La Dame de Monsoreau (13 page)

« Oh! Oh! " said Chicot, " what a breath ! "

Chicot had hardly uttered these words when the lamp was extinguished also, and the apartment was lit only by the last gleams of the fire in the chimney.

" Danger ahead ! " cried Chicot, on his feet in an instant.

" He is going to speak," said the King, cowering in bed ; " he is going to speak."

" Then," said Chicot, « listen."

That very moment was heard a hollow, hissing voice, apparently speaking from the side of the bed.

" Hardened sinner, art thou there ? " it said.

" Yes, yes, Lord," stammered Henri through his chattering teeth.

" Oh ! Oh ! " said Chicot, " that is a very hoarse voice to come all the way from heaven. Still, this is awful, all the same."

" Dost thou hear me ? " said the voice.

" Yes, Lord," mumbled Henri, " and I listen, prostrate before thy wrath."

t( Didst thou think, then," continued the voice, " thou wert obeying me when taking part in all those external mummeries thou wert engaged in to-day, thy heart remaining untouched the while ? "

« Well said ! " exclaimed Chicot. « That hit told."

The King hurt his hands, so tightly did he clasp them. Chicot drew near him.

" Well," murmured Henri, " what do you say now ? Do you believe now, infidel ? "

" Wait," said Chicot.

« What for ? "

" Hush, and listen! Get out of your bed as softly as possible, and let me take your place."

« Why ? "

" That the Lord's anger may fall upon me in your stead."

" Do you think he will spare me in that way ? "

"We can, at all events, try."

And with affectionate persistence he pushed the King out of the bed and lay down in his place.

" Now, Henri," said he, " go and sit down in my chair and leave the rest to me."

Henri obeyed; he was beginning to understand.

" Thou dost not answer," resumed the voice ; " a proof that thou art hardened in sin."

" Oh, pardon ! pardon, Lord," said Chicot, in the nasal tones of the King.

Then, leaning over toward Henri: " It is funny, my son," he whispered, " that the good God does not recognize Chicot."

" Humph ! it does look queer," answered Henri.

" Wait, you 're going to see queerer things still."

" Miscreant! " said the voice.

" Yes, Lord," answered Chicot; " yes, I am a hardened sinner, a frightful sinner."

" Then confess thy crimes, and repent."

" I confess," said ChicqJ;, " that I have been a great traitor to my cousin, Conde, whose wife I seduced, and I repent of it."

" What's that you 're saying ? " murmured the King. " Pray hold your tongue. That has occurred so long ago that we need not trouble about it."

" Ah, yes, quite right ; let us pass to something else," said Ghicot.

" Speak," said the voice.

" I confess," continued the false Henri, " that I have been an abominable thief in respect of the Poles, who had elected me their king, running away from them one fine night, and carrying off the crown jewels along with me, and I repent."

" Ha, you caitiff ! Why do you recall that ? " said Henri. " It was quite forgotten."

" You see, I must continue to deceive him," answered Chi-cot. " Pray let me alone."

" Speak/' said the voice.

" I confess I stole the throne of France from my brother, Alenqon, to whom it belonged by right, since I had formally renounced it on becoming King of Poland, and I repent."

" Knave ! " said the King.

" I confess that I made an arrangement with my good mother, Catharine de Medicis, to banish out of France my brother-in-law, the King of Navarre, having first destroyed all his friends, and to banish also my sister, Queen Marguerite, after destroying all her lovers, all of which I regret most sincerely."

" Ah! you miscreant! " murmured the King, grinding his teeth in rage.

" Sire, we must not offend God by trying to hide from him what he knows as well as we do."

" I do not want to discuss your political life," the voice went on.

" Ah, you have come to it, then ! " continued Chicot, in a most doleful voice ; " it 's my private life you 're after, is it ? "

" Undoubtedly," said the voice.

" It is quite true, O my God ! " resumed Chicot, still speaking in the name of the King, " that I am lustful, slothful, effeminate, frivolous, and hypocritical."

" All that is true," said the voice, in a hollow tone.

