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Updated: May 31, 2025
I advanced, with an exaggerated bow, sweeping the stones of the street with the plumes of my hat. "So it is true!" I said, making no effort to control my agitation, and restraining my voice only that the lackeys might not hear; "you love that man!" She looked at me steadily for a moment, and then said, "Do you mean M. de Noyard?" "Ah, you admit it!" "I admit nothing.
M. de Guise was admitted. He immediately told the King that one of his gentlemen, M. de Noyard, had been killed by the Sieur de la Tournoire, one of the French Guards. I became interested, for I remembered your name as that of the gentleman who, according to my maid, had stopped the spy from whom I had had so much to fear.
Ah, considered I, it is the thought of Mlle. d'Arency's deed that has awakened these foolish suspicions in Blaise's mind! I had given him some account of how that lady had, by a love tryst, drawn poor De Noyard to his death. He was incapable of discriminating between women.
There were different conjectures to be made. Mlle. d'Arency may have made that surprising request merely to convince me that she did not love De Noyard, and intending, subsequently, to withdraw it; or it may have sprung from a caprice, a desire to ascertain how far I was at her bidding, women have, thoughtlessly, set men such tasks from mere vanity, lacking the sympathy to feel how precious to its owner is any human life other than their own; or she may have had some substantial reason to desire his death, something to gain by it, something to lose through his continuing to live.
He wore a doublet of cloth of silver, a black cloak of velvet, and a black hat with the Lorraine cross on its front. The tallest man in his following Philippe de Noyard, of whom De Rilly had just been speaking was the gentleman whom I had met on the road to Paris, and who had refused to fight me after resenting my opinion of the Duke of Guise. He must have arrived in Paris close behind me.
"M. de Quelus," I said, "last night, in a sudden quarrel which arose out of a mistake, I was so unfortunate as to kill M. de Noyard. It was neither a duel nor a murder, each of us seemed justified in attacking the other." De Quelus did not seem displeased to hear of De Noyard's death. "What evidence is there against you?" he asked.
I shivered in the cold. I had left my large cloak beside the dead body of M. de Noyard the previous night, and had worn to the Louvre, in the morning, only a light mantle by way of outer covering. "Blessings on the night for being so dark, and maledictions on it for being so cold!" I muttered, as I turned towards the river.
"And does the Duke of Guise allow himself to be cajoled?" I asked De Rilly. "Who knows? He is a cautious man, anxious to make no false step. They say he would be willing to wait for the death of the King, but that he is ever being urged to immediate action by De Noyard." "De Noyard?"
At last, I fell asleep, and dreamt that I had told De Quelus my story, and he had brought me the King's pardon; again, that I was engaged in futile efforts to approach him; again, that De Noyard had come to life. When De Rilly awoke me, it was broad daylight. I dressed, and so timed my movements as to reach the Louvre at the hour when De Quelus would be about to officiate at the King's rising.
"One of Guise's followers; an obscure gentleman of very great virtue, who has recently become Guise's most valued counsellor. He keeps Guise on his guard against Catherine's wiles, they say, and discourages Guise's amour with her daughter, Marguerite, which Catherine has an interest in maintaining. Nobody is more de trop to Catherine just at present, I hear, than this same Philippe de Noyard.
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