That was the culmination. For an hour these two ninnies of a dream sought vainly in the grass for the missing coins. Then, together but apart, they went like lost souls down the mountain.
Verily, the laws canonical, like the lawyers of Westminster, “thrive on fools.”
CHAPTER I
On the day when Augias, Conte di Rocco, was raised to the Marquisate and made a member of the Government of Victor-Amadeus III., titular King of Sardinia and Duke of Savoy and Piedmont, an express was despatched from Turin by that newly-aggrandised nobleman to the Chevalier de France in his Hôtel Beausite at Le Prieuré, demanding in marriage the hand of the Chevalier’s only child and daughter, Yolande of the white hands.
No more than a day later the brass-new Marchese in person came treading on the heels of his amorous cartel (for, indeed, that seems the word for it), and had his formal interview with the solitary parent—for Yolande was long motherless. This happened in the year 1783, when a certain democratic simplicity was beginning to temper the extravagances of fashion. Monsignore di Rocco, therefore, had that much excuse for his rusty buckles, his cheap wisp of a cravat (in which a costly diamond burned), his hired equipage and single equerry, or valet d’écurie, who was literally his stable-boy. Otherwise, as the great man of the neighbourhood and a suitor to boot, he might have been accused of that sorriest form of ostentation, which is for rank to parade its independence of recognised convention.
On the other hand, M. de France’s “Hôtel” was just a decent abode at the southern end of the village, rich in nothing but the magnificence of the view from its windows.
The Marchese was already expected, and certainly with no delusions as to the manner of his appearance. M. de France gave no thought to anything but his visitor’s expression as he advanced to meet him in the little “salle d’audience” into which di Rocco had been ushered. Of the two, even, the bearing of the Chevalier, though he was no more than a simple gentleman of Savoy, was the more overbearing in its self-conscious vanity.
He gave the other stiff welcome and congratulations on his exaltation. One would never have guessed that he knew himself very plainly for the mouse, sweating and desperate, in the claws of the great cunning cat which he took and pressed.
But the Marchese, with a high little laugh, broke through the proffered formality.
“Here, here, to my breast, father-in-law!” he cried, and seizing, strenuously kissed the Chevalier on both cheeks, verily like a cat in a sort of blood-lust.