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

their attacks, which were made with a good-humour

that but thinly veiled the dislike he was held in and the

satisfaction that was culled from his late discomfiture.

 

For a while I hung back and took no share in the banter that was

toward. But in the end - lured perhaps by the spirit in which I

have shown that Chatellerault accepted it, and lulled by the wine

which in common with my guests I may have abused - I came to utter

words but for which this story never had been written.

 

“Chatellerault,” I laughed, “abandon these defensive subterfuges;

confess that you are but uttering excuses, and acknowledge that you

have conducted this affair with a clumsiness unpardonable in one

equipped with your advantages of courtly rearing.”

 

A flush overspread his face, the first sign of anger since he had

spilled his wine.

 

“Your successes, Bardelys, render you vain, and of vanity is

presumption born,” he replied contemptuously.

 

“See!” I cried, appealing to the company. “Observe how he seeks to

evade replying! Nay, but you shall confess your clumsiness.”

 

“A clumsiness,” murmured La Fosse drowsily, “as signal as that

which attended Pan’s wooing of the Queen of Lydia.”

 

“I have no clumsiness to confess,” he answered hotly, raising his

voice. “It is a fine thing to sit here in Paris, among the languid,

dull, and nerveless beauties of the Court, whose favours are easily

won because they look on dalliance as the best pastime offered

them, and are eager for such opportunities of it as you fleering

coxcombs will afford them. But this Mademoiselle de Lavedan is

of a vastly different mettle. She is a woman; not a doll. She is

flesh and blood; not sawdust, powder, and vermilion. She has a

heart and a will; not a spirit corrupted by vanity and licence.”

 

La Fosse burst into a laugh.

 

“Hark! O, hark!” he cried, “to the apostle of the chaste!”

 

“Saint Gris!” exclaimed another. “This good Chatellerault has

lost both heart and head to her.”

 

Chatellerault glanced at the speaker with an eye in which anger

smouldered.

 

“You have said it,” I agreed. “He has fallen her victim, and so

his vanity translates her into a compound of perfections. Does

such a woman as you have described exist, Comte? Bah! In a

lover’s mind, perhaps, or in the pages of some crack-brained

poet’s fancies; but nowhere else in this dull world of ours.”

 

He made a gesture of impatience.

 

“You have been clumsy, Chatellerault,” I insisted.

 

“You have lacked address. The woman does not live that is not to

be won by any man who sets his mind to do it, if only he be of her

station and have the means to maintain her in it or raise her to

a better. A woman’s love, sir, is a tree whose root is vanity.

Your attentions flatter her, and predispose her to capitulate.

Then, if you but wisely choose your time to deliver the attack, and

do so with the necessary adroitness - nor is overmuch demanded -

the battle is won with ease, and she surrenders. Believe me,

Chatellerault, I am a younger man than you by full five years, yet

in experience I am a generation older, and I talk of what I know.”

 

He sneered heavily. “If to have begun your career of dalliance at

the age of eighteen with an amour that resulted in a scandal be

your title to experience, I agree,” said he. “But for the rest,

Bardelys, for all your fine talk of conquering women, believe me

when I tell you that in all your life you have never met a woman,

for I deny the claim of these Court creatures to that title. If

you would know a woman, go to Lavedan, Monsieur le Marquis. If you

would have your army of amorous wiles suffer a defeat at last, go

employ it against the citadel of Roxalanne de Lavedan’s heart. If

you would be humbled in your pride, betake yourself to Lavedan.”

 

“A challenge!” roared a dozen voices. “A challenge, Bardelys!”

 

“Mais voyons,” I deprecated, with a laugh, “would you have me

journey into Languedoc and play at wooing this embodiment of all

the marvels of womanhood for the sake of making good my argument?

Of your charity, gentlemen, insist no further.”

 

“The never-failing excuse of the boaster,” sneered Chatellerault,

“when desired to make good his boast.”

 

“Monsieur conceives that I have made a boast?” quoth I, keeping

my temper.

 

“Your words suggested one - else I do not know the meaning of words.

They suggested that where I have failed you could succeed, if you

had a mind to try. I have challenged you, Bardelys. I challenge

you again. Go about this wooing as you will; dazzle the lady with

your wealth and your magnificence, with your servants, your horses,

your equipages; and all the splendours you can command; yet I make

bold to say that not a year of your scented attentions and most

insidious wiles will bear you fruit. Are you sufficiently

challenged?”

 

“But this is rank frenzy!” I protested. “Why should I undertake

this thing?”

 

“To prove me wrong,” he taunted me. “To prove me clumsy. Come,

Bardelys, what of your spirit?”

 

“I confess I would do much to afford you the proof you ask. But to

take a wife! Pardi! That is much indeed!”

 

“Bah!” he sneered. “You do well to draw back You are wise to

avoid discomfiture. This lady is not for you. When she is won,

it will be by some bold and gallant gentleman, and by no mincing

squire of dames, no courtly coxcomb, no fop of the Luxembourg, be

his experiences of dalliance never so vast.”

