“Bravo! bravo! that was well said!” cried the soldier, filled with enthusiasm at these fine words.
“That,” said Grand-Ferre, “does not prove that the citizens who made the remark to me that it burned the tongue were in the right; besides, they were not altogether citizens, for they had swords, and they were grieved at a cure being burned, and so was I.”
“Eh! what was it to you that they burned your cure, great simpleton?” said a sergeant, leaning upon the fork of his arquebus; “after him another would come. You might have taken one of our generals in his stead, who are all cures at present; for me, I am a Royalist, and I say it frankly.”
“Hold your tongue!” cried La Pipe; “let the girl speak. It is these dogs of Royalists who always disturb us in our amusements.”
“What say you?” answered Grand-Ferre. “Do you even know what it is to be a Royalist?”
“Yes,” said La Pipe; “I know you all very well. Go, you are for the old self-called princes of the peace, together with the wranglers against the Cardinal and the gabelle. Am I right or not?”
“No, old red-stocking. A Royalist is one who is for the King; that’s what it is. And as my father was the King’s valet, I am for the King, you see; and I have no liking for the red-stockings, I can tell you.”
“Ah, you call me red-stocking, eh?” answered the old soldier. “You shall give me satisfaction to-morrow morning. If you had made war in the Valteline, you would not talk like that; and if you had seen his Eminence marching upon the dike at Rochelle, with the old Marquis de Spinola, while volleys of cannonshot were sent after him, you would have nothing to say about red-stockings.”
“Come, let us amuse ourselves, instead of quarrelling,” said the other soldiers.
The men who conversed thus were standing round a great fire, which illuminated them more than the moon, beautiful as it was; and in the centre of the group was the object of their gathering and their cries. The Cardinal perceived a young woman arrayed in black and covered with a long, white veil. Her feet were bare; a thick cord clasped her elegant figure; a long rosary fell from her neck almost to her feet, and her hands, delicate and white as ivory, turned its beads and made them pass rapidly beneath her fingers. The soldiers, with a barbarous joy, amused themselves with laying little brands in her way to burn her naked feet. The oldest took the smoking match of his arquebus, and, approaching it to the edge of her robe, said in a hoarse voice: