“Prince Dolgoruky’s equerry has been about here for two days, M. le Maréchal,” Pierrot replied calmly; “after M. de Lambert threw him down at the Kremlin he kept away for a while, but now he has returned to his old vocation, and there is also another fellow with him, who, I think, wears the czar’s livery under his cloak.”
“That is likely enough,” I said, thinking of Catherine’s warning; “watch both of them, but especially Tikhon; he has a personal grudge against M. de Lambert, and is therefore the more dangerous. It will go ill with us, Pierrot, if we cannot outwit these Russians; we did it in our young days, and if we fail now it will be because old age is creeping on.”
A smile illumined Pierrot’s stolid face. “Ah, M. le Vicomte,” he said, “we should never have returned to Moscow, for it is our fate here to be constantly mixed up with love and desperate intrigue. I am getting old and stiff, monsieur, and cannot defeat these rascals so easily as I did twenty years ago.”
“Do not confess your age or your stiff joints, Pierrot,” I said, laughing; “it is too soon to be laid upon the shelf by the wild young gallants of to-day. Moreover, they need our counsel.”
“The more they need it, the less likely they are to take it, monsieur,” he said dryly. “Touchet is a featherhead, and M. de Lambert is over-rash, although a noble and gallant gentleman. He reminds me of you, M. le Maréchal, in your youth; the same brave, loyal, and devoted soldier. I think of the old days often, and of madame when she was Mademoiselle Ramodanofsky.”
“We are a couple of old fools, Pierrot,” I replied, “for I think of it too, and perhaps that is why I have so much forbearance for M. Guillaume.”
Pierrot shook his head and smiled. “Ah, monsieur,” he said, “you were a gallant young gentleman too; and Mademoiselle Zénaïde—how well I remember her as she looked when we brought you up the stairs unconscious, after you had saved her life and the others! Those were brave days, M. le Vicomte; you had the swiftest and the strongest sword-thrust that it has been my good fortune to see; you—”
“Hush, man!” I interrupted, “you make me an old fogy. My hand has not yet lost its cunning. You talk of me as an old fellow without a good right arm.”
“The saints forbid!” Pierrot said devoutly; “but you are now a marshal of France and you were then a young cavalier. It is the bâton that is for you now, rather than the sword and the dagger.”
“True enough, Pierrot,” I assented with a sigh; “I must remember my dignity and my years, and let the young have the adventures. Soon it will be my son who has his father’s old tricks with the rapier, and I shall be but a gouty old gentleman who was once marshal of France, but is now a fossil too stiff for service in the field and laid upon the shelf. Well, well, Pierrot, an old sword and an old servant, I hope, will be left me.”