" I have ill-treated women, and especially my wife, the most virtuous of her sex,"

" A man ought to love his wife like himself, and prefer her to everything else in the world," said the voice, furiously.

" Ah ! " cried Chicot, despairingly, " in that case my sins are indeed great."

" And you have caused others to sin by your example."

" True, true, nothing could be truer."

" You have been very near damning that poor Saint-Luc."

" Ah, then, you 're quite sure I have not damned him already ? "

" Yes, but that is sure to happen to him and to you, too, if you do not send him back to his family to-morrow morning, at the latest."

" Aha !" said Chicot to the King, " the voice appears to be very friendly to the house of Cosse."

" And if you do not also," continued the voice, " make him a duke and his wife a duchess, as some compensation for her enforced widowhood during the last couple of days."

f{ And if I do not obey ! " asked Chicot, betraying in his voice an inclination to resist.

" If you obey not," resumed the voice, swelling in a terrible fashion, " you will roast for a whole eternity in the same caldron in which Sardanapalus, Nebuchadnezzar, and the Marechal de Rez are waiting for your company."

Henri III. uttered a groan. The terror that retook possession of him at this threat became more poignant than ever.

" Plague on it, Henri ! " said Chicot, " don't you notice the extraordinary interest Heaven appears to be taking in Saint-Luc ? The devil fly away with me but you might think he had the good God up one of his sleeves ! "

But Henri was not listening to the waggeries of Chicot, or, if he were, they failed to reassure him.

" I am lost," said he, frantically. " I am lost ! and this voice from the other world is a forerunner of my death."

" Voice from the other world ! " cried Chicot ; " ah, this time you are mistaken, for a dead certainty. Voice from the other side, at the most."

" What! a voice from the other side ?" asked Henri.

" Why, of course ! Don't you understand that the voice comes from the other side of yon wall ? Henri, the good God is your guest in the Louvre. Probably, like the Emperor Charles V., he is passing through France on his road to hell,"

" Atheist! Blasphemer !"

" He does you great honor, Henri; and so accept my congratulations ; still, I 'm afraid you 're giving him a rather cold reception. What! the good God is lodged in your Louvre, only separated from you by a partition, and yet you will not honor him with a visit! Oh, fie, fie! Valois, thou art not thyself. I do not recognize thee ; thou'rt not polite."

At this moment a log flamed up in the chimney, and the sudden glare illuminated Chicot's face. There was such an expression of merriment arid mockery on it that the King was amaze*;!..

" What! " said he, " you have the heart to gibe ? you dare to"-

" Yes, my son, I do dare," said Chicot, " and you will be as daring as I am in a minute, or else may I be hanged. Collect your wits, then, and do as I tell you."

" You mean go and see "

" If the good God is really in the chamber next you."

" But if the voice continues speaking ? "

" Am I not here to answer it ? Besides, it 's just as well for me to go on speaking in your name. That will make the voice believe you are here still, for a splendidly credulous voice is this divine voice of ours, and does not know its trade as well at all as it might. Why, for the last quarter of an hour that I have been braying, it has never once recognized me ! Really, this is humiliating for the human intellect."

Henri frowned. Chicot had said so much that even his outrageous credulity had received a shock.

"I think you are right, Chicot," said he, '"and I should really like"

" Then go," said Chicot, pushing him.

Henri softly opened the door of the corridor that led to the next apartment, which was, the reader will remember, the room of Charles IX.'s nurse, and now the temporary abode of Saint-Luc. But he had no sooner taken four steps in the lobby than he heard a renewal of the voice's reproaches, now bitterer than ever, and Chicot's broken-hearted responses.

" Yes," said the voice, " you are as fickle as a woman, as effeminate as a sybarite, and as corrupt as a pagan."

" Ah ! " whined Chicot, sobbing, " is it my fault, great Lord, if you have made my skin so soft, my hands so white, my nose so delicate, and my mind so fickle ? But that is all past, my God ! From to-day I will wear nothing but shirts made of the

coarsest cloth. I will sit on a dung-heap, like Job, and eat offal, like Ezekiel."

