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Then he fell to asking little Melicent about how much she had missed Father while Father was away, and he dutifully kissed the two other children, and he duly admired the additions to Emmerick's vocabulary during Father's absence. And afterward he went alone into the Room of Ageus.
They made a deal of him in Count Emmerick's pleasant home: day by day the outlaw was thrust into relations of mirth with noblemen, proud ladies, and even with a king; and was all the while half lightheaded through his singular knowledge as to how precariously the self-styled Vicomte de Puysange now balanced himself, as it were, upon a gilded stepping-stone from infamy to oblivion.
"Why, but it is Count Emmerick's garden at Storisende," says Jurgen, "where I used to be having such fine times when I was a lad." "I will wager," said Nessus, "that you did not use to walk alone in this garden." "Well, no; there was a girl." "Just so," assented Nessus. "It is a local by-law: and here are those who comply with it."
She was smiling in her sleep when he had lighted his lamp, with due observance of the gray magic. She was infinitely beautiful, this young Dorothy whom people hereabouts through some odd error called Helen. For Jurgen saw very well that this was Count Emmerick's sister Dorothy la Desiree, whom Jurgen had vainly loved in the days when Jurgen was young alike in body and heart.
I am snared in a hard golden trap, I cannot get a guide to Manneville, I cannot even procure a horse from Count Emmerick's stables without arousing fatal suspicions; and I must be at Manneville by dawn or else be hanged. Therefore I dare stake all upon one throw; and you must either save or hang me with unwashed hands. As surely as God reigns, my future rests with you.
Tryon, who was detached this morning with Emmerick's chasseurs, fifty yagers and royal fusiliers and regiment of Trumback, with a three-pounder, to destroy the rebel settlement called the Continental village, has just returned and reported to me, that he has burned the barrack for fifteen hundred men, several store-houses and loaded wagons.
And Perion told how he had come through Pseudopolis, on his way to King Theodoret at Lacre Kai, and how in the market-place at Pseudopolis he had seen Queen Helen. "She is a very lovely lady," said Perion, "and I marvelled over her resemblance to Count Emmerick's fair sister, whom we all remember."
Jurgen remembered it was the day before Bellegarde discovered that Count Emmerick's guest, the Vicomte de Puysange, was in reality the notorious outlaw, Perion de la Foret. Well, yonder the yet undetected impostor was talking very earnestly with Dame Melicent: and Jurgen knew all that was in store for this pair of lovers.
"Dear sir," said Jurgen, hastily, "it was merely that it appeared to me the lady whom they call Queen Helen hereabouts is quite evidently Count Emmerick's sister Dorothy la Desiree." "Whereas I recognized her at once," says Horvendile, "as Count Emmerick's third sister, La Beale Ettarre." And now they stared at one another, for it was certain that these three sisters were not particularly alike.
Across the river, at Emmerick's Landing, a little cluster of unpainted cabins, lies the white barge of a photographer, just such a home as the Derby artist covets. The Ohio is here about half-a-mile wide, but high-pitched voices of people on the opposite bank are plainly heard across the smooth sounding-board; and in the quiet evening air comes to us the "chuck-chuck" of oars nearly a mile away.
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