrong."

"But he, monsieur?" she exclaimed in anguish. "What of him?"

"Believe me, mademoiselle, if it lay in my power I would save him were he never so guilty, if only that I might spare you sorrow."

He spoke with tender regret, foul hypocrite that he was!

"Oh, no, no!" she cried, and her voice was of horror and despair. "You do not mean that—" She stopped short; and then, after a pause, it was the Count who finished the sentence for her.

"I mean, mademoiselle, that this Lesperon must die!"

You will marvel that I let her suffer so, that I did not break down the partition with my hands and strike that supple gentleman dead at her feet in atonement for the anguish he was causing her. But I had a mind to see how far he would drive this game he was engaged upon.

Again there was a spell of silence, and at last, when Mademoiselle spoke, I was amazed at the calm voice in which she addressed him, marvelling at the strength and courage of one so frail and childlike to behold.

"Is your determination, indeed, irrevocable, monsieur? If you have any pity, will you not at least let me bear my prayers and my tears to the King?"

"It would avail you nothing. As I have said, the Languedoc rebels are in my hands." He paused as if to let those words sink well into her understanding; then, "If I were to set him at liberty, mademoiselle, if I were to spirit him out of prison in the night, bribing his jailers to keep silent and binding him by oath to quit France at once and never to betray me, I should be, myself, guilty of high treason. Thus alone could the thing be done, and you will see, mademoiselle, that by doing it I should be endangering my neck."

There was an ineffable undercurrent of meaning in his words—an intangible suggestion that he might be bribed to do all this to which he so vaguely alluded.

"I understand, monsieur," she answered, choking—"I understand that it would be too much to ask of you."

"It would be much, mademoiselle," he returned quickly, and his voice was now subdued and invested with an odd quiver. "But nothing that your lips might ask of me and that it might lie in the power of mortal man to do, would be too much!"

"You mean?" she cried, a catch in her breath. Had she guessed—as I, without sight of her face, had guessed—what was to follow? My gorge was rising fast. I clenched my hands, and by an effort I restrained myself to learn that I had guessed aright.

"Some two months ago," he said, "I journeyed to Lavedan, as you may remember. I saw you, mademoiselle—for a brief while only, it is true—and ever since I have seen nothing else but you." His voice went a shade lower, and passion throbbed in his words.

She, too, perceived it, for the grating of a chair informed me that she had risen.

"Not now, monsieur—not now!" she exclaimed. "This is not the season. I beg of you think of my desolation."

"I do, mademoiselle, and I respect your grief, and, with all my heart, believe me, I share it. Yet this is the season, and if you have this man's interests at heart, you will hear me to the end."

Through all the imperiousness of his tone an odd note of respect—real or assumed—was sounding.

"If you suffer, mademoiselle, believe me that I suffer also, and if I make you suffer more by what I say, I beg that you will think how what you have said, how the very motive of your presence here, has made me suffer. Do you know, mademoiselle, what it is to be torn by jealousy? Can you imagine it? If you can, you can imagine also something of the torture I endured when you confessed to me that you loved this Lesperon, when you interceded for his life. Mademoiselle, I love you—with all my heart and soul I love you. I have loved you, I think, since the first moment of our meeting at Lavedan, and to win you there is no risk that I would not take, no danger that I would not brave."

"Monsieur, I implore you—"

"Hear me out, mademoiselle!" he cried. Then in quieter voice he proceeded: "At present you love this Monsieur de Lesperon—"

"I shall always love him! Always, monsieur!"

"Wait, wait, wait!" he exclaimed, annoyed by her interruption. "If he were to live, and you were to wed him and be daily in his company, I make no doubt your love might endure. But if he were to die, or if he were to pass into banishment and you were to see him no more, you would mourn him for a little while, and then—Helas! it is the way of men and women—time would heal first your sorrow, then your heart."

"Never, monsieur—oh, never!"

"I am older, child, than you are. I know. At present you are anxious to save his life anxious because you love him, and also because you betrayed him, and you would not have his death upon your conscience." He paused a moment; then raising his voice, "Mademoiselle," said he, "I offer you your lover's life."

"Monsieur, monsieur!" cried the poor child, "I knew you were good! I knew—"

"A moment! Do not misapprehend me. I do not say that I give it—I offer it."

"But the difference?"

"That if you would have it, mademoiselle, you must buy it. I have said that for you I would brave all dangers. To save your lover, I brave the scaffold. If I am betrayed, or if the story transpire, my head will assuredly fall in the place of Lesperon's. This I will risk, mademoiselle—I will do it gladly—if you will promise to become my wife when it is done."

There was a moan from Roxalanne, then silence; then—"Oh, monsieur, you are pitiless! What bargain is this that you offer me?"

"A fair one, surely," said that son of hell—"a very fair one. The risk of my life against your hand in marriage."

"If you—if you truly loved me as you say, monsieur," she reasoned, "you would serve me without asking guerdon."

"In any other thing I would. But is it fair to ask a man who is racked by love of you to place another in your arms, and that at the risk of his own life? Ah, mademoiselle, I am but a man, and I am subject to human weaknesses. If you will consent, this Lesperon shall go free, but you must see him no more; and I will carry my consideration so far as to give you six months in which to overcome your sorrow, ere I present myself to you again to urge my suit."

"And if I refuse, monsieur?"

He sighed.

"To the value which I set upon my life you must add my very human jealousy. From such a combination what can you hope for?"

"You mean, in short, that he must die?"

"To-morrow," was that infernal cheat's laconic answer.

They were silent a little while, then she fell a-sobbing.

"Be pitiful, monsieur! Have mercy if you, indeed, love me. Oh, he must not die! I cannot, I dare not, let him die! Save him, monsieur, and I will pray for you every night of my life; I will pray for you to our Holy Mother as I am now praying to you for him."

Lived there the man to resist that innocent, devout appeal? Lived there one who in answer to such gentle words of love and grief could obtrude his own coarse passions? It seems there did, for all he answered was "You know the price, child."

"And God pity me! I must pay it. I must, for if he dies I shall have his blood upon my conscience!" Then she checked her grief, and her voice grew almost stern in the restraint she set upon herself. "If I give you my promise to wed you hereafter—say in six months' time—what proof will you afford me that he who is detained under the name of Lesperon shall go free?"

I caught the sound of something very like a gasp from the Count.

"Remain in Toulouse until to-morrow, and to-night ere he departs he shall come to take his leave of you. Are you content?"

"Be it so, monsieur," she answered.

Then at last I leapt to my feet. I could endure no more. You may marvel that I had had the heart to endure so much, and to have so let her suffer that I might satisfy myself how far this scoundrel Chatellerault would drive his trickster's bargain.

A more impetuous man would have beaten down the partition, or shouted to her through it the consolation that Chatellerault's bargain was no bargain at all, since I was already at large. And that is where a more impetuous man would have acted upon instinct more wisely than did I upon reason. Instead, I opened the door, and, crossing the common room, I flung myself down a passage that I thought must lead to the chamber in which they were closeted. But in this I was at fault, and ere I had come upon a waiter and been redirected some precious moments were lost. He led me back through the common room to a door opening upon another corridor. He pushed it wide, and I came suddenly face to face with Chatellerault, still flushed from his recent contest.