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Updated: June 7, 2025
The little, impertinent Marquis de Chavernay was not present. Gonzague had not thought fit to include him in the chosen of that night. Chavernay was getting to be too critical of his kinsman's conduct. Chavernay was not as sympathetic with his kinsman's ambitions and wishes as his kinsman would have had him be.
And again the voice spoke and answered: "No." By this time Gonzague and the girl had reached the princess, who now rose to her feet and confronted the pair as she spoke. "My child should have with her a packet containing the page torn away from the register of the chapel of Caylus, torn away with my own hands." She turned to Flora and questioned her: "Have you that packet?"
He paused for a moment before the picture of Louis de Nevers. "Louis de Nevers," he said, softly, "you shall be avenged to-night." He moved a little away, and paused again before the portrait of the king. "Louis of France," he said, "you shall be convinced to-night." A third time he resumed his walk, and a third time he paused, this time before the portrait of the Prince de Gonzague.
Suddenly, then, the Princess de Gonzague, clinging to the child in her arms, cried out, calling to Chavernay: "Monsieur de Chavernay, in yonder alcove lies the sword of my dead husband. Fetch it, and give it to Monsieur de Lagardere."
Many sympathized with him in what they knew to be his strange position, and felt that the princess was indeed to blame in refusing friendship and sympathy to such a man. Gonzague bowed respectfully to the king, and his eyes travelled over the whole range of his audience as he spoke.
Gonzague pointed to the hunchback. "Obey Master Æsop, gentlemen, as you would obey me." The two bravos bowed respectfully. Gonzague turned to the hunchback and spoke in a lower tone: "Find this Lagardere for me, and we will soon break his invincible sword." "How?" the hunchback questioned, with a faint note of irony in his voice. Gonzague continued: "By the hands of the hang-man, Master Æsop.
Æsop hates Lagardere, always has hated him. When the last of our men met with" he paused for a moment as if to find a fitting phrase, and then continued "the usual misfortune, I thought it useless to leave Æsop in Spain, and sent for him. He came to me to-day. May I present him to your highness?" Gonzague nodded thoughtfully. Any ally was welcome in such a crisis. "Yes," he said.
Gonzague knew that he was agitated; and that he had every reason to be agitated, but he knew also that no one beholding him would know of his agitation. "What became of her?" he asked, still with the same apparent indifference. And Flora answered as readily as before: "We travelled to France together." "Travelled to France together!" echoed Gonzague.
Perhaps from his interminable boulevard he had never seen the lovely Spanish Square of red and yellow, its steep-roofed houses standing upon arches or the proud Duc Charles de Gonzague who strutted for ever upon his pedestal, his stone cape slipping from one shoulder, his gay Spaniard's hat upon his head holding back a smile from his handsome lips, lest the town which he had come over the mountains to found should see him tolerant and sin beneath his gaze.
The third picture, which was placed between Louis de Nevers and Louis de Gonzague, was the portrait of Louis, not as he now looked, being King of France in reality, but as he looked some seventeen years earlier, when the cardinal was beginning his career, and when the peevishness of youth had not soured into the yellow melancholy of the monarch of middle age.
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