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Updated: May 10, 2025
"They will not be asked to grant you one." "There will be no need," added Mironsac. "I have but to tell the King " "But, my friend," I exclaimed impatiently, "I am to die in the morning!" "And the King shall be told to-day now, at once. I will go to him." I stared askance a moment; then the thought of the uproar that I had heard recurring to me, "Has the King arrived already?" I exclaimed.
But the favour lost much of its value in his eyes when presently I added that I did not wish the seconds to engage, since the matter was of so very personal a character. Mironsac and Castelroux, assisted by Saint-Eustache, closed the heavy portecochere, and so shut us in from the observation of passers-by.
But there was more in it than that. As I had told Mironsac that night in Paris, when the thing had been initiated, it was a duel that was being fought betwixt Chatellerault and me a duel for supremacy in the King's good graces. We were rivals, and he desired my removal from the Court.
I looked at him with fresh interest, for the mention of that dear lad Mironsac brought back to my mind the night in Paris on which my ill-starred wager had been laid, and I was reminded of how that high-minded youth had sought when it was too late to reason me out of the undertaking by alluding to the dishonour with which in his honest eyes it must be fraught.
"Monsieur, I have brought a friend to see you." I turned in my chair, and one glance at the gentle, comely face and the fair hair of the young man standing beside Castelroux was enough to bring me of a sudden to my feet. "Mironsac!" I shouted, and sprang towards him with hands outstretched.
"But," Mironsac asked his cousin, as he took my hands in his own, "why did you not tell me, Amedee, that it was to Monsieur le Marquis de Bardelys that you were conducting me?" "Would you have had me spoil so pleasant a surprise?" his cousin demanded. "Armand," said I, "never was a man more welcome than are you. You are but come in time to save my life."
"Naturally, monsieur. How else do I come to be here? I am in His Majesty's train." At that I grew again impatient. I thought of Roxalanne and of how she must be suffering, and I bethought me that every moment Mironsac now remained in my cell was another moment of torture for that poor child. So I urged him to be gone at once and carry news of my confinement to His Majesty.
He obeyed me, and I was left alone once more, to pace up and down in my narrow cell, a prey to an excitement such as I should have thought I had outlived. At the end of a half-hour Castelroux returned alone. "Well?" I cried the moment the door opened, and without giving him so much as time to enter. "What news?" "Mironsac tells me that His Majesty is more overwrought than he has ever seen him.
"Let that be for the present, Mironsac," I laughed. "You are here, and you can thwart all Chatellerault's designs by witnessing to my identity before the Keeper of the Seals." And then of a sudden a doubt closed like a cold hand upon my brain. I turned to Castelroux. "Mon Dieu!" I cried. "What if they were to deny me a fresh trial?" "Deny it you!" he laughed.
Mironsac, Castelroux, and La Fosse stood babbling around me, but I paid no heed either to Castelroux's patois or to La Fosse's misquotations of classic authors. The combat had been protracted, and the methods I had pursued had been of a very exhausting nature. I leaned now against the porte-cochere, and mopped myself vigorously.
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