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Updated: May 31, 2025
On the one hand his anxiety and affection for his master urged him to run at once to his assistance, whilst Tressan's removal of the troopers rendered it impossible for him to leave Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye unguarded though what he should do with her if Garnache came not back at all, he did not at this stage pause to consider.
I may order her in the Queen's name to deliver up Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. But she will withstand me." "Withstand you?" echoed Garnache, frowning into the face of this fat man, who had risen also, brought to his feet by excitement. "Withstand you you, the Lord Seneschal of Dauphiny? You are amusing yourself at my expense." "But I tell you that she will," the other insisted in a passion.
"The authority of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye," was the unanswerable rejoinder. "I am telling you, more or less, what she herself wrote to the Queen." "Ah! Well, well proceed, monsieur."
"Since you tell me that Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye is content to remain here, I am satisfied that it is so." They were the very words that she desired to hear from him; yet his manner of uttering them gave her little reassurance. The smile on her lips was forced; her watchful eyes smiled not at all.
Garnache observed the ecstatic simper with a grim eye. Then he proceeded with his story. "The late marquis possessed in his neighbour, the also deceased Monsieur de La Vauvraye, a very dear and valued friend. Monsieur de La Vauvraye had an only child, a daughter, to inherit his very considerable estates probably the wealthiest in all Dauphiny, so I am informed.
Her boy was lord of Condillac; Florimond, whom she had hated and who had stood in the way of her boy's advancement, was dead and on his way to burial; Garnache, the man from Paris who might have made trouble for them had he ridden home again with the tale of their resistance, was silenced for all time, and the carp in the moat would be feasting by now upon what was left of him; Valerie de La Vauvraye was in a dejected frame of mind that augured well for the success of the Dowager's plans concerning her, and by noon at latest there would be priests at Condillac, and, if Marius still wished to marry the obstinate baggage, there would be no difficulty as to that.
"But, mother," he cried, "between the dignity of La Vauvraye and the indignity of Tressan, surely there is some middle course?" "Aye," she answered scornfully, "starvation on a dunghill in Touraine or something near akin to it, for which I have no stomach."
He was flung down heavily, and pinned prone in a corner by one of those bullies who knelt on his spine. And then the door opened again, and poor Rabecque groaned in impotent anguish to behold Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye pause white-faced and wide-eyed on, the threshold at sight of Monsieur de Condillac bowing low before her.
"Does it not occur to you, monsieur, that perhaps too much importance may have been attached to the word of this child this Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye?" "Does it occur to you that such has been the case, that she has overstated it?" counter-questioned Monsieur de Garnache. "No, no. I do not say that.
They went, madame with bowed head, her stubborn pride broken at last as the Abbot of Saint Francis had so confidently promised her. After them went the Abbot and the lackeys of Florimond, and Fortunio went with these to carry out Garnache's orders that the men of the Dowager's garrison be sent packing at once, leaving with the Parisian, in the great hall, just Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye.
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