"I meant no harm," I said, and turned sullenly off up the street. This, then, was what I had come to Paris for—to be denied entrance to the house, thrown under the coach-wheels, and threatened with a drubbing from the lackeys!
For three years my only thought had been to serve Monsieur. From waking in the morning to sleep at night, my whole life was Monsieur's. Never was duty more cheerfully paid. Never did acolyte more throw his soul into his service than I into mine. Never did lover hate to be parted from his mistress more than I from Monsieur. The journey to Paris had been a journey to Paradise. And now, this!
Monsieur had looked me in the face and not smiled; had heard me beseech him and not answered—not lifted a finger to save me from being mangled under his very eyes. St. Quentin and Paris were two very different places, it appeared. At St. Quentin Monsieur had been pleased to take me into the château and treat me to more intimacy than he accorded to the high-born lads, his other pages. So much the easier, then, to cast me off when he had tired of me. My heart seethed with rage and bitterness against Monsieur, against the sentry, and, more than all, against the young Comte de Mar, who had flung me under the wheels.
I had never before seen the Comte de Mar, that spoiled only son of M. le Duc's, who was too fine for the country, too gay to share his father's exile. Maybe I was jealous of the love his father bore him, which he so little repaid. I had never thought to like him, St. Quentin though he were; and now that I saw him I hated him. His handsome face looked ugly enough to me as he struck me that blow.
I went along the Paris streets blindly, the din of my own thoughts louder than all the noises of the city. But I could not remain in this trance forever, and at length I woke to two unpleasant facts: first, I had no idea where I was, and, second, I should be no better off if I knew.
Never, while there remained in me the spirit of a man, would I go back to Monsieur; never would I serve the Comte de Mar. And it was equally obvious that never, so long as my father retained the spirit that was his, could I return to St. Quentin with the account of my morning's achievements. It was just here that, looking at the business with my father's eyes, I began to have a suspicion that I had behaved like an insolent young fool. But I was still too angry to acknowledge it.
Remained, then, but one course—to stay in Paris, and keep from starvation as best I might.
My thrifty father had not seen fit to furnish me any money to throw away in the follies of the town. He had calculated closely what I should need to take me to Monsieur, with a little margin for accidents; so that, after paying Maître Jacques, I had hardly two pieces to jingle together.
For three years I had browsed my fill in the duke's library; I could write a decent letter both in my own tongue and in Italian, thanks to Father Francesco, Monsieur's Florentine confessor, and handle a sword none so badly, thanks to Monsieur; and I felt that it should not be hard to pick up a livelihood. But how to start about it I had no notion, and finally I made up my mind to go and consult him whom I now called my one friend in Paris, Jacques the innkeeper.
'Twas easier said than done. I had strayed out of the friendly Rue St. Denis into a network of dark and narrow ways that might have been laid out by a wily old stag with the dogs hot on him, so did they twist and turn and double on themselves. I could make my way only at a snail's pace, asking new guidance at every corner. Noon was long past when at length I came on laggard feet around the corner by the Amour de Dieu.