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Updated: June 9, 2025
"Imp, do you think you lads are the only gallants, and that we old soldiers must give way to you?" Chavernay saluted him again. "You are our general, your majesty we win our battles in your name." Louis laughed and then looked grave, smiled again and then sighed. "My dear Chavernay, when you are my age you will think that one pretty woman is very like another pretty woman.
"I give you my word, cousin," he said, "that I have already lost the half of my heart to your dancer. Are we rivals with the gypsy lass, cousin?" Gonzague looked urbanely and yet gravely at his impudent kinsman. "You must look for love elsewhere," he said, decisively. "I have reasons, though not such reasons as yours; but you will oblige me." Chavernay laughed contentedly.
And her voice was the voice of Gabrielle. "I don't see him yet, mademoiselle," Cocardasse answered. Gabrielle sighed. "I wish he were come. All this noise and glitter bewilder me." And the trio proceeded slowly to make the tour of the fountain. But if Peyrolles, propped against his tree, was too preoccupied to notice the not unnoticeable group, light-hearted Chavernay was more alert.
"It is now two o'clock," he said, and showed the dial to Chavernay, who looked puzzled, but also unconvinced. "No one will come," said Navailles, mockingly. At that moment Chavernay's quick ear caught the sound of footsteps in the private passage outside, and called attention to the sound. "Some one is coming. Is it Lagardere?" As he spoke all eyes were fixed upon the door.
But if he fail, let him never enter France again, for on my word as a gentleman I will have his head." He saluted Lagardere slightly, and turned and crossed the bridge. A few paces beyond it he was joined by Chavernay and Bonnivet.
The paper contained a few words written in a bold, soldierly hand. They ran thus: "Meet me to-night at two o'clock at the palace of the Prince de Gonzague. Gonzague returned the paper to Chavernay with an ironical smile. "Somebody has been hoaxing you," he said. "You will not meet Lagardere here." Taranne consulted his watch.
"Nonsense!" he cried. "Nonsense, Nocé, you began the jest." Then he added, in a lower voice: "You can't pick a quarrel with the poor devil." The hunchback paid him an extravagant salutation. "Monsieur de Chavernay, you are always chivalrous. You really ought to die young, for it will take so much trouble to turn you into a rogue."
The rest of the company arranged themselves with instinctive sense of precedence upon the chairs that were ranged behind it. To Chavernay the whole thing looked like a pompous parody of a trial where there was nobody to be tried, and he made unceasing jokes to his neighbors, which compelled them to laugh.
And even as he spoke the door of the antechamber opened and Chavernay made his appearance unannounced, as briskly impudent, as cheerfully self-confident as ever. He shook a finger in playful reproof at Gonzague as he advanced, wholly unimpressed by the slight frown which knitted the brows of his unexpected host.
While he was speaking he had stepped to where Chavernay's blade lay on the sward, and had picked it up, and now, as he made an end of speaking, he handed Chavernay the rapier. Chavernay took it, and sent it home in its sheath half defiantly. "Fair lady, I ask your pardon," he said, bowing very reverentially to Gabrielle. "Let me call myself ever your servant."
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