However, Henri continued to advance along the corridor, noticing with wonder that as the voice of Chicot died away, the other voice increased in volume, and apparently came from Saint-Luc's apartment.

Henri was about to knock at the door, when he perceived a ray of light which filtered through the wide keyhole of the chiselled lock.

He stooped down and looked.

Suddenly Henri, who was very pale, grew red with anger. He started up and rubbed his eyes as if to see better what he could scarcely believe he saw at all.

" God's death ! " he murmured, " is it possible any one has dared to play on me such a trick as that ? "

For what he had seen through the keyhole was this:

In a corner of the chamber, Saint-Luc in silk drawers and dressing-gown was blowing into an air-cane the threatening words the King had taken for words divine, and near him, leaning on his shoulder, was a young woman in a white diaphanous dress, who, from time to time, snatched the cane from his hands and blew therein, roughening the tones of her voice, all the fancies which might have been first read in her arch eyes and on her smiling lips. Then there were wild outbursts of merriment every time the air-cane was put to use, followed by the doleful lamentations of Chicot, whose imitation of the King was so perfect, whose nasal tones were so natural, that they nearly deceived the King himself ; hearing them from the corridor, he almost thought it was he himself who was weeping and whining.

" Jeanne de Cosse in Saint-Luc's room, a hole in the wall, all to mystify me ! " growled the King, in a hollow voice. " Ah, the wretches ! they shall pay dearly for this !"

And, at a phrase more insulting than the others, breathed by Madame de Saint-Luc into the air-cane, Henri drew back a step and with a kick that was rather vigorous for such an effeminate being, burst in the door, half unfastening the hinges and breaking the lock.

Jeanne, half-naked, uttered a fearful cry and ran to hide behind the curtains, which she wrapped about her.

Saint-Luc, the air-cane still in his hand, fell on his knees, pale with terror, before the King, who was pale with fury.

" Ah ! " cried Chicot from the royal chamber, " mercy ! I

invoke the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, of all the saints - I grow weak. I am dying."

But in the next apartment, none of the actors in the burlesque scene we have just narrated felt any inclination to speak or move, so rapidly had the situation turned from farce to tragedy.

Henri broke the silence with a word, the stillness with a gesture.

" Begone ! " said he, pointing to the door.

And, yielding to a frantic impulse unworthy of a king, he wrested the air-cane from Saint-Luc's hand and raised it as if to strike him. But it was then Saint-Luc's turn to start to his feet, as if moved by a spring of steel.

" Sire," said he, " you have only the right to strike off my head. I am a gentleman."

Henri dashed the air-cane violently o\i the floor. Some one picked it up. It was Chicot, who, hearing the crash made by the breaking of the door and judging that the presence of a mediator would not be out of place, had dashed out of the room that very instant.

He left Henri and Saint-Luc to clear up matters in whatever way they chose, and, running straight to the curtain, behind which he guessed some one was concealed, he drew forth the poor woman, Avho was all in a tremble.

" Aha ! aha ! " exclaimed he, " Adam and Eve after the fall. You chase them out of the garden, Henri, don't you ? " he asked, fixing a questioning glance on the King.

i( Yes," said Henri.

" Wait, then, I 'm going to act as the expelling angel."

And, flinging himself between the King and Saint-Luc, he extended the air-cane above the heads of the guilty couple, as if it were the flaming sword, saying:

" This is my paradise, which you have lost by your disobedience. I forbid you ever to enter it again."

Then whispering in the ear of Saint-Luc, who had thrown his arms about his wife to protect her against the King's anger, if necessary :

" If you have a good horse," said he, " be twenty leagues away from here to-morrow, though you have to kill him."

CHAPTER X.

HOW BUSSY WENT AFTER HIS DREAM AND FOUND IT A REALITY.

MEANWHILE, Bussy had returned with the Due D'Anjou, both in pensive mood: the prince, because he dreaded the consequences of his vigorous attack on the King, to which he had, in some sort, been driven by Bussy; Bussy, because the events of the preceding night absorbed him to the exclusion of everything else.