"Who is he? Slime of the gutter, contemptible old age unashamed, human pitch whose very touch is a loathing, a repulsion, a defilement." It seemed as if Commines was less afraid to speak his mind now that the walls of Valmy were out of hearing, for he went on bitterly: "The King chooses his tools well, a foul tool for a foul use, and neither you nor I can come out of it with clean hands. His name? The gallows-cheat has a dozen names and changes them as you would your coat. He is like a Paris rag-picker, and his basket of life is full of the garbage he has raked from the gutter."
"And the woman?"
"The woman! To hear you say the woman one would think there was but one in the world. The King told me of no woman."
"Then I am not likely to get drunk in Amboise, unless your rag-picker pours the wine.
'Heigh ho! Love is the sun,
Love is the moon and the stars by night.'
The scheme seems a foolish one to me. I can never play the part. But,
Uncle, what do you say? Shall I make a good troubadour?"
"Sing while you may," answered Commines, with a dry gravity behind the softening of his stern mouth, "and remember that at Amboise you sing for a King's pay."
"And I would sing five songs for nothing but the pleasure of singing rather than one for a fee. What kind of a little lad is the Dauphin?"
Commines made no reply, but rode on with knit brows. The question so lightly asked was one he had often weighed in his own mind nor found a clear answer. Rumour said of him—but under her breath, for to speak at all was dangerous—that he was shamefully neglected, slow-witted, ill-taught, or, worse still, untaught, but, and here rumour whispered yet lower, that flashes of shrewdness broke the dull level of the undeveloped intellect when least expected. That he was small for his age he knew, that he was weakly, ill-formed, and awkward. These things were patent to the eye and common knowledge, but into the depths of the lad's nature he had not ventured to probe lest Louis' suspicious jealousy should be aroused. Now that he found himself between a father's twilight and a son's dawn, with "The king is dead, long live the king," an imminent proclamation, he blamed himself for his cowardice as men always do who are wise after the event. With a little more certain knowledge his star might rise with the dawn, instead of, as he feared, setting with the twilight.
"Eh?" he said, rousing himself as La Mothe repeated the question. "The Dauphin? I know little of him. He has lived at Amboise, I at Valmy or Plessis with the King: it is long since the two have met. An ailing, obstinate, dull boy, they say, with no more wit than can be put in him with a spoon. If it were not that weak natures often turn vicious that they may be thought strong I would say the King's fear of a plot was baseless."