A Gentleman of France: Being the Memoirs of Gaston de Bonne Sieur de Marsac, - [if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud .txt] 📗
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The priest saw his terror and his own opportunity. ‘Ay, in an hour,’ he continued slowly, looking at him with cruel eyes. ‘In an hour, lad! You must be fond of pain to court it, and out of humour with life to throw it away. Or stay,’ he continued abruptly, after considering Simon’s narrowly for a moment, and doubtless deducing from it a last hope, ‘I will be merciful. I will give you one more chance.’
‘And yourself?’ I said with a sneer.
‘As you please,’ he answered, declining to be diverted from the trembling lad, whom his gaze seemed to fascinate. ‘I will give you until half an hour after sunset this evening to reconsider the matter. If you make up your minds to accept my terms, meet me then. I leave to-night for Paris, and I will give you until the last moment. But,’ he continued grimly, ‘if you do not meet me, or, meeting me, remain obstinate—God do so to me, and more also, if you see the sun rise thrice.’
Some impulse, I know not what, seeing that I had no thought of accepting his terms or meeting him, led me to ask briefly, ‘Where?’
‘On the Parvis of the Cathedral,’ he answered after a moment’s calculation. ‘At the north-east corner, half an hour after sunset. It is a quiet spot.’
Simon uttered a stifled exclamation. And then for a moment there was silence in the room, while the lad breathed hard and irregularly, and I stood rooted to the spot, looking so long and so strangely at the priest that Father Antoine laid his hand again on the door and glanced uneasily behind him. Nor was he content until he had hit on, as he fancied, the cause of my strange regard.
‘Ha!’ he said, his thin lip curling in conceit at his astuteness, ‘I understand you think to kill me to-night? Let me tell you, this house is watched. If you leave here to meet me with any companion—unless it be M. d’Agen, whom I can trust, I shall be warned, and be gone before you reach the rendezvous. And gone, mind you,’ he added, with a grim smile, ‘to sign your death-warrant.’
He went out with that, closing the door behind him; and we heard his step go softly down the staircase. I gazed at Simon, and he at me, with all the astonishment and awe which it was natural we should feel in presence of so remarkable a coincidence.
For by a marvel the priest had named the same spot and the same time as the sender of the velvet knot!
‘He will go,’ Simon said, his face flushed and his voice trembling, ‘and they will go.’
‘And in the dark they will not know him,’ I muttered. ‘He is about my height. They will take him for me!’
‘And kill him!’ Simon cried hysterically. ‘They will kill him! He goes to his death, monsieur. It is the finger of God.’
CHAPTER XX. THE KING’S FACE.
It seemed so necessary to bring home the crime to Bruhl should the priest really perish in the trap laid for me, that I came near to falling into one of those mistakes to which men of action are prone. For my first impulse was to follow the priest to the Parvis, closely enough, if possible, to detect the assassins in the act, and with sufficient force, if I could muster it, to arrest them. The credit of dissuading me from this course lies with Simon, who pointed out its dangers in so convincing a manner that I was brought with little difficulty to relinquish it.
Instead, acting on his advice, I sent him to M. d’Agen’s lodging, to beg that young gentleman to call upon me before evening. After searching the lodging and other places in vain, Simon found M. d’Agen in the tennis-court at the Castle, and, inventing a crafty excuse, brought him to my lodging a full hour before the time.
My visitor was naturally surprised to find that I had nothing particular to say to him. I dared not tell him what occupied my thoughts, and for the rest invention failed me. But his gaiety and those pretty affectations on which he spent an infinity of pains, for the purpose, apparently, of hiding the sterling worth of a character deficient neither in courage nor backbone, were united to much good nature. Believing at last that I had sent for him in a fit of the vapours, he devoted himself to amusing me and abusing Bruhl—a very favourite pastime with him. And in this way he made out a call of two hours.
I had not long to wait for proof of Simon’s wisdom in taking this precaution. We thought it prudent to keep within doors after our guest’s departure, and so passed the night in ignorance whether anything had happened or not. But about seven next morning one of the Marquis’s servants, despatched by M. d’Agen, burst in upon us with the news—which was no news from the moment his hurried footstep sounded on the stairs that Father Antoine had been set upon and killed the previous evening!
I heard this confirmation of my hopes with grave thankfulness; Simon with so much emotion that when the messenger was gone he sat down on a stool and began to sob and tremble as if he had lost his mother, instead of a mortal foe. I took advantage of the occasion to read him a sermon on the end of crooked courses; nor could I myself recall without a shudder the man’s last words to me; or the lawless and evil designs in which he had rejoiced, while standing on the very brink of the pit which was to swallow up both him and them in everlasting darkness.
Naturally, the uppermost feeling in my mind was relief. I was free once more. In all probability the priest had kept his knowledge to himself, and without him his agents would be powerless. Simon, it is true, heard that the town was much excited by the event; and that many attributed it to the Huguenots. But we did not suffer ourselves to be depressed by this, nor had I any foreboding until the sound of a second hurried footstep mounting the stairs reached our ears.
I knew the step in a moment for M. d’Agen’s, and something ominous in its ring brought me to my feet before he opened the door. Significant as was his first hasty look round the room, he recovered at sight of me all his habitual SANG-FROID. He saluted me, and spoke coolly, though rapidly. But he panted, and I noticed in a moment that he had lost his lisp.
‘I am happy in finding you,’ he said, closing the door carefully behind him, ‘for I am the bearer of ill news, and there is not a moment to be lost. The king has signed an order for your instant consignment to prison, M. de Marsac, and, once there, it is difficult to say what may not happen.’
‘My consignment?’ I exclaimed. I may be pardoned if the news for a moment found me unprepared.
‘Yes,’ he replied quickly. ‘The king has signed it at the instance of Marshal Retz.’
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