In Kings' Byways Part 3

"But I may not," I said faintly--I hated the Bishop--"I may not get speech of Monseigneur. May I not then take the news to the Palais Royal and--and let the Queen know directly? Or go with it to the Cardinal?"

"No, you may not!" he said, with a look and in a tone that sent a s.h.i.+ver down my back. "The Cardinal? What has the Cardinal to do with it?

Understand! You must do precisely that and that only which I have told you, and add not a jot nor a t.i.ttle to it!"

"I will do it," I muttered in haste. My spite against the Bishop was a small thing beside my neck. And there was the reward!

"Good! Then--then, I think that is all," he answered, seeing in my face, I think, that I was minded to be obedient. "And I may say farewell.

Until we meet again, adieu, Monsieur Prosper! Adieu, and remember!" And setting on his hat with a polite gesture, he turned his back to me, went out into the sunlight, pa.s.sed to the left, and vanished. I heard the garden door close with a crash, and then, silence--silence, broken only by the faint whine of the dog, as it moved in its prison.

Was I alone? I waited awhile before I dared to move; and even when I found courage to rise, I stood listening with a beating heart, expecting a footfall on the stairs or that something--I knew not what--would rush on me from the closed doors of this mysterious house. But the silence endured. The sparrows outside twittered, the cricket renewed its chirp, and at length, drawing courage from the sunlight, I moved forward and lifted the dog's coat from the floor. I examined it: it was the one I had seen in the possession of the man in the shed. Five minutes later I was in the streets on my way to the Bishop's hotel, the parcel of velvet tucked under my girdle.

I have since thought that I did not fully appreciate at the moment the marvel that had happened to me. But by this time in truth I was nearly light-headed. I went my way as a man moves in a dream, and even when I found myself at the door of the hotel, whence I had been so cruelly ejected, I felt none of those qualms which must have shaken me had I been sensible. I did not even question how I should reach Monseigneur, or get the news to him: which proves that we often delude ourselves with vain fears, and climb obstacles where none exist. For, as it happened, he was descending from his coach when I entered the yard, and though he raised his gold-headed staff at sight of me, and in a fury bade the servants put me out, I had the pa.s.sion if not the wit to wave the velvet coat in his face, and cry my errand before them all.

Heaven knows at that there was such a sudden pause and about-face as must have made even the stolen dog laugh had it been there. Monseigneur in high excitement bade them bring me in to him as soon as he was s.h.i.+fted, the secretary whispered in my ear that he had a cloak that would replace the one I had lost, a valet told me that my wife was gone to her father's, a serving-man brought me food, and nudged me to remember him, while others ran and fetched me shoes and a cap; and all--all from the head-clerk, who was most insistent, downwards, would know where the dog was, and how I came to know what I did.

But I had even then the sense to keep my secret, and would tell my story only to the Bishop. He had me in, and heard it. In ten minutes he was in his coach on his way to the Montmartre Faubourg, taking me with him.

His presence and the food they had given me while I waited had sobered me somewhat; and I trembled as we went lest the man who had spared me on terms so strange had some disappointment yet in store for me, lest the closet be found empty. But a whine, that grew into a long and melancholy howl, greeted us on the threshold of the room whither I led them; and the closet door being forced, in a trice the dog was out and amongst us.

Monseigneur clapped his hands and swore freely. "_Dieu benisse!_" he cried. "It is the dog, sure enough! Here, Flore! Flore!" And as the dog jumped on us and licked his hand, he turned to me. "Lucky for you, rascal!" he cried, in great good humour. "There shall be fifty crowns in your pocket, and your desk again!"

I gasped. "But the reward, Monseigneur?" I stammered. "The five hundred crowns?"

He bent his black eyebrows. "Reward? Reward, villain?" he thundered. "Do I hear aright? Is it not enough that I spare you the gallows you richly earned but yesterday by a.s.saulting my servant? Reward? For what do I pay you wages, do you think, except to do my work? Are you not my servant?

Go and hang yourself! Or rather," he continued grimly, "stir at your peril. Look to him, Bonnivet, he is a rogue in grain; and bring him with me to the Queen's ante-chamber, Her Majesty may desire to ask him questions, and if he answer them well and handsomely, good! He shall have the fifty crowns I promised him. If not--I shall know how to deal with him."

