Tell me what you desire me to do."
"Prevent this duel; don"t allow an interview to take place between your uncle and the man whom he mentioned. Tell me you will do this, and I shall be safe; for you have never learned to lie; I know."
"Of course he hasn"t, you may be sure of that, you simpleton!" muttered Maitre Quennebert in his corner. "If you only knew what a mere novice you are at that game compared with the chevalier! If you only knew whom you had before you!"
"At your age," went on Angelique, "one cannot feign--the heart is not yet hardened, and is capable of compa.s.sion. But a dreadful idea occurs to me--a horrible suspicion! Is it all a devilish trick--a snare arranged in joke? Tell me that it is not all a pretence! A poor woman encounters so much perfidy. Men amuse themselves by troubling her heart and confusing her mind; they excite her vanity, they compa.s.s her round with homage, with flattery, with temptation, and when they grow tired of fooling her, they despise and insult her. Tell me, was this all a preconcerted plan? This love, this jealousy, were they only acted?"
"Oh, madame," broke in the chevalier, with an expression of the deepest indignation, "how can you for an instant imagine that a human heart could be so perverted? I am not acquainted with the man whom the commander accused you of loving, but whoever he may be I feel sure that he is worthy of your love, and that he would never have consented to such a dastardly joke. Neither would my uncle; his jealousy mastered him and drove him mad--
"But I am not dependent on him; I am my own master, and can do as I please. I will hinder this duel; I will not allow the illusion and ignorance of him who loves you and, alas that I must say it, whom you love, to be dispelled, for it is in them he finds his happiness.
Be happy with him! As for me, I shall never see you again; but the recollection of this meeting, the joy of having served you, will be my consolation."
Angelique raised her beautiful eyes, and gave the chevalier a long look which expressed her grat.i.tude more eloquently than words.
"May I be hanged!" thought Maitre Quennebert, "if the baggage isn"t making eyes at him already! But one who is drowning clutches at a straw."
"Enough, madam," said the chevalier; "I understand all you would say.
You thank me in his name, and ask me to leave you: I obey-yes, madame, I am going; at the risk of my life I will prevent this meeting, I will stifle this fatal revelation. But grant me one last prayer-permit me to look forward to seeing you once more before I leave this city, to which I wish I had never come. But I shall quit it in a day or two, to-morrow perhaps--as soon as I know that your happiness is a.s.sured. Oh! do not refuse my last request; let the light of your eyes shine on me for the last time; after that I shall depart--I shall fly far away for ever.
But if perchance, in spite of every effort, I fail, if the commander"s jealousy should make him impervious to my entreaties--to my tears, if he whom you love should come and overwhelm you with reproaches and then abandon you, would you drive me from your presence if I should then say, "I love you"? Answer me, I beseech you."
"Go!" said she, "and prove worthy of my grat.i.tude--or my love."
Seizing one of her hands, the chevalier covered it with pa.s.sionate kisses.
"Such barefaced impudence surpa.s.ses everything I could have imagined!"
murmured Quennebert: "fortunately, the play is over for to-night; if it had gone on any longer, I should have done something foolish. The lady hardly imagines what the end of the comedy will be."
Neither did Quennebert. It was an evening of adventures. It was written that in the s.p.a.ce of two hours Angelique was to run the gamut of all the emotions, experience all the vicissitudes to which a life such as she led is exposed: hope, fear, happiness, mortification, falsehood, love that was no love, intrigue within intrigue, and, to crown all, a totally unexpected conclusion.
CHAPTER V
The chevalier was still holding Angelique"s hand when a step resounded outside, and a voice was heard.
"Can it be that he has come back?" exclaimed the damsel, hastily freeing herself from the pa.s.sionate embrace of the chevalier. "It"s not possible! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! it"s his voice!"
She grew pale to the lips, and stood staring at the door with outstretched arms, unable to advance or recede.
The chevalier listened, but felt sure the approaching voice belonged neither to the commander nor to the treasurer.
""His voice"?" thought Quennebert to himself. "Can this be yet another aspirant to her favour?"
The sound came nearer.
"Hide yourself!" said Angelique, pointing to a door opposite to the part.i.tion behind which the widow and the notary were ensconced. "Hide yourself there!--there"s a secret staircase--you can get out that way."
