"With Monsieur le Comte?" cried Jehan.
"a.s.s! must I repeat a command?"
Jehan hurried away, nearly overcome by surprise.
"A toast!" said the Vicomte d"Halluys: "the Chevalier"s return to Paris and to favor!"
The roisterers filled their gla.s.ses. "To Paris, Chevalier, to court!"
"To the beautiful unknown," whispered the poet into his friend"s ear.
"Thanks, Messieurs," said the Chevalier. "Paris!" and a thousand flashes of candle-light darted from the br.i.m.m.i.n.g gla.s.ses.
The scene was not without its picturesqueness. The low crockery shelves of polished mahogany running the length of the room and filled with rare porcelain, costly Italian gla.s.s, medieval silver, antique flagons, loving-cups of gold inlaid with amber and garnets; a dazzling array of candlesticks; a fireplace of shining mosaics; the mahogany table littered with broken gla.s.s, full and empty bottles, broken pipes, pools of overturned wine, shredded playing cards, cracked dice, and dead candles; somber-toned pictures and rusted armor lining the walls; the brilliant uniforms of the officers from Fort Louis, the laces and satins of the civilians; the flushed faces, some handsome, some sodden, some made hideous by the chisel and mallet of vice: all these produced a scene at once attractive and repelling.
"Vicomte," said the Chevalier, "we are all drunk. Let us see if there be steady hands among us. I make you a wager."
"On what?"
"There are eight candles on your side of the table, eight on mine. I will undertake to snuff mine in less time than it takes you to snuff yours. Say fifty pistoles to make it interesting."
"Done!" said the vicomte.
Perhaps Victor was the soberest man among them, next to the vicomte, who had jestingly been accused of having hollow bones, so marvelous was his capacity for wine and the art of concealing the effects. Several times the poet had crossed the vicomte"s glance as it was leveled in the Chevalier"s direction. Each time the vicomte"s lips had been twisted into a half smile which was not unmixed with pitying contempt. Somehow the poet did not wholly trust the vicomte. Genius has strange instincts.
While Victor admired the vicomte"s wit, his courage, his recklessness, there was a depth to this man which did not challenge investigation, but rather repelled it. What did that half smile signify? Victor shrugged.
Perhaps it was all his imagination. Perhaps it was because he had seen the vicomte look at Madame de Brissac . . . as he himself had often looked. Ah well, love is a thing over which neither man nor woman has control; and perhaps his half-defined antagonism was based upon jealousy.
There was some satisfaction to know that the vicomte"s head was in no less danger than his own. He brushed aside these thoughts, and centered his interest in the game which was about to begin.
The vicomte drew his sword, and accepted that of Lieutenant de Vandreuil of the fort, while the Chevalier joined to his own the rapier of his poet-friend. Both the vicomte and the Chevalier held enviable reputations as fancy swordsmen. To snuff a candle with a pair of swords held scissorwise is a feat to be accomplished only by an expert.
Interest in the sport was always high; and to-night individual wagers as to the outcome sprang up around the table. "Saumaise," said the vicomte, "will you hold the watch?"
"With pleasure, Vicomte," accepting the vicomte"s handsome time-piece.
"Messieurs, it is now twenty-nine minutes after ten; promptly at thirty I shall give the word, preceding it with a one-two-three. Are you ready?"
The contestants nodded. Several seconds pa.s.sed, in absolute silence.
"One-two-three--go!"
The Chevalier succeeded in snuffing his candles three seconds sooner than the vicomte. The applause was loud. Breton was directed to go to the cellars and fetch a dozen bottles of white chambertin.
"You would have won, Vicomte," said the Chevalier, "but for a floating wick."
"Your courtesy exceeds everything," returned the vicomte, bowing with drunken exaggeration.
The doors slid back, and Jehan appeared on the threshold.
"Monsieur le Comte," he said, "Monsieur le Marquis, your father, desires to speak to you." Jehan viewed the scene phlegmatically,
"What!" The Chevalier set down his gla.s.s. His companions did likewise.
"You are jesting, Jehan."
"No, Monsieur. This moment he commanded me to approach you."
"The marquis wishes to speak to me, you say?" The Chevalier looked about him to see how this news affected his friends. They were exchanging blank inquiries. "Tell Monsieur le Marquis that I will be with him presently."
"Now, Monsieur; pardon me, but he wishes to see you now."
"The devil! Messieurs, accept my excuses. My father is old and is doubtless attacked by a sudden chill. I will return immediately."
At the Chevalier"s entrance the marquis did not rise; he merely turned his head. The Chevalier approached his chair, frowning.
"Monsieur," said the son, "Jehan has interrupted me to say that you desired to speak to me. Are you ill?"
"Not more than usual," answered the marquis dryly, catching the sarcasm underlying the Chevalier"s solicitude. "It is regarding a matter far more serious and important than the state of my health. I am weary, Monsieur le Comte; weary of your dissipations, your carousals, your companions; I am weary of your continued disrespect."
"Monsieur, you never taught me to respect you," quietly, the flush gone from his cheeks.
The marquis nodded toward his wife"s portrait, as if to say: "You see, Madame?" To his son he said: "If you can not respect me as your father, at least you might respect my age."
"Ah; honest age is always worthy of respect. But is yours honest, Monsieur? Have you not aged yourself?"
The marquis grew thoughtful at the conflict in view. "Monsieur, when I asked you to marry Mademoiselle de Montbazon, I forgot to say that she was not my daughter, but legally and legitimately the daughter of her father, the Duc de Montbazon."
This curious turn threw the Chevalier into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. The marquis waited patiently.
"I had no such thought. But your suggestion, had it occurred, might naturally have appealed to me. The supposition would not have been unreasonable."
"The lad is a wit!" cried the marquis, in mock admiration.
The Chevalier bowed. "Monsieur, if my presence at your hotel is not agreeable to you, I will leave at once. It is a small matter where I spend the night, as I return to court to-morrow."
"Ah! And what brought about this good fortune which has returned you to her Majesty"s graces?" The marquis never mentioned Mazarin.
"The cause would scarcely interest you, Monsieur," coldly. The roisterers were becoming hilarious once more, and the Chevalier grew restive.
"No, nothing interests me; but one grows weary of wine-bibbers and roisterers, of spendthrifts and sponges."
"Monsieur is old and can not appreciate the natural exuberance of youth."
The marquis fumbled at his lips.
"Surely, Monsieur," went on the Chevalier, the devil of banter in his tones, "surely you are not going to preach me a sermon after having taught me life from your own book?"
"Monsieur, attend to me. You have disappointed me in a hundred ways."
"What! have I not proved an apt scholar? Have I not succeeded in being written in Roch.e.l.le as a drunkard and a gamester? Perhaps I have not concerned myself sufficiently with women? Ah well, Monsieur, I am young yet; there is still time to make me totally hateful, not only to others, but to myself."
All these replies, which pa.s.sed above and below the marquis"s guard, pierced the quick; and the marquis, whose impulse had been good, but whose approach to the vital point of discussion was without tact, began to lose patience; and a cold anger awoke in his eyes.