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Passepoil appealed to him, pathetically: "Can you ever forgive us?" "Yes," Lagardere answered "yes, on one condition. There is a snake in this garden. Kill him for me." Cocardasse gave a grin of appreciation. "Peyrolles it is."
Peyrolles hurriedly beckoned Cocardasse and Passepoil apart, and could be seen at a little distance transferring money from his pocket to their palms, giving them instructions, and finally dismissing them. Chavernay looked at Gonzague. "I congratulate you on your new friends." Gonzague shook his head. "Judge no man by his habit. Hearts of gold may beat beneath those tatters." Chavernay smiled.
"We are all attention," he declared; and Passepoil, faithful echo by his side, murmured, "We are all attention," and allowed himself to wonder what had become of Martine, and to regret that business did not permit him to go to look for her. Peyrolles began to explain. "Wait in the moat to-night at ten o'clock." Staupitz interrupted him. "Ten o'clock?" he cried.
The bravos still buzzed and grumbled: Cocardasse rubbed his chin thoughtfully; Passepoil pinched his long nose. The situation was becoming critical. Lagardere was Lagardere, but he was only one man, after all, in a narrow room, against great odds.
"Devotion!" cried Cocardasse. "Discretion!" cried Passepoil, and each of the men saluted Lagardere with a military salute.
So they were wedded secretly, without his knowledge, and Louis de Gonzague, that could deny his dear friend and cousin, Louis de Nevers, nothing, helped him to his wife." "That was generous, at least," Passepoil sighed. Æsop sneered. "He hoped, as he believed with reason, that there would be no issue of the marriage, and that by-and-by he would come to what he called his own.
When you go to the house you will wait till the girl is ready, and then you will escort her to the king's ball in the Palais Royal at midnight, and bring her into the presence of the king by the royal tent near the round pond of Diana." "I will do that same," said Cocardasse, cheerfully. "Never let her out of your sight at the ball," Lagardere insisted. "Devil a minute," Passepoil affirmed.
"Well done, comrade," cried Passepoil, wringing the hand of his brother-in-arms; and the others, whose pay had been so notably increased by the diplomacy of Cocardasse, were equally as effusive in their expressions of gratitude. Cocardasse met their applause with an impressive monosyllable.
Passepoil sighed for the sorrows of his young pupil: "Poor little Parisian!"
Then he turned to his followers: "My enemy makes merry to-night. I think I shall take the edge off his merriment by-and-by. But the trick has its risks, and we hazard our lives. Would you like to leave the game? I can play it alone." Cocardasse answered with his favorite salute: "I am with you in this if it ends in the gallows." Passepoil commented: "That's my mind."
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