Chapter XXIX: The two dukes

Mademoiselle being given into Dame Verney's motherly hands, Gilles and I were ordered to repose ourselves on the skins in the saddler's shop. Lying there in the malodourous gloom, I could see the crack of light under the door at the back and hear, between Gilles's snores, the murmur of voices. The king and his gentlemen were planning to save my master; I went to sleep in perfect peace.

At daybreak, even before the saddler opened the shop, Monsieur routed us out.

"I'm off for Paris, lads. Félix comes with me. Gilles stays to guard mademoiselle."

I felt not a little injured, deeming that I, whom mademoiselle knew best, should not be the one chosen to stay by her. But the sting passed quickly. After all, Paris was likely to be more exciting than St. Denis.

The day being Friday, we delayed not to eat, but straightway mounted the two nags that a sunburnt Béarn pikeman had brought to the door. As we walked them gently across the square, which at this rath hour we alone shared with the twittering birds, we saw coming down one of the empty streets the hurrying figure of M. de Rosny. My lord drew rein at once.

"You are no slugabed, St. Quentin," the young councillor called. "I deserved to miss you. Fear not! I come not to hinder you, but to wish you God-speed."

"Now, this is kind, Rosny," Monsieur answered, grasping his hand. "The more that you don't approve me."

Rosny smiled, like a sudden burst of sunshine in a December day. Another man's embrace would have meant less.

"I approve you so much, St. Quentin, that I cannot composedly see you putting your head into the lion's jaws."

"My head is used to the pillow. Do the teeth close, I am no worse off than my son."

"Your death makes your son's no easier."

"Why, what else to do, Rosny?" Monsieur exclaimed. "Mishandle the lady? Storm Paris? Sell the Cause?"

"I would we could storm Paris," Rosny sighed. "It would suit me better to seize the prisoner than to sue for him. But Paris is not ripe for us yet. You know my plan--to send to Villeroi. I believe he could manage this thing."

"I am second to none," Monsieur said politely, "in my admiration of M. de Villeroi's abilities. But to reach him is uncertain; what he can or will do, uncertain. Étienne de Mar is not Villeroi's son; he is mine."

"Aye, it is your business," Rosny assented. "It is yours to take your way."

"A mad way, but mine. But come, now, Rosny, you must admit that once or twice, when all your wiseacres were deadlocked, my madness has served."

Rosny took Monsieur's hand in a silent grip.

"Maximilien," the duke said, smiling down on him, "what a pity you are a scamp of a heretic!"

"Henri," Rosny returned gravely, "I would you had had the good fortune to be born in the Religion."

Again he wished us God-speed, and we gathered up our reins. As we turned the corner I glanced back to find him still standing as we had left him, gazing soberly after us.

The man who was going into the lion's den was far less solemn over it. By fits and starts, as he thought on his son's great danger, he contrived a gloomy countenance: but Monsieur had ridden all his life with Hope on the pillion; she did not desert him now. As we cantered steadily along in the fresh, cool morning, he already pictured M. Étienne released. However mad he acknowledged his errand to be, I think he was scarce visited by a doubt of its success. It was impossible to him that his son should not be saved.

We entered with perfect ease the gate of Paris, and took our way without hesitancy through the busiest streets. Nowhere did the guard spring on us, but, instead, more than once, the passers-by gathered in knots, the tradesmen and artisans ran out of their shops to cheer St. Quentin, to cheer France, to cheer peace, to cheer to the echo the Catholic king.

"I hope Mayenne hears them," Monsieur said to me, doffing his hat to a big farrier who had come out of his smithy waving impudently in the eye of all the world the white flag of the king.

We kept a brisk pace alike where they cheered us and where, in other streets, they scowled and hooted at us, so that I looked out for men with pistols in second-story windows. But, friend or foe, none stopped us till at length we drew rein before the grilles of the Hôtel de Lorraine.

