The Chevalier d'Auriac

by S. Levett Yeats

'None,' I answered, a little bitterly.

'I have, however, and it is this,' and she placed in my hand a little packet. 'Monsieur may open that at his leisure,' and she turned as if to go.

'One moment—I do not understand. What is the meaning of this masquerade?'

'Only this, that my husband will appear to have been at the same time at the Quartier du Marais as well as the Faubourg St. Germain. I would add that Monsieur would be wise to keep indoors as he is doing. We have found out that the house is being watched. Good-night, monsieur,' and, with a nod of her wrinkled face, this strange woman vanished.

I appeared in truth to be the sport of mystery, and it seemed as if one of those sudden gusts of anger to which I was subject was coming on me. I controlled myself with an effort, and with a turn of my fingers tore open the packet, and in it lay my lost knot of ribbon. For a moment the room swam round me, and I became as cold as ice. Then came the revulsion, and with trembling fingers I raised the token to my lips and kissed it a hundred times. There were no written words with it; there was nothing but this little worn bow! but it told a whole story to me. It had come down to me, that ribbon that Marescot said was hung too high for de Breuil of Auriac; and God alone knows how I swore to guard it, and how my heart thanked him for his goodness to me. For ten long minutes I was in fairyland, and then I saw myself as I was, proscribed and poor, almost in the hands of powerful enemies, striving to fight an almost hopeless cause with nothing on my side and everything against me. Even were it otherwise, the rock of Auriac was too bare to link with the broad lands of Pelouse and Bidache, and, love her as I did, I could never hang my sword in my wife's halls. It was impossible, utterly impossible. So I was tossed now one way, now another, until my mental agony was almost insupportable.

The next day nothing would content me but that I must repair to the Rue Varenne, and, if possible, get a glimpse of Madame as she arrived. I left instructions that Palin should be asked to wait for me if he came during my absence; for my impatience was too great to admit of my staying in for him. I was not, however, in so great a hurry as to entirely neglect the warnings I had received, and dressed myself as simply as possible, removing the plumes from my hat, and wearing a stout buff coat under my long cloak. Thus altered I might be mistaken for a Huguenot, but hardly anyone would look for a former cavalier of the League in the solemnly-dressed man who was strolling to the end of the Malaquais. There I took a boat and went by river the short distance that lay between me and the jetty at the Rue de Bac. At the jetty I disembarked, and went leisurely towards the Rue Varenne. As I was crossing the Rue Grenelle, hard by the Logis de Conde, a half-dozen gentlemen came trotting by and took up the road. I stopped to let them pass, and saw to my surprise that amongst them were my old comrades in arms, de Cosse-Brissac, Tavannes, and de Gie. I was about to wave my hand in greeting, when I recognised amongst them the sinister face of Lafin riding on the far side of me. Quick as thought I pretended to have dropped something, and bent down as if to search for it. The pace they were going at prevented anyone of them, not even excepting Lafin, with his hawk's eye, from recognising me; but it did not prevent Tavannes from turning in his saddle and flinging me a piece of silver with the gibe, 'Go on all fours for that, maître Huguenot.' I kept my head low, and made a rush for the silver, whilst they rode off laughing, a laugh in which I joined myself, though with different reasons. On reaching the Rue Varenne I had no difficulty in finding the house I sought; the arms on the entrance gate gave me this information; and I saw that Madame had only just arrived, and had I been but a half-hour earlier I might have seen and even spoken with her. I hung about for some minutes on the chance of getting a glimpse of her, with no success; then finding that my lounging backwards and forwards outside the gates was beginning to attract attention from the windows of a house opposite, I took myself off, feeling a little foolish at what I had done.

I came back the way I went, and as I walked down the Malaquais met master Jacques taking an airing with two companions. In one of them I recognised Vallon, my old friend de Belin's man; the other I did not know, though he wore the sang-de-bœuf livery of the Compte de Belin. Having no particular interest in lackeys I paid him no further attention, though, could I but have seen into the future, it would have been a good deed to have killed him where he stood.

On seeing me Vallon and Jacques both stopped, and I signalled to them to cross over the road to me, as I was anxious to hear news of Belin, who was an intimate friend. This they did, and on my inquiry Vallon informed me that Belin was at his hotel in the Rue de Bourdonnais, and the good fellow urged me to come there at once, saying that his master would never forgive him were he not to insist on my coming. I was truly glad to hear Belin was in Paris. He was a tried friend, whose assistance I could rely on in any emergency; and, telling Vallon I would be at the Rue de Bourdonnais shortly, I went on to my lodging, followed by Jacques, leaving Vallon to go onwards with his companion.

On coming home I found, as might be expected, that there was no sign of Palin, and, after waiting for him until the dinner hour, gave him up for the present and rode off to the Two Ecus; and when my dinner, a very simple one, was finished, took my way to the Rue de Bourdonnais, this time mounted on Couronne, with Jacques, well armed, on the sorrel.

The hotel of the Compte de Belin lay at the west end of the Rue de Bourdonnais, close to the small house wherein lived Madame de Montpensier of dreadful memory; and on reaching it I found that it more than justified the description Belin had given of it to me, one day whilst we were idling in the trenches before Dourlens. It stood some way back from the road, and the entrance to the courtyard was through a wonderfully worked iron gateway, a counterpart, though on a smaller scale, of the one at Anet. At each corner of the square building was a hanging turret, and from the look of the windows of one of these I guessed that my friend had taken up his quarters there.