Bardelys the Magnificent, Rafael Sabatini [best free e book reader .txt] 📗

CHAPTER I

THE WAGER

 

Speak of the Devil,” whispered La Fosse in my ear, and, moved by the

words and by the significance of his glance, I turned in my chair.

 

The door had opened, and under the lintel stood the thick-set figure

of the Comte de Chatellerault. Before him a lacquey in my

escutcheoned livery of red-and-gold was receiving, with back

obsequiously bent, his hat and cloak.

 

A sudden hush fell upon the assembly where a moment ago this very

man had been the subject of our talk, and silenced were the wits

that but an instant since had been making free with his name and

turning the Languedoc courtship - from which he was newly returned

with the shame of defeat - into a subject for heartless mockery and

jest. Surprise was in the air for we had heard that Chatellerault

was crushed by his ill-fortune in the lists of Cupid, and we had not

looked to see him joining so soon a board at which - or so at least

I boasted - mirth presided.

 

And so for a little space the Count stood pausing on my threshold,

whilst we craned our necks to contemplate him as though he had been

an object for inquisitive inspection. Then a smothered laugh from

the brainless La Fosse seemed to break the spell. I frowned. It

was a climax of discourtesy whose impression I must at all costs

efface.

 

I leapt to my feet, with a suddenness that sent my chair gliding a

full half-yard along the glimmering parquet of the floor, and in two

strides I had reached the Count and put forth my hand to bid him

welcome. He took it with a leisureliness that argued sorrow. He

advanced into the full blaze of the candlelight, and fetched a dismal

sigh from the depths of his portly bulk.

 

“You are surprised to see me, Monsieur le Marquis,” said he, and

his tone seemed to convey an apology for his coming - for his very

existence almost.

 

Now Nature had made my Lord of Chatellerault as proud and arrogant

as Lucifer - some resemblance to which illustrious personage his

downtrodden retainers were said to detect in the lineaments of his

swarthy face. Environment had added to that store of insolence

wherewith Nature had equipped him, and the King’s favour - in which

he was my rival - had gone yet further to mould the peacock

attributes of his vain soul. So that this wondrous humble tone of

his gave me pause; for to me it seemed that not even a courtship

gone awry could account for it in such a man.

 

“I had not thought to find so many here,” said he. And his next

words contained the cause of his dejected air. “The King, Monsieur

de Bardelys, has refused to see me; and when the sun is gone, we

lesser bodies of the courtly firmament must needs turn for light

and comfort to the moon.” And he made me a sweeping bow.

 

“Meaning that I rule the night?” quoth I, and laughed. “The figure

is more playful than exact, for whilst the moon is cold and

cheerless, me you shall find ever warm and cordial. I could have

wished, Monsieur de Chatellerault, that your gracing my board were

due to a circumstance less untoward than His Majesty’s displeasure.”

 

“It is not for nothing that they call you the Magnificent,” he

answered, with a fresh bow, insensible to the sting in the tail

of my honeyed words.

 

I laughed, and, setting compliments to rest with that, I led him

to the table.

 

“Ganymede, a place here for Monsieur le Comte. Gilles, Antoine,

see to Monsieur de Chatellerault. Basile, wine for Monsieur le

Comte. Bestir there!”

 

In a moment he was become the centre of a very turmoil of attention.

My lacqueys flitted about him buzzing and insistent as bees about

a rose. Would Monsieur taste of this capon a la casserole, or of

this truffled peacock? Would a slice of this juicy ham a l’anglaise

tempt Monsieur le Comte, or would he give himself the pain of

trying this turkey aux olives? Here was a salad whose secret

Monsieur le Marquis’s cook had learnt in Italy, and here a

vol-au-vent that was invented by Quelon himself.

 

Basile urged his wines upon him, accompanied by a page who bore a

silver tray laden with beakers and Wagons. Would Monsieur le Comte

take white Armagnac or red Anjou? This was a Burgundy of which

Monsieur le Marquis thought highly, and this a delicate Lombardy

wine that His Majesty had oft commended. Or perhaps Monsieur de

Chatellerault would prefer to taste the last vintage of Bardelys?

 

And so they plagued him and bewildered him until his choice was

made; and even then a couple of them held themselves in readiness

behind his chair to forestall his slightest want. Indeed, had he

been the very King himself, no greater honour could we have shown

him at the Hotel de Bardelys.

 

But the restraint that his coming had brought with it hung still

upon the company, for Chatellerault was little loved, and his

presence there was much as that of the skull at an Egyptian banquet.