They made no demur at admitting us. Monsieur went into the house, while I led the horses to the stables, where three or four grooms at once volunteered to rub them down, in eagerness to pump their guardian. But before the fellows had had time to get much out of me came Jean Marchand, all unrecognizing, to summon me indoors. I followed him in delight, partly for curiosity, partly because it had seemed to me when the doorway swallowed Monsieur that I might never see him more. Jean ushered me into the well-remembered council-room, where Monsieur stood alone, surprised at the sight of me.

"A lackey came for me," I said. "Look, Monsieur, that's where we shut up Lucas."

I ceased hastily, for I knew the step in the corridor.

It was difficult to credit mademoiselle's tale, to believe that Mayenne could ever be in a rage. In he came, big and calm and smiling, whatever emotion he may have felt at Monsieur's arrival not only buried, but with a flower-bed blooming over it. He greeted his guest with all the courteous ease of an unruffled conscience and a kindly heart. Not till his glance fell on me did he show any sign of discomposure.

"What, you!" he exclaimed brusquely.

"Your servant brought him hither," Monsieur said for me.

"I understood that one of your gentlemen had come with you. I sent for him, deeming his presence might conduce to your ease, M. de St. Quentin."

"I am at my ease, M. de Mayenne," my lord answered, with every appearance of truth. "You may go, Félix."

"No," said Mayenne. "Since he is here, he may stay. He serves the purpose as well as another."

He did not say what the purpose was, nor could I see for what he had kept me, unless as a sign to Monsieur that he meant to play fair. I began to feel somewhat heartened.

"You have guessed, M. de Mayenne, my errand?"

"Certainly. You have come to join the League."

Monsieur laughed out.

"On the contrary, M. de Mayenne, I have come to persuade you to join the King."

"That was a waste of horse-flesh."

"My friend, you know as well as we do that before long you will come over."

"I am not there yet, nor are my enemies scattered, nor is the League dead."

"Dying, my lord. It will get its coup de grâce o' Sunday, when the king goes to mass."

"St. Quentin," Mayenne made quiet answer, "when I am in such case that nothing remains to me but to fall on my sword or to kneel to Henry, be assured I shall kneel to Henry. Till then I play my game."

"Play it, then. We have the patience to wait for you, monsieur. Be assured, in your turn, that when you do come on your knees to his Majesty you will do well to have a friend or two at court."

"Morbleu," Mayenne cried, suddenly showing his teeth, "you will never go back to him if I choose to stop you!"

Monsieur raised his eyebrows at him, pained by the unsuavity.

"Of course not, monsieur. I quite understood that when I entered the gate. I shall never leave this house if you will otherwise."

"You will leave the house unharmed," Mayenne said curtly. "I shall not treat you as your late master treated my brother."

"I thank your generosity, monsieur, and commend your good sense."

Mayenne looked for a moment as if he repented of both. Then he broke into a laugh.

"One permits the insolences of the court jester."

Monsieur sprang up, his hand on his sword. But at once the quick flush passed from his face, and he, too, laughed.

Mayenne sat as he was, in somewhat lowering silence. My duke made a step nearer him, and spoke for the first time with perfect seriousness.

"My Lord Mayenne, it was no outrecuidance brought me here this morning. There is the Bastille. There is the axe. I know that my course has been offensive to you--your nephew proved me that. I know also that you do not care to meddle with me openly. At least, you have not meddled. Whether you will change your method--but I venture to believe not. I am popular just now in Paris. I had more cheers as I came in this morning than have met your ears for many a month. You have a great name for prudence, M. de Mayenne; I believe you will not molest me."

I hardly thought my duke was making a great name for prudence. But then, as he said, he had to work in his own way. Mayenne returned, with chilling calm:

"You may find me, St. Quentin, less timid than you suppose."

"Impossible. Mayenne's courage is unquestioned. I rely not on his timidity, but on his judgment."