"I hide myself!" exclaimed Moranges, with a swaggering air. "What are you thinking of? I remain."
It would have been better for him to have followed her advice, as may very well have occurred to the youth two minutes later, as a tall, muscular young man entered in a state of intense excitement. Angelique rushed to meet him, crying--
"Ah! Monsieur le duc, is it you?"
"What is this I hear, Angelique?" said the Duc de Vitry. "I was told below that three men had visited you this evening; but only two have gone out--where is the third? Ha! I do not need long to find him," he added, as he caught sight of the chevalier, who stood his ground bravely enough.
"In Heaven"s name!" cried Angelique,--"in Heaven"s name, listen to me!"
"No, no, not a word. Just now I am not questioning you. Who are you, sir?"
The chevalier"s teasing and bantering disposition made him even at that critical moment insensible to fear, so he retorted insolently--
"Whoever I please to be, sir; and on my word I find the tone in which you put your question delightfully amusing."
The duke sprang forward in a rage, laying his hand on his sword.
Angelique tried in vain to restrain him.
"You want to screen him from my vengeance, you false one!" said he, retreating a few steps, so as to guard the door. "Defend your life, sir!"
"Do you defend yours!"
Both drew at the same moment.
Two shrieks followed, one in the room, the other behind the tapestry, for neither Angelique nor the widow had been able to restrain her alarm as the two swords flashed in air. In fact the latter had been so frightened that she fell heavily to the floor in a faint.
This incident probably saved the young man"s life; his blood had already begun to run cold at the sight of his adversary foaming with rage and standing between him and the door, when the noise of the fall distracted the duke"s attention.
"What was that?" he cried. "Are there other enemies concealed here too?"
And forgetting that he was leaving a way of escape free, he rushed in the direction from which the sound came, and lunged at the tapestry-covered part.i.tion with his sword. Meantime the chevalier, dropping all his airs of bravado, sprang from one end of the room to the other like a cat pursued by a dog; but rapid as were his movements, the duke perceived his flight, and dashed after him at the risk of breaking both his own neck and the chevalier"s by a chase through unfamiliar rooms and down stairs which were plunged in darkness.
All this took place in a few seconds, like a flash of lightning. Twice, with hardly any interval, the street door opened and shut noisily, and the two enemies were in the street, one pursued and the other pursuing.
"My G.o.d! Just to think of all that has happened is enough to make one die of fright!" said Mademoiselle de Guerchi. "What will come next, I should like to know? And what shall I say to the duke when he comes back?"
Just at this instant a loud cracking sound was heard in the room.
Angelique stood still, once more struck with terror, and recollecting the cry she had heard. Her hair, which was already loosened, escaped entirely from its bonds, and she felt it rise on her head as the figures on the tapestry moved and bent towards her. Falling on her knees and closing her eyes, she began to invoke the aid of G.o.d and all the saints.
But she soon felt herself raised by strong arms, and looking round, she found herself in the presence of an unknown man, who seemed to have issued from the ground or the walls, and who, seizing the only light left unextinguished in the scuffle, dragged her more dead than alive into the next room.
This man was, as the reader will have already guessed, Maitre Quennebert. As soon as the chevalier and the duke had disappeared, the notary had run towards the corner where the widow lay, and having made sure that she was really unconscious, and unable to see or hear anything, so that it would be quite safe to tell her any story he pleased next day, he returned to his former position, and applying his shoulder to the part.i.tion, easily succeeded in freeing the ends of the rotten laths from the nails which held there, and, pushing them before him, made an aperture large enough to allow of his pa.s.sing through into the next apartment. He applied himself to this task with such vigour, and became so absorbed in its accomplishment, that he entirely forgot the bag of twelve hundred livres which the widow had given him.
"Who are you? What do you want with me?" cried Mademoiselle de Guerchi, struggling to free herself.
"Silence!" was Quennebert"s answer.
"Don"t kill me, for pity"s sake!"
"Who wants to kill you? But be silent; I don"t want your shrieks to call people here. I must be alone with you for a few moments. Once more I tell you to be quiet, unless you want me to use violence. If you do what I tell you, no harm shall happen to you."
"But who are you, monsieur?"