At that, and the mean treachery of his conduct, I fell into my old rage again, and even his servants looked oddly at him, until a sharp word recalled them to their duty; on which they hustled me off with little ceremony, and the less for that which they had before showed me. While the Bishop, carrying the dog in his arms, mounted his coach and went by the Rue St. Martin and the Lombards, they hurried me by short cuts and byways to the Palais Royal, which we reached as his running footman came in sight. The approach to the gate was blocked by a great crowd of people, and for a moment I was fond enough to imagine that they had to do with our affair--and I shrank back. But the steward, with a thrust of his knee against my hip, which showed me that he had not forgotten my a.s.sault upon him, urged me forward, and from what pa.s.sed round me as we pushed through the press, I gathered that a score of captured colours had arrived from Flanders within the hour, and were about to be presented to the Queen.

The courtyard confirmed this, for in the open part of it, and much pressed upon by the curious who thronged the arcades, we found a troop of horse, plumed and dusty and travel-stained, fresh from the Flanders road. The officers who bore the trophies we overtook on the stairs near the door of the ante-chamber. Burning with resentment as I was, and strung to the last pitch of excitement, I none the less remember that I thought it an odd time to push in with a dog; but Monseigneur the Bishop did not seem to see this. Whether he took a certain pleasure in belittling the war-party, to whom he was opposed in his politics, or merely knew his ground well, he went on, thrusting the _militaires_ aside with little ceremony; and as every one was as quick to give place to him, as he was to advance, in a moment we were in the ante-chamber.

I had never been admitted before, and from the doorway, where I paused in Bonnivet's keeping, I viewed the scene with an interest that for the first time overcame my sense of injustice. The long room hummed with talk; a crowd of churchmen and pages, with a sprinkling of the lesser n.o.bility, many lawyers and some soldiers, filled it from end to end. In one corner were a group of tradesmen bearing plate for the Queen's inspection: in another stood a knot of suitors with pet.i.tions; while everywhere men, whose eager faces and expectant eyes were their best pet.i.tions, watched the farther door with quivering lips, or sighed when it opened, and emitted merely a councillor or a marquis. Several times a masked lady flitted through the crowd, with a bow here and the honour of her taper fingers there. The windows were open, the summer air entered; and the murmur of the throng without, mingling with the stir of talk within, seemed to add to the light and colour of the room.

My lord of Beauvais, with his chaplain and his pages at his shoulder, was making in his stately way towards the farther door, when he met M.

de Chateauneuf, and paused to speak. When he escaped from him a dozen clients, whose obsequious bows rendered evasion impossible, still delayed him. And I had grown cold, and hot again, and he was but halfway on his progress up the crowded room, when the inner door opened, half a dozen voices cried "The Queen! The Queen!" and an usher with a silver wand pa.s.sed down the room and ranked the company on either side--not without some struggling, and once a fierce oath, and twice a smothered outcry.

Of the bevy of ladies in attendance, only half a dozen entered; for a few paces within the doorway the Queen-Mother stood still to receive my patron, who had advanced to meet her. It seemed to me that she was not best pleased to see him at that moment; her voice rang somewhat loud and peevish as she said, "What, my lord! Is it you? I came to receive the trophies from Rocroy, and did not expect to see you at this hour."

"I bring my own excuse, Madam," he answered, smiling and unabashed.

"Have I your Majesty's leave to present it?" he continued, with a smirk and a low bow.

"I came to receive the colours," she retorted, still frowning. It seemed to me that he presumed a trifle on his favour; and either knew his ground particularly well, or was more obtuse than a clever man should have been.

For he did not blench. "I bring your Majesty something as much to your liking as the colours!" he replied.

Then I think she caught his meaning, for her proud Hapsburg face cleared wonderfully, and she clapped her hands together with a gesture of pleasure almost childish. "What!" she exclaimed. "Have you found--Flore?"

"Yes, Madam," he said, smiling gallantly. He turned. "Bonnivet!" he said.

But Bonnivet had watched his moment. Before the name fell clear of his master's lips, he was beside him, and with bent knee laid the dog tenderly at her Majesty's feet. She uttered a cry of joy and stooped to caress it, her fair ringlets falling and hiding her face and her plump white shoulders. On that I did not see exactly what happened; for her ladies flocked round her, and all that reached me, where I stood by the door, took the form of excited cries of "Flore! Flore!" "Oh, the darling!" and the like. A few old men who stood nearest the wall and farthest from the Queen raised their eyebrows, and the officers standing with the colours by the door, wore fallen faces and glum looks; but nine-tenths of the crowd seemed to be carried away by the Queen's delight, and congratulated one another as warmly as if ten Rocroys had been won.

