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Perhaps, however, you would like to hear that I have made such arrangements as could be made for your dead servant." "It is like you, monsieur, to remember that." And then there was a silence. After a little she asked almost timidly: "Monsieur, amongst the prisoners taken by M. de Montluc was the Vicomte de Ganache. I have not been able to hear news of him, and I would give much to know "
She whom mademoiselle had addressed, a big-nosed, loud-voiced lady, older than any of the others, answered her bluntly: "You look a shade too green-faced to-day, mademoiselle, for anything to become you." "What can you expect, Mme. de Brie?" Mlle. Blanche promptly demanded. "Mlle. de Montluc is weary and worn from her vigils at your son's bedside."
The late Mareschal de Montluc having lost his son, who died in the island of Madeira, in truth a very worthy gentleman and of great expectation, did to me, amongst his other regrets, very much insist upon what a sorrow and heart-breaking it was that he had never made himself familiar with him; and by that humour of paternal gravity and grimace to have lost the opportunity of having an insight into and of well knowing, his son, as also of letting him know the extreme affection he had for him, and the worthy opinion he had of his virtue.
Vigo might not be ready to defend Mlle. de Montluc, but he would defend Monsieur's heir to the last gasp. Yet I would not yield before the choking Maître Menard had withstood, and I stuck to my lie.
"I do not wish to look at it," responded Dorsenne. "But, yes," he continued, as Montfanon shrugged his shoulders, "in my capacity of novelist and observer, since you cast it at my head, I know already what it is. What do you bet?... It is a prayer-book which bears the signature of Marshal de Montluc, and which Cardinal Guerillot discovered. Is that true?
On board he placed a hundred arquebusiers and eighty sailors, prepared to fight on land, if need were. The noted Blaise de Montluc, then lieutenant for the King in Guienne, gave him a commission to make war on the negroes of Benin, that is, to kidnap them as slaves, an adventure then held honorable. His true design was locked within his own breast.
Far in front of me mademoiselle rode, the white feathers in her hat fluttering like a bird, and little puffs of dust rising beneath her horse's hoofs. For a moment I thought she had made good her word to Montluc but for a moment only. Sarlaboux was right when he said I had chosen the best horse in Poitou.
I knew not how to bear myself before a splendid young noblewoman. When I had dashed across Paris to slay the traitor in the Rue Coupejarrets I had not been afraid; but now, going with a love-message to a girl, I was scared. And there was more than the fear of her bright eyes to give me pause. I was afraid of Mlle. de Montluc, but more afraid of M. de Mayenne's cousin.
She turned as white now as she had been red before, and a bitter pang of jealousy went through me as I thought for whom all this feeling was; but she brought herself together and faced Montluc. "Very well, monsieur. I understand your friendship and your kindness now. I tell you plainly that I will escape at the first opportunity. I shall never reach Paris."
The costly purchase of the relic of Montluc proved that the antipathy conceived for Baron Justus's charming daughter had become a species of passion. Under any other circumstances, the novelist, who delighted in such cases, would not have failed to meditate ironically on that feeling, easy enough of explanation. There was much more irrational instinct in it than Montfanon himself suspected.
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