Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France. Weyman Stanley John

If the nobles did not like him, he was good to the traders, and the bourgeoisie, and equal to all."

      "Silence, man! Silence, and let me think," I said, much excited. And while he bustled to and fro, getting my supper, and the firelight played about the snug, sorry little room, and the child toyed with his plaything, I fell to digesting this great news, and pondering how I stood now and what I ought to do. At first sight, I know, it seemed that I had nothing to do but sit still. In a few hours the man who held my bond would be powerless, and I should be free. In a few hours I might smile at him. To all appearance, the dice had fallen well for me. I had done a great thing, run a great risk, won a woman's love, and after all was not to pay the penalty!

      But a word which fell from Frison as he fluttered round me, pouring out the broth, and cutting the bread, dropped into my mind and spoiled my satisfaction. "Yes, your excellency," he exclaimed, confirming something he had said before, and which I had missed, "and I am told that the last time he came into the gallery, there was not a man of all the scores who attended his levée last Monday would speak to him. They fell off like rats, – just like rats, – until he was left standing all alone. And I have seen him!" Frison lifted up his eyes and his hands and drew in his breath. "Ah, I have seen the King look shabby beside him! And his eye! I would not like to meet it now."

      "Pish!" I growled. "Some one has fooled you. Men are wiser than that."

      "So? Well, your excellency understands. But-there are no cats on a cold hearth."

      I told him again that he was a fool. But withal I felt uncomfortable. This was a great man if ever a great man lived, and they were all leaving him; and I-well, I had no cause to love him. But I had taken his money, I had accepted his commission, and I had betrayed him. Those three things being so, if he fell before I could-with the best will in the world-set myself right with him, so much the better for me. That was my gain, the fortune of war. But if I lay hid, and took time for my ally, and being here while he stood still, – though tottering, – waited until he fell, what of my honour then? What of the grand words I had said to Mademoiselle at Agen? I should be like the recreant in the old romance, who, lying in the ditch while the battle raged, came out afterwards and boasted of his courage. And yet the flesh was weak. A day, twenty-four hours, two days, might make the difference between life and death. At last I settled what I would do. At noon the next day, the time at which I should have presented myself, if I had not heard this news, at that time I would still present myself. Not earlier; I owed myself the chance. Not later; that was due to him.

      Having so settled it, I thought to rest in peace. But with the first light I was awake; and it was all I could do to keep myself quiet until I heard Frison stirring. I called to him then to know if there was any news, and lay waiting and listening while he went down to the street to learn. It seemed an endless time before he came back; an age, after he came back, before he spoke.

      "Well, he has not set off?" I cried at last, unable to control my eagerness.

      Of course he had not. At nine o'clock I sent Frison out again; and at ten, and at eleven-always with the same result. I was like a man waiting, and looking, and, above all, listening for a reprieve, and as sick as any craven. But when he came back at eleven, I gave up hope, and dressed myself carefully. I suppose I still had an odd look, however; for Frison stopped me at the door and asked me, with evident alarm, whither I was going.

      I put the little man aside gently. "To the tables," I said. "To make a big throw, my friend."

      It was a fine morning; sunny, keen, pleasant. Even the streets smelled fresh. But I scarcely noticed it. All my thoughts were where I was going. It seemed but a step from my threshold to the Hotel Richelieu. I was no sooner gone from the one than I found myself at the other. As on the memorable evening, when I had crossed the street in a drizzling rain, and looked that way with foreboding, there were two or three guards in the Cardinal's livery, loitering before the gates. But this was not all. Coming nearer, I found the opposite pavement under the Louvre thronged with people; not moving about their business, but standing all silent, all looking across furtively, all with the air of persons who wished to be thought passing by. Their silence and their keen looks had in some way an air of menace. Looking back after I had turned in towards the gates, I found them devouring me with their eyes.

      Certainly they had little else to look at. In the courtyard, where some mornings when the court was in Paris I had seen a score of coaches waiting and thrice as many servants, were now emptiness and sunshine and stillness. The officer, who stood twisting his mustachios, on guard, looked at me in wonder as I passed. The lackeys lounging in the portico, and all too much taken up with whispering to make a pretence of being of service, grinned at my appearance. But that which happened when I had mounted the stairs, and come to the door of the ante-chamber, outdid all. The man on guard there would have opened the door; but when I went to take advantage of the offer, and enter, a major-domo, who was standing near, muttering with two or three of his kind, hastened forward and stopped me.

      "Your business, Monsieur, if you please?" he said inquisitively. And I wondered why the others looked at me so strangely.

      "I am M. de Berault," I answered sharply. "I have the entrée."

      He bowed politely enough. "Yes, M. de Berault, I have the honour to know your face," he said. "But pardon me. Have you business with His Eminence?"

      "I have the common business," I answered bluntly, "by which many of us live, sirrah! – to wait on him."

      "But-by appointment, Monsieur?" he persisted.

      "No," I said, astonished. "It is the usual hour. For the matter of that, however, I have business with him."

      The man looked at me for a moment, in apparent embarrassment. Then he stood reluctantly aside, and signed to the door-keeper to open the door. I passed in, uncovering, with an assured face, ready to meet all eyes. Then in a moment, on the threshold, the mystery was explained.

      The room was empty.

      CHAPTER XIV

      ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER

      Yes, at the great Cardinal's levée I was the only client. I stared round the room, a long narrow gallery, through which it was his custom to walk every morning, after receiving his more important visitors. I stared, I say, round this room, in a state of stupefaction. The seats against either wall were empty, the recesses of the windows empty too. The hat, sculptured and painted here and there, the staring R, the blazoned arms, looked down on a vacant floor. Only, on a little stool by the main door, sat a quiet-faced man in black, who read, or pretended to read, in a little book, and never looked up. One of those men, blind, deaf, secretive, who fatten in the shadow of the great.

      At length, while I stood confounded and full of shamed thought, – for I had seen the ante-chamber of Richelieu's old hotel so crowded that he could not walk through it, – this man closed his book, rose, and came noiselessly towards me. "M. de Berault?" he said.

      "Yes," I answered.

      "His Eminence awaits you. Be good enough to follow me."

      I did so, in a deeper stupor than before. For how could the Cardinal know that I was here? How could he have known when he gave the order? But I had short time to think of these things. We passed through two rooms, in one of which some secretaries were writing; we stopped at a third door. Over all brooded a silence which could be felt. The usher knocked, opened, and with his finger on his lip, pushed aside a curtain, and signed to me to enter. I did so, and found myself standing behind a screen.

      "Is that M. de Berault?" asked a thin, high-pitched voice.

      "Yes, Monseigneur," I answered, trembling.

      "Then come, my friend, and talk to me."

      I went round the screen; and I know not how it was, the watching crowd outside, the vacant antechamber in which I had stood, the stillness, – all seemed concentrated here, and gave to the man I saw before me, a dignity which he had never possessed for me when the world passed through his doors, and the proudest fawned on him for a smile. He sat in a great chair on the farther side of the hearth, a little red skull-cap on his head, his fine hands lying motionless in his lap. The collar of lawn which fell over his red cape was quite plain, but the skirts