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Updated: June 1, 2025
"I am well," answered Marius sullenly. His defeat that evening had left him glum and morose. He felt that he had cut a sorry figure in the affair, and his vanity was wounded. "I deplore I had so little share in the fight," he muttered. "The lustiest fight ever I or any man beheld," swore Fortunio. "Dieu! But he was a fighter, that Monsieur de Garnache, and he deserved a better end than drowning."
The stranger turned, and stared at Garnache with a look of wonder that artfully changed to one of disdainful recognition. "Ah?" said he, and his eyebrows went up. "The apologetic gentleman! You said?" Garnache approached him, followed a step not only by Rabecque, but also by Monsieur Gaubert, who had sauntered out a second earlier.
Suddenly the little man he was a short, bowlegged, sinewy fellow heaved a great sigh as he plucked idly at a weed that grew between two stones of the inner courtyard, where they were seated on the chapel steps. "You are a dull comrade to-day, compatriot," said Garnache, clapping him on the shoulder. "It is the Day of the Dead," the fellow answered him, as though that were an ample explanation.
The Seneschal stood with blanched face and gaping mouth, his fire all turned to ashes before the passion of this gaunt man. Garnache paid no heed to him. He stepped to the girl, and roughly raised her chin with his hand so that she was forced to look him in the face. "What is your name, wench?" he asked her. "Margot," she blubbered, bursting into tears.
The Marquise stepped back a pace; idly, one might have thought; not so thought Garnache. It had this advantage: that it enabled her to stand where he might not watch her face without turning his head. He was content that such was her motive.
Garnache laughed. "To those that are dead it no doubt is; so was yesterday, so will to-morrow be. But to us who sit here it is the day of the living." "You are a scoffer," the other reproached him, and his rascally face was oddly grave. "You don't understand." "Enlighten me, then. Convert me."
Garnache was dead, she told herself; he was surely dead; and it seemed as if the very thought of it were killing, too, a part of her own self. Unconsciously she sobbed her fears aloud. "He is dead," she moaned; "he is dead."
"And I," said Garnache, "am full of hope that we shall have news of him at any moment." That he was well justified of his hope was to be proven before they were many days older.
The noise of it filled the hostelry. "Sir," said Garnache, with an ever-increasing tartness, "there is a by-word has it 'Much laughter, little wit. In confidence won, is that your case, monsieur?" The other looked at him soberly a moment, then went off again. "Monsieur, monsieur!" he gasped, "you'll be the death of me. For the love of Heaven look less fierce. Is it my fault that I must laugh?
"It is the day when our thoughts turn naturally to the dead, and mine are with my mother, who has lain in her grave these three years. I am thinking of what she reared me and of what I am." Garnache made a grimace which the other did not observe. He stared at the little cut-throat, and there was some dismay in his glance. What ailed the rogue?
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