“The fool!” he exclaimed, “the young fool! A dagger thrust would have ended all. I mistook the boy’s nature; Michon or Jacques would have made no such mistake.”
CHAPTER XI
RENÉE
PÉRON and his twelve men, all armed and prepared for possible resistance, left the Palais Cardinal in less than a quarter of an hour after Richelieu had given his final instructions. Péron was in command of the party and walked a little in advance, anxious to be left to his own meditations, for the last three hours had been full of emotion; in that short space his life had been entirely changed. He was no longer a nameless waif, the adopted son of a clockmaker; he bore a name long honored in France, and his family had sprung from the noblest origin. On his mother’s side he was related to the great Huguenot house of Rosny, and on his father’s to the Catholic Duke of Montbazon. From being a man of humble origin, whose only chance of preferment lay in the favor of his patron, he was now a claimant to title and estates lawfully his own. The incidents of his childhood, so perplexing to him, were at last all understood. He remembered the room at the Château de Nançay, where Jacques des Horloges had made him pray; he remembered Père Antoine’s puzzling answers to his childish questions; it was all plain now, the mystery of the attic on the Rue de la Ferronnerie, the tenderness and respect with which he had been treated by the clockmaker and his wife, and a hundred other trifling indications of his rank which had been concealed from him. He was not slow to divine the motive of this concealment; nothing could have been gained by the revelation of such a secret, and it was a dangerous one too, while his father’s enemy was in such a powerful position that he could easily have removed the child. Péron’s feelings toward M. de Nançay were colored with passionate resentment and a thirst for revenge. Had he been less generous, he would have slain him in the struggle before the cardinal’s clock, but it was not in his nature to strike a blow when an enemy was at his mercy. A man less scrupulous of honor would not have hesitated to avenge his father’s death. Nor would Péron have hesitated to kill the marquis in an open fight, where both were equally armed. Had M. de Nançay been free at that moment and the edict against duelling not in force, Péron would have challenged him to single combat on the Place Royale and fought him to the death. But Richelieu was cardinal, and the duel was a capital offence. Yet, as Péron walked through the streets, he felt that when the hour came and they met on equal terms, he would surely kill M. de Nançay; and with this passionate feeling in his heart, he approached the house of his enemy.
It was now the middle of the afternoon, and the party of musketeers walking rapidly through the streets attracted more or less attention; women peeped at them from the upper windows, tradesmen stared from the doors of their shops, and a small train of ragamuffins had gathered in their wake. The brilliant uniform of the cardinal’s guards and the striking figure of their leader caused a little ripple of excitement. The sudden swoop of Monsignor upon his enemies was proverbial, and the sight of his soldiers always created interest, conjecture, sometimes even alarm. They had reached the corner of the Rue St. Thomas du Louvre, however, before anything occurred to delay their rapid progress. Here there were many foot-passengers; a party had just left the Hôtel de Rambouillet, another was going toward it, and through these groups of gay gentlemen the musketeers were obliged to push their way. Péron, considerably in advance of his companions and with his mind full of his own thoughts, advanced quickly into the midst of the crowd. But his course was barred by a young man dressed in the extreme of fashion, with his face painted and his hair curled like a doll. He was standing directly in Péron’s way, and as the musketeer approached, faced about and eyed him insolently from head to foot. The glance was unbearable, and Péron with a quick movement thrust him aside and would have passed on, contemptuous of the fop, who seemed little more than a boy. But this was not so easily accomplished. The young man instantly resented the strong push of the soldier’s arm and sprang after him, catching up with him and peering into his face.
“Sir musketeer, you struck me!” he exclaimed, frowning fiercely.
“Sir courtier, you blocked the public way,” retorted Péron, with impatient contempt and a scornful laugh.
“Ah!” ejaculated the stranger, savagely, “you make a jest of it. Sir, if you had hurt me, I would have thrown you into the street.”
“And had you hurt me,” retorted Péron, calmly, “I would have broken your neck.”
The exquisite stared as if unable to believe his own ears.
“Impertinent!” he said between his teeth, “you are a musketeer, I am the Sieur de Vesson! If we were equals, I would teach you to insult gentlemen.”