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Updated: May 22, 2025
"I think," said Gaspard, at last raising his eyes from his food, "that Paris will be unwholesome to-night for decent folk." "There's a murrain of friars about," said Champernoun, leisurely picking his teeth. "The place hums like a bee-hive before swarming. Better get back to your Ambassador, Gawain. There's sanctuary for you under his cloak."
The reader may; but even if he has, we must ask him, for Queen Elizabeth's sake, to consider that this young Quixote is the close relation of three of the finest public men then living, Champernoun, Gilbert, and Carew. Within the twelve months he is sent on some secret diplomatic mission about the Anjou marriage; he is in fact now installed in his place as 'a favourite. And why not?
Yet a third time they turned, and in that last mowing they found their desire. A tall man in crimson appeared before them. Gaspard flung his reins to Champernoun and in a second was on the ground, fighting with a fury that these long hours had been stifled. Before his blade the Italian gave ground till he was pinned against the wall of the Bourbon hotel.
And yet the fair Champernoun, at her husband's death, had chosen to wed Mr. Raleigh, and share life with him in the little farm-house at Hayes. She must have been a grand woman, if the law holds true that great men always have great mothers; an especially grand woman, indeed; for few can boast of having borne to two different husbands such sons as she bore.
Champernoun was cursing steadily in a mixture of English and Spanish, good mouth-filling oaths delivered without heat. "Die we doubtless shall, but not before we have trounced this bloody rabble." Still Gaspard did not move. "After to-night there will be no gentlemen left in France, for we of the religion had all the breeding." Then he laughed bitterly.
With mischief-makers like Champernoun in every city, and with such diplomatists at Ostend as Croft and Ropers and Valentine Dale, was it wonderful that the King and the Duke of Parma found time to mature their plans for the destruction of both countries? Lord Willoughby, too, was extremely dissatisfied with his own position. He received no commission from the Queen for several months.
Leger to his uncle the Marshal of Munster; Coffin joined Champernoun and Norris in the Netherlands; and so the Brotherhood of the Rose was scattered far and wide, and Mistress Salterne was left alone with her looking-glass. "Take aim, you noble musqueteers, And shoot you round about; Stand to it, valiant pikemen, And we shall keep them out.
It was as Champernoun had said. Four lusty arquebusiers escorted the Jacobin. But the sixth man was no priest. He was a Huguenot minister whom Gaspard remembered with Conde's army, an elderly frail man bound with cruel thongs to a horse's back and his legs tethered beneath its belly. Recognition awoke in the Jacobin's eye. "Ah, my lords of Spain! What brings you northward?"
The Englishman made a pellet of bread and flicked it at the other's face. "I may have to box your ears, old friend. Since when have I taken to shirking a fracas? We were together at St. John d'Ulloa, and you should know me better." "Are you armed?" was Gaspard's next question. Champernoun patted his sword. "Also there are pistols in my holsters." "You have a horse, then?"
Something in his pose, half rustic, half braggart, seemed familiar to Gaspard. The next second the two were in each other's arms. "Gawain Champernoun!" cried Gaspard. "When I left you by the Isle of Pines I never hoped to meet you again in a Paris inn? What's your errand, man, in this den of thieves?" "Business of state," the Englishman laughed.
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