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Updated: June 22, 2025
He regaled the company, therefore, with a recital of our finding the dying Lesperon, and of how I had gone off alone, and evidently assumed the name and role of that proscribed rebel, and thus conducted my wooing under sympathy inspiring circumstances at Lavedan.
Yet was I very far from being appreciative now that I discovered them, for the story that he told was of how one Marcel Saint-Pol, Marquis de Bardelys, had laid a wager with the Comte de Chatellerault that he would woo and win Mademoiselle de Lavedan to wife within three months. Nor did he stop there.
Aye be you never so noble and high-principled I make bold to say that you had done no less, for the voice that penetrated to my ears was that of Roxalanne de Lavedan. "I sought an audience with the King," she was saying, "but I could not gain his presence. They told me that he was holding no levees, and that he refused to see any one not introduced by one of those having the private entree."
Twice already had he carried unavailingly my request that Roxalanne should accord me an interview ere I departed. On this the third occasion I had bidden him say that I would not stir from Lavedan until she had done me the honour of hearing me. Seemingly that threat had prevailed where entreaties had been scorned.
I have motives sound motives, motives of political import. I desire another wedding for Mademoiselle de Lavedan. I wish it so, Bardelys, and I look to be obeyed." For a moment temptation had me by the throat. Here was an unlooked-for chance to shake from me a business which reflection was already rendering odious.
Have I not said that this Bardelys was become a coward? Then my cowardice suggested a course to me flight. I would leave Lavedan. I would return to Paris and to Chatellerault, owning defeat and paying my wager. It was the only course open to me. My honour, so tardily aroused, demanded no less.
Almost as much shame as I take at the memory of that other bargain which first brought me to Lavedan. The shame of the former one I have wiped out although, perchance, you think it not. I am wiping out the shame of the latter one. It was unworthy in me, mademoiselle, but I loved you so dearly that it seemed to me that no matter how I came by you, I should rest content if I but won you.
She laughed a little nervous laugh, and maybe to ease the tension that my sudden silence had begotten "You see," she said, "how your imagination deserts you when you seek to draw upon it for proof of what you protest. You were about to tell me of of the interests that hold you at Lavedan, and when you come to ponder them, you find that you can think of nothing. Is it is it not so?"
Within, I called the host, and having obtained a flagon of the best vintage Heaven fortify those that must be content with his worst! I passed on to make inquiries touching my whereabouts and the way to Lavedan. This I learnt was but some three or four miles distant.
"Give the word to saddle." I asked him at the moment of setting out did he know the road to Lavedan, to which the lying poltroon made answer that he did. In his youth he may have known it, and the countryside may have undergone since then such changes as bewildered him. Or it may be that fear dulled his wits, and lured him into taking what may have seemed the safer rather than the likelier road.
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