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Updated: June 5, 2025
"It was Garnache," said Fortunio, "and if the information will serve you, it was I who slew him." "You?" cried Florimond. "Tell me of it, I beg you." "Do you fool us?" questioned Marius in a rage that overmastered his astonishment, his growing suspicion that here all was not quite as it seemed. "Fool you? But no. I do but wish to show you something that I learned in Italy.
Fortunio remained where he was at the edge of the moat. He stooped, and waving his torch along the ground he moved to the far angle of the chateau, examining the soft, oozy clay. It was impossible that a man could have clambered out over that without leaving some impression.
His answers came in a deep, hoarse voice, slurred by the accent of Piedmont, and madame her knowledge of Italian being imperfect had frequently to have recourse to Fortunio to discover the meaning of what he said. At last she dismissed the pair of them, bidding the captain see that he was washed and more fittingly clothed.
But of all this that she craved to know, nothing could she bring herself to ask before the Marquise. She rose in silence upon hearing the Dowager order Fortunio to summon Battista that he might re-conduct mademoiselle to her apartments, and she moved a few paces down the hall, towards the door, in proud, submissive readiness to depart.
Look you, Monsieur de Condillac, and you, madame, if I go, I'll need to take with me a better hostage than the whole garrison of this place. I'll need for shield some one who will see to it that he is not hurt himself, just as I shall see to it that he is hurt before I am." "What do you mean? Speak out, Fortunio," the Marquise bade him.
Fortunio stood sponsor for Tressan, and Garnache himself insisted upon handing the Lord Seneschal his bride, a stroke of irony which hurt the proud lady of Condillac more than all her sufferings of the past half-hour. When it was over and the Dowager Marquise de Condillac had been converted into the Comtesse de Tressan, Garnache bade them depart in peace and at once.
He motioned her away, and when she had moved he darted suddenly and swiftly aside and caught the table, his sword still fast in his two first fingers, which he had locked over the quillons. He had pushed its massive weight halfway across the door before Fortunio grasped the situation. Instantly the captain sought to take advantage of it, thinking to catch Garnache unawares.
He heard, but for the moment, absorbed as he was in his own musings, he overlooked the fact that it was the name to which he answered at Condillac. Not until it was repeated more loudly, and imperatively, did he turn to see Fortunio beckoning him. With a sudden dread anxiety, he stepped to the captain's side. Was he discovered? But Fortunio's words set his doubts to rest at once.
He looked up and saw the Dowager, and, behind her, the figure of her son. Away in the meadows the lights of his men's torches darted hither and thither like playful jack-o'-lanterns. "Have you got him, Fortunio?" "Yes, madame," he answered with assurance. "You may have his body when you will. He is underneath here." And he pointed to the water.
The Seneschal turned to her again with his unanswered questions touching the end of that butchery above-stairs. She told him what Fortunio had said that Garnache was drowned as a consequence of his mad leap from the window. Into Tressan's mind there sprang the memory of the thing Garnache had promised should befall him in such a case.
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