In this fashion some three weeks wore themselves out, during which period I lay in my concealment, a prey to weariness unutterable. I might not venture forth save at night, unless I wore a mask; and as masks were no longer to be worn without attracting notice--as during the late king's reign--I dared not indulge the practice.

Certainly my ennui was greatly relieved by the visits of Montresor, which grew very frequent, the lad appearing to have conceived a kindness for me; and during those three weeks our fellowship at nights over a bottle or two engendered naturally enough a friendship and an intimacy between us.

I had written to Andrea on the morrow of my return to Paris, to tell him how kindly Montresor had dealt with me, and some ten days later the following letter was brought me by the lieutenant--to whom, for safety, it had been forwarded:

"MY VERY DEAR GASTON:

I have no words wherewith to express my joy at the good news you send me, which terminates the anxiety that has been mine since you left us on the disastrous morning of our nuptials.

The uncertainty touching your fate, the fear that the worst might have befallen you, and the realisation that I--for whom you have done so much--might do naught for you in your hour of need, has been the one cloud to mar the sunshine of my own bliss.

That cloud your letter has dispelled, and the knowledge of your safety renders my happiness complete.

The Chevalier maintains his unforgiving mood, as no doubt doth also my Lord Cardinal. But what to me are the frowns of either, so that my lady smile? My little Genevieve is yet somewhat vexed in spirit at all this, but I am teaching her to have faith in Time, the patron saint of all lovers who follow not the course their parents set them. And so that time may be allowed to intercede and appeal to the parent heart with the potent prayer of a daughter's absence, I shall take my lady from Chambord some three days hence. We shall travel by easy stages to Ma.r.s.eilles, and there take ship for Palermo.

And so, dear, trusty friend, until we meet again, fare you well and may G.o.d hold you safe from the wickedness of man, devil, and my Lord Cardinal.

For all that you have done for me, no words of mine can thank you, but should you determine to quit this France of yours, and journey to Palermo after me, you shall never want a roof to shelter you or a board to sit at, so long as roof and board are owned by him who signs himself, in love at least, your brother--

"ANDREA DE MANCINI."

With a sigh I set the letter down. A sigh of love and grat.i.tude it was; a sigh also of regret for the bright, happy boy who had been the source alike of my recent joys and sorrows, and whom methought I was not likely to see again for many a day, since the peaceful vegetation of his Sicilian home held little attraction for me, a man of action.

It was on the evening of the last Sunday in May, whilst the bell of the Jesuits, close by, was tinkling out its summons to vespers, that Montresor burst suddenly into my room with the request that I should get my hat and cloak and go with him to pay a visit. In reply to my questions--"Monseigneur's letter to Armand de Canaples," he said, "has borne fruit already. Come with me and you shall learn how."

He led me past the Bastille and up the Rue des Tournelles to the door of an unpretentious house, upon which he knocked. We were admitted by an old woman to whom Montresor appeared to be known, for, after exchanging a word or two with her, he himself led the way upstairs and opened the door of a room for me.

By the melancholy light of a single taper burning upon the table I beheld a fair-sized room containing a curtained bed.

My companion took up the candle, and stepping to the bedside, he drew apart the curtains.

Lying there I beheld a man whose countenance, despite its pallor and the b.l.o.o.d.y bandages about his brow, I recognised for that of the little spitfire Malpertuis.

As the light fell upon his face, the little fellow opened his eyes, and upon beholding me at his side he made a sudden movement which wrung from him a cry of pain.

"Lie still, Monsieur," said Montresor quietly.

But for all the lieutenant's remonstrances, he struggled up into a sitting posture, requesting Montresor to set the pillows at his back.

"Thank G.o.d you are here, M. de Luynes!" he said. "I learnt at Canaples that you were not dead."

"You have been to Canaples?"

"I was a guest of the Chevalier for twelve days. I arrived there on the day after your departure."

"You!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Pray what took you to Canaples?"

"What took me there?" he echoed, turning his feverish eyes upon me, almost with fierceness. "The same motive that led me to join hands with that ruffian St. Auban, when he spoke of waging war against Mancini; the same motive that led me to break with him when I saw through his plans, and when the abduction of Mademoiselle was on foot; the same motive that made me come to you and tell you of the proposed abduction so that you might interfere if you had the power, or cause others to do so if you had not."

I lay back in my chair and stared at him. Was this, then, another suitor of Yvonne de Canaples, and were all men mad with love of her?

