His wig was off--it hung upon the edge of an old praying-chair that was pushed into a corner as though of no further use; certainly of none to the present occupant of this room--and his black-cropped hair, his small black moustache, which looked like a dab stuck on his upper lip--since it extended no further on either side of his face than beneath each nostril--added to his black eyes, gave him a saturnine expression, not to say a menacing one. For the rest, he was a thick-set, brawny man of perhaps five-and-forty, with a deeply-tanned complexion that looked as though it had been exposed to many a pitiless storm and many a fierce-beating sun; a complexion that, were it not for a whiteness beneath the eyes, which seemed to tell of late hours and too much wine, and other things that often enough go with wine and wassail, would have been a healthy one.
Also, it was to be noted that, in some way, his apparel scarcely seemed suited to him. The satin coat of russet brown; the deep waistcoat of white satin, flowered with red roses and pink daisies and little sprays of green leaves; the white knee-breeches also of satin, the gold-buckled shoes, matched not with the sturdy form and fierce face. Instead of this costume à la Régence one would have more expected to see the buff jerkin of a soldier, the brass spurs at the heels of long brown riding-boots, and, likewise, one of the great swords now reclining in the corner buckled close to his thigh. Or else to have seen the man sitting in some barrack guardroom with, beneath his feet, an uncarpeted floor, and, to his hand, a pint stoop, instead of finding him here in this highly-ornamented saloon.
"The plague seize me!" he exclaimed, using one of his favourite oaths, "but there is no going out to-night. Nor any likelihood of anyone coming in. I cannot go forth to gaze upon my adorable Laure; neither Morlaix nor Sainte Foix are likely to get here."
And, after glancing out at the fast falling snow, he abandoned himself once more to his reflections. Though, now, those reflections were aided by the perusal of a packet of letters which he drew forth from an escritoire standing by the side of the fireplace. A bundle of letters all written in a woman's hand.
He knew them well enough--by heart almost; he had read them over and over again in the past year; it was perhaps, therefore, because of this that he now glanced at them as they came to his hand; it happening, consequently, that the one he had commenced to peruse was the last he had received.
It was dated not more than a week back--the night before Christmas, of the year 1719.
"Mon ami," it commenced, "I am desolated with grief that you cannot be with me this Christmastide. I had hoped so much that we should have spent the last New Year's Day together before our marriage."
"Bah!" exclaimed the man, impatiently. "Before our marriage. Bah!" and he rattled the sheet in his hand as he went on with its perusal. "I imagine that," the letter continued, "after all which has gone before and has been between us it will ere long take place----."
"Ah!" he broke off once more, exclaiming, "Ah! you imagine that, dear Marquise. You imagine that. Ha! you imagine that. So be it. Yet, on my part, I imagine something quite the contrary. I dare to imagine it will never take place. I think not. There are others--there is one other. Laure--Laure--Laure Vauxcelles. My beautiful Laure! Yet--yet--I know not. Am I wise? Does she love me? Love me! No matter about that! She will be my wife; the mother of future Desparres. However, let us see. To the Marquise." And again he regarded his letters--flinging this one aside as though not worth the trouble of further re-reading--and took up another. Yet it, also, seemed scarcely to demand more consideration than that which he had accorded its forerunner in his hands, and was also discarded; then another and another, until he had come to the last of the little packet--that which bore the earliest date. This commenced, however, with a vastly different form of address than did the one of which we have seen a portion. It opened with the pretty greeting, "My hero." And it opened, too, with a very feminine form of rejoicing--a pæan of delight.
"At last, at last, at last, my soldier," the writer said, "at last, thou hast come to thine own. The unhappy boy is dead; my hero, my Alcides, is no longer the poor captain following the wars for hard knocks; his position is assured; he is rich, the inheritor, nay, the possessor of his great family title. I salute you, monsieur le----."