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Next morning the Duchesse de Puysange received an immoderate armful of roses, with a fair copy of some execrable verses. De Puysange spent the afternoon, selecting bonbons and wholesome books, "for his fiancee," he gravely informed the shopman.
"Rather, I am a more unmitigated fool than even I suspected, since when affairs were in a promising train I have elected to blurt out, of all things, the naked and distasteful truth. Proclaim it now; and see the late Vicomte de Puysange lugged out of this hall and after appropriate torture hanged within the month." And with that Perion laughed. Thereafter he was silent.
Up and down a shady avenue of lime-trees he paced, and chuckled to himself, and smiled benignantly upon the moss-incrusted statues, a proceeding that was, beyond any reasonable doubt, prompted by his happiness rather than by the artistic merits of the postured images, since they constituted a formidable and broken-nosed collection of the most cumbrous, the most incredible, and the most hideous instances of sculpture the family of Puysange had been able to accumulate for, as the phrase is, love or money.
The Marquis was appalled. "Nay, monsieur, merely an unforeseeable attack of heart-disease." "Ah! ah!" said John Bulmer, very slowly. He presently resumed: "Afterward the Duchesse de Puysange will be a widow. And already she is fond of you; but unfortunately the Duchess with every possible deference, is a trifle prudish.
"Dear love," said Raoul, "do you not understand that you have brought about my death? For Monsieur de Puysange is at the gates of Arnaye; and either he or Sieur Raymond will have me hanged ere noon." "I do not know," she said, in a tired voice. "I think that Monsieur de Puysange has some cause to thank me; and my uncle loves me, and his heart, for all his gruffness, is very tender.
The principals taking the affair thus quietly, we may with profit emulate them. So I let lapse this delicate matter of young Florian's paternity, and begin with his wedding. The Episode Called The Wedding Jest Concerning Several Compacts It is a tale which they narrate in Poictesme, telling how love began between Florian de Puysange and Adelaide de la Foret.
I was moved with a sort of pity, since it was plainer than a pike-staff that Monsieur de Puysange had bundled this penniless young fellow out of Tiverton, with scant courtesy and a scantier explanation. Still, the wording of this sympathy was a ticklish business. I waved my hand upward. "The match, then, is broken off, between you and the Lady Adeliza?" "Ay!" my cousin said, grimly.
Meanwhile Cazaio had grown stronger than de Puysange knew. It was a time of disaffection: the more violent here and there were beginning to assert that before hanging a superfluous peasant or two de Puysange ought to bore himself with inquiries concerning the abstract justice of the action.
"I had in mind," said the other, "my sister, the Demoiselle Claire de Puysange, " It was a day of courtesy when the minor graces were paramount. Ormskirk rose and accorded de Puysange a salutation fitted to an emperor. "I entreat your pardon, sir, for any gaucherie of which I may have been guilty, and desire to extend to you my appreciation of the honor you have done me."
He had never troubled Poictesme much: the Taunenfels were accessible on that side, and so long as he confined his depredations to the frontier, the Duc de Puysange merely shrugged and rendered his annual tribute; it was not a great sum, and the Duke preferred to pay it rather than forsake his international squabbles to quash a purely parochial nuisance like a bandit, who was, too, a kinsman....
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