Opening the door to its widest Saxe stood aside listening, his head on one side, his hand beckoning familiarly to La Mothe, as up the dark well of stairs there came the rise and fall of a man's voice in a brisk chant. No words could be caught, but the air ran trippingly, and if the higher notes broke in a crack which told of age or misuse, or both together, the lower ran clear and full, and the tune ran on with a rollicking, careless awing which showed that, whoever might cavil, the singer had at least one appreciative hearer—himself!
"A wonderful man, wonderful," whispered Saxe, his small eyes twinkling with appreciation, but whether at the music or because the King paid for all, La Mothe was uncertain. "A poet of poets, a drinker of drinkers, and a shrewd, bitter-tongued devil drunk or sober. Not that he grows drunk easily, not he! and always he sings at his third bottle."
"What is his name?"
"Whatever he chooses, monsieur, and so long as the King pays what does a name matter? He serves the King as I do and—with great respect—as you do also. Did I ask your name when you said, 'A room and supper'? Not I!"
"I am called Stephen La Mothe."
"As you please, monsieur, and I don't doubt you will eat as good a supper by that name as by any other. Give me twenty minutes and you will say the Black Dog of Amboise is no cur."
Nor was Jean Saxe's boast unjustified. La Mothe not only supped but ate, and with such satisfaction that in the peace of a healthy hunger crowned with as healthy a digestion—unappreciated blessings of four-and-twenty—he forgot alike King and Dauphin, Valmy and the Grey Gates of Amboise in the shadows across the road.
But neither was allowed to remain forgotten. As he sat over the remains of his supper, tapping out a verse of his love song with his finger-tips on the table, the door from the common room of the inn was opened and a man entered whom La Mothe at once guessed to be one of his three good friends in Amboise. In one hand he carried a lighted candle, in the other a great horn cup.
"Thanks, Jean," he said patronizingly, nodding towards the room he had left as he spoke. "Close the door behind me, my good fellow: both my hands are full." Then raising the candle, he turned and scrutinized La Mothe with a curiosity as great as La Mothe's own and much more frankly evident.
And he was worth studying, as a rare specimen is studied in the difficulty of classification. If there were many such men in France La Mothe had never yet met one of them. He was under middle height, the jaunty, alert youthfulness of his slim figure, supple without great strength, contradicted by the grey which shot with silver the thin hair falling almost to his narrow shoulders, and, as La Mothe searched him in the wavering, guttered candle-light, it flashed upon him that contradiction was the note of all his characteristics. The weak chin with the unkempt straggle of a beard gave the lie to a forehead magnificent in its abundant strength of mental power: the promise of the luminous, clear eyes was robbed of fulfilment by the loose mouth with the slime of the gutter and sensuality of the beast writ large upon its thick lips. From the thin peaked nose upwards it was the face of a son of the gods who knew his parentage and birthright; but downward that of a human swine who loved the foulness of the trough for the trough's sake. A Poet of poets, said the eyes: Slime of the gutter and old age unashamed of its shame, retorted the mouth; and both spoke truth. Evidently his scrutiny satisfied him, for he heaved a sigh of contentment as he drew nearer to La Mothe.