THE REWARD OF ÆSOP
Paris lay quiet enough between the midnight and the dawn. All the noise and brilliance and turbulence, all the gayety and folly and fancy of the royal ball had died away and left the Palais Royal and the capital to peace. Little waves of frivolity had drifted this way and that from the ebbing sea to the haven of this great house and that great house, where certain of those that had made merry in the king’s gardens now made merrier still at a supper as of the gods. The Palace of Gonzague was one of those great houses. The hall where the Three Louis gazed at one another—one so brave, one so comely, one so royal—was indeed a brilliant solitude where the lights of many candles illuminated only the painted canvases throned over emptiness. But from behind the great gilded doors came the sound of many voices, men’s voices and women’s voices, full of mirth and the clatter of glasses. His Highness Prince Louis de Gonzague was entertaining at supper a chosen company of friends—flowers from the king’s garland carefully culled. There were the brilliant, insolent youths, who formed the party of Gonzague; there were the light, bright, desirable women whom the party of Gonzague especially favored among the many of their kind in Paris. Nocé was there, and Oriol and Taranne and Navailles and the others, and the dainty, daring, impudent Cidalise and her sisters of the opera, and Oriol’s flame, who made game of him—all very pretty, all very greedy, as greedy of food and wine as they were greedy of gold and kisses, and all very merry. One face was wanting from the habitual familiars of Gonzague. The little, impertinent Marquis de Chavernay was not present. Gonzague had not thought fit to include him in the chosen of that night. Chavernay was getting to be too critical of his kinsman’s conduct. Chavernay was not as sympathetic with his kinsman’s ambitions and wishes as his kinsman would have had him be.
At the head of the table sat the illustrious host, beaming with an air of joyousness that astonished even his friends. It was as though the sun that had shone for so long upon all their lives, and in whose light and heat they had prospered, had suddenly taken upon himself a braver radiance, a fiercer effulgence, in the glow of which they all, men and women alike, seemed to feel their personal fortunes patently flourishing. No one knew why Louis de Gonzague was so gladsome that night; no one, of course, ventured to ask the reason of his gayety. It was enough for those, his satellites, who prospered by his favor and who battened on his bounty that the prince, who was their leader, chose on this occasion to show a spirit of careless mirth that made the thought of serving him, and of gaining by that service, more than ever attractive.
Outside, in the deserted hall, the Three Louis stared at one another, heedless of the laughter behind the gilded doors, indifferent to the hilarity, regardless of the license characteristic of a supper-party in such a house at such an hour. For long enough the Three Louis kept one another company, while the great wax candles dwindled slowly, and the noise and laughter beyond seemed interminable. Then the door of the antechamber opened, and the hunchback entered the hall and paused for a moment, glancing at each of the Three Louis, with a look of love for one, a look of hate for the other, and a look of homage for the third. At the hunchback’s heels came Cocardasse and Passepoil, waiting on events. The hunchback stood for a moment listening to the noise and jollity beyond the doors. Then he turned to his followers:
"My enemy makes merry to-night. I think I shall take the edge off his merriment by-and-by. But the trick has its risks, and we hazard our lives. Would you like to leave the game? I can play it alone."
Cocardasse answered with his favorite salute: "I am with you in this if it ends in the gallows."
Passepoil commented: "That’s my mind."
Lagardere looked at them as one looks at friends who act in accordance with one’s expectation of them.
"Thanks, friends," he said. Then he sat at Gonzague’s table, dipped pen in ink, and wrote two hurried letters. One he handed to Cocardasse. "This letter to the king, instantly." The other he handed to Passepoil. "This to Gonzague’s notary, instantly. Come back and wait in the anteroom. When you hear me cry out, ’Lagardere, I am here,’ into the room and out with your swords for the last chance and the last fight."
Cocardasse laid his hand on the sham hump of the sham Æsop. "Courage, comrade, the devil is dead."