"You take a great deal upon yourself in supposing that I wanted your death on Tuesday and do not want it on Friday."

"The king is three days nearer the true faith than on Tuesday. His party is three days stronger. On Tuesday it would have been a blunder to kill me; on Friday it is three days worse a blunder."

"But not less a pleasure. I have had something of the kind in mind ever since your master killed my brother."

"You should profit by that murderer's experience before you take a leaf from his book, M. de Mayenne. Henry of Valois gained singularly little when he slew Guise to make you head of the League."

Mayenne started, and then laughed to show his scorn of the flattery. But I think he was, all the same, half pleased, none the less because he knew it to be flattery. He said unexpectedly:

"Your son comes honestly by his unbound tongue."

"Ah, my son! Now that you mention him, we shall discuss him a little. You have put my son, monsieur, in the Bastille."

"No; Belin and my nephew Paul, whom you know, have put him there."

"But M. de Mayenne can get him out if he choose."

"If he choose."

Monsieur sat down again, with the air of one preparing for an amiable discussion.

"He is charged with the murder of one Pontou, a lackey. Of course he did not commit it, nor would you care if he had. His real offence is making love to your ward."

"Well, do you deny it?"

"Not the love, but the offence of it. Palpably you might do much worse than dispose of the lady to my heir."

"I might do much better than bestow my time on you if that is all you have to say."

"We have hardly opened the subject, M. de Mayenne--"

"I have no wish to carry it further."

"Monsieur, the king's ranks afford no better match than my heir."

"No maid of mine shall ever marry a Royalist."

"I swore no son of mine should ever marry a Leaguer, but I have come to see the error of my ways, as you will see yours, Mayenne. It is for you to choose where among the king's forces you will marry mademoiselle."

A vague uneasiness, a fear which he would not own a fear, crept into Mayenne's eyes. He studied the face before him, a face of gay challenge, and said, at length, not quite confidently himself:

"You speak with a confidence, St. Quentin."

"Why, to be sure."

Mayenne jumped heavily to his feet.

"What mean you?"

"I mean that mademoiselle's marrying is in my hands. Where is your ward, M. de Mayenne?"

"Mordieu! Have you found her?"

"You speak sooth."

"In your hôtel--"

"No, eager kinsman. In a place whither you cannot follow her."

Mayenne looked about, as if with some instinctive idea of seeking a weapon, of summoning his soldiers.

"By God's throne, you shall tell me where!"

"With pleasure. She is at St. Denis."

Mayenne cried helplessly, as numbed under a blow:

"St. Denis! But how--"

"How came she there? On foot, every step. I suppose she never walked two streets in her life before, has she, M. de Mayenne? But she tramped to St. Denis through the dark, to knock at my door at one in the morning."

Mayenne seized Monsieur's wrist.

"She is safe, St. Quentin? She is safe?"

"As safe, monsieur, as the king's protection can make her."

"Pardieu! Is she with the king?"

"She is at my lodgings, in the care of the saddler's wife who lets them. I left a staunch man in charge--I have no doubt of him."

"You answer for her safety?" Mayenne cried huskily; his breath coming short. He was flushed, the veins in his forehead corded.

"When she came last night, it happened that the king was there," Monsieur went on. "Her loveliness and her misery moved him to the heart."

"Thousand thunders of heaven! You, with your son, shall be hostages for her safe return."

"The king," Monsieur went on, as immovably as Mayenne himself at his best, "with that warm heart of his pitying beauty in distress, is eager for mademoiselle's marriage with her lover Mar. But he did not favour my venture here; he called it a silly business. He said you would clap me in jail, and he told me flat I might rot my life out there before he would give up to you Mlle. de Montluc."

"Well, then, pardieu, we'll try if he means it!"

"He gave me to understand that he meant it. The St. Quentins out of the way, there is Valère, stout Kingsman, to succeed. The king loses little."

"Then are you gone mad that you put yourself in my grasp?"

