“Coward!” he said, and struck me on the side where mademoiselle cowered, so that I could not ward off the blow, and it slanted on my cheek.
Then the devil rose in me; I thrust her away, and catching him about the waist, flung him headlong on the stairs, just as the ushers in the lower hall began to shout, “The king, the king!”
M. de Mazarin and M. de Besanvel, my friends, hustled me off out of sight, and there was pandemonium on the staircase! Mme. de Montbazon furious and in tears because of the fracas, Mlle. Lamoignon hysterical, and M. le Vicomte, with a bruised head and a black eye, shrieking for vengeance. To make a long story short, the next morning I received monsieur’s cartel at my lodgings, and being privately warned by M. de Mazarin that the king was angry and I might look for the provost-marshal, I lost no time in choosing the hour and the weapons. We fought that day in the Place Royale with swords. What would you? I was accounted one of the best swordsmen in France, and I had the advantage of being indifferent. M. de Besanvel was with me and M. de Palisot with him. So far my evil star shone propitious and sparkled, for monsieur’s nerves were unstrung and his head sore.
I remember the scene quite well. The spring was forward; it was Thursday in Easter week, and the trees were feathery with green and the violets bloomed. ’Twas afternoon, and long shadows fell aslant the green turf and the sun was warm. Monsieur, stripped of coat and waistcoat, confronted me in a white ruffled shirt and trousers of blue satin, with ruffles of point de Venise, and silk stockings and red-heeled slippers. I saw his bloodshot eyes and his purple lips, and we crossed swords, while M. de Besanvel engaged M. de Palisot. It was not long; I spitted him at the second round—my famous thrust over the guard—and I saw him die without regret—vermin!
That was the end of it. We left him in the arms of the surgeon and M. de Palisot, who got but a scratch from Besanvel, and I rode post-haste from Paris with his majesty’s provost-marshal at my heels—and all for a girl I did not know. Saint Denis, such is life!
It seemed that Mme. de Montespan, the handsome she-devil, was hot for my ruin, and would give the king no rest; so Paris would not hold me, nor Normandy, nor France. In this dilemma I bethought me of Maître le Bastien, the goldsmith, then on his way to Moscow, summoned thither by Prince Basil Galitsyn. Maître le Bastien was my father’s friend and mine, and one whom I had benefited in more ways than one; to him therefore I went. Was not a journey to Russia and, mayhap, an adventure or two, better than a dull exile over seas? To protect Maître le Bastien from trouble, I travelled under an assumed name; I had the passports of his apprentice, Raoul,—who fell ill of the small-pox, the week before we left Paris,—and no one suspected my disguise unless it was the little varlet, Michaud, who hated me from the first. Thus out of Paris, and its envy and favour, I dropped into the northern capital, and found it less interesting than I had hoped—which shows that a man sees but an inch beyond his own nose.
I had been in Moscow now nearly a year, and the Czar Feodor was just dead and the two factions—the Naryshkins and the Miloslavskys—were quarrelling to the knife over the succession to the throne, and the quarrel was all the more bitter because it was a family one. It came about in this way. The Czar Alexis the Débonair married first a Miloslavsky, by whom he had several children, among them the Czar Feodor, his successor, but just dead; then Alexis had married a second wife, the young and beautiful Natalia Naryshkin, who became the mother of a boy and a girl. At the death of Feodor his natural successor would have been his own brother, Ivan, but Ivan was weak-minded and blind, and the Patriarch and the Naryshkins stirred up the populace to elect Natalia’s boy, Peter, a lad of nine. But the victory, though apparently easy, was destined to bear black fruit, for behind Ivan, the idiot, was his clever and daring sister, the Czarevna Sophia, who wanted the throne herself, and supporting her was her clever cousin, Ivan Miloslavsky, and Prince Basil Galitsyn, one of the most enlightened of the young Russian statesmen. And the balance of power seemed to be for the time with the Streltsi, or national guard, the only military organization of Russia, and both parties were intriguing with the soldiers, who, dissatisfied with their officers, their pay in arrears, and some of their hereditary privileges threatened by political changes, were ripe for mischief. Trouble growled deep and loud in the lanes and alleys of Moscow; in the palaces and the hovels of its three towns were whisperings, and terror, and intrigue.
But little I cared for all this, and time hung heavy on my hands, for I had many dull hours, and it was in one of these that I watched the dwarf torment the steward, and found the scene amusing.
I was still pacing the workshop in an idle mood when Michaud, the apprentice, found me.
“Monsieur,” he said, with his air of knowing more than he chose to tell, “two ladies are below, determined to see the master.”