 

For of all these fair-weather friends that sat about my table -

amongst whom there were few that had not felt his power - I feared

there might be scarcely one would have the grace to dissemble his

contempt of the fallen favourite. That he was fallen, as much his

words as what already we had known, had told us.

 

Yet in my house I would strive that he should have no foretaste of

that coldness that tomorrow all Paris would be showing him, and

to this end I played the host with all the graciousness that role

may bear, and overwhelmed him with my cordiality, whilst to thaw

all iciness from the bearing of my other guests, I set the wines to

flow more freely still. My dignity would permit no less of me,

else would it have seemed that I rejoiced in a rival’s downfall and

took satisfaction from the circumstance that his disfavour with the

King was like to result in my own further exaltation.

 

My efforts were not wasted. Slowly the mellowing influence of the

grape pronounced itself. To this influence I added that of such

wit as Heaven has graced me with, and by a word here and another

there I set myself to lash their mood back into the joviality out

of which his coming had for the moment driven it.

 

And so, presently, Good-Humour spread her mantle over us anew, and

quip and jest and laughter decked our speech, until the noise of

our merry-making drifting out through the open windows must have

been borne upon the breeze of that August night down the rue

Saint-Dominique, across the rue de l’Enfer, to the very ears perhaps

of those within the Luxembourg, telling them that Bardelys and his

friends kept another of those revels which were become a byword in

Paris, and had contributed not a little to the sobriquet of

“Magnificent” which men gave me.

 

But, later, as the toasts grew wild and were pledged less for the

sake of the toasted than for that of the wine itself, wits grew

more barbed and less restrained by caution; recklessness hung a

moment, like a bird of prey, above us, then swooped abruptly down

in the words of that fool La Fosse.

 

“Messieurs,” he lisped, with that fatuousness he affected, and with

his eye fixed coldly upon Chatellerault, “I have a toast for you.”

He rose carefully to his feet - he had arrived at that condition in

which to move with care is of the first importance. He shifted his

eye from the Count to his glass, which stood half empty. He signed

to a lacquey to fill it. “To the brim, gentlemen,” he commanded.

Then, in the silence that ensued, he attempted to stand with one

foot on the ground and one on his chair; but encountering

difficulties of balance, he remained upright - safer if less

picturesque.

 

“Messieurs, I give you the most peerless, the most beautiful, the

most difficult and cold lady in all France. I drink to those her

thousand graces, of which Fame has told us, and to that greatest

and most vexing charm of all - her cold indifference to man. I

pledge you, too, the swain whose good fortune it maybe to play

Endymion to this Diana.

 

“It will need,” pursued La Fosse, who dealt much in mythology and

classic lore - “it will need an Adonis in beauty, a Mars in valour,

an Apollo in song, and a very Eros in love to accomplish it. And I

fear me,” he hiccoughed, “that it will go unaccomplished, since the

one man in all France on whom we have based our hopes has failed.

Gentlemen, to your feet! I give you the matchless Roxalanne de

Lavedan!”

 

Such amusement as I felt was tempered by apprehension. I shot a

swift glance at Chatellerault to mark how he took this pleasantry

and this pledging of the lady whom the King had sent him to woo, but

whom he had failed to win. He had risen with the others at La

Fosse’s bidding, either unsuspicious or else deeming suspicion too

flimsy a thing by which to steer conduct. Yet at the mention of her

name a scowl darkened his ponderous countenance. He set down his

glass with such sudden force that its slender stem was snapped and

a red stream of wine streaked the white tablecloth and spread around

a silver flowerbowl. The sight of that stain recalled him to himself

and to the manners he had allowed himself for a moment to forget.

 

“Bardelys, a thousand apologies for my clumsiness,” he muttered.

 

“Spilt wine,” I laughed, “is a good omen.”

 

And for once I accepted that belief, since but for the shedding of

that wine and its sudden effect upon him, it is likely we had

witnessed a shedding of blood. Thus, was the ill-timed pleasantry

of my feather-brained La Fosse tided over in comparative safety.

But the topic being raised was not so easily abandoned. Mademoiselle

de Lavedan grew to be openly discussed, and even the Count’s

courtship of her came to be hinted at, at first vaguely, then

pointedly, with a lack of delicacy for which I can but blame the

wine with which these gentlemen had made a salad of their senses.

In growing alarm I watched the Count. But he showed no further sign

of irritation. He sat and listened as though no jot concerned.

There were moments when he even smiled at some lively sally, and at

last he went so far as to join in that merry combat of wits, and

defend himself from