United States or Saint Martin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
An hour later, in one of the regal rooms of the castle, where he enjoyed the hospitality of King Henri IV of France and Navarre, he announced to that most faithful equerry, Gil de Mesa, his intention of riding to Chantenac to-morrow. "Is it prudent?" quoth Mesa, frowning. "Most imprudent," answered Don Antonio. "That is why I go." And on the morrow he went, escorted by a single groom.
She had looked into the haggard face, into the scars of suffering that seared it, and she had answered gently: "Tomorrow you shall come to me at Chantenac, my friend." "I am a Spaniard, for whom to-morrow never comes." "But it will this time. To-morrow I shall expect you." He looked up at her sitting her great black horse beside which he had been pacing. "Better not, madame!
The lords of Chantenac were as noble, as proud, and as poor as most great lords of Bearn. Their lineage was long, their rent-rolls short. And the last marquis had suffered more from this dual complaint than any of his forbears, and he had not at all improved matters by a certain habit of gaming contracted in youth. The chateau bore abundant signs of it.
But Antonio Perez was growing old, older than he thought, older than his years. He knew it. Madame de Chantenac had proved it to him. She had reproached him with never coming to see her at Chantenac, neglecting to return the too assiduous visits that she paid him here at Pau. "You are very beautiful, madame, and the world is very foul," he had excused himself.
He was the pale, faded shadow of that arrogant, reckless, joyous Antonio Perez beloved of Fortune. He was fifty, gaunt, hollow-eyed, and grey, half crippled by torture, sickly from long years of incarceration. What, he asked himself, sitting there, his eyes upon the eternal snows of the barrier that shut out his past, was there left in him to awaken love in such a woman as Madame de Chantenac?
And here, at last, he was at peace, or would have been but for the thought of this woman this Marquise de Chantenac who had gone to such lengths in her endeavours to soften his exile that her ultimate object could never have been in doubt to a coxcomb, though it was in some doubt to Antonio Perez, who had been cured for all time of Coxcombry by suffering and misfortune, to say nothing of increasing age.
Word Of The Day