Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  But I thought that it was time to interfere. “The truth is,” I said, “that M. Grabot here is not so much to blame. He was the victim of a trick which these rascals played on him; and in an idle moment I let it go on. That is the whole secret. However, I forgive him for his officiousness since it brings us together, and I shall now have the pleasure of your company to Vitre.”

  Laval assented heartily to this, and I did not think fit to tell him more, nor did he inquire; the Mayor’s stupidity passing current for all. For M. Grabot himself, I think that I never saw a man more completely confounded. He stood staring with his mouth open; and, as much deserted as the statesman who has fallen from office, had not the least credit even with his own sycophants, who to a man deserted him and flocked about the Mayor of Gol. Though I had no reason to pity him, and, indeed, thought him well punished, I took the opportunity of saying a word to him before I mounted; which, though it was only a hint that he should deal gently with the woman of the house, was received with servility equal to the arrogance he had before displayed; and I doubt not it had all the effect I desired. For the strollers, I did not forget them, but bade them hasten to Vitre, where I would see a performance. They did so, and hitting the fancy of Zamet, who chanced to be still there, and who thought that he saw profit in them, they came on his invitation to Paris, where they took the Court by storm. So that an episode trifling in itself, and such as on my part requires some apology, had for them consequences of no little importance.

  IV.

  LA TOUSSAINT.

  Towards the autumn of 1601, when the affair of M. de Biron, which was so soon to fill the mouths of the vulgar, was already much in the minds of those whom the King honoured with his confidence, I was one day leaving the hall at the Arsenal, after giving audience to such as wished to see me, when Maignan came after me and detained me; reporting that a gentleman who had attended early, but had later gone into the garden, was still in waiting. While Maignan was still speaking the stranger himself came up, with some show of haste but none of embarrassment; and, in answer to my salutation and inquiry what I could do for him, handed me a letter. He had the air of a man not twenty, his dress was a trifle rustic; but his strong and handsome figure set off a face that would have been pleasing but for a something fierce in the aspect of his eyes. Assured that I did not know him, I broke the seal of his letter and found that it was from my old flame Madame de Bray, who, as Mademoiselle de St. Mesmin, had come so near to being my wife; as will be remembered by those who have read the early part of these memoirs.

  The young man proved to be her brother, whom she commended to my good offices, the impoverishment of the family being so great that she could compass no more regular method of introducing him to the world, though the house of St. Mesmin is truly respectable and, like my own, allied to several of the first consequence. Madame de Bray recalled our old TENDRESSE to my mind, and conjured me so movingly by it — and by the regard which her family had always entertained for me — that I could not dismiss the application with the hundred others of like tenor that at that time came to me with each year. That I might do nothing in the dark, however, I invited the young fellow to walk with me in the garden, and divined, even before he spoke, from the absence of timidity in his manner, that he was something out of the common. “So you have come to Paris to make your fortune?” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” he answered.

  “And what are the tools with which you propose to do it?” I continued, between jest and earnest.

  “That letter, sir,” he answered simply; “and, failing that, two horses, two suits of clothes, and two hundred crowns.”

  “You think that those will suffice?” I said, laughing.

  “With this, sir,” he answered, touching his sword; “and a good courage.”

  I could not but stand amazed at his coolness; for he spoke to me as simply as to a brother, and looked about him with as much or as little curiosity as Guise or Montpensier. It was evident that he thought a St. Mesmin equal to any man under the King; and that of all the St. Mesmins he did not value himself least.

  “Well,” I said, after considering him, “I do not think that I can help you much immediately. I should be glad to know, however, what plans you have formed for yourself.”

  “Frankly, sir,” he said, “I thought of this as I travelled; and I decided that fortune can be won by three things — by gold, by steel, and by love. The first I have not, and for the last I have a better use. Only the second is left. I shall be Crillon.”

  I looked at him in astonishment; for the assurance of his manner exceeded that of his words. But I did not betray the feeling. “Crillon was one in a million,” I said drily.

