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Well, gentlemen, would you believe it, to-night Louis of France and Louis de Gonzague will be told the name of the assassin of Nevers?" "And the name?" asked Chavernay. Choisy plucked him impatiently by the sleeve. "Don't you see that the humpbacked fool is making game of us?" Æsop shrugged his shoulders. "As you please, sirs, as you please; but that is why the guards are doubled."
Gonzague looked at Chavernay with a pitying smile. "You come too late," he said, "if you come at the summons of such a host. Lagardere is dead." Chavernay gave a little start of surprise, while the others, to whom the news had been good news some little while ago, but was no news at all now, laughed boisterously at his expected discomfiture.
Gonzague was annoyed at these preliminaries to a demand, this beating about the bush for payment. "Don't plague me with your fancies. Your price?" The hunchback spoke, slowly, like a man who measures his words and enjoys the process of measurement: "If I killed Lagardere, it was not solely to please you. It was partly to please myself. I was jealous." Gonzague smiled slightly.
Something of a statesman and much of a scholar, Gonzague delighted to be the patron of the arts, and to lend, indirectly, indeed, but no less efficaciously, his counsels to the service of the cardinal during the cardinal's lifetime, and to the king now that the cardinal was gone.
Behind these the women huddled together, some screaming, but the most part too frightened to scream. Flora, overstrained, had fainted. Lagardere taunted Gonzague. "Come, monseigneur," he said, "are you afraid? The odds are not so favorable as they were at Caylus." With a writhing face Gonzague screamed to his friends: "Charge!" And Lagardere answered with a ringing cry: "I am here!"
He turned to the picture of Louis de Gonzague, and he thought of his speech in the moat of Caylus with the masked shadow, and of the sudden murder of Nevers, and of his own assault upon the murderer, and how he set his mark upon his wrist. The expression on Lagardere's face was cold and grave and fatal as he studied this picture.
Then the door opened fully, and the hunchback came into the room, dressed now with a splendor of attire which seemed to contrast more grotesquely than his wonted sable with his twisted, withered figure. All present, including Gonzague, had for the moment forgotten the existence of the hunchback.
"My father was a friend of Louis de Nevers." Æsop looked from the group of old men to the group of young men. "It is the ghost of Nevers that troubles us to-night. There were three Louis in those days, brothers in arms. Louis of France did all he could to find the assassin of Nevers. In vain. Louis de Gonzague did all he could to find the assassin of Nevers. In vain.
Gonzague took the hand of Flora and conducted her across the room to the princess. "Madame," he said, "I restore your child." The princess looked fixedly at the girl, her thin hands clasping the arms of her chair convulsively, and it could be seen that she was trembling from head to foot.
If afterwards a charming young girl should die of a decline many die so the fortune of Louis de Nevers becomes the fortune of Louis de Gonzague, who will know very well what to do with it, having the inestimable advantage of being alive."
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