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Updated: June 22, 2025
He uttered a weary sigh. "God help us, monsieur! Monseigneur de Richelieu is likely to have his way with us. But let that be for the present. You are here, and you are safe. As yet no suspicion rests on Lavedan. I was, as I have said, too late for the fight, and so I came quietly back to save my skin, that I might serve the Cause in whatever other way might offer still.
Taking up a quill, I dipped it in the ink-horn that stood by, and drew towards me a sheet of paper. "When you lured me into the wager touching Mademoiselle de Lavedan," said I calmly, "you did so, counting upon certain circumstances, of which you alone had knowledge, that should render impossible the urging of my suit. That, Monsieur le Comte, was undeniably the action of a cheat. Was it not?"
Between these two women his wife and his child as different in body as they were different in soul, came Lavedan with a firm step, a good colour, and a look of well-bred, lofty indifference to his fate. He disposed himself to enter the carriage which was to bear him to prison with much the same air he would have assumed had his destination been a royal levee.
On the morrow I was to leave Lavedan, but there were no preparations to be made, no packing to be done, for during my sojourn there I had been indebted to the generous hospitality of the Vicomte for my very apparel. We supped quietly together that night the Vicomte and I for the Vicomtesse was keeping her room.
But even if I had exaggerated matters, and the Vicomte were not quite so bloodthirsty as was usual with his order, even if he chose to accept my promise that I would forget what he had said, he must nevertheless in view of his indiscretion demand my instant withdrawal from Lavedan. And what, then, of my wager with Chatellerault?
What matter that I had said I would not leave Lavedan until I had her promise, whilst in reality I had hurled my threat at Saint-Eustache that I would meet him at Toulouse, and passed my word to the Vicomtesse that I would succour her husband? I gave no thought to the hidden threat with which Saint-Eustache had retorted that from Lavedan to Toulouse was a distance of some twenty leagues.
She looked up quickly; her expression was almost of alarm, and her eyes dilated as they met mine for, as I have said, she was all unversed in the ways of her sex, and by nature too guileless to attempt to disguise her feelings or dissemble them. "But why must you go so soon?" she asked. "You are safe at Lavedan, and abroad you may be in danger.
"I am Mironsac de Castelroux, of Chateau Rouge in Gascony," he informed me, returning my bow. My faith, had he not made a pretty soldier he would have made an admirable master of deportment. My leave-taking of Monsieur de Lavedan was brief but cordial; apologetic on my part, intensely sympathetic on his.
But this Mademoiselle de Lavedan is of a vastly different mettle. She is a woman; not a doll. She is flesh and blood; not sawdust, powder, and vermilion. She has a heart and a will; not a spirit corrupted by vanity and licence." La Fosse burst into a laugh. "Hark! O, hark!" he cried, "to the apostle of the chaste!" "Saint Gris!" exclaimed another.
Virtue I had accounted a shadow without substance; innocence, a synonym for ignorance; love, a fable, a fairy tale for the delectation of overgrown children. In the company of Roxalanne de Lavedan all those old, cynical beliefs, built up upon a youth of undesirable experiences, were shattered and the error of them exposed.
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