The Duke's Motto: A Melodrama

by Justin H. McCarthy

"Faith," said Cocardasse, emphatically, "I’d rather face an army than face Louis de Nevers."

Again there was a silence. The gentlemen of the sword seemed to be at a loss for conversation. Again Passepoil broke the silence, this time with a question: "Why are we after Louis de Nevers?"

Nobody seemed to be able to answer him. Even Staupitz, who was responsible to the others for this gathering of the company, was baffled. He had been told to supply nine swords, and he had supplied them. He had been told by his employer the purpose for which the nine swords were wanted—he had been told by Æsop against whom those nine swords were to be drawn—and that was the extent of his knowledge. This time the hunchback, in his favorite character of know-all, took the lead. He put his book in his pocket, as if he perceived that further study was to be denied him that afternoon, with so much noise and bustle of curiosity about him, and rose from his chair. Holding his long rapier behind his back with both his hands, he advanced into the middle of the room, where he proceeded to harangue his fellow-guardsmen.

"I can tell you," he said, harshly, "if you would care to hear the story."

Now bravos, swashbucklers, spadassins, and such soldiers of fortune are like children in this regard—as indeed in many another—that they love a good yarn well spun. If something in the dominating, masterful manner of Æsop compelled their attention, something also in the malicious smile that twitched his lips seemed to promise plenitude of entertainment. A grave quiet settled upon the ragamuffins, their sunburned faces were turned eagerly towards the hunchback, their wild eyes studied his mocking face; they waited in patience upon his pleasure. Pleased with the humility of his audience, Æsop began his narrative.

"There are," he said, "now living three noble gentlemen in the first flush of youth, in the first flight of greatness, young, handsome, brilliant, more like brothers than friends. They are known in the noble world of the court as the three Louis, because by a curious chance each of these splendid gentlemen carries Louis for a Christian name. Humorists have been known to speak of them as the three Louis d’or. The first is none other than our good king’s person, Louis of Bourbon, thirteenth monarch of his name; the second is Louis, Duke of Nevers; the third is his cousin, Louis of Mantua, Prince of Gonzague."

He paused for a moment, looking with the satisfaction of a tale-teller at the expectant faces before him, and as he paused an approving murmur from his audience urged him to continue. Æsop resumed his narration.

"You will ask how the Italianate Mantuan comes to be a cousin of our French Nevers, and I will tell you. Nevers’s father, Louis de Nevers, the twelfth duke, had a very beautiful sister, who was foolish enough, or wise enough, as you may choose to take it, to fall in love with a needy Italian nobleman that came adventuring to Paris in the hope of making a rich marriage. He made a rich marriage, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he thought he made a rich marriage. He married Mademoiselle de Nevers."

Again Æsop halted, employing one of the familiar devices of rhetoricians, who lure their hearers to keener interest by such judicious pauses in the course of their exposition. The listening ruffians were as attentive as babes at a day-school, and Æsop, with a hideous distortion of his features, which he intended for a pleased smile, went on with his story:

"Mademoiselle de Nevers had some fortune of her own, of course, but it was not large; it was not the feast for which the amative Mantuan had hungered. The Nevers’s fortune was in the duke’s hands, and remained in the duke’s hands, for the duke married at much the same time as his sister; and the duke’s wife and Gonzague’s wife were brought to bed much about the same time, and each bore a son, and each son was named Louis after the twelfth duke, out of the affection his wife bore him, out of the affection his sister bore him, and out of the affection that sister’s Mantuan husband pretended, in his sly Italian manner, to bear him."