From the Memoirs of a Minister of France by Stanley John Weyman (best desktop ebook reader TXT) 📕

heart, however; for when I next met him, within the week, he was fashionably dressed, his hair in the mode, and his company as noble as himself. I made him a sign to stop, and he came to speak to me.

"How many crowns are left?" I said jocularly.

"Fifty," he answered, with perfect readiness.

"What!" I said, pointing to his equipment with something of the indignation I felt, "has this cost the balance?

"No," he answered. "On the contrary, I have paid three months' rent in advance and a month's board at Zaton's; I have added two suits to my wardrobe, and I have lost fifty crowns on the dice."

"You promise well!" I said.

He shrugged his shoulders quite in the fashionable manner. "Always courage!" he said; and he went on, smiling.

I was walking at the time with M. de Saintonge, and he muttered, with a sneer, that it was not difficult to see the end, or that within the year the young braggart would sink to be a gaming-house bully. I said nothing, but I confess that I thought otherwise; the lad's disposition of his money and his provision for the future seeming to me so remarkable as to set him above ordinary rules.

From this time I began to watch his career with interest, and I was not surprised when, in less than a month, something fell out that led the whole court to regard him with a mixture of amusement and expectancy.

One evening, after leaving the King's closet, I happened to pass through the east gallery at the Louvre, which served at that time as the outer antechamber, and was the common resort as well of all those idlers who, with some pretensions to fashion, lacked the ENTREE, as of many who with greater claims preferred to be at their ease. My passage for a moment stilled the babel which prevailed. But I had no sooner reached the farther door than the noise broke out again; and this with so sudden a fury, the tumult being augmented by the crashing fall of a table, as caused me at the last moment to stand and turn. A dozen voices crying simultaneously, "Have a care!" and "Not here! not here!" and all looking the same way, I was able to detect the three principals in the FRACAS. They were no other than M. de St. Mesmin, Barradas—a low fellow, still remembered, who was already what Saintonge had prophesied that the former would become—and young St. Germain, the eldest son of M. de Clan.

I rather guessed than heard the cause of the quarrel, and that St. Mesmin, putting into words what many had known for years and some made their advantage of, had accused Barradas of cheating. The latter's fury was, of course, proportioned to his guilt; an instant challenge while I looked was his natural answer. This, as he was a consummate swordsman, and had long earned his living as much by fear as by fraud, should have been enough to stay the greediest stomach; but St. Mesmin was not content. Treating the knave, the word once passed, as so much dirt, he transferred his attack to St. Germain, and called on him to return the money he had won by betting on Barradas.

St. Germain, a young spark as proud and headstrong as St. Mesmin himself, and possessed of friends equal to his expectations, flung back a haughty refusal. He had the advantage in station and popularity; and by far the larger number of those present sided with him. I lingered a moment in curiosity, looking to see the accuser with all his boldness give way before the almost unanimous expression of disapproval. But my former judgment of him had been correctly formed; so far from being browbeaten or depressed by his position, he repeated the demand with a stubborn persistence that marvellously reminded me of Crillon; and continued to reiterate it until all, except St. Germain himself, were silent. "You must return my money!" he kept on saying monotonously. "You must return my money. This man cheated, and you won my money. You must pay or fight."

"With a dead man?" St. Germain replied, gibing at him.

"No, with me."

"Barradas will spit you!" The other scoffed. "Go and order your coffin, and do not trouble me."

"I shall trouble you. If you did not know that he cheated, pay; and if you did know, fight."

"I know?" St. Germain retorted fiercely. "You madman! Do you mean to say that I knew that he cheated?"

"I mean what I say!" St. Mesmin returned stolidly. "You have won my money. You must return it. If you will not return it, you must fight."

I should have heard more, but at that moment the main door opened, and two or three gentlemen who had been with the King came out. Not wishing to be seen watching the brawl, I moved away and descended the stairs; and Varenne overtaking me a moment later, and entering on the Biron affair—of which I had just been discussing the latest developments with the King—I forgot St. Mesmin for the time, and only recalled him next morning when Saintonge, being announced, came into my room in a state of great excitement, and almost with his first sentence brought out his name.

"Barradas has not killed him then?" I said, reproaching myself in a degree for my forgetfulness.

"No! He, Barradas!" Saintonge answered.

"No?" I exclaimed.

"Yes!" he said. "I tell you, M. le Marquis, he is a devil of a fellow—a devil of a fellow! He fought, I am told, just like Crillon; rushed in on that rascal and fairly beat down his guard, and had him pinned to the ground before he knew that they had crossed swords!"

"Well," I said, "there is one scoundrel the less. That is all."

"Ah, but that is not all!" my visitor replied more seriously. "It should be, but it is not; and it is for that reason I am come to you. You know St. Germain?"

"I know that his father and you are—well, that you take opposite sides," I said smiling.

"That is pretty well known," he answered coldly. "Anyway, this lad is to fight St. Germain to-morrow; and now I hear that M. de Clan, St. Germain's father, is for shutting him up. Getting a LETTRE DE CACHET or anything else you please, and away with him."

