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Hatred and despair struggled there for mastery hatred and despair, and the hideous sense of hopeless, ignominious, public failure after a lifetime of triumphant crime. "Louis!" cried the king again. "Louis! Assassin!" In a moment Gonzague's sword was unsheathed, and he leaped across the space that divided him from Lagardere, striking furiously for Lagardere's heart.
Then Gonzague's partisans slowly filed out of the room, Chavernay, as usual, smiling, the others unusually grave. Gonzague turned to Peyrolles, who had returned from his task of convoying Flora to her apartments. "Who has done all this?" he asked. He thought he was alone with his henchman, but he was mistaken. Æsop had quietly entered the room, and was standing at his side.
At that command the hunchback, who had been leaning against a chair an apparently amused spectator of the not untragic scene, shambled slowly forward more ungainly than ever in his finery, his long sword swinging grotesquely against his legs. Flora gave a cry of indignation. "Are you mad? That monster!" The hunchback's answer to her words was a comic bow, which made Gonzague's friends laugh.
After these again came Gonzague's own little tail of partisans, Navailles and Nocé, Taranne and Oriol, Choisy and Gironne, Albret and Montaubert, with Chavernay fluttering about them like an impudent butterfly, laughing at them, laughing at his august cousin, laughing at the king, laughing at himself laughing at everything.
Gonzague muttered to himself: "Now for the death-struggle." The king looked at his visitor. "Who are you?" he asked. And Lagardere answered: "I am Henri de Lagardere." At that moment Peyrolles, privileged as his master's henchman, entered the tent and made his way to Gonzague's side. "All is well," he whispered. "We have got the girl, and the papers are upon her."
Gonzague's ambition appeared to be to play the Petronius part, to be the Arbiter of Elegancies to a newly liberated king and a newly quickened court. Very wisely Gonzague had never made himself a politician.
Gonzague's friends took advantage of the crowd and the confusion. They huddled around Gabrielle and her escort, laughing and chattering volubly. They hustled Cocardasse, they hustled Passepoil, treading on their toes and tweaking their elbows, much to the indignation of the Gascon and the Norman, each of whom tried angrily and unavailingly to get hold of one of his nimble tormentors.
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