The Regent's Daughter, Alexandre Dumas père [i am reading a book .TXT] 📗

some brandy-cherries," said Dubois. "I never drink wine except with meals."

The two guards exchanged a contemptuous smile.

The host hastened to bring the cherries.

"Ah!" said Dubois; "only five! At St. Germain-en-Laye they give six."

"Possibly, monsieur; for at St. Germain-en-Laye they have no excise to pay."

"Yes, I forgot that," and he began to eat a cherry, which he could not, however, accomplish without a grimace.

"Where does the captain lodge?" asked Dubois.

"There is the door of his room; he preferred the ground-floor."

"Yes," murmured Dubois; "the windows look into the public road."

"And there is a door opening into the Rue des Deux-Boules."

"Oh, how convenient! And does not the noise annoy him?"

"There is another room above: sometimes he sleeps in one, sometimes in the other."

"Like Denis the tyrant," said Dubois, who could not refrain from Latin or historical quotations.

"What?" said mine host.

Dubois bit his lip. At this moment one of the soldiers called for wine, and the host darted off to wait upon him.

Dubois turned to the two guards.

"Thank you," said he.

"What is it, bourgeois?" asked they.

"France and the regent," replied Dubois.

"The watchword!" cried both, rising.

"Enter this room," said Dubois, showing La Jonquiere's room. "Open the door into the Rue des Deux-Boules, and hide behind a curtain, under a table, in a closet, wherever you can. If, when I come in, I can see so much as an ear, you will have no pay for six months."

The two men emptied their glasses, and entered the room, while Dubois, who saw they had forgotten to pay, put a piece of twelve sous on the table, then, opening the window, and calling to the driver of a hackney carriage standing before the door--"L'Eveille," said he, "bring the carriage to the little door in the Rue des Deux-Boules, and tell Tapin to come up when I knock on the windows with my fingers; he has his orders; be off."

The host reappeared.

"Hola!" cried, "where are my men?"

"A sergeant came and called them away."

"But they have not paid."

"Yes, they left a twelve-sou piece on the table."

"Diable! twelve sous; and my wine is eight sous the bottle."

"Ah!" said Dubois, "no doubt they thought that as they were soldiers you would make a reduction."

"At any rate," said the host, consoling himself, "it is not all lost; and in our trade one must expect this kind of thing."

"You have nothing of the sort to fear with Captain la Jonquiere?"

"Oh, no, he is the best of lodgers; he pays without a word, and ready money. True, he never likes anything."

"Oh, that may be his manner," said Dubois.

"Exactly."

"What you tell me of his prompt payment pleases me."

"Have you come to ask for money? He said he expected some one to whom he owed a hundred pistoles."

"No; on the contrary, I owe him fifty louis."

"Fifty louis! peste!" said the host, "what a pretty sum! Perhaps I was mistaken, and he said receive, not pay. Are you the Chevalier Gaston de Chanlay?"

"Does he expect the Chevalier Gaston de Chanlay?" said Dubois, with a joy he could not conceal.

"He told me so," said the host. "Is that you?"

"No; I am not noble. I am called Moutonnet."

"Nobility is nothing," said the host. "One may be called Moutonnet and be an honest man."

"Yes; Moutonnet, draper at St. Germain-en-Laye."

"And you have fifty louis for the captain?"

"Yes. In turning over some old accounts of my father's, I find he owed fifty louis to Captain la Jonquiere's father; and I have had no peace till, instead of the father, who is dead, I had found the son."

"Do you know there are not many debtors like you?"

"The Moutonnets are all the same, from father to son. When we are owed anything we are pitiless. Listen. There is an honest fellow who owed Moutonnet & Son one hundred and sixty francs; my grandfather put him in prison, and there he has been for the three generations, and he has just died there. I calculated that, during the thirty years he was there, he cost us twelve thousand francs; but we maintained the principle. But I beg your pardon for keeping you with all this nonsense; and here is a new customer for you."

"Ah!" said the host, "it is Captain la Jonquiere himself. Captain," continued he, "some one is waiting for you."

The captain entered suspiciously--he had seen some strange, and, he thought, sinister faces about.

Dubois saluted him politely.

La Jonquiere asked the host if the friend he had expected had arrived.

"No one but monsieur. However, you lose nothing by the exchange, since one was to fetch away money, and the other brings it."

La Jonquiere, surprised, turned to Dubois, who repeated the same story he had told to the host, and with such success that La Jonquiere, calling for wine, asked Dubois to follow him into his room.

Dubois approached the window, and quietly tapped on it with his fingers.

"But shall I not be in the way in your room?" asked Dubois.

"Not at all, not at all--the view is pleasant--as we drink we can look out and see the passers-by: and there are some pretty women in the Rue des Bourdonnais."

They entered the room. Dubois made a sign to Tapin, who appeared in the first room, followed by two men, then shut the door behind him.

