“Courage, fair maiden!” Tan-tan exclaimed from time to time, “the hour of thy deliverance is nigh!”
But not for all the world would Nicolette have allowed Tan-tan to know that she had really been crying. And presently when the dragon was duly slain and the crimson hazel-bush duly testified that he lay in a pool of blood, the victorious knight cut the bonds which held Nicolette to the carob tree, and lifting her in his arms, he carried her to his gallant steed, which was a young pine tree that the mistral had uprooted some few years ago, and which lay prone upon the ground—the most perfect charger any knight could possibly wish for.
What mattered after that, that old Margaï was cross because Nicolette’s stockings were all in holes? Tan-tan had deigned to say that Nicolette had a very good idea of play, which enigmatic utterance threw Nicolette into a veritable heaven of bliss. She did not know what it meant, but the tiny, podgy hand went seeking Tan-tan’s big, hot one and nestled there like a bird in its nest, and her large liquid eyes, still wet with tears, were turned on him with the look of perfect adoration, which was wont to bring a flush of impatience into his cheek.
“Thou art stupid, Nicolette,” he would say almost shamefacedly, when that look came into her eyes, and with a war-whoop, he would dart up the winding path, bounding over rocks and broken boughs like a young stag, or swarming up the mountain ash like a squirrel, shutting his manly ears to the sweet, insidious call of baby lips that called pathetically to him from below:
“Tan-tan!”
Then, when outside it rained, or the mistral blew across the valley, it meant delicious wanderings through the interminable halls and corridors of the old château—more distressed maidens held in durance in castellated towers, Nicolette and Micheline held captive by cruel, unseen foes: there were walls to be scaled, prisons to be stormed, hasty flights along stone passages, discovery of fresh hiding-places, and always the same intrepid knight, energetic, hot and eager to rescue the damsels in distress.
And when the distressed damsels were really too tired to go on being rescued, there would be those long and lovely halts in the great hall where past Comtes and Comtesses de Ventadour, vicomtes and demoiselles looked down with silent scorn from out the mildewed canvases and tarnished gold frames upon the decayed splendour of their ancient home. Here, Tan-tan would for the time being renounce his rôle of chivalrous knight-errant, and would stand thoughtful and absorbed before the portraits of his dead forbears. These pictures had a strange fascination for the boy. He never tired of gazing on them and repeating to his two devoted little listeners the tales which for the most part his grandmother had told him about these dead and gone ancestors.
There was Rambaud de Ventadour, the handsome Comte of the days of the Grand Monarque, who had hied him from his old château in Provence to the Court of Versailles, where he cut a gallant figure with the best of that brilliant crowd of courtiers, stars of greater and lesser magnitude that revolved around the dazzling central sun. There was Madame la Comtesse Beatrix, the proud beauty whom he took for wife. They were rich in those days, the seigneurs of Ventadour, and Jaume Deydier, who was Nicolette’s ancestor, was nothing but a lacquey in their service; he used to take care of the old château while M. le Comte and Mme. la Comtesse went out into the gay and giddy world, to Paris, Versailles or Rambouillet.
’Twas not often the old lands of Provence saw their seigneurs in those days, not until misfortune overtook them and Geoffroy, Comte de Ventadour, Tan-tan’s great-grandfather, he whose portrait hung just above the monumental hearth, returned, a somewhat sobered man, to the home of his forbears. Here he settled down with his two sons, and here Tan-tan’s father was born, and Tan-tan himself, and Micheline. But Nicolette’s father, Jaume Deydier, the descendant of the lacquey, now owned all the lands that once had belonged to the Comtes de Ventadour, and he was reputed to be the richest man in Provence, but he never set foot inside the old château.
Nicolette did not really mind that her ancestor had been a lacquey. At six years of age that sort of information leaves one cold; nor did she quite know what a lacquey was, as there were none in the old homestead, over on the other side of the valley, where Margaï did the scrubbing, and the washing and the baking, put Nicolette to bed, and knitted innumerable pairs of woollen stockings. But she liked to hear about her ancestor because Tan-tan liked to talk about him, and about those wonderful times when the Comtes de Ventadour had gilded coaches and rode out on gaily caparisoned horses, going hawking, or chasing, or fishing in the Durance, the while old Jaume Deydier, the lacquey, had to stay at home and clean boots.