CHAPTER VI
THE WISE WOMAN OF “THE COCK WITH THE SPURS OF GOLD”
It was a strangely superstitious age this age of Louis XV., strangely superstitious and strangely enlightened. On the one side the illuminated philosophers of the rising school of Voltaire, on the other a society ready to be gulled by every charlatan, quack, or sorceress clever enough to exploit the depths of human credulity. You shall read in the fascinating memoirs of that century how the male and female adventurers tricked to their immense profit that polished, gallant, cynical, and light-hearted noblesse which made the glory of the Court. And André was a true child of his age. Yvonne’s mystifying remarks had stirred all the superstition and awe lurking behind his hollow homage to the established religion, and human curiosity whetted this stimulus of superstition. He scented, in fact, an agreeable adventure in a visit to this mysterious witch.
But first he consulted his friend Henri, Comte de St. Benôit, like himself a Chevau-léger de la Garde, and like himself notorious for his skill with the sword and for his countless gallantries. Was it not St. Benôit who had taken his place in rousing the jealousy of the Comte des Forges and who had also been obliged to give the hot-headed husband the quietus of a flesh-wound?
Henri of course knew all about the wise woman. Was she not the talk of the bel monde?
“She won’t see you,” he said. “She only prophesies to women, and very few of them. I tried to bring her to book, but her girl, a devilish saucy grisette with a roving eye and a skittish pout, shut the door in my face, by Madame’s orders, if you please.”
“And you went away?”
“No, indeed, I put my knee against the door and said that as I couldn’t pay Madame I must pay her. Not the first time the hussy has been kissed, and it won’t be the last. You, too, will discover the jade hasn’t the dislike to men that her mistress has.”
“What will you wager she will not see me—the mistress?”
“A kiss from my Diane of the ballet. I’ll bet, too, Madame is not at home at all, for she comes and goes like a will-o’-the-wisp. But if you do see her she’ll tell you something cursedly disagreeable. She frightened the poor Des Forges, your Comtesse and mine, into hysterics, and,” his voice dropped, “she warned the Duchesse de Châteauroux she had only three weeks to live—and it was all the poor thing had. Don’t go to her, my dear André; she’ll see you in her crystal globe, face upwards in a heap of dead with an English sword in your guts.”
Needless to say, perhaps, that afternoon saw André at the tavern called “The Cock with the Spurs of Gold,” which, save for a brand-new sign-board, had all the appearance of a farmhouse hastily turned into an inn. Buried in the woods between Paris and Versailles it was exactly suited for a rendezvous to which all might repair without the world being any the wiser. André had carefully disguised himself, and as he rapped on the door his appearance suggested rather the comfortable bourgeois than the noble Capitaine-Lieutenant des Chevau-légers de la Garde. To his surprise he won his wager with greater ease than he had dreamed.