With this warning, he dismissed the young soldier and went, with something akin to a smile on his stern face, to give his morning audience to an immense circle of fawning clients and courtiers, who thronged the anterooms of the Palais Cardinal and overflowed into the Rue St. Honoré.
Péron went out through the gardens and made his way slowly to the rear entrance of Archambault’s pastry shop. He was in search of some men to accompany him on his mission, and he knew that the pastry cook was well acquainted with all sorts and conditions of society. Though bent on fulfilling it faithfully, Péron did not like his mission. The cardinal had given him no explanation of it, but he was not slow to divine the purpose of mademoiselle’s ride to Poissy. She was to be used to entice some of her father’s accomplices to the house called the Image de Notre Dame. Of that there could be no doubt; her arrival was a signal for a meeting of the conspirators, and from his brief acquaintance with Renée de Nançay, Péron felt sure that she would not allow the cardinal to use her as a means for the destruction of the friends of the marquis. He would not have accepted the commission at all, preferring to brave Richelieu’s displeasure, if it had not been for the cardinal’s covert threat that if he did not undertake it some one else would who would be less delicate toward mademoiselle’s feelings. But Péron would rather have met the desperate men alone than have encountered the merciless tongue of Renée de Nançay.
With these troubled and perplexing thoughts in his mind, the young musketeer opened the kitchen door of the pastry shop and walked into the midst of a scene similar to the one which he had witnessed in his childish visit, when he had been the jest of the soldiers. It was the busiest hour of the morning, and some of the cooks were roasting meat and some were rolling pastry, while others were making marvellous palaces and fantastic shapes of sugar. Here was the Palais Cardinal in sugar on top of a fruit cake, and there was an angel with a harp, and Noah’s dove with the olive branch. There was a mountain of rissoles on one table and on another a royal pasty made of venison from the forest of St. Germain.
Péron passed unheeded through the busy scene, and at the door of a small office next the public room he met Archambault. The pastry cook was stouter than ever, and the bald spot on the top of his head far exceeded the proportions of a poached egg; but he wore a look of placid content, and it was whispered that his fortune exceeded that of the late Duc de Luynes. At the sight of Péron, his fat face beamed; Jacques des Horloges had already told him of the cardinal’s revelation, and he drew the young man into his private room, and shut the door.
“Sit down, M. le Marquis,” he said, pointing to the table, on which was a bottle of wine, “and let us drink to your health and prosperity.”
“Nay, good Archambault,” replied Péron, smiling, “let the toast be your famous run from Poissy to save my life.”
“Parbleu! it was a run,” said Archambault, laughing; “I thought I should drop on the hill, Monsieur Jehan, but I made it, and the wine that we gave the canaille to drink was as good as this in which I drink your health, my marquis.”
“No marquis as yet, Archambault,” Péron replied; “only the Sieur de Calvisson, nor would I have it known that I am really the son of the late Marquis de Nançay.”
Archambault set down his empty glass with a look of perplexity on his fat face.
“And wherefore not, Monsieur Jehan?” he asked; “surely monsignor—”