 

“Po’ Cap de Dieu!” growled Cazalet, who was a Gascon captain in

the Guards, and who swore strange, southern oaths. “Up, Bardelys!

Afoot! Prove your boldness and your gallantry, or be forever

shamed; a squire of dames, a courtly coxcomb, a fop of the

Luxembourg! Mordemondieu! I have given a man a bellyful of steel

for the half of those titles!”

 

“I heeded him little, and as little the other noisy babblers, who

now on their feet - those that could stand - were spurring me

excitedly to accept the challenge, until from being one of the

baiters it seemed that of a sudden the tables were turned and I

was become the baited. I sat in thought, revolving the business

in my mind, and frankly liking it but little. Doubts of the issue,

were I to undertake it, I had none.

 

My views of the other sex were neither more nor less than my words

to the Count had been calculated to convey. It may be - I know now

that it was that the women I had known fitted Chatellerault’s

description, and were not over-difficult to win. Hence, such

successes as I had had with them in such comedies of love as I had

been engaged upon had given me a false impression. But such at

least was not my opinion that night. I was satisfied that

Chatellerault talked wildly, and that no such woman lived as he

depicted. Cynical and soured you may account me. Such I know I

was accounted in Paris; a man satiated with all that wealth and

youth and the King’s favour could give him; stripped of illusions,

of faith and of zest, the very magnificence - so envied - of my

existence affording me more disgust than satisfaction. Since

already I had gauged its shallows.

 

Is it strange, therefore, that in this challenge flung at me with

such insistence, a business that at first I disliked grew presently

to beckon me with its novelty and its promise of new sensations?

 

“Is your spirit dead, Monsieur de Bardelys?” Chatellerault was

gibing, when my silence had endured some moments. “Is the cock that

lately crowed so lustily now dumb? Look you, Monsieur le Marquis,

you are accounted here a reckless gamester. Will a wager induce

you to this undertaking?”

 

I leapt to my feet at that. His derision cut me like a whip. If

what I did was the act of a braggart, yet it almost seems I could

do no less to bolster up my former boasting - or what into boasting

they had translated.

 

“You’ll lay a wager, will you, Chatellerault?” I cried, giving him

back defiance for defiance. A breathless silence fell. “Then have

it so. Listen, gentlemen, that you may be witnesses. I do here

pledge my castle of Bardelys, and my estates in Picardy, with every

stick and stone and blade of grass that stands upon them, that I

shall woo and win Roxalanne de Lavedan to be the Marquise of

Bardelys. Does the stake satisfy you, Monsieur le Comte? You may

set all you have against it,” I added coarsely, “and yet, I swear,

the odds will be heavily in your favour.”

 

I remember it was Mironsac who first found his tongue, and sought

even at that late hour to set restraint upon us and to bring

judgment to our aid.

 

“Messieurs, messieurs!” he besought us. “In Heaven’s name, bethink

you what you do. Bardelys, your wager is a madness. Monsieur de

Chatellerault, you’ll not accept it. You’ll—”

 

“Be silent,” I rebuked him, with some asperity. “What has Monsieur

de Chatellerault to say?”

 

He was staring at the tablecloth and the stain of the wine that he

had spilled when first Mademoiselle de Lavedan’s name was mentioned.

His head had been bent so that his long black hair had tumbled

forward and partly veiled his face. At my question he suddenly

looked up. The ghost of a smile hung on his sensuous lips, for all

that excitement had paled his countenance beyond its habit.

 

“Monsieur le Marquis.” said he rising, “I take your wager, and I

pledge my lands in Normandy against yours of Bardelys. Should you

lose, they will no longer call you the Magnificent; should I lose

—I shall be a beggar. It is a momentous wager, Bardelys, and

spells ruin for one of us.”

 

“A madness!” groaned Mironsac.

 

“Mordieux!” swore Cazalet. Whilst La Fosse, who had been the

original cause of all this trouble, vented his excitement in a

gibber of imbecile laughter.

 

“How long do you give me, Chatellerault?” I asked, as quietly as

I might.

 

“What time shall you require?”

 

“I should prefer that you name the limit,” I answered.

 

He pondered a moment. Then “Will three months suffice you?” he

asked.

 

“If it is not done in three months, I will pay,” said I.

 

And then Chatellerault did what after all was, I suppose, the only

thing that a gentleman might do under the circumstances. He rose

to his feet, and, bidding the company charge their glasses, he gave

them a parting toast.

 

“Messieurs, drink with me to Monsieur le Marquis de Bardelys’s safe

journey into Languedoc, and to the prospering of his undertaking.”

 

In answer, a great shout went up from throats that suspense had

lately held in leash. Men leapt on to their chairs, and, holding

their glasses on high, they acclaimed me as thunderously as though

I had been the hero of some noble exploit, instead of the main

figure in a somewhat questionable wager.

 

“Bardelys!” was the shout with which the house reechoed. “Bardelys!

Bardelys the Magnificent! Vive Bardelys!”