“Nay, monsignore,” he said. “It cannot lie, so its parts remain true. Yet I confess it strained my credulity to the extent this night that I was fain to bring it in and examine it.”
“And what had been its message?” sneered the Marquess, uneasy while he scowled.
“That monsignore’s death must follow close upon his marriage,” said the Rosicrucian, calmly.
Di Rocco tore the instrument from his hand and dashed it upon the floor.
“Liar!” he screamed. “I know thy tricks and motives. Did it foretell this end to them? Begone, thou ass inside a lion’s skin, lest I spit and trample on thee! Begone, nor look upon my face again!”
Without a word Bonito stooped and gathered up the wreck of brass, then, clutching it, walked softly from the room.
Cartouche pulled calmly on at his pipe.
CHAPTER III
M. Louis-Marie Saint-Peray lodged in the house of a M. Paccard, Le Prieuré’s respectable doctor, and an enthusiast in matters of geology. Everyone loved Louis-Marie, even, in a sweet, impartial way, the doctor’s only daughter, Martha, who, however, had other geese to pluck in the matrimonial market. The young man was so good and so good-looking, so pious, so enthusiastic and so sensible. Anticipating the boy-angel of “Excelsior,” he came storming the frozen heights, which, nevertheless, he was not to attain. But his failures made the true romance of his endeavours—in the eyes of women, at least, who do not admire the cocksureness which comes of success. As to the men, the rugged mountaineers, who were experienced in the natural limitations to their craft, they mingled, perhaps, a little contempt with their liking. It would be all very well to put their knowledge to school by showing it the way up Mont Blanc; but, in the meanwhile, aspirations were not deeds. They all, for the matter of that, aspired to conquer the great white peak, but their women did not applaud them for the wish. True, they had not, not one of them, M. Saint-Péray’s serene white face, and kindling blue eyes, and hair of curling sunbeams. Yet Le Prieuré was not deficient in manly beauty, however little it might derive from an exclusive ancestry of angels.
Le Prieuré, in Louis-Marie’s time, was a rude enough valley, and almost forbidden ground to the ease-loving traveller. That was one reason, perhaps, why the women so favoured this gentle stranger, who came to them on his own initiative out of the despised world of luxury. If he brought with him the traditions of tender breeding, he brought also its fearless spirit. It was something god-like in him to defy, in his frail person, that unconquerable keep of the mountains.