"I was never saner. I come, my friend, to make you listen to sanity."

I had waited from moment to moment Mayenne's summons to his soldiers. But he had not rung, and now he flung himself down again in his arm-chair.

"What, to your understanding, is sanity?"

"If you send me to join my son, monsieur, you leave mademoiselle without a protector, friendless, penniless, in the midst of a hostile army cursing the name of Mayenne. Have you reared her delicately, tenderly, for that?"

Mayenne sat silent, his face a mask. It was impossible to tell whether the shot hit. Monsieur went on:

"You can of course hold us in durance, torture us, kill us; but you must answer for it to the people of Paris."

Still was Mayenne silent, drumming on the edge of the table. Finally he said roughly, as if the words were dragged from him against his will:

"I shall not torture you. I never meant to torture Mar. The arrest was not my work. Since it was done, I meant to profit by it to keep him awhile out of my way--only that. I threatened my cousin otherwise in heat of passion. But I shall not torture him. I shall not kill him."

"Monsieur--"

"I put a card in your hand," Mayenne said curtly. His pride ill brooked to concede the point, but he could not have it supposed that he did not see what he was doing. "I give you a card. Do what you can with it."

"Monsieur, you show what little surprises me--knightly generosity. It is to that generosity I appeal."

"Is the horse of that colour? But now you were frightening my prudence."

"Ah, but how fortunate the man to whom generosity and prudence point the same path!"

It may have been but pretence, this smiling bonhomie of Monsieur's. Mayenne doubtless gauged it as such, but, at any rate, he suffered it to warm him. He regained of a sudden all the amiability with which he had greeted his guest. Smiling and calm, he answered:

"St. Quentin, I care little for either your threats or your cajoleries. They amuse me alike, and move me not. But I have a care for my sweet cousin. Since you threaten me with her danger, you have the whiphand."

Now it was Monsieur's turn to sit discreetly silent, waiting.

"I went last night to tell the child I would not harm her lover. Lo! she had flown. I had a regiment searching Paris for her. I was in the streets myself till dawn."

"Monsieur, she made her way to us at St. Denis to offer herself to our torture did you torture Mar."

"Morbleu!" Mayenne cried, half rising.

"God's mercy, we're not ruffians out there! I tell it to show you to what the maid was strung."

"I never thought it great matter whom one married," Mayenne said slowly: "one boy is much like another. I should have mated her as befitted her station--I thought she would be happy enough. And she was good about it: I did not see how deep she cared. She was docile till I drove her too hard. She's a loving child. You are fortunate in your daughter, St. Quentin."

Monsieur sprang up radiant, advancing on him open-armed. Mayenne added, with his cool smile:

"You need not flatter yourself, Monsieur, that it is your doing. I laugh at your threats. 'Twere sport to me to clap you behind bars, to say to your king, to the mob you brag of, 'Come, now, get him out.'"

"Then," cried Monsieur, "I must value my sweet daughter more than ever."

He was standing over Mayenne with outstretched hand, but the chief delayed taking it.

"Not quite so fast, my friend. If I yield up the Duc de St. Quentin, the Comte de Mar, and Mlle. Lorance de Montluc, I demand certain little concessions for myself."

"By all means, monsieur. You stamp us churls else."

My duke sat again, his smile a shade uneasy. Which Mayenne perceived with quiet enjoyment, as he went on blandly: "Nothing that I could ask of you, M. de St. Quentin, could equal, could halve, what I give. Still, that the knightliness may not be, to your mortification, all on one side, I have thought of something for you to grant."

"Name it, monsieur."

"Another point in your favour I had forgot," Mayenne observed, with his usual reluctance to show his cards even when the time had come to spread them. "Last night I laid on this table a packet, just arrived, which I was told belonged to you. When I had time to think of it again, it had vanished. I accused my lackeys, but later it occurred to me that Mlle. de Montluc, arming for battle, had purloined it."

