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Updated: June 1, 2025
Not daring to trust to any knowledge of my own as to immediate or temporary treatment of his wound, I made the greatest haste to follow his directions. I ran out of the chamber, down the stairs, and out to the street, finding the doors neither locked nor barred, and meeting no human being. Mlle. d'Arency and her companion had silently disappeared.
I sprang back in horror, crying out his name: "De Noyard! My God, it is you!" "Yes, monsieur," he gasped, "it is De Noyard. I have been trapped. I ought to have suspected." "But I do not understand, monsieur. Surely you could not have attacked Mlle, d'Arency?" "Attacked her! I came here by her appointment!" "But her cry for help?" "It took me by complete surprise. There was a knock on the door "
"I needed no song to warn me, mademoiselle," I said, thinking of Mile. d'Arency and M. de Noyard. "I have in my own time seen something of the treachery of which some women are capable." "You have loved other women?" she said, quickly. "Once I thought I loved one, until I learned what she was." "What was she?" she asked, slowly, as if divining the answer, and dreading to hear it.
Presently Malerain left to go on duty at the Louvre, and soon I followed, to take up my station in sight of the window where Mlle. d'Arency slept. The night, which had set in, was very dark, and gusts of cold wind came up from the Seine. The place where, in my infatuation and affectation, I kept my lover's watch, was quite deserted.
"Monsieur," she said, with a very captivating air of reproach, "have I not told you that I shall walk in the gardens of the Tuileries to-morrow afternoon?" And she glided away, leaving behind her the most delighted and conceited young man, at that moment, in France. I was disappointed in the interview that I had with Mlle. d'Arency in the gardens of the Tuileries, the next day.
"The woman who told our hiding-place!" said Frojac. Could it be? Was she another Mademoiselle d'Arency? Had she thought that, after De Berquin's accusation, any attempt on her part to draw me from my men would convict her in my eyes; that indeed I might come at any moment to believe in the treachery of which he had warned me?
Was I still a fool, had I learned so little of women, had my experience with Mile. d'Arency taught me only to beware of women outwardly like her, did I need a separate lesson for each different woman on whom I might set my heart? Was it my peculiar lot to be twice deceived in the same way?
Mlle. d'Arency wore a mask of black velvet, but that could not conceal her identity from eyes to which every line of her pretty head, every motion of her graceful person, had become familiar in actual contemplation and in dreams. Her cloak and gown were, alike, of embroidered velvet of the color of red wine, as was the velvet toque which sat perched on her dark brown hair.
The day was a mild one for the time of year, and the curtains of the litter were open. Inside sat a number of ladies. With a start, I recognized two of the faces. One was Mlle. d'Arency's; the other was the Queen-mother's. Mlle. d'Arency was narrating something, with a derisive smile, to Catherine, who listened with the slightest expression of amusement on her serene face.
Catherine was going to try to persuade her son, the Duke of Anjou, to give up his insurrectionary designs and return to the court of his brother. I guessed this much, as I lay hidden in the bushes, and I heartily wished her failure. As for Mlle. d'Arency, I have no words for the bitterness of my thoughts regarding her.
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