At that moment, while I hung in suspense, expecting each moment to be called forward, I heard a little stir at my elbow. Turning--I had advanced some way into the room--I found myself with others pushed aside to give place to a person of consequence who was entering; and I heard several voices whisper, "Mazarin!" As I looked, he came in, and pausing to speak to the foremost of the officers, gave me the opportunity--which I had never enjoyed before--of viewing him near at hand. He bore a certain likeness, to my lord of Beauvais, being tall and of a handsome and portly figure. But it was such a likeness when I looked a second time, as a jewelled lanthorn, lit within, bears to its vacant fellow.

And then in a moment it flashed upon me--though now he wore his Cardinal's robes and then had been very simply dressed--that it was he whose back I had seen, and whose dazzling thumb-ring had blinded me in the garden near the Filles Dieu.

The thought had scarcely grown to a conviction before he pa.s.sed by me, apologizing almost humbly to those whom he displaced, and courteously to all; and this, and perhaps also the fact that the ma.s.s of those present belonged to my patron's party--who in the streets had the nick-name of "The Importants"--so that they were not quick to make room for him, rendered his progress so slow that, my name being called and everybody hustling me forward, I came face to face with the Queen almost at the moment that he did. And so I saw--though for a while I was too much excited to understand--what pa.s.sed.

Her Majesty, it seemed to me, did not look unkindly upon him. On the contrary. But my lord of Beauvais was so full of his success, and so uplifted by the presence of his many friends, that he had a mind to make the most of his triumph and even to flaunt it in his rival's face. "Ha, the Cardinal!" he cried; and before the Queen could speak, "I hope,"

with a bow and a simper, "that your Eminence has been as zealous in her Majesty's service as I have been."

"As zealous, a.s.suredly," the Cardinal replied meekly. "For my zeal I can answer. But as effective? Alas, it is not given to all to vie with your Lords.h.i.+p in affairs."

This answer--though I detected no smack of irony in the tone--did not seem to please the Queen. "The Bishop has done me a great service. He has recovered my dog," she said tartly.

"He is a happy man, and the happy must look to be envied," the Cardinal answered glibly. "Your Majesty's dog----"

"Your Eminence never liked Flore!" the Queen exclaimed with feeling. And she tossed her head, as I have seen quite common women do it in the street.

"You do me a very great wrong, Madam!" the Cardinal answered, with the look of a man much hurt. "If the dog were here--but it is not, I think."

"Your Eminence is for once at a loss!" the Bishop said, with a sneer; and at a word from him one of the ladies came forward, nursing the dog in her arms.

The Cardinal looked. "Umph," he said. He looked again, frowning.

I did not know then that, whether the Queen liked him or disliked him, she ever took heed of his looks; and I started when she cried pettishly----

"Well, sir, what now? What is it?"

The Cardinal pursed up his lips.

My lord the Bishop could bear it no longer.

"He will say presently," he cried, snorting with indignation, "that it is not the dog! It is that his Eminence would say," with a sneer, "if he dared!"

His Eminence shrugged his shoulders very slightly, and turned the palms of his hands outwards. "Oh," he said, "if her Majesty is satisfied I am."

"_M'dieu!_" the Queen cried, with a spirt of anger--"what do you mean?"

But she turned to the lady who held the dog, and took it from her. "It _is_ the dog!" she said, her colour high. "Do you think that I do not know my own dog?" she continued. And she set the dog on its feet. She called it "Flore! Flore!" It turned to her and wagged its tail eagerly, and jumped upon her skirts, and licked her hand.

"Poor Flore!" said the Cardinal. "Flore!" It went to him.

"Certainly its name is Flore," he said: yet he continued to scan it with a puzzled eye. "It is the dog, I suppose. But it used to die at the word of command, I think?"

"What it did, it will do!" Monseigneur de Beauvais cried scornfully.

"But I see that your Eminence was right in one thing you said."

The Cardinal bowed.

"That I should be envied!" the Bishop retorted, with a sneer. And he glanced round the circle. There was a slight though general t.i.tter; a great lady at the Queen's elbow laughed out.