"Your shrewdness does you credit."

"You see you have scored a fourth point, though again by no prowess of your own. Therefore am I emboldened to demand what I want."

"Even to half my fortune--"

"No, not your gear. Save that for your Béarnais's itching palm."

"Then what the devil is it you want? You will not get my name in the League."

"I am glad my nephew Paul bungled that affair of his," Mayenne went on at his own pace. "It might have been a blunder to kill you; it had certainly been a pity. Though we Lorraines have two murders to avenge, I have changed my mind about beginning with yours."

"You are wise, monsieur. I am, after all, a harmless creature."

Mayenne laughed.

"Natheless have you done your best here in Paris to undermine me. Did I let you carry on your little works unhindered, they might in time annoy me. Therefore I request that so long as I stay in Paris you stay out."

"Oh, I don't like that!"

The naïveté amazed while it amused Mayenne.

"Possibly not, but you will consent to it. You will ride out of my court, when we have finished some necessary signing of papers, straight to the St. Denis gate. And you will pledge me your honour to make no attempt hereafter to enter so long as the city is mine."

Mayenne was smiling broadly, Monsieur frowning. He relished the condition little. He was enjoying himself much in Paris, his dangers, his successes, his biting his thumb at the power of the League. To be killed at his post was nothing, but to be bundled away from it to inglorious safety, that stuck in his gorge. For a moment he actually hesitated. Then he began to laugh at his own hesitation.

"Well, ma foi! what do I expect? To walk, a rabbit, into the lion's den and make my own terms to Leo? I am happy to accept yours, M. de Mayenne, especially since, do I refuse, you will none the less pack me off."

"You mistake, St. Quentin. You are welcome to spend the rest of your days with me."

"In the Bastille?"

"Or in the League."

"The former is preferable."

"You may count yourself thrice fortunate, then, that a third alternative is given you."

"It needs not the reminder. You have treated me as a prince indeed. Be assured the St. Quentins will not forget."

"Every one forgets."

"Perhaps. But when you need our good offices we shall not have had time to forget."

"Pardieu, St. Quentin, you have good courage to tell me to my head my course is run!"

"My dear Mayenne, none punishes the maunderings of the court jester."

Monsieur laughed out with a gay gusto; after a moment Mayenne laughed too. My duke cried quickly, rising and walking the length of the table to his host:

"You have dealt with me munificently, Mayenne. You have kept back but one thing I want. That is yourself. You know you must come over to us sooner or later. Come now!"

The other did not flame out at Monsieur, but answered coldly:

"I have no taste to be Navarre's vassal."

"Better his than Spain's."

Mayenne shrugged his shoulders, his face at its stolidest.

"Well, I am no astrologer to read the future."

Monsieur laid an emphatic hand on his host's shoulder.

"But I read it, my friend. I see a French land under a French king, a Catholic and a gallant fellow, faithful to old friends, friendly to old foes. I see the dear land at peace at last, the looms humming, the mills clacking, wheat growing thick on the battle-fields."

Mayenne looked up with a grim smile.

"I have still a field or two to water for that wheat. My compliments to your new master, St. Quentin; you may tell him from me that when I submit, I submit. When I have made my surrender, from that hour forth am I his hound to lick his hand, to guard and obey him. Till then, let him beware of my teeth! While I have one pikeman to my back, one sou in my pouch, I fight my cause."

"And when you have none, you yet have three pairs of hands at Henry's court to pull you up out of the mire."

"I thank their graciousness, though I shall never need their offices," Mayenne said grandly. He stood there stately and proud and confident, the picture of princeliness and strength. Last night at St. Denis it had seemed to me that no power could defy my king. Now it seemed to me that no king could nick the power of my Lord Mayenne. When suddenly, precisely like a mummer who in his great moment winks at you to let you know it is make-believe, the general-duke's dignity melted into a smile.

"After all," he said, "it's as well to lay an anchor to windward."