United States or Bhutan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
His account against the assassins of Caylus was being slowly paid; but never had any item of that account been annulled with less regret. The others Staupitz, Saldagno, Pinto, and the rest had been ruffianly creatures enough, but there was a kind of honesty, a measure of courage in their ruffianism.
Pepe added: "He fought with me once in Madrid, and got off without a scratch. That says a good deal for his skill, I'm thinking." Saldagno and Pinto were silent. They looked curiously at Pepe, but they nodded their heads approvingly. Thus each of the bravos had his eager tale to tell, and would have told more but that Cocardasse waved them into silence with his large hand.
"Who is it?" the second shadow questioned, and again the voice sounded youthful to Lagardere's ears. "It looks like Saldagno," said the first shadow; and, coming a little farther forward, he called dubiously into the gloom: "Is that you, Saldagno?"
Monsieur Peyrolles told me to bring nine of my babies, and nine we must be, and nine we should be at this moment if our truants were at hand." At this moment Saldagno set down his beaker. "I hear footsteps," he said.
Now, as Saldagno was the name of one of the swordsmen who had met at the Inn in menace of Nevers, Lagardere came to the swift conclusion that the two shadows now haunting him had something to do with that conspiracy, and that, if it were possible, it would be as well to learn their purposes.
It seemed an age of battle, it seemed an instant of battle. Then the baffled assassins recoiled, leaving two of the smugglers for dead, while Saldagno and Faenza were both badly wounded, and cursing hideously in Portuguese and Italian. Behind the intrenchments, Lagardere chuckled as he heard. He turned to Nevers. "Are you wounded?" he asked, anxiously.
Staupitz made an apologetic gesture. "Only once in twelve times." Lagardere turned to Saldagno, Pepe, and Pinto. "Ah, my bandits of Madrid, who tried me, three to one." Saldagno was more apologetic than Staupitz, with a Latin profusion of gesture, as he explained: "That was for a wager, captain." Lagardere shrugged his shoulders. "Which you did not win." He turned to Joel de Jurgan.
He was, therefore, quite prepared to be Saldagno for the occasion, and it was with a well-affected Lusitanian accent that he promptly answered, "Present," and came a little nearer to the strangers. The first shadow spoke again, craning a long neck into the darkness. "It is I, Monsieur Peyrolles. Come here."
Æsop rolled to one end of the room, Staupitz to another; Cocardasse and Passepoil, Saldagno, Pepe, Pinto, Faenza, and Joel were scattered like sparrows, and the little page found himself liberated and crouching at the feet of a man who was standing with folded arms surveying the discomfited bravos mockingly.
Cocardasse continued: "Faenza was killed at Burgos." Passepoil went on: "Saldagno at Toledo." Cocardasse took up the tale: "Pinto at Valladolid." Passepoil concluded the catalogue: "Joel at Grenada, Pepe at Cordova." "All with the same wound," Cocardasse commented, with a curious solemnity in his habitually jovial voice. Passepoil added, lugubriously: "The thrust between the eyes."
Word Of The Day