Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
The hunchback struck an attitude as he spoke, and strove to twist his evil countenance into a look of inspiration. Peyrolles was all eagerness now. "Let me see the girl," he pleaded. Æsop shook his head. "By-and-by. It is understood that if Gonzague accepts the girl as Nevers's child he takes me into his service in Paris. Eh?" Peyrolles nodded. "That is understood."
Lagardere answered: "That I have kept my word. I have given back her daughter to the princess. I will now unmask the murderer." Again the king questioned him: "Where are your witnesses?" Lagardere turned and pointed with his drawn sword to Gonzague: "You are the first." Gonzague, trying hard to recover his composure, raged at him: "Madman!"
Gonzague made a faint grimace. "Let them wait there." Peyrolles inclined profoundly. "Yes, monseigneur," he said, and waited. The long knowledge of his master's manner, the long study of the expression on his master's face, told him he had not done with him, and he was right, for in a moment Gonzague spoke to him again: "This gypsy girl will serve the turn to perfection.
"Look at me, monseigneur," he said, "Æsop the hunchback, but do not laugh while you look and damn me for an impossible gallant. Crooked and withered as I am, I have power to make women love me. Let me try. If I fail to win the girl, do what you please with her, and I will ask no more." Gonzague looked keenly at the bowed, supplicating figure. "Are you thinking of playing me false?" he murmured.
"We have the honor to salute your highness," he said, sonorously. Gonzague observed him with well-restrained astonishment, and questioned Chavernay: "Who are these gentlemen?" Chavernay was eager to explain that he had come across them in the fair, and had taken a great fancy to them.
Lagardere turned to the king and spoke more solemnly: "The second is in the grave." Gonzague laughed. "The dead cannot speak." Lagardere still looked menacingly at Gonzague. "To-night the dead will speak. The proofs of your guilt are in that sealed packet, stolen from me by assassins in your pay." Gonzague turned to the king, protesting: "Sire!"
"I give you my word, cousin," he said, "that I have already lost the half of my heart to your dancer. Are we rivals with the gypsy lass, cousin?" Gonzague looked urbanely and yet gravely at his impudent kinsman. "You must look for love elsewhere," he said, decisively. "I have reasons, though not such reasons as yours; but you will oblige me." Chavernay laughed contentedly.
He could have told how seven gentlemen that were named Staupitz, Faenza, Saldagno, Pepe, Pinto, Joel, and Æsop had been sent to dwell and travel in Spain at the free charges of Prince Louis de Gonzague, with the sole purpose of finding a man and a child who so far had not been found, though it was now seventeen years since the hounds had been sent a-hunting.
But in his pleasures, as in his policy, Gonzague was always discreet, reserved, even slightly mysterious, and though rumor had linked his name time and time again with the names of such gracious ladies as the cardinal had permitted to illuminate the court of the king, Gonzague had always been far too cautious, or too indifferent, to drift into anything that could in the least resemble an enduring entanglement.
The girl shook her head dubiously, and there was suspicion in her dark eyes as she asked: "What do you want of me?" Gonzague smiled more paternally than before. "I want you to love me," he said; and then, seeing that the gypsy lifted her brows, he continued, leisurely: "Do not misunderstand me. Women still are sometimes pleased to smile on me. I do not want such smiles from you, child.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking