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"That is good enough," he murmured, "to deceive a short-sighted fellow like Peyrolles, and as for his Highness of Gonzague, he has not seen me for so many years that there will be no difficulty with him." He glanced at his new raiment with an expression of distaste. "When I get to Paris," he mused, "I will shift these habiliments.
Gonzague's ambition appeared to be to play the Petronius part, to be the Arbiter of Elegancies to a newly liberated king and a newly quickened court. Very wisely Gonzague had never made himself a politician.
And through the double line of soldiers Louis of France entered the room with the Princess de Gonzague on his arm. The king looked with astonishment at the strange scene before him the fainting women, the two camps of armed men, the scattered furniture. The Princess de Gonzague looked only at the girl, who now hung so lovingly upon the arm of Lagardere. "Why have I been sent for?" the king asked.
It was an undoubted fact that the late duke's daughter had disappeared, for the grief of the whilom Duchess de Nevers and present Princess de Gonzague was excessive for the loss of her child, and the efforts she made and the money she spent in the hope of finding some trace of her daughter were as useless as they were unavailing.
The princess always wears mourning " Æsop shivered. "Cheerful spouse." Peyrolles went on: "While the Prince de Gonzague lives a bright life, and sets the mode in wit, dress, vice in every way the perfect gentleman, and now the favorite companion and friend of his melancholy majesty, whose natural sadness at the loss of the great cardinal he does his best to alleviate."
Just when Gonzague, after all his failures to trace the missing child of his victim, just when he had so ingeniously found a substitute for that missing child, it would really seem as if the child herself, now a woman, had come to Paris to defy him and to destroy his plans.
"Don't talk like a fool. I expect old Caylus made her. He was a grim old chip, after my own heart, and our widow had no friends. Oh yes; I expect daddy Caylus made her marry Gonzague. What a joke! what an exquisite joke!" Peyrolles replied, with attempted dignity: "You didn't travel all the way from Madrid to talk about my master's marriage, I suppose."
She had consented to marry, and had married, Prince Louis de Gonzague, who, as all the world knew, had been the closest friend of the dead Louis of Nevers with one exception, and that was Louis of Bourbon, that was King of France.
"Why does Louis de Gonzague want to kill his friend, Louis of Nevers, just at this particular moment, and why here in this heaven-forgotten hole of a place, in this heaven-forgotten corner of the world?"
All this was thrilling news enough, but news more thrilling was to follow. The newly recognized Duchess of Nevers soon, to the astonishment and, at first, the blank incredulity of all hearers, took to herself a third name, and became Madame la Princesse de Gonzague. There was soon no doubt about it.
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