  “So am I,” he answered.

  I confess that the audacity of this reply silenced me. I reflected that the young man who — brought up in the depths of the country, and without experience, training or fashion — could so speak in the face of Paris was so far out of the common that I hesitated to dash his hopes in the contemptuous way which seemed most natural. I was content to remind him that Crillon had lived in times of continual war, whereas now we were at peace; and, bidding him come to me in a week, I hinted that in Paris his crowns would find more frequent opportunities of leaving his pockets than his sword its sheath.

  He parted from me with this, seeming perfectly satisfied with his reception; and marched away with the port of a man who expected adventures at every corner, and was prepared to make the most of them. Apparently he did not take my hint greatly to heart, however; for when I next met him, within the week, he was fashionably dressed, his hair in the mode, and his company as noble as himself. I made him a sign to stop, and he came to speak to me.

  “How many crowns are left?” I said jocularly.

  “Fifty,” he answered, with perfect readiness.

  “What!” I said, pointing to his equipment with something of the indignation I felt, “has this cost the balance?

  “No,” he answered. “On the contrary, I have paid three months’ rent in advance and a month’s board at Zaton’s; I have added two suits to my wardrobe, and I have lost fifty crowns on the dice.”

  “You promise well!” I said.

  He shrugged his shoulders quite in the fashionable manner. “Always courage!” he said; and he went on, smiling.

  I was walking at the time with M. de Saintonge, and he muttered, with a sneer, that it was not difficult to see the end, or that within the year the young braggart would sink to be a gaming-house bully. I said nothing, but I confess that I thought otherwise; the lad’s disposition of his money and his provision for the future seeming to me so remarkable as to set him above ordinary rules.

  From this time I began to watch his career with interest, and I was not surprised when, in less than a month, something fell out that led the whole court to regard him with a mixture of amusement and expectancy.

  One evening, after leaving the King’s closet, I happened to pass through the east gallery at the Louvre, which served at that time as the outer antechamber, and was the common resort as well of all those idlers who, with some pretensions to fashion, lacked the ENTREE, as of many who with greater claims preferred to be at their ease. My passage for a moment stilled the babel which prevailed. But I had no sooner reached the farther door than the noise broke out again; and this with so sudden a fury, the tumult being augmented by the crashing fall of a table, as caused me at the last moment to stand and turn. A dozen voices crying simultaneously, “Have a care!” and “Not here! not here!” and all looking the same way, I was able to detect the three principals in the FRACAS. They were no other than M. de St. Mesmin, Barradas — a low fellow, still remembered, who was already what Saintonge had prophesied that the former would become — and young St. Germain, the eldest son of M. de Clan.

  I rather guessed than heard the cause of the quarrel, and that St. Mesmin, putting into words what many had known for years and some made their advantage of, had accused Barradas of cheating. The latter’s fury was, o
f course, proportioned to his guilt; an instant challenge while I looked was his natural answer. This, as he was a consummate swordsman, and had long earned his living as much by fear as by fraud, should have been enough to stay the greediest stomach; but St. Mesmin was not content. Treating the knave, the word once passed, as so much dirt, he transferred his attack to St. Germain, and called on him to return the money he had won by betting on Barradas.

  St. Germain, a young spark as proud and headstrong as St. Mesmin himself, and possessed of friends equal to his expectations, flung back a haughty refusal. He had the advantage in station and popularity; and by far the larger number of those present sided with him. I lingered a moment in curiosity, looking to see the accuser with all his boldness give way before the almost unanimous expression of disapproval. But my former judgment of him had been correctly formed; so far from being browbeaten or depressed by his position, he repeated the demand with a stubborn persistence that marvellously reminded me of Crillon; and continued to reiterate it until all, except St. Germain himself, were silent. “You must return my money!” he kept on saying monotonously. “You must return my money. This man cheated, and you won my money. You must pay or fight.”