Presently he continued:

"When I heard that St. Auban was in Paris, having apparently abandoned all hope in connection with Mademoiselle, I obtained a letter from M. de la Rochefoucauld--who is an intimate friend of mine--and armed with this I set out. As luck would have it I got embroiled in the streets of Blois with a couple of cardinalist gentlemen, who chose to be offended by lampoon of the Fronde that I was humming. I am not a patient man, and I am even indiscreet in moments of choler. I ended by crying, 'Down with Mazarin and all his creatures,' and I would of a certainty have had my throat slit, had not a slight and elegant gentleman interposed, and, exercising a wonderful influence over my a.s.sailants, extricated me from my predicament. This gentleman was the Chevalier de Canaples. He was strangely enough in a mood to be pleased by an anti-cardinalist ditty, for his rage against Andrea de Mancini--which he took no pains to conceal--had extended already to the Cardinal, and from morn till night he did little else but revile the whole Italian brood--as he chose to dub the Cardinal's family."

I recognised the old knight's weak, vacillating character in this, a creature of moods that, like the vane on a steeple, turns this way or that, as the wind blows.

"I crave your patience, M. de Luynes," he continued, "and beg of you to hear my story so that you may determine whether you will save the Canaples from the danger that threatens them. I only ask that you dispatch a reliable messenger to Blois. But hear me out first. In virtue as much of La Rochefoucauld's letters as of the sentiments which the Chevalier heard me express, I became the honoured guest at his chateau.

Three days after my arrival I sustained a shock by the unexpected appearance at Canaples of St. Auban. The Chevalier, however, refused him admittance, and, baffled, the Marquis was forced to withdraw. But he went no farther than Blois, where he hired himself a room at the Lys de France. The Chevalier hated him as a mad dog hates water--almost as much as he hated you. He spoke often of you, and always bitterly."

Before I knew what I had said--

"And Mademoiselle?" I burst out. "Did she ever mention my name?"

Malpertuis looked up quickly at the question, and a wan smile flickered round his lips.

"Once she spoke of you to me--pityingly, as one might speak of a dead man whose life had not been good."

"Yes, yes," I broke in. "It matters little. Your story, M. Malpertuis."

"After I had been at the chateau ten days, we learnt that Eugene de Canaples had been sent to the Bastille. The news came in a letter penned by his Eminence himself--a bitter, viperish letter, with a covert threat in every line. The Chevalier's anger went white hot as he read the disappointed Cardinal's epistle. His Eminence accused Eugene of being a frondeur; M. de Canaples, whose politics had grown sadly rusted in the country, asked me the meaning of the word. I explained to him the petty squabbles between Court and Parliament, in consequence of the extortionate imposts and of Mazarin's avariciousness. I avowed myself a partisan of the Fronde, and within three days the Chevalier--who but a little time before had sought an alliance with the Cardinal's family--had become as rabid a frondeur as M. de Gondi, as fierce an anticardinalist as M. de Beaufort.

"I humoured him in his new madness, with the result that ere long from being a frondeur in heart, he thirsted to become a frondeur in deeds, and he ended by begging me to bear a letter from him to the Coadjutor of Paris, wherein he offered to place at M. de Gondi's disposal, towards the expenses of the civil war which he believed to be imminent,--as, indeed, it is,--the sum of sixty thousand livres.

"Now albeit I had gone to Canaples for purposes of my own, and not as an agent of M. le Coadjuteur's, still for many reasons I saw fit to undertake the Chevalier's commission. And so, bearing the letter in question, which was hot and unguarded, and charged with endless treasonable matter, I set out four days later for Paris, arriving here yesterday.

"I little knew that I had been followed by St. Auban. His suspicions must have been awakened, I know not how, and clearly they were confirmed when I stopped before the Coadjutor's house last night. I was about to mount the steps, when of a sudden I was seized from behind by half a dozen hands and dragged into a side street. I got free for a moment and attempted to defend myself, but besides St. Auban there were two others.

They broke my sword and attempted to break my skull, in which they went perilously near succeeding, as you see. Albeit half-swooning, I had yet sufficient consciousness left to realise that my pockets were being emptied, and that at last they had torn open my doublet and withdrawn the treasonable letter from the breast of it.

"I was left bleeding in the kennel, and there I lay for nigh upon an hour until a pa.s.ser-by succoured me and carried out my request to be brought hither and put to bed."

He ceased, and for some moments there was silence, broken only by the wounded man's laboured breathing, which argued that his narrative had left him fatigued. At last I sprang up.

"The Chevalier de Canaples must be warned," I exclaimed.

"'T is an ugly business," muttered Montresor. "I'll wager a hundred that Mazarin will hang the Chevalier if he catches him just now."

"He would not dare!" cried Malpertuis.

"Not dare?" echoed the lieutenant. "The man who imprisoned the Princes of Conde and Conti, and the Duke of Beaufort, not dare hang a provincial knight with never a friend at Court! Pah, Monsieur, you do not know Cardinal Mazarin."

I realised to the full how likely Montresor's prophecy was to be fulfilled, and before I left Malpertuis I a.s.sured him that he had not poured his story into the ears of an indifferent listener, and that I would straightway find means of communicating with Canaples.

CHAPTER XXI. OF THE BARGAIN THAT ST. AUBAN DROVE WITH MY LORD CARDINAL