Tapin's two followers went to the window of the common room, and drew the curtains, while Tapin placed himself behind the door of Jonquiere's room, so as to be hidden by it when it opened. The host now returned from La Jonquiere's room, to write down the receipt for the money which La Jonquiere had just paid him for the wine, when Tapin threw a handkerchief over his mouth, and carried him off like a feather to a second carriage standing at the door. One of the men seized the little girl who was cooking eggs, the other carried off the servant, and soon they were all on the way to St. Lazare, drawn by two such good horses that it was evidently not a real hired car.

Tapin remained behind, and taking from a closet a calico apron and waistcoat, signed to a loiterer who was looking in at the window, and who quickly transformed himself into a publican.

At this moment a violent noise was heard in the captain's room, as of a table thrown down with bottles and glasses; then oaths, then the clinking of a sword, then silence.

Presently a carriage was heard rolling away up the Rue de Deux-Boules. Tapin looked joyous.

"Bravo," said he, "that is done."

"It was time, masters," said the pretended publican, "for here is a customer."


CHAPTER XIV.

TRUST TO SIGNS OF GRATITUDE.

Tapin at first thought that it was the Chevalier de Chanlay, but it was only a woman who wanted a pint of wine.

"What has happened to poor M. Bourguignon?" asked she. "He has just been taken away in a coach."

"Alas!" said Tapin, "we were far from expecting it. He was standing there talking, and was suddenly seized with apoplexy."

"Gracious heavens!"

"We are all mortal," said Tapin, throwing up his eyes.

"But why did they take the little girl?"

"To attend to her father--it is her duty."

"But the servant?"

"To cook for them."

"Ah, I could not understand it all, so I came to buy a pint of wine, though I did not want it, that I might find out."

"Well, now you know."

"Yes, but who are you?"

"I am Champagne, Bourguignon's cousin. I arrived by chance this morning; I brought him news of his family, and the sudden joy overcame him; ask Grabigeon," continued Tapin, showing his assistant, who was finishing an omelet commenced by the landlord's daughter.

"Oh, yes, everything passed exactly as M. Champagne says," replied Grabigeon, wiping away a tear with the handle of his spoon.

"Poor M. Bourguignon! then you think that we should pray for him?"

"There is never any harm in praying," said Tapin, sententiously.

"Ah, stop a minute, give me good measure."

Bourguignon would have groaned in spirit, could he have seen the wine that Tapin gave for her two sous.

"Well," said she, "I will go and tell the neighbors, who are very anxious, and I promise you my custom, M. Champagne; indeed, if M. Bourguignon were not your cousin, I would tell you what I think."

"Oh, tell me, never mind that."

"I perceive that he cheated me shamefully. What you have given me for two sous, he would hardly have given me for four; but if there is no justice here there is in heaven, and it is very providential that you are to continue his business."

"I believe so," said Tapin, in a half voice, "particularly for his customers."

And he dismissed the woman just as the door opened, and a young man entered, dressed in a blue cloak.

"Is this the hotel Le Muids d'Amour?" asked he.

"Yes, monsieur."

"Does Captain la Jonquiere lodge here?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Is he within?"

"Yes, he has just returned."

"Tell him, if you please, that the Chevalier Gaston de Chanlay is here."

Tapin offered the chevalier a chair, and went into La Jonquiere's room.

Gaston shook the snow from his boots and cloak, and proceeded leisurely to examine the picture on the wall, never supposing that he had close to him three or four swords, which, at a sign from the polite host, would leave their sheaths to be plunged into his breast.

Tapin returned, saying, "Captain la Jonquiere waits for M. de Chanlay."

Gaston proceeded to the room where sat a man whom the host pointed out as Captain la Jouquiere, and--without being much of a physiognomist--he perceived at once that he was no bully.

Little, dry, gray-eyed, uneasy in his uniform, such appeared the formidable captain whom Gaston had been recommended to treat with so much consideration.

"This man is ugly, and looks like a sexton," thought Gaston; then, as the stranger advanced toward him--

"Have I the honor of speaking to Captain la Jonquiere?" asked Gaston.

"Himself," said Dubois; "and are you M. le Chevalier Gaston de Chanlay?"----"I am, monsieur."

"Have you the sign of recognition?" asked the false La Jonquiere.

"Here is the half of the gold piece."

"And here the other," said Dubois.

They tried the two, which fitted exactly.

"And now," continued Gaston, "the papers;" and he drew from his pocket the strangely folded paper, on which was written the name of La Jonquiere.

Dubois took from his pocket a similar paper, bearing Gaston's name: they were precisely alike.

"Now," said Gaston, "the pocket-book."

They found that their new pocket-books were precisely similar, and both, though new, contained an almanac for the year 1700, nineteen years previous.

"And now, monsieur," said Gaston.

"Now we will talk of business: is not that your meaning, chevalier?"

"Exactly; are we safe?"

"As though in a desert."

They seated themselves by a table, on which were a bottle of sherry and two glasses.

Dubois filled one, and was about to fill the