“What rogue?” asked Péron quickly.
Both Jacques and his wife looked up in surprise.
“Did you not know that M. de Nançay had been set at liberty?” asked the clockmaker. “I saw him yesterday on the Rue St. Martin with an escort of gay gentlemen. There was much gossip, so says Archambault, about the arrest and the release; ’tis thought that monsignor but baits his trap for larger game.”
Péron was silent, perplexed and uneasy at this turn of events. It was impossible, however, for any man to probe the cardinal’s purposes; it was not unusual for him to let a victim apparently escape from his toils for the sole purpose of more deeply involving him. It might be so with M. de Nançay; it had been so with Chalais; but Péron could not understand, and it presented matters in a new light: it bore directly on his own future.
“I cannot forgive him for letting the rascal go,” Madame Michel remarked, breaking in on the thread of his meditations; “if a man ever deserved to lose his head it is Pilâtre de Marsou, sometimes called Marquis de Nançay. Mère de Dieu! I wonder that his flesh does not creep at the name, for verily ’twas he who murdered your father and would have murdered you. Ah, I have not forgotten that night in the woods, and how I prayed and wept with the poor fatherless baby in my arms. I know that the bon Dieu will reward him according to his merits. I recollect how I said over and over the words of the psalm: ‘Qu’une ruine imprévue accable mon enemi; qu’il le prenne au piège qu’il a dressé lui-même, et qu’il tombe dans les embûches qu’il m’a préparées.’ And I believe that it will be so, for even Père Antoine, who is an angel of forgiveness, says that retribution comes surely upon the wicked—either at seedtime or harvest.”
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CARDINAL’S RING
IN the Rue des Bons Enfans, behind the gardens of the Palais Cardinal, Péron had his lodgings. He had long since outgrown the proportions of his little room over the clockmaker’s shop; the old house at the sign of Ste. Geneviève was too small to accommodate the three grown people and the apprentices, and he had taken up his quarters near the scene of his daily employment. He had two upper rooms in a house but a little way from the rear of Archambault’s pastry shop; his means were limited and his requirements few and simple, so the apartments were plainly and neatly furnished. He had left the little room on the Rue de la Ferronnerie untouched; it was to him full of tender recollections of his childhood, and he knew it was dear to the motherly heart of good Madame Michel, who looked upon him almost as her own son.
It was in these rooms on the Rue des Bons Enfans that he made a discovery which amazed and alarmed him. He had been twenty-four hours in Paris before he recollected the cardinal’s ring, which he had hidden in the lining of his coat, and when he went to look for it, to his surprise, it was not to be found. He remembered that it had escaped the vigilance of M. de Vesson’s searchers, and he could not account for the loss. In his anxiety, he cut the lining entirely away from his coat, but revealed nothing. It was dusk when he made this discovery of his mishap, and he lighted a taper and kneeled on the floor, searching with patience and exhaustive scrutiny every corner and crevice of the room. The furniture was scanty, and the light shone into the most remote spots, but showed nothing. He was convinced that the ring was in the coat when he took it off to assume his uniform, nor could it get out of its own accord. He had dressed hastily to attend the cardinal to mass at his parish church of St. Nicholas des Champs, and in his hurry he had forgotten the ring. No one had entered the rooms in his absence, for the doors were both secure and the keys in his pocket. Then he recollected the windows. There were three; the two in the front room overlooked the street and were inaccessible, but the one in the inner room opened within three feet of the slanting roof of the adjoining house, which, however, appeared to be unoccupied. If any one had entered his rooms, it must have been through that window, but he saw no signs of it. It was possible for a man to walk along on the roofs of the other buildings and come down on the roof opposite his quarters, but why should any one suspect him of carrying the ring, and know where to find it? If the men of Vesson’s party had seen it, they surely would not have hesitated to take it. What had become of the circlet? It could not effect its own escape, that was certain, and he could not imagine that it had fallen from its place, so securely had he fastened it. Moreover, he was not alone confronted with anxiety at the loss; he was liable to be called upon to produce it at any moment by Richelieu, who had for the time overlooked it, but who never forgot. His ceaseless vigilance noted all things, small and great, with the same untiring energy and patience. It was with profound anxiety, therefore, that Péron continued his search, and it was only when he was absolutely certain of its fruitlessness that he ceased to look in every possible spot where the precious ring could have been mislaid. At last, he was compelled to go on duty again to attend the cardinal to the Louvre, whither he went like a man in a dream. He was too full of his own perplexities to observe the gay scenes in the galleries of the palace, where M. le Grand was at the height of his power and arrogance, unconscious that Richelieu’s web was already about him. Père Matthieu had sent from Brussels evidence of M. le Grand’s correspondence with the Vicomte de Fontrailles, who had already been selected as the messenger that the conspirators were to send to Madrid to conclude a treaty in the name of Monsieur. For Péron had aided in the first steps to expose the plot of Cinq Mars, which was already partially woven. In the Louvre, too, Péron came face to face with his old patron, the Prince de Condé, who greeted him kindly, recalling with a smile the victory over Choin in the tennis court and saying that monsignor had spoken highly of the musketeer’s courage and address. The prince’s condescension and his mention of the cardinal’s commendation suggested to Péron the possibility that his real station in life was already known among a few, and that M. de Nançay’s strange liberation had some secret meaning. But all these thoughts did not allay his anxiety over his loss, which might be attended with such serious results, the bearer of that ring being able to gain easy access to the house of the iron cross, and perhaps to fool even Père Matthieu. Yet a vision rising before him of the stern-faced, keen-eyed priest afforded him some reassurance, for it would be difficult indeed to outwit him.
It was midnight when Péron was at last at liberty to return to his lodgings. He was weary and abstracted, and made his way through the gardens of the Palais Cardinal to the Rue des Bons Enfans. At his own door he found a little ragged boy of the street sitting on the stone step, and thought the child had selected this spot to sleep; but at his approach the small figure rose. It was too dark for either one of them to distinguish the features of the other, and only the lantern which hung above the door revealed the ragged outline of the boy. He peered through the darkness at Péron as he came up.
“Are you M. de Calvisson?” he asked.