"What! St. Germain?" I said.

"No!" M. de Saintonge answered, prolonging the sound to the utmost. "St. Mesmin!"

"Oh," I said, "I see."

"Yes," the Marquis retorted pettishly, "but I don't. I don't see. And I beg to remind you, M. de Rosny, that this lad is my wife's second cousin through her step-father, and that I shall resent any interference with him. I have spent enough and done enough in the King's service to have my wishes respected in a small matter such as this; and I shall regard any severity exercised towards my kinsman as a direct offence to myself. Whereas M. de Clan, who will doubtless be here in a few minutes, is—"

"But stop," I said, interrupting him, "I heard you speaking of this young fellow the other day. You did not tell me then that he was your kinsman."

"Nevertheless he is; my wife's second cousin," he answered with heat.

"And you wish him to—"

"Be let alone!" he replied interrupting me in his turn more harshly than I approved. "I wish him to be let alone. If he will fight St. Germain, and kill or be killed, is that the King's affair that he need interfere? I ask for no interference," M. de Saintonge continued bitterly, "only for fair play and no favour. And for M. de Clan who is a Republican at heart, and a Bironist, and has never done anything but thwart the King, for him to come now, and—faugh! it makes me sick."

"Yes," I said drily; "I see."

"You understand me?"

"Yes," I said, "I think so."

"Very well," he replied haughtily—he had gradually wrought himself into a passion; "be good enough to bear my request in mind then; and my services also. I ask no more, M. de Rosny, than is due to me and to the King's honour."

And with that, and scarcely an expression of civility, he left me. Some may wonder, I know, that, having in the Edict of Blois, which forbade duelling and made it a capital offence, an answer to convince even his arrogance, I did not use this weapon; but, as a fact, the edict was not published until the following June, when, partly in consequence of this affair and at my instance, the King put it forth.

Saintonge could scarcely have cleared the gates before his prediction was fulfilled. His enemy arrived hot foot, and entered to me with a mien so much lowered by anxiety and trouble that I hardly knew him for the man who had a hundred times rebuffed me, and whom the King's offers had found consistently obdurate. All I had ever known of M. de Clan heightened his present humility and strengthened his appeal; so that I felt pity for him proportioned not only to his age and necessity, but to the depth of his fall. Saintonge had rightly anticipated his request; the first, he said, with a trace of his old pride, that he had made to the King in eleven years: his son, his only son and only child—the single heir of his name! He stopped there and looked at me; his eyes bright, his lips trembling and moving without sound, his hands fumbling on his knees.

"But," I said, "your son wishes to fight, M. de Clan?"

He nodded.

"And you cannot hinder him?"

He shrugged his shoulders grimly. "No," he said; "he is a St. Germain."

"Well, that is just my case," I answered. "You see this young fellow St. Mesmin was commended to me, and is, in a manner, of my household; and that is a fatal objection. I cannot possibly act against him in the manner you propose. You must see that; and for my wishes, he respects them less than your son regards yours."

M. de Clan rose, trembling a little on his legs, and glaring at me out of his fierce old eyes. "Very well," he said, "it is as much as I expected. Times are changed—and faiths—since the King of Navarre slept under the same bush with Antoine St. Germain on the night before Cahors! I wish you good-day, M. le Marquis."

I need not say that my sympathies were with him, and that I would have helped him if I could; but in accordance with the maxim which I have elsewhere explained, that he who places any consideration before the King's service is not fit to conduct it, I did not see my way to thwart M. de Saintonge in a matter so small. And the end justified my inaction; for the duel, taking place that evening, resulted in nothing worse than a serious, but not dangerous, wound which St. Mesmin, fighting with the same fury as in the morning, contrived to inflict on his opponent.

For some weeks after this I saw little of the young firebrand, though from time to time he attended my receptions and invariably behaved to me with a modesty which proved that he placed some bounds to his presumption. I heard, moreover, that M. de Saintonge, in acknowledgment of the triumph over the St. Germains which he had afforded him, had taken him up; and that the connection between the families being publicly avowed, the two were much together.

Judge of my surprise, therefore, when one day a little before Christmas, M. de Saintonge sought me at the Arsenal during the preparation of the plays and interludes—which were held there that year—and, drawing me aside into the garden, broke into a furious tirade against the young fellow.

"But," I said, in immense astonishment, "what is this? I thought that he was a young man quite to your mind; and—"

"He is mad!" he answered.

"Mad?" I said.

"Yes, mad!" he repeated, striking the ground violently with his cane. "Stark mad, M. de Rosny. He does not know himself! What do you think—but it is inconceivable. He proposes to marry my daughter! This penniless adventurer honours Mademoiselle de Saintonge by proposing for her!"

"Pheugh!" I said. "That is serious."

"He—he! I don't think I shall ever get over it!" he answered.

"He has, of course, seen Mademoiselle?"

M. de Saintonge nodded.

"At your house, doubtless?"

"Of course!"