“His Majesty bids you to supper, my lord, to crack—these are his Majesty’s own words—a bottle of Rhenish, as in the old days of Flanders. His Majesty is melancholy and—commands that you come and be melancholy with him.”
The faintest shadow of a smile passed over the grave, listening countenance. Any one who once came under the gaze of those brilliant, haunting eyes of the Lord Constable’s could well conceive that such an order was of easy obedience. He sat in melancholy, as his royal master sat in tedium: hence the subtle pleasantry of ‘my Merry Rockhurst.’
“Thank you, Vidame,” said he, half rising, with a formal inclination of the head. “Inform his Majesty, if you please, that I attend instantly.”
The French boy had to pause outside the gateway door, to battle with the suffocating rage that suddenly invaded him. Rather would he have received fresh insults from his enemy than this perfect courtesy—a courtesy which at once seemed to remember and to pass over. In that last glance that rested upon him, in that deep, brooding look, there had almost lurked (or so he thought) pity. Pity! Enguerrand tore open the ruffle at his throat and gasped for breath.
Then, as swiftly as it had come, the paroxysm passed. Weakling, to waste his energies on fruitless curses! Was not his hour nigh, and did he not need the cool head, the steady hand, the quick eye?… He once had offered his honour and his sword for a chivalrous test … they both had been broken and cast from him.… Vastly well! Now would he pass the secret thrust for which there is no parry! He fastened his ruffle again with fingers that now scarcely trembled. And, as he ran back to the royal apartment, he broke shrilly into a stave of song: that same frondeur lilt that had tickled the royal ears from Sister Jeanne’s lips on yonder night when she had met fortune and jilted her—at the King’s supper party:—
“La Tour, prends garde, la Tour, prends garde,
De te laisser abattre…!”
rose the high notes.
“Master Page,” said a yeoman sternly, “have you taken leave of your wits? The King is within.…”
“I know, I know,” said Enguerrand, poising himself for a moment on one springing foot, and looking back over his shoulder like some light Mercury in satin and ringlet. “I know, good old greybeard, and ’tis I serve his Majesty’s supper to-night!”