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Updated: May 23, 2025
Cocardasse amplified: "My letter told me to be outside the Inn of the Three Graces, near Neuilly, on a certain day this day to serve the Prince of Gonzague." Passepoil nodded again. "So did mine." Cocardasse continued: "Mine enclosed a draft on the Bank of Marseilles to pay expenses." Passepoil noted a point of difference: "Mine was on the Bank of Calais."
"Let no one speak to her," Lagardere continued. "Devil a word," said Cocardasse. As the hunchback seemed to have no further instructions for them, the pair made to depart, but Lagardere restrained them, saying: "Ah, wait a moment. We are all the toys of fate. If any unlucky chance should arise, come to me in the presence of the king and fling down your glove." "I understand," said Cocardasse.
Lagardere laughed as he answered the riddle. "Because, dear dullards, I want you to enter the service of Gonzague. If I return to France to right a wrong, I know the risk I run and the blessing of you two devils to help me." Each of the two bravos extended his right hand. "Any help we can give," protested Cocardasse "is yours," added Passepoil. Lagardere clasped the extended hands confidently.
When you hear me cry out, 'Lagardere, I am here, into the room and out with your swords for the last chance and the last fight." Cocardasse laid his hand on the sham hump of the sham Æsop. "Courage, comrade, the devil is dead." Lagardere laughed at him, something wistfully. "Not yet." Passepoil suggested, timidly: "We live in hopes."
Passepoil questioned again: "What became of your bully?" Lagardere was laconic: "We had a chat afterwards. I attended his funeral." Cocardasse clapped his hands. "Well begun, little Parisian." Passepoil pointed admiringly at Lagardere. "Look at you now, a captain in the king's guard." Lagardere laughed cheerfully. "Look if you like, but I am no such thing. I am cashiered, exiled from Paris."
Cocardasse took off his hat and swung it. "Hurrah for the sword!" he shouted. Lagardere's glance applauded his enthusiasm. "Iron was God's best gift to man, and he God's good servant who hammered it into shape and gave it point and edge. I shall never be happy until I am master of it." Æsop joined the conversation mockingly. "I thought you were master of it," he said, with an obvious sneer.
And again Cocardasse persisted: "It might concern us very much if we chanced to believe that our quarry is Louis de Nevers, and if we got it somehow or other into our heads that our employer is Louis de Gonzague."
Lagardere, who had taken no notice of the threatened attack of the hunchback, surveyed the group, and, glancing from them, addressed himself to Cocardasse and Passepoil. "Why, my old masters," he asked, drolling them, "what are you doing in this desperate adventure? You ought to be careful. The boy might have hurt you."
But one of them seemed to desire more explicit information. "Then," said Cocardasse "then we are to accost him." Peyrolles nodded. "Very politely and earn your money." He turned upon his heel now, for he relished the Inn room little, and its company less, being a fastidious lackey, and made to go, as if the affair were settled. But Cocardasse arrested him.
"Is it really you?" said Cocardasse, when he thought the embrace had lasted long enough, holding Passepoil firmly by the shoulders and gazing fixedly into his pale, pathetic face. Passepoil nodded. "Truly. What red star guides you to Paris?" Cocardasse dropped his voice to a whisper. "I had a letter." Passepoil whispered in reply: "So had I."
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