  “With a dead man?” St. Germain replied, gibing at him.

  “No, with me.”

  “Barradas will spit you!” The other scoffed. “Go and order your coffin, and do not trouble me.”

  “I shall trouble you. If you did not know that he cheated, pay; and if you did know, fight.”

  “I know?” St. Germain retorted fiercely. “You madman! Do you mean to say that I knew that he cheated?”

  “I mean what I say!” St. Mesmin returned stolidly. “You have won my money. You must return it. If you will not return it, you must fight.”

  I should have heard more, but at that moment the main door opened, and two or three gentlemen who had been with the King came out. Not wishing to be seen watching the brawl, I moved away and descended the stairs; and Varenne overtaking me a moment later, and entering on the Biron affair — of which I had just been discussing the latest developments with the King — I forgot St. Mesmin for the time, and only recalled him next morning when Saintonge, being announced, came into my room in a state of great excitement, and almost with his first sentence brought out his name.

  “Barradas has not killed him then?” I said, reproaching myself in a degree for my forgetfulness.

  “No! He, Barradas!” Saintonge answered.

  “No?” I exclaimed.

  “Yes!” he said. “I tell you, M. le Marquis, he is a devil of a fellow — a devil of a fellow! He fought, I am told, just like Crillon; rushed in on that rascal and fairly beat down his guard, and had him pinned to the ground before he knew that they had crossed swords!”

  “Well,” I said, “there is one scoundrel the less. That is all.”

  “Ah, but that is not all!” my visitor replied more seriously. “It should be, but it is not; and it is for that reason I am come to you. You know St. Germain?”

  “I know that his father and you are — well, that you take opposite sides,” I said smiling.

  “That is pretty well known,” he answered coldly. “Anyway, this lad is to fight St. Germain to-morrow; and now I hear that M. de Clan, St. Germain’s father, is for shutting him up. Getting a LETTRE DE CACHET or anything else you please, and away with him.”

  “What! St. Germain?” I said.

  “No!” M. de Saintonge answered, prolonging the sound to the utmost. “St. Mesmin!”

  “Oh,” I said, “I see.”

  “Yes,” the Marquis retorted pettishly, “but I don’t. I don’t see. And I beg to remind you, M. de Rosny, that this lad is my wife’s second cousin through her step-father, and that I shall resent any interference with him. I have spent enough and done enough in the King’s service to have my wishes respected in a small matter such as this; and I shall regard any severity exercised towards my kinsman as a direct offence to myself. Whereas M. de Clan, who will doubtless be here in a few minutes, is—”

  “But stop,” I said, interrupting him, “I heard you speaking of this young fellow the other day. You did not tell me then that he was your kinsman.”

  “Nevertheless he is; my wife’s second cousin,” he answered with heat.

  “And you wish him to—”

  “Be let alone!” he replied interrupting me in his turn more harshly than I approved. “I wish him to be let alone. If he will fight St. Germain, and kill or be killed, is that the King’s affair that he need interfere? I ask for no interference,” M. de Saintonge continued bitterly, “only for fair play and no favour. And for M. de Clan who is a Republican at heart, and a Bironist, and has never done anything but thwart the King, for him to come now, and — faugh! it makes me sick.”

  “Yes,” I said drily; “I see.”

  “You understand me?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I think so.”

  “Very well,” he replied haughtily — he had gradually wrought himself into a passion; “be good enough to bear my request in mind then; and my services also. I ask no more, M. de Rosny, than is due to me and to the King’s honour.”

  And with that, and scarcely an expression of civility, he left me. Some may wonder, I know, that, having in the Edict of Blois, which forbade duelling and made it a capital offence, an answer to convince even his arrogance, I did not use this weapon; but, as a fact, the edict was not published until the following June, when, partly in consequence of this affair and at my instance, the King put it forth.

