Under the Red Robe by Stanley John Weyman (positive books to read txt) 📕

I took the old seat on the three-legged stool before the hearth. ‘The night is cold and there is no fire in your room.’

While he ran to and fro with my cloak and bags, little Gil, to whom I had stood at St Sulpice’s, borrowing ten crowns the same day, I remember, came shyly to play with my sword hilt.

‘So you expected me back when you heard the news, Frison, did you?’ I said, taking the lad on my knee.

‘To be sure, your Excellency,’ he answered, peeping into the black pot before he lifted it to the hook.

‘Very good. Then now let us hear what the news is,’ I said drily.

‘Of the Cardinal, M. de Berault.’

‘Ah! And what?’ He looked at me, holding the heavy pot suspended in his hands.

‘You have not heard?’ he exclaimed in astonishment.

‘Not a tittle. Tell it me, my good fellow.’

‘You have not heard that his Eminence is disgraced?’

I stared at him. ‘Not a word,’ I said.

He set down the pot.

‘Then your Excellency must have made a very long journey indeed,’ he said with conviction. ‘For it has been in the air a week or more, and I thought that it had brought you back. A week? A month, I dare say. They whisper that it is the old Queen’s doing. At any rate, it is certain that they have cancelled his commissions and displaced his officers. There are rumours of immediate peace with Spain. Everywhere his enemies are lifting up their heads; and I hear that he has relays of horses set all the way to the coast that he may fly at any moment. For what I know he may be gone already.’

‘But, man—’ I said, surprised out of my composure. ‘The King! You forget the King. Let the Cardinal once pipe to him and he will dance. And they will dance too!’ I added grimly.

‘Yes,’ Frison answered eagerly. ‘True, your Excellency, but the King will not see him. Three times to-day, as I am told, the Cardinal has driven to the Luxembourg and stood like any common man in the ante-chamber, so that I hear it was pitiful to see him. But his Majesty would not admit him. And when he went away the last time I am told that his face was like death! Well, he was a great man, and we may be worse ruled, M. de Berault, saving your presence. If the nobles did not like him, he was good to the traders and the bourgeoisie, and equal to all.’

‘Silence, man! Silence, and let me think,’ I said, much excited. And while he bustled to and fro, getting my supper, and the firelight played about the snug, sorry little room, and the child toyed with his plaything, I fell to digesting this great news, and pondering how I stood now and what I ought to do. At first sight, I know, it seemed to me that I had nothing to do but to sit still. In a few hours the man who had taken my bond would be powerless, and I should be free; in a few hours I might smile at him. To all appearance the dice had fallen well for me. I had done a great thing, run a great risk, won a woman’s love; and, after all, I was not to pay the penalty.

But a word which fell from Frison as he fluttered round me, pouring out the broth and cutting the bread, dropped into my mind and spoiled my satisfaction.

‘Yes, your Excellency,’ he said, confirming something he had stated before and which I had missed, ‘and I am told that the last time he came into the gallery there was not a man of all the scores who had been at his levee last Monday would speak to him. They fell off like rats—just like rats—until he was left standing alone. And I have seen him!’—Frison lifted up his eyes and his hands and drew in his breath—‘Ah! I have seen the King look shabby beside him! And his eye! I would not like to meet it now.’

‘Pish!’ I growled. ‘Someone has fooled you. Men are wiser than that.’

‘So? Well, your Excellency understands,’ he answered meekly. ‘But—there are no cats on a cold hearth.’

I told him again that he was a fool. But for all that, and my reasoning, I felt uncomfortable. This was a great man, if ever a great man lived, and they were all leaving him; and I—well, I had no cause to love him. But I had taken his money, I had accepted his commission, and I had betrayed him. These three things being so, if he fell before I could—with the best will in the world—set myself right with him, so much the better for me. That was my gain—the fortune of war, the turn of the dice. But if I lay hid, and took time for my ally, and being here while he still stood, though tottering, waited until he fell, what of my honour then? What of the grand words I had said to Mademoiselle at Agen? I should be like the recreant in the old romance, who, lying in the ditch while the battle raged, came out afterwards and boasted of his courage.

And yet the flesh was weak. A day, twenty-four hours, two days, might make the difference between life and death, love and death; and I wavered. But at last I settled what I would do. At noon the next day, the time at which I should have presented myself if I had not heard this news, at that time I would still present myself. Not earlier; I owed myself the chance. Not later; that was due to him.

Having so settled it, I thought to rest in peace. But with the first light I was awake, and it was all I could do to keep myself quiet until I heard Frison stirring. I called to him then to know if there was any news, and lay waiting and listening while he went down to the street to learn. It seemed an endless time before he came back; an age, when he came back, before he spoke.

‘Well, he has not set off?’ I asked at last, unable to control my eagerness.

Of course he had not; and at nine o’clock I sent Frison out again; and at ten and eleven—always with the same result. I was like a man waiting and looking and, above all, listening for a reprieve; and as sick as any craven. But when he came back, at eleven, I gave up hope and dressed myself carefully. I suppose I had an odd look then, however, for Frison stopped me at the door, and asked me, with evident alarm, where I was going.

I put the little man aside gently.

‘To the tables,’ I said, ‘to make a big throw, my friend.’

It was a fine morning, sunny, keen, pleasant, when I went out into the street; but I scarcely noticed it. All my thoughts were where I was going, so that it seemed but a step from my threshold to the Hotel Richelieu; I was no sooner gone from the one than I found myself at the other. Now, as on a memorable evening when I had crossed the street in a drizzling rain, and looked that way with foreboding, there were two or three guards, in