  Saintonge could scarcely have cleared the gates before his prediction was fulfilled. His enemy arrived hot foot, and entered to me with a mien so much lowered by anxiety and trouble that I hardly knew him for the man who had a hundred times rebuffed me, and whom the King’s offers had found consistently obdurate. All I had ever known of M. de Clan heightened his present humility and strengthened his appeal; so that I felt pity for him proportioned not only to his age and necessity, but to the depth of his fall. Saintonge had rightly anticipated his request; the first, he said, with a trace of his old pride, that he had made to the King in eleven years: his son, his only son and only child — the single heir of his name! He stopped there and looked at me; his eyes bright, his lips trembling and moving without sound, his hands fumbling on his knees.

  “But,” I said, “your son wishes to fight, M. de Clan?”

  He nodded.

  “And you cannot hinder him?”

  He shrugged his shoulders grimly. “No,” he said; “he is a St. Germain.”

  “Well, that is just my case,” I answered. “You see this young fellow St. Mesmin was commended to me, and is, in a manner, of my household; and that is a fatal objection. I cannot possibly act against him in the manner you propose. You must see that; and for my wishes, he respects them less than your son regards yours.”

  M. de Clan rose, trembling a little on his legs, and glaring at me out of his fierce old eyes. “Very well,” he said, “it is as much as I expected. Times are changed — and faiths — since the King of Navarre slept under the same bush with Antoine St. Germain on the night before Cahors! I wish you good-day, M. le Marquis.”

  I need not say that my sympathies were with him, and that I would have helped him if I could; but in accordance with the maxim which I have elsewhere explained, that he who places any consideration before the King’s service is not fit to conduct it, I did not see my way to thwart M. de Saintonge in a matter so small. And the end justified my inaction; for the duel, taking place that evening, resulted in nothing worse than a serious, but not dangerous, wound which St. Mesmin, fighting with the same fury as in the morning, contrived to inflict on his opponent.

  For some weeks after this I saw little of the young firebrand, though from time to time he attended my receptions and invariably behaved to me with a modesty which proved that he placed some bounds to his presumption. I heard, moreover, that M. de Saintonge, in acknowledgment of the triumph over the St. Germains which he had affo
rded him, had taken him up; and that the connection between the families being publicly avowed, the two were much together.

  Judge of my surprise, therefore, when one day a little before Christmas, M. de Saintonge sought me at the Arsenal during the preparation of the plays and interludes — which were held there that year — and, drawing me aside into the garden, broke into a furious tirade against the young fellow.

  “But,” I said, in immense astonishment, “what is this? I thought that he was a young man quite to your mind; and—”

  “He is mad!” he answered.

  “Mad?” I said.

  “Yes, mad!” he repeated, striking the ground violently with his cane. “Stark mad, M. de Rosny. He does not know himself! What do you think — but it is inconceivable. He proposes to marry my daughter! This penniless adventurer honours Mademoiselle de Saintonge by proposing for her!”

  “Pheugh!” I said. “That is serious.”

  “He — he! I don’t think I shall ever get over it!” he answered.

  “He has, of course, seen Mademoiselle?”

  M. de Saintonge nodded.

  “At your house, doubtless?”

  “Of course!” he replied, with a snap of rage.

  “Then I am afraid it is serious,” I said.

  He stared at me, and for an instant I thought that he was going to quarrel with me. Then he asked me why.

  I was not sorry to have this opportunity of at once increasing his uneasiness, and requiting his arrogance. “Because,” I said, “this young man appears to me to be very much out of the common. Hitherto, whatever he has said he would do, he has done. You remember Crillon? Well, I trace a likeness. St. Mesmin has much of his headlong temper and savage determination. If you will take my advice, you will proceed with caution.”

  M. de Saintonge, receiving an answer so little to his mind, was almost bursting with rage. “Proceed with caution!” he cried. “You talk as if the thing could be entertained, or as if I had cause to fear the coxcomb! On the contrary, I intend to teach him a lesson a little confinement will cool his temper. You must give me a letter, my friend, and we will clap him in the Bastille for a month or two.”